Answers and anecdotes in response to questions such as, “Describe a recent conversation you had with a student about faith that sticks with you.” Or, “Who has someone who has influenced your faith?” Or, “What hopes do you have for your child’s faith in the future?” and “Describe the most memorable moment you have when thinking about your child’s faith.”
I was working with the Sparkhouse curriculum development team to process hours of interviews and observations with youth, parents and youth workers. We could have spent that time sitting in an office, brainstorming. We could have relied on our own experiences, assumptions or surveys and used those as the starting point to create new faith formation resources. We could have crafted market research questions to ask about desired curriculum, topics or products. Instead, we went out with broad, open-ended questions. We wanted to understand what was happening in youth ministries across the country, who these people are, what they care about, why they are involved in ministry.
We embraced a process called design thinking. In youth ministry, we talk a lot about creativity, but design thinking may be a new term. Popular in the business world, design thinking is an approach to understanding and addressing complex problems. However, instead of identifying a problem and diving in to make something, design thinkers focus on people.
There are a number of models for design thinking, but the process basically is:
1. Develop empathy;
2. Generate ideas;
3. Try out one or more ideas, testing and revising
…which brings me back to sticky notes.
Sticky Notes and Stories
Taking a step closer to the giant foam boards, I skimmed the quotes we captured from our interviews.
One pastor smiled as he recounted, “One student—a really quiet guy—started emailing me questions about belief. One was, ‘Are pastors in it for the money?'” Another youth worker echoed what I’ve heard from many others who work in ministry: “Families aren’t having faith conversations at home because they don’t know where to start.”
A student shared, “My favorite part was the retreat for the chance to be together and spend time with the people in my class.” Another started to break down as he talked about his most treasured object: some Army medals and a belt that belonged to his grandfather, who had passed away.
“I hope my son’s faith is a comfort and a source of strength,” said one parent. While another explained, “My mom and dad didn’t talk to me about much of anything as a kid. I want to keep the door open for discussion. I don’t want my kids to think they can’t talk to me.”
More than one volunteer said something to the effect of, “Everyone should be a mentor because you learn so much!”
The stories didn’t always seem exceptional, but I was surprised by how open people were as I spoke with them: laughing, speaking quickly, sharing frustrations and sometimes holding back tears. I’d wait through long pauses, giving the person time to think before answering a deep question about their faith that they’d never been asked before or at least not without an expectation to give a right answer.
Try it: Think of a problem you’re dealing with in your ministry. Who has a stake in this problem? If you could interview them without judgment or expectation, what questions would you ask? How can you invite people to share stories and experiences, not just requests or ideas for improvement? Get a stack of sticky notes. Set a timer for 10 minutes, and write down as many open-ended questions as you can, one question per sticky note.
Little Squares of Empathy
A cluster of 3×3 yellow papers held quotes from a boy named Andrew. He was entering seventh grade in the fall and felt excited and nervous to join youth group at church.
We met him at his home and sat down on the patio with Andrew and his mom. He recently had been confirmed at his Methodist church. As we asked him about his confirmation experiences, he abruptly stood up and went into the house. When he came back, he was beaming and carrying a red hymnal. Turning to the page with “Holy, Holy, Holy,” his talking sped up.
Andrew and his mom explained that when he was younger, Andrew heard an instrument at church and asked what the sound was. It was the organ. After worship, they went to see the instrument. A while later, his piano teacher (also a church organist) let Andrew play some of his piano music on the organ. From there, his excitement about music and the organ grew. For the confirmation service, he was invited to sit up front with the organist and play “Holy, Holy, Holy” during worship.
“The first time I played, I didn’t miss a note. It was really fun. I enjoyed it. Our minister already asked me to play it again. He asked me right after. I’m thinking about ‘Near the Cross’ because I have it in my book.”
The pace of Andrew’s speech and his grins underlined his excitement about having a meaningful leadership role in worship.
Why did I go meet Andrew…or the 20 other youth, parents and youth ministers in their homes and churches? I could have reflected on my own experiences playing piano for worship when I was a teen. I could have imagined mission trips, group-building games and Bible study conversations. Or I could have read the latest research from Pew, Barna, Fuller Youth Institute, or a host of seminaries and universities publishing reports on young people.
After all, I enjoy reading the research and attending conferences. While I know a number of youth ministers and have worked and volunteered in churches, I needed to set my assumptions aside.
By entering homes and youth rooms, engaging in conversation, noticing nuance, and developing empathy, I was given space and permission to think about youth ministry in a new way; to meet the needs of the people for and with whom we minister; to see them as whole people with ideas, feelings, joy and unique experiences rather than as users or consumers.
This is also why empathy is a hallmark of the design thinking process. Traditionally, designers would come up with a solution and then pour time, energy and money into it to make it successful. “Behold, my great idea! Now change your ways and start using it!”
Designing from a place of empathy flips the dynamic. Instead of trying to sell a solution, design thinkers actually are humbled and made vulnerable through the people they meet and the stories they hear. Empathy is hard, but in this place we find inspiration to create something that truly will meet the needs of real, whole people.
So we develop empathy. We gather stories, write them on sticky notes and spread them out in front of us. Then what? How can individual quotes and scenarios translate into something youth ministers can act on?
