"Youth Ministry as a Learning Laboratory" by Jeffrey Conklin-Miller
At first glance, what Bob Bates does with inner-city youth in Los Angeles seems clear: he teaches them art.
Bates co-created the Inner-City Arts program in 1989 and has seen it blossom. It now serves nearly 16,000 kids every year, introducing them to artistic media including paint, drama, sculpture -- you name it. In these days of economic downturn and lean budgets, many schools are focused on raising test scores, not cultivating art. So it follows that this program exists to teach kids what schools don't: how to be an artist.
But that's not really what Inner-City Arts is about.
In an interview with the Dowser website, Bates explained: "We set out to learn about creativity, not just teach art." As it turns out, giving kids a laboratory space to play, collaborate with others and experiment bolsters cooperation, patience, confidence and creativity. In other words, it gives kids what they need to succeed in school. And in fact UCLA researchers have found that in this and other such programs, participants' test scores go up, dropout rates go down, and kids formerly characterized as "at risk" start thriving. What's going on here?
This model embodies something significant about the way youth learn: not through the presentation of theory and endless testing, but through active involvement in "an experiment, a response, some adjustment, and more experimentation," as David Bornstein and Susan Davis write in "Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know."
In his book "Lost Icons," Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams makes similar recommendations about children's formation. Instead of thinking of youth only as consumers -- quasi-adults with cash and the power to choose where to spend it -- Williams argues for providing spaces of "indeterminacy," where youth can be teenagers and not "young adults."
Such spaces allow for "irresponsible talk," where children can play and speak freely, trying on new identities, practices and behaviors without fear of making mistakes or of having somehow "gotten it wrong." That kind of learning doesn't come from a book or a classroom, or from simply being treated as adults. It comes from practice and play. On the road to adulthood, more than anything, teens need a place to speak irresponsibly. In other words, young people need some space to be young.
Youth ministry as a learning laboratory
Jeffrey Conklin-Miller asks: How can we open the door to a new laboratory for youth -- a place where we emphasize experience, reflection and play?
Editor’s note: Duke Divinity School is currently accepting applications for the Youth Ministry Cohort of its new Master of Arts in Christian Practice(link is external) degree.
At first glance, what Bob Bates does with inner-city youth in Los Angeles seems clear: he teaches them art.
Bates co-created the Inner-City Arts(link is external) program in 1989 and has seen it blossom. It now serves nearly 16,000 kids every year, introducing them to artistic media including paint, drama, sculpture -- you name it. In these days of economic downturn and lean budgets, many schools are focused on raising test scores, not cultivating art. So it follows that this program exists to teach kids what schools don’t: how to be an artist.
But that’s not really what Inner-City Arts is about.
In an interview with the Dowser website(link is external), Bates explained: “We set out to learn about creativity, not just teach art.” As it turns out, giving kids a laboratory space to play, collaborate with others and experiment bolsters cooperation, patience, confidence and creativity. In other words, it gives kids what they need to succeed in school. And in fact UCLA researchers have found that in this and other such programs, participants’ test scores go up, dropout rates go down, and kids formerly characterized as “at risk” start thriving. What’s going on here?
This model embodies something significant about the way youth learn: not through the presentation of theory and endless testing, but through active involvement in “an experiment, a response, some adjustment, and more experimentation,” as David Bornstein and Susan Davis write in “Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know.”
In his book “Lost Icons,” Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams makes similar recommendations about children’s formation. Instead of thinking of youth only as consumers -- quasi-adults with cash and the power to choose where to spend it -- Williams argues for providing spaces of “indeterminacy,” where youth can be teenagers and not “young adults.”
Such spaces allow for “irresponsible talk,” where children can play and speak freely, trying on new identities, practices and behaviors without fear of making mistakes or of having somehow “gotten it wrong.” That kind of learning doesn’t come from a book or a classroom, or from simply being treated as adults. It comes from practice and play. On the road to adulthood, more than anything, teens need a place to speak irresponsibly. In other words, young people need some space to be young.
