My New Blackberry

Well I’ve been waiting for over a year and I’ve finally been able to get another blackberry. For the past year and half I’ve been stuck with windows based phones and have not enjoyed the experience. So much to my excitement my opportunity for upgrading my phone and changing to Verizon came about. So this past Friday I was able to get myself the Blackberry Storm. Now I know being a Apple fan as I am I chose this over going for the iPhone, but honestly I was looking for something different. The truth is I love this phone. It has all the features I wanted and it looks amazing. Now the iPhone is the standard for touch screen phones, but I think the Storm gets a little under appreciated. It connects with my Mac, it has apps like the iphone and well I get the benefit of connecting to an exchange server. Another added feature is when I’m around all my youth pastor friends and their iPhones my Storm stands out.

Now you might ask what does this have to do with God, spirituality or even youth ministry. Absolutely nothing. It is my pathetic materialism at work. I do totally enjoy great phones. Sorry weakness. I’ve been having a bit of fun, besides Saturday was my birthday, so I am allowed a little enjoyment.

The amazing thing about summer

So I was thinking the other day about all that goes on during the summer. Many times our summers start out fast paced and exciting, but by mid summer things seem to run out of gas. In many ways our spiritual journeys are the same way. When we first find faith we are so aggressive and fast paced, grasping at everything that we can find. However, somewhere down the line we seem to run out of gas. Now there are some who seem to never have this issue, and I wish I could say I was one of them, but I am not. The truth is I have to work at it. My journey has been just that a journey. It has had it’s amazing moments and it’s rough ones too. Yet, somehow I always seem to find myself staring at my faith and seeing just how much God continues to work in me despite my weakness. It’s like the first day of school all over again. I always loved the first day of school, all the excitement, energy and the freshness of a new start. So this summer try to find ways to keep the freshness alive. Look for new ways to explore your faith and enjoy the journey. What an amazing God we have, He keeps giving us the chance to learn about him in new ways.

Almost Done

Well in a few days I will finally be allowed to put weight again on my knee. It’s been an interesting last few weeks to say the least. Because I completely tore the LCL and a muscle from the head of my fibula it’s has caused me to spend the last 4.5 weeks without bending or putting weight on my left leg. As you could imagine it has been a true test of my patience. I’m not one for sitting around. However, over the last couple of weeks I have had time to relax, pray, and spend time in reflection. I find it amazing on what God shows us and tells us when we quite down and listen. I intentionally stayed away from youth ministry for the first 2 weeks of my recovery so that I could focus on healing and relaxing. I’ve lately been a bit neglectful of my time with God and this was a great chance to just pull away and sit with Him a bit. I’m thankful that His love is amazing and His grace bountiful. As I head back into the trenches I find myself renewed for the journey ahead. I’m excited. We have a great summer ahead.

Impending Surgery

Well tomorrow is the day. Not that I am nervous or anything, but I am anxious to get this over with. The more I think about this and the more I have to hobble around that more I realize how difficult it must be for people with permanent disabilities. Today I went into a restaurant as I walked in the door a couple of people were blocking the more direct way through, even though they saw I was in a knee brace and clearly limping the stood there still obstructing a clear path. This forced me to have to walk through a narrow area that was very difficult and quite frankly a bit painful. It caused me to wonder how many times in my life that I have been insensitive to someone with a clear disability. I think it is important that we not only as Christians, but as human beings to consider the scripture when it tells us to consider others above ourselves. We need to be a reflection of love. Lets be more aware of people around us and be a little more sensitive.

So tomorrow bring a challenge ahead, I really wish I didn’t have to endure this, but unfortunately I do. Therefore I am going to do my best to meet the pain, and physical therapy head on. However, for now I promise not to whine.

Knee Surgery

Well A couple of weeks ago while bowling with my youth group I decided to jump in and have some fun. One thing to remember when your bowling, use bowling shoes. As I released the ball my left leg came to a complete stop and the rest of my body decided it wanted to continue to move. The result was pain the likes of which I can honestly say I have never felt. In the aftermath of MRI’S, X-rays, doctor visits we now know that I have a Cat 3 rupture of the LCL. For those of you who are wondering what that is it is the ligament on the outside of your knee. What is going to have to happen is a wonderful Doctor has to go in and open up the side of my leg and tie the two torn pieces of ligaments back together. For me it’s surgery on Sheri’s birthday, and 12 weeks of recovery. Fun for me. I guess I will have some time off to work a bit more on making sure I write more often on my blog.

Being amazed

Sunday night was amazing. It never stops amazing me when I watch students release their inhibitions and worship God with unbridled passion. I guess the reason for me is simple – I want to be like them. I want to let everything go and just immerse myself in His presence and find that moment of peace that can only be found sitting at his feet. For me I too often allow the things going on around me to become way more important than simply sitting down and worshipping him. For my faith, my journey, and my relationship to continue to grow I must alway be willing to let those things go in my life that pull my focus from Christ. In reality too often my faith becomes more about me than the one I am following. So it becomes important for me to be reminded that everything I do should always be about him and his will for my life. So, last night was one of those moments where I got real with Him and found that his love is never ceasing and his grace and mercy unending.

Perfect Youth Pastor!

