S3E21
· 01:04:59
Welcome, everyone. We're so glad you're here this morning. Most of you don't know who I am. My name is Rob Chartrand. I am the, program coordinator for Christian ministry here at Briarcrest.
Rob Chartrand:I'm, an assistant professor here as well, and I've been here for 2 years. But prior to that, I was in pastoral ministry for 30 years. 12 of those years was as a youth pastor in different cities, Regina, Thunder Bay, out in Unionville, Ontario. And then since then, I've taken on other roles also church planter. So just so glad you guys are here.
Rob Chartrand:And, I gotta say, I I love youth pastors. I love youth volunteers and leaders even more. And so this morning, Sid and I are tag teaming this thing. We haven't really planned this, but that's that's the industry. Right?
Rob Chartrand:Honestly. I mean, we have, but we haven't. I mean, so,
Sid Koop:much like gray hair or lack of hair that Rob and I have combined?
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. Do you know what I'm
Sid Koop:saying? Seriously, what is it? 60 years of planning, actually.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. It's totally. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand:Absolutely. I do. I have more hair. Anyway, do I do I need this? Who thinks Rob colours
Sid Koop:his hair? Seriously.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. I use Just for Men.
Sid Koop:A little
Rob Chartrand:bit of salt and pepper. Okay. Do it do I need this mic in the back? Yeah. You're good.
Rob Chartrand:I I can take get rid of the audio. Thank you. I don't Technology. Good. So as as I was thinking through this morning's conversation, I thought I really care about the longevity of youth workers and and of pastors.
Rob Chartrand:And there is a growing concern, for the number of youth workers and youth leaders who are not making it in the long haul. And so I thought I wanted to share with you out of my own life, in pastoral ministry of 30 years, what it means to maybe build a resilient life, to build a life of faith and a life in ministry. And and and I hope I hope that it has application not just for those of you who are maybe paid vocational workers but it's also very applicable for you who are volunteers and serving in in volunteer capacity and roles because I I think the principles that we're gonna talk about do apply across the spectrum of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. But if I were to just oh, by the way, there's notes at the back. There's pens at the back.
Rob Chartrand:There's a bin full of pens. That bin full of pens, has has a long life. That bin has been filling up over 30 years of ministry of pens I've collected over different events throughout the world. So some of those pens are older than some of you in this room. Okay?
Rob Chartrand:But, please give them back afterwards. They're very precious to me. Golem. Golem. Okay.
Rob Chartrand:So, if we were to talk about the resiliency scorecard for for pastors and for young adults, it's it's not great in the Canadian context, in the North American context. There's a study out of Duke University. It says 50% of people this the study is about 10 years old. Okay. I get that.
Rob Chartrand:It's probably even worse now but 50% of, clergy won't make it past the 1st 5 years in ministry. We we know when we look at the demographic evidence, census data across Canada, we see what's called the phenomenon of the rise of the nones and the dones. So, more and more people are checking off the box of no religion on their census data. More and more young adults, and emerging adults are saying I'm done with religion. And so the scorecard's not good.
Rob Chartrand:And some of those, truthfully, are still followers of Jesus but they're no longer in our churches because they're just down to church in in many ways. So the scorecard is is is not looking good and and I think that gives us, the impetus to have this conversation and talk about what it means to build a resilient life of faith. Let's talk about 4 realities that will challenge your your ministry,
Sid Koop:and hit you in the
Rob Chartrand:face, in a in a life of ministry. This comes out of research done by our own Margaret Clark here. She's, in our counseling department here at Briarcus, sets that up. But they did a study, and they they identified 4 themes that are very common among ministry leaders that really challenge you, and challenge your resiliency. The first one, of course, is workload.
Rob Chartrand:We have a huge workload. How many of you have very busy lives and very low pay? Yeah, a number you could say that. Okay. Expectations.
Rob Chartrand:Expectations from parents, expectations from your lead pastor, expectations from volunteers, expectations from youth, expectations from yourself, expectations from the fallacious dream of social media that says you gotta be like this, preacher sneakers on platforms. Okay. Expectations. Isolation. Ministry can be very isolating.
Rob Chartrand:Some of you are in remote geographic regions, that's isolating. Some of you just feel all alone in your ministry, isolation can hit you. And and then, of course, personal conflict. You've got your family conflict. You've got conflict within staff sometimes, conflict with parents.
Rob Chartrand:Like, you you experience a lot of conflict in in ministry, and these things can have a soul sucking experience on your life in ministry. Now, it's not all like that. I'm not gonna paint it as doom and gloom. I I I have wonderful years of ministry, that I can just look at and say thanks be to God. I've seen so many lives change and transform.
Rob Chartrand:But these realities are true for me. Like, and and some of you could probably say that. As a matter of fact, why don't we do that? Give you just one minute. Turn to someone beside you or a couple beep people beside you and say, which one of those is hitting you really hard right now?
Rob Chartrand:Go ahead. Okay. I'm gonna hear you guys again. You have all 4 chance to have a conversation. I I think it's appropriate.
Rob Chartrand:What I'm hoping to do is to go from theoretical down to practical by the time we're done with our time together. But it I think it's appropriate to talk about the the biblical understanding or biblical theology that kinda undergirds this conversation about resiliency. So I just wanna share 4, key ideas with you, that I think you can all agree with. And and this shouldn't be new to any of us, but it's important to talk about it. First of all, he said, you are the steward of your life.
Rob Chartrand:You are not the owner. And that that's important to understand when we talk about life, your life and your life in ministry. You don't own your life. God owns your life. God created you.
Rob Chartrand:But not only that, but as the scripture would say, you were bought at a price. So god owns all of your life, your body, mind, soul, heart, all of that, and you are just a steward. And so at the end of the day, if you are a steward, that means you will be accountable for what you do with your life. 2nd, your life exists for god's glory. There's a difference between the creator and the created.
Rob Chartrand:Right? And we are the created, and the created ultimately exists for the glory of God, not for the glory of self. And so you are not the hero of your story. God is the hero of your story. And because of that, then all of your life should exist to bring glory and praise and worship to God, every part of your life.
