Hey everybody, welcome to episode three and our celebration of women and youth ministry. Today's episode is very special. Not only is our guest today and amazing minister, but an author of several books that maybe you've read and if not you should be because they're quite good. It's the one in the only agenda, Bradbury or why Amgen on twitter, which is just a great handle and Jen, thank you for all the good work that you've done. Just want to take a midweek break and say thank you for all the support we've already received for this. We are excited for this month long celebration and so please tell your friends, women and youth ministry, share with the sisters, men and youth ministry. Sit, listen, and learn and share with those that you have so much to learn from and so much to be appreciative of. If you haven't had a chance, go to youthministrybooster.com/giveaway. We're giving away a big year,$500 when more and prizes to women and youth ministry. We are so thankful in what you to treat yourself for a whole year because you've finished your booster. We care, we care about those that care about young people, and if you are a minister that cares about young people, you need someone caring about you and that's what we're here for. Just this week, the conversations about honesty for this month, long emphasis of honesty have been so important in the network and for less than 20 bucks a month, it is a powerful testimony of what it means to have a support system. You heard it from Anna on Monday. You'll hear more about it from Jen today. You need a support network. If you are minister caring for other people, you need people that are caring about you and so we hope that this month long celebration reminds you and encourages you and point you in the right direction to find the care that you need. Until then, I'll catch you at the end. This is our interview with Jen.
Chad:Hello and welcome to youth ministry booster. My name is Chad Higgins and I have the great honor again today to interview Jen Bradbury. How are you?
Jen:I am excellent and thanks for having me on Chad.
Chad:Jen, I am excited to talk with you today to hear about everything that you're doing, to maybe talk a little bit about some of your books. We've talked a little bit before the show about this. I'm convinced that you haven't slept since 2014. Uh, and so abs love to hear that experience from you. So tell us, before you dive into that, who you are, where you're from, what does that look like?
Jen:Yeah, so I am a youth worker in the Chicago suburbs. So I am the Minister of Youth and family at Atonement Lutheran Church in Barrington, Illinois. Um, this is a brand new job for me. I just started about six weeks ago, but it's my 16th year in youth ministry. Um, I'm married, I have a three year old daughter and uh, so I love spending time with my husband and with my daughter. Uh, and I also love to write, as you alluded to. Um, so I've written four books. The Jesus gap, they're real Jesus unleashing the hidden potential of your student leaders and a mission that matters. Um, and those are all about things that are really important to me that I'm super passionate about and that are things that have come out of my own ministries in really big ways.
Chad:That's awesome. I'm blown away that you are able to not only be a mom but defeat on staff leading, you know, youth families and also be a writer. And so that is, that's absolutely incredible. And so, um, I really hope that if you're listening and you haven't had a chance to check out Jen's books, can you tell them like where they can find those? Where's the easiest place to, to check those out?
Jen:Yeah, absolutely. So, um, the Jesus gap and the real Jesus were published by the youth cartels. So the best way to get those is that youth cartels website, which you can just google youth cartel and the student leadership and the mission, his book a mission that matters. We're published by Abingdon press so you can get them on their website or those are also available on Amazon.
Chad:Some of you guys may have never heard of Amazon before and so it's a small website out there. Um, and I think you can find it@Amazon.com. So check those out. Those would be, I think very much worth a look into. So Jim, tell us 16 years of student ministry, what guy you into it right before you were crazy enough to write a book and go to school and all that kind of stuff. Like what brought you into student ministry?
Jen:Yeah, absolutely. So, um, I have a bachelor's in electrical engineering. So for Youth Ministry is what you do with that. So for me, I went to the University of Illinois in Champaign and while I was there I was serving in a youth ministry and the youth pastor at that church saw something in me and really called it out and me. And so my senior year, which happened to be a year that nine slash 11 happened and the economy crashed and you know, what had been a sure thing in terms of electrical engineering jobs suddenly wasn't. And so I started applying for lots of engineering jobs and was just getting no hits at all. And along the way, I had this youth pastor friend who kept saying, Jen, there's more to the story than what you're, uh, what you're owning here. It's not just a matter of the economy, it's a matter of God's got something better for you. And so he gave me a couple jobs sites in the youth ministry world and I went on him and skimmed them and within a couple of weeks had a couple job offers. And so, uh, I took my first job in youth ministry, lasted there 14 months, did everything I possibly could go wrong and ended in disaster, uh, and left feeling like, okay, this job was absolutely not the right job for me, but like this calling is absolutely right for me and it uses every one of my gifts and it energizes me and it challenges me and I see the fruit of what's happening, uh, and so left that confident that something else would come up. And indeed it did. And so here I am.
