Month: July 2007

  • Walls… building or tearing down?

    I’ve been watching Bill Bowles trip around the world on his blog almost every day. I am continually impressed that he can produce and release a video a day from all over the planet. Some are fun and some are serious, but most are just fascinating. OK, so the Beer Run one from today is both fascinating and fun.

    But every once in a while Bill does something truly remarkable. This post from the Great Wall is brilliant. The question he poses is something that I hope this generation addresses. Gang, Jesus is all about justice… but are his people?

  • I’ve been busy today

    What I’m about to say won’t sound too impressive.

    But I’ve spent most of this week, today especially, moving church websites to our new webhost. Here are two that area completely on a new host. I’d tell you to update your feed readers… but no one had subscribed to them.

    RomeoKids.com
    LightForceministries.com

    If you’ve been to those sites in the last 2 months you’ll know that not much has changed. I didn’t say this was a big sexy (no reference to our church van) move, but I did move all the data and where the domains are pointing. It’s a nice improvement and I can now put that on my list.

    As I was doing this today I decided I’m going to add a feature to YMX Hosting. For $25 I’ll set-up a Word Press blog, customize a template, set-up the site feed, and pretty much get it ready to "just blog."

    (more…)

  • Fighting the Elongation of Adolescence

    As long as I’ve studied adolescents and been doing youth ministry I’ve heard talk of "the elongation of adolescence."

    That’s a fancy sociology term for saying, Kids grow up slow these days. Not all kids, but most, are being more dependent on their parents longer.

    A Quick Disclaimer: This has more to do with books and articles I am reading than individuals I know.

    Some causes

    • Parents don’t want their kids to grow up. They don’t enter adolescence with Bill Cosby’s goal of kicking them out… so they never raise adolescents to move out.
    • Kids are happy to accept luxuries without paying for it. It sickens me that parents just foot the bill for adult children. (By adult, I mean those who are old enough to live on their own and pay their own way.) They pay for their college, they give them spending money, they give them a cell phone, pay for their car, feed them, clothe them, and basically treat them like royalty. Honestly… why would you move out if you are waited on hand and foot? Think of all the free stuff you would lose if you moved out!
    • Parents are too nice. Just so we are clear… parents are not under obligation (Legally, morally, or spiritually) to provide for their children indefinitely! It’s not doing your children a favor to tell them "just concentrate on school and I’ll take care of the rest." The result is an unemployable and lazy, overeducated child who will live in your house and sponge off of you until you die. Imagine the interview of your adult child when they are a fresh graduate from college! "I‘ve never worked, I can’t do my own laundry, and I don’t really need this job because everything will be OK. My parents will make sure I don’t starve, they’ll buy me clothes, pay my bills, pay my car insurance, let me live rent free, and even give me money to go on vacation." Would you hire this person? I wouldn’t. I want to hire people who are hungry to work hard and have demonstrated hard work.
    • There is no allure of marriage. Think about it. Why get married? Take away the sex and companionship… and there is no reason for a young adult to get married anytime soon.
    • No urgency to grow up. No one expects an 18-19 year old to be an adult. We become shocked when 18-19 year olds want to act like adults! We even freak out a bit about it, don’t we? It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy.

    Some possible solutions

    (more…)

  • Sarcasm and Geniuses

    Paul, not quite 4, has taken an interest in learning math. This week he’s worked hard on addition and subtraction. While he is still very young I am excited that my little boy is showing a sincere interest in learning. (Spurred on by a mommy who loves reading and going to the library.)

    Dunce
    Megan, just turned 6, is starting to pick up the McLane communication structure.     Yesterday when Paul and Bradley were acting foolish Kristen jokingly called them "geniuses" and Megan instantly picked up on the sarcasm. All day long Kristen and Megan shared the joke that the boys were geniuses.

    I am a very sarcastic person. I try to keep it under control as I know a lot of people don’t like my humor and some even consider it rude. I remember Kristen struggled with my sarcasm when we first met and I kept telling her "wait until you meet my family and then you will see real sarcasm." Sarcasm is a communication trait in our family. It’s probably the one thing we all truly share.

    I think for me, sarcasm is just how I coped with things growing up. It was so much easier to laugh things off than to get swallowed in the circumstances.

    And for my kids, I think sarcasm is purely learned behavior. My kids are going to be sarcastic because Kristen learned it from me and I am sarcastic.

    Conversely, I think our kids are also picking up the family trait of curiosity for learning. We are all constantly reading, digging, innovating, and trying to discover something new.

  • Draught

    How come no one wants to use this term? The Romeo area has to be more than 6 inches behind on rain. People who haven’t watered their lawn are now experiencing dormancy and people who do water are having to do so nearly daily.

