By Sasha Rasmussen
Have you ever taken a drive through the American West? It is impressive. The landscape breaks from defiant mountain ranges to an endless carpet of prairie. Many have ventured into its depths seeking to take hold of its beauty, resources and opportunity. In the process, in order to organize and subdivide their exploits, they placed fences. For the mountaineer, fences may seem constricting, but for the rancher, miner, or even private property owner, they are necessary. They are a way of focusing, a way of containing one's efforts, a way of harnessing the vast opportunities that can overwhelm us.
In the American West most fences are made of barbed wire as a cost and time saving means of enclosure. These fences consist of deeply sunken posts strung together with tightly tensed steel wire. Many will testify that, although they do not initially look that strong, one hapless encounter in the dark is enough to be convinced of their usefulness. The whole system however, depends on the tension of the wire. When setting up these fences, one must systematically tense, or ratchet down with pressure the wire lengths in order for the fence to maintain rigidity and withstand the test of weather and the occasional run-in with livestock.
Currently, we are faced almost daily with decisions that force us to take into account the various 
complexities that perhaps previous epochs of business, family, and religious life have not challenge us with. Our worlds are constantly updated Facebook pages, unpredictable and fluid. Game-changing cultural shifts send us messages that we are falling behind, are not current enough, and that we are missing out. There is always one more social network we haven't joined, updated or heard about. It is hard to develop strategy in such an ever-changing universe. As an urban youth missionary in Cordoba Argentina, amidst this vast frontier of human complexities, we have sketched out a sort of field guide for practical strategy. It is a way of tensing a fence where we see opportunity and need in ministering to the lives of young people in Cordoba.
Idealism - Pragmatism: Our first strategic paradox hangs between idealism and pragmatism. In Christian youth missions work, like in almost all organizations, we have some lofty ideals. Here is our mission statement.
"Urban Passage exists to develop healthy and spiritually whole adolescents who transform their culture. We accomplish this by providing a safe alternative environment in which teenagers can seek help for their current situation, and by creating engaging programs which help them to develop life tools for their future in five essential areas: mind, body, soul, family, and community."
This sounds really great. It sounds like I have done my due diligence in going through the steps to develop strategy for my ministry. But this statement becomes a museum piece if I am not committed to putting firmly in place a fixed pragmatic post and tensing the connections between the two. Our idealism instructs and in our pragmatism we have coffee one on one. In our idealism we offer advice, and in our pragmatism we offer a hand. Our ideals are our compass, but a compass will not get us far without a good pair of hiking boots.
We have many students who come to our group having been handed few ideals and have been taught poor life practices. They are initially enamored with Jesus, His love and His way. But they have some pretty bad days along the way. They are fraught with feelings of discomfort, failure and even depression as these new ideals meet with the brokenness of their lives. Pragmatism calls me to do the humble work of listening, understanding and adjusting so our ideals as an organization meet their actual need. Sometimes this is harder work than forging a mission statement because we are consistently re-writing it, tailoring it to suit each person or situation that arises. These are the adjustments necessary to make this section of the fence hum.
Needs - Wants: One of the hardest sections of fence for us to build is between the needs-wants paradox. There has always been a bit of controversy in youth ministry circles regarding the differences between these two basic models. There are those who focus on faith and character development, a sort of metaphorical vegetables only model. Then there are those who emphasize creating an attractive and comfortable environment for teenagers. In our model, those are the individuals who go straight for dessert. In this analogy it is easy to see the bottom line. While offering a fun and engaging environment for teenagers attracts their presence, it certainly does not offer everything they need. It is possible to have many teenagers visit and yet to have failed to give any one of them substance. Yet, serving up plate upon plate of vitamin packed bounty that is not palatable will only benefit those already accustomed to such a diet. One may have succeeded in offering substance, but will have done so to precious few who may already be fairly healthy.
In having a working strategy, both needs and wants must be addressed simultaneously. The very nature of their complex relationship necessitates the tension. Sometimes we want what we need, but the opposite is also often true. That is why we must always be assessing how tense the line is. The tension will ensure a strategy that is more centered, and one which can more tightly secure and contain our efforts. When looking to develop a strategy which includes both needs and wants, we are going to have to be just like mom was when she was faced with the same issue at dinner; we are going to have to be tenaciously creative!
Long-term - Short-term: Our organizational lives seem more like movies sometimes. They are dramas played out with minimal detail, events which transpire quickly and in orderly fashion towards some sort of often predictable and satisfactory end. However, any organization with many years under its belt has a quality much like a Dostoyevsky novel- slow, plodding, painstakingly detailed and incomprehensibly complex. As leaders, it is our job to be committed to the playing out of both simultaneously. We must be focused on what is accomplished through the slow roll of time, the daily commitment and faithfulness that builds our empires one brick at a time. We must also be alert for those crucial moments when we are able to crystalize our long-term efforts into concentrated activity.
Ah the summer camp! It is the golden child of youth ministry. It is the five days out of the year when everything comes together for one incredibly fruitful youth ministry experience. Two days before youth camp you are wondering why you ever got yourself involved, and a day after you are wondering when the next one will be. It is the most intensely prepared and creatively planned event on a youth ministry calendar. Its success however is not due only to how well it was fund-raised, thought through and executed the two months prior. Its success has everything to do with the cumulative efforts of the ministry throughout the previous year. All of those mid-night phone calls, weekly teaching sessions and Saturday morning fund-raising phone book deliveries leave their footprint on the shorter and purer experience of camp. Without them, a truly successful camp is not possible. Understanding that the success is in the tension between the long and short term helps us develop our yearly strategy.
Now we have our stallion in a corral. The corral fences represent our guiding principles. We need to have enough space to work with the wiles and complexities of our animal, and yet contain our efforts so as not to lose or loose our results. These three guiding strategic tensions have assisted us in ministering to young lives through our organization and give us the flexibility needed to adapt and the containment needed to hold everything together. They have helped us build strategy in our ministry. We could name many others: process - end product, quality - quantity, artistic - scientific, and the goose - golden egg. Whatever paradoxes exist in your organization I suggest the following: dig two deep holes, set up two strong posts, and tense the fence.
Sasha Rasmussen, and his wife Maria Silvia, work as urban youth missionaries to high-school and college students in Cordoba Argentina at Centro Crecer Biblica Bautista (Growth Center Bible Baptist Church). Sasha graduated from Liberty University with a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies. Sasha and Maria Silvia are expecting their first baby girl on November 18th!
