Category: Millennials (and me)

Young Families in Church…continued…..

A lot of young people don’t go to church (I know your shocked, your really, really shocked).

Here is my vast knowledge about church

1. Its a good community…its a good way to have intergenerational interaction, its a good way to ask hard questions (at the good churches anyway)

2. Church Shopping is tough: churches are desperate (which isn’t that attractive) and its hard to church shop when you feel unsettled, and lets face it, with the way the economy is, most people are fairly unsettled, especially the young people. I have been at the same job for 4ish years…that is VERY unusual for a person my age. If you don’t have a steady job or don’t know if your going to have to move (again) within the same year, its hard to make time to church shop.

In theories churches should be helping with this process (how about get to know your town guides? New to the neighborhood events that aren’t creepy? My church does a playgroup that allows a little bit with this)

3. Churches need to advertise themselves as a pace of transition (ie we are a stable place to come while your transitioning)…too much to Churches self-advertise or give the impression that this is where to go when you start to sort out your beliefs or your all set on where you are in life. This is OPPOSITE of what church should be, church should be a place to be crazy, screwed up and confused, a place to support people who are figuring it out…….Maybe churches should be more like college and less like a government.

4. Young Families Basic Needs: tend to include activities at a time of day they can actually manage, Sunday School that is enjoyable, Family friendly events, Adequate Rooms for children, Babysitting for events that are not suitable for children, changing tables, cribs, and preferably a space in the Worship area for kids to worship during church (try getting that one done, its almost impossible)…want to welcome families? Go out of your way to give them a real space to be….

5. Try to focus more on the Sabbath piece of church. Every single person I know is stressed and overwhelmed, if church could be a place of sanctuary, rest and sabbath we might actually communicate our message better.

6. That whole forgiveness of debts thing: do that. We preach forgiveness of debts, practically everyone I know is WAY in debt, yet we do nothing to practice what we preach….um….yeah….

7. Engage, engage, engage, find as many opportunities as possible to serve the community, to experience the community and to get to know the community (this is that piece of advice every single leader of churches gives)

8. Do NOT talk about young people as the “future”; first off, they are already people, not just future people (get my drift?), secondly this gross genera9lizing of who the young are is not appreciated

9. Try not to be judgmental: To be human is to be judgmental, its how we separate the “us” from the “them” its a defense mechanism, its natural, and its sad….we don’t need to judge other people, that’s God’s job. Plus! loving is our goal, good news is our job, and judging people adds to their problems. I used to have someone call me up at night and tell me what I needed to worry about…guess what…that is the opposite of helping…

10. Have Faith: Preach Good News, practice joy, dwell in the spirit, worry not about today or tomorrow, consider the birds, consider the lilies of the fields, they toil not, but God takes care of them…

The Token Young Family

“It’s exhausting being the young family in a church” This sentiment was shared to me by one of our “young families” about what another “young family” told them.

Its exhausting. Of course, I speak from the “young family” and “pastor’s family” congruently, but I know what they mean.

1) Getting the schedule

I’m not sure if it was just very different for families back in the day when our older members were young, or if they’ve forgotten just how crazy it is, but there is some kind of generational divide between what people think young families’ schedules are like and, well, reality. Events that seem easy are actually not. Babysitting is not considered (nor the lead time needed to get a babysitter) and the whole, I have to work for a living is similarly forgotten (which is ironic since I work for the church so hanging out is part of my work but sermons and paperwork need to get done too..I can only imagine how this increases for regular families)

2) Responsibilities

Most things these days require some level of participation that is beyond us: school, clubs, jobs, job-related socialization. Church responsibilities are the same, churches try to toe the line between keeping families involved and yet not being overdemanding, but honestly, most events are more fun if there are children there, except for the ones that children need to stay home for. The truth is, juggling kids at events is tricky, I’d prefer if every event was welcoming and helpful for kids to be present at.

3) Regular attendance

For most families attending once or twice a month is the very best they can do…they are just too busy, and making them feel guilty is not helpful.

Of course the easy solution to this is to no longer be the only “Young Family” at a church, but its hard to figure it out….I toy with ideas of starting a TEDtalks Bible study or doing more Family Oriented programming (Kids Clubs, Parents Night Out, Exploratory Music Classes), but timing is tricky. And I want church to be FUN. In the meantime, the hope is that there are advantages of being the “young family too” such as a. the kids getting more attention b. the church can listen better to your needs c. the church starts to be a better and better place for young families to hang out at…..

