Lent

As a typical Baptist, I don't usually do Lent very well. It has always seemed a little too stuffy, religious and legalistic to me (as most traditions do). But over the years I have slowly come around.

This year has been significantly different already. This is the first year that I received ashes on my forehead. The Ash Wednesday service at the Episcopal church was beautiful and meaningful, but I was still very aware how out-of-place and uncomfortable I was with it all. Nevertheless, I was glad to be connected to something that Christians all over the world were a part of.

Then there is the commonly observed practice of giving up something for Lent. It is meant to be a time of self-denial and repentance (which in it's true form indicates a change of behavior) that leads to the Cross of Good Friday and the Empty Tomb of Resurrection Sunday. So with a fairly honest assessment of my life, I committed to drinking only water for 40 days. Giving up soft drinks (of which I typically consume several each day) was the big one, but it includes everything else, too. It may be healthy, but it is not meant to be a diet or for health reasons; it is meant to set me free from something in my life that has been addicting. I cannot allow anything in my life to compete with Jesus for control over it.

Another part of Lent this year is our church's emphasis on listening through the New Testament together. We have been encouraging the congregation to join us each day in listening to a few chapters of an audio version of the New Testament. I have to admit, after trying out the material we were distributing, I went back to my old copy of The Bible Experience audio Bible because it is so much better of a dramatic reading. I'm now in the first few chapters of Luke, and this has been a really nice part of this season as well.

Finally, thanks to a link on a friend's blog, I found Mars Hill Bible Church's Lent 2010 experiential calendar. This calendar is set up so that on each of the 40 days I will participate in an activity that challenges me and stretches me to grow toward Christ and his love. This includes activities like doing something you've been putting off or making a phone call to someone you've had a falling out with or shoveling snow from a neighbor's driveway or fasting from food or technology or music. I like that it helps Lent to be about more than just giving up something for a duration of time, but it also adds in spiritual exercises to your life in a wide variety of areas.

The funny thing about this season of Lent is how these added observances have bumped up against my regular life. The ashes coincided with a youth mission project, which helped me reflect on serving others as a proper response to repentance from self-centeredness. The audio Bible listening has been mixed in with a variety of activities throughout my day. The nothing-but-water fast creates tension whenever I go to the refrigerator or out to eat. My experiences from the Lent calendar are not always convenient with my day-to-day schedule so I have to find ways to make it work.

Tomorrow I'm headed to the Simply Youth Ministry Conference in Chicago, and I'm going to be thinking and talking a lot about youth ministry. I'm hopeful that my deeper observance of Lent this year will also pay off in a fuller understanding of ministry as I reflect and study it together with some other great youth leaders. (Btw, I'm planning on blogging from there this weekend, too... or you can follow me on twitter.)

Not Fair Video

One of the highlights of the National Youth Ministry Conference!

my team

I have a great team of volunteers who labor alongside me in the kingdom of God to minister to the teenagers in our church. I am honored by their unfailing support and encouragement.

I went to a youth ministry conference last weekend, and one of the presenters, Mark DeVries, spent some time talking about volunteers. And somewhere in there, he asked, "Who's the most important person on a football team's offense? (Obviously, it's the quarterback.) Who's the second most important... or at least the second highest paid? The left tackle." If you don't know, the left tackle is the guy on the offensive line with the task of protecting the quarterback's blind side (that is, of course, assuming the QB's right-handed... and actually, in the case of my Cleveland Browns, Left Tackle Joe Thomas is THE highest paid player on the team). The point is this: An unprotected leader is vulnerable... and even though the leader of a youth ministry is important, don't neglect the importance of someone in your life who looks out for your blind side. This football analogy really made sense to me and got me to thinking about some my volunteers...

First of all, there's my left tackle, my wife Amy. More than anyone else, she defends my blind side. Without her, I'd be toast. She keeps me in check in everything from balancing my time with work and family, keeping my ministry priorities in line, and helping diffuse frustrations. She's the one who sees the things that threaten my attitude... the things that can easily make me ineffective. And she'll go to bat for me every time, even when I make some pretty clumsy plays. In football jargon, she keeps my uniform clean.