Chad:That's awesome. What a story. How did your parents feel when you made the shift from electrical engineering two student ministry? What was, what was that like? What was your experience there?
Jen:Yeah, that is a great question.
Chad:Are you still working through that?
Jen:So I am an only child and I am also the first in my family to have a college degree. And so my parents vision for my life was very different than what my life has ended up being. And so they were frustrated and they were hurt and they didn't understand my choice. Um, and to a large extent I would argue that they still don't. Um, and so, you know, even as I was going through this job transition the summer, you know, my dad still made the comment that, well, you know, you could always go use that engineering degree and like not saying that jokingly being totally serious. Um, and yeah, like if they had their way, I would be back into that. But it's so clear to me, it's so clear to my husband, to the people whose voices matter the most to me that, you know, this, this is God's call on my life.
Chad:We navigate those things, right? Like especially when you're younger and even now, right? I mean 30, 40 year old people, like sometimes our parents still try to like, you know, they're speaking the direction. I mean I look at my little daughter and I assume I'll never do that right. Thirty, but uh, that I think that that's real life, right? Like we walked through seasons like that and following Jesus is not always easy, right? I mean not only for ourself but for the people around us that love us and care for us and a very deep way. Tell me, over the last 16 years, what have, what's been like one of your favorite youth ministry moments? This to be funny story, a meaningful story, whatever you love to tell.
Jen:Yeah. So a favorite youth ministry moment for me. Would it be a mission trip that I took some kids on in 2011? So the church that I was working at at the time was super, super involved in refugee ministry and so we lived in a county and in a community where refugees were constantly just coming and being resettled. And so our, our church as a whole was doing lots of ministries geared at refugees in the area, so we had, um, an English as a second language program and a sewing ministry, um, and like a basic coding class for people to learn how to code. So like all these different things. And so naturally. And so one of the things that we started seeing was that the high schoolers in our youth ministry, we're interacting with these refugees in various ways, sometimes at church, just kind of in passing, uh, oftentimes in their schools where they would wind up in the same classes as a refugee friends, um, but they had no real knowledge or understanding of what a refugee was for what the needs were or how that person's life was different than their own. And so, we were doing a three year mission trips cycle and our congregation. And so that happened to be a year that we were looking at going on an international trip. And so I started thinking, what if instead of going someplace just super exotic, just for the heck of it, um, what if we actually tried to find a way to get kids on the other side of the refugee highway in the camp so that they would understand the origins of um, and so like it wasn't even a matter of trying to find the exact camp that people were coming from, but just, you know, a similar experience, uh, and so through the partnerships and the networks that we had started working the phones and essentially saying, Hey, is it possible to take a group of high schoolers who have no skills and no training into a refugee camp? And I found exactly one group who said yes to that and it was a missionary couple in Kigali,, which is in Rwanda. And they were actively working in a refugee camp in western Rwanda, uh, that had about 20,000 Congolese refugees in it. And so we spent a year as a team doing a deep dive into what are refugees, how do you do cross cultural ministry? And then spent two weeks together in Rwanda. And that trip was seven years ago now, and so the kids who were in a lateral and so the kids who were on that trip have now all graduated from college and it has been so incredible to see the fruits of that trip bear out in what they're doing. Vocational. A, so for this, you know, we took eight kids. It was a small trip, but for those eight kids, I'm almost every single one of them went into a career that directly related to the fact that stood up on this refugee camp. One kid has finishing dental school because when we were in the refugee camp, he noticed that there were lots of doctors, but there were no dentist. And he said, I can do something about that. Uh, so he found this path to go to dental school so that he can get back to these refugee camps and give back.. Another kid is in Grad school studying agricultural development because when we were there, we visited a small rural town and they were trying to figure out how to maximize the land. So we're. Wanda is a country that has very little land and so it's really hard to grow things and it's really hard to, um, to keep animals just because the space is so precious. And so this girl went, you know, if we can fix that, if we can find a way to maximize the space, we can give people such a jump. Uh, and so she's doing that. Another girl is working full time for, I'm a refugee organization in the Chicago area and like the list just goes on and on. and so those sorts of, I mean, that's a big example, but it's, you asked for favorite in that trip, that trip, was it?
Chad:It's incredible. What an amazing story when you're telling me that story. All I can think about is like the Good Samaritan, this question of who is my neighbor? Because you know, for these kids, right? You talk about there in this community that have refugees coming in.
Jen:Yeah.
Chad:and it's one thing to see your neighbor and go up there just like me. But then when you're put in their shoes, what they've walked through and where they've come from, like I can't help but think that, that just like, that increases empathy and passion for people in that. That's been something for me, I think over the last couple of years, um, that I've identified as this like characteristic that I felt like her world is missing so much. Like I feel like empathy almost seems like it's nonexistent.
