Investments
I work alongside others that serve children, youth, young adults, parents, and volunteer adults that shape the lives of young people. I’m always interested in education headlines and what is, and is not, happening. Based on my observation more and more school systems are “teaching to the test” rather than educating young people. I’ve written before and said out loud that an educated laity is the ongoing reformation movement within Christendom. Educated laity require a different kind of minister and seek out a religious experience that challenges as well as comforts. I often speak of my brand of Christian witness, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), as a denomination that celebrates the spirituality that study and service provide to strength and enrich faith. I think our denomination as a whole will return to this celebration though right now many are running away from it in every manifestation of the church. I speak of children, youth, and young adult ministries as “investment” ministries. Of late, my group of peers have begun using “missional” as a way of describing children, youth, and young adult ministry. Missional not to “save souls”, but to journey alongside. Missional as a way of centering “why” a congregation, a volunteer, or an ordained minister’s intentionally serves children, youth, and young adults seeking to experience and hear Gospel. It’s an investment in today and tomorrow.
Such is education. But, the great consumerism that has swept across this nation has turned education into another product to consume and it happens at every level. Pay your money and get your certificate or diploma whether you can do the work or not. In our age of mass media and edutainment having good filters for information is more important than ever before. How else can one sort through the marketing of ideas, policies, politics, medications, and religions to locate the truth, to understand redaction, or note revisionists history. Education helps provide a better tomorrow, today. But not if it is for sale.
The tone for education begins in a home. My parents were not scholars, but required me to do my best and then try again. Boundaries were set to ensure that I had time and learned the skills to manage my time. School was my job just like my father and mother went to their jobs. This is one reason why I think the cutting edge of ministry with children and youth is ministry to their parental units or the adults that are providing care. Filters, values, and a moral compass begin at home and are influenced by outside friends and forces. Helping the adults that are providing the boundaries, example, and moral compass claim their identity as thinking, feeling selves about their religious beliefs and a host of other “isms” is where I would be focusing ministry in a local congregation. That’s an investment in children and youth today and tomorrow.
Nick Kristof writes for the New York Times and has an interesting piece on their website.
Occupy the Classroom
Nicholas Kristof | The New York Times | Oct. 19, 2011Occupy Wall Street is shining a useful spotlight on one of America’s central challenges, the inequality that leaves the richest 1 percent of Americans with a greater net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent.
Most of the proposed remedies involve changes in taxes and regulations, and they would help. But the single step that would do the most to reduce inequality has nothing to do with finance at all. It’s an expansion of early childhood education.