I borrowed this from Over at the Random Thoughts Blog Random Man blog, there are a series of terrific postings about the myth of the perfect youth pastor. Anyone who has spent any extended amount of time in youth minstry will certainly relate with each of these myths in some way or another. I thought this was really funny!

Myth #1 The perfect youth pastor must be between 22 and 35 years old in order to relate to youth.

Myth #2 The perfect youth pastor must be a dynamic, entertaining speaker.

Myth #3 The perfect youth pastor relates well with every student.

Myth #4 The perfect youth pastor is married and his wife is actively involved in the youth ministry.

Myth #5 The perfect youth pastor must be “cool” in order to relate well to teens.

Myth #6 A perfect youth pastor needs to have events every month for the students while attending all other church-wide functions.

Myth #7 The perfect youth pastor must be able to coordinate babysitting for all other ministries in the church.

Myth #8 The perfect youth pastor must be willing to help anyone who stops by the office no matter how busy they are with their own work.

Myth # 9 The perfect youth pastor must be willing to live off the smallest salary, work in the smallest office and work with the smallest budget in the church all while believing what the people of the church tell them that “the youth ministry is very important to us”.

Myth #10 The Perfect Youth Pastor’s ministry will grow numerically even though the church as a whole won’t change and never grows.

Myth #11 A perfect youth pastor will take responsibility for the failures and mistakes of every student in the youth ministry.

Myth #12 The Perfect Youth Pastor will make the teens visible to the church at large and get them involved with the Sunday morning worship service but will not attempt to change the culture of said church.

Tearing a Bible

A couple of weeks ago I was attending a youth event were in the service as a part of a sermon illustration the speaker took a bible and tore it to pieces. Now I know that for some this is ground for full out battle. However, his words that followed where amazingly true. He said, “Why are you offended, this is what we do everyday when we ignore the Word of God and refuse to follow its teachings.” I guess for some of us that could sound incredibly judgmental but in reality is what he said true? Do we really value the teachings within the bible or do we have a casual relationship with them? For me I keep looking back on that and wondering if I truly put into practice the teachings or have I just embraced a behavior change. My passion is to return to a simple faith, one less complicated by opinions and judgments about things I don’t really understand or need to worry about. For me the importance of walking out this relationship with Christ is of utmost. I reluctantly understand that there are more than my own children watching me and I’m beginning to realize that the most important issue for me isn’t that some guy tore a bible apart, but rather how deep I am in my relationship with Christ. I guess the one thing we all must take the time to acknowledge is that we are all on this journey together, and as we sojourn with one another that the expression of love must abound even in moments were someone is tearing a bible apart to prove a point.

Our relationship with one another and with Christ is more important than the things we want, the agendas we pursue, the plans we lay out and the aspirations of glory we desire. The most important things in life abound for us is the pursuit of God’s amazing love and the reflection of that into the world around us. Just a thought.

Hanging out.

I love it when a student decides to just “drop” in. For me it’s one of those moments were God says, “here you go have fun”. There are to many days where I am wrapped up in the office working on a message, planning that next event, or having one of those weekly staff meetings and wishing to just hanging out. As someone who is too talkative at times well most would argue all the time it is a moment to just sit hang out and see how they are doing. It’s a good time to check the pulse and see how they are fairing in their journey. I love those moments where you have one of those great students hanging out and just talking about anything. I guess my prayer is “God give me more of those moments”. They are too much fun.

The State of Youth Ministry

Last week I attended the Youth Pastor’s Summit in Orlando. I love going to these kinds of event, one they are free and second I get to hang out with amazing people doing wonderful things in the lives of students. However, this year I left the conference with a different perspective. Listening to Jay share some disturbing statistics about the percentages of students who walk away from their faith after graduation was painful. As a veteran youth pastor I have seen these statistics first hand and it’s difficult to reflect on. Yet, after some intense discussions with other youth pastor’s I began to ask the hard questions: Why, and have we failed as youth pastors to create the right connection between our students and their faith? The hard truth is maybe the whole idea of youth ministry is wrong. Have we created such a separate subculture within our churches that our students have a difficult time connecting after their time in youth ministry or has the church failed to adjust to a changing culture.

One thing I have come to believe is that for many of our students we have helped them make the right “behavior” changes, but have the bulk of our students really made the “heart” changes. For anything in our walk with Christ to work must come from a heart transformation and not just a behavior one. We know that with behavior changes when the situation that reinforces it changes the behavior modifies to fit its surroundings. So when that student goes off to college and is in the environment that doesn’t reinforce Godly principles what results do we expect to see?

I am coming to believe that youth ministry has failed to focus more on heart changes than behavior changes. You see I think it is too easy to blame youth ministry for the issue, but honestly I wonder if it is more that we have failed our families. Have we focused too much energy on our students and not on our parents? I know that many of us have those students that get it, that they have had massive heart changes and you can look back and see that they had shining examples at home. I wonder about those statistics? How many of those who have walked away from faith come from homes where there was a consistent Christian presence there? How many came from homes where their parents truly patterned a Godly lifestyle for them, versus those who their student came to church, but at home their parents didn’t reinforce what they were learning at youth?

These are the questions we need to begin to ask so that we as parents, students and youth pastors can respond to the overwhelming amount of students walking away from a deep relationship with Christ. We must adapt and look for ways to impact the those lives in ways to help them in the future make the right choices when it comes to their faith.