As 2009 has come to an end, I am faced with the realization that another year has sped by at an alarming rate. There have been many things accomplished and many highs and low. Many joys and some unexpected sorrows...

But, in the midst of all of the activities, duties, experiences and the stuff that consumed 2009...Ive caught myself wondering about all of the things that I didn't do!

How many times did I say out loud or think to myself, someday I will...

How many ideas were never shared...
How many thank you's went un-said...
How many letters/notes went unwritten...
How many meals were never shared...
How many words of encouragement were never spoken...
How many difficult conversations never happened...

I could go on with the list...

As I look back at 2009 I wonder how many times "someday" worked its way into my life and conversations...

Today we begin a new year, and we all have a chance to start over...This year I want to remove "someday" from my vocabulary.

May your 2010 be filled with adventure following God...Grace/mercy flowing through you from God...and may the word "someday" be removed from our conversations!

What’s the deal with guys?

Recent research warns of the chronic underachieving, emotionally drifting, and irresponsible “Guyland” of male adolescence. But most of us in youth ministry don’t need research to tell us that there are new challenges inherent in working with boys.

Youth pastor and blogger Jeremy Zach recently voiced an ache many of us feel when it comes to the guys under our care:

Talking to a high school male about spiritual stuff is like basically talking to a wall… And trying to motivate a high school guy to pursue righteousness is a tough, tough task.1

Clearly something isn’t connecting for guys in many of our ministries. How can we as youth workers better equip ourselves and parents to face the current realities of boys and help them engage God and others? Given that we’re also each raising a son, this is a question we wrestle with every day.
Excuses and Fears

Much of our culture’s collective anxiety about adolescent guys is caught up in various excuses and fears. Excuses like “boys will be boys” or “it’s a guy thing” have become cultural blankets to cover all sorts of irresponsible and destructive behaviors from young boyhood through adulthood.

Meanwhile we’re overwhelmed by the fears that arise from the behaviors that prompt these excuses in the first place: boys are emotionally closed off, spend too much time playing video games and hanging out online, are too sex-obsessed, lack motivation, and often drift into adulthood with little direction.

More than a few of these fears are valid, but we struggle to find reliable lenses through which to interpret what’s going on with guys. We should say up front that not every boy is the same (thank goodness!) and not every boy lives by the excuses and fears we describe below. But these research trends are worth taking time to understand and respond to, for the sake of the guys—and the girls—in our ministries.
Guyland: The Secret Underworld

According to sociologist and gender studies expert Michael Kimmel, young men ages 16-26 live in a secret world of Guyland that resembles an uncertain holding tank.2 His interviews with over 400 guys led Kimmel to conclude:

Guyland is the world in which young men live. It is both a stage of life, a liminal undefined time span between adolescence and adulthood that can often stretch for a decade or more, and a place, or rather, a bunch of places where guys gather to be guys with each other, unhassled by the demands of parents, girlfriends, jobs, kids, and the other nuisances of adult life.3

Similar to the research of our Fuller Seminary colleague Chap Clark,4 most of the guys in Kimmel’s study believe that they are completely on their own to chart a path through Guyland. By the time they hit high school, they can’t trust their parents or other adults—and most feel like they can’t trust each other either. This is in large part because of the “Guy Code,” learned in boyhood and expanded in adolescence.

The number one rule in the Guy Code is, you guessed it, “Boys don’t cry.” Kimmel observes, “Masculinity is largely a ‘homosocial’ experience: performed for, and judged by, other men.”5 And it’s driven by homophobia—defined in Guyland code as the fear that others might think you’re gay. “That’s so gay” is one of the most common put-down guys use in high school, and it can refer to anything—something you say, wear, or do. So guys spend a lot of their energy attempting to prove (primarily to other guys) that they aren’t gay, that they are masculine enough to warrant independence in the “real man’s” territory. In other words, while many maintain that our version of masculinity is simply hardwired by biology, few account for the way the masculine code is “coerced and policed relentlessly by other guys.”6

High school has become the boot camp for Guyland, raising the stakes for the “boys don’t cry” code they have already learned and making the consequences for breaking it more severe. “How do I measure up?” is the daily question boys ask in the face of the guy code, and most guys we know feel like they fall short every day. Breaking the dependence on that code starts with working on rule number one. Boys are taught that they’re acting like girls—in overtly cruel as well as implicit ways—any time they express emotions, but also even when they feel them. As a culture, we leave boys isolated and detached, essentially numb to any kind of emotion. “Be tough. Shut up and take it. Don’t be a sissy.”

