Category: Harbor Mid-City

  • The Dogpile Effect

    Photo by John Shardlow via flickr (Creative Commons)

    Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you.

    1 Thessalonians 4:9-11

    We live in a dog pile society. Everyone has an opinion on everything. Their own opinion is superior to everyone else’s. And nothing gets us talking faster than repeating or adding to someone else’s opinion.

    It’s the dog pile effect. It takes a mountain, makes a molehill, then it makes Mt. Everest. All in the name of “just talking.”

    As if the collateral damage was worth it?

    The annoying thing about the whole dog pile method is that, at the end of the day, it’s typically over things we don’t actually care about or effect us.

    And while we all join in, and get injured by, the dog pile– we do it to other people! (It’s true that hurt people, hurt people.)

    National politics? Office politics? Denominational politics? Church politics? Sure, I’m up on the news but I don’t really care enough to say… hurt a friends feelings by saying his opinion is stupid.

    The bottom of the dog pile hurts

    Broken bones. Broken dreams. Broken lives.

    It doesn’t matter if you’re a big, fancy nationally known person or the guy handing out flyers at the grocery store. When criticism mounts, when accusations fly, when things get repeated to the point that it’s assumed to be true even before you take a serious second to think… all of that adds weight to the dog pile.

    Stop it

    O, that we would be different! That we would seek to understand before volleying an opinion. That we would differ in opinions in a way that honored, loved even, others.

    There are things in this world that are worth destroying. But one another is not one of them.

  • To the mountaintop

    I’m a dreamer. I like to dream big dreams for myself. But I really like to dream big dreams for the students in our ministry. So when Kathy gave me the opportunity to paint a big picture and ask big questions as we start off this Fall in our high school ministry, I jumped at it!

    When I look at the transfiguration in Mark 9, I am left asking… How do I get to the mountaintop with Jesus? I want to be there! What do I have to do to be there and see what God sees?

    And what is it about God and mountaintops?

    Click the link below to download my talk notes

    [download id=”9″]

  • 3 Things I Love About My Community Group

    When Stephen asked us to host a small group at our house, one week after attending Harbor Mid-City for the first time, we begrudgingly agreed. In fact, when he told us that Harbor was a church consisting of a few community groups… we were skeptical.

    My faith in small groups had been shaken. I was pretty close to making the statement public that I’d felt for a while… “Small groups don’t work.” Most of my adult life I had either lead a teen small group or adult small group and they had always functioned but never “worked” quite like the books on small groups said they would. We had always met, done some sort of Bible Study, prayed for one another, shared food and some laughs– and that was it. The community thing never happened. The caring for one another or feeling connected… it never happened. Those groups were functional and great, but left me longing for that small group experience everyone talked about in the books.

    I wondered if small groups were a myth!

    Then I met these people. I don’t know how else to explain it but our group just gelled and it’s been a great group from our first meeting. Here’s a few things that I love about having the group at our house each Monday night:

    1. We keep the agenda in check. The agenda is that we’re in community together. There is likely a church agenda. Probably that we’d talk about the Sunday sermon or that we’d pray for one another. And sometimes those agendas converge while other times they don’t. Our group has done everything from adopting a refuge family to watching Monday Night Football. Most often we get together and talk about the past weeks message and pray for one another. We’ve had incredibly deep conversations and we’ve had a chili cook-off. I actually think the magical component that has made our group work is keeping the community agenda the only important agenda while keeping all the other agendas in check.
    2. We’re game for “one another.“ The core people of this group hasn’t changed that much in the last 12 months. In that time we’ve welcomed probably 25 different people who’ve come and gone. That really is how small groups go. Heck, that’s how churches roll! I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but this group has really taken care of one another.
    3. We don’t take ourselves very seriously. Last Monday, we spent about 10 minutes joking about the name of the restaurant we’re having lunch at on Sunday, Pho King. (Pho is a Vietnamese soup meal, pronounced “fu,” exactly like the first half of the F word.) We talk about serious things. We have serious moments. But laughter and hilarity are always within reach.

    Each Monday, on my way home, I think to myself… “I’m glad it’s Monday.” This little group has been a testament that small groups can work.

  • Support Holistic Youth Ministry in San Diego

    kathy-phamI’m a part of a team at my church trying to figure out how to create a holistic youth ministry right here in San Diego. What exactly is a holistic youth ministry? Well, we don’t know just yet! But our vision is to architect a ministry that is good news to the urban working poor students in our neightborhood. We know that in our neighborhood we can just talk about good news, we have to bring good news to them. So our ministry will be teaching the Bible, aggressively sharing our faith, providing academic support, family services, and based on what we’ve heard from the first 3 weeks of our ministry… some sort of justice seeking mission. (Helping to right wrongs caused by oppressive situations, manipulative landlords, harsh government officials, and other fun things like that!)

