Month: March 2009
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Spam Crackdown!
If you’ve ever opened that scary place on your inbox called the “spam” folder, you will appreciate this video. (Couple naughty words, in context of spam. Sorry about that.)
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Saturday Tunes
Another weekend, already? If it has to be Saturday I will take it. Yet, it hardly seems like a week since my last installment.Last night we had some friends over for dinner. Chris and Anastasia are very cool and I’m thankful to have them on staff at Harbor dreaming of ways to reach people and bring justice to City Heights. Kristen absolutely went off and delivered one of the most incredible collections of food ever. With a mediteranian theme she made everything from scratch. Homus, pita bread, chicken skewers, salad, and even frozen yogurt. Give that woman a kitchen and some ingredients and she comes to life. All of those years of girl porn have really paid off.
Today we are taking the kids to the zoo for a while. I’ve never been and they have each been a few times. So that will be fun. Have we gotten used to Southern California to the point where we are laid back about going to the San Diego Zoo? I mean, that place is a wonderland of zoology. I’m sure it’ll be fun.
As usual, Saturday kicks off with some quiet time. Everyone is sleeping in and I am quietly listening to some tunes. Here are the next 10 tunes randomly selected on my iPod… er, I mean iPhone.
#1 Sweet Home Alabama by Lynard Skynyrd *****
#2 Loose Lips by Kimya Dawson ****
#3 Baba O’Riley by The Who *****
#4 Footloose by Kenny Loggins *****
#5 Here is Our King by David Crowder Band ****
#6 More than Life by Hillsong United ****
#7 Can’t Find the Words by Karina ***
#8 Mysterious Ways by U2 *****
#9 All the Young Dude by Mott the Hopple ****
#10 Late Night, Early Town by Lloyd Cole
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How do we get to Youth Ministry 3.0?
I’ve been wrestling with the concepts of Marko’s book, Youth Ministry 3.0 for a long time. Actually, before I worked a YS I had been going through a prolonged set of discussions at Romeo saying in a thousand different ways… What I’m doing isn’t working anymore. The problem was simple. I was trained and experienced at how to do youth ministry a certain way. The entire ministry was built around a youth group night of games, worship, small groups, and a talk. I had seen it work and do incredible things! Even in Romeo we had seen this ministry model draw 40+ students to a church of 120. Lives were changed, kids were discipled, volunteers loved it, on and on. We ran that thing and worked that model like a well-oiled machine. I was well-versed in all the terminology of all the other well-oiled youth ministry systems and had written tons comparing and contrasting the strength of one model over the other. But in the last few years the model tanked. Kids stopped coming. The whole thing became kind of toxic. Instead of re-arranging their schedule to make in on Wednesday night all of a sudden kids were trying to find things to do on Wednesday night so they could politely bow out. Frustration mounted and I kept saying, “What I’m doing isn’t working anymore.”
The crazy thing was my reaction to a YM 2.0 model. My response was always, even to the last day, “I know this works, something is just missing, that’s all.” I would tweak things here, re-emphasize this or that. It was never that the concept was broken. The problem was always either the kids not getting the vision of the model or my model not having the funding/support it needed to succeed. It never really dawned on me that my solution to fixing things was to kill the model and search for a better way to minister to students. My reaction was always to just work harder and to keep trying.
Pray more, blame the parents. Pray more, blame the money. Pray more, blame myself. Pray more, blame the kids busyness. In the end I was royally frustrated and a little angry at God that He had me in a place where I couldn’t fix things.
But as Marko’s book shows, there is a massive shift from what he calls “Youth Ministry 2.0” built around programs and models, towards “Youth Ministry 3.0” where the programmatic approach is, probably though not necessarily, foregone for a draw towards ministries built around affinity. (A super over-simplified analysis, right there!)
My wrestling point right now is pretty simple… how do I help ministries kill what has worked for a generation and open their eyes to a way to reach this generation. My experience in YM 2.0 environments is that they’d be happy running an un-attended YM 2.0 model if that means they don’t have to change things. Youth workers may not like the sacred cows of big church but they have certainly built some sacred cows themselves. (Remember the fury over my articles, “I Kissed Retreats Goodbye?“)
From a national perspective I’m seeing one trend that is scaring me and I don’t want it to be the solution: Killing youth ministry budgets, staffs, and programs. Please tell me that we’re not going to throw the baby out with the bath water? Simply because a model isn’t working doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t minister to adolescents!
What is a more productive outcome than that?
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The move is done!
Today was the last day of our lease at the old place. We really only had two items left that had to be retrieved. We had the base of our yard swing. Kristen loves this thing so I knew we had to get it taken care of right away. And we had our old car. Yeah, the one with the blown engine.
Tonight we went over there to get both. The swing seemed like the easy thing, so we loaded that into the back of the truck, no problem. Next, we charged the battery on the Camry for a while and after about 30 minutes of trying I got it started.
That’s when the race was on. Rather then pay $50 to tow the car I decided to drive it! Now, you need to know two things to appreciate this lunacy. First, we moved from the top of one hill to the top of another. So it was down 400 feet of elevation and back up the other side. (About a mile total) Second, the engine was running on two cylinders. That means there were two other cylinders busted and making huge bangs while the other two chugged along like a lawn mower.
So, down the hill and off we go. The brakes are super soft since I hadn’t driven the car since October. Yeah, big hill and bad brakes. Smart move.
