Category: hmm… thoughts

It’s a beautiful sunny morning in Romeo on Memorial Day. We were out late visiting with some friends so everyone is a little slow in getting up this morning. But as we don’t have many plans today, it’s just fine.

One thing I like about getting back from vacation is a fresh perspective on things. After being away for a Sunday from church, it was awful nice to be back home. This may sound cheesy, but I’m pretty pleased with the vibe the church services are putting off.

The church staff is full of perfectionists… me being the worst of them. I have a natural tendency to forget the 95% of things that went great and focus my attention on the 5% that didn’t go to my liking. (In fact, people are willing and have left churches over a .5% thing… but I digress.)

I think this comes from the "theater and music" background of growing up. Burned on my brain are the sharp criticisms of former mentors and teachers who instructed through insult. I remember finishing shows where everyone in the audience was elated about a performance only to get intensely negative feedback over tiny things. ("You didn’t stick a line the way we rehearsed it" or "that one note was a tad flat.") In fact, I think I’d gotten so used to the back-sided compliments in my life that I vowed to just cut to the chase.

I’m such a people pleaser that the compliment part… I always felt it was insincere, said only to earn my ear for the harsh critique.

The back-sided compliment/critique:
"The performance went great, we brought down the house… but there were 3-4 things we need to fix for next time."

In an effort to just be direct, I would have preferred this:

Blunt force feedback:
"The performance would have been better had you done these 3-4 things better."

Here’s something I’m learning: People prefer the back-sided compliment/critique. While I may have focused on the negative… it seems most people don’t mind the negative when a few nice things are mentioned first.

Jesus said, "Today is salvation day in this home! Here he is:
Zacchaeus, son of Abraham! For the Son of Man came to find and restore
the lost." Luke 19:9-10 (The Message)

In the past couple weeks I’ve had a chance to observe more than lead. To kind of stop and reflect on what my own ministry is doing, talk to people about their church/ministry, and also get a chance to get a "third person" perspective and just observe ministry. This was powerful for me, revealing for me, and encouraging for me.

As I reflected on my observations I thought of this passage. To me, it’s a powerful reminder of our ministry task. My opinion is that most institutional churches are more interested in "seeking the saved" as opposed to "seeking the lost."

As I talked to parishioners and church leaders alike I heard phrases like, "That sounds like a great idea but I could never get away with that at my church."

This reveals that church leaders are more worried about upsetting the flock and keeping their job than they are about boldly going after the lost sheep. May it never be. Think about it… we are worried about saving the saved! And as a result of "seeking the saved" we are perfectly fine with allowing the lost to die and go to hell. We even hide behind our theology and say things like "Well, God is God and He’ll save who he wants… He’ll bring those who need to be saved to us."

Really? Is that what God expects out of us?

An example from the Emerald Isle

(more…)

I’m struggling with something.

Labels used to be so useful to me. I could categorize people based on what I knew of them. That allowed me to know what they stood for, what I liked/disliked about them, and most importantly… it provided me the benefit of a standard response to "that label."

Here’s the thing: As the world has gotten smaller, people now have many more labels that apply to them and at the same time, a label’s meaning has changed.

In my mind, things that used to seem terrible I can tolerate now. And things I used to like drive me insane. The problem with labeling people is that it isn’t fair since people aren’t static labels… they are fluid. People change their minds all the time.

Moreover, I hate getting labeled and this has forced me to intentionally stop labeling and categorizing people. (Which in effect, devalued their person hood as they ceased being a person and I just saw them as a being to be labeled.)


Being in a "public job" has led to me getting a lot of labels. Some examples: In some circles,  I am a crazy conservative. In others, a wacky liberal. In some I am brilliant and in others I’m "just a youth pastor." In some circles I’m labeled a cynic who hates everything while in others I’m labeled as having the gift of encouragement. In some circles I’m wildly creative while in others I’m labeled as only having bad ideas. To some people, I am loving and to others I don’t notice them. To some I’m labeled as polite, while in others I’m labeled conceited. Am I schizophrenic or a chronic hypocrite?

Nah, I don’t think so. I think it just proves my point about labeling. I’m a human being. As I think of my life I see myself being all of those things. As Mike Yaconelli was fond of saying, "We’re all really messy."

