Sunday, July 30, 2017

The Prom Dress

Mindlessly scrolling through Facebook a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a photo of a 40-something woman wearing my prom dress while doing her laundry. Yep. The internet is a wild and sometimes wonderful place. https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemcneal/

Woman doing laundry in her bridesmaid's dress (https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemcneal/)
It took me a few seconds of confusion to realize she wasn't wearing my dress exactly. Since 1993, that dress has been carefully packed away in a closet, perfectly preserved for who-knows-what future event. She was having fun pulling out an old bridesmaid's dress, laughing at that optimistic declaration all brides make when choosing impractical dresses for their bridesmaids, "you can wear this again!" 

Ready for prom in the 90's
I'm pretty organized, so it took me less than 60 seconds to make sure that my dress is hanging just where I thought it was. Here's what's funny: both of us have 20-year-old dresses we'll never wear again hanging in our closets. Why?

It has been said that the more stuff we own, the more our stuff owns us. Over the last few years, I've had the growing realization that I spend more time than I want to cleaning, organizing, managing STUFF. This problem is not unique to me. Did you know that there are 300,000 items in the average American home? (LA Times) A British study found that the average 10-year-old owns 238 toys, but plays with just 12 daily (The Telegraph). As a mom, I can certainly attest to the fact that our children have many more toys than they play with on a regular basis, and no one enjoys cleaning the toy-littered play room.

I am thankful that our family has more than what we need, but I also wonder how much of my life is unnecessarily spent accumulating, maintaining, caring for possessions- things that keep me from spending these energies on things that are more important in light of eternity. Also, what lessons are we teaching our children about possessions and our family's values? 

Joshua Becker quote

Our own Free Methodist denomination has roots in simplicity. In 1860, the "free" in Free Methodist emphasized certain basic freedoms found in scriptures, one of which was freedom from materialism in order to help the poor. (What is a Free Methodist?) The size of the American home has more than tripled in the last 50 years (NPR), so it is probably safe to assume that many of us live in much larger spaces today than our brothers and sisters who set forth these values over a hundred years ago.

As I started learning about decluttering and minimizing, I realized there are a lot of different methods out there. The organizing industry has boomed as many Americans have realized they own too much, and spend a lot of effort trying to rein it all in. I think we all know deep down that stuff doesn't bring us happiness, but we're surrounded by the pursuit of it, and being counter cultural is a daily challenge. I laughed out loud at this statement, poking fun at one popular method:

Poking fun at the Marie Kondo method

A friend of mine from college, and fellow Free Methodist got me interested in reading articles from author Joshua Becker, whose ideas resonate with me. He started a website chronicling his family's 9 month journey into owning less at  www.becomingminimalist.com, which now has a million visits per month.  He shares a story about finding himself spending a beautiful spring Saturday dutifully cleaning the garage, all the while, turning down his young son's requests to spend the morning playing ball with him in the yard instead. After complaining to his neighbor, she uttered some life changing words: "Maybe you don't need to own all this stuff."   

In his words, 

"The juxtaposition was striking. My possessions piled up in the driveway… my son in the backyard… my day slipping away… I immediately recognized something needed to change. My belongings were not adding value to my life. Instead, they were subtracting from it.

We began donating, recycling, and removing our unnecessary personal possessions. We embarked on an intentional journey to own less stuff.
As a result, we discovered more money, more time, more energy, more freedom, less stress, and more opportunity to pursue our greatest passions: faith, family, friends. And we decided to write about it."
Not surprisingly, I later discovered that Mr. Becker is a pastor. Beyond sharing great tips for owning less, he also shares some wise insights on the Biblical basis of this lifestyle. God has used his family's choice to minimize and the sharing of that story to reach millions. 

The pull of materialism and the challenge of living free from it is nothing new. John the Baptist and Jesus both addressed it as a spiritual issue. The early Free Methodists gave it priority. The whisper of the Holy Sprit in our hearts confirms it today.

