I’m performing a wedding this weekend for long-time friend Dave Luke and his fiancee` Justine. Thinking about their engagement and wedding brought back this lovely memory.
I’m not sure Kristen has changed a bit. But I’m glad that zit finally healed up and I got over the Friends look.
I’m a youth pastor, you don’t think I never rocked a goatee at some point, did you?
Good Friday reminds me of this song and this moment for two reasons.
In every community around the United States only about 5-10% of people attend a church on any given weekend. (Easter & Christmas, let’s bump that to 15%.) If you believe that Jesus intended His church as the primary instrument of the Gospel spreading and prevailing in a community… this is a problem we need to deal with.
First, some people question my math. My encouragement, do the math for yourself. In the next hour call every church in your zip code and ask them for last Sunday’s actual attendance. Then divide that by the number the census bureau says lives in that zip code. You’ll see I’m being very generous by saying 5-10%. It is likely 4% or less. Even less when you consider that each church you called probably rounded their numbers up and there are a good number of people who are actually actively involved in 2 or more churches.
I cringe when I see church leaders bash one another. Gluttony, arrogance, and pride are the sins of pop culture Christianity today. Everyone has something smart to say. Everyone thinks their theology or practice or church or worship is somehow morally superior to everyone else’s. When people comment on blogs they say, “I agree with you ___, but I disagree with you ____.” David summed it up well, “In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin.” (Psalm 36:2)
None of us have it 100% right. All of us are equal in our failure to reach more of our community. Save your swagger for going out dancing with your “smoking hot wife” on Friday night. Name the biggest church in the country and then do the math. You’re rocking 25,000 in a metro area of 2 million? (1.25%) You have nothing over a church of 250 in a town of 14,000. (1.78%)
We are all just doing the best we can to figure out how to reach our communities. We should encourage one another– instead of wasting our time lining up to bash people.
Your theology isn’t any better or more perfect than the church across the street. (Within the confines of orthodoxy, of course.) And no one is impressed with your ability to make yourself look intellectually superior. If those theological legs aren’t walking next door to love your neighbors… well, perhaps you’ve made Jesus your hobby and not your Lord?
It’s easy to look at the style of church you like and say, “The world needs more of that.” But the reality is that each community needs all kinds of new churches. We should celebrate rich diversity in the body of Christ as opposed to espousing that one way is ideal and the rest are second best.
We need big megachurch-copying-rip-off-artist churches. We need Jim-and-Tammy-Faye-money-grabbing churches. We need earthy organic churches. We need old-skool-indie-fundy churches. We need go-to-church-to-watch-a-dude-on-TV churches. We need stiff-necked-hymn-loving-Presby churches. We need clothing-sharing-community-development-loving-missional churches. We need almost-disneyland-just-built-a-slide churches. We need honky-tonk-country-music-loving churches. We need hip-hop-driven-urban-family churches. We need big-hat-potluck-loving churches. We need all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people with the love of Christ.
There’s no room to say what kind of church is right and what kind of church is wrong when you are only reaching 5-10% of the population. We just need churches and we just need to reach people!
Churches working together. Churches loving one another. Church leaders choosing to unite. Churches choosing to reconcile age-old problems. Churches sharing resources. Churches sharing staff. Churches coming together for the greater good of the community. Churches flinging the doors open to newfound ethnicities in their community. Churches feeding the poor and caring for widows, orphans, and otherwise needy people. Churches tearing down the walls of their fifedoms for the sake of the spread of God’s Kingdom on earth.
Let’s celebrate and talk about that. Tearing one another apart? I’ve got no time for such worries.
When I tell people that I have never had a student loan and paid for my undergraduate (and the 50% of my graduate) studies out-of-pocket, their jaws drop. It’s true. Kristen and I both earned our bachelors degrees and walked across the stage at graduation debt-free.
It really wasn’t that hard.
And yet, in the last 10 years college has gone from “really expensive” to “ridiculously expensive.”
For instance: I was an undergrad student at Moody Bible Institute in 1994-1995. Total fees paid for room & board, $4200. Same room & board 17 years later? $11,000. $4200– I was able to swing that. I worked full-time during the summer and part-time during school and made it work. $11,000? I don’t see how that is possible today. And that is at a private Christian college which doesn’t charge tuition!
Here’s a quick glance at the current costs of some various undergraduate programs: (looking at in-state, on-campus, with meal plans, etc.)
For most families and almost all students that simply isn’t possible.
