• Inhibitions to the spread of the Gospel in your community

    The church is decreasing in America while our population continues to expand. One major factor contributing to this decline is how Christians think about themselves and their community of faith in the greater community in which they interact. This “self-talk” internally acts as a mental inhibition towards the innovation and creativity we need to reach lost people with the good news of Jesus Christ.

    Here’s some examples of inhibitions:

    • There’s nothing new under the sun. Really? I hear this dismissive tone nearly every time a new idea is floated. While there are certainly many, many who just redress the same pig and expect a different award at the fair– there are also tons of brand new ideas out there. In fact, the rate at which new information about our world is gathered, disseminated, and implemented continues to accelerate. There are actually new things discovered under the sun every second of every day.
    • People aren’t interested in Jesus. To the contrary every study reveals a wide gap between those claiming Christ and those actively involved in fellowship with other believers. While the gap changes based on the studies you read, let’s ballpark it at 20% of the United States population. That’s 61.4 million people in America who are walking around identifying themselves with Christ but are disconnected from the Christian community. When Jesus said the fields are white for the harvest he wasn’t kidding. Literally, 1:5 people you will meet today already call themselves a Christian but just need to get connected. (John 4:35)
    • I am not an evangelist. Good! People desperately need community. And people with microphones selling Jesus scare almost everyone. The good news is that the Holy Spirit is the best evangelist ever. Your job isn’t to tell every person about Jesus and ask them to receive Christ. Jesus said the two most important things you can do are to love your neighbor as yourself and love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. (Matthew 22:33-35) Anyone can do that, right?
    • I’m not a pastor. Cool, neither was Jesus. He was a carpenter and a lay teacher– A blue collar regular guy like you or I who went to work every day. He didn’t have a church to invite people to. If the last 50 years of church decline have taught us anything it’s that the “If you build it, they will come” strategy can’t reach an additional 20% of a growing population. We can’t build fast enough.
    • People don’t want to come to church with me. Who said they need to go to church? Giving your heart to Jesus and finding community with other believers doesn’t mean people have to join a church. You can form a community of believers who hate church right in your house. Who knows? As they discover that you aren’t a tool, maybe they’ll want to be a part of church later? And maybe that group of church haters in your house will grow… and become a church?

    What are other inhibitions, mental blocks, that are impacting the spread of the Gospel in your community?

  • City People Really are Wired Differently

    Photo by Jerry W. Lewis via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    In 2002, Kristen and I considered a position at a lovely church in rural Nebraska. The nearest large city was Lincoln some two hours away. The town was quaint and cute as a postcard. But as we dug into the realities of moving somewhere with one coffee shop, a small grocery store, a gas station, and three farm implement dealers we realized that we really couldn’t see ourselves living 45 minutes from the nearest town with a  supermarket. (Or hospital, mall, or even Applebee’s.)

    We loved the idea of a ministering in a simple, farm town. And we adored the church and their vision for the community. (Nearly half the town attended their church each Sunday morning!) But, ultimately we are wired as city folks. We were used to riding the cramped train to work. And, in Chicago, we were never more than a few blocks from the nearest Starbucks. Even in our 5 years of living in Detroit’s northern suburbs we found ourselves constantly annoyed by the monoculture of suburbia. The quiet and wide open space and all of that stuff kind of raises my stress level a bit. When it’s that quiet and wide open I find myself humming the Dueling Banjos from Deliverance.

    I feel alive and free in an urban setting while visiting or living in a more rural place raises my anxiety level. (Folks from Romeo will remember that we chose to live in the village and not out in the more rural areas of town.)

    I always thought this was just my personal preference. But, it turns out that city people and rural people really are different neurologically. A recent article in Time Magazine shared some insights from recent research on the differences between rural and cities people’s brains.

    In an international study, researchers at University of Heidelberg and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute at McGill University report in the journal Nature that people who live or were raised in cities show distinct differences in activity in certain brain regions than those who aren’t city dwellers.