Let the youth ministers with ears listen. Youth ministry that treats teens as consumers is coming under increasing fire, which is good. But it seems equally problematic to give young people an all-access card to the leadership and management of the church. Of course, their voices must be part of the conversation. But to stop there, to believe that this is all we are called to do, is to succumb to the same problem as when we seek only to entertain them: it is to cast them as adults, not as youth. We have to give them more.
We should give them room to experiment and play with the holy practices and things of the church. We have to let our teens pick up the language and be “irresponsible” with it so they might learn what it means to speak faithfully as Christian adults.
We have a word for this kind of space, where experimentation and innovation are encouraged: We call it a laboratory.
We try to provide such a laboratory each year in the Duke Youth Academy for Christian Formation(link is external). Each June, 45 to 50 high school juniors and seniors gather for two weeks at Duke University. Each day is shaped by the patterns of worship in word and sacrament, reflection on Scripture, service in the world, fellowship in the sharing of meals, and engagement in rest and play.
Participants are given both the language of theology to discuss and the elements of the church’s holy life to practice. This is all so that they can try on a baptismal vision with which they can see their lives and the world they are called to serve. Like Bob Bates in Los Angeles, we create a laboratory, a place of experimentation and inquiry, a safe space where “irresponsible talk” can be encouraged and sustained without fear of censure or judgment.
What comes of this, we think, deeply forms youth on the way to becoming Christian adults. As one participant said: “My understanding of Christian faith is being challenged through the various perspectives and opinions that I am experiencing. It is a challenge because the different faith traditions and teachings that I hear and see test the teachings that I have brought with me to the Academy. ... My faith is being strengthened in many ways that I never expected. I am seeing the different ways people do church.”
How would that laboratory take shape where you live and serve? Instead of hiding our teens in the church basement, what would it look like if the youth room were the church’s “research and development” department, the place where the practices of the Christian faith could be crash-tested?
Could we integrate a baptismal font and an altar along with the beat-up couches and media screens to create something between a sanctuary and a ball pit? And what difference might this model make in the way we think about summer camping experiences and weekend youth retreats, as well as how judicatories shape regional youth ministry?
Instead of the convention with the keynoter and the indie Christian band, could we open the door to a new laboratory where we emphasize experience, reflection and play, trusting that in this mix the Spirit will shape us into holy people?
The “laboratory” approach requires a large commitment of resources. It requires a community of friends, partners and investors. It requires a well-trained staff, a cadre of leaders who don’t just love youth but also love the church, who have learned its language and its ways and can safely guide the youth at play, allowing experiments but preventing anyone from getting blown to bits.
And it requires an abundance of patience, which Williams reminds us is essential if we are to give our youth the time and space to be young.
In a church that is rapidly growing older, this might be one of the most challenging investments we have to make. We must not economize on the crucial incubator of experimental youth ministry.
onday, July 6, 2015
In Worship Frames, Deborah Kapp explores how the sociological concept of frames can help us better understand the social and human dynamics of worship. By understanding our frames, we can learn how to reframe worship to give fuller and richer expression to our faith. Kapp shares her insights with congregations and worship leaders so they will gain new perspectives from which to analyze and design worship and deepen their perceptions about the role worship plays in faith communities.
Buy the book
Continue Your Learning with the Pastoral Excellence Network
Finishing Strong, Ending Well: Crafting the Culminating Chapter of Your Ministry
A retreat with Dr. Larry Peers
Marriottsville, MD | July 27-29, 2015
Are you planning to retire from full-time ministry during the next two to ten years? This event will help you make these years a vital, intentional time for culminating your ministry and also a time of exciting preparation for what's next. This retreat will feature techniques for personal preparation and also help you plan effectively with your congregation so that you finish strong and end well.