4) Welcoming

Being desperate is not the same as being welcoming. Church’s “need” young people to keep going, so they look at young families as their literal salvation (oops) and get very needy very quickly. Prime examples: Expecting young families to have their teenager to help with technology, expecting young parents to teach the Sunday School, Expecting young families believe the exact same things that the church grandparents believe are a few examples.

i.e. The Church should be more than a vampire looking for Fresh Blood!

Being welcoming is accepting the natural gifts of the family and asking them where they want to help out. Being welcoming is allowing for give and take….ask what the family needs from the church, not just vice versa…

What would help you to feel more relaxed and less stressed about families and church?

This year I will……

This year I will talk to dragons, I will spend the time I need to with fairies and fight off the bad guys with a sword.

I will flirt outrageously

I will laugh more than ever

I will be sure to build as many towers as I knock down, and remember that journeying to the castle is just as important as defeating the bad guy

I will improve my tea drinking ritual–because its more fun the more you do it

I will remember to sing loudly in the car, try new upsidedown and balancing thingies in yoga and throw more snowballs

I will wiggle more in my seat, draw more doodles and as a result become wiser than ever

I will pick the flowers

I will get my hopes too high on a regular basis, expect all  people I know to be brave & wise & good no matter what I might (or might not already) know about them and catch up on Dr. Who

I will exclaim over every baby that they are each the most beautiful baby in the universe—because every single one is, and spoil my cats while contemplating with my husband the fact that we’ve acquired a creature (baby or kitten) every year that we have been married.

I will make it my mission to make my job be more and more about people (and less about paperwork)

I will declare random vacations to go out and play in the sun

I will do silly things I’m not good at, I will play strategy games, draw, play music, etc. because those are the things I love

I will do something meaningful to support trans*/bi community

I will watch as many Disney movies as possible and get my haircut when I feel like it

I will remember never to eat the food in fairyland

I will let my kids be messy, allow them to have fun, and teach them to love people

I will play more practical jokes on my husband

I will enjoy God’s sense of humor!

I will get lost and have fun while I’m doing it

I will read many, many library books

I will chase rainbows…and sunsets….

I will go on as many adventures as I can cram in…

I will walk to nowhere

I will tell the stories that give my life meaning, and repeat them over and over again until they are true

I will be Katy 🙂

Millennials and Achievement

This is a great video about the overemphasis on quantity over quality in education…but it also points to, what I think is a CRUX of the cultural issue of Millennials

Are we lazy?
Is it the economy?
Do millennials have too high expectations?
Who raised these millennials to think this way?
Did we give too many trophies?
Why do millennials have to show off everything via social media anyway, isn’t that just being self-centered?

I think the millennials are an achievement based generation. One in which achievement is the highest value. And that culturally, we have hit a time where unacknowledged achievement feels worthless.

Boomers (mostly) valued themselves on their own achievements and so they encourage millennials to be high-achieving.
High Expectations: because (we) are encouraged to achieve..although mine are fairly reasonable due current conditions https://katyandtheword.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/one-millennials-expectations/
Social Media; To acknowledge achievement…I have a joke that big events (babies, marriages, etc) aren’t real until they are noted on facebook, I don’t think its just self-centered, I think its culturally about achieving the next goal
Trophies: Those were merely acknowledgments of our achievements, to me (and most people I know) the achievement was reward enough, but the acknowledgement was part of the “reality” that the world recognition makes it more real…
Laziness; I am still not convinced that laziness exists, most people I know who don’t reach their “achievements” are clinically depressed, or have ADHD or have severe home issues that get in their way of getting things done. What most people mean when they say “I was too lazy and didn’t do the laundry” is that emotionally they didn’t have the oomph/gumption to get behind doing that work that day, because life was just too overwhelming….which can be easily confused with laziness but shouldn’t be….

I have a friend who told me “your fairly ambitious….which I gggguessss is a good thing” It brought me up short. How can being ambitious be a bad thing? I mean I know I’m ambitious in what I consider a GOOD way, I don’t value money really (all I want is to be able to afford food and rent for me and mine)…I don’t want public recognition, but I do want to be effective, to be useful, to make a difference in the world…..

