• 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

  • Reminder: Back-up your blog

    This morning I woke up and my blog was down. With more than 6 years of content here that is scary.

    It was a healthy reminder to me that it was time to back-up my blog. (After fixing some corrupt tables)

    This is your reminder: If you haven’t backed-up your self-hosted WordPress blog lately, you need to do it.

    Don’t know how?

    No problem! I wrote a tutorial for you over on the McLane Creative blog.

  • Team Meeting Strategy

    The team meeting.

    It’s one of those necessary evils of most organizations.

    No one truly enjoys them but it’s also critical for teammates to get an idea of where you are at regularly. Whether you are a start-up with 3 employees or a conglomerate with thousands of employees across multiple offices and departments, this is one of those ubiquitous things you do.

    For as long as I’ve had these meetings I’ve heard people complain about them. But the simple truth is I don’t know of a better alternative. How else are you going to know who is doing what, what needs to  get done, and how we are doing as a team?

    Forms of team meetings

    I break it down into two distinct styles:

    1. The sit down – Get the coffee, even the shortest version of this is an hour.
    2. The stand up – Get the coffee, but we aren’t going to sit so it’ll only last 10-15 minutes.

    Style of team meetings

    I break it down into three types:

    1. Report to the boss – Everything is presented to or directed at the boss, who responds and digs deeper as needed.
    2. Catch up with the team – Everything is directed at the team, those who need to ask more questions do so.
    3. Hybrid – Most team meetings are this, there’s a little bit of reporting to the boss, and hopes of collaboration.

    Adam’s rules for team meetings

    1. Be prepared – Typically these happen weekly. If you don’t show up ready you don’t take your job seriously.
    2. It’s a briefing, keep it brief – When I show up I want to have my facts handy, I try to stay on point, and I want to plainly communicate the whole truth. Facts, numbers, problems.
    3. Don’t hide failures – I like to make sure I communicate where I’m struggling, where my problems are, etc. Hiding that only leads to bad things.
    4. Open to questions – Even when I screw up, I make sure to ask if anyone has any follow-up questions.
    5. If you aren’t the team lead, don’t take over – I don’t like it when someone dominates this meeting that isn’t in charge of the meeting.
    6. If you are the team lead, moderate well – When I’m running these meetings I make sure I keep them moving. I’m never afraid to interrupt and say, “That’s a sidebar, let’s meet later.” Or “it would be better if you two just talked about that and reported back next time.“
    7. The meter is running – In my mind, I calculate the hourly rate of these types of meetings. If there are 10 people who average $30/hour, are we getting $300/hour worth of benefit here?

    What about you? What are your rules for team meetings?

  • Ashley Judd – Children are not for sex

    Powerful stuff. I hope change is underway in Georgia.

    GenerateHope is an organization which helps reach out to women who have been sexually trafficked into San Diego County. As Ms. Judd points out, its more common that you’d like to think.

  • unFrozen

    Jesus told this simple story, but they had no idea what he was talking about. So he tried again. “I’ll be explicit, then. I am the Gate for the sheep. All those others are up to no good—sheep stealers, every one of them. But the sheep didn’t listen to them. I am the Gate. Anyone who goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out, and find pasture. A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of. John 10:6-10, The Message

    There’s a joke told about church people– they are referred to as “the frozen chosen.”

    In some very real ways that description is sadly true.

    I know too many people frozen. They are stuck and can’t move forward. In the guilt of their sin they know with their heads that they are forgiven but struggle with moving forward… They are frozen in their regret. They quiet, honest corners they cry, “How could God love me when I’ve _____.” They are frozen in fear that if they somehow move forward– forgiving themselves a little– the same temptation will befall them again. They are frozen from dreaming.

    They are frozen from living.

    From imagining with wonder the possibilities of what God could do through them.

    They are frozen spiritually, going through the daily motions of life.

    And they live life to the least as a result

    If you are frozen, John 10:10 is for you.

    The frozen feeling is real. Under your own power you are frozen. You aren’t free. You are bound by the penalties of the messes you’ve caused. The thief is winning and will continue to win. You feel powerless in the weight of your failures. You can’t move forward, backwards, or to the side because you really, truly, are frozen.

    Yet, Jesus came so you could be unfrozen. Whether today is the first day you’ve put your trust in Christ or your 20,000th, you are in the same position. Paul (and the Holy Spirit) captured your psychobabble pretty well, didn’t he?

    I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.

    But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. Romans 7:14-20, The Message

    The reality is that only you, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and with the freedom paid for by Jesus, can get unfrozen. Going to church won’t unfreeze you. Listening to a million sermons won’t unfreeze you. Tithing won’t unfreeze you. Serving at the church won’t unfreeze you. Giving the poor won’t unfreeze you. Nothing you can do externally will unfreeze you.