There’s an assumption that somehow all of that cost will pay off and that people who go to college will make more in a lifetime than those who don’t. But when you calculate in the cost of education, student loan interest, etc… earning an undergrad degree might not be your quickest path to financial success. Let’s compare two high school seniors. One chooses to be an elementary teacher and the other a plumber.
| Profession | Cost of Education | Interest paid by age 30 (assuming 50% of costs result in loans) | Average salary | Working years until age 30 (assuming you complete the programs on time) | How much money have you grossed by age 30? (pre-tax, after debt) |
| Elementary Teacher | $92,938 | $17,702 | $51,467 | 8 | $301,096 |
| Plumber | $0 | $0 | $58,332 | 11 | $641,652 |
Notes:
Teacher – Bachelors degree only, assuming no years off and getting a job right out of college.
Plumber – 5 year paid apprenticeship averaging $17 per hour; 6 years as a journeyman plumber averaging $40 per hour.
The same is largely true for a lot of professions. It takes so long for the cost of the education to make it worth it, and at the same time people change jobs more often than you’d imagine.
The median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was 4.4 in January 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This measure, referred to as employee tenure, was 4.1 years in January 2008. The increase in tenure among those at work reflects, in part, relatively large job losses among less-senior workers in the most recent recession. — Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor
So there is a good chance that a person is going to go into debt learning a profession they might not work at long enough to make it financially profitable to do so.
This flies in the face of the mantra that college is for everyone. That’s a marketing lie. College isn’t automatically in the best interest of every student.
A sad fact is that a lot of people incur a lot of college debt but don’t complete their degrees nor enter into the profession they were studying in the first place.
I think, as youth workers who care deeply about the lives of our students, we need to help students and their parents find the best solution and not just a mantra that everyone needs to go to college.
The idea that everyone needs to go to college doesn’t make sense on so many levels. Not everyone wants to go to college. Not everyone deserves to go to college because they performed poorly in high school. Not everyone who graduates from high school knows what they want to do. And we don’t live in a society where our economy can support an environment where everyone gets a college degree. (There aren’t enough of those types of jobs, which is why a plumber makes more than a school teacher. Simple supply and demand.)
In fact, I think most students need to take a year off after high school. They need to get free enough from the rigors of high school to ask themselves the question, “Do I even like education? Do I want that? Is it worth my going into debt? Do I even know what I want to do?”
They need to get away from their parents. They need to leave their communities of comfort. They need to get a job. They need to just get the heck out of what they know to find out who they are!
In other words they need to be allowed the space to grow up.
Which is, in my opinion, their parents worst nightmare.
“Well, I’m in if you’re in.”
That was the phrase that began my next season at Youth Specialties. Back in December 2009 I’d been offered the opportunity to stay on with YS after the purchase by YouthWorks. Tic and I exchanged a couple phone calls and texts… and I remember saying to him playfully, “Well, I’m in if you’re in.”
Verbalizing with my lips what was in my head for the very first time I wanted to stay on for the next phase of YS’s history. But I wanted it to be with him at the helm. Everyone knew it was our best chance. Just crazy enough to work. And just crazy enough to be fun, too.
Tic rejoining our team meant a world of difference. Instead of pushing the sled uphill we’d take it to the top of the hill, throw our hands in the air, and gleefully shout “wwwhhheeeee” at the top of our lungs.
Today, Tic announced that he was leaving YS to pursue something he’s always wanted to do but never quite felt called to until now, working for his church. I have mixed emotions about that. On the one hand there’s nothing more important than listening to the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit and obeying. On the other, when this transition period is over I’ll miss his daily presence in my life.
The last 16 months have been a blast. Knowing you are on borrowed time has made the whole thing more precious. (He made it clear from day one that he didn’t intend to stick around forever. Though, like the video points out, we’d all hoped it would be 2-3 more years. God changed the timing!) Each day of gleaning wisdom and knowledge has been a gift. I’ve known it was a gift– and done my very best to savor that gift day-by-day.
That’s not to say that the last 16 months have been super serious. If you know Tic at all you know the last 16 months have been filled with deep moments where you’d cry followed quickly by massive amounts of laughter. One thing I’ve learned from Tic is that it’s OK to be the guy who is a wussy-sissy-cry-baby and also to break the tension by telling a joke that’d make a middle school boy blush.
All this to say, I’m thankful to Tic for the gift of the last 16 months. Coming to YS three years ago I had hopes that I’d get to know Marko and Tic well. Like a lot of youth workers I kind of grew up in ministry looking up to them. And while I never could have predicted that I’d get to know them in this season of their lives, I’m grateful to call them both friends, to have seen their character exhibited again and again in the toughest of circumstances, and to see them chose the right way versus the easy way again and again… the only way I can express it that its been a gift. A gift I am thankful for.
Am I excited for Mark and the future of YS? Absolutely. I’ll have much more on that another day.
(Thanks for asking. I appreciate your love for me and my family.)
I love words. And I love making up words in my head that serve as mantras. This has been the word/phrase rattling around my head for the last few weeks. “I’m Happysadexcitedscaredhopefulangst-tastic.”
