Ginger Sinsabaugh MacDonald
1. How did you get involved in youth ministry in general and urban youth ministry specifically ? It all started when I ended up in Chicago’s Cook County Jail on my 24th birthday. I was new to Chicago and the church I was attending had jail tutoring that night, so I thought I’d spend a memorable birthday behind bars. Being a naïve girl from a small farm town in Southwest Michigan, I was expecting jail to be similar to the Andy Griffith show—with a Barney Fife like officer and a tank full of drunks. Was I in for a surprise. The inmates at Cook were younger than me!
After spending a few years doing Bible studies behind bars, I realized you had to reach youth before they made a bad decision. That’s when I got involved in urban youth ministry at Chicago’s Faith Tabernacle church with Danny Lopez, Dana Thomas Kids Across America, and Larry Butterfield of GRIP outreach.
In 2001, I got frustrated with the lack of resources out there for urban youth ministry. That’s when I decided to create TastyFaith resources for urban youth ministry. The TastyFaith name stands for creating a craving for Christ.
2. What are 5 things you wish the typical suburban youth pastor understood about the realities of urban youth ministry?
That there’s more to ministry than just ministry. Disconnected phones. Illiteracy, teen pregnancy are just some of the issues that you confront on a regular basis. Deaducation. Take for example, my husband, a public school teacher in a lower income neighborhood in Chicago. He doesn’t have enough text books for his students, let alone computer access in the classroom. Yet his kids are supposed to be getting the same education as those in nicer zip codes.
Teen Parent Epidemic. It’s the norm in the inner-city, yet few churches have outreach programs catering to teen parents in need. Two out of three teen moms drop out of high school to take care of their babies, then get sucked into the cycle of poverty. Teen dads often have unresolved issues with their fathers.
It’s a white world.
Pick up a magazine and see how many ads feature people of color. Or check out how many white adult men are shining the shoes of African American businessmen in airports. It’s embarrassing to see the amount of inequality that’s still around. And when you look at the justice system, it’s even more twisted. Blacks and Hispanics make up 62 percent of the incarcerated population, though comprising only 25 percent of the national population Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics
3. Describe a difficult time in your life or ministry/job and how your faith changed as a result.
Getting a bad lab result. I got a call from my doctor last November and she broke the news that I had highly suspicious rapidly growing cell growth in my girly parts. She was eating a sandwich at the time. While I’m OK now, boy, was I angry at God for a while. It made me understand how He can keep the planet spinning without my measly efforts. And more importantly, so slow down a bit and take time to smell the Starbucks.
4. How do you balance or strive for balance between your paying job and the ministry you love doing? What advice would you give to others who have a vocation outside of youth ministry but serve in and love youth ministry?
As a writer in advertising, I could be out of town for weeks at a time on a commercial shoot. And yes, that would put the brakes on relationship building with kids. Currently, I work in advertising/church marketing on a freelance or consulting basis. This allows more time to devote to TastyFaith and kids. This took a major leap of faith. While not as scary as jumping out of a plane (which I did in college and ended up with a broken back) it still stretches my faith daily like a contortionist doing downward facing dog. You got to look at your life from God’s perspective, not just your current situation.
However,working fulltime in a secular job will give you incredible opportunities to share your faith. Break out of the Christian bubble if you can.
5. What is the greatest joy you have in your ministry/job?
Once, I got a voice message from a teen thanking TastyFaith for creating Life After Birth Bible studies for teen moms. Teens are thankless by definition. This young lady was strapped for time and cash, yet took the time to say thanks. Creating materials to reach a Jerry Springer generation is a lot more rewarding than writing about cheese curds.
6. What are some things youth workers could do to create a “tasty” environment in their youth ministry?
Forget the Cheetos®, what you want is to create an atmosphere where real dialogue can happen. If kids know they can share what’s really going down in their lives, they’ll be open to what you have to say.
Remember, it’s about relationships. You can’t force feed anyone the gospel. You got to create a craving for Christ. Let them crave the Christ that’s in you.
7. What five books or resources would you recommend for learning more about urban ministry?
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
This is not a Christian book, but a true account of kids growing up in the Bronx. It will give the reader an uncensored account of what it’s like growing up in the inner-city.
Any chapter in the Proverbs
This is the original handbook for parole and correctional officers. The common sense offered in the Proverbs is a must to share with teens on the street.
The Cross and the Switchblade
This classic true story about a small town pastor who moves to NYC to work with gang members is as inspirational as ever.
