Back in the first Clinton (as in Bill’s) presidential campaign, the continual reminder in the “war room” was “It’s the economy, stupid.” The phrase, coined by Clinton campaign strategist James Carville, refers to the notion that Clinton was a better choice because Bush (as in George HW) had not adequately addressed the economy, which had recently undergone a recession.

All that being said, if you haven’t already, it is way past time to begin to take care of your own finances.  Why?Because (as you were reminded in the video Monday)  “The economic crisis doesn’t represent a cycle; it represents a `reset.’ It’s an emotional, social, economic reset.  …  People who understand that will prosper.  Those who don’t will be left behind.”  It is time to reset your personal economic practices:

Pay Yourself First.  It’s time to start improving your own savings.  Stop spending all of your paycheck money each month.  Intentionally, put money aside first, then pay your bills, and live more frugally on the rest. My bank offers a “Keep the Change” program on ATM purchases where the sales amount is rounded up and the change is placed into savings.

Don’t buy what you can’t afford. If you can’t pay cash, you probably can’t afford it.  If it is straining your cash flow, ladies and gentlemen, this is not the time to have a strained cash flow. Paying interest on anything is only making somebody else rich.

Sweat the Small Stuff: Examine the cumulative cost of all of your small indulgences and then motivate yourself to cut back.  Is the Starbucks logo on your coffee worth that much more than the Dunkin’ Donuts or the Kwiki-Mart?  I just cut back on my cable package, I appreciate the internet connectivity but just lost a significant amount of channels (Never watched Animal Planet anyway)

Never Too Late: Ray Kroc was 52 years old when he bought the franchise. He had diabetes and incipient arthritis, had lost his gallbladder and most of his thyroid gland, but was convinced that the best was ahead of him.  The franchise Kroc purchased? McDonalds.  It is not too late to make choices to do something different and move forward. Don’t let past choices hold you back, don’t lose hope, get help if needed, and move forward.

All that being said, look again at Mickee-Dee’s, is that an indulgence, both in the wallet and on the waistline, you can afford anymore?

Some links for further reading:

> Choose to Save

> Six Months To A Better Budget 

> The Beauty Of Budgeting

> Build Yourself An Emergency Fund 

> Are You Living Too Close To The Edge?

Any more suggestions, folks?  (We are all in this together, so…) Comment Away!

Doesn’t make a difference if we are talking about your pastor or pastoral life director or business manager or director of religious education or bishop, someone in your life serves as “the boss” to your professional and/or volunteer ministry. Your boss is looking at a very tough year ahead and has probably already been looking at it for a while.  As part of the Youth Ministry Stimulus Program, what can be done to make things better in your relationship???

The Vision Thing:  Yep, you’ve got responsibility for you slice of the pie.  Is your boss capable of responding to questions about the direction that you are taking and “name” some of the larger efforts/programs?  Are you well aware of where your boss wants your efforts to go (expectations) as well as his/her larger vision for the whole faith community??  Are you asking questions of your boss, are you learning? Where can you improve and how will your boss best respond to increased communication?  Are memos, one-on-one’s, and/or informal coffee klatch chats called for here?  Your relationship should include the personal (family stuff), the ministerial (church stuff) but should absolutely include the professional as well (performance stuff – Am I doing well?  Where can I improve?)

Don’t “Shoot the Shepherd:”  You yourself are well aware: leaders have immense bulls-eyes on their backs. Be loyal. Don’t get suckered into complaining conversations regarding him or her. Your best response is “You need to talk to him/ her directly about that.” And then report the conversation openly, giving names, that someone raised a concern. You’d be surprised how that disarms people. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the vision and direction provided by your boss, assume that person has what’s best for the Church in mind, and that he / she wants people to grow closer to God. Finally, pray for your boss, regardless of your relationship with him or her.

Taking It for the Team:  Your boss is dealing with a larger slice of the pie than just you   Where and how can you be of assistance?  Where can you bring your skills into play for “the greater good?”  Don’t under-estimate the value of just showing up for a program/presentation that has absolutely nothing to do with youth ministry but expresses support for your boss and/or the concerns of the whole church?

