Category: hmm… thoughts

  • Dealing with discouragement

    Last Sunday, I wrote about some of the discouragement I was feeling. Anxiety. Self-doubt. Questioning my abilities. Questioning decisions I’ve made. Paths I’ve chosen. I wish I could say that was just a moment of self-doubt and second-guessing. And I wish I could look back on that 7 days later and laugh.

    But I can’t. It seems I’m passing through a little season of discouragement.

    And it sucks.

    It is completely antithetical to reality. My head knows it but my heart doesn’t seem to care.

    As I look out my window right now, the Eastern sky is about to burst with the morning. With the blue sky to later burn through the morning mist– I’m reminded that discouragement comes from Satan.

    Discouragement is Satan’s ministry to me. He wants to distract me and destroy me. He wants to get a foothold. He’d love nothing more than for me to give up.

    3 Ways I’m Dealing with this Season of Discouragement

    1. Looking back – I reread two posts this morning that really helped me put this whole thing into perspective. The first came from July 2010. (5 Ways to Encourage Your Church Staff.) The second needs more context as it was written nearly 6 years ago. A lot was changing in my life. We moved to Romeo in 2003 with hopes that big things were to come at that little church. It had grown from about 100 people to about 400 people when I was hired. Then four months after I arrived, the senior pastor resigned and we quickly went from nearly 400 to about 175. In the midst of that, my new boss (a person I had lead the charge to hire) didn’t have the same high-view of youth ministry I had. So, in turn, I was getting pulled away from the thing I loved most, youth ministry, and pushed into more of an assistant pastor role. On top of that, I’d go to my local network meetings and because Romeo was seen as this little town in the country and because my church didn’t have 3,000 people like everyone else at the table… I was often completely ignored. In the midst of that I wrote a post called, Am I OK with “Just OK?” As I reread that post this morning my own words from 2005 put tears in my eyes. I have dealt with seasons of self-doubt before and yet here I am, STILL STANDING in the simple knowledge that God is the author and I am not!
    2. Looking around – I’m in an amazing season of life. The last six weeks since Jackson’s birth have been some of the best times we can remember. That little boy has been an amazing gift to our life. Not just in welcoming a new child. But also in how he’s brought our entire family closer together. On top of that, it’s been an amazing six weeks of blessing from our friends as we’ve relished in watching Jackson act as a joy machine everywhere we’ve gone. As I think back over the last year, I just shake my head at how much God has shown Himself. It’s more than just Jackson, (and Ruby, Eliza, Xander, Sofia, Lucy… and the other babies who have arrived into our life) it is in my work, in our community group, in our neighborhood, at our church, at the kids school… God shown Himself clearly and repeatedly.
    3. Looking forward – This Winter and Spring I said no to a ton of things. I missed two YS Palooza’s, I missed a PlanetWisdom, and I missed a few other conferences/opportunities because I wanted to be home for Kristen and the kids. I love those things. And I’m already looking forward to getting out and doing the thing I love most more this Summer: Meeting and encouraging ministry folks. More than that, there are some really fun things on the horizon with our family & our church. Even our garden gives me something fun to look forward to.

    Here’s the excerpt that made me smile this morning. I love when my 2005 self preaches to my 2011 self:

    How come so many youth workers look up to Mike Yacanelli, but when it comes down to it… They don’t have the balls to live like him? They read his books, they chuckled at his joke “I am the pastor of the slowest growing church in America” but they wouldn’t ever put themselves, their talents, their families, or their reputation in that situation. Let’s face it, a lot of youth workers out there HAVE EGOS THE SIZE OF THEIR YOUTH GROUPS. They are snobs who wouldn’t ever want to work with broken and busted churches. They hear what church I work at and head for the hills because we are too small, too broken, and can’t offer them anything of value. So the reality is, that they are in ministry for themselves and not for others. They have been trained and are getting experienced so that they can have easier jobs with more stuff and less problems. The concept of “others first” or “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you” is foreign to them. A lot of the “big guys” I know have bought into and perpetrate the lie “bigger is better.”