Successful church’s are helping people to belong and do hands on work, my generation is one of the greatest for volunteering, creativity is being valued over money and small/creative/homemade items are being more and more valued as real achievements…
because the achievements we hoped for: steady jobs, families, to buy a house, are so often out of reach.

But sharing your couch (couch surfers), opensourcing (Firefox/linux), carsharing (relayrides), farming (CSA, community gardening) and personalized crafts (Etsy) can be https://katyandtheword.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/open-sourcing-and-laziness-2/

I am fairly ambitious
I am achievement oriented
These can be good or bad things

But no matter what, they are definitely DEFINING for me and my generation

My Fairy Tale for 20 somethings….

http://fairytalesfor20somethings.tumblr.com

Wizard of Oz by Katy Stenta

Dorothy thought that chasing the first tornado would have landed her the weather job. Instead she kept having to travel. Meanwhile her parents wanted her to click her heels and come back home, problem was no work there. She was not moving back in with her parents (again). She kept following the yellow brick road, and following and following. 
 
Finally a TechWizard convinced her and her three traveling companions to Kickstart a book about her journey.

The new Young Adult Dystopia An AWESOME PERSPECTIVE

The new Young Adult Dystopia An AWESOME PERSPECTIVE

If you think kids are too young to worry about unemployment numbers, consider this: Some of our most popular young adult novels fairly shiver with economic anxiety.

Queer Creation: A synchroblog!!!

Queer Theology Synchroblog 2013: Queer Creation

May thanks to my AMAZING sister who wrote this essay in response to my questions!!!!

What is your favorite series to read? How does it relate to your real life experience? Does it help to inform who you are/want to be?

TORTALL_d_original

Well any week that you ask me this I’m likely to have a different answer, but right now I’d say I’m really fond of the quartets that Tamora Pierce has written. There’s a lot in there about strength in yourself and through friends, and showing strength in different ways. Alanna is fiery and forward, Keladry is more reserved and protective. Daine is compassionate and driven, Aly is resourceful and wily. But in the end, they each have some strength that pushes them forward and towards great heights. I identify with each of these women, in part for their strength and in part for how hard they fight. I’ve faced my own challenges, and I have learned to never stop and don’t accept defeat.

What can I say, my sister has great taste in books..what is interesting about all of Pierce is that all of her characters “Come Out” Alanna as a girl (can’t imagine how my sister relates), Daine as a wild Mage and Aly as a spy…Their coming out is natural, it is a growing into themselves and their strength, and what I appreciate about my sister’s answer’s is that its these gifts and strengths that are highlighted, the fact that they are women to look up to….that and HOPE and PERSEVERANCE which are traits that I find to be essential and what should be what we love about the Bible as much as fantasy and PS is why I read fantasy….

As Joss Whedon notes, this shouldn’t be noteworthy (Query: why do you write strong heroines? Whedon: because you keep asking me that), but it is! (PS Favorite book is a totally cheating question, one I can never answer, can I pick a favorite star in the sky?)

The story God gives us is that we are both female and male in God’s image. Do you experience yourself as being in God’s image? (I like to think that transsexual’s have a more (w)holistic sense of what God’s image is)

So there’s this weird conflict here where, on the one hand, God must be both genders- and some representations of the Holy Ghost/Spirit interpret that as female. But I can’t view God that way- because there’s distinctly more than two genders. If the purpose of the question is to establish that God shares their gender with everyone, I think of it like this. Jesus was pretty clearly male- to the best of our knowledge, he’s the son and had no issues with his body in that way. (Which is an entirely different conversation one could have, but that’s not the point here.) So if the physical manifestation was male, then to me the logical next step is that the part we cannot grasp or understand is, as the physical manifestation’s natural opposite, female and comfortable with that. Well then, what is God, both? No. God can’t be both. God must be all. Male, Female, Trans* Genderqueer, Genderfluid, Bi-Gender, Agender, Third Gender (I can’t possibly list all of them…) They must be all of them and thensome. Part of what makes me uncomfortable in most churches is the interpretation of God as Father, Christ as Son and ignore the Holy Spirit completely. What, you mean it should all be male? God and Christ don’t understand women, and have nothing to share with them? Because sometimes that’s what it feels like. And the more a church focuses on Christ as son and redeemer, the less attached I feel to the words they’re speaking, because they’re only speaking from one viewpoint and ignoring the rest.