Rob Chartrand:3rd, you are responsible to build up your life. So the Christian faith is absent, but it's also active. So it's not just, you sitting back and saying, you know, God, I'm letting go and I'm letting you go. If you don't let go and let God, let Jesus take the wheel. No.
Rob Chartrand:There is a a certain amount of activity, a directness that you need to be involved in in in the pursuit and the growth of your own life. And so there's that well known Proverbs verse, guard your heart above all else for it's the source of life. And I think oftentimes, we think of that that word guard, we think of it meaning to hide my life. In other words, to put a protective shield around me that saves me and protects me from the world in this safety bubble, that guards me from that so that my heart can then therefore be pure. But but, actually, the idea of guard is more about building up a resistance.
Rob Chartrand:It's more about building up a fortification. It's called building up an army. Right? And so the idea of guard is this active pursuit of developing my life in such a way that it retains the life of god within me. So guard your life.
Rob Chartrand:You're responsible to do that. And, of course, it starts from the inside out. Guard your heart first because the heart is the center of a person's being. And then finally, your life has implications through your ministry. And Paul made it so clear to Timothy, his protege.
Rob Chartrand:He says pay close attention, Timothy, to your life and your teaching. Persevere in these things for in doing this, you will save both yourself and your hearers. And and I think as as good Evangelicals, we like the second part of that which is we pay really close attention to our teaching, to our doctrine, what we believe. But we're not always so great at paying attention to our life. And and as we'll see, not just our spiritual life but our our life entire, paying attention to our whole life so that we can have resiliency because the implication is, yeah, it's gonna have implications for you.
Rob Chartrand:It's also gonna have implications for those you serve. And let me just stop for a moment on that first part where we talk about it having implications for you. Do you know today that you are God's mission? Not not just the people you serve, not just the youth you care for and you want so much to come to know Jesus, that you today are God's mission as well, and he wants you to be paying attention to your life because your life in God, your life in Christ matters. So you have to pay attention to that.
Rob Chartrand:So those are the theological, understandings and underpinnings. Can we agree with all 4 of those? Is that Yeah. Amen? Okay.
Rob Chartrand:So let's then talk about the development of resiliency. And I I wanna give you some principles that I I think, again, won't be new to you but we can all agree. Resiliency, ultimately, we have a lot there's a lot of conversation today in in in the both the Christian and the secular world about resiliency. But resiliency focuses on capacity building and not just time management. I think in ministry, we are so fixated on time management because we only have so much time.
Rob Chartrand:Time is a limited commodity. It is a finite resource that we have, and you're running out of time. Every day, you're 1 minute closer to dying. That's
Sid Koop:just the right?
Rob Chartrand:It's a finite resource. But when you talk about resiliency, it it's much more important to talk about not just how much time you have, but your ability to bring your full self into the time that you have. It's about the capacity you have in every moment. Now I know this is a terrible weekend to talk about it. Right?
Rob Chartrand:Because it's sleeplessness, low protein diet, and I know lots of energy. You're running. You're ragged. I get that. But let's imagine ourselves on maybe Tuesday after you recover on Monday, and you're thinking about bringing your full self into life.
Rob Chartrand:So capacity is the energy, the ability, the motivation to do life and to do God's work. You can have all the time in the world, but if you don't manage your capacity, your time will be wasted. Your capacity management is actually more important than your time management. 2nd, when you think about resiliency, resiliency views capacity as holistic. In other words, you have a capacity in so many different parts of your life, and you are you are a a complex being.
Rob Chartrand:And this is why scripture would say, you know, you need to understand even your love, your capacity to love God in a holistic sense. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Jesus is written on, Deuteronomy 6. This is the. You know, if you all these with the Lord, I'll just want.
Rob Chartrand:But here you even see reflected in here an understanding of human nature as being holistic and complex. You have strength. You have a heart. You have a mind. You you have a soul.
Rob Chartrand:And so in this, yeah, I think it's important to understand that a resilient life over the long haul requires holistic development. As Christians, we seem to emphasize just one very important aspect of our resiliency, and that's the spiritual life. And that's important, and that certainly, that has primacy. Yes. Read your bible, pray every day, and you'll grow, grow, grow.
Rob Chartrand:Right? Neglect it, you'll shrink, shrink, shrink. We know that. Right? But scripture would invite us into a holistic understanding of resiliency that includes even more than that.
Rob Chartrand:So you're probably familiar with these 4 quadrants. These 4 quadrants were were introduced by Stephen Covey in his book, The Seven Habits. It's also been used in in other books on resiliency studies where they talk about understanding your life in 4 quadrants. It's a taxonomy. Every taxonomy has limitations.
Rob Chartrand:However, I think it's a health taxonomy when you think about your own life. Did you know your spiritual life matters to God? That God cares about your soul, he cares about your heart, he cares about your your your values and what you love. Your physical life matters to God. Love your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
Rob Chartrand:Your body is a temple. Your physical life matters to God. Your oops, sorry. There we go. Okay.
Rob Chartrand:Your relational life matters to God. God cares about the people you interact with. He cares about your relationships with the with the people of God, the body of Christ. And this one part that we often don't think about is that, actually, God actually cares about your intellectual life. He cares about your mind.
Rob Chartrand:I mean, let let's let's look at Romans chapter 12 verse 2. Be transformed by the renewing of our of our minds, right? Love the Lord your God with all your heart and your mind. God cares about your intellectual life. That that matters.
Rob Chartrand:So that's the holistic understanding of capacity. But the other thing to understand about resiliency is that your capacity spans in the capacity of your planet. You all know this to be true. You you are you are you are taking deposits and you're taking withdrawals on each of these areas of your life all the time. I mean, we could say this is true for your spiritual life.
Rob Chartrand:How many of you would ever say, spiritually, man, I feel spiritually empty empty or I feel tempted. Right? We know there's a drain that may happen there. Your your relational life. Right?
Rob Chartrand:Anyone ever feel peopled out? Any introverts in the room? Okay. Feel peopled out? You might feel that already.
