Here are the most popular blog posts from the month of September 2010:

There is a unique track going on at the National Conference on Catholic Youth Ministry this year… and it is celebrating a collaboration with the National Catholic Young Adult Ministry Association.

One of the voices of the NCCYM will include Julianne Donlon-Stanz.  Born and educated in Ireland, Julianne ministers for the Diocese of Green Bay as director of adult faith formation and young adult ministry. Her “breakout session” will be on Young Adults: The Nomads of Parish Life.

Previous NCCYM podcasts include Mike Patin and Ansel Augustine, Roy Petitfils, Mari Ann Callis and the New Orleans Youth Office.

Through this week, we are pulling some more quotes from Kendra Creasy Dean’s Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church.  From pages 65:

(We must maintain our) focus on Jesus Christ despite pressure to focus on ourselves. An African Christian described it to me this way” “You Americans think of Christianity as a farm with a fence. Your question is, ‘Are you inside the fence or outside of it” We Africans think differently. We think of Christianity as a farm with no fence. Our question is, “Are you heading towards the farm or away from it?” The Church’s identity is not defined primarily by its edges, but by its  center: focused on Christ, the sole source of our identity, no intruder poses a threat. No alien hops a fence, because there is no fence. Boundaries are determined by proximity to the Holy Spirit’s centripetal pull, not by arbitrary human boarders. The truth is that two thousand years of Living Water sloshing through over the church’s walls has done more to erode than defend them, leaving chinks and gaping holes that let wind and strangers in and that allow the Christian community to go out…

A misional imagination calls us to rethink the nature of Church and the relation we expect young people to have with Christianity… God’s love in Jesus Christ is simply not something we can keep to ourselves. As individuals and as a church, the sheer magnitude of divine love bursts our walls or resistance, as God’s self-giving love surges into the world through us.

Through this week, we are pulling some more quotes from Kendra Creasy Dean’s Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church.  From pages 55-56:

Which religiously devoted teenagers in the NSYR have all the practices that set them apart from their peers (Standing up for injustice, attending church regularly, reading the Bible, and dressing modestly are common), Mormon youth also describe practices distinctive to LDS life. Mormon teenagers belong to a highly participatory church structure; more than half of all Mormon teenagers (53%) reported giving a presentation in church in the past six months (fewer than one in seven Southern Baptists, and only one in twenty-five Catholic Youth have done the same). Nearly half (48%) of Mormon teenagers had attended a meeting in the past six months where they were part of making decisions, compared to one in four Southern Baptists and one in twelve Catholic Teenagers. Mormon youth assume that their contributions matter, and frequently mentioned taking part in church rituals like public testimony, fasting, baptisms, and blessings which – along with upholding community norms like abstaining from alcohol and premarital sex – they deemed important to their identity as Mormons,

Since the family is the primary “community of belonging” in the Mormon church, taking part in family practices like Monday family home night and tithing is as significant as taking part in church activities is for Protestants and Catholics. Mormons are twice as likely as other teenagers to pray with their parents and times other than meals or worship (79%) and to talk about God or religion as a family almost every day (74%).

I think that I have given up on ever publishing (in print) something…  Which is kind of funny as I have numerous articles that have made “hard copy” and over 3,500 blog posts of comment

But, here is the argument to open source everything… Which was what we did last week with the Youth Contact postings, and that was not just about showing off.

Chris Anderson, longtime journalist and publisher, is now the curator of the TED Conference and he suggests that “radical openness” is changing the world. He says that what Gutenberg did for writing (and the global exchange of ideas) online video can now do for face-to-face communication.

In this 18 minute video (settle in, it’s worth it), Anderson discusses Crowd Accelerated Innovation.  We now have the ability to easily share digitally — a picture, a music file, software — and this technology is launching a whole new cycle of innovation.

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This Saturday, I will be attending our own local centennial celebration for the Boy Scouts… Here’s some of the back-story:

CHICAGO, IL — William Boyce, a Chicago businessman, founded the Boy Scouts of America in 1910, modeling it after a scouts organization in London. While there on a business trip, Boyce got lost in a dense fog and a young scout helped him get to his meeting. Boyce offered him money, but the boy declined, explaining that he was on duty to do a good deed. Boyce decided America could use such an organization. More from Chicago Breaking News

IRVING, TX — This is a very special year for Scouting and especially for Catholic Scouting. The National Catholic Committee on Scouting (NCCS) is celebrating its 75th anniversary since their founding by Brother Barnabas Edward. 

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Through this week, we are pulling some more quotes from Kendra Creasy Dean’s Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church.  From pages 37-38:

Young people invest in religion precisely what they think it is worth – and if they think the church is worthy of benign whatever-ism and no more, then the indictment falls not on them, but on us.

The fruit of a consequential Christian Faith is holiness, not niceness, which is not a course for the faint of heart. If the Bible is any indication, holy people make us uncomfortable. They take sacrificial risks on behalf of others; they are disarmingly wise and, often, disconcertingly weird. They expose us with their honesty. Teenagers in this trajectory find ninety-five things wrong with the church, nail the list to the door, and call the press. Yet in their faith is a the passion of God, who empowers them for mission and calls them out of their comfort zones so they can call us out of ours.  Holiness – a word that implies justice, kindness and humility before God (Micah 6:8) but somehow got shrink-wrapped inside twentieth-century Protestant piety – means to be “set apart’ for God. Holiness is another for sanctification, a life conformed to the self-giving love of Jesus Christ, God-made-flesh who came into the world to save it. Holiness enacts the gospel’s missionary impulse, the result of news too life-giving to keep to ourselves. True Love begs to be shared.

Recently, Mark Oestreicher offered this wonderful midrash on 1 Kings 19.

And the word of the LORD came to him (or her): “What are you doing here, Youth Worker?”

Youth Worker replied, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The teenagers (or the people of this church, or the staff of this church) have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.

Marko goes on to ponder about the wind, the earthquake, ad the fire of youth ministry, and encourages us to listen for a tiny whispering sound.

C’mon, you know you could use the encouragement – - – check it out!  UPDATE:  Marko struck again, this time taking on Luke 5

Recognizing that we have already discussed Kenda Creasy Dean’s love of an Irrationally Hopeful Breed, her Call for Radical Parents, and her questioning of What Counts as Real Participation? in previous blog postings related to her recent book Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church… We are going to pull some more quotes from the book this week for your thought and consideration. From pages 11-12:

In the view of American Teenagers, God is more object than subject, an idea but not a companion. The problem does not seem to be that churches are teaching young people badly, but that we are going an exceedingly good job of teaching youth what we really believe, namely, that Christianity is not a big deal, that God requires little, and that the church is a helpful social institution filled with nice people focused primarily on “folks like us” – which, of course, begs the question of whether we are really the church at all.

What if the blasé religiosity of most American teenagers is not the result of poor communication, but the result of excellent communication of a watered-down gospel so devoid of god’s self-giving love in Jesus Christ, so immune to the sending love of the Holy Spirit that it might not be Christianity at all? What if the church models a way of life that asks not for passionate surrender but for ho-hum assent? What if we are preaching more affirmation, a feel better faith, and a hands-off God instead of a decidedly involved, impossibly loving, radically sending God of Abraham and Mary, who desired us enough to enter creation in Jesus Christ and whose Spirit is active in the Church and the world today?

Baltimore can be a beautiful place, especially if the Ravens return to their winning ways. (h/t to flickr user  photoskip and the Baltimore Sun’s Midnight Sun blog.)