    Obviously, I’ve got a full time job already. (As do the other 3 people volunteering) And getting something like this off the ground is a Herculian task. That’s why I’m stoked that our church has brought on Kathy Pham to lead this project that is crazy enough to change the world. She came here first as a summer mission intern– but we begged her to stay and transform those relationships with high school students into our launch of a youth minsitry.

    This idea was born just 6-7 weeks ago. We started with a handful of kids, no building, , no team, no concrete plan, and of course no money. So here we are: We’ve got a plan, a team, a building, a growing number of kids… and now we need some people to get behind Kathy so we can fulfill the fullness of what holistic youth ministry in San Diego can look like.

    Two ways to support:

    1. Support Kathy. Pure and simple. She’s the practitioner. We need someone out, on the ground, making this thing happen. She needs to raise $40,000 per year. And quick. [download id=”4″]

    Kathy has set up some times where you can meet her and here her presentation:
    October 18th: Vietnamese/English Presentation in Santa Ana, 6pm
    October 24th: English Presentation in Anaheim Hills, 6pm
    November 8th: English Presentation in City Heights, 6pm
    Any Day: English Presentation at wherever you would like to meet, any time:)

    2. Let us pick your brain. We’re looking to learn from others doing urban, holistic ministry. If you’re doing it… let me know. Our team is commited to learning from others.

  • Why Did Jesus Come to Earth?

    Here’s my notes from the youth group talk tonight. Feel free to use them however you’d like.

    Title: Why Did Jesus Come to Earth?
    Passage: John 1

    [download id=”3″]

  • The Hook-Up for Youth Group

    woot

    I was so distracted by convention last week that I failed to really process/understand/comprehend an e-mail I got about our brand new youth ministry. It’s really cool to see people get on board with what we are trying to do.

    Background: About 6 weeks ago I had lunch with two pastors at Harbor Mid-City. Basically, they felt like the time was now to form something more substantial. Christine Brinn had done an amazing job with some of the young women and created an awesome model for mentorship. We wanted to build on that and reach more students. So we quickly formed a team, had 3-4 meetings, and launched last week with a handful of students. Idea-to-launch in 6 weeks. Stellar.

    What we want to do: Our dream is for this thing to be Good News in a holistic way. You can’t be in this neighborhood and think that a youth ministry can just be about teaching the Bible. So we want to meet practical needs… as many as possible. Stuff like, making sure our students get a good meal experience with us. We want to offer educational tutoring. We want to offer leadership development. We want to offer family services. And we want to provide a more substantial level of mentorship than we currently can handle. And we want to get all of that started yesterday because the need is so great.

    The problem: Practically speaking that’s an awesome dream. But as I’ve said a bunch of times… an unfunded vision is just a dream and when we said what we wanted the vision to look like we were really just dreaming. We had 4 adults. We had no where to meet. We didn’t have tutors or mentors for everyone. Pretty much all of the vision was laid out in faith that somehow, in time, God would provide.

    How God hooked us up! This church moves quick… have you noticed? I got an email from Kathy that outlines two amazing things. First, a church in City Heights has made their building available to us. That’s amazing stuff right there! Not only did we get hooked up on a place to meet– we can use it tonight! Second, Kathy made a pitch to InterVarsity over at San Diego State to students about getting involved by offering educational tutoring to students in the neighborhood. That’s right, you guessed it… our tutoring ministry kicks off NEXT WEEK!

    Building momentum towards the rest: These are two awesome things. A place to meet and a gaggle of people wanting to help teach is awesome. Those two things make the dream a little more of a reality. But there are also new challenges ahead. We still need access to family services. We still need people to help provide the stuff these kids need. We still need more mentors. And, of course, all of that stuff requires money we don’t have.

    But for now, I’m celebrating!

  • Inward, Outward, and Beyond

    So you’ve noticed I’ve not blogged much this weekend. As you know, I’m running social media at NYWC this weekend and have literally not stopped moving. In a couple hours I’m co-leading a lab with Ian Robertson on social media and video. Pray for me during that time. I’m fried– and yet I am so thankful for this opportunity to resource youth workers who want to do media better. Pray that I might fight through my selfish tiredness and give it my all.

    I did want to share something I found incredibly encouraging this morning. Chris Brewster, our churches community development pastor, posted this on his blog and I wanted to share it. Please go to his blog, leave him a comment, and join with us in the mission of reaching kids in City Heights for Jesus Christ.

    Let me be so bold as to ask you to consider supporting this ministry. Our goal is to present Christ as the one who offers a true promise of hope. We want our ministry to be holistic in helping teens, their family situations, their economic situation, their educational situation, and the future of our neighborhood. We’ve got big dreams and no funding. Chris and Kathy are missionaries… they’d love it if you joined their financial team or prayer team.