Then, pulling onto University, I hear a nasty sound. As if a busted engine isn’t bad enough, the swing had fallen out of the back of the truck and was being dragged. I kept driving my car go-kart towards the house while Kristen figured out the swing. It was a freaky moment as we go separated. Not good.
I pulled into the bottom part of our neighborhood so I could check on Kristen. She was fine, just getting everything secure. So I started driving up through the streets with my loud banging engine. Driving up a steep hill with full knowledge that your car could stop at any moment is kind of fun. Not only was I trying to snake through my neighborhood, I was keeping an eye out for places to ditch in case I had pull over and call for a tow.
A few minutes later I pulled into our driveway and turned off the engine. A couple minutes after than Kristen arrived.
Kristen and I were giddy in completing our task. We knew we did something dangerous and it came out OK. The kids were nervous about the whole thing but after a few minutes were willing to celebrate with us. I told Paul, “Sometimes to do things adventurous you do it not knowing it’s going to be fine. That makes the adventure more fun.” He told me “OK” but I don’t think he was convinced.
Craziness over? Of course not! I needed to move the car a few feet to the right so we could park next to it in the driveway. Of course, the car wouldn’t start so we had to push it. Yeah, good times right there.
This was one of those nights where we shared a lot of laughs. Most importantly, our move is now officially over.
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St. Patrick’s Day Prayer for Missionaries
Each year I’m shocked that few Christians latch onto Saint Patrick‘s Day as a holiday to celebrate international missions. I think it comes from few people knowing Patrick’s story. They have heard the lore that he scared the snakes out of Ireland but forget the facts. Patrick (of Wales) was trafficked as a boy to Ireland to work for a rich person. Later, he left Ireland and returned home. Through a series of events Patrick became convinced that his life’s mission was to return to the place of his captivity and set spiritual captives free. For the rest of his life he worked tirelessly to establish Christianity on the island. Through some inginuity and fancy friends Patrick was eventually able to help start 500 churches across the once resistant land. As time would tell, Ireland would become the place which “protected” Christianity during the Dark Ages. Luck of the Irish or providence of God? I chose providence!While drunks everywhere salute St. Patrick as the god of Guinness I celebrate him as the example of all believers to chase wildly the call of following Christ wherever you are lead.
With that in mind, here are the missionaries I’ve been lifting up in prayer today. These are the heroes in my life who willingly accept the crazy challenge of changing the world.
– Dan & Barb Evans. My former youth pastor and his wife run a hospitality house for military personnel in Alaska.
– Eric & Michelle Stapleton. Kristen and I have been friends with them since college. They spend their days translating the Bible in a remote area of the island nation of Vanuatu.
Of course, the staff of our church are all missionaries. (They raise support as they plant this church.) Today I’m praying for Stephen & Bradford Phelan, Edgardo & Elizabeth Avila, Christine Brinn, Chris and Anastasia Brewster, and the whole team at World Impact who have joined forces with Harbor.
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Powered by the Letter “I”
Two things dominated our Saturday. Ikea and iPhones.
Actually, on the way to this epic fun we had lunch at In & Out Burger. I’m not a cult-fan of the burger joint but it was quick, easy, and not McDonald’s.
Ikea: There’s a pretty strong irony in our trip yesterday. When we moved across country in August we sold nearly all of our furniture. We had a rule of thumb that if it had been to California and back in 2002 & 2003 it wasn’t going in 2008. Then when we set up the house in August we made a massive trip to Ikea. We packed 4 of those big flatbeds to the gills and crawled our way to the checkout. They even had to break our receipt in half so that their strict delivery rules when get it all delivered.When we moved into the bigger place a few weeks ago we immediately recognized that the bedrooms all needed more stuff. Both kids bedrooms are huge and all they had was a dresser and a loft bed. So back to Ikea we went! We didn’t manage to get everything they needed yesterday. But we did add to each kids room a lamp, desk, and chair. Mom and dad also picked up some end tables, a TV stand for our bedroom, and a patio table for the backyard. It doesn’t look like Ikea has everything we need… so we’ll have to look at our second favorite furniture store, Target.
iPhones: Kristen and I have bounced back and forth on this forever. We didn’t upgrade when 3G released because one of our phones was still under contract. Then I really wrestled with the whole Blackberry vs. iPhone thing, then I decided in December I wanted an iPhone but I didn’t want to make a decision before I saw if Apple was going to release a new version. When Apple released a new Mac Mini, iMac, and Shuffle last week that was my signal that they weren’t rushing anything to production.With that, we headed to Fashion Valley Mall‘s Apple store to make our purchase. Though the store was slammed we were able to find a person who was perfectly happy to help us out. While the in-store activation thing is a bit annoying I can imagine this is the way to go on the macro level for Apple/AT&T. I wrapped things up in the Apple store while Kristen shopped at Crate & Barrel for a new blender. (Thank you community group for the gift card!) I’ll do a full review later for the iPhone 3G, but I will say my initial expectations were exceeded. Before I got to the car I had already synched my phone with my gmail account and installed a Facebook and Twitter app. The hardest part about the set-up was getting my contacts synched between gmail and Address Book on my Macbook. But now I have all of that taken care of and all of my contacts sorted into tidy groups. Next up is getting Kristen’s contacts and my contacts to synch… wouldn’t that be cool? If only it talked to our Highrise account…
We spent most of the evening putting things together from Ikea. Twist, twist, twist, screw gun, screw gun, screw gun. All fairly simply and everyone is happier. We still have a long way to go until everything is put away from this last move but it is progressing nicely and we’ll be hosting a housewarming BBQ some time after Easter.