I’m happy for Tic.
I’m sad that I won’t get to work with Tic forever.
I’m excited for Mark.
I’m scared for Mark because expectations are crazy like that.
I’m hopeful for the future of YS. I wouldn’t work there if I didn’t think our best days are yet ahead.
I’m angst-tastic because it feels like we’re leaving the dock of what we know to sail into the Sea of Unknown once again.
A few months back we had some meetings at work. And by “some meetings” I mean we were in meetings from Monday – Thursday more than 8 hours per day.
All throughout the week, one member of our team asked us, “Why do we do what we do?”
I wasn’t sure what this person meant by it. And since it was often randomly inserted into the conversation I wasn’t sure how the question fit.
But on the last day– at the last moment– the question was asked more insistently. “I need to know why we do this? Why do we do what we do?” It was unavoidable. We all were going to be forced to tell the group why we do what we do. We personalized it and went around the room answering the question, “Why do I do what I do?”
It was a powerful conclusion to the week. I’m really glad we finally made the time to answer the question.
The truth is that its a very important question. It doesn’t matter if your a plumber, a surgeon, the President of the United States, or you are me… what motivates you to do what you do is vitally important to who you are.
My community group reminds me that I live at the unique intersection of a job I love, working with people I love, and I get paid enough to take care of my family. Not many people in the world can claim all three.
With that said, it doesn’t mean that my life is without heartache or challenges. While I may live at that rare vocational crossroads I am still human. I have moments of weakness. And I’m often left running back to the bedrock question, “Why do I do what I do?”
In those self-doubting moments, when I question myself, I go back to my motivations. These are some of the core reasons I do what I do:
No matter what happens… Those are some of the reasons I do what I do. Even before I was on staff at YS… most of those were true. (That helps too, I did much of this even before I got paid to do it!)
I don’t think it’s all that important that I shared these things today. Except for the fact that I hope that you can find the time to search yourself for your own motivations. Things will happen in your life that will rattle you to the core of who you are. Sometimes life shakes so hard all you can do is cling to the 1-2 endearing facts that keep you from giving up.
It will be worth it for you, for your long-term effectiveness, and for the trajectory of your life if you’d make time to drill down into the profound simplicity of this question:
Why do you do what you do?
Back in college I had a job managing a group of machine operators. Part of my job was to make sure that the materials for the equipment were easily available to my team so that they could keep the machines running as much as possible. I taught my team to think of the machine as a cash register. When it stopped running the company stopped making money. With that simple mindset we were extremely efficient.
Our materials came from various sources around the world, I purchased in bulk through a series of middle men, then stored the materials in our warehouse. In our department, we kept a small quantity and I would order replacement items on a regular basis and a different department would go get what I needed and bring it near our area of the warehouse and we would put stuff away.
Typically, this was a smooth operation. But sometimes, like on a weekend or over a holiday, I would have to go out into the warehouse and get my own materials.
Our stuff was densely heavy. So, I would take apart skids of materials on their shelves and put what I needed onto a very heavy hand cart one item at a time. Then I’d push as much as 1 ton of materials and put them away in our room.
This cart was really cool in it’s simplicity. It had big steel wheels, heavy wood, and a massive steel bar for pushing or pulling.
You know what was interesting about that cart? I could put thousands of pounds of materials on it, give it a big shove, and then walk along with it along the smooth concrete exerting very little effort. It took way more energy to stop it and start it than it did to just keep it going in a straight line.
To keep that cart under control you had to find the right speed and apply an even amount of force. If you did that it was fine. If you didn’t apply enough force consistently you ended up working way too hard. But if you got going too fast… you would be out of control and you might not actually be able to stop it.
I always feared that someone would walk out in front of me and I wouldn’t be able to stop the cart before it hit them. That never happened. But one of my co-workers did hit a very large steel post (buried in concrete) and bent it severely.
That is physics in action. A giant mass doesn’t need to go very fast to apply a large amount of force against a stationary object.
It is also a lesson in how momentum works. In order to keep moving with the least amount of effort, you have to apply a steady amount of force.
I think the cart taught me a lesson way back that is easily applied to stuff I do today.
When I reflect on things that are out of control in my life… maybe I’m misapplying force? Maybe I’m going too slow and working to hard as a result? Maybe I’m going too fast and changing directions is just too difficult? And maybe I’m just not patient/disciplined enough to walk at the right pace or applying the right level of direction?
Too often, I have an attitude that I can do everything at once RIGHT NOW and all the time. And that means that things sometimes get out of control. Sadly, it also means that sometimes people get hurt.
