Wednesday, December 21, 2016

I Hate Youth Ministry:

I’ve said it more than once, but it’s not what I mean. I don’t hate teenagers or ministering to them. I can’t speak for you, but here’s what I mean when I say I hate Youth Ministry.

I HATE BEING DISRESPECTED
It’s tough at every level of youth ministry; from volunteer to full-time and everywhere in-between. If you love kids, have a vision, and put your all into it, you will be disrespected. Sometimes by a disconnected staff member, sometimes by well meaning older saints, and sometimes by the very kids you are trying to minister to. Disrespect is not a Youth Ministry thing, it a life thing, It’s an age thing. It’s a perception thing. You know how you think flipping burgers would be so much better than what you are experiencing right now? Yeah, it would be no time at all before someone disrespected your burger flipping skills.

I HATE APATHY
When I say I hate youth ministry, I’m really saying, “I hate feeling like I am doing this all alone.” I hate that no one has my passion and love for these kids. Think of it this way, if they already had people that had your love and passion for kids, they wouldn’t need you. Never stop reaching out to adults who could help you. Risk the rejection and go bananas when someone says, “Yes, I’ll help.” Never stop praying to the Lord of the harvest that he would send workers into your harvest field.

I HATE CHURCH POLITICS
I hate anything that disrupts the flow of ministering to kids. If there’s something going on in the church that seems to be sucking the energy away from the Jesus stuff we should be doing it makes me cranky. It makes me feel sad for God’s church that we have to have power struggles and back biting going on. Then, I remember that these are people. They are no different than the household of David who slaughtered each other for power, money, and control. It happens everywhere. Deal with it through prayer and protect the kids as much as possible.

I HATE MY OWN INSECURITIES
I hate youth ministry when I doubt myself. When I think I am not good enough and not up to the task. Our insecurities are just a sign of our great need of God and His mercy. We cannot sow anything without him. When you’re feeling like you are not up to the task, it’s ok, you’re probably not, but God is. Lean on Him more than you ever have and let your insecurities be swallowed up in His grace.

I HATE THAT I AM NOT MORE SUCCESSFUL
This one is a thorn in the flesh for me. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how many show up to the youth meeting, or if you have this grand dream in your head that is not meeting a specific timeline. You are where you are right now. That is where you are supposed to be. Success is what you are right now, not what you are going to be. How do I know this? We had our college and career meeting the other night and one student show up. My wife and I told her she was not obligated to stay, but she stayed, talked, and watched TV, with a couple of “old people.” At that moment, because our home was a sanctuary and not a meeting place, we were successful.

 Do you hate youth ministry? No. Do you hate your job? Sometimes.

 As they say, it’s the journey that matters and I wouldn’t trade mine for yours for…well let’s not say a million dollars, because on some days I might just take it; but know this, the grass is not greener anywhere. Love who you are and what you do for as long as you can.

Monday, December 19, 2016

My Usual Speech:

CREW's latest activity was winding down and with a few minutes left until parents showed up to pick up their son or daughter or high schoolers hoped into their vehicles to drive off I gathered everyone's attention and said, "Thank you for coming. Our next event will be... I'm proud of each of you and I love you." After I finished speaking one student who will remain nameless looked up and said, "what did you say." I began to repeat myself when the student stopped me and said, "oh just your usual speech."

Just my usual speech.
Just my usual speech.
Just my usual speech.

I'm sure the student had no idea but he or she (let's keep this anonymous) paid me one of the biggest complements which could be paid. "Oh, just your usual speech."

My usual speech at the end of an event. "Thank you for coming. Our next event will be... I'm proud of each of you and I love you." Every section of this speech is important and something I want every student who is a part of CREW to know and meditate on.

Thank you for coming: There are about a hundred things for a student to do in my town. They have a lot of different obligations but the fact that he or she would take time to come out to an event at my house blows my mind. I do not take it for granted that students choose to come to CREW and they choose to participate in our activities. I am thankful that they've chosen to join us for each and every particular activity. Besides let's face it wouldn't the world be a lot better off if more people said thank you.

