This was beautiful. I’m thankful I found it.
I’m an introvert caught in an extroverts life. Fortunately, I’m married to a fellow introvert. And we dream about simple things… like taking vacations places where we can walk in silence and be alone. Where we are free to explore and discover. And where we take the time to just be.
I find the Spirit’s voice loudest and my mind most alert when I make the time to be alone.
Weird, isn’t it?
What the heck is the Table Project? It’s hard for me to describe, exactly. At first blush it’s easy to call it a social networking site for churches. But it’s more than that. To label it as that would cheapen it. I’d called it a social networking utility for churches.
Most churches have an assortment of inter-connected people. There are people in the pews, an email list, a Facebook page, a website, a youth group list, a group of knitters who meet at the church but no one is sure why, and some sort of database for tracking member information.
These are all separate things that the Table tries to bring together to make life a bit simpler for churches.
Since the Table is a ministry launched from YouthWorks, I’ve gotten a chance to spend time with the developers… poke holes in their theories… and share Coke’s over head-spinning “what if” sessions.
Over the months, in my skepticism, we’ve tossed quips back and forth. I’ve said, “Are you guys just another Jesus-flavored Facebook rip-off?” And they’ll fire back, “What’s your solution? Create a forum and charge people to join?”
Zoinks. Touche`.
With this big milestone, I want to point out a few things about the Table and invite you to check it out.
My disclaimer: Youth Specialties and The Table Project are both parts of the same organization. But no one has asked me to blog about their project. I’m just doing it because they are friends of mine and I’m excited about it going to the beta test.
For the last month I’ve had my head under the hood on a brand new event for YS called, “YSpalooza.”
Over at the YS blog I’ll talk a little more about what the event is and why we are excited about it.
But here I wanted to take readers behind the scenes to show off some of the nerd-factor I added to the website.
This was a fun project to work on. For one thing, it’s a brand new event. So we were creating a lot. Typically, I manage a group of freelancers who all do 1-2 pieces of the pie. For this one it was a blast to do it in-house, with coding help from Dave.
Sometimes I embarrass my wife. And on our July trip to Haiti I offered her one very embarrassing moment when I refused to go through the new backscatter TSA screening machines while opting for a manual pat down instead.
The TSA made the process of opting-out a hassle. While there were plenty of officers on duty they managed to make me wait for about 10 minutes while they played their keystone cop routine.
Call me a jerk all you want. But I don’t like that the government wants to take pictures of its people naked for the sake of “security.” The media has shown over and over again that all of this extra screening doesn’t stop people from smuggling weapons aboard a plane. It’s really just for passengers to feel safe while traveling and little else.
Back at the Ft. Lauderdale airport. I had completely dug in on my decision.
Kristen quickly went through the line, got her nudey pic taken, put her shoes back on, and glared at me in the way only a wife could.
Finally, an older TSA agent had me go through the metal detector and directed me to the screening area. He explained that he was going to pat me down and that he intended to touch my private parts with the back of his hands.
Obviously, I’m not dangerous and they didn’t find anything.
As the officer took his gloves off he looked in my eyes and asked asked me why I had opted out. My reply, “When it comes to governmental invasions of privacy, I prefer personal over digital.”
That moment revealed the heart of the matter. If the TSA agents had to look hundreds of thousands of passengers in the eyes and manually search them– we’d actually be safer.
Dehumanizing the screening procedure is not how you make airline flight safer. Humanizing it is.
The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg shares his desire to resist as well as documents the new procedure to feel up your thigh until they feel “resistance.” (Obviously, women lack resistance.)
“But what about people who hide weapons in their cavities? I asked. I actually said “vagina” again, just to see him blush. “We’re just not going there,” he reiterated.
I asked him if he was looking forward to conducting the full-on pat-downs. “Nobody’s going to do it,” he said, “once they find out that we’re going to do.”
In other words, people, when faced with a choice, will inevitably choose the $%*#-Measuring Device over molestation? “That’s what we’re hoping for. We’re trying to get everyone into the machine.” He called over a colleague. “Tell him what you call the back-scatter,” he said. “The $%*#-Measuring Device,” I said. “That’s the truth,” the other officer responded.
