Chasing small fish

Recently I heard someone say that we spend too much time chasing small fish. Small fish are those ever elusive people that we try to get into out corner but never seem to be content. It’s funny how we spend so much time in our ministry trying to chase these small fish but no matter how much we try we will never get them to change there minds, agree with our perspectives or ever buy into our vision; Yet, we are convinced that we must torture ourselves into trying. We expel great energy, time and patience to earn their support and yet in the end we still find ourselves frustrated because they are still elusive.

Small fish are single minded, closed to the ideas that you are trying to express. They tend to be the ones who complain yet are never the ones who step up and attempt to find a solution or even help. Small fish come in many different shapes and forms, they can look like a student, a parent, a staff member or that little old lady who thinks the youth destroyed the carpet in the foyer during the last lock in. These fish tend to distract us from the direction God is pointing us to, and they hold us back from the journey in front of us. It’s hard to walk away, its difficult to stop trying to catch that elusive fish but we need to for the health of your ministry, and you personally.

The question we must ask is why, why do we expel so much energy trying to capture these small fish? Is it rooted in a lack of self esteem, or maybe the need to please people? No matter the reason the only thing we end up doing is wasting a tremendous amount of energy in accomplishing something that will never be done. So how do we reach a place of harmony in a world of small fish? How do we move past the need to spend our time chasing those elusive small fish? It starts with us. It starts with being secure in your vision, your ministry and most importantly your relationships. We must be willing to sacrifice our insecurity for trust. We must trust God to deal with our small fish. We must be willing to hand over those fish and swim away. There are schools of fish that are not elusive but swimming around and looking for us to come and lead them.  They are the fish that no matter what they are excited by your vision, your direction and have joined in the journey to God’s path in front of you. We must be willing to place our time and energy into the fish that will swim with us, that will follow the direction that we have prayed so hard for, and the vision we are so convinced that God has given us.

If we are to grow both in our ministry and in our personal lives we must be willing to acknowledge that we have small fish in our lives. We must also be willing to trust God and those other leaders around us to deal with our small fish. It is always our hope that the small fish will join in the school of others and swim with us, but we cannot continue to spend all our time trying to capture that elusive small fish that saps the energy, joy and passion for the ministry God has placed before us. Be a leader and lead. Leave the small fish to the one who is the master of fishing.

Kicking the Box and a journey toward Orange.

Recently I picked up one of those books. Once in a while I find a book that challenges me to look at things differently. Well this is one of those books. Over the past year a group of friends I work with have taken a wonderful journey toward a wonderful place called Orange, and after a year I have finally decided to dip my foot in and see where it takes me. Now your thinking what does he mean by Orange. Well it is a place where the two most influential forces in the world collide and meet . . . the Church and the Family. Reggie Joiner describes it as this the Church is represented by the color yellow something bright and shining pointing in a God ordained direction and the family as the color red both warm and inviting a place where the greatest influence in the life of people exist. The two combine create the wonderful color Orange. For a long time both the church and the family have worked to accomplish their task, but unfortunately hardly ever in sync with each other. Now what I love so much about the book so far is the push to bring these two forces together to make a life changing impact on kids and students.

It doesn’t take long for us to realize that we are losing the battle for this generation. We are losing the battle fundamentally in the living room with fractured families and in our churches with our growing lack of relevance. Yet what would happen if these two forces came together? What would be the result of change in our society when the two beacons of the greatest influence combined their efforts to effect change? We have in front of us one of the greatest generations this world has ever seen, and if we continue to stand by trusting in the “old” ways to accomplish our mission the results for me are to frightening to imagine. As with anything we must also walk in balance, but we need to start asking the questions. We are losing 70 – 80 percent of our graduating seniors, and unfortunately I know this statistic personally. After eleven years in full time youth ministry I have seen this statistic up and close, and I have always come back to the same conclusion when I have asked “how did we lose them?” and it’s always fallen back to the church and the family. What would have happened to those students if there had existed a deeper more profound relationship between what I was doing and my families? What would have been the results of a more strategic relationship? How many of those students would not have walked away after experiencing their family and their church working closely together to establish for them a stronger pattern of life that was both relevant and inviting. So over the next few weeks I’m going to journal my journey through this book and hopefully reveal something challenging to someone. Well most importantly to myself.

Oh By the Way the Book is: “Think Orange” by Reggie Joiner.

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 where 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.