I will try not to rant here, but there are all kinds of mistranslations of the Bible that slant God towards masculine, when God isn’t. The word for Holy Spirit (Ruach) in Hebrew is a feminine word. The word Almighty in Hebrew means the God of many mounds (i.e. BREASTS to feed all of her children) etc. etc. This is a problem most females have with Christianity, that my sister has a VERY perceptive and unique focus on. God MUST BE ALL (which I bolded above), God is all, and its too much for us to understand so we compartmentalize so our little brains can handle it, but really, God must be all! PS I have always been a Kinsey 1-6 scale advocate, where completely straight is 0, completely bi is 6 and most people are 1-5…not a gendering issue, but still brings in the issues of God, Sexuality, Gender and Sex. Hey if we can’t talk about our embodied experience, why the heck are we even worrying about religion, am i right?

Image

My son drew God, because he wanted to know what God looked like, he said that God is both a boy and a girl and not a boy in a girl and….”I think God is very big, because God takes care of everybody, and I think God is a rainbow, because God likes all colors. See these dots? These are all the people, they are all different kinds too…” ..and a child shall lead them, anyone, anyone?

How important was naming yourself as female? How did the naming effect the embodiment? Or how did the embodiment effect the naming? Was there an order to it, or did all come together?

Okay, there’s a lot of questions to this question and I just have to address them one at a time.

Hehehehe, I told my sister I wrote only 4 questions, but of course I cheated, layering question upon question, luckily my sister is brilliant (really brilliant she is the smartest one by far in my family) and she was able to pull apart my meaning…good thing she has practice, being related to me and all.

Naming myself as female changed my whole world. It was about comfort and knowledge as much as anything else. I collect stories, including those I experience, and there was always something wrong with the story of me as a male. It would be like reading Harry Potter but instead of the proper ending Voldemort kills all the muggles and takes over the world. It’s still a pretty good story, but it’s not right. It’s not the way that the story should go, and we know that somewhere in us. In a similar way, being male wasn’t ruining my life. It just wasn’t right, and somewhere within me knew that. So the naming and identifying put me back to the right story, and changed…well, everything to some extent. As for the naming/embodiment dynamic, I’d say it was (and still is) a pretty consistent back and forth. I’d look at my past- realize that I’d been skipping around in skirts at age 8 and pinning down my arm movements since age 10- and see how I’d been living it my whole life. Then I’d start doing something and the driving feeling would be “screw it, I feel like doing x-y-z because that’s what my gender says is comfortable, so I will.” In the past, I was still learning what made me comfortable and my physical actions in the past helped guide that. As I look more toward the future, and being a woman is an unshakeable part of my identity, I’d say the balance is more towards the naming- I chose this title and this gender and this life (well, I chose to act on it, anyway) So I might as well embrace the parts of it I like.

YAY! I love how the “naming” piece of my sister’s identity has brought her more into SELF….I can’t add to this

What questions and wonderings do you have about God or the human existence that are informed by your being/experience/embodiment on earth?

I have a very important, unanswerable question that involves only one word. Why? Why put people through rigors and trials? Why challenge people in ways that they sometimes cannot handle, or cannot handle at the time? Why love, why hate, why trust, why lie? In short, my question out of all of my gender and sexuality struggles, out of dysphoria, out of watching my friends and my family is the most basic and most complex question of all. Why do it? Why was I born into the wrong body? What did I need to learn or understand? What did I gain? What did I lose? Was it worth the cost? I have no answers. I’m left with just the resounding question, sounding a bit like a petulant five year old. Why?

Shepherd: What are we up to, sweetheart?
River: Fixing your Bible.
Shepherd: I, um.. what?
River: Bible’s broken. Contradictions, false logistics.. doesn’t make sense.
Shepherd: No, no, you can’t..

River: So we’ll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God’s creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels
already there. Eleven, important number, prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times but always comes out one.

River: Noah’s Ark is a problem.
Shepherd: Really?

River: We’ll have to call it “early quantum state phenomenon”. Only way to fit 5,000 species of mammal on the same boat.
Shepherd: Give me that. River, you don’t… fix the Bible.
River: It’s broken! It doesn’t make sense.
Shepherd: It’s not about making sense, it’s about believing in something and letting that belief be real enough to change your life.
It’s about faith. You don’t fix faith, River, it fixes you.

