from a longer post I'm writing for my online class:
The most popular and, I presume effective, youth leader I’ve ever known is my friend Bill who used to be the director of religious education for the congregation I served. Bill wasn’t interested in what he could teach youth about Unitarian Universalism or anything handed down in the UU OWL program as much as he was interested in simply being what Mark Yaconelli describes as being “prayerfully present to young people.” He had few lessons—every once in a while he’d lead them on a hike or a garbage pickup around town or a foraging expedition—but just went outside with them for an hour during services to the park nearby or, if the weather was bad, down into the basement where he’d teach them to play flutes or let them talk about their week.
By all criteria that I can think of Bill’s tenure was successful—the youth group bloomed under his leadership, the kids genuinely looked forward to spending time with him, I’ve heard from parents that they’d often talk the rest of the day about the things Bill had said or shown them, and even years after he’d left if one of them heard that Bill was appearing at a service she’d show up, just to sit next to him or talk with him afterward. He left eventually for the local Methodist church which has a large choir, singing being his second obsession (his own native spirituality being the first). After he left, the youth just dribbled away.
I’m of two minds about Yaconelli’s book. There are parts, especially those that make me think of what Bill was to those kids and the effect he had on them, that I really stand up and cheer for. There are other parts that I take serious issue with.
I’ll take the latter first. There are occasional spots in which Yaconelli seems blind to the effect some his ideas might have on other people—I’m thinking especially of the story he tells in chapter 3 about his epiphany concerning his youth ministry and how it changed after he realized it was up to god and not to him, which sounds wonderful for Yaconelli, but since we never hear how it affected the youth program under him or even if it did, a less charitable reading might suggest he just got comfortable with his own mediocrity—but one story sticks out for all the rest, and that’s the one on pages 117-19 about the young man from the Redwoods Group Home.
Yaconelli’s description of this incident in a local mall is pretty affecting, and I really liked the end of the first part: the man with Down Syndrome ordering and enjoying his own coffee. That’s a good story and an important lesson. Folks with Down Syndrome deserve the respect afforded by making their own, sometimes unhealthy, decisions. But it’s when Yaconelli continues that it’s obvious he can’t see beyond his own experiences.
The sad fact is that the young woman who sat in the puddle with the man and let him cry on her shoulder probably is no longer in that profession. On her return to the Home she would have come up against the rules once an administrator or manager saw the man in soaking wet, stained clothes. Her explanation that she had “participated in the power of God’s healing love through [a] gentle act of solidarity and kindness” (to use Yaconelli’s words), would not cut the mustard with someone who simply wants to know why she let him stay in the rain. At the very least, she was probably reprimanded for not having convinced him sooner to get up and into the van. (Clients putting themselves at risk is one of the few times staff are empowered to use Personal Restraint Techniques if the home was state-run; a private facility makes its own rules, but the staff have fewer safeguards against being fired.) And if he’d gotten sick, as residents living in a facility with other people whose hygiene may not extend beyond the two or three times a day staff can coax them into washing their hands are prone to do, she might even be open to personal financial responsibility by the client’s family because she obviously did not follow procedure or policy. (And before we argue that the policy should be more reflective of the ethics Yaconelli espouses how would we feel is that was our son or brother or father and he was struck with pneumonia?)
What I’m trying to get at is not that the woman was wrong to sit in the puddle with the man and share his grief or that Yaconelli is wrong to point it out as a model for us. What I’m trying to get at is that our response to it is as people outside the event who have no stake in it and we do not take into account the persons immediately involved who might have other responsibilities and who might suffer for their decisions.
The most popular and, I presume effective, youth leader I’ve ever known is my friend Bill who used to be the director of religious education for the congregation I served. Bill wasn’t interested in what he could teach youth about Unitarian Universalism or anything handed down in the UU OWL program as much as he was interested in simply being what Mark Yaconelli describes as being “prayerfully present to young people.” He had few lessons—every once in a while he’d lead them on a hike or a garbage pickup around town or a foraging expedition—but just went outside with them for an hour during services to the park nearby or, if the weather was bad, down into the basement where he’d teach them to play flutes or let them talk about their week.
By all criteria that I can think of Bill’s tenure was successful—the youth group bloomed under his leadership, the kids genuinely looked forward to spending time with him, I’ve heard from parents that they’d often talk the rest of the day about the things Bill had said or shown them, and even years after he’d left if one of them heard that Bill was appearing at a service she’d show up, just to sit next to him or talk with him afterward. He left eventually for the local Methodist church which has a large choir, singing being his second obsession (his own native spirituality being the first). After he left, the youth just dribbled away.
I’m of two minds about Yaconelli’s book. There are parts, especially those that make me think of what Bill was to those kids and the effect he had on them, that I really stand up and cheer for. There are other parts that I take serious issue with.
I’ll take the latter first. There are occasional spots in which Yaconelli seems blind to the effect some his ideas might have on other people—I’m thinking especially of the story he tells in chapter 3 about his epiphany concerning his youth ministry and how it changed after he realized it was up to god and not to him, which sounds wonderful for Yaconelli, but since we never hear how it affected the youth program under him or even if it did, a less charitable reading might suggest he just got comfortable with his own mediocrity—but one story sticks out for all the rest, and that’s the one on pages 117-19 about the young man from the Redwoods Group Home.
Yaconelli’s description of this incident in a local mall is pretty affecting, and I really liked the end of the first part: the man with Down Syndrome ordering and enjoying his own coffee. That’s a good story and an important lesson. Folks with Down Syndrome deserve the respect afforded by making their own, sometimes unhealthy, decisions. But it’s when Yaconelli continues that it’s obvious he can’t see beyond his own experiences.
The sad fact is that the young woman who sat in the puddle with the man and let him cry on her shoulder probably is no longer in that profession. On her return to the Home she would have come up against the rules once an administrator or manager saw the man in soaking wet, stained clothes. Her explanation that she had “participated in the power of God’s healing love through [a] gentle act of solidarity and kindness” (to use Yaconelli’s words), would not cut the mustard with someone who simply wants to know why she let him stay in the rain. At the very least, she was probably reprimanded for not having convinced him sooner to get up and into the van. (Clients putting themselves at risk is one of the few times staff are empowered to use Personal Restraint Techniques if the home was state-run; a private facility makes its own rules, but the staff have fewer safeguards against being fired.) And if he’d gotten sick, as residents living in a facility with other people whose hygiene may not extend beyond the two or three times a day staff can coax them into washing their hands are prone to do, she might even be open to personal financial responsibility by the client’s family because she obviously did not follow procedure or policy. (And before we argue that the policy should be more reflective of the ethics Yaconelli espouses how would we feel is that was our son or brother or father and he was struck with pneumonia?)
What I’m trying to get at is not that the woman was wrong to sit in the puddle with the man and share his grief or that Yaconelli is wrong to point it out as a model for us. What I’m trying to get at is that our response to it is as people outside the event who have no stake in it and we do not take into account the persons immediately involved who might have other responsibilities and who might suffer for their decisions.
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