This is our prayer for another ordinary Sunday.

Lord, be in the midst of our lives. You formed us, You know us, and You have dedicated and appointed us.

Lead us towards a still more excellent way. Let us love as to not cling towards childish things, judging with fury from the viewpoint of our native place. Let us love as to not be a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal, to be nothing, to gain nothing. Let us love so that we might bear all things, believe all things, hope for all things, and endure all things.

We sing of Your salvation. In You we find refuge and safety. Rescue us, deliver us; save us.

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count.
It’s the life in your years.  

– Abraham Lincoln

We are wrapping up the NFCYM annual membership meeting in Los Angeles and I will be spending a majority of this day, ironically enough, Up in the Air. And, today, I turnover the personal calendar to 52 years old.

It is a little more of a fascinating age of a birthday for me than has been 50 (which was just fun), 40, and other younger years (which, frankly, were plain forgettable)  At 52, for whatever reasons, I find myself a little more reflective.

52 reminds me of the Ray Lewis dance.  There is a certain amount of confidence that does come along with experience. I am personally a bit more self-contained that the Ravens’ middle linebacker, but I do appreciate the celebratory nature of each new encounter.

And, so… A little reflective and ready to dance.  Let’s go!

Others hitting 52…  Matt Fewer/ Max Headroom (this month), Ellen DeGeneres (last Tuesday), Judy Norton-Taylor/ Mary Ellen Walton  (yesterday), comedienne Brett Butler (today), and sports reporter Rick Reilly (next Wednesday)

Yes, I did not blog last night’s session….  Weariness won out and I opted to attend the session in a rather comatose mode that to type throughout it.   The meatiest past was a preview of statistics of ecclesial lay ministers who attended attended NCCYM (I think… or was it NCYC?) and even that was more stats than implications.

We will be back up after morning prayer sometime after 9am pacific time…  This one should be an intersting session… Are we organizationally built for success?

We will begin live-blogging again after morning prayer… starting around 9am pacific time.

We are live blogging from the Annual Membership Meeting of the National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministry!

We began the month reviewing 2009 entries to this category, offering reheated caffeine of the introductory posts, looking at the signs of the times and what’s been brewing.  Then we packed a little caffeine for the road and looked at the Emmaus Walk as a model and worked at the caffeine grind discerning the secret ingredient (passion) that will make this ministry tasty. Which all lead up to the warning that there was danger ahead.

Then our Caffeine series entered some dangerous grounds considering the potential outcomes of our efforts – a dangerous young woman.  We wondered… Do we invite young people to a safe faith or encourage them towards dangerous unselfishness. Will our young people be more likely to be losing their religion or take up lives of dangerous goodness?

The danger is found in our call towards solidarity.  Therefore, we need to center the faith of our young people by offering them (as Kenda Dean has identified them) anchors for a lifelong religious identity which include a creed to believe, a place to belong (see parts one and two), a call to live out, and a hope to hold onto.

I arrived at the NFCYM’s membership meeting last night in Los Angeles.  We will defer continuing the series until February in anticipation of doing a little live-blogging from the meeting.  Check in later today!

WASHINGTON, DC — Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston and chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, praised the presence of young people in pro-life activities.
“A new generation is rising that will usher in a culture of life . . . We should not underestimate the role of young Catholics,” said Cardinal DiNardo, . “What a tremendous gift to have young people! What a wonderful energy they bring!”  The cardinal said young people know in their heart what is right and what is wrong when it comes to life. “They do not make some of the tortured distinctions that some of we elders have made,” he added. Read the whole Catholic News Service article.

LOS ANGELES, CA — Otherwise, not much is tripping hot on the wires right now… so we are packing out to LA for the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry‘s annual membership meeting.  Watch for irregular updates throughout the next few days as we report on the events occurring there. I’m really looking forward to the trip… LA host Mike Norman has promised me front-row seats to the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien throughout the week!

One of Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is to “Begin with the End in Mind.” The end in mind proposed by Jesus was the Reign of God- the realization that God’s love, grace, and justice has preeminence and dominion over our existence and experience.

All indicators of our mission should point towards God’s Reign. It is part of imagination, our story, our prayer, and our expectations. It fuels an optimism and a confidence within our lives. Most especially, it engenders an attitude of gratitude for each moment of grace experienced that hints towards God’s presence and reign within our lives.