Rob Chartrand:I'm sorry. You got 2 more days. Okay. Or physically, I'm just so exhausted. I'm just so tired.
Rob Chartrand:I just wanna go to bed. I just I just wanna sleep. And we know that, even intellectually, my brain hurts. Right? I need a brain break.
Rob Chartrand:Sometimes your brain is just so full, you just can't think anymore. So we know that it stands and then we also know that we also have to replenish it, that we can't live in this state of being of expenditure all the time, that we actually have to fill ourselves up. So resiliency though grows when you stretch your capacity and then recover. And, and I think one of the realities we face in our culture here is we want to resist hard things all the time. Right?
Rob Chartrand:And, and we're experiencing a phenomenon in our culture called satism, the rise of satism. You guys are familiar with that? Jonathan Haidt in his book, The Job Causing of the American Mind. If you haven't read it, I recommend you read it. But he talks about this phenomenon of satheism where satheism.
Rob Chartrand:Safety is a is a sacred virtue in our culture. And because it's a sacred virtue in our culture, we will, you know, wrap our kids in bubble wrap, put a hockey helmet on them. Right? Just so they can go in the backyard and play tag. Right?
Rob Chartrand:We we see parents, helicopter parents just hovering over children and this is reality. And so as a result of that, we have this generation who've grown up with non resilience. And the reason why is there's this aversion, there's this fear of conflict. There's this fear of doing difficult things. There's this fear of being exposed to something that might actually challenge us.
Rob Chartrand:And the reality is that if you want to grow resiliency, you actually have to face difficult things. You actually have to do hard things, but you also have to recover from those hard things. So there's this tandem of going from, hitting the hard things in difficulty and recovering, hitting the hard things and recovering. And you actually need both if you want to grow, if you want to develop resiliency. I think we tend to move towards the bubble wrapping Christians and Christian kids and putting them into an environment where there's they're protected all the time.
Rob Chartrand:And because they're not doing hard things and exposed to hard things, they do not grow. They do not grow. So we know this is true in our physical bodies. Like, if you do weights once a week You're not doing weights. You're not doing weights.
Rob Chartrand:You will not grow. Right? Because you'll you'll I bench my max. Right? And then you take a week off, McDonald's and Wendy's.
Rob Chartrand:And then you go back and I bench my max. That max is not gonna change. Right? Why? Because you didn't have resistance.
Rob Chartrand:But the other side's true as well. I I I used to do a lot of long distance running, do half marathons. I was just an absolute idiot. I just thought I could just train and run every single day and not take a break, never rest. Because I saw that the exercise schedule, this is how you run-in a half marathon.
Rob Chartrand:I'm like, these guys don't know what you're talking about. Right? I didn't know there was rules, like, you're supposed to rest and recover 1
Sid Koop:or 2 days a week.
Rob Chartrand:I didn't know the 10% rule where you don't increase your long run by 10% every week. I just don't have I know what I'm doing. Well, one morning, I I woke up. I couldn't get out of bed. And because my feet hurt so bad, I didn't say, what's wrong with me?
Rob Chartrand:And I found out I had, plantar fasciitis because I overtrained and I did not recover. And I think a lot of people in ministry also have this problem as we overtrain but we do not recover. We're not recovering our souls. We're not recovering our relationship life. We're not recovering all these aspects.
Rob Chartrand:Both of these things are important and necessary to build up resiliency. And finally, I would say that if you do not manage your time woah, sorry. How did I do that? There we go. There we go.
Rob Chartrand:Resiliency and capacity developed through rituals and routines. And so, it's not just that you do hard things, you do hard things repeatedly and you're actually intentional about your growth, spiritually, emotionally, all the quadrants. You're intentional about it. And so that it's not accidental. It's intentional.
Rob Chartrand:And accidental growth, if you if you choose to run your life and your ministry in such a way that I'm gonna pursue these things accidentally, it might happen. But if you say to yourself, I wanna develop resiliency by being very thoughtful about how I go about it, there's a greater chance that it will happen. And so that's what I wanna encourage, us towards this morning. Alright. I wanna go back real quick.
Rob Chartrand:I want you to turn the, people at your table here with this spiritual, relational, physical, and intellectual. Okay? And have a quick conversation. How do you replenish these quadrants? How do you replenish each of these quadrants?
Rob Chartrand:And maybe you can choose a specific quadrant for you. But what does replenishment look like for you in each of these quadrants? Take a couple minutes. Okay. Okay.
Rob Chartrand:I'm curious. How does somebody recover intellectually? Jenny, would talk about that intellectual? What do you do to recover intellectually? Yeah?
Rob Chartrand:I watch a mindless TV show. Watch a mindless TV show. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand:Desperate Health and Life is not. Yeah. Parents are Okay. You journal and write it down. Okay.
Rob Chartrand:Yeah. And so you got like free flow happening there. Okay. Someone else. You know?
Rob Chartrand:I love rocking. That's that's why I'm the same day that I'm the man. Yeah. Clearly I heard I heard my new last week so I would train with you real Do do you listen to music when you rush? No.
Rob Chartrand:Nothing. No. Nothing. Nothing. Silence.
Rob Chartrand:Okay. Your mind is a steel trap. Good. Yeah. I'm listening.
Rob Chartrand:Listen to music. Listen to music.
Sid Koop:And knit.
Rob Chartrand:And knit. Oh, awesome. Okay. Yeah. That's good.
Rob Chartrand:I tried knitting once. I didn't I got half the dish cloth done. Okay. Yeah. So hide the garden, like, not see it, right?
Rob Chartrand:Guard hide in the garden. That's just okay. Hide in the garden. Yeah. Good.
Rob Chartrand:I need a brain brain. Yeah. So that some of the some of those mindless tasks, those rhythmic things, are really important. They say Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address while he was chopping wood. So I mean, like, there's so much happens in those experiences.
Rob Chartrand:Okay. Good. I wanna jump now and and and be more specific now. How do you plan for resiliency in your life? I I think that the important principle is if you do not manage your time, it will manage you.
