A Great Quote

"The power to turn the world upside down comes when the church connects the passion of the adolescent with the passion of Christ"

Mike King, Presence Centered Youth Ministry pg 55

Lost in the Transition

I am a tracking through the jungle of the transition from modern thinking to post-modern thinking in the way we approach youth ministry. I was trained and schooled in the early transitions, so I was getting the idea down, but I still have a ways to go in making the transition. I am reading this book, "Presence Centered Youth Ministry" and it is great. It is helping me chop my way through this jungle. I came across this quote today:

"Our churches are full of fear because the people in them are full of fear. Parents want youth workers and youth ministry programs that will fix their kids-modify their behavior. Parents hope that youth ministry will make their kids nice American citizens who think the right things and do the right things...

Today many churches attempt to eliminate the risk and danger of the call. We cushion the risk and remove the danger of discipleship by drawing up a list of moral rules that give us security instead of holy insecurity. The need to isolate teenagers from the world in order to protect them from evil leads to dysfunctional Christianity."

Mike King pg 48-51

I see myself in the same boat if God calls my child to Africa or to some Jungle, I would be that parent who would not want their kid to follow God. I am protective. I want Isaac to be safe, loved, and free from trouble. Sometimes I isolate him too much from things that would push him to grow. Pushing too hard does cause him to go into seizure as we found out last year on the bike trip. But to keep him from any trouble is not good.

Its funny, but Isaac loves the movie Finding Nemo, in which there is a fish born with a disability, and the father is over protective and wont let him do things on his own and does it all for him. I am trying to not be that parent, but it is hard.

Does God ever feel this way? (video)

this is the video from the washington post article I referred to in "Does God ever feel this way?".

Does God ever feel this way?

This is the most amazing, tragic, article I have ever read on our society. Please take 15 minutes and read this.

I Did It

Today, I went out and ran. It was killer. It hurt, it made me dizzy, it made me nauseous. but I did it. I made the decision to run yesterday when I found out that my BMI was in the overweight category.

My BMI is around 27, and you want it to be somewhere between 18 and 25 (unless you are buff like Dave) It does not take into account muscle mass. But considering that I do not have muscle mass, I am going to trust this chart.

So this morning I woke up, got my stuff together, leashed up my Dog and ran. I didn't do too well. I am really out of shape. But I will run again on Wednesday.

Big Day Today!

We had a very big day today. As a family we had so many milestones hit today!

1. Isaac went into the 3 year olds Sunday School class for the first time, and he loved it! Usually we put him in the nursery with the 2 and under kids. He has always gone in there, it is no structure play kind of stuff. The 3 year olds class has a bit of structure. They read stories and color, he made a bookmark! It was so wonderful.

2. I made a decision to take up running again. I haven't ran since my knee surgery 6 years ago. I am going to take my hyper active Dog and run three days a week. My goal is to be running 30 minutes a day, three times a week in 10 weeks.

3. Nolan got his first bottle today, and I got to give it to him. He thought it as weird.

4. We went as a family to our area ice cream parlor for the first time. It was really good stuff. I got strawberry cheesecake flurry, Isaac got a vanilla cone, and Kara got a malt.

5. We went to the video store to rent some movies for us to watch as a family. We started Pooh's Heffalump Movie.

6. Nolan lays next to Isaac in his bed for good night kisses, and I just happened to click a picture as Isaac was kissing Nolan, and Lo and Behold, Nolan was smiling! We have not snapped a picture with Nolan smiling until this one.

All in all, a great day.

Nolan Turns One Month

Nolan is now one month old. Man time is flying by fast. His eyes are turning green, and his hair is staying darker. As you can see from this picture he is still my little "pudge."

I love it when he falls asleep on my chest. This morning, before Isaac woke up, Nolan and I went out to the living room to watch PBS. I always watch the cooking shows on PBS on Saturday morning. He cuddled in and fell asleep on my chest. I love that.

Kara took this picture last night. We are going to try and track him monthly with photos so we can compare them at the end of the year. That will be cool on his first birthday.

Book Reveiw : Contemplative Youth Ministry

I just finished Contemplative Youth Ministry by Mark Yaconelli. This book was amazing. I read it all in five days. This book gives so many great ideas for youth ministry. If your church is a small church with no youth minister, this is a great book to implement with a group of adult volunteers. If you are in a large church, this book is great for keeping the focus on God, not entertainment.

I had no idea what to expect with a title like "Contemplative Youth Ministry" but it explains itself very well. I found that it not only gave me great ideas and insights into youth ministry, but also into my own faith and walk with God.