Then there's my starting running back, Alex. In football, the running back can run the ball out of the back field, stay in as an extra blocker to pick up a pass rush, or go down field as a receiver. In most offenses at least half of the offense goes through the running back. So, needless to say, Alex is my work horse. He has led Sunday morning Bible study, taught the guys small group, went on mission projects and last summer's mission trip, chaperoned for many events, and basically fills in any time I need him. He's a great friend who I trust to make great decisions, and we've gotten pretty good at coordinating clean hand-offs. He's very versatile, and I can depend on him to "pick up the hard yardage through the hedges" over and over again.

Also I've got this amazing receiving corp, including Melissa, Blair, Christa, Erin, and Scott. The reason I think of this group as my receivers is because they're the ones who make the big plays and show up on the highlight reels. I love to watch them work... it's so fun to see them loving on these kids and making a significant impact in their lives! They each have their own strengths like receivers in football (e.g. speed, good hands, tight routes, athletic agility, big targets, and even down field blocking). Some of these volunteers have just the right timing with words, some of them give just the right nudge to push a kid along, and some are always showing up to be there for a kid when they need it the most.

In particular, I think of Christa as my slot receiver. The receiver who lines up in the slot is usually a possession receiver (a.k.a. you count on them to make the play to keep the drive alive) with great hands that is willing to run across the middle of the field, knowing they'll take the big hits from the defensive backs. Not only is Christa clutch, but she has been willing to take some "hits" for the team. When she's in there, she's definitely a momentum changer.

Similar to the slot receiver is the tight end. However, tight ends are unique because on any given play they can function as either important possession receivers or stay on the offensive line as extra blockers. The primary tight end on my team is Donna. Even more so now that she's on the personnel committee, Donna picks up some key blocks by advocating for me or the youth ministry whenever she can. On the other hand, Donna is one of my favorite passing targets. Tight ends are known for being tall and big (so they can block effectively) which means they have a larger throwing window, i.e. there are a lot of places you can deliver the ball and it will still be caught. Tight ends are often athletic and can catch passes thrown at their feet or way above their heads. Many times I've not delivered the ball particularly well to Donna, but every time she has found a way to make a great play out of a bad pass. In fact in a lot of offensive schemes, the tight end has become sort of like a pressure release valve. When the quarterback is in trouble and about to be sacked for a loss, he'll often dump it down to the tight end and can count on him to make the play. When I'm feeling the pressure I have a lot of confidence in Donna to help me out of my mess. She is indeed "clutch."

Though these are a few of my "go to" players, there are a host of other teammates who come in and play valuable downs, helping to take the pressure off the starters. I have depended on great volunteers like Tia and Aaron, Dianna, Connie, Alyssa and Paul, Christie, Charlene, Karen, Jamie, Terri, Jennifer, Sabrina, Kevin, Heather and Matt (and others who work behind the scenes or cheer us on from the sidelines).

I have a great team. And this is really the point: We are a team. These important volunteers are not simply chaperones who babysit the youth. They value the goal, they buy into the system we've put together to reach them, they work hard at their responsibilities, and they believe in me to lead them. They truly take ownership of this ministry. Do we mess up? Yes, I often draw up a terrible play. But we're getting smarter, working together better, seeing some great results, and having a lot of fun, too.

Many times when I've gone to the kinds of youth ministry conferences like the one last week, I've sat there feeling depressed about how much work I needed to do to have a stronger ministry. This last weekend, as the guy talked about healthy, sustainable youth ministry, there were a lot of youth pastors there having these same kind of obvious difficulties with their programs. The interesting thing was that I really had this sense that, even though we're not there yet, my student ministry at GBC is getting there, and I felt good about it. And I think the thing that made the biggest difference--my team.

By the way, as we approach the time when we finally have our new senior pastor in place, I hope that he's looking for a teammate. I'm hoping he'll let me be his left tackle (or maybe tight end!).

wrapping up my thoughts on the NYMC

I had a great time this weekend at Group and Simply Youth Ministry's National Youth Ministry Conference in Columbus (next year it's in Chicago!). It's was great to hang out with excellent and passionate youth workers from all over the country. I hope everyone goes away with something that will ignite their heart for students.

Since the last time I blogged, I got to experience some tremendous seminars. After checking out a couple issue-specific workshops I was interested in earlier, I got back on my original seminar track on Sunday--"Secrets to a Healthy Youth Ministry." Mark DeVries from First Presbyterian Church in Nashville and Youth Ministry Architects basically presented on his recent book, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn't Last and What Your Church Can Do About It.

