R U texting w God?

While reading the book The Christian Atheist by Craig Groeschel today, I was struck by a particular line in his chapter about prayer:

“We are instructed to pray honestly, openly and continually.”

That got me thinking.  Then my thinking was interrupted by a beep.  It was a text from my husband James. I quickly typed out a reply and hit send. Then I got back to thinking. How can I communicate openly, honestly, and continually with God.

Then I got another text from a friend. So of I course I answer her immediately. I resolved to really ponder and think about prayer.  How can I stay attentive to God’s voice throughout my day? Another text breaks into my reverie!

Then it hit me. I DO know how to communicate continually and honestly.  I text!

The average teenager sends over 3,000 texts per month, according to this article by CNN.  http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/10/15/teen.texting.mashable/index.html. This works out to an average of over 100 texts per day.  Since I am a bit older than a teen, I can’t keep up that pace, but I probably send 10-20 texts a day.  If I’m frustrated with the kids, I’ll text my husband. If I need prayer, I’ll text my mom. If I want to get in touch with a co-worker, I’ll text them.  If I see a funny sign, I will snap a photo and send it to a friend. Most of us are in a constant stream of communication throughout our day.

Yet, only 40% of American teens pray at least once a day, according to this study by the National Study of Youth and Religion.http://www.youthandreligion.org/node/62  Even adults struggle to pray, and those who do pray often report that it feels scripted and forced. I am learning how to be in conversation with God throughout my day.

So what if we texted God?

I don’t know God’s cell number, but I do know that through the Holy Spirit we have a way to instant message with the Almighty.  What I mean by texting is sending up short, 140 character prayers throughout our day.

- Don’t worry about the spelling or grammar.

- Don’t make it long and fake sounding.

- It’s just a quick text from a Friend.

And be ready for His reply.

It was nothing short of AMAZING!

July E-Newsletter of Urban Leadership

I wish you were there and God blessed you if you were! We just had one of the most incredible experiences this side of heaven. We just experienced 15 days of intense leadership training for some of the most powerful leaders in the Twin Cities, young people.  We were 71 people answering the call to constructively engage the affairs of the world with the faith that we can make a difference. Our leadership was not discussed in the lecture halls but experienced in real life circumstances, we didn’t just talk about serving humanity but our learning lab was face to face in over 1,000 service hours with people in need.

The best part is that all of this was just the beginning of a one-year experience where these young people are going to have significant impacts on their communities, stay tuned for incredible excitement to come. Please don’t underestimate these young people who will do amazing things, we will highlight the differences they are making in the weeks and months to come. See you soon.

Yours truly,

Stephen Crawford

Executive Director of Urban Leadership

What a Difference!

It’s true in so many things we experience today: we can hear all about an unusual event, an exotic car, a mega-mansion, but it’s not the same as actually seeing it, up close and personal.That was my experience recently when I had the opportunity to visit the Urban Leadership Academy. In fact I was there several days of the two-week session. I had heard about it, talked about it, even told others about it, but being there and seeing it was so much better.

What I saw and experienced was “transforming”. I was transformed in terms of understanding the power of the process within the lives of ULA students. I saw many of them transformed in their thinking, in their Faith journey, and their interactions with others. By the end of the two weeks, they treated each other with greater respect. By the end of the two weeks, they participated in the processes and activities. Perhaps more to the point of ULA, they began exhibiting the leadership qualities which Staff and presenters had been modeling for them. In essence, they were being transformed into leaders.

For those of you who have supported ULA with your financial gifts, you can be pleased that your investment is paying off in the changed lives of young people.

We are now half-way through the year and the organization itself is going through a transformation. Our long-standing support from the Lilly Foundation is ending, as we knew it must. They have been so faithful to us. We are also looking for new partnerships with existing organizations where we might share costs and economize, thus being better stewards of our resources. And we are constantly trying to provide better service to the students who are entrusted to us.

In this time of transformation, we continue to need the generous gifts of our donors. To put it bluntly, we need you to either begin, or to continue your financial support. We cannot make it any other way.