The pat-down at BWI was fairly vigorous, by the usual tame standards of the TSA, but it was nothing like the one I received the next day at T.F. Green in Providence. Apparently, I was the very first passenger to ask to opt-out of back-scatter imaging. Several TSA officers heard me choose the pat-down, and they reacted in a way meant to make the ordinary passenger feel very badly about his decision. One officer said to a colleague who was obviously going to be assigned to me, “Get new gloves, man, you’re going to need them where you’re going.”
Here is another story of a pilot who refused the pat down and was suspended from his job. Ridiculous.
So– it’s come to this. If you want to fly you are left with an awful choice. Do you want someone looking at you naked or someone touching your genitals? We aren’t talking about a doctor here… we’re talking about a TSA agent. A person hired by the Department of Homeland Security for just above minimum wage with no qualifications. Seriously, TSA screeners either have to have a high school diploma or GED or one years experience working security.
Call me crazy. But I think if enough people opt-out we can force the issue and make the government remove these devices.
Call me a conspiracy theorist: But I would like to know how much American Science & Engineering, Inc gave to their members of congress and senators to lobby for selling these machines. (They are $170,000 each!)
My little trick or treaters, waiting for go time., originally uploaded by mclanea.
It’d been a couple of years since I have been home for Halloween.
So, I was thrilled when the kids informed me that I was taking them trick-or-treating and Kristen was going to stay home and hand out candy.
They quickly covered several blocks of our neighborhood. (It was fun to see the same neighbors again, without the hovering helicopters and SWAT teams of the night before. What a difference 24 hours makes!)
One thing I adore about our neighborhood is how friendly everyone is. The neighborhood is a fun mix of middle-class families, immigrants/refugees, retired folks, and college students. That was on full display all night.
Three favorite moments:
1. There is one neighbor who goes all out. They set up their yard like a haunted house, complete with zombies and chainsaw masacres. Both of our kids fought the fear, smiled realizing it was all fake and for fun, and made it through. Paul kept telling himself, “Don’t chicken out” as he made his way to the porch. (They gave out full-sized candy bars, pretty cool)
2. About an hour into their adventure both of them got very tired. As we were still several blocks from home they both just looked at me and said, “Can we walk straight home?” Then, as we were walking home, both Megan and Paul decided they needed to make one more stop. They wanted to go next door to visit our 80+ year old neighbors. They love that couple and have a special bond with them that is really cool. I loved that they wanted to see them and knew that “Mr. Stan” would want to see them in their costumes.
3. I loved seeing and handing out candy to first-timers. Our community welcomes refugees from all over the world. The latest group hails from several African nations… and it was fun to see them try to figure out Halloween. The costumes were a little off and the concept of a cute plastic pumpkin as a candy storage device was lost along the way. But these kids got it, and the smiles on their faces were priceless.
I love living in a country where one day we can have a police standoff and the next it is safe enough for children to wander around in the dark asking random houses for candy.
Gosh, I really love the message of this video.
I want to encourage youth workers to watch this video twice. Watch it the first time with your adult glasses on. Get annoyed that there are fireworks shooting out of her chest or two boys kissing or even that a girl strips down and jumps in a pool.
Those are the things you are trained to see as an adult.
The second time, put on the glasses of a high school student. Remember what it was like to be one of the people portrayed in the video. Feeling out of sorts. Feeling unpopular. Feeling isolated from the world you wanted to be a part of.
Perhaps now you can see why this message is so powerful? (More than 500,000 views in 24 hours!) Perhaps, just perhaps, Katy Perry is preaching a message you’d also like to get across?
Maybe she’s a prophetess to a generation? (And doing it outside of being a part of the church? Gasp.)
Perhaps we need to learn that her use of art and symbolism to communicate to students is something we need to think about way more than just the spoken word? Perhaps we need to continue to foster ministries that embrace and empower students to express themselves and feel safe? Perhaps we need to celebrate when students break free of peer pressure that’s keeping them down or isolating them and dance with them as they embrace freedom? Maybe the message of this video could be a halfway point to talking about freedom in Christ?
When I see people in youth ministry looking down on the powerful messages the media is portraying, I get frustrated in the realization that the church continues to perpetrate the same old lie. “If it isn’t our message shared in our way, it must be bad.” (This is a closed theory, like I talked about here.)
And I wonder when we’ll embrace openness and acknowledge that our message is true, and can be open, expressed in ways we don’t have to approve of and still be truth?
