Since becoming a follower of Jesus, I've learned the impact that words have on the human heart. It's the heart that has to be injected with new rhythms if my thinking, behavior, actions, attitudes are to change.
IMPACT is instilled in every one. Perhaps misdirected, prohibited, constricted or even poisoned, but IMPACT is in “there”.
This endeavor is more than just another program or curriculum. We can conduct trainings, programs and lessons all day long. However, if we don’t intersect the participant’s internal drive unit (head and heart)…will anything really change for that person?
IMPACT’s approach is directed to challenge the traditional thinking and values that may be instilled in the individual. This may have been/is being done by the youth’s choice, culture, community, etc.
Presenting proven successful core values that may assist the youth in beginning the process to break the cycle is the target. Consider this...Consequences of that may be…
The participant will then have new concepts and can actively filter embedded factors and cultivate the possibilities of genuine transformation that leads to attributes of pursuing excellence.
…or, we can just go build castles on the beach…
Introduction.
How do you peel off the layers of a person to see what’s on the “inside”?
Can an assessment, psycho analysis, questionnaire dive past the poverty ridden crust to see what’s inside the heart?
It begins with the understanding that God has instilled in each and every wonderfully made soul the basic characteristics evident in all man.
Beyond the mask, the face that personifies the abandon, neglected, dysfunctional gene of what is evident lays an internal and yet eternal reality.
Though we measure and calculate the obvious, do we minimize the prospects in order to “label” a victim for our own justification?
Do we cast the stereotype genre to quantify our own rationale? Or do you see?
A baby gasps for breath.
The living being fights to adapt to survive.
Even in death, the struggle is there.
So, despite the facade people may merge into, evident values remain.
When does a person in poverty know they are poor…when we tell them.
Who tells the young girls to give it up for love and respect?
Who encourages the dealing and mischief with the young boys?
Who is spreading the hate that people of different color and social economic levels are not to be trusted, instead despised?
Our kids are getting an education!
We
ourselves, as youth workers may not tell them, but their culture, community,
family, music, media and even houses of supposed faith, resound the labeling
and instilling of defeat, anger and the poison that slowly eats away at the
source of life.
Oh,
so they nestle in the reckoning that’s proposed and settle for a caste system.
Can
there be freedom, a breath of fresh air in the stale reality that exists
because society profits from the demise?
Here’s
where many will stop the thinking and close the chapter on this endeavor, or
pursue on.
If
there’s liberty from the plantation, why do so many choose to be residents of said atrocities?
Tough
word, choose. Like there’s a 2nd plan, an option B. Sure there is.
So ignore the titles and the justifications to maintain the status quo. Put aside the political, racial and class warfare stigmas.
Come to the realization that values and needs are a part of every human life, red, yellow, black or white.
Without addressing those key issues that make up the very being a person, everything else is just a procedure in building a castle at the beach. It looks good for a while, but soon is swept away from the tide.
It may keep the castle builders in business…but it’s a catastrophe for the residents of the castle.
IMPACT.
Yes, THEY are.
They, our youth, there is an “I’m motivated, pursuing, achieving, committed, teachable” instilled in them. It’s there, it came with the gift of life.
Sure the bed it was seeded in may be hard as a rock, poisoned by neglect and abuse, mortified by the toxic sound of the beating drums and shouts of tyranny.
But the IMPACT is there.
Did you see it?
Did it show itself in a conversation today?
Did you hear the silent wave being permeated in the space with its whispers of “I’m in here….”
So when you counsel, talk with, visit with a young person, go ahead and imagine they have labels, titles, post it stickers on them. You know, the little quote bubbles found on comics, not the ones with the direct statement, rather the bubbles that reflect the thoughts?
See them as they ARE and project to them, what they can BECOME!
Those key 6 values, as we’ll call them, are the natural make up of all of us.
Without an understanding and acknowledgment of those truths, will more money, government assistance, programs, techniques, plans, service strategies really influence the young person for real change?
