Old, and getting older.

There have been a lot of things written about the age of people who are involved with church.

What we can do to keep the next generation (if you only read one, read this one- it really spoke to me)
Congregations getting older
How churches can bring young people back from (ugh) Fox News

As I sat around a table with fellow parents of kids from 6th-12th grade last Sunday, I realized something that I know my Assistant Rector who is in charge of youth programs and the Rector who is just in charge in general realized ages ago- we have a problem.

The problem isn't with the kids. It's with the parents. The kids can't get there by themselves.

My kid had never, not once, been to Sunday school. I wouldn't take him. The only reason I went last week is because I have such fond memories of youth group when I was in middle and high school. I also have some not-fond memories, but whatever, everyone has stuff like that in middle & high school. Anyway, I didn't take him before, because for adults, Sunday school is sitting and listening to someone. And then go to church, and listen to someone else. I do not have the patience for that. I need some interaction. I need discussion. I need problem solving. I want to be with my peers, too. And my peers aren't at church. Well, not many of them.

The alternative to listening to someone was teaching, but I didn't want to teach to little kids. I don't like little kids. I teach high school for a reason. But women always get asked to teach little kids. And I teach 5 days a week already. I didn't really want to go teach on yet another day. As it is, I teach 2-3 children church sessions a year, and I dread each one.

I love my church leaders, they are amazing humans, and I know they have very full plates, and I don't want to tell them no. So I just avoid them. Sorry. I know you're reading this. You probably already figured that out, though. I know it's passive aggressive of me.

As I was looking around, I realized 2 things:

• There was no one there who looked like me. I have purple streaks in my hair and a nose ring. I was wearing blue glitter nail polish. I was also wearing clothes from Banana Republic, before you get this image of me wearing a Slayer shirt with a mohawk and a tattoo on my neck (it's on my ankle). I'm not that rebellious, but sometimes I stand out in a white bread crowd. And yet...
• Everyone looked like me. We were all white, middle/upper middle class people between 39 (I'm fairly confident I'm the youngest) and 55ish? 60? I don't know. I'm not great with ages of people who are older than I am.  

I've been mulling this over for the past couple of days. I go to a small church in a midsized but rural town. I go to an Episcopal church which has kept ties with the Diocese and the area is fairly conservative. But the town I live in also has a university, which means by it's very nature has some random social liberals wandering the streets. 

These social liberals have kids. I know, because my kids play with them at summer camp, at school, in the neighborhood. A couple of them go to my church. And the ones who do are pretty cool people. But not enough of them are there. 

I grew up in the precursor to a mega church. It was perfectly normal to have 600-700 people on a regular Sunday. Wednesday night youth group would commonly pack the youth room with kids sitting on the floor after the chairs were gone- 50+ kids on a regular basis. None of the leaders were parents of kids who were in the room. They were college students and young married couples. 

Part of the delight of the youth group was the idea that we were always doing things that our parents would have probably not enjoyed. Singing as loudly as possible? Check. Randomly breaking out into tears over various teenage angst coupled with emotional spirituality? Check. Having that guy reach over and take my hand during prayer and not letting go when it was finished? Check. Wash dishes for an entire camp of people and stick my hands into disgusting drains to clean out the food? Check. 

I doubt any of those things would have happened if my parents were there. I would have gone- I would have been forced to go- but I would have been guarded. I would have been intentionally difficult to deal with. 

After this meeting on Sunday, I realized the draw of the "mega church."  I've been to a mega church. I didn't like it. It felt too fake. But it's easy to get your kids involved. You can plug them into a community that will reinforce some kind of values which you hopefully approve of through peer pressure and adults who aren't their parents. And if you choose to, you can not be involved at all. 

I always thought I would be involved with a youth group. I never thought it would be while my own child (or children) was in it. But when I tried to get involved as a college student, I was discouraged from doing so. I was too young, the kids in the youth group were too old and too close to my age, I wanted to change things too much- this was at a different church than the one I grew up in- and there was a strong undercurrent of "and you are too female, which is not ok with us." So it's been about 20 years since I've gotten active with church, and I'm kind of dragging my feet right now. 

Agent N, the 6th grader, needs to do some stuff without me around. He needs to have positive influences in people who aren't his parents. He needs to sing and yell and dance and cry without us watching. But we go to a small church in a midsized town, and so one of us will be watching sometimes. I'm going to try to get involved with other kids but it's hard when you hear your child's voice yelling (Agent N's normal volume) to focus on something or someone else. And it's hard to talk to kids you don't know when you're... like me. I'm a good teacher because it gives me an in- I have something to talk about. And then the kids tell me stuff, so we have something to talk about together. But put me in a room with random people, especially random teenagers, and I'm awkward as hell. I was about 1000 times more confident when I was a teenager. Now I'm a teenager in an adult body. 

And this brings us back around to the beginning. The church has an age problem. Where are the parents? Where are the college students? I have avoided getting involved because of the demands on my time. But if more people got involved, there would be fewer demands on everyone's time because there would be more people to share the workload. But in order to get someone to want to take part of the work, they have to buy in to the concept. 