We are asking you to prayerfully consider a “sacrificial” gift for the support of ULA. You can simply click on the “giving” button here or on our website. Please consider not just a one-time gift but a gift and a pledge of support into the future. Let what’s happening at ULA be a “transforming” experience for you as well.

Blessings,
T. Harrison “Tuffy” Bryant
Director of Development

The 2011 Summer Academy was a wonderful success!

• Largest Overnight Academy: 51 students entered the Academy this June. Our student class included 30 young women and 21 young men.
• Increasing Racial and Ethnic Diversity: 65% of our students were African American, 16% Hispanic, 14% Caucasian and 3% Bi-racial.
• Over 30 presenters from the community participated, including seminary representatives, pastors, community leaders and board members.
• Largely alumni staff team: 8 wonderful alumni joined 6 returning and new staff to be the face of ULA to the students.
• Incredible life change and spiritual growth: We rejoiced to participate with the students in a “sea-change” moment in their lives, faith and leadership.

Service Learning

Urban Leadership Academy students provided 1,000 hours of service this June to organizations and individuals in the Twin Cities and around the world.

• St. Paul Homeless Connect: All the ULA students served at the event, which helped over 1,700 people experiencing homelessness. ULA students served as translators, meal servers, volunteer helpers and clean-up crew.
• Feed My Starving Children: packed meals for starving children internationally
• Our Savior’s Housing Shelter: toured shelter and made lunches for homeless men
• Catholic Charities: served at Seton Services location
• Source Ministries: Fallout Shelter’s building of a house for former prostitutes
• University Good Samaritan Nursing Home: led ice cream social and entertained residents
• People Serving People: cleaned and served at the emergency shelter for families
• World Vision Twin Cities: worked in the warehouse providing good for those in poverty
• Simpson Housing: toured shelter and made lunches for homeless men
• Kids Carnival: provided a carnival for foster children at Shelter Care for Kids
• Minneapolis Crisis Nursery: made meal for children and staff
• Powderhorn Park: park shoreline restoration
• Peavey Park: park beautification and assistance with programming
• Courage Center: Special Olympics at the Colin Powell Center

Speakers and Teachers

Over 30 presenters from seminaries, churches, schools and the community shared with the Urban Leadership Academy students.

Links:

Donate

Events:

Valleyfair, August 11th

©2011 Urban Leadership
3015 13th Avenue S

Minneapolis, MN  55407

612-729-2689

Voice of the Young

One of the most incredible things about the Urban Leadership Academy is the wisdom, strength and leadership we see coming from the students. The teens pray, the teens speak, and the teens teach one another.  For many, this is the first time they have been able to hear their own voice and have their voice be taken seriously.

Unfortunately, that’s not the common practice of the world. The young are silenced. Teens’ voices and opinions don’t matter to anyone, except the advertisers.  This practice is why youth culture has evolved—a need to have an arena where youth can express themselves in their own ways and be heard.  This is how youth often feel:

And the silencing of youth is even worse in church.

In many churches, children and teenagers are nuisances. Keep them quiet and out of sight is the mantra. Resources are not spent on youth, but on building programs. Children’s and youth ministries are not designed to grow youth, but to keep them occupied while the adults “have church.” Evidence:

- Adults do all (or most) of the speaking, teaching, and planning of events, even events for kids and youth.

- Youth and adults are kept segregated for most of church programming.

- Those who work with children or youth are paid less and seen as less important than those who work with adults.

- The groups who make decisions for the church do not include youth.

The Bible shows us that God loves and values the Voice of Youth

“…And a little child will lead them.”     Isaiah 11:6

“Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity.”  1 Timothy 4:12

“‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.”      Acts 2:17

What can we do to listen to and encourage the Voice of the Youth?