Learn more and register »
Ideas that Impact: Children and Youth Ministry
Intergenerational Friendships and the Future of the Church by Alaina Kleinbeck
Intergenerational friendships and the future of the church
Youth should not be set apart, but rather integrated into the life of a congregation through friendship.
Andy Root, while reflecting on Bonhoeffer’s Theses on Youth Work, reflects that we should not set youth in the church apart as privileged and special. Around these parts, it’s been said that overinvesting of the young prompts the renewal of the church. While these things may seem contradictory, in fact they are not.
As Amy Laura Hall always tells the students of the Duke Youth Academy(link is external), “Youth are not the future of the church. Jesus is.” It doesn’t matter what topic she’s addressing; this expression is part of her message to our young, eager theologians.
It’s her way of releasing the valve of pressure we’ve placed on young people to save the church. It’s her way of telling young people that they are not the sole bearers of the future; they are not responsible to convert and procreate so that the church will not die. It’s her way of naming Christ as the central figure of our life in the church.
In making youth ministry into a specialized industry and young people into the “hope for the future,” we isolate the young and ignore our own responsibility to participate in their formation.
We’d rather pay a person still young enough to take a pitiful salary to run a separate youth ministry than set about the difficult work of engaging the young in the existing life of the church. We’d rather refurbish the basement with hand-me-down couches and ping pong tables than share a welcoming space with everyone. We’d rather send our youth to camp a few hours away than invest in discipleship resources at home.
On their own, each of these things may seem like innocuous or well-intended investments in the young of the church, but over the long term they point to a tendency to “silo off” the formation of the young and demonstrate our inadequate grasp of what overinvestment looks like. Overinvestment can be financial and material resources, but those resources mean very little without investment of our very selves through friendship.
While leading a workshop this summer, I asked attendees to think about how they might foster opportunities for their older congregants to befriend the younger people of the congregation. A clever participant noted that the choir, with mainly older adults, meets right before the youth group gathers for a weekly meal then bible study. She wondered whether she could bring the choir members to the youth group dinner.
I think that’s exactly what Jesus would do. He was all about bringing uninvited and mismatched guests to the dinner party (See Luke 7 and 14).
Of course, even when we invite mismatched people to eat together, the people will err on the side of self-segregation, opting to eat with their own and avoid awkward exchanges. But over time and with some encouragement to mix it up, the potential for friendship exists at a much higher rate than if there were not a shared meal.
If the leaders in the church don’t model and prompt intergenerational friendships, they won’t happen. It is our responsibility to nurture a space for the older and younger and those in between to be together in normal, mundane ways. In these moments, no one is set apart as special. Yet, in these moments, each of us has the potential to see one another as Christ sees us, with compassion, love and friendship.
When we share the love of Christ with one another in the ordinary moments, sharing the Word, the peace and the bread in worship takes on new dimensions and power. In these friendships, we are all participating in the future of the church.
Read more »
YOUTH & CHILDREN, YOUTH MINISTRY
The future of the church isn't youth
istcok/CEFutcher
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's “Eight Theses on Youth Work in the Church” In Worship Frames, Deborah Kapp explores how the sociological concept of frames can help us better understand the social and human dynamics of worship. By understanding our frames, we can learn how to reframe worship to give fuller and richer expression to our faith. Kapp shares her insights with congregations and worship leaders so they will gain new perspectives from which to analyze and design worship and deepen their perceptions about the role worship plays in faith communities.
Buy the book
Continue Your Learning with the Pastoral Excellence Network
Finishing Strong, Ending Well: Crafting the Culminating Chapter of Your Ministry
A retreat with Dr. Larry Peers
Marriottsville, MD | July 27-29, 2015
Are you planning to retire from full-time ministry during the next two to ten years? This event will help you make these years a vital, intentional time for culminating your ministry and also a time of exciting preparation for what's next. This retreat will feature techniques for personal preparation and also help you plan effectively with your congregation so that you finish strong and end well.
