A Safe Place

It is amazing. You trip across something on leadership and the connections for discipleship, evangelization, and catechesis are there and clear.

In Simon Sinek’s TED presentation Why good leaders make you feel safe, he speaks of a circle of safety, (being) inside the tribe, where we feel like we belonged. This is all of our best rhetoric and highest ideals regarding the circle, tribe, belonging place that we know as church, that we know as family. It comes down to being a matter of trust and cooperation. <<Watch it below or from the link… It will be a good twelve minute mini in-service from your screen!>>

Sadly, our recent history and our culture have left us individualistic and continuously contortionistically ensuring the safety of our very own backsides. While we cannot return to days gone by; our path forward must engage the re-collection of the values of whom and what we are.

Connecting, then, with the Sinek video, evangelization is the proclamation and extension of an invitation explaining that our relationship with Jesus as well as each other is the basis for our circle, tribe, belonging place. Catechesis is recognizing that what counts in trusting relationships are the head counts and the heart counts. There is a knowledge thing and an awareness thing that are both fueled and supported by our emotional connections as well. Head and Hearts alone remain have us along the path towards a sense of home and an enthusiasm and courage to offer our hands towards the task of community living and safety making. The one who motivates us to selfless choices such as giving of our blood and sweat and tears for another and our countercultural response is the One who was sourced by No Greater Love and has chosen to sacrifice Himself on my own behalf. This is Discipleship.

To lift a quote from Sinek, we in catechesis and youth ministry desire to give young people (actually, ALL people as in go out to ALL the nations) opportunities, education, discipline them (lovingly) when necessary, all so that they can grow up and achieve more than we could for ourselves.

D. Scott Miller

D. Scott Miller is the dean of Catholic Youth Ministry bloggers which is a polite way of either saying that he is just plain old or has been blogging for a long time (since 2004.)

Scott recently married the lovely Anne and together they have five adult young people and also grandparent three delightful kids (so, maybe he is just plain old!) Scott presently serves at Saint John the Evangelist in Columbia, MD as the director of youth and young adult ministry.

He has previously served on the parish, regional, diocesan, and national levels as well as having taught within a catholic high school. He is one of the founders of RebuildMyChurch and has returned to posting regularly (keeping regular is important to old guys) at ProjectYM.