I’m a mess. I fight the labels in my own life, and I’m starting to hate myself for labeling people. I’ll label myself… "I’m a messed up guy… a good kid, with a lot of problems." I need Jesus as much today as any other day.

This one will flat out make you think. As someone who didn’t grow up around church… I really struggle with the major delineation between men and women in the evangelical church as a whole. So, since it made me think… here you go.

It’s no secret that the world we live in is more connected and smaller than ever. Everyday I discover more ministry related websites that are helping serve and connect ministry professionals. That is extremely exciting for me as ministry professionals often feel isolated and unconnected.

At the same time, sites get bigger and more interactive as they fight for market share… for lack of a better term. Here’s an interesting corollary that I’m thinking about:

A website has to be BIG in order to feel small. See, in order for people to really connect and find true community, there has to be a lot of people to chose from… making the community big, with a small feel.

As YMX closes in on 1000 members we realize how tiny the site is in comparison to the dead and dying Myspace or the new giant, Facebook. But yet… something happens at a medium site like YMX that is missing at Facebook and is definitely not found at the myriad of tiny start-ups. (Of course, we know that one day a start-up will think of a better  way to do what we are doing and eat us for lunch.)

Here’s where I am at so sip some coffee before you read this… if small is the new big and big is the new small… what are people looking for? How do I make YMX appear to people… big or small?

Not sure what I’m talking about as far as big sites feeling small? Check out CNN.com or ABCnews.com and start noticing how much you… the small guy… can interact with these media giants.

There is a phrase going around some leadership circles I’m in (I’ve heard it at more than 1 venue… so it’s beyond the church) and it goes like this:

99% of things can go well and you will never get feedback on that, but you will always hear about the 1% that doesn’t go well.

May it never be. Seriously… if you never hear about the 99% of things that go well, than they aren’t really going well and people are just tolerating what you are doing. Along the same lines, I pray that I am becoming the type of person who notices and appreciates the 99% and encourages when the 1% inevitably happens. I also hope that I am not the type of person who only notices the bad stuff in people or an event or something else. I mean… what kind of representation of Christ is that? May it never be that God’s people accept such a negative view of one another. We need to lift one another up in good times and bad alike.

Another thought about hearing this is… "If I’m only doing 1% of things poorly, than I’m not taking enough risks." I pray that I am the type of leader who takes great risks to share the gospel with a world dead and dying without Christ.

Starting next week, MainStreet will be on local cable access, Channel 6. For Romeo, this is a big step. In the past few months we’ve talked about tangible ways to tell our community about what’s cookin at 32 & Campground. This isn’t as easy as you would think. First of all… we’ve been around for 167 years, which means anyone who has lived in Romeo very long already has an established opinion about our church. Second of all, along similar lines, once you have an established opinion about a church, (or a car dealer or a school or a place to eat) it’s awful hard to "market" to that person and help change what they think.

And that’s what putting MainStreet on Channel 6 is all about. We know it’s not what people will expect from us… and we want to show it off. Why? We think that if we show what we are doing at MainStreet, parents/kids will be more likely to check out MainStreet… which is MainStreet’s main purpose as a foyer environment. (Just get people to check us out.)

So, long story short. MainStreet will be on Channel 6 in our community starting next Friday. According to the station manager, we’ll be on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 7:00 PM as well as Saturday and Sunday at 10:00 AM.

This morning I was reading an article in the Focus on the Family thing that comes in the mail. It’s not a magazine I seek out to read, but the cover story caught my attention. "Kids Music that Won’t Drive You Crazy" about a Christian kids ministry band called, Go Fish.

There is a sentence in here that really made me think. (Didn’t blow me away, I just like it) They talked about having to learn the kids audience and they described it with the phrase "We had to adapt to entertain…"

That is so true. With MainStreet, we flat out label it as "entertainment." We know that MainStreet is a tool for helping draw kids and families into better learning environments. It’s full of crazy music, skits, puppets, and the occasional bucket of nacho cheese… and it’s just that… entertainment. But, just like the Go Fish guys, it’s entertainment with a specific purpose. It’s not a stand-alone event, it’s an event tied into our stronger teaching times at UpTown and DownTown.

And it works! At the end of the day, all of the labor of something like MainStreet is absolutely worth it because it works to help connect families to the life-changing, life-giving message of a relationship with Christ. So, if entertainment is bad… I’ll take it.