Five Questions With Becca Dean
Monday, 24 October 2011
Becca Dean is a wonderful person, she's from the great not-quite-a-city-but-definitely-should-be town of Ipswich, she has a blog, and she is just finishing up working as the youth worker for Carpenters Community Church. For a while Becca was on the same pub quiz team as me, we never won when she was there, but we never won when she wasn't either. We were that sort of team.
Top Five Favourite Pies.
Oh. I don't really like pie. Bannoffee Pie, Cherry Pie, Lemon Merangiue Pie, Mississippi Mud-pie, and I guess apple pie
Best book you've ever read about youth ministry?
Growing Souls by Mark Yaconelli. at this point I have to ask why Becca loves Mark Yaconelli so much Because he has a fabulous beard. No! Because he is very real about his theology and very high in his expectation of what God will do with young people and how importatnt it is to make it very clear that god loves them, but at the same time he's not away with the fairies about the realities of youth work in the western world and he's grappled with the two and found a working theology of where we need to go. I like a lot of his contemplative stuff about not trying to be too driven about achivement in youth work and discipleship. At the same time I like a lot of his stuff about naming people as beloved and that being a key tool in youth work.
What's your favourite joke?
What do you call a fly with no wings. I don't know, what do you call a fly with no wings A walk. What do you call a fly with no wings and no legs. I don't know A raisin.
What's the worst thing about christian youth work in the UK?
You. Not really. The worst thing about christian youth work in the UK? The levels of apathy that come with our consumer culture. Is that the apathy on behalf of the youth workers or the young people or both? The young people in my experience. Their focus is very skewed. It tends to be not untill crisis moments that you start to help them reflect on why their worldview is so off-kilter.
What's the best thing?
The young people! Getting to spend time with people who are forming, full of potential and how they suprise you and delight you and come up with things you could that you couldn't have come up with. And that, even when they're naughty, they're these bright amazing, ridiculously funny people. And how they say things that challenge you in your walk with God. How they make you feel like... those moments when you realise it's all worthwhile. Yeah. The best thing has got to be the young people.