Our next event will be...: Our mission statement at CREW is to reach, teach and release 7th-12th grade students. Every event we do is either a reach, teach or release event. In July, I sit down and brainstorm a list of activities for the coming year and I spread out reach, teach and release activities throughout the quarter. Students have fun in our reach activities, learn in a hands on way in our teach activities and serve the church and community in release activities. We are a family and we grow as a family in CREW through monthly activities where students can be themselves.

I Am Proud of You: As long as I live I will never forget sitting in a room of twenty Seniors in High School and asking them if they knew their parents or someone was proud of them. The vast majority in the room did not know that someone was proud of them. I left that meeting changed. Every chance I get I tell my students that I am proud of them. To be honest I am very proud of them. Everyone of them is growing and maturing in the Lord and as young men and women. They blow my mind so many times with their self-less attitude and servants heart. I am proud of them and I want them to know that I am proud so I tell them collectively and individually. If you are a parent reading this may I please encourage you to share with your son or daughter that you are proud of them. They do not know it unless you share it.

I love you: I love my students. I would take a bullet for each and every member of CREW. I don't love them because they are good kids (they are) or because they are Christian (not all of them are) or because they serve others (they do). I love them for who they are. I love them because they are made in the image of God and they have value, worth and dignity. This world is tough and unforgiving. I want them to know that there is at least one place where they can come and feel loved. No matter what happens or what they do I will always love each and everyone of them.

At the end of the next event you know what I will say.
I bet I will say my usual speech.
I will say, "Thank you for coming. Our next event will be... I'm proud of you and I love you."

As far as I'm concerned that's not a bad speech or philosophy. 

Friday, December 9, 2016

I Want My Kids To Have A Backbone:

“If you do not stand firm in your faith, then you will not stand at all” (Isaiah 7:9).

This was the word of the Lord through His prophet to a trembling king when faced with adversaries. It was an admonishment to not look to the size of the enemies at hand, but instead trust in the power of God on his behalf. Stand up. Let your backbone be fortified with the truth of the promises and power of God.

I grew up in a time when this command, to stand firm in the faith, was really just rhetoric. There were no kings and armies at the gate; the invading culture and challenges to Christianity were held at bay inside our insulated small town; in fact, the most popular decision I ever made as a college student was to publicly declare before my church family that I sensed God’s call to ministry.

But times… they are a’changin. Obviously.

Research shows us that the number of evangelicals is not diminishing, as some doomsdayers might claim. Instead, what we see is that the days of the “sort of committed Christian” are coming to an end. The “mushy middle ground” of occasional church attendance and casual belief in the authority of Scripture are quickly fading. These are days, increasingly so, when those who are for Christ must be truly for Christ.

There is a reaction to this reality, which I feel in my gut, that is a longing for a perceived past when based on our memory times were much simpler. But those memories are colored and tempered with time, for each generation has had its own challenges to deal with. We can’t give in to the impulse to sit about reminiscing about the good old days, the days when we remember little being challenged, for God has given us these times. These moments. There is great truth in what an old wizard said to a young hobbit in Tolkein’s The Fellowship of the Ring:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Which brings me to the subject of our children. These are times when our longing for our remembered past should be replaced with active prayer. Not just for us, but for our children. So what do we pray for them? Do we pray for their safety? For their comfort? For their freedom? For their ease? Perhaps, but I find myself increasingly praying something else for them, something that feels more appropriate. And in that prayer, I find it not only being made on behalf of them, but for myself, for I along with every other mom and dad have been entrusted with the sacred responsibility of raising these children in the admonition of the Lord. So I pray often:

“Lord, help me raise children with a backbone.”