    Those who currently live in the city, for example, showed higher activation the amygdala, the brain region that regulates emotions such as anxiety and fear. The amygdala is most often called into action under situations of stress or threat, and the data suggest that city dwellers’ brains have a more sensitive, hair-trigger response to such situations, at least when compared with those living in the suburbs or more rural areas. Read more

    All of this is kind of locked in during the first 15 years of life. Your developing brain is either used to the stimulation of the city or in suburban/rural settings and that becomes comfortable with one or the other.

    As the article goes on to point out– there are positives and negatives to either. City people tend to be more anxious over their lifetime than rural people. And people raised in the country are less likely to ever fully feel at ease living in the city.

    Why does this matter?

    Understanding yourself is often half the battle to managing life stress. As the article concludes, “So what does this mean for avid city livers like me? I’m not giving up my urban lifestyle, but I may have to balance the high-energy hum of city activity with more downtime. “In general when it comes to stress, it’s important to keep a balance,” says Pruessner. “These results suggest the need to keep things in balance so after a period of working hard, you balance that with a period of off-time as well.”

    Read the full article here.

  • Unleash Your Fingers

    Really cool video. The whole time I kept thinking… he’s going to pick his nose. I just know it. Pick it!

    ht to Likecool

  • The Sky is (not) Falling!

    I don’t know about you. But I’ve just about had it with people telling me that youth ministry is over.

    It’s not over.

    But it is changing.

    A brief look back at the history of youth ministry

    Examining youth ministry with a historical lens will allow you to see more clearly where we are and where things seem to be headed. For those who didn’t read Marko’s Youth Ministry 3.0, this is covered there pretty well.

    Era 0: Early ministries (1870s – 1940s) Before we really had adolescence we had ministries working with children and young adults. They have a legitimate claim to saying they started youth ministry. But their practices were dramatically different than we commonly see today. Some of these organizations still exist today… Christian Endeavor, Boy Scouts, Boys Brigade, YMCA, to name a few.

    Era 1: Parachurch dominance (1940s – 1960s) Younglife, Youth for Christ, and a few other ministries essentially invented the youth ministry practices we use today. The 3-fold youth group night of worship, games, and teaching came out of this. It’s important to point out that the catalyst for these ministries was first that adolescence as we know it today was born. And second that the church was horrible at responding to the needs of this emerging subculture.

    Era 2: Church dominance (1960s-2000s) The success of the parachurches eventually trickled into the church. In the mid-to-late 1960s churches began to hire Younglife/YFC staff to serve at the church and basically copycat what they were doing for the church without actually integrating with the church in a wholesale way. But as time has gone on youth ministry has trickled into the adult church. (Casual worship music, teaching styles, skits, media use… these are all inventions of church-based youth ministry that graduated into “big church.”) In fact, it’s the “big church” vs. youth group mentality that created the tension we are in now. Some places describe church-based youth group as an organizational island while others coined the phrase, the One-Eared Mickey Mouse. Either way… that tone and some recent research has lead to a lot of church-based youth workers in vocational trouble.

    Era 3: Missional dominance (2000s – ???) As I wrote about in January 2011, we are continuing to see a trend that big churches are getting bigger, little churches are getting missional, and medium-sized churches are feeling the pinch in the middle. But if you think about it all three are just getting missional and being more true to who they are. As churches (and parachurches) realize that the One-Eared Mickey Mouse isn’t helping young adults make the transition from adolescent faith to adult faith they are wrestling to discover how to best minister to the adolescents in their communities. This is leading to big churches getting better at what they do and growing numerically. Smaller ministries have realized that they can’t copy the methods of the big churches and have started to adapt adolescent faith development and evangelism into new ministries which meet the needs of the communities students.

    The sky isn’t falling on youth ministry

    I don’t want to minimize what many people are going through. It certainly feels like their sky is falling. One result of this transition is that a huge amount of long-term professional youth ministry staff people are losing their jobs.

    As the church dominance era is coming to an end there are lots and lots of people who vocationally left in the cold. So the sky feels like it is falling on them as churches (and parachurches) wrestle through the reality that they might need to do youth ministry differently. Unfortunately, when many church boards look at their one-eared Mickey Mouse, they see old Pastor Adam and his youth ministry department and decide that in order to shake things up… they are going to need new leadership.