    Read the rest

  • The Joy Machine

    It’s been five weeks since Jackson was born.

    It’s hard to remember what our family was like without him.

    The fun part about Jackson, to us, is how much of an unexpected miracle he is to our family. With both Megan and Paul we carefully planned their arrival. I remember sitting down with Kristen and doing the math with the calendar about a year before she was born– “If Megan is born on May 12th, that will be the day after my last final. That will give us the best opportunity to spend the most time with her before classes begin.” With Jackson, the element of surprise changed everything. Even today we laugh thinking about having a 3rd baby. He wasn’t in the plan. He just showed up!

    One thing I’ve noticed with Jackson that I didn’t notice with the other two is that a new baby isn’t just a joy for its parents and immediate family, he brings joy to every corner of our community. You see it on the faces of people everywhere we go with him! His arrival literally makes people smile.

    Infectious Joy

    • Our extended family loves seeing him.
    • Our neighbors love seeing him.
    • People in our neighborhood who saw Kristen walking while she was pregnant stop her now to see him and smile.
    • People at church love seeing him.
    • People at both of our jobs love seeing him.
    • Long time friends from all over the world love seeing his pictures on Facebook.
    • The kids classmates and other random people at the kids school love seeing him.
    • The guy at our favorite smoothie shop loves seeing him.
    • Random people whom we barely know, stop us in public, because they love seeing him.
    • People we’ve never met but are our Facebook friends and Twitter followers love seeing him.

    He is a joy machine!

    One little baby has brought joy, spontaneous joy, to any entire group of people. I’m thankful to God for allowing me to observe it this time.

    You are a joy machine, too

    I’ve started to think about this observation in light of other people in my life. At one point you brought Jackson-like joy to your community. People oogled over you at the grocery store. Your parents neighbors counted down the days until you were born. People your parents barely knew smiled when they pushed a stroller around your block.

    The same is likely true of you today. Even if you don’t see it– you bring joy to your community. People look forward to seeing you. Your impact isn’t just in your work or in the people you think it is, it’s so much deeper and wider than you can imagine. The guy at the smoothie shop (or coffee shop) you go to regularly looks forward to seeing you every day.

    Don’t forget that. You are a joy machine.

  • Living what you believe

    In some circles, what I’m about to say, will cause people to snicker:

    I’m an Evangelical Christian. I studied at Moody Bible Institute. I tend to approach the Bible from a traditional, literal, cultural perspective. I’ve work at Baptist churches. With altar calls and hand raising. I know all of the words to a whole slew of hymns. (Well, most of the words.) And I kind of like them over the never-ending repetition of some of the new stuff rolling out.

    Yes. I am “one of those.”

    Except.

    By “one of those” I mean that I take the Bible at face value. Which isn’t all that radical. But, I suppose, what is radical is that I hold that in authority over the culture that evangelicalism has created.

    As I read the Bible day-by-day I refuse to be bound by the trappings of a church-created culture. Church culture holds no stone to the boulder of Biblical authority. For too long the church has stood for the wrong things for the sake of protecting their little-k-kingdoms in the face of BIG K calls to action. As I study Scripture I see that Jesus didn’t just come to earth so I could raise my hand and say a prayer which was a magic token to eternal life. As Ephesians 2 teaches, it’s no more important to “present the Gospel” as it is to “present yourself as the Gospel.”

    Jesus didn’t die so that I could run around sharing Good News. He also wanted me to be Good News. To stand up for the poor, to give special attention to children, especially orphans, to put women on equal footing with men, to seek justice for the oppressed, on and on.

    I refuse to over-emphasize Pauline epistles and forsake the radical words of Jesus in the Gospels. Or, for that matter, to ignore principles taught the Law which Jesus says he didn’t come to replace but to fulfill.

  • Self-talk

    • Do you believe in yourself?
    • Are you proud of yourself?
    • In quiet moments do you have positive or negative thoughts about yourself?
    • When you are at work, how do you feel about your work environment? Does being there energize you or steal your joy?
    • When you are at home, how do you feel about your home environment? Does being there energize you or steal your joy?