I don't even know where we go from here. 

Help me help you!

Students,
Dear, Dear Students,

You think teachers have all the power. So I am begging and pleading with you now, I am demonstrating to you that you are the one with the power. I cannot help if if I don't know what you don't understand.

Let me tell you a story:
Once upon a time, I took economics. This was in college, and it was the 90s, so there was none of this bullshit about students as customers. If you didn't like the professor, fuck off. If you didn't feel he (mostly he) taught very well, fuck off. Many (though definitely not all) of the professors at the university I attended had the attitude of "We are the very prestigious university and many other people could have had your place as a student, so sit down and shut up."

Some of those professors were wonderful. None of them taught econ.

I did not do well. I did not understand. I did not like economics. I received the worst grades I had ever received. I still minored in econ.

Ten years later (give or take) I was told I would be teaching economics.

I dreaded it. I did not want to teach it. I did not like it.

I was wrong.

I did like it. Kind of a lot. It's really useful information. You can apply what you learn to real life.
And because I struggled with it, I am really damn good at teaching it.

Now, ten years after that, I'm teaching AP economics. And I understand your struggle. I know that not everyone gets it on the first pass. I know that sometimes you need three or four or ten examples before things click.

HOWEVER.



When you say to me I DON'T GET IT. I totally understand how you're feeling. I do. I have been where you are.

Because I'm teaching online, this is all via email. It shouldn't be, but no matter how many times I tell you about the software that we use to meet in real time, you refuse to meet with me.

I send another email. And I ask you- can you give me an example of a question that you don't understand. A practice quiz question. An assignment. Anything?

And you email me back and say I just don't understand.




And I email you again. This time, again asking for a specific example of what exactly you don't understand. I want to help you.



Please, tell me, WHAT DON'T YOU GET? Do you not understand the theory behind it? Do you not understand the formula we are using? Do you not understand anything about gross domestic product or consumer price index or monetary policy?

I have given you EVERYTHING. At some point, you have to take responsibility. You have to read back over your notes. The textbook. The additional website I showed you that has videos. The website with definitions. The practice tests.

And then, you have to answer my questions. I will make you a video. I will write out painstaking, step by step instructions. But you have to answer my questions.

The Great Decluttering Challenge

Every day for the past month, "Declutter 1 Thing" has regenerated on my to do list. I love repeating items on my to do list.

Declutter could mean 3 things:

1. Throw it away. 
2. Put it aside for yard sale. My neighborhood has an epic yard sale every spring and fall. Some people are very serious about selling stuff at this yard sale, or renting their driveways out to their friends. Traffic is mayhem at this ridiculous yard sale. People get out their grills and sell hot dogs. In general, I decided that if someone else might find value in it, I was going to pack it into a box and put it in the basement to sell in the spring. All money from the yard sale in May, 2015, is going to fund my service trip to Honduras (more on that later). 
3. Put it aside to give away.

More rules I established for myself:

• If I didn't declutter one thing, I couldn't check it off the list. Which means it turned red and became "overdue" on my app. And then the next day, I had 2 things to declutter. I only got really behind once, when I had to declutter 4 things in one day. 
• I could only remove something of my own, unless I had permission. The other day I cleaned up my younger son's books but I had to have permission to remove them. He gave it, since most of them were "baby books." 
• I couldn't check things off in advance. If I got fired up and cleaned out 3 things in one day, I couldn't check off 3 things ahead. One day, one check. The only time it counted was in back pay. (see above)

Occasionally, I decluttered lots of things. I started by cleaning out bookcases. Since my oldest son was born 12 years ago, we have moved 4 times. Twice to different states. That's a lot of packing and unpacking books, some of which I don't even like. It was hard to get rid of books because books are nice. They're comforting. You might need them someday. Some of them I gave to fellow teachers for their classrooms. Some I put in a yard sale box. Some I gave to a local charity.

Once I got past the initial routine, it became easier. I would try to think of a place I hadn't cleaned in a while and look there.

Some wonderful results of this particular challenge:

• I got a lot more organized. 

So organized. (not mine.)

• I have some really good stuff to sell at the yard sale. I always feel like I have a ton of stuff then I put it out and it's not that much. Which means that people don't even stop to look. Maybe they will this year. 
  

Some problems I came across:

• When I thought we should sell/give away something that a child refused to part with. A regular conversation was "You haven't played with this in years!" "But I want to now!" 
• Sometimes, the task was too daunting. I would look in a closet and decide that I would not be decluttering that particular location. Mainly that was because the object in that closet were not mine and I didn't want to get approval for decluttering. Either that, or I didn't want to move them around to get to the stuff that is community property. 

I'm not saying the rest of the people I live with are hoarders,
but I might be the one person standing between them and reality TV. 

• I'm so organized that I can't find some things. 

Either way, I strongly recommend doing this. It really helped me think about how there are some things I don't care about that I have moved around over and over again. And it definitely made me more organized. If only I can find the cookie cutters by Christmas, I'll be ok.