    How come no one wants to use the word drought? I’ve not heard it on the news or anywhere. How come Al Gore isn’t marching around telling everyone it’s the result of global warming? How come some idiot isn’t on the God channel telling everyone it’s the result of too many gays in Michigan?

    Obviously, this isn’t NorCal and we’re used to getting regular rain showers in the summertime.

    Growing up in Indiana I remember the farmers and all locals talking every year about too much rain or too little rain. They were quick to use terms to label the season. But around here, I talked to one farmer who is excited there isn’t much rain. "Less grass to cut" he told me.

    Huh.

  • why bother changing?

    I’ve not heard this direct quote, but I’ve put it together enough to know that some people in Light Force are wondering "Why bother changing? We’ve got a good thing going!"

    It’s true. Light Force has gone fairly well. But I don’t think it’s gone well enough.

    Why bother changing?How do you know changing things is worth it?

    Because lost people are worth reaching… even if it costs a lot. Because somewhere, sometime someone thought I was worth reaching. Because somewhere, sometime, someone got out of their comfort zone because they thought you were worth reaching.

    With that in mind, who isn’t worth reaching?

    I personally believe every person is worth leaving our comfort zone to reach out to. And I believe every story is important enough to, at least, hear. So… that is why we’re bothering to change.

    In my opinion, why bother staying the same?

  • Will it Blend? iPhone

    This post isn’t really a statement about what I think of the iPhone. I just wonder if Tom Dickinson had to pay for the service that goes with this badboy for 2 years or not? And something tells me he paid for the "bumper to bumper" cell phone protection.

  • Monday Exchange

    Monday_promo_logo_smallWe started a promotion yesterday that I think is pretty sweet. Each Monday we’re going to give away a FREE resource for youth workers. It’s not always going to be fancy and as much as we’d like to give everyone iPhones, our giveaways will always be downloadable.

    Here is a link to the free resource page at YMX.

    Here is a link to subscribe to our feed    … get our stuff delivered to your RSS reader so you’ll never miss it.

    Here’s a link to our email subscriptions… you’ll get our stuff delivered to your inbox.

    Our first downloadable is a bucket full of permission slips and commonly used forms for youth group.

  • No More Wimpy Church

    Alright, this is pretty funny and cool. Mark Driscoll is the teaching pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA and the founder of Acts 29 church plant movement. What’s interesting to me is that he’s not alone in this sentiment. There are a lot of people asking "the church" to get more masculine. I went to a session at NYWC in Cincinnati last fall essentially saying the same thing about youth ministry… How do you think you’re going to attract young men? By doing stuff that would get them labeled as gay? I don’t think so.

    question: For those who go to church… do you agree with Mark’s sentiment that we tend to make church for chicks? If so, what can we do to change that? If you don’t think so, how come?
    HT to Bobby Williams (aka B Dub)

  • Nigerian Scam

    I’ve now encountered several people who have been tempted by the Nigerian Scam or 419 or it’s official name, the Advance fee fraud. Here’s how it looks:

    You receive and email that says, "My husband is dying of cancer in London, he is a rich oil executive from Nigeria. I am in need to transfer $40,000,000 to a US Citizen upon his death. Blah blah blah."

    Why does something that looks so much like a scam fool so many  very intelligent people?

    1. People aren’t very sophisticated internet users. I hope that doesn’t come off as rude, but the average internet user isn’t as sophisticated at sniffing out a scam via email as they would be in their mailbox at home.
    2. This capitalizes on something in our culture. We all would like to believe that we can get rich quick. We want to get something we haven’t earned… heck, some of us secretly hold out hope that they are really royalty and it’s just a matter of time before the truth is known and we assume our throne!

    The reality is that the Nigerian scam is just that… a scam. The money is never going to come. You aren’t going to get rich. All you’ll ever do is feel foolish and support gangs of scammers in foreign lands. Again… this isn’t something I know about in theory, it’s something people here in Romeo are tempted with.

    In light of this, here is a great article from Back to the Bible that addresses this from a spiritual angle. I love this quote.


    While
    true Christians may stop short of extortion and robbery, the pursuit of wealth
    can easily become the focal point of their lives. Our society, especially in
    the United States,
    encourages us to make the acquisition of money and things all-important. According to Nancy Beach, director of programming
    and a teaching pastor at Willow Creek
    Community Church
    in South Barrington, Illinois,
    "In the United States alone, the advertising
    industry spends over six billion dollars a day. The result is that envy is
    pervasive, and far too many of us live in a perpetual state of longing."