I am not ashamed of how I feel.
Future of Royal Rangers, (Actually,,, the current Royal Rangers.)
Here I go again on one of my rants about the changes in the Royal Ranger program.
Every time I learn about the latest plans of Royal Rangers lowering the bar in the name of keeping up with the times and competing with the enticements of the world on today’s kids, my stomach turns with disgust. And what’s worse!!! I seem to be learning new things at every Wednesday night meeting. It’s like we can’t dumb this program down fast enough to stop the bleeding of boys migrating away from this Royal Rangers, so we’re desperately throwing the baby out with the bath water. The problem isn’t the boys!!! It’s the men!
We tell everybody, (And ourselves) we stopped challenging the boys to high adventure scouting because; “It’s just not what the boys are into anymore”. Bull-sh@#! The truth is we stopped challenging the boys to high adventure scouting because the men in the program just don’t have the interest, the time, gear, and the skills to deliver it to the boys on a regular schedule at the outpost level! We abandoned real scouting! In the name of “Spiritual Mentoring”, (As if you can’t accomplish both through developing a person’s character in a scouting based program!) High Adventure used to mean things like, spelunking, multi-day backpacking trips, 100 mile bike rides, White-water adventures, and other activities that required real knowledge, and challenged a group of people to work together to reach their outer limits. Something that stood out from the normal, that a boy / man, could feel real pride of accomplishment in knowing only a few good men could do what they did. I’m talking about real pride for real accomplishment. Not all this empty accolade for half baked efforts, and sub-par results.
(I can’t wait to listen to this next generation of Royal Rangers 15 years from now; Reminiscing on Facebook, “Remember how we used to spend all those weekends sleeping the basement of the church, learning how get in touch with our feelings and playing “I’m OK, You’re OK” games? That was really cool!!!!” ) Wanna see a picture of my Gold medal???
We stopped challenging the boys to step up their game and deliver a real effort, on their own time, in the form of home-work, with their parents involvement, because the men in the program just don’t have the interest, the time, the knowledge, and the skills to motivate the boys on a regular schedule at the individual level! Now,,,, we’re happy if we can get the boys to write down the answers to the questions WE WRITE OUT ON THE WHITE BOARD FOR THEM! It’s like it’s our hardest part of our nightly activity just to manage to break through that glazed over “I’m bored” dumb, emotionless, stare, because we don’t present our program feature on a 2” X 4” screen. God Forbid we ask the boys to actually bring anything to the table, (other than their cell phones!) Once again!!!! The problem is US! Like it’s some big deal for a Royal Ranger Commanders just to show up and do something!!! We can’t really expect Royal Ranger Commanders to invest a couple of hours before each Wednesday night meeting preparing something really challenging, and engaging for the boys to participate in! REMEMBER when we ran the canoe merit at the camp several years ago! Huge effort, Huge commitment on the part of three commanders…. Did we have any complaints from the boys that “We’re Bored!!!” Did we have kids dropping out then! I have a novel idea!!! If a boy is too dam lazy, or can’t be bothered to invest some kind of effort into any real scouting types of activities, into any real character building challenges,,, MAYBE HE’S NOT GMA MATERIAL!
I get sick when I keep hearing commanders extolling the virtues of a Royal Ranger Program that hands out Gold Medal of Achievements like Happy Meal prizes, and boasts (as the Great New Vision) how a boy can earn his GMA and never leave the classroom. THAT”S NOT SCOUTTING, (But that’s not what we are, We’re not a scouting organization! Are we?); And that’s not how we’re going to raise up a new generation of real leaders! That’s how we’re going to raise up another generation of men that can’t be asked to invest anything of their time, talent (that they never developed), and money to the next generation, because they’ve never experienced it for themselves. How the helllll can we ever expect these young boys to take a Godley position in their own families?