Rob Chartrand:So this is where you start getting back to the idea of time management. It's like, oh, I'm good. I came for the seminar and the guy told me to manage my life. Yes. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand:If you don't manage your life, it'll manage you. And because the reality is, unmanaged time is often taken over and directed towards different aspects of your life that, are beyond your control. So unmanaged time flows to things I suck at. As you know, if there are things you suck at and you have to do, they take more time and you sometimes get sucked into these tasks that you hate. It comes under the influence of dominating people.
Rob Chartrand:So there might be that person whose life is unmanageable and they suck you into the vortex of their unmanageable life because you haven't managed your own life or you have surprise meetings or, you know, think people just come up and, do drop ins and knock on your door. But because you don't have a plan, they take over. It succumbs to what we call the tyranny of the urgent. I take this from Gordon McDonald's book, Ordering Your Private World. Interruptions, tasks that you forgot to complete, social media feed, doom scrolling.
Rob Chartrand:Can I hear an amen? Amen. Alright. That's the tyranny of the urgent and and it actually uses dopamine to get your attention. So you're an addict, right?
Rob Chartrand:So doomscrolling. If you don't have a plan for your life, you will spend your life doomscrolling. Right? So the tyranny of the urgent. And finally, get to invest in the platform building rather than importance.
Rob Chartrand:And what I mean by that, yes, we are familiar in our social media culture that everybody, you know, wants to be an expressive individual and express themselves in social media. But also in ministry, if you're good at something, you're gonna get asked by somebody else to do more. And there's always more you can do, and there's always more opportunities. And I'm guilty of this. I get it.
Rob Chartrand:Right? But what happens is you can continue doing more and more and more and jumping at every opportunity and have a life that is just shallow because you didn't focus on what's important. Or your mind doesn't grow or you're, you you get physically unhealthy or all of these things because you're just jumping on to the next thing. Okay? Whereas, Jesus would say, I want to build a new resilient life that's gonna last 30 years, and I've seen so many people fail because they were busy platform building.
Rob Chartrand:So, what that means is you need to schedule your capacity building first when you think about your calendar. And if you're not a calendar person, I encourage you to at least become a calendar person to think about how you schedule your life. You're probably familiar with this illustration. You know, the guy takes the big rocks, throws in the jar and asks how much, you know, what do we put in next? Put in the small rocks and you put in the sand.
Rob Chartrand:Right? And all of those components are part of your life. But if you just start with the sand, you can't get the big rocks in there because the sand is basically you fill the room. Right? And so the idea here is to focus on what matters first, to put first things first as Stephen Covey would say.
Rob Chartrand:So, I encourage you to take time and think to yourself how do I build resiliency into my calendar? And I'm gonna talk about that in a minute and show you what I do. And if it's helpful, great. If not, great. And then I would encourage you to schedule a capacity building for periods of maximum effectiveness.
Rob Chartrand:So there's these things called secreting rhythms and ultrading rhythms throughout your day where you go through these waves of of maximum effectiveness and minimum effectiveness. How many of you here are morning people? That's not up here. That's where I put all my meetings is after lunch if I can. Right?
Rob Chartrand:Because for me, those aren't the most important thing. But in the mornings in the mornings, that's where I put my study time and my reading time and my growth time. Right. And working out, I work out at right after work when I get home, right, because I think that's a good time to do it, and it sucks but I do it. Okay.
Rob Chartrand:So so you gotta think through one of the times and some of you I know you have real jobs, not ministry jobs.
Sid Koop:And
Rob Chartrand:you don't have the luxury of designing your time this way. I I realize that, but I I just want you to think about the principle and at least contextualize it for your environment, for your life. What does this look like? Some of you have family. You've got kids.
Rob Chartrand:Right? I'm an empty vessel now so I'm gonna I'm gonna hold it. I got all this money. It's amazing. I I get that.
Rob Chartrand:I get that. But if you can, as much as you can, when are the periods where you can maximize your resiliency and your growth? And then I would just say make room for interruptions. Jesus was a man with a mission, a man of God, holy God, holy man. It was clear to him.
Rob Chartrand:His primary role was with the gentile was with the Jews and then to the gentiles. He knew where he was going. He's making a beeline for the cross, which we and this we understand all of that. But Jesus had even his life for interruptions. Do you think of the woman who suffered completely?
Rob Chartrand:You think of the crippled figure at the side of the road, god have mercy on me? So, yes, be rigid in your development of resiliency, but at the same time, be discerning in your willingness to be interrupted. And also I have to say create margin in your life so that you can you can be interrupted. So I do wanna practice, and, my kids I hope can attest to this. I know my wife Karen can attest to this that I've been carrying on for about 20 years, 25 years of ministry and I call it the hour of power.
Rob Chartrand:I know that sounds so Tony Robbins, it's not. But the one practice I have that has helped me develop resiliency over the last 30 years is the hour of power. The hour of power takes place every Sunday night and every Sunday night I make an appointment with myself and I have a conversation about my life and my resilient life. And in that conversation, I actually look at the 4 quadrants, and I and I accept
Sid Koop:and I think,
Rob Chartrand:how am I doing? And then I plan my life according to the 4 quadrants. So my 4 quadrants might look something like this. Rob, how do you develop your spiritual life? What do you need to do?
Rob Chartrand:What about your emotional your relational life, your physical life, your intellectual life? And I look at these things. Sometimes I don't look at them deeply. I just do a cursory glance because I know what they are. But sometimes I I look at them at the mortgage deeply.
Rob Chartrand:I actually do an and then a biannual retreat where I get away for 2, 3 days, and I enable days, and I I look at the at the more deeply, actually do an and then a biannual retreat
Sid Koop:where I get away for 2 or
Rob Chartrand:3 days and I enable days and I really examine my life in the sunshine and solitude and prayer. But I I look at the quadrants. And then from the quadrants, I say to myself, how am I gonna schedule my life this week in such a way that I'm building resiliency in my schedule and I'm planning for it? And so the schedule might look something like this. And this is my basic template for my schedule.
