Category: hmm… thoughts

This isn’t a complete thought, but it’s what I am thinking. In fact, this resembles more of a brainstorm than a complete thought.

The strength of our new model is that all the ministry staff share duties. The result is a feeling from congregants that all of ministry staff at the church are ministers to all of the church. (This is unlike most current "big church" models)

An interesting thing happens in today’s evangelical church. Most ministry’s "copy" more than they model the way they organize their ministry… and since the evangelical church practically believes that size=blessing+good management, most smaller churches copy larger churches. The results are always mixed.. and shade towards "bad." (This is particularly amplified in existing and even old congregations) Logically, this happens because the small church doesn’t take the time to research what parts of the model will work in their community and which ones should be left in the book. The assume that since something worked in Los Angeles, Chicago, or Atlanta, that the demographics are "close enough" to be transferable to where they live. (Sidenote: If that were true… wouldn’t all those megachurches that everyone copies be doing the same things? Um, they aren’t… because they take the time and energy to get to know their community very well and then build a model)

Moving along…

What does this have to do with youth ministry, general? I’ve noticed that in most cases, the church and the youth ministry aren’t on the same model. So… the youth group operates as an entirely different entity and as a result, this contributes to a loss as students can’t find a similar sense of community that they had in the youth group…. so they just leave. Just so everyone knows this… if your youth ministry is competing against the rest of the church… you are losing.

In most cases, the youth group/youth pastor needs to change to fit the students into the church model. (Translation: I think most youth pastors are terrible team players on their staffs!) This is what I’m trying to do in Romeo. This isn’t as cheesy as the Mark DeVries "Family-based youth ministry" but uses a couple of the same principles to truly integrate the youth ministry into the church and visa versa.

The thought looks like this… what if the church’s worship leader were the youth group’s worship leader? What would happen if the senior pastor became the pastor of students? What would happen if the youth pastor became the pastor to children? What would happen if the children’s director lead a small group for adults? In the business world we called this teamwork. The buzz word was "cross training" so that I could take the place of other people and visa versa in an emergency. It works and makes sense in business… but because this isn’t taught in Bible colleges and seminaries… it doesn’t happen in church world. Instead, everyone has their own little "programs" that they defend at all cost to the loss of the entire body.

This is what we are trying to fix in Romeo. We (the ministry staff) want the whole church to see me as their pastor. So I participate in Children’s ministry and adult ministry and other areas that play to my strengths. We want the senior pastor to be seen by children as their pastor. So he comes to the youth group intentionally, teaches children regularly, he plays to his strengths and makes the youth group better and KidsTown better. We want the worship leader to be accepted by adults, children, and students as their worship leader… so he leads worship at youth group and is a big part of our MainStreet kids night.  On and on and on.

Why won’t this work at most churches? Pride.

Does this take away from people’s skill sets? Um, not at all… instead it amplifies people’s skills across the small church. I will always be an expert in adolescence. The children’s director will always know more about children’s ministry than me. The worship leader… he’s still a worship leader. Obviously, the senior pastor is still the expert in preaching. On and on.

What’s the benefit? I think the people of our church are getting it. All-in-all, it is more healthy and more biblical than the typical programmatic model that is more about turf wars than redemptive life. I am doing more of what are my strengths even if I have given up some of my "youth ministry turf." On and on… we chose to sacrifice what we want (as individuals) for the good of the church, as a whole.

Sounds like a sports team, eh?

The first couple days of this week the church ministry staff is away on a mini-retreat. We do this because we take to heart the advice that "in order to work on something you have to get out of something." Sometimes, in being so wrapped up in what we’re doing with the church we need to just get away from the place to more clearly see what we need to do.

So what’s new in 2007? Well, we’ve made a plan! While we’re not ready to reveal the plan quite yet… I will say that it is both aggressive and simple. We’re not looking to make any changes but instead improve on the changes of 2006. What we’ll work on will be "big enough" that it will impact every single person at the church and yet subtle enough for some to say "YES!"

Of course, it’s Wednesday. Which mean Light Force is tonight. (After the annual business meeting) I am always excited to spend time with LFers. (I’m start to call them "lifers" at least in my brain.)Tonight, I will finally let everyone know our plans for the Christmas break. This probably didn’t come soon enough for some of our students… but that’s life.

My opinion has only hardened in the last few weeks. MySpace, the social networking giant… is dying. One peek at their Alexa profile will show that the ratings are way down, and while overall traffic isn’t totally flat… it’s fading. More importantly, as it’s gotten overrun with adults… almost all of the students I know have slowed their use.

I used to get see all sorts of activity from students on a daily basis… but that seems to be fading too. Fewer content rich comments, fewer bulletins with anything valuable, and MORE spam. In fact, I’ve only been logging on myself once every few days. It simply isn’t worth the ads/spam/crappy bulletins that people post.

