Batons, Fear, and Pasta

0 comments | Oct 23, 08:41 PM | best-of-earl | by Earl Creps

Just got back from an Off-Road Disciplines conference at Bethany University in Scotts Valley, CA.

We opened with a Chapel service involving the students. I spoke on, “The End of the World as We Know It.” Hope to have the mp3 available soon.

Then, Randy Walls and I spent an afternoon, evening, and morning with a group of about 12 leaders from the area trying to unpack 3-4 of the disciplines (e.g., Sacred Realism, Reverse Mentoring, and Passing the Baton) so they made sense in the real world.

Things went along OK, especially when Rusty and Stephanie St. Cyr (Student Ministries Pastors at BU) joined a student named Lacey to form a young adult panel that I interviewed about reverse mentoring. The group then asked them questions for about an hour, often using MySpace as a case study in YA culture. Lacey’s comment that she has friends globally while her parents only have friends locally, really explained why MS is seen as an essential relationship tool by the young. I had never seen the issue in this way before that moment.

Another highlight: when Rusty suggested that we invite our participants into an informal student chapel on Friday morning to discuss “passing the baton” in small groups. We mixed in the seminar folk (mostly older) with about 75 students gathered around tables in the cafeteria.

Rusty and I introduced the session together and then threw out a couple questions: (1) How well are older leaders passing the baton to younger leaders, and; (2) Complete this sentence: If we’re going to raise up a generation of younger leaders, we have to change…

The discussions had good energy, and our seminar participants really seemed to enjoy the experience (although one reported being at “the dysfunctional table,” mainly because of the non-stop verbalizing of an older leader who to want an audience at any cost.

We returned to our meeting space to debrief the experience. The discussion lasted a couple hours as each of our dozen took a turn relating their experience of the group discussion. We heard lots about the need to give young leaders a chance, and the potential of reverse mentoring. Actually, I took detailed notes on the debrief but lost them all by saving the file incorrectly. Ugh.

Anyway, two things really stand out in my memory from this cross-generational experience:

(1) Andrew, one of Rusty’s assistants for men’s discipleship, told me that he knows lots of young people who aren’t going to wait for anyone’s baton. They are going to invent their own baton. For example, he cited friends involved in dotcoms, start-ups, and the likes. Actually, I’ve never considered this issue from Andrew’s vantage point. What if the whole idea of a baton passing from older to younger makes no sense of young people because it suggests that oldsters hold all the assets in the relationship and have the right to decide who receives what, making them the gatekeepers of the future for the young. The patronizing sound of that makes me sick. So Andrew really helped me here. We’ve got to make it clear that the “baton” is the mission, not the positions we hold.

(2) Kristin, an undergraduate student at Bethany told our seminar during the debrief that the real problem she heard during the discussions was just fear. The old are afraid of letting go and the young are afraid of making mistakes. Neither side is trusting God to be head of the church and to guide everyone involved. Ouch. Kristin’s comments dropped a bomb in the room. Really, if we were trusting God, why would people my age hold on so tight? And why would it be so tough to find church planters?

All the way around, we need leaders who love the Church more than their interpretation of it, their position in it, or the scorn they heap on it. Perfect love casts out fear.

Oh yes, and we got to eat some superb pasta in downtown Santa Cruz when the seminar was over. After that we walked to the pier, then toured Vintage Faith (Dan Kimball’s church) with Rusty, Stephanie, and our friends Daniel and Rhonda Davis. VF is now meeting in the First Presbyterian facility in an intriguing hybrid church experiment. I wish them well.

This coming Friday (10/27) we hold an O-RD seminar at AGTS.