Author: Adam McLane

  • My blogging process

    Photo by m-c via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Posting something almost daily at adammclane.com is a challenge. So I thought it’d be fun to write about that process. Perhaps this will provide an insight into my daily life or maybe it’ll even help someone figure out a new process for them?

    Three main sources of my daily post

    1. I wake up and have something on my mind to write about.
    2. Pre-planned posts.
    3. Rants.

    Typically, I write in the morning. I leave for work at 8:00 AM and I often start writing at about 6:30 AM. Most days I am literally pressing the publish button, hopping in the shower, and dashing off to work!

    1. For stuff I write in the morning.
    These are my journal posts. They tend to ramble more. These are also posts that I mostly write because I have to or the thought will take over my day. It’s hard to explain that, but I think I’ve disciplined myself to wake up thinking about something. There’s definitely a spiritual discipline side to it as well. I’m going on 6 years of daily public blogging… so it’s probably as much a habit as a discipline. But I really dig getting up early to write. And the pressure of having to finish by a certain time helps. (Donald Miller has a great post about using a timer to blog)

    2. For stuff I pre-plan.
    I’m a doodler. And if you’ve spent time with me you’ve probably seen me listen to something, or finish a conversation, and pull out my iPhone to take notes. (I also carry a notebook for this and use Post-its for the same purpose.) I use Evernote to organize that mess into a list. I have one ever-edited note called “blog posts” which is simply a list of things I want to blog about at some point. Some of those items on the list have partial posts that match… these are things I doodle while in meetings, sitting in church, on the trolley, or in a plane. Some of them are just main ideas, some of them are fully edited posts, and some are pictures of things I’ve doodled in my notebook.

    Sidenote: Almost every morning I look at that list and decide do I want to write about something on the list or something on my mind? If I chose to write something on my list instead of what is on my mind, I always make sure to capture a couple sentences of that thing have on my mind for a later post.

    3. Rants
    Rants are a healthy part of the blogger diet. The part of ranting that I’ve tried to eliminate from my blogging diet is the immediate rant. (That’s blogger junk food!) I used to allow something to fire me up and then I’d write a scathing response. Bam, done. My new self-imposed rule is that I don’t publish a rant right away. Instead, I prefer to allow it to sit in Evernote for a while and add it to my list of things to blog about. Then, when I’ve had some time to reflect, I can decide when to publish the rant as well as how I want to edit it. Some of my most popular posts of all time started as rants, fermented, and got re-edited to something else. But a good rant is fun and I let ’em fly on occasion.

    Other types of posts

    There are a couple of genres of blog posts I didn’t include here. These are my more spontaneous posts. Book reviews, family updates, and video posts. There’s not much pre-planning or  deep thought that goes into them. Which is why I typically publish them on weekends or when I’m on the road. And the truth about those posts is that they are more meaningful to me than they are to the reader.

  • This Too Shall Pass

    Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

    HT to PJ

  • I have the same problem with my Porshe

  • Ministry Beyond Behavior Modification

    Photo by philippe leroyer via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    How do you know if Jesus is changing a person’s life?

    How do you know if “your seeds” have landed in “fertile soil?”

    How do you know if the faith a high school student exhibits will stick into college and beyond?

    How do you know if a student is ready to be a student leader?

    We all want something to measure and we tend to measure the easy and obvious stuff.

    Confession Time

    Most youth workers label behavior modification as spiritual growth. That’s how they measure success. “The kids in my ministry sin less than kids who don’t attend.”

    Of course, that’s a load. You’ve probably merely succeeded at making kids religious so that they repress. Which is hardly helpful for development.

    If you’re new in youth ministry let me offer you this little fast forward on your growth as a leader. Behavior modification/sin management doesn’t change hearts. Don’t believe me? Just read the Old Testament. Jesus’ incarnation wasn’t to teach us how to manage sin among religious people. Jesus’ ministry gave up on sin management in order to win hearts.

    Your youth ministry should be about winning hearts for the long haul– not short term behavior management.

  • The plot and sub-plot of every youth group meeting

    Youth group meets every Wednesday evening at 7:00 PM. And every Wednesday night at 7:00 PM a cast of characters arrives on scene. Each character is three-dimensional. And each character is coming to youth group for their own reasons.

    Every Wednesday there is a plot and a series of sub-plots. And it looks something like this.

    Style: Drama

    The plot: Youth group has an agenda. The youth leader picks a topic for the night and has themed everything around it. In tonight’s play, we’re talking about worship. Everything that we’ll do is targeted at the agenda. What is worship? How can I worship? Why should I worship? Let’s worship together. Worship-themed games. And a wall where we’ll write our own definition of worship.

    This is the plot the youth worker, Adam, needs for the night to feel like a success. This agenda must win over everything. Why? The youth worker is in charge, duh.

    The main characters: Here’s a list of fictional characters for youth group, along with what their plot is on Wednesday.