I have to admit, I love these two words when talking about developing a youth ministry--healthy and sustainable. I think they are great ways of thinking about long term goals for what a student ministry should look like... not "big and exciting," but "healthy and sustainable." As Doug Fields likes to put it, "healthy things grow and thrive." I want a ministry that goes beyond this group of students, this group of volunteers, or even me. The sustainability of a youth ministry cannot totally rely on the lead youth pastor, so I'm learning to build a structure for the long haul that will be able to outlast me.

I also got a lot of practical tips for thriving in ministry (which, by the way, I had the foresight to bring a flash drive and download his powerpoint notes to go back and look at). I especially liked the section "monkeys, frogs and balconies," which I'm sure will become starting points for future blog posts. But as far as the frogs part of that section goes, he gives us the advice to do the hard/dreaded task first-thing in order to help us become more effective the rest of the day. Based on the Mark Twain quote, "If you eat a frog first thing in the morning, the rest of your day will be wonderful," DeVries urges us (wisely, I think) to eat the frog so that it doesn't grow and multiply as we procrastinate to do it. Oddly enough, Mark also recommended "planned procrastination" where we intentionally put off other things so that we actually benefit from time constraints. Lots of great stuff there that I hope to see become reality.

My final workshop was this morning, and it was on working with the college-aged ministry, "Preparing Your Teenagers for Life After Youth Group," led by Chuck Bomar (see also collegeleader.org). It was good, and I'm still hoping to get the powerpoint notes from that one, too. Here he spent quite a bit of time on the philosophy of having a college-aged ministry and how to affect the mindset of youth before they leave the youth group, but I was mostly looking for new and transferable ideas to bring back and apply. I was late to this, so I'm sure I would have gotten more out of it had I gotten there earlier (I guess I'll have to read the book that comes out later this year!).

There's not much else to really share about the last few general sessions. They were funny and worshipful and challenging, but that's not what sticks out to me about the conference. Besides Kay Warren's talk and the workshops, what sticks out to me is the word Doug Fields emphasized at the beginning: accessible. It was fun to see the presenters all over the convention center, chatting with Matt and Josh, eating lunch next to the Skit Guys, participating in the live podcast, riding the elevator with Mark DeVries, and following the live twitter feed. I just want to say-- accessible works. It works really well, and I hope they keep it up no matter how big this conference gets over the years. I know it's harder and takes more work to make yourself available like that, but I think it really pays off. I think the Youth Specialties conventions I've been to over the years has sort of lost that, but not here, not this year at least. Thanks guys! Accessible works.

a long day at NYMC

*video from last year's conference replayed last night... thought it was pretty fun.

This morning's worship included a simple devotional activity and lesson from Rick Lawrence and Duffy Robbins based on the passage "taste and see that the Lord is good." What can I say? You can always count on Group Publishing for some good object lessons. They gave us packets of condiments for us to taste, including salt, pepper, vinegar, honey and Dijon mustard, taste at least 3 of them, and think through some ways it reminded us of God. Shawn (the youth leader at the Crossroads Christian Church campus in town) and I tasted the Dijon mustard, then the pepper, then the salt, and finally the honey. I was surprised to find that the pepper taste wasn't very strong, so the thought I wrote down was this: "The taste of pepper reminds me that You are more subtle than I sometimes expect You to be (even while others attack my senses); and You show me Your goodness when You make me aware that You are there." A good way to begin the day.

One of the areas I want to work on this year is helping our children and preteens transition smoothly into the youth program. My first workshop this morning addressed that specifically. "Bridging the Gap: Transitioning Kids from Children's Ministry into Youth Group" was a good, interactive workshop led by Rick Chromey. Understanding that it's "better to build a fence at the top of the cliff then to build a hospital at the bottom," we talked about starting earlier and more intentionally with our kids. With all that our preteens (5th and 6th graders) are experiencing physically, mentally, socially and spiritually, we need to think through some ways of tailoring our programming and events to respond to where they are in the development process. One thing I took away from it was the desire to find some possible ways of getting our youth small group model going (in some form) with this younger age group. With the nature of early adolescence and the onset of puberty, I think they would greatly benefit from some small, gender-specific groups with several caring adult volunteers who spent significant time investing in them.