- Rachel

Tweets from ULA @RachelSchwenke

Follow along with the Urban Leadership Academy through Program Director Rachel Schwenke’s Twitter updates.  Here’s what’s been happening so far:

So far only 1 broken bone @ #UrbanLeadership . Megan’s pinky didn’t make it through the basketball game.

Mauri Melander tears it up!!! @ #UrbanLeadership / Are you protecting your “cakeness”? #purity http://yfrog.com/gyt4fjgj

“I LOVE working with #volunteer groups @WorldVisionTC! So energetic, helpful, and willing to serve! #ilovemyjob” / #UrbanLeadership

Inside the box thinking… Breaking out @ #UrbanLeadership http://yfrog.com/gz5wznuj

Teamwork through adversity at #UrbanLeadership. Go Alisyn and Kiki. http://yfrog.com/keehjwj

Climbing to new heights with #UrbanLeadership! Go Lupe and Michael. http://yfrog.com/kgdotfj

#UrbanLeadership staff training preparing young leaders to influence ULA students this year. #excited

15 Jun

Stories of ULA Alums

Start Strong or Finish Well?

What is more important to your success as a leader: Starting Strong or Finishing Well?

We all have a natural bent to being STARTERS  or to be FINISHERS.

STARTERS are: innovative, creative, strategic, and visionary. They take joy in blazing new trails and discovering new paths. Starters often love to bring people together around a stated vision. They get off the blocks quickly.

FINISHERS are: self-motivated, faithful, resourceful, priority-focused, and achievers. They take joy in completing the task and seeing the results. Finishers are those who fight to see the dream reach reality. Finishers look toward the end.

Both personality styles have their flaws, of course. Starters often get engaged by starting the next great thing and leave a project half-done. Finishers often get so focused on completing the task they fail to innovate or change when conditions change mid-stream.

Where do you fall? Do you love to Start or do you get joy from Finishing?

What’s more important as a leader: Starting Strong or Finishing Well?

In leadership, we must be able to recognize our own strengths and weaknesses. I believe the answer to the Starter/Finisher dilemma is to create a TEAM where the leaders share opposite strengths. Then each leader must be EMPOWERED to lead in their area of strength.

And if you don’t know me….I am a finisher.

- Rachel

Phone Catasrophe! aka Importance of Communication

I am writing this post sitting at the service desk in Best Buy as Geek Squad employees hover around like bees trying to make enough honey in the last moments of summer.  My Blackberry has stop making clear calls- who knows why. So I am working hard to transfer contacts, pictures, videos and documents as I order my replacement phone. After about 2 hours I finally finished.

Then to pile it on- I can’t access Gmail! All of my work emails and contacts are unavailable to me.

This is how I feel:

No phone. No email. I am cut off from the world. Voiceless.

This situation has me thinking about the importance of communication. As a leader, I need to be able to communicate with others to:

• Hear and understand their concerns
• Ask for their opinions and support
• Share my vision and plan
• Talk through issues as they arise
• Celebrate successes along the way
• Identify challenges and failures
• Implement alternative strategies
• Reach our goals together

Without communication, nothing is possible. Leaders who can’t communicate simply have no way to connect to others and cannot create a team.

• How do you communicate with others?
• What happens when a leader stops communicating?

Use this week to develop your communication skills.

By the way, if you want to connect with me today, try Facebook.

- Rachel

20/20 Vision

Do you have 20/20 Vision?

I do not have 20/20 vision. I am near sighted with astigmatism. Since I was a young child, I had glasses. The best glasses Minnesota Care welfare can buy: Pink, plastic, thick glasses. Fashion statement of the decade. My 3rd grade photo is hilarious. Then I got contacts. Not the nice, breathable, comfortable, wear for 21-day contacts I have now, but rigid gas permeable contacts. Otherwise known as hard, scratchy, UNCOMFORTABLE pieces of plastic in your eye.