    Ted: Ted was in the parking lot when the youth leader arrived. He’s thrilled it’s Wednesday night because the last thing he wants to do is be home. Ted’s sister is two years older and teases him constantly. That may not be a big deal, but Ted is sick of being teased. He comes to youth group because its a safe place for him to hang out. He’s got a couple of friends who come, too.

    Ted’s sub-plot for Wednesday night is that he needs to feel loved somewhere. He doesn’t get that at home. And he’s not sure if the church can make him feel loved… but his new girlfriend sure is making him feel loved. So if he’s not feeling it this Wednesday, he probably won’t come next week.

    Linda: She just wants to make it in the room. She’s been crying off and on all day. Not like in a dramatic way… but in a “I need to go to the bathroom” kind of way. Linda doesn’t know what to do because she is about 5 days late and might be pregnant. She doesn’t want to tell Mario because she knows he’ll freak. Her eyes are sore from crying and she’s completely on edge. She told Jill, Mary, and Christy what was up because they go to youth group with her and love her.

    Linda’s sub-plot is she’s freaked out because she isn’t sure if she’s pregnant or not. And she doesn’t even want to think about what would happen if she really is. That’d cause drama in every corner of her life. Youth group, school, and especially home. Yikes, her mom doesn’t even know she’s having sex. And the youth leader, Adam, that dude doesn’t have a clue. And she might just slap Margaret. That kid is so happy and she had the nerve to ask her on Facebook why she’s been a bitch all day. That kid doesn’t have a clue.

    Margaret: She’s everybody’s best friend. At least she thinks she is. She calls everyone each Wednesday after school to make sure they come to youth group. She helps lead worship, she helps Adam plan youth group activities, and when she isn’t getting straight As at school she is doing pretty good on the soccer team. Her home life is meh, but it doesn’t seem to faze her. Sure, her parents are getting a divorce, but God is in control, right? Plus, Adam and the other youth group leaders come to her soccer games– they are the only family she needs.

    Margaret’s sub-plot is tat she wants the night to be awesome. Youth group has made a big difference in her life, she knows she is loved and safe, and she feels like if people will just give it their all, they will all love Wednesday nights and the youth group will really start to grow.

    Mario: Mario loves coming to youth group. It’s silly, it’s fun, he learns a lot. He likes learning about God. For the first time in his life he feels like the stuff about God is making sense. He hasn’t told Adam yet, but at the retreat he prayed the prayer and has been reading his Bible every day. Speaking of the retreat, for the last 2-3 months since the retreat… he’s been giving Linda a ride home from church. It’s kind of funny because everybody knows they are going out but no one really suspects anything.

    Mario’s sub-plot is that he looks forward to youth group on Wednesday night so he can see his friends, learn about Jesus, and give Linda a ride home. He knows it’s crazy… but they’ve had sex on the way home every Wednesday for like 9 weeks. There’s no way he’d miss a Wednesday night. No not ever.

    Carrie: Carrie is really quiet on Wednesday nights. She comes a few minutes late, brings her Bible, and just kind of goes through the motions. She comes to everything, loves Adam’s teaching, and just likes youth group because its a distraction from her home life.

    Carrie’s sub-plot is that she comes on Wednesday night to get away from a verbally abusive home. Nothing she does is good enough for her parents. She feels unloved and youth group is the only place she feels safe. But no one at youth group would know that because she’s terrified to tell the truth about her dad, the pastor.

    Jill, Mary, and Christy: They’ve spent the whole day praying Linda isn’t pregnant. Well, they were praying when they weren’t asking their friends if they should tell a teacher or Adam. So now they feel a little guilty that about 200 people at school know Linda might be pregnant but that doesn’t really matter because if she is… everyone needs to know anyway, right? And if she isn’t pregnant than those 200 people will know that prayer works.

    Their agenda is that all they can think about is their friend Linda and her uterus. They are just going to play along tonight and not say anything. And then they are going to go home and Facebook chat about it some more.

    Adam: Adam just wants Wednesday night to be over with. He’s super tired and had a bad day. Staff meeting went way late. He couldn’t find the ingredients for the game he wants to play. And he’s annoyed that the elders are thinking about cutting his budget to go to NYWC this Fall. Adam got rushed through preparation because he was dealing with a problem between a parent and a former student who is now in college… like all day Tuesday. Adam thinks his lesson plan is solid and that this is what God wants him to teach. But he’s really frustrated that the students just don’t seem as into it since the retreat.

    Adam’s agenda is to be faithful to the plan. His gut is telling him there’s a lot going on with his students but the truth is, there’s a lot going on in his life, too. So Adam just wants tonight to be over with so he can go home and watch some TV he’s DVRed and see his kids before they go to sleep. He’s really frustrated, too. Since the retreat there’s been a lot of apathy among the students. Which is weird, it seemed like everything at the retreat went so well?

    What’s the point of the story: A lot of time in youth ministry we think that the plot of our lesson plan is the real story of our ministry. We go home feeling great if the lesson went well and kids seemed engaged in the plot. But when you look at all the sub-plots coming on Wednesday night– you see God is waiting for someone to intervene– and we go home frustrated because our gut tells us it could have gone better and we just don’t have a clue why. Sadly, we allow the plot to override what our students desperately need.