The key to the cart working in the warehouse is that there’s very little friction between the steel wheels and the smooth concrete. That’s why its so important to keep the floor of a warehouse clean. Outside of the warehouse, friction is the variable in the equation that is not always under my control. In order to maintain momentum, I need to constantly monitor and deal with sources friction.
Sometimes I watch a YouTube video or read a news story and I wonder…
Contest: Write a fake Craigslist ad for the gig featured in the video above. Make me laugh. Make me cry. Make me wince in pain. Just make it good.
Rules: Keep it PG-13 or below. No more than 2 entries per person. I’ll narrow it down to 3 finalists on Monday and run a poll to pick the winner.
Prize: $25 USD Amazon gift card. (If I get a lot of entries, maybe I’ll find more prizes.)
Have you ever tried to teach Holy week? It can be confusing to nail down the chronology. Looking at the narrative and laying it out against what we celebrate reveals that we might not be counting the days exactly the way the four Gospel writers counted days.
So what’s the problem? That all makes sense in the narrative once you work it out.
The problem is that our written and oral tradition says that Jesus rose on the “third day.”
The way we say (sing, read, write songs, print Easter cards) “three days later” would be Saturday, Sunday… Monday. That would imply that three days after Jesus died would be Monday, not Sunday morning.
It’s confusing. So confusing that you find this story in today’s USA Today.
As Christians worldwide prepare to celebrate Easter, they will follow a familiar chronology: Jesus was crucified on Good Friday and rose from the dead on “the third day,” in the words of the ancient Nicene Creed.
But if Jesus died at 3 p.m. Friday and vacated his tomb by dawn Sunday morning — about 40 hours later — how does that make three days? And do Hebrew Scriptures prophesy that timetable?
Even Pope Benedict XVI wrestles with the latter question in his new book, Jesus: Holy Week, about Christ’s last days. “There is no direct scriptural testimony pointing to the ‘third day,’” the pope concludes. read the rest
The article goes on to propose how 40 hours can be called three days.
Literalist – It’s 3 days because they counted Friday as Jesus died before sunset.
Figurative – In those days “three days later” was a phrase of inexact length. Kind of like “See you in a few days.“
Either one of those are fine with me. They both make sense.
But here’s my last difficulty with calling it Holy Week. If Holy Week starts on Palm Sunday and ends on Easter Sunday… it’s really eight days so it should be called “Holy Weeks.”
No matter how you look at it, if Palm Sunday is included that’s two weeks!
If you want to blow your mind today– check out the Wikipedia page on weeks. 5 day weeks, 10 day weeks… 3 day weeks! There’s a lot of ways to divide 365 days.
Last night, our high school ministry night met. We were down a couple of adults and up a few students. Actually, the night felt right at that balance between “out-of-control” and “in control” that is some of the secret sauce of youth ministry.
As I struggled to push my table group through a Bible study they clearly weren’t interested in I was feeling a little heart tug in a couple of directions:
Instead, I decided to just let it ride. We half-pushed our way through and half-let them stay easily distracted and unsatisfied. I resisted the urge to either side.
I’ll never know if I did the right thing or the wrong thing. But I do know I came home deflated and frustrated. Again.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the purpose of Tuesday nights in our group’s life. On the one hand, we want to “keep it real” and be authentically who we are. But my problems aren’t their problems. And my students already deal with more crap than they can work through in a lifetime. So I’m not sure “being authentic” about a lot of stuff is very helpful.
Nearly all of my students have spent some time in foster care. Nearly all of my students have at least one member of family member who struggles with drug addiction. Only 1-2 students have a dad in their lives. More than half have experienced some level of physical or sexual abuse. Most scrape by academically.
At 15 years old most of them have lived a lifetime of grief.
At the same time they deal with all of the normal pressures, temptations, realities, and burdens of being a high school student.
They don’t want to keep it more real. They want to keep it less real.
Maybe instead of dealing with the realities of life… Tuesday night should be an escape from all of that?
When you desperately need a new life “being authentic” just feels like you get dragged back into the quick sand you’ve just escaped.
Maybe Tuesday night would be better if it were kind of an other world experience? A healthy escapism? A place that intentionally disoriented students from their own reality and allowed them to escape to another reality for a night? A place in which at some point, on the way home, they questioned… was that even real?
Maybe youth group should be more of an escape? Sure, one on one or in small groups or in other high trust situations… we can go there and deal with that stuff. But when we gather as a large group I’m questioning the value of creating an authentic experience when a fantasy one is so much more desirable.
For discussion: I’ve used my own group as an example. But the reality is, youth ministry-wide, the pendulum has swung back and forth about youth group nights as a whole, about the youth worker being more authentic with their struggles, about sharing in small groups about life stuff vs. Bible study groups, etc. What do you think? Is it more useful for students to have a place of deep authenticity? Or is it more useful for students to have a place of escape to play, worship, and laugh?