Jen:Yep.
Chad:And we, we try to, like, we talk about people as groups more than like gentleman their stories and um, and I think there's something very true of that. Like seeing your neighbor ride like as yourself and that's this very individual kind of thing. And so, um,
Jen:and with that, I mean one of the incredible things too. So we were coming back from this mission trip into this community where again, refugee ministry was the part of our congregations DNA. And so like, our kids would go and deliver, uh, this thing that we called welcome packs, which was essentially a refugee gets to the US and they usually have either a bag or a small suitcase of literally all the things that they own in the world and they have nothing else in this department. And so we'd show up on the day that they arrived with, you know, basic groceries and kitchen things and bathroom things and shampoo and conditioner. And what was so amazing about that is that, you know, we'd be in someone's home, someone who literally just showed up in the US, and before when we had done these packs, you know, our kids would get so frustrated because a refugee would do stuff like try to put shampoo in a refrigerator and our kids could not understand why they didn't know and why they didn't get that shampoo does not go in a refrigerator, and then having been in a refugee camp, they realize, wait a minute, there are no refrigerators. And so no wonder they don't know what shampoo was. They've never seen shampoo. And they've also never had a refrigerator, you know, so that sort of empathy radical and was just such a part of the experience that our kids walked away from with that,
Chad:I would. So you have a beautiful book, right, that specifically about missions. I'm assuming like maybe the story impacted some of you, right, to even write something like this, give us a little bit of insight and in that book specifically, uh, and, and maybe how that plays out in how you see that being a benefit youth ministers who do no short term trips and, and their structure of student ministry or in their church.
Jen:Yeah. So I, um, grew up in a youth group who also did mission trips. And so, you know, I had that sort of paradigm in my mind even as a young 21, 22 year old when I first started in youth ministry that Oh my gosh, I want to do mission trips. There's nothing like them. And I didn't really have any theological framework for that other than like, that's what I did as a youth group kid. And it was good. So we need to now, uh, and so my very first year and youth ministry, I led a trip to West Virginia that pretty much horrified me in every way, um, in ways that I just didn't expect it to. And so, you know, there was a group of 400 students, um, you know, I was a very small fraction of that 400 students going into this very rural town and essentially invading in for a week. And what I've watched happen was that the mission trip organization was there a week before us and then they led these trips and then they would stay at a week after essentially did you clean up and then they were out. Um, and I watched that as a young youth worker and thought this doesn't fit for me. Like there's something off on this. I can't quite identify what it is, but this doesn't feel right. I'm on the same trip. I watched those, uh, one of the staff positions with this mission trip organization was they had a photographer that went out to every work site, um, and would take pictures. And so as it happened, my work site was one of the places that the photographer went on the first day. And so here we were at this work site, elderly man and this photographer shows up and essentially man handles this man who's home more in who we had just met, forcing them to come outside, stand pictures with us. And I thought you are robbing this man of dignity. I'm like, he's got nothing left. And so that experience then really made me start wrestling with, okay, like there's gotta be a better way. Like I understand that mission trips can be good for those who go on them, but how do we do this in a way that actually gives dignity, that's about relationships. It's about longterm faith formation, but doesn't just screw up the community that we're trying to help. Uh, and so really through a bunch of trial and error landed on this rotational model that was very much about partnerships with people and with organizations that we kept going back to you within the framework of the three year mission trip cycle. Um, and then, so the partnerships is a key component of that. I'm doing stuff like being honest about how we fundraise for mission trips. So, you know, I can't even tell you how many people I talk to who will make the statement of, you know, when we do our mission trip fundraising, we have all these signs that are like, your mission trip money is going to help these kids in an athletic show or on an Indian reservation or overseas, wherever it is. Right? But in reality the money is going to send the kids from that church to that place and it's not actually helping those folks. And so that sense of like, let's be honest about how we fund raise and about who actually benefits from mission trip, um, maybe even fundraised more than we need to so that when we go into a community, we have money we can give to host organizations that they can use to their own discretion. Um, and so then a piece of all of that, then becoming this, really figuring out what is it that your congregation is passionate about so that you can tap into that. So that mission trips are no longer a matter of like the coolest place that we want to go to, but instead, let's pick a place that somehow ties back to ministry that our congregation is already involved in so that we can plug kids into that once we get home. Teaching them how to use their gifts both a way, but also when they get back home. Um, and a big part of that then means that to do mission trips, well we have to do a lot of prep work. Um, I would for every day
Chad:that the trip is long a, you have to have about a month's worth of prep work there. Uh, and so, you know, making that time investment. I'm expecting big things of kids, but then also doing debriefing on the other end to help kids unpack their experience and more unpack their experience to help kids actually figure out what does it mean to integrate this week long or two week long trip into my daily life. So that it's not this thing that's removed from everything else that I do and all that I am. Um, but that really becomes a part of me. There's, there's so many elements that go into mission work, right? Like, it's more than everybody getting in the same tee shirt and hopping on a plane, right? Yep. And, and not only for us in our student ministry, but you know, across the ocean or across the border or wherever it's at, like there's so much that goes into that and thinking through that longevity, I heard, I heard someone talking about, uh, the economics of admission stuff and the story that he told was, I'm of a man who I had bought a few chickens that he was going to begin to produce eggs for his village and sell his eggs and that was going to be, this was that man's livelihood. And um, at a big church found this village that was, you know, starving and, you know what I mean, those kinds of things. And uh, and they, I started buying chickens and eggs, all, you know what I mean for this town. And you know, this man went belly up and I mean, you can't sell eggs to someone who there. Everybody's now getting cartons of eggs, right? And then eventually that church moved on.