The work of disciple-ing young people is a work of the Holy Spirit. We merely aspire to be collaborators with God in this process. We should not be about this mission alone. The National Directory for Catechesis reminds that “All members of the community of believers in Jesus Christ participate in the Church’s catechetical mission. (NDC, #53) If we are to disciple young people into faithful communities, then we must be involved in this work, not only as individuals, but it is essential that we do this as part of a faithful community ourselves.

Mark Cannister is Professor and Chair of Youth Ministries at Gordon College in Wenham, MA.  He recently wrote for YouthWorker.com on Growing Up Without Selling Out: The Professionalization of Youth Ministry.  In it he likens our growth as a profession from the technique and skills needed for soapbox racing to the technology and fine-tuning necessary for professional Full Throttle Drag Racing.

The money quote: The takeaway from all this isn’t the standardization of youth ministry, but the general raising of the bar for everyone in youth ministry—broadening our scope, our understanding and our resources. Leading a ministry based on a single personality or one person’s experience, or driven by the views of one seminar speaker or one author, one resource will be short-lived in our complex, multicultural society. Read the whole article.

Being in relationship with a God of consequence and a faith community of consequence means nothing unless they compel us to lead lives of consequence. Catholicism calls for us to be agents for dangerous good. The difference between Catholicism and Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, however, is that Catholics do good, not because they are nice people, but because they are disciples to Jesus and are attempting to live out a beatitude lifestyle.

True friendship and true love selflessly desires the best the best for one. In Good Willing Hunting, Ben Affleck’s Chuckie Sullivan confronts Matt Damon’s Will who wonders “What do I want a way outta here for? I want to live here the rest of my life. I want to be your next door neighbor. I want to take out kids to little league together up Foley Field.” Chuckie responds, “Look, you’re my best friend, so don’t take this the wrong way, but in 20 years, if you’re livin’ next door to me, comin’ over watchin’ the Patriots’ games and still workin’ construction, I’ll f…in’ kill you. And that’s not a threat, that’s a fact. I’ll f***in’ kill you.”  (Hey, apologies for the language on the video… Take care if you are in the office)

Their dialogue is about the gift for mathematics that Will has and what a waste it would be for him not to use it to change his life. Chuckie will the do the best with what he has but he knows that Will can do so much better, only his fear is holding him back. Chuckie concludes by saying, “Let me tell you what I do know. Every day I come by to pick you up, and we go out drinkin’ or whatever and we have a few laughs. But you know what the best part of my day is? The ten seconds before I knock on the door ‘cause I let myself think I might get there, and you’d be gone. I’d knock on the door and you wouldn’t be there. You just left.”

Therefore, it is time to increase the ante and the stakes regarding our work with vocation. The work of encouraging vocations is not just about encouraging priesthood, although this is essential to our Church. We need to encourage young people is discern the ways that they will build a lifestyle of discipleship around their baptismal promises.

We can no longer be satisfied with ministry that duplicates itself. True ministry anticipates that the ministry that is engendered from our efforts will advance and improve. We can no longer be satisfied with a ministry that remains comfortable in place. We must recognize that something has sadly died in a ministry that has participants in the same place twenty years later doing the same things.

Fear must be replaced with confidence and motivation. The adult community must first model this lifestyle before imparting it. We must come to the dangerous recognition that the action of one can make a difference and that the life of one can have a purpose and role in the plan of the Lord.

Finally, we must reaffirm the gift of freedom that we both celebrate in our relationship with God as well within our country’s democracy. In a visit to Baltimore in 1995, Pope John Paul II reminded the United States that “Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”

It was in the same homily that he suggested the vocational direction. By nurturing a “willingness to let the Lord transform our lives,” we should anticipate “a renewed spiritual and missionary vitality among American Catholics” who would be disciples.

Our story is of the Holy Father’s invitation. Our story is of two catholic boys from Southie in Boston. Our story is of Jesus and the communion of saints who lived as they ought to have lived their lives.

Kenda Creasy Dean proposed that “in a morally insignificant universe—the one a substantial number of American teenagers seem to inhabit—there is no telos, no larger story into which one’s life fits, no judgment or even remembrance of one’s life when it is over, no consequence.” We are called to “send out” others on behalf of all of us to transmit the Good News to others.