    But you need to know that there is no less interest in youth ministry. In fact– there is much, much more church-wide.

    The exciting flip side of all of the tension/drama/pain is that we are in an incredible period of innovation, invention, soul-searching, research, and discovery in youth ministry as we all try to figure out, “What’s next?“

  • The Prince’s Posture

    He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

    John 1:11-13

    —

    The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

    Romans 8:16-17

    Do you have a Prince’s Posture?

    Christians believe that Jesus’ work gave us access to the King of Kings. Not only do we have access through Christ– We are adopted as children of God.

    Adopted children of the King with unlimited access to God. That’s status.

    And yet, as I interact with Christians in leadership at their church, and especially as I interact with Christians in the public arena I’m appauled how many of us take a posture of weakness, irrelevancy, and… other postures unworthy of respect or the high calling we have on our lives.

    We genuflect to the kings, demigods, and pseudo-powers of our society instead of carrying a prescence and posture of a prince.

    A prince would never need to genuflect to a local lord. Nor would he entertain, beyond amusement, the solutions of those who didn’t have access to the knowledge he had.

    But that’s the posture many people take in society.

    The only thing worse than an arrogant prince is a weak, defeated one

    A prince isn’t cocky, he is confident. A prince isn’t intimidated by challenges, he uses his resources to overcome. A prince isn’t lead by fools, he is entertained by them. He isn’t overcome by his insecurities in the public arena, as he knows his King owns the public arena and His Father has the power over the people. Ultimately, the prince isn’t worried worried what people think, because he understands that any power in the room belongs to his Father.

    A Prince’s Posture

    • Self-assured
    • Confident
    • Clear-minded
    • Generous
    • Polite
    • Educated
    • Connected
    • A doer of his Father’s business, not a debater of what his Father might want

    As we begin a new week, my encouragement for my fellow princes and princesses is to put on the Prince’s posture and put away the insecurities.

  • Committee Meetings – A Cartoon

    Click image to see full-sized version

  • Fat Adam is Weak

    There’s little joy in kicking fat Adam to the curb. It’s not as simple as dragging him to the curb and waiting for the truck to haul him away. Fat Adam is old, crabby, and full of bad habits. He’s punchy. And he puts up a good fight for a fat guy.

    My weapons of choice

    Skinny Adam is making progress. Here’s how.

    3 times per week I’m running 1.5 – 2 miles… easing up to 3.2 miles. At least 4 times per week I’m commuting to work for an additional 6 miles of bike riding. I gave up soda (pop) for lent and haven’t gone back to it. I’ve tried to replace it with water as much as possible while cutting down on easy calories like getting regular coffee instead of my favorite blended drink at Starbucks.

    My drugs of choice

    Fat Adam is holding on to some bad habits. Here’s what I mean.

    My eating habits suck. It really isn’t how much I eat on a given day so much as when and how I’m eating it and what I snack on. I tend to skip breakfast. (Or eat something carb/sugar heavy. Like a bagel. Or a donut. Or a bagel and a donut followed by granola.) Since I skip a proper breakfast and snack all morning, I tend to not feel hungry at lunch. Which means I eat a late lunch, or eat a full lunch when I’m not really hungry, and then eat a regular dinner too.

    Unless I eat lunch so late that I skip dinner and eat dinner really late. Which is super bad.

    The result? I’m feeling much, much better but I know I could be doing a lot better. Muscles are noticeably stronger. My lungs and heart feel much stronger. And I don’t fatigue on my runs nearly as soon or as bad as when I first started.

    But my eating habits are holding me back. I can feel it when I’m out pounding the sidewalk.

    While this whole thing isn’t just about weight, I’d feel a lot better if I could drop some of the weight. I’ve lost weight. My clothes all feel more loose. Which is awesome!

    The plan for July. I’m not a fan of diets. But there’s a connection between what I eat and how much progress I can make and I need to make that sacrifice. My fancy plan? I will eat breakfast. Not just a cup of tea. (Which is what I like!) I’ll eat– at least an orange or banana… something that isn’t a bagel.

