My name is Johnny I heard you speak this past weekend. Man, you said some things that I know were for the youth but I needed to hear it. I’ve tried to create a safe environment for my youth group, but the kids have been wearing me down and I really needed to hear about making it a team effort. What really bugs me and gets me down is not so much that the kids are crude or rude to me (that’s how they are treated at home) but more so how they tear down each other. I know you got a lot on your plate, but I was wondering if you had any suggestions on how I can get them to treat each other better.

Johnny

Thanks for the encouragement! Not much time, but lots of thoughts.

First of all, crafting a culture is tough anyway, but impossible without some like-minded co-conspirators. If you want to show the kids how to treat each other, you’ve got to import some ringers, friends of yours who will help you set that tone…and who will be really responsive when you suggest a new idea or game and be really interested when you are giving a talk. Then you’ve got to concentrate on contrasting the ways you and your insiders joke, play, affirm, confront, forgive each other with the kid’s less-good patterns. It’s more about showing than telling…and to do that you’ve got to rig the group.

Secondly, you’ve got to be really open about confronting what is wrong in the culture without attacking the kids themselves. Reject movie suggestions not because they have sex or swearing, but because they portray lousy ways of relating to other people. Read aloud from books like Letters to a Bullied Girl, or read articles from the paper about kids being mean or destructive, and verbally savage the actions of kids who aren’t your kids (but may be a lot like them). Be ‘out there’ as a champion of the oppressed. Kids say they respect coolness, but if they follow anything at all (and many don’t), they follow passion.

Gotta zoom. Keep the faith!

Bart

Honestly, I’m not here to help people, but only to make friends, and I’m not trying to fix those friends, but only to love them ways they can feel.  I know Bobbie isn’t likely to hold a job, or to stop drinking so much, or even to be especially nice to me more days than not.  I’m not loving her because she has potential.  I’m loving her because I can.

More and more I realize that I live in the land of bad decisions, where people keep breathing and eating and reproducing even though both they and their culture are broken beyond repair.  I’m not optimistic anymore, about this place of about the larger world’s chances for avoiding a serious cataclysm, but apparantly I remain a prisoner of hope.  That is, I still believe that what I do matters, even if it doesn’t make a difference.

Bart, I wanted to update you on your guy’s progress. He is doing very
well so far, no problems that I can see. He made it through the -8
degree day without mishap, which is about as tough as it gets in our
place. However, he did smash his finger in a chain back a couple of
weeks ago. I took him to the Urgent Care, no break and no broken skin.
I drove him down to his house in Walnut Hills to save him the ride.

Wow. I was shaken out of my white bread world in a hurry. I thought I
had a rough crowd, it’s unbelievable down there. Kids yelling at me to
stop, come over to see them. All sorts of stuff (as you well know).
Mykel said, as so many of the guys do, that the whole key to survival is
to just stay in the house. This is madness. Dave

Dave ,

Aw, it’s not so bad down here, once you get used to it. The problem is, you never really get used to it.

The key, for me at least, is not to stay in the house, but rather to get out and try to engage people in ways that let me see past their dysfunction to their humanity. Otherwise I just look out my window and feel contempt for their mess and anger for the way it spoils my view.

In other words, in an ugly world, you gotta be a proactive lover or you’ll end up being a passive hater.

Thanks for playing your part like a champ,

Bart

Now my intellectual hero, Thomas Friedman, is trying to get the rest of us to put pressure on the Obama administration to make this move while he has the economic crisis and the meltdown of Detroit to rationalize it for folks who can’t see the bigger picture.
Read his column (click here), think for fifteen seconds, and start spreading the word to your friends and relatives: Here is a sacrifice we can all make that will really make a difference…let’s make it happen!