Another Boy from the Hood
OK, so I’m tooting my own horn. But this Bible study for urban youth contains real stories of urban youth pastors, such as Chris Brooks, who were just another boy from the hood until they met Christ. It also contains the story of Christ and explosive questions to get real dialogue going. This is a must have for anyone who wants to see what issues urban youth face. Download a free excerpt at the website.
Kids Count
This free resource gives you state profiles of child well-being. Stuff like what state has the most teen pregnancies (Texas) and which has the highest drop out rate (Nevada)
8. What's the most unique thing you've ever bought on e-bay?
A coroner’s toe tag.
9. How would you love to see youth ministry change?
Let’s get back to the basics and crack open the Bible. We rely so much on videos, music, etc, we forget to dive into the actual text. Especially in the urban environment where illiteracy rates sky rocket, it’s important to devote time in your program to reading. Philemon is not the first three syllables of filet mignon.
~~~~~~
Ginger Sinsabaugh MacDonald is the Top Cookie of TastyFaith.com resources for urban youth ministry. She's the author of Help! I'm an Urban Youth Worker: A Survival Guide to Teen Ministry in the Big City. She splits her time between advertising and urban youth ministry.
Over the past twenty years, she has worked on almost every product you can think of, from panty hose to process cheese. She’s written witty lines for animated critters, super athletes and super models, only to have clients rewrite them.
Along with insights into the weird world of marketing, Ginger has oodles of experience in urban youth ministry, where she has seen things a lot worse than a spit bucket (her blog). Kids having kids, broken educational systems, and home lives that make the Jerry Springer show seem tame. But the most disheartening thing of all is this: churches that want to help but don’t know how.
She lives in Chicago with her husband Jeff.
In 2001, I got frustrated with the lack of resources out there for urban youth ministry. That’s when I decided to create TastyFaith resources for urban youth ministry. The TastyFaith name stands for creating a craving for Christ.
2. What are 5 things you wish the typical suburban youth pastor understood about the realities of urban youth ministry?
That there’s more to ministry than just ministry. Disconnected phones. Illiteracy, teen pregnancy are just some of the issues that you confront on a regular basis. Deaducation. Take for example, my husband, a public school teacher in a lower income neighborhood in Chicago. He doesn’t have enough text books for his students, let alone computer access in the classroom. Yet his kids are supposed to be getting the same education as those in nicer zip codes.
Teen Parent Epidemic. It’s the norm in the inner-city, yet few churches have outreach programs catering to teen parents in need. Two out of three teen moms drop out of high school to take care of their babies, then get sucked into the cycle of poverty. Teen dads often have unresolved issues with their fathers.
It’s a white world.
Pick up a magazine and see how many ads feature people of color. Or check out how many white adult men are shining the shoes of African American businessmen in airports. It’s embarrassing to see the amount of inequality that’s still around. And when you look at the justice system, it’s even more twisted. Blacks and Hispanics make up 62 percent of the incarcerated population, though comprising only 25 percent of the national population Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics
3. Describe a difficult time in your life or ministry/job and how your faith changed as a result.
Getting a bad lab result. I got a call from my doctor last November and she broke the news that I had highly suspicious rapidly growing cell growth in my girly parts. She was eating a sandwich at the time. While I’m OK now, boy, was I angry at God for a while. It made me understand how He can keep the planet spinning without my measly efforts. And more importantly, so slow down a bit and take time to smell the Starbucks.
4. How do you balance or strive for balance between your paying job and the ministry you love doing? What advice would you give to others who have a vocation outside of youth ministry but serve in and love youth ministry?
As a writer in advertising, I could be out of town for weeks at a time on a commercial shoot. And yes, that would put the brakes on relationship building with kids. Currently, I work in advertising/church marketing on a freelance or consulting basis. This allows more time to devote to TastyFaith and kids. This took a major leap of faith. While not as scary as jumping out of a plane (which I did in college and ended up with a broken back) it still stretches my faith daily like a contortionist doing downward facing dog. You got to look at your life from God’s perspective, not just your current situation.
However,working fulltime in a secular job will give you incredible opportunities to share your faith. Break out of the Christian bubble if you can.
5. What is the greatest joy you have in your ministry/job?
Once, I got a voice message from a teen thanking TastyFaith for creating Life After Birth Bible studies for teen moms. Teens are thankless by definition. This young lady was strapped for time and cash, yet took the time to say thanks. Creating materials to reach a Jerry Springer generation is a lot more rewarding than writing about cheese curds.