( Here’s a telling statistic,,, In 2013, 73% of all graduates of higher education were women! God knows there is no other voice in our Pentecostal world that shouts louder “You Go Girl!” than mine… But! What’s happening to the men in our 2013 world??? That statistic is a direct reflection of the dumbing down of our society’s men and lowering of expectation of our young boys. AND ROYAL RANGERS IS PLAYING DIRECTLY INTO THAT MENTALITY! ) Girls aren’t just easily excelling! They are simply stepping into the void left behind by week boys, failing to rise up and fulfill God’s calling and place in this world for them. And we won’t even tell them about their roll, let alone require it of them.
In the company of most commanders, I’m beginning to feel as though I have to hide the fact that I am now or ever was a Scouting focused, Royal Ranger Commander that used the fundamental principles and scouting activities to weave into a person’s character such arcane concepts of Self Respect, (In light of God’s value on one’s life.) Self Confidence, (in light of accomplishing God’s plan for one’s life.) and Self Awareness (in light of Gods living Holy Spirit working out His plan for this world through us.) Scouting has become a dirty word, and real scouting skills and experiences, pornography. God help us all when we manage to extinguish the spirit of Johnny Barns, for the spirit of Angry Birds.
I like the material in Leadership merits! It’s great stuff and it has its place, (As a complete merit, or integrated into each of the other merits.) But none of that material “requires” Royal Rangers to gut the scouting aspect of the program, and none of that material “requires” dumbing down the program to the lowest intellectual level of the average inner-city boy; And the laziest academic level of any boy that might attend. If a boy has special needs or has real difficulty completing the academic riggers of the GMA, then by all means,,, “exceptions” should be made. But designing the entire program so that any/every 12 year old boy can complete a GMA, takes the “Achievement” part of the award out of it. I can’t accept that any but the most exceptional, spiritually mature 12 year old boy earning the GMA will even know what the acronym stands for; Let alone even be mature enough to comprehend the mental, physical and spiritual intent of what the GMA used to, and should continue to represent.
The one good thing the new program required was the Capstone project. A spiritually and mentally challenging 8 week Christian maturity focused journey that put the spiritual and Christian habits and even the best Royal Ranger Commander’s to shame. The intensity of the 8 week Capstone program required the participants to literally refocus their lives from the ground up for 8 weeks. The Capstone project was not humanly possible to complete. It required Super Human effort, It REQUIRED the Holy Spirit. And that was it’s death nail. It required something hard, from its mentors, and from the boys. Boys and Girls all over the world are using the Fire Bible Capstone Project 8 week program to ignite a real spiritual awakening. But not Royal Rangers; They backed away from, and scuttled the program completely before day one! I know why! It was too much to “require” it was too much to expect, it was too much to ask,,, from the commanders to properly mentor the boys for 8 weeks.
Now we’re “re-vamping PowWow. Well it’s about time. PowWow has been losing ground and interest for ten+ years. Ever since we’ve stopped expecting the supernatural manifestations of the Living God to move over the crowd and take control. No wonder the commanders have been complaining about the weekend being nothing more than running from disappointing event after disappointing event. Waiting in line for 45 minutes at the archery event for one completely frazzled commander to have the boys shoot $5 toy bows with broken arrows at plywood targets. Or maybe the event where we have the boys run a stick from one end of the field to another… Real top notch events to inspire and challenge the boys. It’s ten years and more since we’ve needed to change PowWow, But of course what else can we expect… Instead of asking commanders to step up to the challenge and upgrade the events to activities like real Seneca runs, Ropes courses, real guns on the gun range, or real bows in the archery course; Were turning PowWow into a rip roaring “Play Date”. Just another custom made event for fat old commanders huddled around each other, bloviating about all the high adventure activities they used to have when they were 14 years old in Boy Scouts 50 years ago..
Needless to say,,, I have no idea how much longer I can force myself to stomach this castration of the program, in the name of whatever it is we are trying to accomplish. Once these 4 GMA boys fade away from the program, I’m just not sure I’m much of a good fit for the New Royal Rangers. I don’t even have the “Gold Medal requirements” to use as leverage to develop a mentoring relationship with a small handful of boys with their eyes on real Gold. At some point I can see myself just gravitating to people, young or old, male or female of like mind and spirit that value the same values of Excellence, Holiness and caring for God’s gift of Life and all that sustains it.