I’ve been into a few books lately, trying to read them all at once.

This list includes a contribution from one of my daily blog reads, Seth Godin, who wrote Linchpin.

A linchpin is somebody in an organization who is indispensable, who cannot be replaced—her role is just far too unique and valuable. Seth, who writes for the business and management crowd, contends that to not be a linchpin these days is economic and career suicide.

Look around, youth ministry crowd.  This is our moment.  We need to be linchpins for the church… right now!

Almost thirty years ago, Tom Peters (co)wrote In Search of Excellence and has had something to say about management ever since.

Recently, on his blog, he has been running a series of videos regarding the little big things…  that which seems minor but makes a great difference.

Here, he encourages us to develop milestones.

“Design the milestones to keep people excited, to keep them engaged. Celebrate the living dickens out of the smallest ones, as well as the biggest one.”

Seth Godin recently made a very reasonable point:

Often, someone will riff on a concept or approach, make a suggestion, and heads will nod. “Sure, that sounds great idea within reason.”

Godin indicates that it is the last two words that make it a lie.

The last two words allow you to weasel your way into failure. Within reason means, “without bothering the boss, without taking a big risk, without taking the blame if we fail, without alienating our current retailers… be reasonable!”

Godin indicates that the result will likely be that so you will implement your idea half-heartedly and fail, only to be beaten by the folks who chose to do something similar in a manner beyond reasonable. Calculation never made a hero. (John Henry Cardinal Newman)

We are people of faith… let do something unreasonable.

Tim Schmoyer, over at his Life in Student Ministry blog, recently identified some Signs that a youth leader is lacking maturity and healthy adult relationships.

You know the type:
> the automatic buddy who will always side with a teen over their parent(s) or another adult in the program…
> the confessional adult who too often shares TMI (too much information) inappropriately in public and with the kids
> the “ambulance chaser” ready to rescue any young person out of any situation, not matter how big or small…
> the adult volunteer who hangs much more often with the kids than the other adults…

Tim has a whole list here; check it out, then come on back with a comment regarding any signs that you think are missing.

If I could make a wish for any youth minister, it would be this… I wish for you to have a great eulogy.

A few years back, Robert Feduccia of OCP’s Spirit and Song led a youth ministers’ retreat for ArchBalt and invited all the participants to consider their own eulogies. If you think an eulogy that celebrates your youth ministry program successes makes for a great send-off, you’d be mistaken.

Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, recently offered the eulogy for David Gentiles, his youth pastor.  In Donald’s eulogy, he says, “I learned more about Jesus from David than any other person I know.” Now, that’s a great eulogy for any youth minister.

Read the whole thing and hope to live that sort of life.  Rest in Christ’s peace, David Gentiles.

John Rinaldo of the Diocese of San Jose recently made the argument that youth ministry coordinators should be seen as administrators.  He is calling for a shift from the perception of the youth ministry coordinator as just the youth group leader.

John is calling for a paradigm shift that Youth Ministry  is about team leadership. If we are to truly affect the lives of young people, we need to spend time equipping and empowering volunteer leaders that will allow us to more fully reach out to the youth population in our parishes. He places the priority for the youth ministry coordinator to be  equipping and empowering volunteer leaders that will allow the parish to better fulfill their mission to “the younghurch.”  Please consider reading John’s whole post.

Busy?  Great!  Lots to do?  Awesome!!  Deadlines pending?  Wonderful!!!

Really, if this stuff is all getting to you, keep it (mostly) to yourself.  Your boss and your co-workers, your best volunteers, and especially the kids don’t really need to hear all about it.

Sometimes, we will whine  just to portray ourselves as one who is a little more important as to have been burdened by so much.  Seth Godin suggests that we have the false belief that “whining equals intimacy (in our relationships.) It doesn’t. Whining and complaining is easy and natural, but it’s not a foundation for a long term relationship.”

Catch yourself when whining.  Let’s share our hopes and our dreams. Let’s share the Hope and the Dream, not just the stuff that ticks us off.

Obsessed with cool. Trendy. Impulsive. Self-focused. Caught up in the moment. Probably sounds like a description of some of the kids in your youth group. Actually, um…well…this is not an article about youth culture or the world of today’s teenagers. This is an article about those of us in the youth ministry culture and how we seem to be sliding into an adolescent approach to our faith and mission.

So starts a wonderful article by Duffy Robbins for YouthWorker. He goes on to recommend a maturity that has perspective, hope,and love. Take a moment for a little youth ministry examination of conscience.

So, I’ve been negligent on posting about this book. It’s great and worth the read. In Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, he basically tells his own story of reviewing his own life as a series of stories, but not necessarily as “a” story.

It is easy to live from moment to moment, rising up on the occasion.  Miller is suggesting that wholeness is found in the integrity of living within all the moments. Real stories, he learned, require characters who suffer and overcome.

In the end, our stories are not best told about what we have experienced as much as in hard choices that have been made.  Miller suggests that if it won’t work in a story, it won’t work in life.  He encourages the reader to examine their whole life as a well constructed narrative. “Once you know what it takes to live a better story, you don’t have a choice.  Not living a better story would be like deciding to die, deciding to walk around numb until you die, and it’s not natural to want to die.”

I also recently read The Audacity to Win, written by David Plouffe, campaign manager for Barack Obama’s primary and general election victories in 2008.  Politics aside, one does have to take note of a campaign that became a movement rewriting the rules and expectations of the game.

In telling of the preparations for the Iowa caucuses, Plouffe acknowledges the servant leadership example of Paul Tewes who “established a motto for our field staff philosophy. ‘Respect. Empower. Include.’  We wanted to be the nicest, most attentive, and most creative staff in the field.” Contrary to the methods of most national races experienced locally, volunteers were not treated as if they were to serve the professionals in headquarters, but “in many ways, they would be the embodiment of the campaigns.

Finally, I pulled Horizons & Hopes: The Future of Religious Education off my shelf recently.  One story in there has my attention:

There was this artist marooned on an island for years.  Her prized possession was a sculpture that she had created by collecting bits of metal found on the island.  In the process of shaping the work she had grown in her understanding of the sculpting process, of herself as an artist and a person, and of the way in which art gives expression to beauty and truth. Although she is very proud of her creation, she also realizes that she has grown beyond it – both as an artist and as a person. She is confident that her new work of art will express new depth and challenge her even further in her work and her life.

So she goes in search of more metal. She scours the island and is disappointed to discover that there is no more metal to be found. She realizes that she can only give expression to her new insights, her new creative movement, by melting down and remolding the first creation.

How does the story end?  However it ends does say something about the artist, does it not?

(Update:  Embedded video was not working. Here’s another.)

I’ve been reading Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

I had heard of Blue Like Jazz, but never read it.  I understood that Million Miles was going to be about “editing” one’s life into a better story. So I bought four copies because I thought it might play into an office project.  Four copies on a blind whim… really, that’s not me.

When the books arrived, instead of delivering them right way, I put them aside.  I started reading that night and got halfway through. 

The next morning, the books were on everybody’s desk. It’s a wonderful, challenging read.