It encouraged me to slow down and live in the awareness of God's presence. And take that into the way that I minister. I loved it. Every youth pastor should read this book. Period.

Five stars out of five

Isaac is so sweet

We were in the car coming home from grocery shopping, and I had a McDonalds urge I could not resist. We got Isaac a happy meal, fries, nuggets, and a milk. I reached back and handed him a fry, and he said the most sincere, "thank you daddy" I have ever heard. It was great.

My Hands Are Greasy

Kara and I own (yes own) a 1993 Buick Roadmaster (or "the Hog" as I like to call it). Don't laugh it has a 350 in it. Some really great people in church donated it to us, and it is in great condition. They helped us go to a 2 car family, for which we are grateful.

The past few months has been a but tight on the budget, we had to replace the radiator and the water pump, one after another. On mother's day, we went to visit Kara's parents. We had a big fish fry and ate till we were sick (literally for my father in law) It was a great time, but we left later than we anticipated. We wanted to leave at 8:30, but we left at more like 10. It is a two hour drive.

So when we got home, I was exhausted and wanted to sleep, so we unloaded the car, put the boys to sleep, and went to sleep as well. We left the interior lights on. So when we got in to drive it yesterday for the first time since mother's day, it was dead. I jumped it, and we drove into town a ways, and it died. We jumped it again, it died again.

I had to replace the alternator. I just got done, and I did it all by myself (well my neighbor dave did come and help out too) The car is fixed, and I payed no labor! That feels good.

Children See, Children Do

wow, thought this was really powerful.

too good not to post

another quote from Mark Yaconelli too good not to post:

"Most churches I know of pray for the coming of the youth ministry messiah. They wait for the dynamo of a young adult who can relieve parents and church members of their burdensome youth, take away all the anxiety over the junior high Sunday school class, and offer forgiveness to the church members saying, "Come to me all you who are heavy burdened and I will give you rest. Your ridiculous attempts at ministry are washed away and forgotten. I release you from all guilt and responsibility. I, the savior to adolecents, am all that is needed. Go now in peace and worry not for your children, for they are safe in my tan and well defined arms."

-Mark Yaconelli, Contemplative Youth Ministry p141-142

Mark Yaconelli Quote

What are churches looking for in a youth pastor? According to a survey from Claremont School of Theology they want a "20-something, attractive, guitar playing, charismatic, youth savvy, hip, hard working, van-driving, free-spirited, denominationally loyal, Jesus loving, Bible carrying, old people friendly, faith filled, fiscally responsible youth leader (preferably male with decorative facial hair and a mountain bike strapped to the top of his car roof -- or if he is unavailable, a spunky, to die for, fashion conscious female who will cry once on youth sundays and twice on summer missions trips).

Lets disect this and see if I meet the standards of most churches for youth pastor:
20-something: not for much longer, I turn 29 this year.
attractive: maybe to my wife
guitar playing: can't sing, so I can't lead worship
charismatic: HA! more like dork
youth savvy: I hate their music, the lyrics irritate me
hip: ummm... yeah I shall refer you to the dork comment from above
hard working: In the popular sense of keepinng office hours, waking before dawn...um no
van-driving: I had an incident with 14 Jr. Highers and some ice on the road
free-spirited: nope. I am self-conscious, and a dork
denominationally loyal: I serve at a NON-denominational church thank God
Jesus loving: yes
Bible carrying: If I have my backpack
old people friendly: I LOVE OLD PEOPLE!! (senior citizens sorry)
faith filled: sometimes
fiscally responsible: trying

So I meet two of those requirements. (unless you count the decorative facial hair that changes every few months.) How bout you?

UHF - Wheel Of Fish

oooooh a red snappah. hmmmm very tasty! this is the clip I think of when I see my red snapper riding mower.

Random Thoughts

I have not been a consistent blogger for the past few months. In fact I have not been a consistent anything in the past few months.

Well anyways, we had a lawn service "Bush Landscaping" come and cut our 2 acres. My neighbor on one side has an immaculate lawn treated monthly and cut serveral times a week, and my other neighbor cuts his regularly. So when the beginning of May hit and I had not cut my lawn once due to a busy schedule, sickness, new baby, etc... I called some people from church. They stopped by that day and cut it at an amazing price. I felt awkward, I thought only rich people had lawn services. But Isaac loved watching the "tractors" fly through and mow our lawn. It takes me four hours to cut and trim our lawn, it took these two guys 25 minutes! The picture is my little red snapper (those of you who may be a fan of the classic UHF movie)

Is God Better Than Sex? John Piper

King of Glory

With that last post said, i next viewed this video. wow. It encouraged me to say one last thing: not having a style gives no excuses for not being relevant or lame. We still ave to do things well, and do things that are relevant to our audience.