Rob Chartrand:I don't always follow it closely. My wife, Karen, at the back can attest to that. It's it's great in theory, but I but I do aim to to do this. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I stay up late playing valorant when I shouldn't.
Rob Chartrand:Okay? Yeah. Respect rising in the room or diminishing. I don't know. But you see across the board, you know, you see the hour power on Sunday in the evenings.
Rob Chartrand:Right? There's meal prep. There's fitness. Ready for the day. Prayer in the morning.
Rob Chartrand:Shabbat, Sabbath on on on the weekend. Sunday worship. And then I start adding in other aspects of it when I'm gonna study. This is just my personal calendar. My work calendar has study in it and all these other things that are in it because I wanna focus on the big rocks because I'm a holistic being and every aspect of my life is intended to give glory to God and every aspect of my life belongs to God.
Rob Chartrand:And I wanna make it till I'm 65 and beyond. And I don't wanna have a moral failing. And I don't wanna die prematurely 10 years. And I wanna be there for the most important people of my life. And I can attest that for the past 30 years, by the grace of God, by the grace of God and his alone, that I've I've never missed a kid's sporting event.
Rob Chartrand:I have a deep, loving relationship with my wife. Yeah. I I was in ministry for 30 years. It was hard. I was able to complete graduate school twice and do my doctorate in my intellectual life.
Rob Chartrand:My weight has been like this. Okay? But today, I'm feeling good. But, you know, you never do it all perfectly. But it's because I'm paying attention to my life, my resilient life, my spiritual life, every aspect of it.
Rob Chartrand:And and I would hope that for each and every one of you as you think about your ministry. And so in final considerations, which of the 4 corners do you need to be paying close attention to? What is one practice you can I I encourage you to take a picture of this if you want, but a QR code will get you the notes of all the answers in case you didn't write well now? What's one practice you can implement this coming week that will increase your capacity? And then which important people do you need to tell about this to keep you accountable?
Rob Chartrand:And if you're a full time pastor, I'll encourage you to talk to your your supervisor or your lead pastor. Say, hey. I wanna do this.
Sid Koop:Thank you, Rob. Hey, I just wanna quickly say a a quick word here as we jump in. I wanna make a shift now from just building our own resilience to how do we start building resilient disciples.
Rob Chartrand:And, I'm just gonna give you one second over here while I make this work.
Sid Koop:I I am, I am so excited about, the future of ministry preparation here at Briarcrest. I just wanna be really clear on that. I think one of the really important elements of youth quake is our kids get an opportunity to experience a space where immersive faith formation could happen, not just on a weekend but over a long period of time. And there's many reasons why I'm excited about what god is doing here, but but one primary is because he's brought Rob here. And I've had the chance to just, be with Rob a little bit on our tour, and I've had a chance actually to spend a little bit of time with his daughter on one of the projects that we worked on with YWC.
Sid Koop:So I get to see the results of faithfulness there. If you ever yeah. Anyways. And I just want you to know that I am so excited about the future of discipleship and faith formation here at Briarcrest. I wanna say thank you to to you for that.
Sid Koop:And I really believe, you know, it's funny with my own boys, with Peyton and Cole. We really encourage Peyton to do a year, at least 1 year in a faith based environment, gap year, and Cole did not. And if I could go back and do it all over again, I would have made that nonnegotiable for my youngest son. And I would just wanna say to you as youth workers that, that I really think that one of our high priorities in terms of developing resilient faith in the next generation is to make it a part of your culture that a gap year faith based gap year experience is just kind of what we do. And, you're gonna have to be at your very best in terms of helping your parents understand that vision and recruiting your senior leadership to help lean into that vision.
Sid Koop:Does that make sense? And volunteers, you're gonna have to be at your best to think through how to encourage that with your with your kids. It's gonna be really, really key. But especially because of the extension of adolescence. Identity formation is so rooted even in the years after high school that being in a environment where kids are known more by their first name than their last name but shares the values of faith is deeply formative for them.
Sid Koop:So I just I just wanted to quickly say that right off the top. Let me just take a couple of minutes just now to consider what it looks like for us to do, the work of helping form resilience in the next generation with us. I'm doing a bunch of reading right now around, stewardship of the mind. It's really funny. You know what I mean?
Sid Koop:When we talk we're we're we just started a new research project by the way with the EFC and a number of different, organizations and how in terms of how social media is affecting the faith formation of adolescents. So we just leaned into that. We're looking at how it's affecting them, why they're leaning into it, how they're using the platform, and then how we as youth ministry leaders should consider what to do with the platforms. This afternoon I'm speaking on the issue of pornography with students and so we often think a lot about content when it comes to the negative effects of some of our plat digital platforms that our kids are involved in. I'm it's funny.
Sid Koop:I'm actually more concerned right now about the issue of distraction. And, and even the research around, you know, rapid toggling and how it inhibit inhibits our mind's ability to do deep work and thinking. And as Rob said that we are transformed by what the renewing of our mind. And and here's my concern, I don't think that the way of discipleship, deep discipleship and resilience has changed much over the last 2000 years. I think the challenges we have to overcome in order to see that take place has grown incrementally.
Sid Koop:And I would like to say to you as youth workers, just to follow-up with what Rob said, I wonder if the great challenge that we face as volunteer and point leaders in terms of passing a resilient faith onto the next generation is going to be our inability to do the deep kind of thinking necessary to help us steward our calling and faithfully overcome the real obstacles that we find
Rob Chartrand:place in front of us.
Sid Koop:Of us. I wonder. One of the things right now in the coalition that we're saying to our students, I just said it, 2 weeks ago when we had our last class, is I said, hey, I just want you to know that that as we talk to, like, senior leadership in churches and organizations and they're looking at interviewing next generation leaders to be a part of the ministry, some of the questions we're telling them that they should ask is things like, hey. How much time are you spending on your device? What are the platforms?
Sid Koop:What are the apps that you've uploaded onto your device? For what reason? What role are you cleaning your life? My concern isn't primarily content, although I think that's significant. I'm concerned about distraction, And I'm wondering the question, are we doing the hard work of discipline to break habits that are keeping us from doing the deep thinking that's going to be required to overcome the very real obstacles we now face in order to pass faith on to the next generation.