    Students are bringing the mess of their lives to the church and asking, “Can God help me with ____?“ And we’re answering that question by distracting them with games, music, and a lesson that isn’t answering their biggest question.

  • Now on Kindle

    Just a quick note that adammclane.com is now available on Kindle. I’m free for 14 days.

    Here’s the link

  • The Good News is You

     

     

     

    Giant slice of lasagna
    Photo by Gone-Walkabout via Flickr (Creative Commons)

     

    Have you ever stopped to think that Good News is brought through you?

    Sometimes I wonder if our ideal theology is a bit larger than the practical theology God is actually calling us to do?

    We think global while God is likely thinking local. We get so lost in the vastness of our calling to change the world that we lose sight of being good news to our block, next door neighbor, or even our house.

    Back when I was a kid sometimes I’d order something at a restaurant that was simply more than I could eat. The waitress would bring this massive plate of lasagna and my eyes would get big. As I readied my fork, mouth watering, anticipating the first bite– reality would set in. My dad would say, “Looks like your eyes are bigger than your stomach.”

    Of course it was true. I had ordered a massive portion and my dad had amused me by letting me get it and thinking I could finish it. But he knew from the get-go that there wasn’t a chance I could polish off such a tall order. I’d try but ultimately there would be more meal than would fit in my stomach. When I had finally given up and pushed the half full plate away in defeat my dad would repeat the same phrase with a smile, “Looks like your eyes were bigger than your stomach.”

    The same is true with our desires to change the world, isn’t it? Sometimes we order such a big portion that we barely make a dent. We push away the plate and give up– and our Heavenly Father knowingly smiles and reminds us that our eyes were bigger than our appetite.

    Perhaps the smarter thing is to order a portion we can tackle?

  • Tide pool fun

    This is why Cabrillo National Monument is one of our favorite places to go in San Diego County.

    We made 3 videos as well. 1 2 3

  • 5 Things Leaders Do

    Image by Jean-François Chénier via Flickr (Creative Commons)
    1. Drive people around them nuts
    2. Piss off critics
    3. Take you places you would/could never go on your own
    4. Care deeply about the goal, but even more about the people under care
    5. Celebrate victories

    I think the opposite it true, as well. I know someone isn’t really a leader if they…

    1. Are laid back about their work
    2. Worry about what critics say
    3. Talk a lot of crap, but don’t ultimately take you anywhere you couldn’t go on your own
    4. Care more about the goal than the people under care
    5. Worry more about the next goal than celebrating a victory

    I don’t know about your world. But in my world everyone calls themselves a leader. These are some criteria I use to tell the fakes from the for-reals. What are your criteria?

  • It only takes 10 givers to fund a church

    People don’t like to talk money and the church. It makes people instantly think of TV evangelists.

    And while those TV evangelists swindled millions out of well-meaning, hard-working Americans, the truth is that 99% of churches are great places and not full of crooks.

    I have an encouragement for my friends just entering their 30s, you’re finally hitting the earning power to make a difference in your church.

    Here’s something that may be news to you: It only takes about 10 solid givers for a small-to-medium-sized church to stay solvent.

    Working for a small church this was clear. 6-7 core “giving units” provided a solid foundation of giving on which our monthly budget was built. We didn’t really know who they were but we were thankful for their faithfulness. But the $200-$500 a week they each gave weekly was the difference between the staff having a heart attack about the budget and knowing we’d at least make payroll! And, of course, people beyond that core group gave substantially too which made all the difference in the world for doing more than making payroll. Yet the fact remained that without those 6-7 anonymous folks we would have been in deep trouble.

    Now, I’m sure $200-$500 per week seems unattainable. You’re saying that’s a lot of money! In some parts of the country $800/month is more than the mortgage. So you’ll have to do the math to figure out what that translates to in your local economy.

    But here’s the point: These weren’t a special breed of super-givers. These were regular Joe’s and Mary’s. The median family income in that part of Michigan was about $60,000. That meant the median family brought home about $800/week after taxes. ($80/week if they tithed) Yet most of the folks in our church had professional jobs which paid much, more than that. All of a sudden you realize… the 6-7 families funding a big chunk of the church are really just average professionals tithing about 10% of what they brought home.

    That’s where you come in. If just 5% of the church actually tithed, your church could stay solvent. I don’t mean they’d be in great shape. I just mean that 5-10 solid givers per hundred forms the foundation of giving for your church.

    And if you are wise with your money you can be one of them soon.

    Again, that may seem impossible. But if you got serious for the next 6-12 months on reducing your debt load you will be able to give a lot more. And while most people in their early-mid thirties are just starting to dig their way out of mountains of credit card debt, college loans, car loans, and the fat part of a mortgage… as they do that they are discovering they can have a lot more giving power.

    It only takes 10 givers to fund a church. The question is simply– Do you want to be one of them?