    For some people, their whole identity is wrapped up in playing Eeyore in the real life drama they star in. Each day is a disappointment and they exude a “why bother?” attitude.

    Others play the role of Charlie Brown. Life could smack them in the face daily, their best friend could humiliate them, and their dreams could shatter– but they wake up with a generally positive life outlook on the next day.

    Three things I’ve learned about this stuff that is worth noting:

    1. Anyone can choose to be an Eeyore or Charlie Brown. We all have equal potential to be either character.
    2. How people feel when they are at your home or office dramatically impacts the bottom line. However you measure success at your home or at your office will be greatly impacted by the positive or negative feelings people who are there feel about being there.
    3. A single person flavors the pot one way or the other. I’ve been in negative work environments where one person comes in and is the catalyst for the whole group to feel more positive about themselves. And we’ve experienced the opposite at home when one person has a negative outlook and it ruins it for everyone.

    Sadly, many Christians perpetrate the lie that in order to really “get it” as a believer that you need to put on your Eeyore costume. I’ve visited churches where the whole staff has a loser complex. (Their success or failure comes from the same place of dissatisfaction and self-loathing.) And I’ve visited homes so positive they don’t even notice (or care) that they have roaches.

    This makes no sense. Jesus didn’t die for us so that we’d wallow in our sin. Quite the opposite. John 10:10 says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

    What’s the point?

    You might not have the ability/power/opportunity to change anything about where you live or work today. But you always have the power to change the flavor of the pot with your attitude.

  • When God shows up

    The last 48 hours have been filled with God’s presence. Little moments of stillness amidst the storm of welcoming a new baby in which God whispered in our ear gentle reminder:

    “You are Mine.”

    “Jackson is Mine.”

    “I’m in charge.”

    The change started Tuesday morning as the sun came up. In the 24 hours preceding we had been in the hospital trying to get labor going nothing had happened. Like literally, we progressed backwards!

    We fell asleep exhausted, frustrated, and discouraged. We woke up refreshed, optimistic, and encouraged.

    I turned on the lights and I changed the music in our room to a playlist I call, “All U2, All Crowder, All the Time.”

    That little room reset set in motion a series of things where God loudly presented His voice.

    First, the nurses examined Kristen. A 25 year veteran and then the senior nurse on the ward both said… “I’ve never felt anything like that. I have no idea what that means or what’s going on.”

    We laughed. And both Kristen and I soaked in the reality that it wasn’t just that Kristen was a newfound medical mystery– it was that God was going to reveal Himself in an unexpected way.

    Then, the doctor came in. She answered all of our questions and was matter-of-fact about what was going to happen. His head was too big to be born

    As the hours progressed our anxiety about the realities of how Jackson would be born significantly decreased, too. We rested knowing that while we hadn’t intended for a C section, it wasn’t the end of the world. But it clearly a little test of our dependency on God as our Father.

    As a dad I like to be in control. Our kids are old enough where I’ve learned how to keep things in my family within parameters of my control. Those boundaries are often wide for plenty of room to be brave yet stringent enough to keep everyone out of harms way. Control is a necessary function of parenting. In many ways it isn’t that I like to be in control. It’s that my role as a father means I need to be in control.

    Yet, in this situation we were removed from the control position. We knew nothing about having a baby this way. We were going to have to completely give up control to people we barely knew and trust that they would take care of us in our most vulnerable state.

    On one side of the teeter totter was the birth process we knew. Being a known process, even if it ended in more frustration, seemed good to us because we knew it. On the other side of the teeter totter was the birth process we knew of, knew a lot of facts about, but couldn’t trust from our experience.

    Back and forth we went.

    All afternoon, we teeter-tottered between rationally knowing that the surgery was the only way to go and the fear of the unknown. And yet God’s peace began to fill the room with each passing hour.

    Finally, the hour arrived. With all of the preparations complete an OR nurse came into our room and started to pull Kristen’s bed out of the room.

    We were helpless with what was about to happen. We had zero control. We signed consent forms. Our “yes” was in writing! This wasn’t some sort of metaphysical letting go anymore… literally, Kristen’s life and Jackson’s life were being wheeled down the hallway.