Office Hours:  All right, this (for some) might get a little painful…   It doesn’t make a difference if your office has a corner-view or if it formerly the broom closet without a phone or internet connectivity… of if you don’t really have an office at all.   You need to have a consistent presence around the place where your boss has a consistent presence, ie, “the office.”  If you are a believer in the profound possibilities of the informal contact  with a young person or a volunteer… then the same must be true with your boss!  But, it will not occur unless you are around – -  make that happen, huh??

Bring the Fun:  All right, no one signs up for youth ministry anticipating that it will be boring or grueling.  Soooo, don’t ever let it get that way. We must be the “morale officers” for our staffs and superiors.  Proactively celebrate your relationships beyond the “forced fun” of a office christmas party or birthday luncheaon (but bring the fun to those as well!! 

Some links for further reading:

> Companions in Ministry: Youth Workers and Pastors in Partnership

> Looking Over Both Sides of the Fence: A youth worker turned pastor looks at staff relationships

> Partnering with Your Pastor

> 10 Ways to Get Along With Your Pastor

> Power Struggles and Games

Any more suggestions, folks?  (We are all in this together, so…) Comment Away!

We are diverging s bit from our usual Tuesday edition of Catholic YM News for this one article. This is the news item that tripped me over into developing materials regarding our month-long stimulus package. 

During this holiday season of hard times, not even houses of God have been spared. Some lenders believe more churches than ever have fallen behind on loans or defaulted this year. Some churches, and at least one company that specialized in church lending, have filed for bankruptcy. Church giving is down as much as 15 percent in some places, pastors and lenders report.

Some commercial lenders no longer see churches as a safe investment. “We are seeing more stress in churches than we have in modern history,” says Mark G. Holbrook, president and chief executive of the Evangelical Christian Credit Union of Brea, Calif., which specializes in lending to churches. The credit union has moved to foreclose on seven of its 2,000 member churches this year, and Holbrook says he expects to take similar action against two more next year. Before now, it had foreclosed on only two churches in its 45-year history.

The article continues on…, but for those of us reading “the signs of the times,” (or the Wall Street Journal,) watch this note along with the caveat regarding “major denominations:

Dozens more churches are listed as delinquent on their loans, according to a search of county court records nationwide. Churches were long considered good credit risks, lenders say. Weekly collections tend to be steady, even during recessions, and churches feel a moral tug to pay debts. Most of the nation’s 335,000 churches carry little or no mortgage debt, and are based in buildings that were paid off long ago. But some churches, especially those not affiliated with major denominations, borrowed briskly to build or expand in recent years.

Read the whole article here. 

Some folks make resolutions regarding the New Year.  This is an effort to continue to learn how to develop home-made trainings to serve distance learning for our shared future.

That being noted, here is a set of nine things that I’m watching for, both within the field of catholic youth ministry as well as in myself.  This is serves as a set-up and foundational statement as to why we are offering the Catholic Youth Ministry Stimulus Package throughout this month.

The videoes runs about 17 minutes.  Future Monday videos will be shorter.  As with the times that I was doing my first audio podcasts, I got a bit overly ambitious on content.  So settle in and enjoy. 

(The Kenda Dean presentation referenced in part two can be found here and the flea video can be found on YouTube here.)

Questions: 

1. What is the one thing that you are on the watch for in 2009?

2. What one of the “09 things to watch for”  gives you the greatest concern (NOT worry!)?   Why?

3. What one(s) of these nine suggestions is totally wrong?  And why?

4.  What makes you hopeful, both personally as well as for the field of Catholic Youth Ministry, for 2009?

Please comment away!!!!

We are still within the twelve days of Christmas And no, this has nothing to do with nine lords a’leaping.

This is the retelling of a  a World War I tale often repeated by Sojourners’ Jim Wallis. This day we “pray for the coming of the prophetic vision in which all the fragmented and alienated peoples will gather together, worship together, sing together; when the ‘normal’ shall pass away and all things be made new. And in the meanwhile, may God grant that we might embody even now—still in the midst of the ‘normal’—the ‘new,’ which has come and is coming and shall come in fullness”

May Silent Night be the hymn that fuels my (and our) mental soundtrack throughout the year.  AMEN,

It’s the day after New Years and no one really watching, so I just wanted to give you a heads up…  We are going to try something really ambitions throughout January – - – a series that will last an entire month (at least that is all I have planned so far.)

On Tuesday and Wednesdays, you can anticipate the usual pattern of posting up Catholic Youth Ministry News items and podcasts. As always, the blog will break in with breaking news as needed.  But, the rest of the month is dedicated to offering you a stimulus package for you and your youth ministry. These challenging economic times have really been weighing heavily on my mind and yours as well, I’m sure.