Rough Day

Well today is my first day back in the office. It has been tough getting things organized, cleaned up, and ready to go again. I have been working from home since Nolan was born. I was supposed to be back already, but Isaac got sick early this week.

My mind is at home wondering how they are doing, if Nolan is sleeping and eating well, if Isaac is feverish at all, if Kara is sore and able to handle a sick special needs child and a nursing infant just two weeks out of major surgery.

Awesome Post from Perry

Perry Noble is a pastor of a church in North Carolina. He recently put up a post on his blog site that was very interesting, and very moving. It was called "what about me." Here are some excerpts:

Someone asked me a really great question the other day. They said, “Perry, whenever you cast vision you always speak specifically about the children and then teenagers; however, you don’t really say a lot regarding the adults, why is that?”

Here was my answer…I love adults, especially the senior citizens... The senior adults…and the not so senior adults…should not be ignored and/or neglected; however, I do not believe they need to be the focus of the church, which, unfortunately has happened in many churches in our country.

Come on now, don’t tell me it doesn’t happen. If the youth and children want to do something, go on a mission trip or summer camp then what does the church do? Stick them out in the sun and make them wash cars and sell doughnuts. BUT…in that same church…if the senior adults want to go pick apples then the church completely pays for the trip.

Maybe it’s just me…but I see something SERIOUS that is wrong with that.

I think a part of being a mature adult is getting past yourself enough to understand that everyone does not like things “my way,” and in order to really impact the next generation then I need to be willing to give up my desires.

church attendance among teenagers and twenty something’s is the lowest of any generation in existence. Statistics show that 1 out of 8 churched kids DROP OUT of church before the age of 25. The church needs to wake up and smell the flippin’ coffee!!!! The ONLY way to seriously impact the world that teenagers and children live in is to spend money. Disney spends money! MTV spends money! The cartoon network spends money! The church has GOT to spend money.

I believe one of the reasons so many kids have dropped out of church, or haven’t gone at all, is because the church has been giving them leftovers and telling them they ought to appreciate it…while the world has been spending BILLIONS of dollars telling them, “We’ll take you–come over here!”

It amazes me the number of parents and grandparents that say they would give their own life to save their child or grandchild, yet that same parent or grandparent won’t give up their personal preference when it comes to music in church to reach that same child/grandchild!

I believe in our children! I believe in our youth group! I believe in strong families! I want to see our community changed because moms and dads and kids are all falling in love with Jesus. AND adults–we can do this a lot easier than they can, at least we SHOULD be able to…that is why it is God’s call on our life to continue to do all we can to allow the generation after us stand on our shoulders!

Now I don't agree with everything said here, but I do believe that the man has a point. I am not 100% convinced that church should be a style, because then in 25 years from now, the teen-agers will be in the same place as many of their parents and grand parents, "I like my style of church." We then get in an endless cycle of pleasing generations and ignoring others.

Maybe church should be more about being a place where we can connect with God and people. Maybe we play too much music. Worship is far more than music (which is hard for me to say because I love my style of worship music!) Has anyone ever heard of the sacraments?

As a youth pastor I have been trying to find ways to get students to connect with God in creative hands on kinds of ways. Yes there is music, it is a big part of their life. But I have seen kids dance and sing chorus lines from 50's musicals at school! That is certainly not from their generation. So what has happened? The play was a place of connection and fellowship! Church should be the same, except we add and focus on the connection with God as well. So maybe it is not all about style.

If we create a beast that only likes its own style of church, then we hinder those people later in life in connecting with God and older and younger generations. I am not trying to give generations excuses to be stingy with their style, I am trying to refocus us on God. Maybe we should stop being consumers of worship, and let worship consume us.

Other than that one tiny disagreement, I loved this post, and I love what Perry is doing in NC. I love that he wants to take care of the younger generations.

Isaac Update

He is still feverish, and feeling pretty crummy. No more seizures though. His old feeding tube site has started to leak again. I think we will have to get it surgically closed. It has been out for a year and a half, so it should have healed up by now.

Please pray that he will feel better, be free of seizures, and be his old self again.

I've been thinking (and it hurts)

I have been in a thinking mood for a few months now about youth ministry. I have gone back to the drawing boards to recreate the foundations of the way that I do ministry. Which made me think of one question: What is it, exactly, that we want students to look like when they leave?