    The heat and power to unfreeze you can only come from within.

    Somewhere, near that place where you aren’t quite sure if it’s your own self-talk or the Holy Spirit speaking to you, you need to conspire against yourself and get unfrozen. The source of the heat lives inside of you. You need to trust it and boldly allow it to work.

    And when you do? In Jesus’ words, “I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.”

    (John 10:10, NASB, personalized the “they” for “you.”)

  • 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.

  • One hundred seventy-seven

    It was really cool to find out that my blog was indexed and currently ranks as #177 of the top #200 church blogs. Always nice to be recognized- thanks Kent.

    Based on how he measures, there are two things you can do to help me move up on that list.

    First, subscribe to my blog via Google Reader.

    Add to Google

    Second, if you have a blog, tumblr, postereus site, or anything like that, it actually does help both my page rank & Yahoo links ranking if you have a link to me somewhere.

    More importantly…

    It’s really cool to see the noticeable addition of youth ministry blogs into the Church Relevance rankings. Here’s a list of youth ministry bloggers on the list, with their YS ranking in parenthesis.

    To have 10 youth ministry blogs in the top 200 is really cool. I’m excited about that.

    As I’ve said about the YS rankings. There is room for you.  You have a voice– speak your mind!

  • New ideas wanted

    The numbers are staggering.

    • 5%-10% of the population are actively engaged in church in our country. (With some geographical variations)
    • The United States population continues to grow, the U.S. Census bureau estimates that we’ll have 392 million by 2050. (Currently 307 million)
    • There seems to be an deepening inverse relationship between the amount of money spent on “church stuff” (staff, buildings, programs, etc.) and the amount of people who are active.
    • There are now so many megachurches that we need to differentiate between the mega (under 10,000) and others gigachurches. (10,000+) At the same time, these big organizations are difficult to navigate, don’t work for everyone, and are by definition not on the cutting edge.
    • Our nation continues to become more ethnically diverse. Our churches? Not so much.
    • More and more people are moving to urban centers. The mega and gigachurch movement typically does best in the suburbs. It’s cost prohibitive to build a 10,000 seat auditorium in an urban center.
    • Meanwhile, a church planting movement continues to explode in suburbs and urban contexts, starting churches of all shapes, sizes, and denominations. (Some prioritize youth ministry, but most seem to emphasize their worship service and children’s ministry, youth ministry is a necessary afterthought.)
    • Adolescent culture continues to evolve, devolve, morph, repeat and fragment. One size doesn’t fit all more now than ever. More and more there are children growing up today who not only don’t go to church, but their parents have never attended church, nor their grandparents.

    All of this to say one thing: We, the church in America, need to keep innovating just to survive!

    None of the items are “bad” except the first item. We are reaching a decreasing amount of people while our population explodes.

    All of these things are cries for new ideas, new innovation, and new adaptations.

    Why? Because we know the church is Jesus’ chosen vehicle to carry His message of redemption, restoration, forgiveness of sins, and promise of eternal life to the population.

    No excuses. Get to it.

    1. If you know Christ you are on the team. (1 Corinthians 12 implies that we are handicapped without you.) No other prerequisite is required. Soft innovation typically comes from front-line workers. Hard innovation typically comes from complete outsiders.
    2. It starts with ethnography. You need to know who your people are, what their needs are, etc.
    3. It continues with prayerful ideation and research to test your concept. Don’t go it alone, you’ll never make it.
    4. It’s empowered/driven by success stories and a healthy dose of “we’re out to stick it to the man.“
    5. It’s sustained by good people doing it for the right reasons.

    The time is now. Today is the day.

    What are you waiting for?

  • Snake bit

    Darkness creeps in at weird moments.

    A comment. A ungaurded remark by the wrong person. A glance or a stare that you can’t get an explanation for. All of those are things that can set me off inexplicably.

    Normally, I’m pretty happy-go-lucky. Why do those tiny things trigger the my mind so wildly? I wonder those things as I lay in bed with my mind literally swirling in the darkness.

    At times when darkness creeps in I’m left asking myself questions like this:

    • Are these people playing me?
    • Am I just being set up to be the fall guy?
    • How do I get out of the way of this situation I’m imagining?
    • Am I prepared to go another direction, right now?
    • What would happen if….

    If what? That’s when I snap out of my anxiety-filled, irrational Risk game and wake up to reality. No one is out to get me.

    Disappointed with myself, I am left self-reflecting: How did I get to that place… AGAIN?!?

    Snakes in a church?

    You see, like a lot of people who are involved in Christian leadership, I’ve been bitten by a snake before. And once you’ve been bitten you don’t ever want it to happen again. As a result, people who work in churches tend to have a healthy fear of snakes.

