A Considerable Speck

Darren Wright (Youth Ministry Blog) recently blogged about The Teens’ Speech and linked to the video. So what is Teens’ Speech?

The Teens’ Speech was a project designed to give a voice to young people in Britain. It was predicated on a simple truth, espoused by philosophers as diverse as Bertrand Russell, Friedrich Nietzche and yes, Whitney Houston. Children are our future. They will define this country in years to come. Therefore, its everyone’s best interest to listen to what they have to say. It’s also in everyone’s best interest to give them the best possible start in life and create a society where young people can make mistakes and learn from them, a society that removes them from the moral and legal equivalent of Newton’s third law of motion – that every action must have an equal and opposite reaction. We need to develop the moral imagination and courage to allow children to develop into well rounded individuals – or we face a future based on the worst qualities of humanity, rather than the finest.

So, yes, The Teens’ Speech tried to give a voice to young people. We did it by interviewing hundreds of teenagers from all over the U.K. – mostly over the telephone, but also face-to-face and on camera, we conducted research and ran polls and we also instituted an unprecedented campaign of engagement on YouTube, Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.

- from The Teens’ Speech website

The video provides a voice to those in our society who usually don’t have much of a voice – teenagers. The video provides a wonderfully moving glimpse of young people who portray a sense of hope in the future and a dream for something better even while dealing with stress, misunderstanding and loneliness.

Check out the video…. and also check out some of the other videos on The Teens’ Speech YouTube Channel.

Related books:

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The Parish System

Choice is a good thing? Isn’t it? Surely being able to choose between 10 varieties of bread is better than being able to choose from just 2 choices. And for the longest time we have used that theory in our work in leading and growing churches. Surely we should provide people with a choice of worship styles, times, music, age groups etc. And on the surface it makes sense, but then you, sometimes, you have to wonder. Does it really make that much sense? Here are two presentations from TED.com. One by Malcolm Gladwell and the second by Barry Schwartz.

Malcolm Gladwell…

Barry Schwartz…

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As I have mentioned earlier, I’ve been reading Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us  by Seth Godin. And while exploring the TED.com website, I came upon this presentation by Godin. In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to just ignore the ordinary stuff. In this presentation, Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones. It got me thinking about how we go about promoting and trying to grow churches. We aim for the center. We are often so scared to try things that are different, out of the box, whacky or weird because we don’t want to fail that we end up doing things more or less the same way we’ve always done them. We retreat into predictability and safety with the occasional minor tweak to quiet the voices wanting something more and something different. What would our churches look like if we did focused on the fringes, on those who are the “early adopters” and those who are passionate about exploring their faith and stepping out of their comfort zones? I wonder….

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