Having hard contacts as a 9 yr old was awful. It was a half an hour struggle daily to get them in. I was constantly losing my contact and spending hours crawling on my hands and knees with a flashlight half blind looking for my contact. My brother became the master of helping me find my contact. I lost contacts in the pool, on a motorcycle ride, in the car.  My eyes grew red and swollen after countless pokes trying to insert the dreaded contact. But I was told I needed to wear the hard contacts every day to maintain my vision. [Good] vision is so important that I went through the hard contact rigmarole for 15 years.

At Urban Leadership, we stress the importance of vision. We define it like this:

Vision is a CLEAR mental picture of what COULD BE, fueled by the CONVICTION that it SHOULD BE.

We emphasize to our young leaders that vision is crucial. If you don’t have a clear mental picture of your desired destination, how will you get there? If you don’t have the conviction that your vision should come to pass, what will motivate you to work for it?  We share God’s vision for restoration and challenge young people to develop their own leadership vision for their year of Community Transformation Projects.

What’s your vision?

What are you willing to go through to bring your vision to reality?

- Rachel

ULA’s impact

Like ripples in a pond, the impact of Urban Leadership Academy can be felt well beyond the year of initial investment in training. It starts with individual students, who are encouraged unlock their imagination and passion to improve their community.

• The first ring in the ripple represents the impact our experiential leadership-training can have on the individual students who are trained to take a stand and to be transformed from citizens to community leaders.

• The second ring represents the impact of leadership the student brings back to their local church or organization.

• The third ring represents the impact of the students’ commitment to a one-year service project in their community.

• The fourth ring represents the impact ULA alumni have on incoming through mentoring and training.

• The fifth ring represents the impact alumni are having on the world through lifelong commitment to vocational and volunteer service.

Student Story: Arsheki Berry

Ripple #1: Initial Impact

Arsheki (Banks) Berry left with her brother from North Carolina due to the fact that her mother was confined to a drug rehabilitation center. She had no contact with her father. Arsheki moved to Minnesota her junior year of high school and her grandmother recommended that she do something productive and someone from her church recommended she participate in Urban Leadership Academy. Arsheki came to ULA timid and afraid of engaging people but left with a fundamental belief that despite her difficult past she could make a difference in the lives of other teens.

Ripple #2: Impact on Congregations

The church Arsheki attended mainly works with recovering drug addicts. After attending Urban Leadership Academy, Arsheki became a key leader in their youth ministry.  She encouraged and helped the other students, as well as working with the adult youth leaders to plan events.  Her ministry team danced regularly at their church services. Arsheki eventually was hired on by the church as a successful indigenous leader.

Ripple #3: Service Projects impact

Arsheki was challenged and felt empowered by ULA to start a dance team with the children from the church.  She worked with a group of junior high and high school to improve their self-esteem, create relationships, and provide a way for the team to minister.  Arsheki’s dance team performed in many church across several states, and even danced in front of a crowd of 2,000 at MN Youth Convention.

Ripple #4: Reintegration as Volunteer

Arsheki came back to Urban Leadership in her college years, while she was serving as the youth director at her home church.  She initially started out as a mentor for young girls, guiding them through their service projects and encouraging their faith and leadership. Arsheki also came to work with Urban Leadership as a teacher, sharing her testimony and experience with whole new classes of ULA students.

Ripple #5: Long Term Impact of Program

Following her experience in Urban Leadership, Arsheki grew in leadership and attended North Central University and majored in Urban Studies. She was a youth minister for two years in Minneapolis and then moved with her husband to Chicago to work with youth in on of the most dangerous areas of the city. She now resides Washington D.C. working with a church.  Arsheki has dedicated her life to fulfilling the call of God in the city.

Transforming Communities by Building Leaders

Urban Leadership is 10 years into community transformation.  We have seen over 600 students go through our program and they have impacted hundreds of thousands of people.  It has been incredible for me to see young people who have come through our experience, graduate and go out and become community leaders.

Here’s a look at one of our graduates, Aleisha.

Even more amazing is that they come back and serve ULA!

We’ve had over 50 graduates come and teach, lead, mentor and serve the next generation of upcoming leaders.  This is truly grassroots, community based leadership.