Sid Koop:Now I'm hopeful. Right? Because Jesus says he will build his church. There's no question about that. And we've been called to a time such as this.
Sid Koop:And the other thing I'm incredibly hopeful for is that our young people, ourselves included, are aware of the negative effects and implications of being in these spaces. Do you know what I mean? So we have hope if we will step in. Now one of the reasons why, it was so important for Rob to speak about our resilience before we talk about our students' resilience is what? Is all of our research tells us that that type of faith is caught more than it's taught.
Sid Koop:Right? And we all of our research tells us that what we model matters most. Okay, can I just speak to you as point leaders for a second? We know that embodied discipleship, relational discipleship is the best space for the faith formation of the next generation. Point leaders, one of the things you guys spend some real hard time doing is thinking about how can I create a child protection policy that will also release my volunteer leaders to be a relational presence in the lives of my kids outside of program moments?
Sid Koop:Volunteers, you are going to have to figure out if God has called you as one of your primary areas of stewardship of your faith, if it's passing faith onto the next generation. Are there ways and I know it's so busy. And if you can't move beyond the 3 hours of program structured time for your ministry, then you'll figure out how to leverage that well. But is there a way for you to faithfully invite kids into your life journey beyond just the program moment so they can actually observe and experience what resilient faith looks like on the day to day journey. And I'm telling you that's a cost, so I'm sympathetic to it.
Sid Koop:It's a cost. It's not gonna be easy, but maybe it just starts with a bit. I remember with my first, volunteer leaders, I when I first came out of Bryant Crest here, I was so excited about all things ministry, and I asked my volunteers to be meeting with, like, all their kids outside of program moments, like, every week. That was a huge fail. And we got all the way down to could you connect with 1 kid once a month for like maybe an hour
Rob Chartrand:outside of program moments.
Sid Koop:You know what I mean? Let's just go there. Could you show up at a game? Just give them a high five at the end. Maybe just go like, no, but all of these types of things really, really matter.
Sid Koop:They really, really matter. Okay. In light of that, let me just quickly give you, just a couple of thoughts in terms of of, some of the practices that are going to be necessary for us to help develop resilient faith in the next generation outside of just what we model. And, this afternoon, I'm talking about identity formation, so I'm actually not gonna camp out this slide because I wanna move out of here. But this afternoon, I'm gonna talk about the difference, you know, that when it comes to deep resilient faith formation in the next generation, it's so much more than a decision.
Sid Koop:We already all know that, but we haven't always used the language of it's actually embracing an identity. That's actually what's very core. It's always been that, but the language of identity is so culturally popular right now that that's a good place for us to lean into to bridge into what a gospel identity might look like for our young people. Does that make sense? And by the way, one of the issues when it comes to, like, helping kids experience the goodness of God, number one question kids are asking is not is God right or is he true?
Sid Koop:They should ask that question, by the way. We should help them answer it or get them to ask it. Number one question is, is he good? Make sense? And again, our lives will help them answer that question.
Sid Koop:But number 2, we're often dealing with practices that's kind of the expression of what's actually the foundation which is identity. Tracking with me. And if we can start helping them better understand, create a new language around the old truth of what it means to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Jesus as an identity, it will help them understand how certain expressions are actually good and not oppressive. Help them understand how denying yourself in a culture that says do whatever feels good and your truth is your truth could actually be something experienced as life giving. Okay.
Sid Koop:And so we'll talk more about that later this afternoon really quick. But here, let me just do the let me finish this. There's a number of research projects most of you know because you've journeyed with YWC a little bit. There's a number of research projects that we've been involved in and work with and then there's a number of people that we interact with. I had the opportunity to spend some time with Mark Matlock who's worked with David Kinnaman and Barna, over the last number of years.
Sid Koop:They wrote the book faith for exile. How many of you have read this book faith for excels? K. Some of you have. I think this is a really wonderful practical book to think about, like, ways that we can help the next generation embrace a faith that will be resilient.
Sid Koop:K. And they just give 5 practices that they talk about that are necessary for seeing the next generation embrace a resilient faith. Let me share those with you and then I'm just gonna ask you to take a quick minute to think about, hey, in our youth ministry, which of these practices are we naturally leaning into? Which one might be one that we should maybe push just a little bit more or or think a little bit more intentionally about. Okay?
Sid Koop:And again, I this this is your this is irregardless of if our youth ministry is run by a paid professional or by volunteer. Most of the youth ministries in our country, by the way, are run by volunteers. Correct? Bless you. Bless you.
Sid Koop:There's no such thing as volunteer Christian, by the way. This is just what followers of Christ do in case you're wondering. It's by very definition, this is who we're called to be. We just do it in unique and different context at times. K.
Sid Koop:Here's these five practices that they talked about that, Matt talked about. 1st practice is to form resilient identity, experience intimacy with Jesus. When we did, hemorrhaging faith research looking at young people disengaging from the church and faith, and that was early on in, like, 2011, a long time ago. But one of the consistent themes that came up is for a young person to have a resilient faith, they needed to be able to look back on their journey and then say, I experienced God. Primary places where we found kids say they experienced God were things like camp, missions trips, or going through hard times, and answered prayer.
Sid Koop:Those were the 4 primary ones that came up for us. For me at our camp, one of the things that we've been wrestling with in light of this idea, how do we help kids actually experience God, is we've asked ourselves the question, do we actually have a culture of prayer in our environment that actually creates the opportunity for young people to experience God? We just did a podcast. Jerry and I, just recorded our podcast on our volunteer youth worker podcast, 2 days ago just thinking through, hey, how do we actually create a culture of prayer? In my youth ministry, I used to say prayer was one of my values.
Sid Koop:It was actually an aspiration. It wasn't really something we did very much, if I'm really honest. And so then we said, well, how does this actually become a natural expression or way of being for us? And we just started pressing into our leaders and now at camp, into our leaders, we say, hey, there's at least 3 ways we pray. Number 1, we pray internally.