    Kristen went down the hall into the operating room and I was left alone behind the big double doors. Alone in the moment. I was trying to think about anything but “what if?”

    My mind swirled in those moments. Thinking about seeing Jackson in a few minutes. Thinking about the order of who to call after he was born. Thinking about news of an earthquake in Christchurch, NZ. Thinking about the deliveries of Megan and Paul. Thinking about if I had watered the plant above my desk at home. Thinking about all the episodes of TV hospital drama I’d seen and never actually been into an operating room. Thinking about how I was going to juggle taking pictures with both my iPhone and my still camera. Thinking about what I wanted to say to Kristen when he was born.

    Round and round my brain went. 1,000 miles per hour and 1,000 directions at once. My world felt very small in those few moments. My whole world was limited to the two 12×12 tiles my feet were frozen in.

    There was never a place in my life so alone as in that hallway. And for Kristen, I’m sure there was never a more alone place than laying on that table getting prepped. If marriage is about oneness than we shared in the oneness of our aloneness in that moment.

    Finally, the door opened and a nurse moved me to another room. A real waiting area. More like a closet. I’d be brought into the operating room just before they were ready to pull him out. Fortunately, there was a chair there so I could sit down. I collapsed into the seat– still swirling and full of emotion. There wasn’t anything I could do. Just sit.

    As the nurse closed the door leaving me alone I felt God’s presence arrive and fill the room. It’s hard to explain. But I just started to feel the same phrases over and over again. Not audible, not in mind mind… but somewhere in between. “You are mine. Jackson is mine. I’m in charge.”

    I don’t know how long I was in there. Probably just a couple of minutes. But it was glorious! Now, all of a sudden, it felt like the whole experience was holy ground.

    The nurse came back to get me. I put on my surgical mask. And the next few minutes were a blur of seeing Kristen, hearing the doctors talk, and culminating with the phrase, “Time. Seventeen-eleven.” I leaned to my left and there he was… Jackson Tucker McLane.

    The bottom line is simple: When God shows up– Everything changes.

  • Leave me alone

    Photo by Ian Burt via Flick (Creative Commons)

    Maybe I want to be in debt, eat crappy food, and watch endless hours of mind-numbing television?

    Has it ever crossed your mind that the reasons I do this are because I want to? And maybe, just maybe,  don’t want to be fixed?

    Maybe it’s not about addiction? Maybe it’s not some sort of freudian cover-up to deal with the pain of childhood lost? And maybe it’s not because I’m avoiding handling my responsibilities.

    Thank you Dr. Phil. Thank you Suze Orman. Thank you Dave Ramsey.

    Yeah– I’ve heard about the book. Yeah– I’ve heard about your website.

    But no thank you.

    A fix it culture

    Rooted in our DNA as Americans is an innate desire and need to fix things. We find our identity by making broken things better. It is a source of great pride. People who fix things are heroes. People who need fixing are zeroes.

    We hunt out things that aren’t right and apply a solid dose of American stick-to-it-tiveness to the situation so that it falls in line with a level of social acceptability.

    We love Dr. Phil.

    And Maury Povich, Jerry Springer, Judge Joe Brown, Oprah Winfrey, and we used to love Phil Donohue.

    We feed off of Biggest Loser. Before that we giggled at Richard Simmons, while thinking he was a hero at the same time.

    A show like This Old House or Flip this House are as addicting as crack cocaine.

    We text in our favorite underdog to American Idol or Dancing with the Stars.

    Then a few years later we cry along with fallen heroes on Celebrity Rehab.

    Fix me, baby. Fix me.

    Why?

    Because we have an innate desire to fix people.

    And yet we never ask the question… “Would you like to be fixed?” Or “Can we humiliate you on national television so people can be entertained?”

    At the end of the day, deep in our DNA, we don’t care if someone wants the help nor do we take the time to understand how they could best use our help.

    We’re too busy fixing symptoms and not causes.