In fact, there’s some evidence that although boys express emotions less, they feel them more intensely, at least physiologically in measures of perspiration and heart rate.7 Far beyond the biology of guys and emotions, the truth is that masculinity is multilayered and multifaceted, and to force a masculine profile into one specific box—whatever the box—is to deny part of the beauty of God’s creation of maleness (and femaleness, for that matter).

This denial of feelings also manifests itself in an anti-woman sentiment that runs as an undercurrent through Guyland. The objectification and degradation of women is pervasive in the ways guys talk to one another, use and share pornography, and of course treat women. So as they follow the Guy Code, guys not only fail to relate to themselves and one another, but also young women, with any authenticity.
Escaping Guyland

Those of us who feel called to help guys experience all God intends can take heart. Just as research helps us understand the pull of Guyland, it can also give us some tips for helping guys find an escape.
Fostering Emotional Resilience

Kimmel suggests that one of the antidotes to perpetual Guyland is encouraging emotional resilience in guys—the development of an ethical and emotional core that helps guys bounce back in the face of adversity.8 From his research, there are at least four factors resilient guys share:

1. At least one adult who made a difference, who believed in them and invested in them.

2. Parents—mothers and fathers both—are critically important, even to late adolescent males, to stay connected and help usher them into manhood.

3. A passion or interest area in which he can develop a competence. This is even better if it broadens his set of social connections beyond high school.

4. Real, enduring friends. Guys need at least one other guy to balance the opinion of the crowd and reduce the isolation inherent in the guy experience. Further, nurturing female friendships cuts down on the objectification of women because guys learn to relate to real girls. Either way, one genuine friendship can be enough to make a real difference for guys who are really struggling through adolescence.
Redefining Manhood: Just Guys

Having spent over 25 years studying and working with boys, psychologist Michael Gurian poses the question, “What is the purpose of boys?” The answer from our culture seems to be, “We don’t know.”9 No wonder, then, that adolescent boys seem to lack a sense of direction. One of Gurian’s key insights in his book The Purpose of Boys is that boys often need to be led to purpose before they can lead themselves or others in purposeful ways. They need communities of purpose around them to help them develop a purpose as boys—and as men.

Men, for better or worse, will define manhood to our boys. And if men aren’t around to define, model, and usher boys into manhood, other boys will do it on their (and our) behalf. Boys initiating boys into manhood (fraternities and sports team hazing offers plenty of ripe examples here) plunge males deeper into the abyss of Guyland.

Together with dads and other men in our church, we as both male and female youth workers can create meaningful rituals that help answer the question, “What does it mean to be a man?” One all-boys’ school in Maryland defines this through a five-week service trip each year to the Dominican Republic, during which time the boys learn to work hard and live simply, all for the sake of others. The answer to the question about purpose becomes “using your strength in the service of others.”10 Giving all we have to serve others doesn’t sound like an all-American definition of manhood, but it does sound an awful lot like the Bible.

On that journey, we can help guys learn to speak out against injustice in their own communities and around the world. As Kimmel concludes, “Guys who are ‘just guys’ can become just guys—guys who are capable of acting ethically, of doing the right thing, of standing up against the centripetal pull of Guyland…They can actually become men.”11 The perpetuation of the worst behaviors is fed by our own silence and our inability to help guys speak out. Instead, we can help them see God’s heart for the oppressed and set them free to advocate and act on behalf of others.

A big key is to get boys connected with older generations. If mentors aren’t jumping out of the shadows to nurture adolescent boys, go hunting for them. Explore opportunities for guys to serve the senior men’s group at your church in some way, or to volunteer at a local nursing home. Find fathers whose sons have left home, and invite them to join another boy on his journey.
Leading Forward: Alternative Paths

Below are a few more ideas for inviting guys to crawl out of the darkness of Guyland and engage each other, girls, adults, and God in new ways:

* If you’re a guy yourself, model a countercultural reality for guys. If you’re still in the under-30 crowd, find ways to live out a Guyland alternative. If you’re over 30, and especially if you’re a dad of an adolescent guy, consider your own actions, words, and choices and the ways they feed into or react against the “Guy Code” script. What are your true passions, and do the young men in your life know about them and see them lived out?