On Mondays, please anticipate some video chatting regarding the immediate future, a catholic vision for “youth ministry 3.0,” hope, and building sustainable youth ministry.  On Thursdays, we’ll blog regarding communication with your pastor and staff as well as with parents and the parish. Fridays will focus in on you regarding the economy,  your plan for the future, you keeping faith in challenging times, and resume building.

Let’s comment away folks…  What’s missing and still needed?  What are the concerns and issues that you and your peers are discussing in corner tables late at night?

And, if you have something to contribute larger than a comment, like a hyperlink to an article deserving of our attention or a posting of your own (I’m accepting guest bloggers on this, folks) please contact me.  And, don’t miss a single entry, consider signing up for the RSS Feed

Happy New Year, folks! This week is always a great week to catch up on holiday movies.  I’ve already seen three:  Slumdog Millionaire (Keep reading this post,) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and The Day the Earth Stood Still.  Hope to see up to maybe three more.  

Slumdog Millionaire has been receiving Oscar buzz, so I took a matinee in to see what the fuss was all about.  It is a typical Academy Award potential nominee in that it is a “serious.”  The tale told weaves its way between the nightmares of the poorest of the poor and the dreams of India’s version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire (whose prize is actually 20 million rupees which equals $411,000 US.)

The movie revolves around the life story, told in flashbacks, of Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is one question away from winning the top

prize. Each chapter of his story reveals the key to the answer to one of the game show’s questions.

Will he become rich because of the knowledge derived from his experiences or is he already rich because of them.   Will the prize be won at the end of the show by answering the questions or has the prize already been claimed by being willing to struggle with questions?  See, told ‘ya the movie was “serious” stuff.

In Bollywood fashion, there is a dance scene saved for the closing credits. (Bollywood loved large joyful dance scenes.) Someone mashed up that scene with clips from throughout the movie (which really gives nothing away)  The song is Jai Ho, which translates into father, the Hindu God Vishnu, and/or “conqueror of death.”  As the dance is a celebration of life, I’m gonna go with the latter definition.

“My name is Benjamin Button, and I was born under unusual circumstances. While, everyone else was agin’, I was gettin’ younger… all alone.”

Went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last night.  It was a good movie. Yes, it is a long movie but the sort that you just settle in for and enjoy it as you watch. It is visually a beautiful movie, great care was take in in the design of each scene.

The film tells the story of the whole life of Benjamin, but takes care to slow down within the moments of the relationships that were special to him.  (Isn’t that how our own memories work?)  Benjamin’s inconvenient love for Daisy seems to echo Forest Gump’s relationship of bad-timing with Jenny (screenwriter Eric Roth was involved in both movies) but Benjamin seems capable or celebrating the joy of love more deeper and richly. 

Benjamin Button lives a life in reverse.   We who live our lives in forward are concerned about the dehabilitating effects of our old age, Benjamin has these very same concerns regarding his decline into youthfulness.  But somewhere, there is a middle ground where we’ve lived enough, experienced enough, yet remain young enough to live life freely and fully.  After watching this movie, one has to ask himself or herself, what if I am living in the middle ground right now? “Fear not that your life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.” (John Henry Newman)

The story is narrated from the “present time” of the land-fall of Hurricane Katrina which seems to re-emphasize this exchange between the movie’s central characters:
  Benjamin Button: I was thinking how nothing last, and what a shame that is.
  Daisy: Some things last.

Have you seen the movie?  Your comments are welcomed!

    Secretary of Defense: Why have you come to our planet?
    Klaatu: Your planet?

The Day the Earth Stood Still was an interesting movie.  I do remember having seen the original on a classic movies channel sometime back.  Keanu Reeves again makes with the minimalist dead-pan and milks a lot of drama without much being dramatic as the alien invader Klaatu.

The original involved Klaatu and his robot coming the Earth to call for the end of war, Without unveiling this movie’s plotline, there is a presumption in this movie that the human race is only willing to step up to being heroic after having already walked out to “the precipice.”

   But, Klaatu’s question of “your planet?” does haunt.  What is truly counted as our possessions? And what is our responsibility  for stewardship of those possessions?

Have you seen the movie?  Your comments are welcomed!