Their mettle will be tested. Their faith will be challenged. They will be pressured to succumb on any number of fronts. By God’s grace, we will raise them not to shrink back into the shadows, nor to be intentionally argumentative and betray Christian kindness and compassion. That they will stand, and stand firmly.

I pray that I will raise my children with a backbone.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Enough Is Enough:

Let the record show this is not my blog. I copied and pasted from Gary Thomas blog (http://www.garythomas.com/enough-enough/). Though I agree with every word of the blog.

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26

What does it mean to “hate” someone we are elsewhere called to sacrificially love? We are told to love even our enemies, yet Jesus here tells us to hate some of our closest family members. What could that mean?

Hatred here is Semitic hyperbole. In essence, it means “love less than.” There are times when our love and allegiance to God may be at odds with human loyalties; in those cases, love for God, His light and the way of truth, must always prevail.

It’s okay (actually, commendable) for me to love the Seattle Seahawks. But if my wife needs me to take her to the hospital in the middle of a game or needs me to pay her some attention, I have to act like I hate the Seahawks and not even consider my love for them in service to my wife.

Let’s apply this principle in regards to how the church views marriage and divorce.

I recently spoke at a long-standing North American woman’s conference and was overwhelmed by the quantity and horrific nature of things wives are having to put up with in their marriages. Between sessions, I was bombarded by heartfelt inquiries: “What does a wife do when her husband does this? Or that? Or keeps doing this?” It broke my heart. I felt like I needed to take a dozen showers that weekend.

This may sound like a rant, but please hang with me, as I think this conference was a divine appointment. I can’t get this out of my mind.

One wife began our conversation with, “God hates divorce, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “I believe He does.”

“So I’ve just got to accept what’s happening in my marriage, right?”

When she told me what was happening, I quickly corrected her. “If the cost of saving a marriage is destroying a woman, the cost is too high. God loves people more than he loves institutions.”

Her husband is a persistent porn addict. He has neglected her sexually except to fulfill his own increasingly bent desires. He keeps dangling divorce over her head, which makes her feel like a failure as a Christian. He presented her with a list of five things he wanted to do that he saw done in porn, and if she wasn’t willing, he was through with the marriage. She agreed to four of them, but just couldn’t do the fifth. And she feels guilty.

God hates divorce, right?

This is monstrous and vile. This woman needs to be protected from such grotesque abuse, and if divorce is the only weapon to protect her, then the church should thank God such a weapon exists.

A young wife, barely in her twenties, held a baby in a blanket and looked at me with tears. Her husband has a huge temper problem. He’s made her get out of the car on a highway with her baby, twice. “But both times he came back for us,” she said in his defense when I looked absolutely appalled. They were separated and she was living with her parents. She wanted to know if she should take him back because his psychiatrist supposedly said there wasn’t anything really wrong with him. Her husband doesn’t think he has a problem that, in fact, the problem is with her “lack of forgiveness.”

They had been married only three years and she had already lived through more torment (I’m not telling the full story) than a woman should face in a lifetime. My thoughts weren’t at all about how to “save” the marriage, but to ease her conscience and help her prepare for a new life—without him.

Church, God hates it when a woman is sexually degraded and forced to do things that disgust her. It should also make us want to vomit.

When a young man is so immature he puts his wife’s and baby’s life in danger on a highway (amongst other things), the thought that we’re worried about the “appropriateness” of divorce shows that our loyalties are with human institutions, not the divine will.

As Kevin DeYoung so ably puts it, “Every divorce is the result of sin, but not every divorce is sinful.”

Another woman told me about putting up with her husband’s appalling behavior for over forty years. I was invited to look in her face, see the struggle, see the heroic perseverance, but also be reminded that counsel has consequences. So when I talk to a young woman in her third year of marriage and it’s clear she’s married to a monster, and someone wants to “save” the marriage, I want them to realize they are likely sentencing her to four decades of abuse, perhaps because of a choice she made as a teenager. When these men aren’t confronted, and aren’t repentant, they don’t change.