Try it: Sort through your stack of questions and choose the top two or three areas you want to learn about. Then talk to three people. Ask a question, and then shut up. Focus on taking notes, listening and asking follow-up questions to learn more or clarify what they’re saying. Don’t offer solutions at this time; these interviews are all about listening and learning.
Blobs and Clusters and Sequences
“Oh, this volunteer says he stays involved with youth ministry because he learns so much alongside the kids.” “Here’s that youth pastor’s story about how the adult leaders asked way more questions than youth when they were talking about heaven and what happens when people die.” “That kind of fits with the student who talked about how it was cool to see the adults didn’t have all the answers either.”
“Andrew talked about playing organ during worship and how that was a really meaningful part of his confirmation experience. Let’s put that with this quote from Emma about helping with VBS kids. She had an opportunity to live out her faith through service to others.”
Conversations such as these continued throughout the afternoon in front of the sticky notes as we clustered them into affinity groups. We told stories and interpreted what we saw and heard. Seemingly disparate observations joined together, and we discovered patterns among churches that appeared totally different on the surface.
For each cluster, we combined what we saw (observations) with what we know (our experiences and personal biases) to develop insights. In the words of designer and educator Jon Kolko, founder of the Austin Center for Design, an insight is “a provocative statement of truth—that might be wrong.”
In my experience, as soon as I’ve written down an insight, it’s a total duh moment, such as, “Teens listen with their eyes,” or, “Technology helps people externalize their inner thoughts and creativity,” or, “Parents care more about safety than theology,” or, “The best part of youth ministry is picking up trash.” Even so, we wrote these down and returned to them again and again as we brainstormed dozens and dozens of ideas for new products. The insights became a shorthand for the stories we heard, a way to carry empathy forward into whatever we created.
Try it: Review your notes. If possible, write key quotes and highlights on sticky notes, and post them on a wall in front of you. Start clustering and look for themes. What insights (provocative statements of truth—that might be wrong!) are core to your youth ministry? Write them on large sticky notes and hang them in a place where you’ll see often. Share them with others who are involved in steering your youth ministry to get their take.
Off the Wall and into the World
Insights and product or ministry concepts are great, but they’re useless if they stay stuck to the wall. The next part of the design thinking approach is dedicated to prototyping and iterating—a fancy way of saying “making a thing, testing it, and revising.”
I think prototyping and iterating comes quite naturally for many youth workers. Youth ministers continually tweak and contextualize. A retreat dedicated to sexuality and relationships will look different from one year to the next based on the youth who will be there, the schedule, the curriculum, and what worked (or didn’t work) the previous time.
However, by starting with empathy and identifying insights using design thinking methods, youth ministers can take some of the guesswork out of creating a new ministry or program. Others become involved and invested in the process of creating something new as the youth worker becomes a facilitator instead of the author.
A friend of mine embodied this role when she started a pilot program for her preteen ministry. One girl was experiencing bullying at school and approached the youth minister, looking for help. Out of this conversation, the youth worker developed a four-week series on bullying. She wrote a curriculum herself based on conversations with her kids, as well as research into bullying. On Sunday mornings, the preteens met in a cozy space that felt more like a youth room than a traditional Sunday School classroom. Parents received letters in advance with a description of the pilot program, and each week she sent a follow-up email to encourage conversation at home among families and to ask how the series was going. The series was a huge success, with parents nearly having to drag kids out of the classroom at the end of the lesson. Now the minister is getting feedback from parents and students and figuring out how to improve the bullying curriculum for next year, as well as what other topics to pilot.
By starting with the needs of her students and then setting up the class as a pilot, kids and families were open to trying Sunday School a little differently, and they were more willing to share feedback and recommendations. Plus, prototyping a new curriculum gave the youth minister freedom to shift course as she taught, not to mention permission to rework and expand similar classes in the future.
Not that prototyping and iterating is easy—I get quite attached to ideas where I’m invested to the degree that sometimes I don’t want to hear the feedback others have on what did and didn’t work. To complicate matters, when working with youth, it can be unprofessional or downright dangerous to involve youth in a half-baked idea. (No one wants to end up in the emergency room.) You need to know what will be acceptable in your own congregation, but I do know one thing: I need to start somewhere. If I’m striving for the perfect idea, experience or event, I’ll probably spin my wheels so long that it never will get done. Piloting or prototyping calibrates expectations to try something new without requiring perfection.
Try it: Put one or more insights into practice. Apply them to a current ministry activity; or gather a group of youth, parents and volunteers to come up with something you can prototype. Start small, learn from it, revise and repeat.
Practical Theology that Sticks
“You can’t solve problems using the same thinking that created them,” is a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein. I think of it often when I’m speaking with youth ministry leaders. Because of the busyness of everyday ministry life, it’s hard to justify taking some time away to focus on developing empathy, ideating, trying out new ideas and refining.
Beyond my love for office products, I’m a believer in design thinking because it helps me practice my theology, as well as to embrace an individual’s God-given creativity, hear their testimony, and invite them to participate in the work of the Holy Spirit in life-giving ways. Design thinking reminds me that I don’t have all the answers, and I do not need to be in control. Instead of developing a program or ministry for others to consume, we co-create, bound together, in community.
While this design thinking process might seem to be a luxury, in my experience, the splurge is worthwhile…and sticky notes are a small price to pay.