    Check out this from Chris’s blog:

    Introducing Inward, Outward, and Beyond-yond-yond-yond-yond!!! (echo affect). Or, abbreviated, I.O.B, if we need a name that lends itself to teens pitching their new youth ministry to friends…”Yo you check out dat I.O.B…it tight!” Behind the name, I encourage anyone to read Inward Outward Journey by Elizabeth O’Conner. Primarily, to have your paradigm of spiritual formation radically challenged, but I suppose also, if you want to know where we ripped off this name.

    After an amazing Summer Internship with teens/ young adults this summer, the question pressed into the minds of our ministry team was, “What now with these young people?” Our much beloved Christine Brinn had gone deep into relationship with a group of girls for the last two years (many of whom participated this summer). Upon transitioning out of her two year internship to Fuller Seminary a few weeks ago, nurturing and intentional as she is, with the help of my lovely wife, she set these teens up with mentors.

    But, we all knew, especially after this dynamic summer, that part of being church, is being church together as a larger community. Jesus wants us to catch him INWARD within our own lives and hearts, and within our dynamic webs of relationships. But not to stop their, to find him OUTWARD as this large community encourages, envisions, energizes, and activates us, to discover him once again outside of our corporate life through piggy backing on his work in the world. And to find him BEYOND doing things “we couldn’t ask for or imagine.”

    With the young people God had given us, we knew this meant extending out the experience of our summer into the school year in some sustainable way. Also personally, I knew that it was time to form a community that would allow me to invite students from Hoover, who I know through all my activities there, to find a safe place to explore faith in Jesus. Introducing Inward, Outward, and Beyond!!!!!!

    Before we arrived here though…I surely didn’t want to go back to being the guy who would “make it happen,” as “the youth guy.” That guy is someone I admire, someone I can slip into being, but someone who exhausts every introverted fiber of my body. In fact, I don’t even think that guy or gal really exists, except among those willing to leg press the facade until it topples on them, like it does everyone else who plays that game. I knew that God had to assemble a team with someone to direct it who had more focused passion than myself.

    Enter Kathy Pham! Notice her with the confident youthy peace sign on the right of the picture, with a look on her face like “Peace is so RAD!!! Its what you neeeeed!!! Kathy (tall girl with glasses, black shirt) was amazing as a summer intern this summer. She thought she was merely exploring a call into urban ministry, she ended up falling in love with teens and young adults in our community, and doing such a good job loving them, that our ministry team took notice and then began to petition the Lord to put her in a half nelson and drag her into our community.

    Kathy is now raising support for a position as Director of Youth and Young Adults. Oh yes, I will shamelessly ask some of you not only to give to Anastasia and I, but to give to her as well, because she is the real deal. Kathy is from Westminster, the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam in Orange County (an omen for her joining up with a Presbyterian church? I think so…theology nerds only please.) She has found that City Heights feels like home, with a Vietnamese business every 10 ft., yet she trips out like all of us, at how people are mish-mashed together into this strange diversity casserole called City Heights.

    Kathy has a background in the corporate world, and therefore moves on everything so efficiently and intentionally, she makes me feel SLOOOOW. Somehow, she has figured out how to incarnate herself into cyber-space, and through the strange power of Facebook knows what teens are thinking before they think it themselves. Kidding aside, her entrepreneurial and gregarious nature make her uniquely fitted to direct our new youth ministry. Interestingly, she happens to have run a tutoring center, which we beforehand had said would be a vital aspect of a ministry intent on loving the whole person, rather than just” saving their soul.” Coincidence? I think not.

    Enter Adam Mclane. Adam, the white guy with glasses with the “Oh crap, am I really doing this” smirk, was one of those youth guys I was talking about who had the facade topple on him. He works for Youth Specialties as a resource to other burned out youth guys, and as their computer boy genius inventing an array of online tools to help resource youth pastors. He and his family happened to land in our church awhile ago, but if you mentioned doing ministry of some sort, he would bare his teeth like a wary dog, knowing that the kind hand of a stranger can end up with him back on the ministry leash. Thank God Adam is ready to go! He will play an incredible role in teaching, resourcing, and generally helping us to envision a youth ministry that doesn’t fall into the same tired paradigms that lend themselves to hollow entertainment-based ministry, that fails to offer the costly but full and compelling invitation to follow Jesus in sacrificial ways.

    Enter Erin. My first memory of Erin was of her bailing out of my house in the first days of our church plant, needing some breathing room from the suffocating worship and God-talk that spooked her and challenged her at the same time. Once our token skeptic, she is now living out her new-found faith by taking a risk to with work young people from a world very different from her own. Erin brings authenticity, someone well aware (as we all should be) that she is along the same journey with the young people she will work with. The value of an older person who is not settled and secure in their beliefs, is immense. Young people need to see examples of other seekers being used by God, even though they have not fully “arrived” at rock solid conviction.