Learn more and register »
Ideas that Impact: Children and Youth Ministry
Intergenerational Friendships and the Future of the Church by Alaina Kleinbeck
Intergenerational friendships and the future of the church
Youth should not be set apart, but rather integrated into the life of a congregation through friendship.
Andy Root, while reflecting on Bonhoeffer’s Theses on Youth Work, reflects that we should not set youth in the church apart as privileged and special. Around these parts, it’s been said that overinvesting of the young prompts the renewal of the church. While these things may seem contradictory, in fact they are not.
As Amy Laura Hall always tells the students of the Duke Youth Academy(link is external), “Youth are not the future of the church. Jesus is.” It doesn’t matter what topic she’s addressing; this expression is part of her message to our young, eager theologians.
It’s her way of releasing the valve of pressure we’ve placed on young people to save the church. It’s her way of telling young people that they are not the sole bearers of the future; they are not responsible to convert and procreate so that the church will not die. It’s her way of naming Christ as the central figure of our life in the church.
In making youth ministry into a specialized industry and young people into the “hope for the future,” we isolate the young and ignore our own responsibility to participate in their formation.
We’d rather pay a person still young enough to take a pitiful salary to run a separate youth ministry than set about the difficult work of engaging the young in the existing life of the church. We’d rather refurbish the basement with hand-me-down couches and ping pong tables than share a welcoming space with everyone. We’d rather send our youth to camp a few hours away than invest in discipleship resources at home.
On their own, each of these things may seem like innocuous or well-intended investments in the young of the church, but over the long term they point to a tendency to “silo off” the formation of the young and demonstrate our inadequate grasp of what overinvestment looks like. Overinvestment can be financial and material resources, but those resources mean very little without investment of our very selves through friendship.
While leading a workshop this summer, I asked attendees to think about how they might foster opportunities for their older congregants to befriend the younger people of the congregation. A clever participant noted that the choir, with mainly older adults, meets right before the youth group gathers for a weekly meal then bible study. She wondered whether she could bring the choir members to the youth group dinner.
I think that’s exactly what Jesus would do. He was all about bringing uninvited and mismatched guests to the dinner party (See Luke 7 and 14).
Of course, even when we invite mismatched people to eat together, the people will err on the side of self-segregation, opting to eat with their own and avoid awkward exchanges. But over time and with some encouragement to mix it up, the potential for friendship exists at a much higher rate than if there were not a shared meal.
If the leaders in the church don’t model and prompt intergenerational friendships, they won’t happen. It is our responsibility to nurture a space for the older and younger and those in between to be together in normal, mundane ways. In these moments, no one is set apart as special. Yet, in these moments, each of us has the potential to see one another as Christ sees us, with compassion, love and friendship.
When we share the love of Christ with one another in the ordinary moments, sharing the Word, the peace and the bread in worship takes on new dimensions and power. In these friendships, we are all participating in the future of the church.
Read more »
YOUTH & CHILDREN, YOUTH MINISTRY
The future of the church isn't youth
istcok/CEFutcher
Editor’s note: The following is a summary prepared by Faith & Leadership of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Eight Theses on Youth Work in the Church,” from Volume 12 of the “Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works.”
1. The future of the church is not youth itself but rather the Lord Jesus Christ alone.
2. The question is not, What is youth and what rights does it have? but rather, What is the church-community and what is the place of youth within it?
3. Being in the church-community means being in Christ; being in Christ means being in the church-community.
4. Youth enjoys no special privilege in the church-community.
5. The Bible judges youth quite soberly: Genesis 8:21(link is external); Isaiah 3:5(link is external); Jeremiah 1:6(link is external); Ecclesiastes 11:10(link is external); 1 Peter 5:5(link is external); 2 Timothy 2:2(link is external) and other passages.
6. Church youth work is possible only on the basis of addressing young people concerning their baptism and with the exclusive goal of having them hear God’s word.