  • Do Good Ideas

    Last night I was riding my bike home and my head was full of ideas. I actually pulled over, whipped out my iPhone, and jotted 3 of them down so I wouldn’t lose them.

    That lead me to post on Twitter: “I really wish I had 4-5 people to sit around with regularly and share ideas. I could actually meet almost every day.”

    That tweet launched a conversation about if such a group was really plausible.

    Here’s what I’m thinking. This is completely open for discussion. So leave a comment if you have ideas or feedback.

    And yes, I’m pretty serious about this.

    Good ideas cohort

    • It’d be a group of people who care about investing in an idea enough to see it through.
    • It’d need to be a group of people somehow vocationally tied to youth ministry, but the ideas shared wouldn’t necessarily have anything to do with youth ministry.
    • There’d be a $500 buy-in per person, so everyone would have a dog in the fight. (We’d hold the money in an escrow account.)
    • Annually, we’d fund one idea with our seed money. Other than that no one would profit from the cohort.
    • Everyone in the group would sign a non-disclosure agreement as well as some sort of an agreement that ideas shared would belong to the person presenting them.
    • Everyone would get the opportunity to share their idea (quickly) each time we met. If nothing less, this cohort would teach you how to pitch an idea for action.
    • We’d commit to a one-year cohort for the purpose of sharing ideas, learning from one another, etc. If the group wanted to keep going beyond that, it’d be up to them. (But they’d have to put up $500 annually)
    • We’d have something like a private Ning group to regularly share concepts, ideas.
    • We’d meet quarterly online via some form of video conference.
    • We’d meet annually for 2 days somewhere. Location would depend on the people in the group.
    • This would be an all-for-one and one-for-all type of thing. No one would have more power in the group than another.
    • Ideally this would be entrepreneurial. The idea of somehow donating the money to a charity doesn’t give me a lot of energy. Instead, I’d like to see the measurement of the idea be “what’s the best idea” as opposed to some other measurement.
    • Seems like 10 people would be about the maximum per cohort. But I can see doing an East Coast and West Coast version.
    • The reality is that $5000 (group of 10) isn’t a lot of money. But it could be the seed money an idea needs to get going. And who knows from there?
    • Ultimately, this would be informal enough to be fun yet formal enough that everyone would agree to take it seriously.

    Good ideas friend group

    As I thought about this more. I like the idea of the cohort a ton. But I would also love to have a group of Southern California friends to get together with much more often in a way more informal way. To maybe share ideas, bounce around solutions to complex problems facing the church today, and generally just be friends brought together by a common thread of wanting to see change happening and perhaps having one slice of the pie at their disposal to see change happen.

    Thoughts? Ideas? Refinements? Just crazy enough to be for you?

  • 5 Sources of Creative Inspiration

    Getting stuck is a big deal. In my world it means progress stops. So getting from an uncreative space to a creative space is integral to thriving.

    One thing I’ve learned about myself is that restarting the creative process is typically a matter of moving in one of two directions. I refind my mojo by taking things from very structured to very unstructured or visa versa.

    5 Sources of Creative Inspiration

    1. Improvisational jazz or intensively introspective classical music. I have a few works from Miles Davis and Rachmaninoff that seem to come in handy at different times. The ordered chaos in Miles Davis seems to help my brain make sense of things when I’m going a million different directions on a project, all of which I like but can’t figure out how they fit. And the acapella All Night Vigil has a unique ability to both calm and awaken my senses. Anxiety, particularly that my work will be rejected, is a major block. For some reason Rachmaninoff helps me release that.
    2. Magazines. I like the staccato pace of magazines. While I do get a few regularly I can’t say that I read one all the time. But when I’m stuck I tend to gravitate to a magazine. There’s something about the page turning, the ads, and getting stuck on a story that always leads me to my notebook to draw or sketch. (Or Evernote if I’ve got new ideas.)
    3. A walk or bike ride. Sometimes I just need to think about something else for a while in order to think about a project in a new way. Taking the dog for a walk in our neighborhood or riding my bike somewhere is a great stress relief and for some reason typically helps me clear my mind enough where eventually, almost accidentally, my mind will free enough to release a creative idea.
    4. Web design showcases. For some reason this helps me even if I’m not working on a web project. I subscribe to several web design sites and when they publish showcases of cool designs I always bookmark them for later. There’s something inspiring about seeing how people are using the latest HTML5 tags or what’s hot in Polish web design or the hottest trends in mobile app sales.
    5. Deadlines. I’m a middle schooler on the inside. The pressure of a deadline gets my juices flowing. Maybe it’s the desire to get stuff done on time and maybe it’s the pending reality of failure? Who cares! I find the approach of a deadline an important part of the creative process. It helps me get to past the point of something needing to be perfect and into the frame of “What is the best I can do with the time I have available?”

