November 2019 News: Healing, Hard Conversations, Handouts and Healthy Spirituality

My work this month introduced me to some excellent resources that I really want to pass along to you. Please let me know if any of them are helpful.

I’m not praying for healing. This one was written by one of my dearest friends. I cannot recommend it enough. Please pass it along to anyone suffering from long-term illness or deep struggle. I think they will find it giving words to something that has been indescribable for them.

How to Handle Difficult Conversations. Both in my decades of ministry and in my current life of consulting in the private sector, I find this topic comes up so many times. This is a valuable one to keep handy. And while you're at it, bookmark the Psychology Today website. There are often surprisingly good resources there, written in accessible, non-threatening terms.

Fuller Youth Institute (FYI) Free Library. I am ALL about free goodies and there is some great stuff here. I know the folks at FYI and this website is solid gold.

Healthy Spirituality. OK, this is actually more of a topic than one resource because I found so many good articles this month. Check these out!

• Leaving (My) Church. SO MANY conversations rolled around in my head as I read this one. You may find yourself nodding your head at times as you read it.
• Is American Christianity Really In Free Fall? I especially appreciate this one because it is written by one of the great scholars of world Christianity, Philip Jenkins. He offers some excellent reflections on methodology in terms of the research coming out and also on how we are to understand how we measure our faith identity in the 21st-century. For example: "Here is an interesting question: if someone believes in God, prays frequently, reads the Bible, and regards themselves as Christian, but rejects a denominational affiliation – even something as broad as Protestant or Catholic – should they properly be counted as Christian? I would say so, unequivocally."
• The (Successful) Pursuit of God: Family, Work, Ministry, and the Ghost of A.W. Tozer. Holy cow, this one is a humdinger. Take some time to read this once, then again. It is worth a discussion with staff and colleagues. And it is so beautifully written, to boot.

I'll finish with these wise words from one of my heroes, Walter Brueggemann:

“Humanness depends on being faithfully heard. And being faithfully heard depends on risky speech of self-disclosure uttered in freedom before a faithful listener.” 

Thanks for reading. You can find more of my leadership development resources at my other blog, https://www.ksleadershipdevelop.me, and on my resource drive, KSLD Resources. Contact me with questions, comments and feedback at kelly.soifer@ksleadershipdevelop.me. 

October 2019 Update: Millennials, Middle Schoolers and Milestones

Two different conversations with pastors this week have got me thinking about all the different ways those in vocational ministry walk through the multiple stages of life with people. One pastor asked me for my thoughts on how to recruit interns (and let me tell you, I have a LOT of opinions about that!) and the other reflected with me on the challenges of shepherding elderly members well.

With those conversations in mind, here are some resources that proved useful in my work with clients in the past month...

The Millennial Existential Experience. I know, I know, there have been So. Many. Articles. About. Millennials. How could there possibly be one more?! Well, I feel like this one provides a different take. I started following this blogger after his reading his book The New Copernicans: Millennials and the Survival of the Church (which I recommend highly, PS). This particular blog post lists some pertinent stuff regarding the profound anxiety that younger generations are experiencing. For the sake of confidentiality I will be spare in my details, but in recent conversations with college students, I was truly shaken by the prevalence of struggles they faced with mental health, family pressures and a general sense of being overwhelmed by their futures. Take a few minutes and reflect on this one.

Turning 60. Now we swing to another ring further along the monkey bars of life...  This sentence in the first paragraph grabbed my attention: "here are a few things turning 60 in 2019—the Barbie doll, Etch a Sketch, the commercial copier, the microchip, transpacific flights, Alaska and Hawaii as states." YIKES. That hits a bit close to home! The author provides three really helpful, thought-provoking suggestions for navigating the big 6-0 and more importantly, how to age intentionally. This will provide some good conversation fodder, I promise.

Tell Me More. As a graduate of Fuller Seminary and former youthworker, I am impressed by these resources that I came upon recently.  I HIGHLY recommend that you pass them along to parents, teachers, and youth ministry leaders:

• Tell me more: 8 conversations to have with your new middle school student
• Tell me more: 8 questions to ask your high school freshman

Each of them come with a nifty, concise PDF download of the questions from the articles. PS I would pass these along to parents of pre-teens (tweens? I don't know the right term...) as well. Preparing parents of adolescents when their students are actually adolescents is pretty much too late! Let's get crackin'!

This says it all.

“Those who are weak have great difficulty finding their place in our society. The image of the ideal human as powerful and capable disenfranchises the old, the sick, the less-abled. For me, society must, by definition, be inclusive of the needs and gifts of all its members. How can we lay claim to making an open and friendly society where human rights are respected and fostered when, by the values we teach and foster, we systematically exclude segments of our population? I believe that those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us. When we do include them, they add richly to our lives and add immensely to our world.”

―Jean Vanier, Becoming Human

Thanks for reading... feel free to pass this along to others. Contact me with feedback and questions at kelly.soifer@ksleadershipdevelop.me. And check out my other blog while you're at it, devoted to leadership development in the marketplace, at https://www.ksleadershipdevelop.me/