See we are related! We love tough questions….My sister has a great quest ahead of her. Of course, I don’t have an answer…its just too good a question.

Here’s what I think, I know its not all bubbles and sunshine (though I wish that were the case–to see a bubbles and sunshine version of events read here). But I am honored to witness to it, I hope that I am deepened by it, and I am SO proud of her! I think she is an amazing, strong, brave and resilient person who NEVER GIVES UP already, and she’s 10 years younger than me. I can’t wait to see what she does next!

 

Read the Other Queer Synchoblog Posts!

Queering Our Reading of the Bible by Dwight Welch

Queer Creation in art: Who says God didn’t create Adam and Steve? by Kittrdge Cherry

Of The Creation of Identity (Also the Creation of Religion) by Colin & Terri

God, the Garden, & Gays: Homosexuality in Genesis by Brian G. Murphy, for Queer Theology

Created Queerly–Living My Truth by Casey O’Leary

Creating Theology by Fr. Shannon Kearns

Initiation by Blessed Harlot

B’reishit: The Divine Act of Self-Creation by Emily Aviva Kapor

Queer Creation: Queering the Image of God by Alan Hooker

Queer Creation by Ric Stott

Eunuch-Inclusive Esther–Queer Theology 101 by Peterson Toscano

Valley of Dry Bones by Jane Brazelle

Queer Creation: Queer Angel by Tony Street

The Great Welcoming by Anna Spencer

Queer Creation by Billy Flood

The Mystery of an Outlandishly Queer Creation by Susan Cottrell

We’ve Been Here All Along by Brian Gerald Murphy

God Hirself: A Theology by T. Thorn Coyle

The Objectification of God by Marg Herder

Coming Out As Embodiments of God Herself by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott

An Interview by Katy

On Creation and Belonging by Andrew Watson

Creation by Liam Haakon Smith

Practically Creating Practical Queer Theology by Talia Johnson

Inspired Possibility: Opening the Gift of the Queer Soul by Keisha McKenzie

Oh What A Difference A Pope Makes! by Hilary Howes

I’m Really Angry by John Smid

Focus on the (Chosen) Family by Brian Cubbage

The Goddex by Thorin Sorensen

This sounds just like “Bible Study”…what’s different about all of this?

My Presbytery is trying to explore the whole 1,001 worshipping communities/church planting. 

As we did we talked over exciting interest for starting a house church in the college area…

 

and we were discussing how to go about, different ideas and resources (i.e. Messy Church etc.)

and someone asked “Can someone tell me, how this is different from a Bible Study? I mean we do this, we get to better in different houses and worship and get together what is different about this?”

Well……I might have said a few things in response 🙂

1. Its not that different but we are reformed and always reforming because we need to find new ways to tell the gospel message. Clothing Exchanges are not that different from Rummage Sales (as one of my congregants pointed out). But they ARE different because they speak to a different generation in a different way!

2. We need to meet people where they are in a tree, by a well, even on the cross. If that is what Jesus is doing then that’s what we should do too. 

3. Because we need to show our willingness to see, know, people in places that AREN’T the church. When people say they are Spiritual-but-not-religious they mean they want to reach God, but they don’t want to reach God in the same way we do, so we need to find ways that work for people. Ways in which they are comfortable. Thank God, the message is the same as what it was  over 2000 years ago, even though the method changes

4. Aren’t we reformed and always reforming so we can grow and be nurtured closer to Christ? Don’t we hope that we keep looking at ways to become more able to see God?

5. Because its not exactly the same, it seems the same, but its really not. Because we are saying, come to our Game, Come to our Home Field, Come to our Turf and we’ll tell you about how we do the God thing. Its not simply sitting inside the church and throwing open the doors and wondering why no one is coming in…its going out to meeting them on their turf…its street ministry at its finest.Its changes to a “you might not experience God the same way we do, so we’ll come to you and let you tell us what you want to try” thing…that’s what Spiritual-but-not-religious is, experiencing God in a new way!

 

Your right, its exactly like Bible Study…..Only Different!

 

 

Thanks!

I have reached 250 posts and 100 followers about the same time! Then today (midafternoon) I’m already up to 51 views! The blog has seen amazing growth in the last month, and sustains a VARIED audience (wahoo!!)

Thanks for all the reads, likes and comments!