7. The authenticity of young people’s protest against their elders is demonstrated by their willingness to maintain solidarity with the guilt of the church-community and to bear that burden in love, abiding in penitence before God’s word.
8. There is no real “church association”; there is only the church.
Read more »
Experiencing Religion through Story
YOUTH & CHILDREN, CHILDREN
Sandy Sasso: Experiencing religion through story
Stories and art allow children and adults to engage deeply in the sacred, says a well-known rabbi and author.
Stories express religious experience in a way that is more immediate than ritual, liturgy or theology, Rabbi Sandy Sasso says.
That doesn’t mean stories -- even stories for children -- are superficial or simplistic. Indeed, she said, writing children’s books about faith requires deep study and reflection.
“I think children struggle with the large questions of life, and we don’t often give them credit for that,” she said. “We assume that they’re not capable of engaging in conversations that we assume are more philosophical and abstract. I don’t think that’s the case.”
Experiencing Religion through Story
YOUTH & CHILDREN, CHILDREN
Sandy Sasso: Experiencing religion through story
Stories and art allow children and adults to engage deeply in the sacred, says a well-known rabbi and author.
Stories express religious experience in a way that is more immediate than ritual, liturgy or theology, Rabbi Sandy Sasso says.
That doesn’t mean stories -- even stories for children -- are superficial or simplistic. Indeed, she said, writing children’s books about faith requires deep study and reflection.
“I think children struggle with the large questions of life, and we don’t often give them credit for that,” she said. “We assume that they’re not capable of engaging in conversations that we assume are more philosophical and abstract. I don’t think that’s the case.”
Sasso(link is external) is senior rabbi emerita of Congregation Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis, where she has served with her husband, Rabbi Dennis Sasso, since 1977.
She has written a number of books for children and adults, including “God’s Paintbrush,” “Midrash: Reading the Bible with Question Marks” and the forthcoming “Anne Frank and the Remembering Tree.”(link is external)
Sasso’s career has been marked by a number of firsts. She was the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi in the Reconstructionist movement, the first rabbi to become a mother, and the first woman to serve a congregation as rabbi in partnership with her husband.
Sasso spoke to Faith & Leadership about her work as a rabbi, leader and writer. The following is an edited transcript.
Q: What is the value of storytelling in religious education, especially for children?
I think that the closest thing to the religious experience is the story. First there is an experience, a spiritual, religious experience, and then the next thing you do is tell a story about it in order to hold that experience in some type of container that can be passed on from generation to generation and can be shared in community.
Then that story becomes ritual and liturgy, in many cases. So that experience is ritualized. For example, in Judaism there was an experience of the exodus, and then a story was told about it, and then we have a Passover Seder that becomes part of a ritual tradition, and then ultimately we reflect upon it, and that’s theology.
So theology is the furthest from the experience. Not that it’s not important. Of course it’s important, but it’s furthest from the experience.
The story is what attempts to capture the feelings and the emotion and the power of that moment.
Q: Your work bespeaks a certain kind of respect for children. Would you talk about that?
I think children struggle with the large questions of life, and we don’t often give them credit for that. We assume that they’re not capable of engaging in conversations that we assume are more philosophical and abstract. I don’t think that’s the case.
What they don’t have is the language. It’s our obligation as educators, adults, clergy to give them the language. My feeling is that language is story, and so through story they are able to deal with these larger theological questions.
In many ways, adults also can better understand and grapple with those questions through story. I cannot write for children unless I really understand the concept. It’s much more difficult in many ways, because I think we hide behind philosophical language.
I don’t write to give answers. I really don’t feel that I should be preaching. I feel I should be telling a story. I’m a storyteller.
Each child will develop his or her relation to the story based on where they are at that point in their lives and their experiences. So many times when we tell stories, we want to tell people what the story means. What the story means to us -- not what the story means to someone else. When I ask people where they are in the story, the responses are incredible, and I learn something about the story that I didn’t know before.
