Lisa KrammeLisa Kramme
Director of Faith Formation
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

This spring I trimmed back our rose bushes. They had been in decline and were quite scraggly. “What can it hurt?” I thought. Doing the same watering and fertilizing routine of the last few years had not done the trick, so pruning down to the bare minimum seemed to be what needed done next.

Then the rains came. And the sun shined. And, seemingly overnight, the rose bushes not only grew back from the pruning, but they are much more green and full than they have ever been since I started caring for them.

Life can be like these rose bushes. Sometimes we do the same things over and over, believing that we are caring for our responsibilities as we should. After awhile though, what used to work “before” does not work “now.” We ask questions about what could be wrong, but the answers we come up with do not help. We are stuck.

Karen Matthias-Long serves in the Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod in the area of youth ministry. In the blog “Faith Tools for the Family of Faith,” Karen writes about the primary questions that mission centers regularly ask concerning youth and young adults. These questions are:

  • “Where are they?”
  • “What can we do to get them back?”
  • “After confirmation they drop out. Why aren’t they here?”

Do these questions sound familiar to you? They do to me. Although these questions produce a few answers, conversations around these points typically leave people frustrated and with no helpful direction. Take a look at the new questions that Matthias-Long suggests:

  • Instead of asking, “Where are they,” ask instead, “What are our motives or reasons for wanting youth and young adults in our congregations?”
  • Instead of wondering, “What can we do to get them back,” ask instead, “What are youth and young adults seeking in a congregation?”
  • Instead of fixating on the confirmation “drop-outs,” ask the questions, “What are we doing—or not doing—that lead youth and young adults to leave the church? What behaviors and attitudes are we willing to give up or change in order to minister more effectively to and with youth and young adults?”

Maybe this spring it is time to “prune back” our old questions. After all, are they really helping our mission centers to flourish? Instead, with prayer and intentional conversation, ask new questions. May we be inspired in this work by the Holy Spirit and wonderfully surprised by the growth in mission and ministry that result from this pruning.

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