    Creative buzzkills

    These are probably unique to me but maybe they are stopping your flow, too?

    • Novels and non-fiction books. I find biographies sources of inspiration. But novels and non-fiction works tend to suck creativity from my brain.
    • Pressure to perform in the moment. There are times when I can come up with amazing things in a group setting. But typically, my best group work comes in lulls in the action. But if you walk up to me and demand three ideas for something I know nothing about, I’ll punt every single time.
    • A palette too big or too small. I do best with some parameters. A few, not too many.
    • Interruptions. It can take me a couple hours of fiddling around to really get into a creative groove. But it can take only a single interruption to get me out.

    I suppose this all just proves one thing. I’m a pain in the neck to work with!

  • My life in photo

    Amazing the digital footprint we leave, isn’t it?

    ht to William Hartz

  • Perspective

    That’s what 2010 has been about.

    My life was turned upside down multiple times in the past 12 months. All of which I’m entirely grateful for.

    Haiti – On January 12th, as news flooded in that much of Port-au-Prince had crumbled in an earthquake, I prayed a crazy prayer. I asked God to comfort those who were dying, bring emergency help if possible for those who survived, and if He wanted I was willing to go.

    Little did I know that 5 weeks later I’d be standing amidst the rubble. We helped where we could. We prayed with people and met plenty of pastors looking for aid. But the thing that rattled me more than anything was to feel a nation suddenly turn their heart towards God. An emotion leapt out of every person that sang in the streets, “I’m alive, so I can celebrate! I’m alive because of Jesus! I will celebrate even though I have nothing!” The only way I can describe that is that it felt like I’d been given the opportunity to dip my toe in a river of God’s benevolence. It’s was more powerful than anything I’d ever experienced.

    My perspective was changed when people who slept in tents on the rocky bare ground asked if they could pray for me. That re-defined what it means to be poor.

    Baby – One Sunday in late June the game was changed. “I’m pregnant.” Two words that I’ve wanted to hear for a long time but never really thought I’d hear again. Over the next few months we’ve had to wrap our minds around what it’ll mean to have a baby in the house again. Unlike with our first baby the question we’ve been asking ourselves is, “How little stuff do we think we can get away with acquiring?” There are, of course, bigger questions to be answered. How will this baby change our family? How will we handle child care? Will this baby finally have curly hair like Kristen?

    My perspective was changed when the reality set in that this is an opportunity to apply what we learned with Megan and Paul. In many ways we’re brand new parents.

    Openness – For some reason I’d kept a muzzle on myself. I suppose I had a fear that if I really opened up and said what was on my mind– instead of what I thought people wanted me to say– that people would like me less. And I certainly felt the sphincter effect on my creativity as more and more people began reading my blog after Marko left YS.

    Then, late last year I woke up and realized something. “I just don’t care. I need to be 100% me 100% of the time. This is who God made me and I need to be gaudy in that. Let the chips fall where they may.” It’s been interesting to see the results in 2010. I’ve written things in 2010 that I literally done with fear and trembling… and time and again those things have been affirmed as not just OK… but words that people needed to read. More good things have happened as a result of trying to be true to myself than I ever would have thought possible.

    My perspective was changed when I internalized that the world has enough pretenders. Sometimes you need to do things that are counter-intuitive to break through a barrier.

    All of this has given me new ears to listen. New levels of obedience. And an overwhelming excitement for days to come.