This has been a tough question to answer specifically. Of course we want them to look like Jesus, but what characteristics does that entail? Reading the bible daily? Well that is a good thing to do, but if not accompanied by the right heart, it is useless. Praying every morning before school? That is also a good thing, if done right. What if they don't have a proper perspective on what prayer is? (Self-centered rantings about what we want God to do)

So I have been asking myself, not what actions I want to see them do, but about what character I want to see come about in their life. There is a church in the area and their youth pastor is not called a youth pastor, they use the term, "Student Journey Designer." I think that is a good fit as to what we are trying to accomplish as youth pastors. We are trying to design a pathway for students to walk down that leads to a life devoted to Christ.

So all that said, I read an amazing part of this book, Spirit of the Disciplines: Dallas Willard:

"The general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy. This is the feature of human character that explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality.

The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of principles to be obeyed apart from identification with Jesus Christ. The Sermon on the Mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting His way with us...

...No one ever says, "If you want to be a great athlete, go vault eighteen feet, run the mile in under four minutes," or "If you want to be a great musician, play the Beethoven violin concerto. Instead we advise the young artist or athlete to enter a certain kind of overall life, one involving deep associations with qualified people as well as rigorously scheduled time, and diet, and activity for the mind and body.

...What would you tell someone who aspired to live well in general? If we are wise we would tell them to approach life with this same general strategy. So if we wish to follow Christ - and to walk in the easy yoke with him- we will have to accept his overall way of life as our way of life totally. Then, and only then, we may reasonably expect to know by experience how easy is the yoke and how light the burden.

We cannot behave "on the spot" as he [Christ] did and taught if in the rest of our time we live as everybody else"


Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard. p7-8

Oswald Chambers

I read this in Oswald Chambers today, and it spoke to me:

A spiritually minded man will never come to you with the demand, "believe this and that," but with the demand that you square your life with the standards of Jesus. We are not asked to believe the Bible, but to believe the One whom the Bible reveals (John 5:39-40). We are called to present liberty of conscience, not liberty of view. If we are free with the liberty of Christ, others will be brought into that same liberty - the liberty of realizing the dominance of Jesus Christ.

Always keep your life measured by the standards of Jesus. Bow your neck to his yoke alone, and to no other yoke whatever; and be careful to see that you never bind a yoke on others that is not placed by Jesus Christ. It takes a long time to get us out of the way of thinking that unless everyone sees as we do, they must be wrong. That is never God's view. There is one of liberty, the liberty of Jesus at work in our conscience enabling us to do what is right.

Don't get impatient, remember how God dealt with you - with patience and with gentleness; but never water down the truth of God. Let it have its way and never apologize for it. Jesus said, "Go and make disciples," not "make converts to your opinions."

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest p127

Rough Night

Isaac woke up at 5am crying. I went in his room to find he had vomited everywhere, had a high fever still, and was coming out of another seizure. He is sleeping again now.

Man what a day

It was a long day today. mostly it was great. I woke up at 6am (which is weird for me) I felt an urge to read my Bible, and God took me to some great passages and gave me a message for our concert.

I had a great friend of mine, Jayson Simonson come out to lead worship for our church and promote our benefit concert. He hadn't seen the baby yet because he has been on tour on the east coast. He brought a friend Mike Hirst out with him to lead as well. They have been on tour together. They were awesome. They led worship and promoted the concert for later that evening.

We had a benefit concert to sponsor a child through world vision. We ended up raising enough funds to sponsor another child. We sponsor 2 already, and we are looking to reach 10 children a year sponsored through our student ministry.

The music was great, we had about 30 people come out. And we raised enough money to sponsor a child. It was awesome (and tiresome) until we started to go home and Isaac had a pretty big seizure on the way home. We had to pull over and hold him and pray with him. He vomited everywhere, and spiked a big fever.

We came home, fed Jayson and Mike dinner, showered Isaac, and cuddled him until bedtime. The guys left for Fowlerville, and now I am writting this blog, ready to fall asleep. So I think I will. Peace.

Book Review: Advanced Strategic Planning

My pastor, Kendall, bought the staff a book early last year from Aubrey Malphurs called ministry nuts and bolts. That was an amazing book that transformed the foundations of how I structure youth ministry. I loved it so much that I decided to get the advanced book. I just finished this book, and it is the most amazing book on church planning I have ever read.

If you are in ministry leadership, or are going into ministry leadership, you have to read this book. It took me four months to read, only because I would pause and start implementing and re-reading sections over and over until I got them.

I can't say enough about how amazing this book was for me, and planning the foundations of our youth ministry. The book walks you through crafting your values, mission, vision, and strategy. This is NOT a cookie cutter ministry style to adopt, but a system to walk through to find your unique ministry style for your unique congregation and place.