    In 2002, Kristen and I left an over-resourced church we loved to accept a call to full-time ministry. It was the culmination of years of hard work, prayerful steps of obedience & preparation, and a lot of sound advice. We left Chicago and headed west for an under-resourced church in an area which described itself as the armpit of California. A huge unchurched population. Rampant adolescent problems. And no viable, functional Christian ministry to those kids.

    Our hearts were way ahead of our skill level. The church wasn’t nearly as willing to reach “the wrong kids” as they originally said. The meth epidemic was exploding all around them and they didn’t know how to respond. So instead of reaching out the leaders decided to close the shutters and try to ride out the storm.

    Within a few months every friend and mentor I’d ever had was telling me the same thing: Bad fit, get out.

    So we did. I began a quiet process of finding another place to do ministry while at the same time respecting my obligation to the church I was serving at, holding out some hope that things might turn around as I was looking and we’d be able to stay.

    A few months later, Kristen and I found a much better fit, well-suited for my skill level, and closer to our family. We accept that churches call, signed a contract, and were eager to close things up at one church to move on to another, better fit. We had kept everything on the up-and-up. I’d asked the advice of people far more seasoned than I and followed their advice closely.

    All that was left was to tell the elders.

    The meeting didn’t go well. They turned on me. These men slobbered angry tears at me about how they wished I was going to be the son they wished their sons had been to them. And they told me I was a horrible husband to Kristen. And a horrible father to my daughter. And that I was unfit for any kind of ministry. And that the devil must have confused me into thinking I was called to ministry when I was clearly not.

    I took it all in. I apologized for disappointing them. If the room full of men turned into bitter boys, I’d be the one in the room to stand up and take it like a man.

    Then they explained to me that they couldn’t allow me to quit because that would be an embarrassment to them. I couldn’t quit because they were firing me! Later, they produced a letter and “a review” of my performance based purely on things they had heard, filled with quotes from my volunteers, things they later told me they never said, and the viscous letter even went so far to say that Kristen was an unfit mother.

    And I was told to read a different letter to the church the next Sunday. (I read parts of it, ad libbing the rest. Oops.) And they were to pay me off to get me out of their sight. Then, when that was all over- phone calls came because they said things about me in private to other people. Letters arrived at our house. People drove by our house slowly to stare. My neighbors wouldn’t talk to me.

    The next 30 days before our moving van left were the worst 30 days of my life. It made no sense whatsoever. I hadn’t done anything wrong. All I had done was quit one job to take a job that better suited me. But, the men I had trusted suddenly turned into snakes, biting me repeatedly.

    I’ll never forget my last conversation with one of the elders. The one whom I’d been closest too. As he walked me to our car on the last Sunday, he handed me an envelope full of money and pretended to say nice things. He tried to apologize for how the elders had acted, but since he was also delivering their hush money, it was all kind of a lie and he knew it. He said, “You know, I’ve wanted to know this whole time something, maybe you can help me? From the first day you’ve loved kids here that none of us would love. You’ve reached out to people we don’t want to even look at but probably should. What book did you read that taught you how to love those kids?” I looked at Kristen. Her jaw dropped. She shook her head. One statement summed up the entire disconnect that haunted the last year of our lives. I help back a smile. I said, “Mark, I learned those things from the life of Jesus. That’s the entire point of the New Testament. The Gospel isn’t just for people born into the church, it’s for everyone.”

    Snakes. I never felt so sick to my stomach in all of my life. As Indiana Jones so famously said, “Why did it have to be snakes?”

    Darkness creeps in

    The last 24 hours, memories of the snakes have crept back in. I wish I could explain it. I guess old fears lurk just under the surface. But these fears paralyze me. I wish it weren’t true. But it is. It’s a weakness I wish I could grow out of but I fear it’s become part of my DNA.

    It’s not a fear like the fear of the boogie man. Instead, it’s a fear of knowing that one day in the future you might have to face that same situation… and how will you respond differently?

    “Am I more prepared today to deal with that situation? Am I more mature? Am I more self-confident?”

    Questions that wake you from a deep sleep. Or prevent you from sleeping to begin with.

    Fear is irrational. It comes from an emotional place. When darkness like that swarms in I’ve learned to rebuke it. That sort of fear isn’t from God.

    That’s where truth always wins.

    The Groom would never treat His Bride that way. Though Jesus had the power, he chose to win our hearts instead of capturing our hearts. He’s doesn’t demand our trust, He asks us to freely give it to him.

    Whom do I trust?

    If I learned anything from being bit by a snake it’s that I need to be secure in whom I put my trust.

    Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
    bind them around your neck,
    write them on the tablet of your heart.
    Then you will win favor and a good name
    in the sight of God and man.

    Trust in the LORD with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
    in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.

    Do not be wise in your own eyes;
    fear the LORD and shun evil.
    This will bring health to your body
    and nourishment to your bones.

    Proverbs 3:3-8