It’s only natural that once the corporations take over and the dollars start rolling in that the adolescents check out. Nothing could be less cool than being labeled "corporate."

Never fear, something else will pop up! And by the time most adults figure out what it is… it won’t be cool anymore.

For some reason, my blog has a very high site ranking. You put that with my unique ability to spell things wrong, despite the pretty red line that Firefox 2.0 puts under misspelled words, and it seems like my blog is a repository of lost blog travelers.

For example, I spelled some celebrity’s name wrong… and a lot of other people don’t know how to spell his name, so they end up here. 40 so far today! Pretty funny… and if I were a marketer I’d start to wonder if spelling words wrong to increase site traffic was really worth it or not. Interesting concept.

Anyway, if you are here because you are lost… feel free to comment!

Worth: usefulness or importance, as to the world, to a person, or for a purpose: Your worth to the world is inestimable.

versus

Deserve: to merit, be qualified for, or have a claim to (reward, assistance,
punishment, etc.) because of actions, qualities, or situation: to deserve exile; to deserve charity; a theory that deserves consideration.

This thought has been floating around my head for a few days now. It’s a weird thought.

What is the relationship between my worth and what I deserve? I’m not talking about money here and I’m really not talking about my job at all. I’m thinking about life in general. How do I know the difference between what someone is worth and what they deserve? How do I know what I’m worth vs. what I deserve?

From a biblical perspective, I am worth a lot to God. He gave His Son up to die for me because a relationship with me was worth a lot. As I say all the time, I love my friends and students enough that I would probably die for them if it came down to it… but let my 3 year old boy die for them? Not in a million years! I don’t love them that much. So… in God’s equation I am worth a lot.

From a human perspective "worth" is a difficult thing to measure. We tend to measure that based upon what a person has done/contributed for me or the world or some people. Or, we tend to measure someone’s worth by their ability or inability to gain wealth or something equally measurable. I don’t know how it works for everyone… but in some sick and twisted way I’m imagining little numbers floating around above people’s heads. That person is +300. That person is +2. That person is -15. You could add a second value to that with little stock market arrows that would let the world know if that persons worth is raising or lowering. Kind of a sick visual, eh? This is why I’ve been captured by this. It’s interesting and sick at the same time.

Adam -18 (+3)
Kristen +18 (-1)
Megan +2 (+15)
Paul +9 (+1)

Then there is the other side. What do I deserve? This is where it gets more interesting.

From a biblical perspective, we don’t deserve anything. I’m a Calvinist, I believe in total depravity. When God sees me, not through the lens of Christ, but on my own… He sees a man who has been given every opportunity to not sin… but still struggles because life isn’t that simple. Quite bluntly, the Bible teaches that without Jesus’ action on the cross, as he took the punishment as my substitute, I deserve death.

From a human perspective, I don’t know what I deserve in life. Do I deserve respect? Do I deserve money? Do I deserve anything at all or do I have to earn everything? If yes, why? If no, why not? See… there are different ways to judge what a person deserves. It’s so easy to think of this in monetary terms. From a humans perspective a person deserves "more" if they’ve been loyal or competent or if they can take more or make more, they deserve more. Unions acts as agents of equaling that out in the business world. One person may deserve a 10% raise while another deserves to be fired, but together… they all deserve something… but I don’t want to get distracted on that.

My observation is that a person deserves more if they are loyal. If I am loyal to my wife, I feel I deserve increased love from her. If someone is loyal to the church, I feel they deserve more respect. On and on. But the thought that floats around my head is that number thing again… does each person walk around with an imaginary number above their head? This is what they think they deserve in life.

I remember meeting people who were absolutely off on the "what I deserve" number. I remember employees who barely graduated from high school, who never worked hard a day in their life, who had very little abilities, put out very little effort, had no talent, and yet walked around with a massive "deserve" number above their heads. Guys who made (didn’t earn!) $7/hour couldn’t understand why someone didn’t "discover" them and pay them like Pdiddy.

And I’ve met people who were convinced that they deserved nothing in life… yet they were some of the most precious people I’ve ever met.

In some sick and twisted way I wonder if people are walking around with a big = sign. It would look like this….

W + D = V
My worth plus my "deserve" equals my value.

Man, what would happen if above every single persons head was a visible number. In black, someone’s value would notate that they had positive value to the world. A little green/red stock ticker would update live as someone’s quotient shot up and down during any given moment. In red, someone’s value would let the whole world know that this person had little value to the world around them.

I wonder what my number would be? I wonder how this would effect how people lived their lives. As they worked, as they talked to someone, as they dealt with temptation… what would the world be like if everyone’s value were known? What if someone lied to themselves and tried to decorate their number to be higher than it should? What about the high schooler who had a high value and hid it in shame to appear lower? What about the people who would try to make the red cool?