    Where am I in the picture? Fittingly, I was on my back in bed, after an awkward and humbling procedure which will make Maddie and Toby the only children I will father again (I think.) Isn’t it beautiful! Our first youth night, and I, literally and symbolically am out of the picture!!! When I was grinding my teeth, timid about moving forward, because I thought that all of this would somehow fall on me, God said, “Yo Chris, I am going to put you on your back with some awkward soreness, just to let you know that ministry is not about any load you carry my friend.” Thanks God, I needed that.

    I invite you to pray for us, as we moved forward….

  • Back in the Saddle Again

    This video expresses a lot of how it felt last night to get back in the youth ministry saddle again. Last night was a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to figuring out a whole new way of doing ministry.

    My biggest observation from last night: These students have a particularly sexualized lexicon. I wasn’t ready for that!

  • Teaching from a position of exploration

    Tonight starts our youth ministry [in a formal sense] at Mid-city. There are a lot of things our team is excited about. I wanted to share one that has captivated me.

    Traditionally, the teaching in youth ministry is from an authoritative perspective. Whether as a stated or implied goal we teach God’s Word with an assumption that it is true, you can trust it, and that I am teaching it the way you should believe it.

    While I certainly value those assumptions, our team felt like that wasn’t going to help us express the value, “This is a safe place to explore Jesus.“It just isn’t safe if I give you all the answers and say, “OK, go believe that! You can trust me!”

    My role is to develop the content. I’ve been charged developing a style of teaching the Bible from an exploration perspective instead of an authoritative perspective.

    For example, tonight we’re teaching about doubt. Yes, our very first lesson talks about why you should doubt what people say about God! We’re stating right up front, it’s perfectly OK to doubt. It might even be a virtue. Your leaders have doubts about the claims of Christ. We will tell them it’s a good thing to not believe everything we say at face value. We want them to explore Jesus on their own and show by our actions the youth ministry is a safe place to ask questions– hard questions– and those questions will be accepted with an open heart as we explore a relationship with Jesus together.

    Here’s my discussion questions that go with the talk:
    – Where is Jesus on doubt?
    – Do you think doubt is good or bad?
    – What does doubt have to do with honesty?
    – What are some things/circumstances that cause people to doubt God?
    – What are some things about Jesus you need to be true? (Like stuff about Jesus you are jacked up without.)

    Our hope is that positioning our ministry from a place of safe exploration that students will learn that each of us is on a journey with God. (Romeo people will remember that I call these people journeyists instead of the Christian term, soujourners.) No journey is better or more holy than the other. We think (hope, PRAY!) that the faith we help develop in our students will stand the test of time.

  • Towards Holistic Youth Ministry

    degrees-360I’ve been blogging the Harbor Mid-City journey as we head towards a launch of student ministry. Up until now in the life cycle of the church plant youth ministry has always been around– part of the DNA– but never emerged as a priority. That’s changing rapidly as the church has formed to the point where ministering to adolescents is bubbling to the top of needs.

    Here is where we are:

    – We are doing a “soft launch” next Tuesday. 8-10 students are coming to one of the pastors house where we will eat dinner, get to know one another, we’ll crack open the Bible, and break off into discussion groups.

    – We’ve got a core team of 4 to start “youth group” with. (That doesn’t seem like the right term, but it’s what we have.)

    – We are creating a ministry aimed at ministering to the whole needs of our students. So Tuesday night youth group is really just one part of the greater sum of what we’re doing. We already offer mentorship, we’ll be adding to that academic help, regular community service projects, leadership development, and family assistance and probably more stuff as we go. The antithesis of what we’re after is entertainment.

    – For now, we’re focusing on high school and recent graduates. The church has a pretty solid kids ministry and for now, that’s where the middle schoolers will be ministered to.

    – For the first quarter, we are meeting in a house. But an early goal is to secure a meeting site somewhere more suitable.

    – Unlike anywhere else I’ve worked with students… getting rides is a big deal.

    – The concept of plural leadership seems to be in the DNA of what we’re creating. I’ve committed to leading up to 25%. For now that means I’m in charge of content. (Either teaching or lining up the teaching, but helping develop the content for the group.)

    – There’s a lot of excitement as we get started. I’d call it naive but the truth is that there’s a lot of experience in the leadership group. We know what we’re getting into and we’re pumped at what God is doing!

    – I think it’s a good idea that we don’t have all of the details, vision, and particulars nailed. Since we already have a solid group of students to launch with… it just seems better to launch with what we have and line-up the rest as we go.

    – We are looking to learn. I’m picking the brains of the urban youth workers I know, putting feelers out to meet more, and our team is all doing the same thing. We know we aren’t inventing something even though it feels like it.

    – Yes, we have a sexy acronymn for what we’re doing. I just can’t remember it.