After lunch, I went to Jana Sarti's "Creating an Intern Ministry From Start to Finish." It's funny to sit and listen to Jana talk about Saddleback's intern program, thinking about how unbelievably different it is from what we've recently started at my church. They have 15-25 interns who come from all over the world and commit to coming to Southern California for two years at a time without any compensation (by raising their own support). Don't get me wrong, I came away with tons of new ideas and helpful suggestions, but I guess I had to listen better and work a little for the take away. It also got me more excited about our summer intern this year and having a great experience where both the church and the intern come away with a win!

Finally, the worship tonight was great. I have to admit I wasn't expecting a whole lot from Kay Warren. I knew she was Rick's wife and had an outreach to orphans of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, but I can't say I knew anything else about her. Let me just say that I've read a couple of her husband's books and heard him speak at Catalyst the year before last, but she really blew me away tonight more than he ever has. It may just be where I am in my journey with God right now because it's hard to pinpoint anything new she said that I hadn't heard before (I've even used some of her illustrations in my own teaching), but as she spoke God was really working on me.

As she focused on the words "dangerously surrendered," "seriously disturbed," and "gloriously ruined," my gut was wrenching and my heart bursting. Surely not outloud, but inwardly, I have prayed the prayer she said used to pray, "Lord, ask me to do anything as long as it doesn't threaten my family... if you mess that up, the deal is off." If I pray that, I'm recognizing that God might ask risky and dangerous things, but it reveals in me a disbelief in God's goodness and a fear of the unknown/uncontrollable. He's not safe, but he is good. If he's good, why can't I trust his plan to be ultimately good for my family? My temptation is to use Amy and the kids as an excuse to play it safe... you know, for their sake. All the while the world continues on...

Part of my struggle is with the nature of youth ministry itself. It's legitimate. It's safe. It operates within structures that are legitimate and safe. As entrenched as it is, I struggle to know how to change the world from within it. Kay mentioned that the church has so often spiritualized the phrase "carry your cross" without realizing that, for Jesus, it meant being willing to actually die for something. Do I love what God loves so much that I'm willing to put my very life on the line for it (especially since God says he loves the neglected and marginalized of the world)? How do you communicate that in a youth Bible study class? As she said this, it also occurred to me that, for Jesus and his audience, the cross was also a loaded political symbol. The Romans used it as an object lesson (!) to make a statement about power, displaying the tactics and methods of how the empire would exert its will through violence, domination and control. How does this change the meaning of "take up your cross"?

I'm still struggling with all this, but I'm praying and seeking... I have confidence he'll reveal himself at the right time.

blogging (and twittering) the NYMC

I am here at the National Youth Ministry Conference having a great time learning, talking, and processing youth ministry. I'm sorry I'm not getting to this earlier, but I've been trying to avoid the internet fees that my hotel charges to get on-line.

I'd like to make a few observations thus far (and you can also follow my twitter updates for more up-to-date microblogging):

* I'm glad I have a self-evaluation in hand that I finished earlier this week... it has helped me to set some goals for what I want to think about while I'm here, specifically summer internship program ideas, bridging the gap between our sixth-graders (and other preteens) and the youth ministry, some possible administrative improvements, and building a long-term sustainable youth ministry.

* The first general session was really good. I liked the effort at trying to set the tone for the conference as being open, accessible and conversational... the morning workshop today was a pretty good example of this. I'm wondering if I can use this reasoning to get Doug Fields to reveal his secret blog address :)

* I wasn't especially impressed with the Harris brothers speaking last night. I like what they had to say (that our students can think deeply and that they are up to the challenge of doing great things), and I really think I'll like the book once I get to read it. But last night, for some reason, I wasn't particularly engaged. (See my tweet about the devil shaking about students reading systematic theology.)

* One last thought: I've been thinking a lot about the concept of "Empire" and the way America and our culture is steeped in maintaining affluence and status, even while it can only exist at the expense of other people (see $8 hot dog video at http://www.workofthepeople.com/). This leads to thinking about Christianity as having the task of undermining and subverting that way of life. It's really hard to go to a conference, see the bigness of everything and feel connected to the broken around the world. With that said, I'm really proud of the way they featured the Compassion speaker. But at the same time, it's hard to sing the chorus we sang last night, "You're the Defender of the weak; You comfort those in need" when most of the time I'm not defending or comforting anyone but myself.

I hope to stay updated better now that I have internet. Look for me at the live SYM 100th episode podcast! And click on these links for others who are blogging NYMC and posting twitter updates!