Sid Koop:Every time we walk into a room, we wanna start making it a practice and a habit that when I walk into a room, I see Josh. I go, lord, thank you so much for Josh. Thanks for the work that you've been doing in his life. I love how you formed him in Kaleo. That was so beautiful.
Sid Koop:Love how he's been faithful in his ministry outside of Edmonton. I'll bless him. And if there's a word you'd have me to share with him today, could you just, like, give that to me? And so what happens is when you walk into a room and connect with a person, your natural movement is to bring him before the father or her before the father. I think that's the closest thing I can get to in terms of praying continuously.
Sid Koop:That my natural movement is to lean there. So we train on that. Second one we do is we pray, teach to pray for our people. Don't walk away from a moment if god has given it to you where you say, hey. Can I pray about that for you?
Sid Koop:Would that be okay if I pray for you? Of course, there's levels to everything. First level might just be, hey. Listen. I hear what you just said.
Sid Koop:I want you to know this week I'm going to be praying for you. One of the great gifts that you can give to a young person level like 2, might be to say to them, hey. I'm praying for you and pray for them, but level 1 would be come back the next week and ask them how it went because you prayed for them. And then that just tells them that you're in a they're in a very important place in your world. You know what I mean?
Sid Koop:It's not something really beautiful. We pray for our students, and then what we do is, 3, we invite them into prayer. Hey. Why don't we pray about that together? And, of course, there's journeys and levels on that as well.
Sid Koop:Correct? When we started in Canmore, I would ask them, what are your prayer requests? And then I'd say, k. I got those for the week. Then I moved to, hey.
Sid Koop:Tell me what's one thing we can be praying about for each other. And then I might pray for them in that moment when they were done. And then level 3 was, hey. Why don't we pray for each other using 1 sentence prayers? What's your prayer request?
Sid Koop:Who would like to pray for that? We prayed for a lot of cats that thing. That's the thing. And I gotta tell you my number one prayer was lord soften my heart towards cats. To form a resilient identity, we need to experience in this Jesus.
Sid Koop:Kate, can I just say this as well and I think as our culture becomes more and more antagonistic to our values of faith, moments like youth quake are going to become more important because it is so immersive and it reminds our students that they're not alone and they're not just part of a local club? They're part of a different culture and way of being. And I really believe that, I think these moments are taking on a different type of role in our cultural context that will be so so important. Okay. That's the first one.
Sid Koop:2nd practice, is in complex and an anxious age develop the muscles of cultural discernment. So teach them to become good critical thinkers, but let me just say this, if you do not have a baseline, a basic biblical understanding, you cannot become a good critical thinker. Does that make sense? So, we have to be committed to being deeply rooted in the scriptures. We always have.
Sid Koop:One of the reasons why a deep commitment rooted in scriptures, has to do again with identity formation, the whole movement of deconstructing faith which actually isn't new, it's just taking on some new angles by the way. It's rooted in the garden, Genesis chapter 3. But one of the new angles of course is in a culture where Rob talked about expressive individualism, where our emotional center is actually the primary authority in our lives. Deconstruction nowadays has very little to do with wrestling with the scriptures. It's simply removing scriptures from the primary place of authority and placing our emotional experience in that position.
Sid Koop:Makes sense? Yeah. So what we have to do is model that our lives are lived according to a different authority, that's Jesus through his word, and that it's not just true or right, it's good and here's why. K. So we have to fight to get there.
Sid Koop:And when we do that, then we can begin to teach cultural discernment, analyze and understand what are the values and messages that colleges that that culture is speaking to you and how should we respond to that? What's a good way? Don't be afraid of it. How do we respond to it? Hey.
Sid Koop:Let me just tell you a quick thought. So I mean, this is a stupid one, but can I just quickly check it out there just for a second? So my wife is pretty con pretty convinced that Taylor Swift is,
Rob Chartrand:like, maybe the antichrist. I'm not sure. That's why I don't It's
Sid Koop:going too far. I know. I'm so sorry. Going too far. Going too far.
Sid Koop:I do have to say this. If we ever want a dance party at camp, all we have to do is put her on and just, like, turn it into, like, this. And my boy at age 18 is playing like I've never seen so many adolescent and young adult men sing a woman like Taylor Swift songs.
Rob Chartrand:Are they
Sid Koop:posting right now? And then I was just like, man, I'm so excited about this. I can't wait till she comes off with a song that's all about forgiveness. Is there there are few things more destructive if I read the scriptures than an unwillingness to forgive? Do you know if right?
Sid Koop:So I don't wanna demonize, and you I'm just saying, oh, you know, that, like, we actually need some cultural discernment to start thinking about kind of the messages that our kids are embracing and what might be a redemptive way forward. Does that make sense? And again, not demonize, not like not like, you know, that sort of thing, but just to be better thinkers about what culture is saying and what is the flourishing and redemptive way for it. Okay. Track them with me.
Sid Koop:So we need to be better at that. Practice number 3 is when isolation and mistrust are the norms for meaningful intergenerational relationships and I don't have to preach to the choir by virtue of you being here, you're committed to intergenerational relationships. So I just want to say thank you to that. Just know consistently showing up brings deep meaning to a young person. So thank you for the work you do.
Sid Koop:Please don't quit doing that. Number 4, to ground and motivate an ambitious generation trained for vocational discipleship. And here's what I mean here is we need to help our students understand that there is no such thing as a sacred and secular divide, but Jesus is the owner of all things and that, that we do all things for his glory and we need to think through what does that look like when I'm serving in Starbucks, when I'm volunteering in Sunday school, when I'm playing on the basketball team in my high school. Does that make sense? What does it look like for all of these environments to not own our identity but be spaces where we get to live out our identity in Jesus for his glory and the good of others.
Sid Koop:And we need to help them understand how faith, how relationship with Jesus affects all of these areas. I don't think we talk about vocation near enough. And, you know, here's the thing, I mean our common theme within our culture of course and we as parents are the ones to blame for this is that you got to get really great marks in high school, lots of pressure so you can get to a really good university, lots of pressure you can get really great marks, lots of pressure so that you can get a great job with lots of money, lots of pressure so you can build a really big house, lots of pressure, and then you die, pressure gone. Okay. So right.