6. What are some things youth workers could do to create a “tasty” environment in their youth ministry?
Forget the Cheetos®, what you want is to create an atmosphere where real dialogue can happen. If kids know they can share what’s really going down in their lives, they’ll be open to what you have to say.
Remember, it’s about relationships. You can’t force feed anyone the gospel. You got to create a craving for Christ. Let them crave the Christ that’s in you.
7. What five books or resources would you recommend for learning more about urban ministry?
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
This is not a Christian book, but a true account of kids growing up in the Bronx. It will give the reader an uncensored account of what it’s like growing up in the inner-city.
Any chapter in the Proverbs
This is the original handbook for parole and correctional officers. The common sense offered in the Proverbs is a must to share with teens on the street.
The Cross and the Switchblade
This classic true story about a small town pastor who moves to NYC to work with gang members is as inspirational as ever.
Another Boy from the Hood
OK, so I’m tooting my own horn. But this Bible study for urban youth contains real stories of urban youth pastors, such as Chris Brooks, who were just another boy from the hood until they met Christ. It also contains the story of Christ and explosive questions to get real dialogue going. This is a must have for anyone who wants to see what issues urban youth face. Download a free excerpt at the website.
Kids Count
This free resource gives you state profiles of child well-being. Stuff like what state has the most teen pregnancies (Texas) and which has the highest drop out rate (Nevada)
8. What's the most unique thing you've ever bought on e-bay?
A coroner’s toe tag.
9. How would you love to see youth ministry change?
Let’s get back to the basics and crack open the Bible. We rely so much on videos, music, etc, we forget to dive into the actual text. Especially in the urban environment where illiteracy rates sky rocket, it’s important to devote time in your program to reading. Philemon is not the first three syllables of filet mignon.
~~~~~~
Ginger Sinsabaugh MacDonald is the Top Cookie of TastyFaith.com resources for urban youth ministry. She's the author of Help! I'm an Urban Youth Worker: A Survival Guide to Teen Ministry in the Big City. She splits her time between advertising and urban youth ministry.Over the past twenty years, she has worked on almost every product you can think of, from panty hose to process cheese. She’s written witty lines for animated critters, super athletes and super models, only to have clients rewrite them.
Along with insights into the weird world of marketing, Ginger has oodles of experience in urban youth ministry, where she has seen things a lot worse than a spit bucket (her blog). Kids having kids, broken educational systems, and home lives that make the Jerry Springer show seem tame. But the most disheartening thing of all is this: churches that want to help but don’t know how.
She lives in Chicago with her husband Jeff.
posted by Len at 1:07 PM
3 Comments:
Just wanted to say that I randomly came across your site and have loved reading the thoughts of others in my position!
God Bless,
"It’s a white world.
Pick up a magazine and see how many ads feature people of color. Or check out how many white adult men are shining the shoes of African American businessmen in airports. It’s embarrassing to see the amount of inequality that’s still around."
I'm sure that there are some people who still harbor racist feelings and beliefs, but I just don't see it being a problem of racism as you seem to be implying. It seems to be a problem of bad parenting, more specifically, bad fathering.
And when you look at the justice system, it’s even more twisted. Blacks and Hispanics make up 62 percent of the incarcerated population, though comprising only 25 percent of the national population...
And I'm sure there are far more men than women in prison even though there are more women than men in the population. We need to correct this inequality now. And 99.9% of the incarcerated population is made up of criminals, how unjust!
Seriously though, you seem to be implying that there is some vast national conspiracy on the part of police and judges to put blacks and hispanics behind bars. Can you really believe that? Maybe there is a conspiracy to put criminals behind bars, and it just happens that 62% of the crimes for which a person goes to prison are committed by blacks and hispanics.
Again, it doesn't seem like a problem of social injustice. It looks like a situation where people come from bad homes, with broken families, where the father isn't around to do his job raising his son(s). Maybe to fix this problem the solution would be to reach young men (of all ethnicities) for the Lord, teach them responsibility, and disciple them to follow hard after Jesus instead of MTV and we might see a difference made.
I appreciate the difficulty of the demographic you are working with, but let's try not to run off down the street screaming conspiracy and inequality, when the real problem is with the parents not doing their job.
I appreciate your comment. Bad parenting is a big problem. Yet, my comments about this being a "white world" stem from my twenty some years in advertising. I've been to too many casting sessions where a client almost has a heart attack because a person of color is recommended for a role. Using voice over talent with any ethnic flavor could get my hands slapped on various accounts.
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