When I talk about religion and stories, often kids say, “Is that story true? Did that really happen?” I make a distinction between true stories and truth stories.
And I say that some of the stories may not be true in the sense that we can actually document that these events happened or these people lived, but they are truth stories that teach us something about human nature and the world.
You know, children are really able to deal with that. I’ve seen that when I talk to kids. They say, “Oh, I get it.” But when they grow up, they grow out of it.
I want to give a kind of story that can grow with children. I think that has something to do with children sometimes leaving a tradition. Because we haven’t really addressed them seriously and taken a deeper look at belief and connection and community and meaning.
Q: Your forthcoming book is a children’s book about Anne Frank. That really is giving children a lot of respect to be able to handle a difficult topic. Did you struggle with that at all?
The Holocaust is a particularly difficult topic for young children, but I told this story from the point of view of the tree that was behind the secret annex. It’s the tree that Anne and Margot Frank wrote about in their diaries.
When the tree was at a point where it couldn’t live anymore and was going to be cut down, saplings from the tree were saved and then planted all over the world -- 11 in the United States.
The first one happened to be planted at the children’s museum in Indianapolis, which is where I learned about this story.
So I tell the story from the point of view of the tree, and I think it makes it much more accessible to young children. And it ends with hope, because the tree is planted in 11 places around the United States, and every time someone sees it, the story is remembered. It makes a very difficult event accessible for younger children.
My other belief is that children struggle with difficulty, and we need to honor that. Look at all the fairy tales. Some of them are quite frightening, you know. The big, bad wolf, a lot of Grimm tales -- I mean, they’re grim.
Children love them, and why do they love them? Because it addresses some of their natural fears and ultimately says you can overcome them. Because the endings of the stories are always hopeful. And I think if we ignore that, then we’re ignoring a very important part of a child’s life.
Q: I want to shift topics and talk to you about your own life as a religious leader. You have a long list of firsts. What advice would you give to other religious leaders, whether male or female, based on your experience?
First of all, I would say you have to really love what you do. You have to have a passion not only for teaching but for being with people in community, because it’s a hard career choice. There are lots of demands and lots of expectations, and they are not uniform.
Very few people have to be able to work with people of all ages -- some who are more academic and some who are not, some who are looking more for entertainment, some who are looking more for scholarship -- and also to be a good speaker and a great pastor.
It’s something more than a profession; it’s a lifestyle. It’s who you are as a human being.
Remember that the personal is important as well as the public presence. I think particularly with clergy, that’s significant. There is a public presence, and there’s also an opportunity to connect with more people because of your role.
I have made connections in this community that I would never have made if I were, let’s say, a lawyer or a doctor. You represent your tradition, and you have a responsibility of doing that in an honest and genuine way, and that helps create greater understanding and tolerance in a world where there’s not a whole lot of it.
Q: Do you consider yourself a leader?
Yes. One of the roles is to build community, to bring diverse people with different interests and different inclinations together to form a community for a common search for meaning and for creating a life that makes a difference in the world around us.
If I were to talk about my own theology, I think of it as a theology of encounter. I feel that I experience the divine and the sacred in the connections with other people.
It could be a connection with a text, but it isn’t a connection with a sacred text alone. It’s a text in conversation with another person.
One of the things that I’ve done after retirement is create a religion, spirituality and arts program at Butler University. I bring together 12 artists from all artistic disciplines to study one biblical text through the eyes of art, music, literature and religion. The result has been incredible. I mean, just beyond my imagination.
We studied Genesis 22 for the first year, and it’s been extraordinary. I’ve studied that text in seminary and as a rabbi for years and years, and the artists just opened up a new way of looking at it. And I think looking at it also with somebody who has studied it for a long time allowed for some new inspiration for art.