  • Office Adventures: Moses saves Ben’s life, part 1

    This is the opening shot to a film. Write the first scene.

    Go!

  • If Prayer is a Verb…

    If prayer is a verb…

    • You’ll knock on the door of your enemy to say you’re sorry, even if they wronged you.
    • You’ll nail the interview because you studied up.
    • You’ll check your friend into rehab.
    • You’ll get an A on the test because you got a tutor.
    • You’ll confront your boss about the things he says to you.
    • You’ll wait for your neighbors car to pull in; you’ll walk over and talk to them about Jesus.
    • You’ll go back and find that homeless woman and learn more than just her name.

    God can do anything. He’s huge and good and loves it when we seek Him. But sometimes He doesn’t answer prayer because He has already provided an active solution to your prayer request.

    Never forget. Prayer is a verb. Prayer isn’t passive, it’s active.

    What are you praying with your feet today?

  • Place your bet

    Photo by @ Alex via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    A few months ago I went to Las Vegas with my father-in-law for 24 hours. There are at least 4 things hilarious with that statement, right?

    He was running a marathon and needed someone to drive with him from San Diego to Las Vegas and back. I went since it’d be nice to catch-up along the way as well as have lunch with my mom, who lives a mile from the Strip.

    Since my mom lives there… I have been to Vegas at least 10 times. Normally, I like to people watch late at night. The joke has always been that I’m down $11 in slots lifetime and I’m mad about it. I’ve never really been into the games.

    What I learned from 6 hours on the Strip

    Unlike my normal late-night-people-watching, this trip had me up very early, checked out of my hotel, and walking the Strip by breakfast. With more than 6 hours to kill I wandered through a few casinos filled with old people playing slots and a bunch of dealers standing at empty tables.

    Along the way I stopped at a Starbucks. As I sipped my mocha I entertained myself by watching a few scattered games here and there. In truth, like a lot of Christians, I feel really out of place on a casino floor. More because I don’t know what to do than that I don’t feel like I could enjoy it.

    At one casino there was a small crowd around the crap table. It was a morning clinic explaining how the game worked. Perfect… I could kill an hour, learn something, and its free.

    Here’s an observation from that clinic: There is a time to place bets. But once the time has passed it is too late for placing bets. You are either in the game or you are out. The shooter rolls 7 or 11 on his first roll, everyone with a bet on the line instantly doubles their money. If you think about it, every form of gambling has that same timeline. A time to place bets. A time when betting is closed. And a moment when a winner is declared. Cards, slots, horses, lottery, etc.

    When you are playing in the game you have a claim at the table. You can win or you can lose. Your heart beats faster and adreneline pumps. The dealers chatter with you. And the cocktail waitress is happy to bring you a bottle of water or whatever you’d like on the house.

    When you aren’t in the game you have no claim to the table. You can’t lose but you can’t win either. You’re on the sidelines as an observer. No pitter-patter of your heart. The dealers might not acknowledge you. And fat chance in getting a free drink from the waitress if you aren’t in the game. You’re just another tourist.

    Gambling in Vegas is a lot like life outside of Vegas

    It feels like people are so afraid of losing that they just refuse to place a bet at all.

    • College – Where do I want to go? What do I want to study?
    • Marriage and family– Is this the right person? What if it’s the wrong person? Should we have kids? If so, when?
    • Vocation – What do I want to do when I grow up? What if I don’t like it?
    • Location – Where do I want to live?

    People aren’t shy about their shock with Kristen and I because we placed bets on all four of those categories early in life and have continued to “improve our hand” over the years.

    The flip side, experience has taught: In order to win you have to place a bet in the game. And the window for placing a bet is limited. When the time comes to place a bet I already know I want to be in the game because sitting on the sidelines is too boring for me. There are risks and rewards… but I always know I want to be in the game.

    Life’s winners and losers are in the game. But those who hold on, never placing a bet, will never know what winning feels like because they are too afraid to accept the risk of losing. And that, my friends, is losing every time.