I don’t know if I want to live in that world. But it’s an interesting thought.

Yesterday I bought one of these (product) Red iPod Nano’s for a prize on YMX. The transaction was simple enough. I knew what I wanted and where I wanted to get it from. Since I wanted it engraved I knew I’d have to wait a couple extra days… which didn’t matter to me since the contest drawing isn’t until January.

So, this morning I get greeted by an email from Apple telling me that the iPod had shipped. I clicked on the tracking button, which took me to a FedEx tracking website… and my jaw dropped. I placed my order yesterday evening and my order has just been picked up for immediate delivery from "SHENZHEN CN" to Romeo. Shenzhen is located near Hong Kong. So, the (product) Red iPod is all sorts of Red! But hey, $10 of that purchase is going to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

From China, with Love. It really is a global world.

I’ve been noticing this lately. Not a lot, but enough times to being something I’ve noticed. I’ll be at the grocery store or some local restaurant and I’ll see someone who used to go to our church. With our church’s many changes in the last decade and its 166 year history, it’s no wonder that there are a few people in a town of 10,000 who are former members for one reason or another. These are people who I know and consider acquaintances.

And they avoid me.
It’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever encountered, but they avoid me. They see me in the store and they quickly checkout and leave. They dodge down another aisle. They do whatever they can do to avoid what they think will be an awkward conversation.

What’s up with that?
I’ve got a few thoughts as to why this is happening. But I think I can boil it down to two categories of people who have left our church and how they intersect with avoiding me in public. First, these are people whom I’ve misconnected with or otherwise missed in my ministry. Due to the "law of unspoken expectations" they expected me to be something I wasn’t. (Or any staff member, because in people’s minds all staff members really are 1 person) Maybe I wasn’t as serious as they thought I should be. Or maybe they didn’t like the clothes I wear or my personality. Or maybe they were more conservative than me or more liberal or didn’t like the NIV or the car I drive. So, they’ve now left the church and they just want to avoid me because they can’t stand me. Second, these are people who have left the church for their own reasons. Maybe they left because of music or something that happened with a friend at church or didn’t like some leadership decision or indigestion or any other of the myriad of reasons I’ve heard. But they avoid me because of shame that they carry around about their leaving the church. Honestly, there are a lot of people who have sinned in the way they’ve left the church, and they are ashamed.

Here’s the thing. I don’t feel awkward about it at all. I’ve done ministry long enough to know that people come and people go. The days of people attending one church for a lifetime are long gone… there are simply too many options for people and they treat church as a consumable item. Church, in many people’s eyes, is just another choice in the marketplace. That’s not devaluing anyone or any decision, it is just how the landscape of church is today. (Nor am I stating that this is a good thing or a bad thing, merely a statement of what I see.)

As this happened to me last night, I really hurt for that person as they dodged me at the local grocery store. To walk around your town carrying either anger towards a person or shame about a situation is really sad. How can you live with that kind of stress?

At the same time I wonder about the logic of doing this. Because, the only way it’s ever going to get dealt with is if that person sucks it up and deals with it. They should either talk to me about how I’ve hurt them or allow me to express to them my apologies for whatever happened in the past. Otherwise, they are dodging people from the church for the rest of their lives. It’s really an immature response. It’s the same thing Paul does, and he’s 3 years old.

When Paul has done something bad, he hides. Usually we find him behind the couch or under his bed. That’s just how 3 year olds deal with shame. Kristen and I have to walk around the house and find him. When we find him we either have to talk him out of his hiding place or literally tear him from the place his is hiding as he kicks and screams. As a parent, it’s our role to teach him how to deal with it. We’re commanded by God to go there and do that… how else is he supposed to learn?

I struggle with this as I wonder, is it my role to chase people as they avoid me? Should I be running down the aisles of the grocery store after a grown person screaming "I forgive you!" or "Will you forgive me?"

Somehow I don’t think that’s it either.

OK, this is my last post on the NYWC. Monday was actually pretty simple. We woke up late, packed the room up, put everything in the car, had a breakfast at a diner that is still making me fart, and went to the last general session.

We found great seats in the 6th row and really enjoyed the last session. Carl, Chris, Mel, Jessica, and I enjoyed sitting together through the whole conference and this was no exception. Lost and Found were very silly and fun as usual. Starfield was amazing though they probably need more songs. Marko did a great job ending things with a push for humility, and then Starfield came back to end the whole thing "super fun." We sang one more song and everyone was bouncing around and dancing and having fun.

After everything was said and done I finally got a chance to meet Marko face to face, had lunch with Chris and Carl, and then took Carl to the airport before driving home.

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