I'm taking baby steps toward doing more than organizing- instead, trying to own less and see how the Lord uses those spaces to make me available. Fortunately, I don't have to start with the emotional stuff, like the prom dress. It's absolutely okay to start with the utensil drawer! 

Monday, June 26, 2017

Growing Young

Last week in our morning worship service, we had a group of teens and their parents come forward. We prayed for them as they headed off to FMYC, the Free Methodist Youth Conference that happens for high schoolers every 3 years. As that was occurring, I was reminded of my own experience at that conference, back when I was their age. 

FMYC (then IYC) crew, 1994
24 of us from MAFMC made the trek that year, including the brave chaperones who made our attendance possible: Joe Patton, Jeff and Pam Wilson, Brownie Davis and Larry and Kara Roberson.

One impactful moment for me in the formation of my faith took place in the arena during a large group session. The speaker had us all pause and pray out loud in groups of three. I appreciated something new about God that day, hearing hundreds of voices praying to Him. I was struck with how powerful He must be to hear so many prayers, also knowing that those of us gathered in that room represented a mere fraction of believers around the world whose prayers He was also hearing at the same time. Mind boggling! It made me feel small, but in a good way, knowing what an awesome God we serve.

In retrospect, I am so thankful for those busy adults who took time off of work to take an awkward group of teens to Colorado for a conference. I’m also thankful for Pam, who took the time to get to know me and several other girls better that year by leading a Bible study and spending some extra time with us. She was our friend, and someone we looked up to. Those moments helped shape my life and decision making at a crucial time.

Why do I share this story with you? Our Board Of Administration went on a retreat earlier this spring to do some long term planning. One result was to develop a group to look at how as a church we can better reach the millennial generation. Some of us are reading a book titled Growing Young, a compilation of research by Fuller Youth Institute that has studied churches that are successfully reaching the next generation for Christ. (Learn more about their research here.)

Growing Young book by Kara Powell, Jake Mulder and Brad Griffin

They’re finding that ALL generations in these churches are stronger as a result. Empathizing, or feeling with, young people is one of the key components they’ve identified for helping churches “grow young”. I know it made a difference in my faith journey when a Christian farther down the path of life took time to understand and listen to me. I believe it is even more important for adults in the church to do today than it was in the 1990’s.

I don’t have time in this moment to bowl you over with statistics, but know that young people today (those ages 15-29) are facing a longer season of adolescence and exploration than past generations. 25 feels like the new 15, and 15 often seems like the new 25. Their journey has both an earlier starting line as the world is forcing them to take on mature issues at younger ages, and a later finish line with typical young adult benchmarks being delayed. Omnipresent technology has become a new challenge for all generations.

Church, I know that we want to love the young people in our midst and in the world around us. Now don’t worry, the bus left yesterday for Colorado, so I’m not up here to recruit chaperones for FMYC. What I want to do today is challenge you to think about a young person or persons in your life that you might pray for, encourage and engage in conversation from time to time- even if it’s just in the hallway here at church. However, in order to feel with them, we need to understand them better.

To help equip you, I want to share a good, free resource that is e-mailed out every Friday to subscribers. It’s called The Culture Translator. It’s a put out by a creative ministry called AXIS, and provides weekly insight into how pop culture, technology, and media are influencing students while equipping parents and other caring adults to start biblically based conversations. They bring up topics that will be on the minds of teens, but are probably off the average adult's radar.

The Culture Translator logo

Although this newsletter is written to parents, I think it is a great resource for anyone who wants to understand young people better. I’ve included a copy of last week’s Culture Translator in the bulletin- it’s on the yellow sheet.  One of the topics is an app called Yellow. Do you know about it? I didn’t!

Like me, you might be thankful for Christian adults who befriended you (in real life!) in your teens and twenties. To those of us that are not quite so young anymore, I pray that we too will be motivated to empathize with and encourage the next generation as they explore matters of faith.