There are photographers and visual artists and sculptors and writers and drama people and architects, and they come together from all different kinds of religions -- and people who don’t consider themselves identified with a particular religion -- but they’re all spiritual seekers, and they create something from this conversation.
I feel like I’m building a community that did not exist, because these people don’t know each other, and they don’t usually work across artistic lines and religious lines at the same time. As one of the artists said to me, “I can talk about my art with other artists. I talk about my spiritual life in my religious community. But I’ve never been able to bridge the two.”
So this opportunity of building this new kind of community allowed that to happen. It was so successful, the artists didn’t want to stop, and many of them are meeting on their own now and have continued to form a community that continues this conversation.
Q: That’s fascinating.
Yes, it’s been so exciting. It’s something I wanted to do but had no idea whether it would work or not.
In leadership, there’s always a little bit of risk taking. If you just stay on the path that’s already been paved for you, not very much creative happens, but if you’re willing to go off the path a bit and take some risks, then there are myriad opportunities.
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She has written a number of books for children and adults, including “God’s Paintbrush,” “Midrash: Reading the Bible with Question Marks” and the forthcoming “Anne Frank and the Remembering Tree.”(link is external)
Sasso’s career has been marked by a number of firsts. She was the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi in the Reconstructionist movement, the first rabbi to become a mother, and the first woman to serve a congregation as rabbi in partnership with her husband.
Sasso spoke to Faith & Leadership about her work as a rabbi, leader and writer. The following is an edited transcript.
Q: What is the value of storytelling in religious education, especially for children?
I think that the closest thing to the religious experience is the story. First there is an experience, a spiritual, religious experience, and then the next thing you do is tell a story about it in order to hold that experience in some type of container that can be passed on from generation to generation and can be shared in community.
Then that story becomes ritual and liturgy, in many cases. So that experience is ritualized. For example, in Judaism there was an experience of the exodus, and then a story was told about it, and then we have a Passover Seder that becomes part of a ritual tradition, and then ultimately we reflect upon it, and that’s theology.
So theology is the furthest from the experience. Not that it’s not important. Of course it’s important, but it’s furthest from the experience.
The story is what attempts to capture the feelings and the emotion and the power of that moment.
Q: Your work bespeaks a certain kind of respect for children. Would you talk about that?
I think children struggle with the large questions of life, and we don’t often give them credit for that. We assume that they’re not capable of engaging in conversations that we assume are more philosophical and abstract. I don’t think that’s the case.
What they don’t have is the language. It’s our obligation as educators, adults, clergy to give them the language. My feeling is that language is story, and so through story they are able to deal with these larger theological questions.
In many ways, adults also can better understand and grapple with those questions through story. I cannot write for children unless I really understand the concept. It’s much more difficult in many ways, because I think we hide behind philosophical language.
I don’t write to give answers. I really don’t feel that I should be preaching. I feel I should be telling a story. I’m a storyteller.
Each child will develop his or her relation to the story based on where they are at that point in their lives and their experiences. So many times when we tell stories, we want to tell people what the story means. What the story means to us -- not what the story means to someone else. When I ask people where they are in the story, the responses are incredible, and I learn something about the story that I didn’t know before.
When I talk about religion and stories, often kids say, “Is that story true? Did that really happen?” I make a distinction between true stories and truth stories.
And I say that some of the stories may not be true in the sense that we can actually document that these events happened or these people lived, but they are truth stories that teach us something about human nature and the world.
You know, children are really able to deal with that. I’ve seen that when I talk to kids. They say, “Oh, I get it.” But when they grow up, they grow out of it.
I want to give a kind of story that can grow with children. I think that has something to do with children sometimes leaving a tradition. Because we haven’t really addressed them seriously and taken a deeper look at belief and connection and community and meaning.
Q: Your forthcoming book is a children’s book about Anne Frank. That really is giving children a lot of respect to be able to handle a difficult topic. Did you struggle with that at all?