* Both male and female youth workers can give guys outlets for expressing emotion and then talk about it together. Sports are one place—and currently just about the only acceptable place—for guys to express emotions. Guys come alive emotionally in sports, and feel more free to feel and show joy, sorrow, pain, even tears. Tap into that reality by going to games together or playing sports together, and let these become teaching moments as you debrief the experiences, talking about the emotions elicited by sports.

* Help guys build a moral compass that will actually lead them somewhere beyond Guyland. Foster a vision for integrity that values the image of God in others—both girls and guys.

* Stop the gay jokes and comments in your youth ministry. Seriously. Any time we participate, laugh, or fail to speak or act in response, we approve of the code that cripples guys from showing any genuine emotion or sensitivity. Your theological position on homosexuality itself is actually irrelevant here, because as Kimmel observes, the term “gay” refers to anything “not guy” enough.12 Talk with groups of guys about phrases like “That’s so gay” or “You’re such a fag” and ask them questions about what they’re really thinking—or fearing—when they make those statements. Chances are good you’ll have to start with your adult ministry team first on this one.

* Help parents understand that guys desperately need them—moms AND dads—to stay connected and involved throughout the “guy” phase, and give parents tools to keep communication channels open.

* Advocate for and with parents in local school systems for anti-bullying and anti-hazing policies that help diffuse some of the more violent behaviors that guys carry out against one another in Guyland.

* Encourage parents to engage boys in finding a way to care for someone or something else every day—a grandparent, a pet, a neighbor—to help build compassion and a sense of purposefulness as boys learn to channel their power for the good of others.

* Help boys discover something beyond themselves to live for, to fight for, to serve. Channel these purposeful desires into seeking justice for the oppressed and poverty-stricken. Raise their awareness of world concerns like AIDS orphans or child slavery, and give them tangible ways to engage in both global and local care for others. Help them experience the joy and sense of purpose that comes from being “just guys”.

ACTION POINTS

* When you think of or hear the phrase, “Boys will be boys,” what comes to mind? What’s encouraging about that? What’s disturbing? How is your perspective challenged by the insights in this article?

* How have our youth ministries fed into and perpetuated the “Guyland” mentality? Read this article with your team, then make two lists together of the ways your youth ministry both contributes to guy stereotypes and builds an alternative reality for guys and girls. Most likely you’ll find items on both lists you’d like to respond to as a team.

* Pick one or two of the “alternative paths” listed above to focus on for the next two months, creating an action plan for how you will implement that path. Then evaluate how your team is doing on addressing guy culture and discipling the boys in your midst, and perhaps choose another change to implement in your ministry with guys.

1. Read more of the dialogue on Jeremy’s blog from June 2009: http://www.smalltownyouthpastor.com/2009/06/youth-ministry-male-mentorship/ [↩]
2. Michael Kimmel, Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (San Francisco: Harper, 2008). [↩]
3. Michael Kimmel, Guyland, 4. [↩]
4. See Chap Clark, Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004). [↩]
5. Michael Kimmel, Guyland, 47. [↩]
6. Michael Kimmel, Guyland, 51. [↩]
7. Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys(New York: Ballantine Books, 1999), 10-11. [↩]
8. Michael Kimmel, Guyland, 270ff. [↩]
9. Michael Gurian, The Purpose of Boys: Helping Our Sons Find Meaning, Significance, and Direction in Their Lives (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 4. [↩]
10. Leonard Sax, Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 181. [↩]
11. Michael Kimmel, Guyland, 267. [↩]
12. Michael Kimmel, Guyland, 77. [↩]

©2009 Fuller Youth Institute

Family Experience: Create a Rhythm
A Better Story
By Tim Walker

I’ve been reading a book called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. It’s by one of my favorite writers, Donald Miller. I like it, but this is not a review or a recommendation. I only mention this to make sure you realize that what I am about to say is not my original idea. It’s from the book. In fact, what I am about to say pretty much sums up the theme of the book. The theme is story.

In the book, Miller talks about this concept of story and how we are all living a story. He talks about how his life had gotten mundane, and how even when opportunities to live a different story and improve his own came up, he would often let them pass by. Then one day, he felt like God was telling him to search for his dad, whom he hadn’t seen in years. And this time, instead of ignoring the prospect, he decided to do something about it. He actually tracked his dad down and had an awkward, but good encounter. Following that, he had the opportunity to go to Peru and hike the mountains. And he did it. Then he took a bike ride across the country. He decided to start eating better and exercising more, not for the sake of vanity, but because those were the things he needed to do in order to accomplish the things he wanted to do. He began to realize if he wanted his story to turn out differently, he would have to make intentional changes.