Jesus said what he said about divorce to protect women, not to imprison them. Divorce was a weapon foisted against women in the first century, not one they could use, and it almost always left them destitute if their family of origin couldn’t or wouldn’t step up.

How does it honor the concept of “Christian marriage” to enforce the continuance of an abusive, destructive relationship that is slowly squeezing all life and joy out of a woman’s soul? Our focus has to be on urging men to love their wives like Christ loves the church, not on telling women to put up with husbands mistreating their wives like Satan mistreats us. We should confront and stop the work of Satan, not enable it.

Look, I hate divorce as much as anyone. I have been married for 31 years and cannot fathom leaving my wife. I have prayed with couples, counselled with couples, written blog posts and articles and books, and have travelled to 49 of the 50 states and nine different countries to strengthen marriages in the church. By all accounts, I believe I’ve been an ambassador for improving and growing marriages.

The danger of what I’m saying is clear and even a little scary to me, because no marriage is easy. Every marriage must overcome hurt, pain, and sin. No husband is a saint, in the sense that every husband will need to be forgiven and will be troublesome and even hurtful at times to live with. I’m not talking about the common struggles of living with a common sinner, or every man and woman could pursue divorce. (There are many men who live with abuse and could “biblically” pursue a divorce as well.) Charging someone with “abuse” when it doesn’t truly apply is almost as evil as committing abuse, so we need to be careful we don’t bear “false witness” against a spouse to convince ourselves and others that we can legitimately pursue divorce to get out of a difficult marriage.

That’s why I love how some churches will meet with a couple and hear them out to give them some objective feedback, helping them to distinguish between normal marital friction and abusive behavior. Some women need to hear, “No, this isn’t normal. It’s abuse. You don’t have to put up with that.” Others need to hear, “We think what you’re facing are the normal difficulties of marriage and with counseling they can be overcome.” There’s no way a blog post (or even a book) can adequately anticipate all such questions.

I love marriage—even the struggles of marriage, which God can truly use to grow us and shape us—but I hate it when God’s daughters are abused. And I will never defend a marriage over a woman’s emotional, spiritual, and physical health.

I went back to my hotel room after that woman’s conference and almost felt like I had to vomit. I don’t know how God stands it, having to witness such horrific behavior leveled at his daughters.

Enough is enough!

Jesus says there are “levels” of love, and times when one loyalty must rise over another. Our loyalty to marriage is good and noble and true. But when loyalty to a relational structure allows evil to continue it is a false loyalty, even an evil loyalty.

Christian leaders and friends, we have to see that some evil men are using their wives’ Christian guilt and our teaching about the sanctity of marriage as a weapon to keep harming them. I can’t help feeling that if more women started saying, “This is over” and were backed up by a church that enabled them to escape instead of enabling the abuse to continue, other men in the church, tempted toward the same behavior, might finally wake up and change their ways.

Christians are more likely to have one-income families, making some Christian wives feel even more vulnerable. We have got to clean up our own house. We have got to say “Enough is enough.” We have got to put the fear of God in some terrible husbands’ hearts, because they sure don’t fear their wives and their lack of respect is leading to ongoing deplorable behavior.

I want a man who was abusive to have to explain to a potential second wife why his saintly first wife left him. Let men realize that behavior has consequences, and that wives are supposed to be cherished, not used, not abused, and never treated as sexual playthings. If a man wants the benefit and companionship of a good woman, let him earn it, and re-earn it, and let him know it can be lost.

Enough is enough.

I know I’m ranting. But I don’t think it was an accident that I was constantly stopped at that woman’s conference and forced to hear despicable story after despicable story (“forced” isn’t the right word. I could, of course, have walked away). I think God wanted me to see the breadth and depth of what is going on, and in this case, perhaps to be His voice.

Message received! We are called to love marriage, but when marriage enables evil, we should hate it (love it less) in comparison to a woman’s welfare.