Sid Koop:But but the gospel is calling us to is something different. It's understanding who we are, how we've been designed, and how we can now best steward our identity for the sake of his glory in whatever vocation he's calling us to. And that's just such a different way to think about that, but brings meaning to all spaces and environments. K. And then practice number 5 is we need to curb entitlement and self centered tendencies by engaging in counter cultural mission.
Sid Koop:One of the wonderful gifts God is giving us in a culture that is moving farther and farther away from Judeo Christian values is that it's much easier to be counter cultural. So I was just on a phone call last night with my friend Jonathan Kurnelson. He had, 4 young ladies who came back from their missions trip, that they did over spring break. They decided that their school needed to be their mission field. And so they just talked about how could we practically do that.
Sid Koop:So last week, they made cookies, put a cookies, and the notes, threatened to bring the children into the principal's office because they felt like they had violated like some types of human rights policies around their religion or faith, And so they've been now in conversation. Jonathan called me last night and just said, hey Sid, like we've been talking to some of our friends who are on the council in that area, situations that are taking place. It's so crazy. It doesn't even make sense. I don't want to be alarmist about it.
Sid Koop:But the number one role he gets to play now with his students is supporting them in ways that they can continue to love the teachers in their school, including administration. Isn't that powerful? What an opportunity that God has given for those kids to experience Jesus at work in and through them. And the opportunity for their faith to grow in deep resilience just because of the space that God has placed them in. As a father, my desire would be to pull them out of the hardship, but as a follower of Christ, my desire should be to help journey them through the hardship and bear with them.
Sid Koop:And god will do this wonderful work in them as he shapes a profound faith that truly matters. Okay. Here's what I want you to do real quick then just before we shut it down. For each of the practices, rate your ministry 1 to 10 on effectiveness. Why do you give yourself that rating?
Sid Koop:So just really quick, in your mind, go through each practice. Go, man. I think we're leaning into this one pretty good. Give yourself a 1 to 10 or I'm not sure we're doing really great. And we've got just, like, 3 minutes around your table.
Sid Koop:Maybe really quickly go, hey. I think this is one that we're doing really well. I think this is one that we need to lean into over the next few months. K? So just talk about that around your table real quick.
Sid Koop:Okay. One thing that you should do is, is maybe when you're done the weekend, if you've taken a picture of the slide, what you could do is go, hey, what's just one thing we could do to just turn the dial, like, 5% on one of these areas over, like, the next, 3 months? I I'm super cautious when we do these types of events that that we walk away thinking we need to change everything. That's a fallacy in a lie unless, like, you're, like, seriously got bombed. But god bless you.
Sid Koop:But, you've been then we're not gonna help you either. It's actually better. But, if we just move the dial a little bit and by the way, Jesus has always been working. Right? So we celebrate what he's been doing and he is working.
Sid Koop:He's gonna keep working in spite of us mostly. But just turn the dial up 2 to 5%. And when you do that, you never know what kind of other implications come because of that. I I I just stand here, today so thankful for you, because of the work that I see in my own boys' life, because of people like you and what you have done for people like them, volunteers. This summer, I went to church.
Sid Koop:I went to one of our old churches I had been to for a number of years. And my son, Peyton's principal, was there and I had to walk up to him and I just had to say to him, mister Campbell, I owe you a huge apology. I put my child in your school at a very difficult season and it was not easy for you. He started laughing at me. My son got removed from Christian school three times.
Sid Koop:Okay. So I'm gonna bless you. Bless you. Bless you. I I remember, I remember when my son got kicked out of my own youth ministry in Lethbridge because he was out of control.
Sid Koop:So for those of you who go to youth group next week and you see that student walk you into the door, then you just go, lord, could you please bring a raptor tonight? I understand. You know?
Rob Chartrand:I want you to know
Sid Koop:I we we get that. I understand that. I remember I remember when my boy as a teenager came to me and he just said, dad, I want you to know that I am never doing what you and mom do. And I was like, bless you child in another house somewhere far away from here. You know what I mean?
Sid Koop:Like, you're putting food on your table. And, and then I also don't remember. I remember when I went to his baptism, and some of you heard the story, when he was about 12 or 13 years old. In fact, his small group leader texted me and said, is your boy getting baptized this weekend? I'm like, no.
Sid Koop:And I was like, hey. You getting baptized? Yes. Oh, awesome. I was like, would you like your dad to help with that?
Sid Koop:No. That was a hard no. I was like, okay. Just my possession. So we just we just got out.
Sid Koop:But I remember when he shared his testimony and he just said when I was 11 years old at camp, it was camp Quanellis. He said, God became very real to me that week for the first time. I was so excited because that was the very first time I ever was his camp speaker. You know what I mean? How cool is that?
Sid Koop:And then he goes on and he says, just, yeah, I have these two counselors that just really showed me what it was to love Jesus. I was like, I've been doing that for 11 years, boy. You know what I mean? I'm way into Jesus. Right?
Sid Koop:And then I remember when he came to, me, after he started working at camp and and about, like, 4 or 5 years ago, he came to me and he said, dad, I think maybe I'm being called to youth ministry. I think, oh, that's a change. And, and I said to him, stay out of it as long as he can. And if he can't stay out of it, then go for it. And this year, he's actually in our coalition program and he's working as a youth pastor right now.
Sid Koop:Hey. Great story, by the way. He he has a bunch of, Christian school kids in his youth group, which I have a real heart for. I worked in a Christian school for 6 years as their chaplain. It's the only place I've been publicly mocked while preaching, just in case you're wondering.
Sid Koop:And for the first time, this past week, my son experienced that as, like, a youth pastor, essentially. I was like, oh, welcome to the club here. But I just wanna say thank you so much. You have no idea what your work now might be doing
Rob Chartrand:for the future. So bless you everybody.
Sid Koop:Bless you. Have a good day.
Listen to Youth Quake using one of many popular podcasting apps or directories.