It may seem that Miller, who is in his mid-thirties, is merely taking care of himself or increasing his self-discipline. It’s the kind of thing you hear from someone who publishes one of those diet books or writes a self-help book or shares their story on Oprah. If Don were a little bit older, say my age at 41, some people might even say he’s simply having a midlife crisis.

But there was something more going on there. And after having read Don’s book, there’s something about this idea of story that I can’t seem to shake. I don’t know about you, but my life is, well, routine. Predictable. Maybe even a little monotonous. There are things that I “do” and “don’t do.” For example, every Thursday night I watch “my shows.” I eat the same cereal every morning. I go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning. And there are times when I feel like I’ve created some really deep ruts in my life. You know what ruts are, don’t you? Well-worn paths, almost like ditches that you get stuck in. And occasionally, when I allow myself to really think about it, there are times when I feel like my comfort, my desires and my expectations have motivated me to settle for a lesser, smaller story. And the result or lack of result shows up in my everyday life.

It shows up in the ways I interact with my wife. It shows up in the ways I interact with my kids. I’m willing to just live out a very small, very boring story because it all feels very safe just the way it is. And before I know it, the hours and the days seem to fly by. The time between when I get home from work and when I go to bed always seems like a blur. Today feels like yesterday, which feels like the day before, which feels like the day before that.

But what if you and I could be a part of something bigger? What if, instead of letting our stories solely be about who needs to go where and when, what’s for dinner or is my shirt clean, we lived our lives with the intent of becoming part of God’s story? A story that may involve drama, action, tears, even tension.

What if, when we have a little extra cash—a rare thing these days, I know—we don't try to figure out how to make our lives more comfortable, but instead look for a way to use that money and, as a family, work together to make someone else’s life a little better?

What if we reach out to someone who doesn't have a family of his or her own? What if we have that person over for dinner once or twice a month?

What if I find ways to show my sons that life is less about them and more about being a part of what God is doing in the world? What if I give them experiences to help them live out the truths from the Bible?

If I do those things, I would begin to live out the story I want both for my family and for me. I would be making the story I want my boys to be a part of a reality instead of just hoping they arrive someplace “good” someday—as adult children who love God and love others. My life would have more intent, more purpose.


And working towards participating in this kind of story begins with one thing, one action, one step. I don’t need a life makeover. I just need to make some different choices—some choices that reflect the kind of story I want to be a part of. I need to actually do some things instead of just thinking about them. What is one thing in my life that I can change to make my story more interesting, more significant? It may not be hiking in Peru or biking across the country, it may a lot less complicated and start a lot closer to home. But the improvement to my story does have to start somewhere. And right now, it starts here.

I know this isn’t going to be easy. I also know that I may not do this very well. I may have this on my to-do list for a while before I actually do something. But I also know that time is passing by way too quickly, and as much as I hate to admit it, days go by without any distinction. There’s nothing memorable about a week or a month or even a year. And that isn’t the kind of story I want to stay in.

What about you?

This Christmas, as we remember a story that is so amazing, so wonderful and so mind-blowing, we are going to challenge your child to think of the story not just as a history, or even a great story, but as something that has meaning and significance to us today. It’s a story that is still going on.

And it’s a story that plays out in your life and mine. We are given the choice to join in the story. We are given the chance to be part of what God is doing.

So today, wrestle with this question: What can I do to be a part of a better story, God’s story? And how can I lead my family to be a part of it as well?

© 2009 The reThink Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Christmas story is more than just one we respond to individually, it’s one we participate in—and we’re not talking bathrobes and kids in sheep costumes. The participation the Christmas story calls for is more earth shaking than a quiet stable and a clear sky with a bright star. This story shook the way the world operates when it started to unfold thousands of years ago. But it has the potential to do the same thing today when we become an active part of it. What would our world look like if we became a part of the vision God has for the world—a vision revealed with the birth of His Son, and rests on us now?

Bottom Line: The Christmas story is a one that we participate in.

Scripture References: Luke 1:35, 38, 46-55

Series Overview

A manger. A baby. Shepherds. Stars. The Christmas story is one we look at with great reverence. The peaceful scene is recreated and plastered on everything from phone backgrounds to lawn decorations. But the Christmas story is more than a just a story we look back on and remember. It’s ongoing. It’s active. It’s a story that required a response over 2,000 years ago, and one that requires a response today. It’s a story that invites us to participate in it even today—because the Christmas story is the never ending-story.