Jen:Okay.
Chad:And there were no more eggs and now this man no longer has chickens, right? Because he got rid of all men and they were in this place. There was like an even much worse than they were before it all started. And I think it's so important that we don't just think about the week or the two weeks that our students are there, but generations. Right? And the impact that that has on things, um, huge. Huge. All right. So you get to go back in time and you get to have a conversation with like first year you write like straight out of electronic electrical engineer. By the way, I've got this great idea for the Jenga game. Were the two chairs a just send a small volt of electricity at random times and I think you could help me finally build this. I've been thinking about it for years. I think it puts a whole new spin on Gina that makes it way better. You get to go back and sorry, I, you get to go back in time. Have a conversation with yourself, what advice would you give yourself?
Jen:So, as I mentioned, my first year was a disaster in pretty much every way. So there's a lot I wish I could tell my first year self, I'm, one of them would be slow down. Um, so, you know, I went in just with a sense of everything's wrong and I'd have to fix it all and I have to fix it all right now. And in the process of doing that, I'm totally missed the fact that I was walking into a congregation that had a story and a history and a story and a history that I didn't know and I didn't understand and I would've been so much better equipped to minister to that congregation in that time and space had I taken the time to understand their history and their story. And likewise. So as a 21, 22 year old, I mean, I was cocky, I was arrogant even though I had no theological training, I thought I knew how to do it all and I knew how to do it. All right. And, and so I listened to no one and in addition to that I also ran towards conflict, um, and so I would tell myself that there are some hills worth dying on a but not all of them. And so know, your battles know the things that you are willing to get fired for and the things that you aren't in, the things that you're not, um, maybe it's something that means that you can just don't touch, you don't deal with, um, maybe it's something that you deal with through another person. Maybe it's something you deal with later. Um, but to be able to distinguish and recognize that not every conflict is worth actually fighting over.
Chad:I've absolutely loved our conversation and I thank you so much for being on. I feel like I've felt like I've learned a lot from you in just a short little period of time. And so thank you for being on.
Jen:Well, thanks Chad. Thanks for having us. Thanks for recognizing women and for doing this month long crazy thing, which is awesome.
Chad:Our pleasure. As I sit here and think about everything you said from the ministry with the refugees and your first church, um, I think there's, so, there's actually so much I think we can learn from those two things and how they on the surface may look so different, but are actually, I think so, so similar. And I think for, uh, for us listening and for you that you may be sitting here listening to us in your earbuds and you may be in that same position right in your church that you feel like everything's going horrible and you just want it all to change extremely fast. And my encouragement to you today is I to put yourself in their shoes, uh, to know and take time to listen to the hertz, to the pains, to the joys that the people in your congregation, um, may have walked through in the past. Not only for them individually, but for them collectively as a body in that church. And I think it's so easy for us to get in with big ideas and having seen how someone else has done it and we just want to shake them and go, hey, let's change this really quick. Uh, and I think that there's great wisdom in what you said, jen, of slowing down and listening. And so thank you for listening today and we'll see you tomorrow.
Zac:There you go. That's our interview with Jen, a wonderful, amazing youth minister, author, mom, and sometimes engineered jen. Thank you so much for sharing a little podcast today. If you'd love to learn more about what jen does and where you can find her writings, check the links in the show notes below. Thanks for listening again. Visit youthministrybooster.com/giveaway for your chance to win a year's worth of goodies for your favorite woman and youth ministry, which could be you or a friend or whoever that you think is an amazing woman. You've finished, right? We're celebrating all month long. Check out this episode, an exciting one for you tomorrow at a checkout. And until then we'll see you on the network.