The Holocaust is a particularly difficult topic for young children, but I told this story from the point of view of the tree that was behind the secret annex. It’s the tree that Anne and Margot Frank wrote about in their diaries.
When the tree was at a point where it couldn’t live anymore and was going to be cut down, saplings from the tree were saved and then planted all over the world -- 11 in the United States.
The first one happened to be planted at the children’s museum in Indianapolis, which is where I learned about this story.
So I tell the story from the point of view of the tree, and I think it makes it much more accessible to young children. And it ends with hope, because the tree is planted in 11 places around the United States, and every time someone sees it, the story is remembered. It makes a very difficult event accessible for younger children.
My other belief is that children struggle with difficulty, and we need to honor that. Look at all the fairy tales. Some of them are quite frightening, you know. The big, bad wolf, a lot of Grimm tales -- I mean, they’re grim.
Children love them, and why do they love them? Because it addresses some of their natural fears and ultimately says you can overcome them. Because the endings of the stories are always hopeful. And I think if we ignore that, then we’re ignoring a very important part of a child’s life.
Q: I want to shift topics and talk to you about your own life as a religious leader. You have a long list of firsts. What advice would you give to other religious leaders, whether male or female, based on your experience?
First of all, I would say you have to really love what you do. You have to have a passion not only for teaching but for being with people in community, because it’s a hard career choice. There are lots of demands and lots of expectations, and they are not uniform.
Very few people have to be able to work with people of all ages -- some who are more academic and some who are not, some who are looking more for entertainment, some who are looking more for scholarship -- and also to be a good speaker and a great pastor.
It’s something more than a profession; it’s a lifestyle. It’s who you are as a human being.
Remember that the personal is important as well as the public presence. I think particularly with clergy, that’s significant. There is a public presence, and there’s also an opportunity to connect with more people because of your role.
I have made connections in this community that I would never have made if I were, let’s say, a lawyer or a doctor. You represent your tradition, and you have a responsibility of doing that in an honest and genuine way, and that helps create greater understanding and tolerance in a world where there’s not a whole lot of it.
Q: Do you consider yourself a leader?
Yes. One of the roles is to build community, to bring diverse people with different interests and different inclinations together to form a community for a common search for meaning and for creating a life that makes a difference in the world around us.
If I were to talk about my own theology, I think of it as a theology of encounter. I feel that I experience the divine and the sacred in the connections with other people.
It could be a connection with a text, but it isn’t a connection with a sacred text alone. It’s a text in conversation with another person.
One of the things that I’ve done after retirement is create a religion, spirituality and arts program at Butler University. I bring together 12 artists from all artistic disciplines to study one biblical text through the eyes of art, music, literature and religion. The result has been incredible. I mean, just beyond my imagination.
We studied Genesis 22 for the first year, and it’s been extraordinary. I’ve studied that text in seminary and as a rabbi for years and years, and the artists just opened up a new way of looking at it. And I think looking at it also with somebody who has studied it for a long time allowed for some new inspiration for art.
There are photographers and visual artists and sculptors and writers and drama people and architects, and they come together from all different kinds of religions -- and people who don’t consider themselves identified with a particular religion -- but they’re all spiritual seekers, and they create something from this conversation.
I feel like I’m building a community that did not exist, because these people don’t know each other, and they don’t usually work across artistic lines and religious lines at the same time. As one of the artists said to me, “I can talk about my art with other artists. I talk about my spiritual life in my religious community. But I’ve never been able to bridge the two.”
So this opportunity of building this new kind of community allowed that to happen. It was so successful, the artists didn’t want to stop, and many of them are meeting on their own now and have continued to form a community that continues this conversation.
Q: That’s fascinating.
Yes, it’s been so exciting. It’s something I wanted to do but had no idea whether it would work or not.
In leadership, there’s always a little bit of risk taking. If you just stay on the path that’s already been paved for you, not very much creative happens, but if you’re willing to go off the path a bit and take some risks, then there are myriad opportunities.
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