3 reasons why I think every Christian should embrace Halloween as a cultural phenomenon beyond personal convictions that you are endorsing evil.
My kids are excited about Halloween. Megan is dressing up like a tiger and Paul is dressing up like a mad scientist. This year, I will be handing out candy and pleasantries with neighbors while Kristen (Baby Tres is in the belly, he is wearing a placenta costume, kind of gross but that’s what he wanted. Weirdo.) take the kids around the neighborhood.
Maybe I’ll get in trouble for saying this? But I think Halloween is my favorite holiday.
ht to Todd and my original post from 2007.
Contrary to popular belief– I do have fears.Every day I ride my bike to work, I’m fearful of getting hit by a car.
When I’m out bodyboarding, I’m fearful of getting killed by a shark.
When my kids are late coming out of school, I’m fearful that something happened to them.
I have the same fears as everyone else. I recognize that there are things with which it is healthy to have fear.
Fears are often irrational. I’ve got a pretty slim chance of getting hit by a car, or killed by a shark, or that my kids will be kidnapped from their school.
That’s the rational reality.
So, I chose to not have my life defined by paralyzing fear of those things.
The lens of fear is the wrong lens to judge an opportunity. You can’t worry about failure. You can’t worry about getting emotionally hurt. You can’t worry if people will like you. And you can’t worry about what people will think if you say yes or say no.
You need a better lens than that. You need a level head to determine whether an opportunity is good for you or not.
I often say no to ideas presented to me. But I never allow fear to be a part of the equation.
Why?
Deep down I know that I shouldn’t fear what could happen if something goes wrong. Instead, I fear what could happen if I don’t try.
As Franklin D. Roosevelt said, standing before the world on his inauguration day. With everything to fear– from wars on two continents looming, a depression lasting nearly a decade, and even his private battle with paralysis:
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. listen
Churches acting more like businesses has lead to reaching less of the population. (Read more here and here.)
Businesses acting more like ministries has lead to those companies growing in a down economy. (Read more here and here.)
Why don’t we celebrate ministry leaders who just want their ministries more and more like a ministry?
Let’s embrace some holy inefficiency and grow the Kingdom!
I first made this discovery at work but then noticed it in my own life.
As you can imagine, I’m a little schizophrenic at the National Youth Workers Convention. I hold several different roles simultaneously, which keeps me constantly moving and shifting from one role to another. And during our general session– I’m all over the place in that room. I’m welcoming people as they come in. I’m backstage saying hello (and thank you) to our speakers and artists. I’m making sure we’re capturing all the media we’ll need for the next year. On and on.
The net result is that I’m typically working during the entire general session… I have to be very intentional about sitting down and listening to the speaker. (This year I need to listen to the speaker since I’m interviewing them right after their talk with some follow-up questions.) It’s a crazy transition to have my mind moving at a million miles per hour and then to just sit down and listen at 100-120 words per minute.
There’s a big group of people who willfully don’t sit in chairs during general sessions. It really is like a middle school dance. The vast majority of the people are having a good time, laughing and dancing and highly engaged in what happens on the stage. And the “teachers” are all hanging out on the fringes loosely engaged at what is going on– but firmly in observation mode. My movement around the room is completely invisible to those engaged in the general session. But to those who are just observing on the outside, utterly disengaged, they watch me. They wave at me. They wave me over to say hello.
Those observing and not engaging are present but not connected. The implication is that the session isn’t for them… they are just present.
That discovery has haunted me the for weeks as I realize how many times I slip into observation mode during church.
Sure, I don’t sit in the back of the room. But I willfully disengage as if to say, “This isn’t for me.”
This habit of disengaging began as I worked at churches. Much like I have to work during general sessions at NYWC, most people who work at churches are working during the church service. Sure, the staff may be present… but they often have a million things on their mind. They are thinking about the lesson they just taught or are about to teach, or what they will say when they have to go up front, or keeping their head up to make sure that stragglers make it back in the room… if they are gone too long they feel they ought to go see what’s going on.
The end result is that few people who work at church ever get to fully participate in church.
Problem #1 leaves us with a pretty strong contradiction. We want to create an atmosphere where people engage with God and yet our staff is utterly unable to do so in the same space. So, our actions are actually teaching people that if they want to be leaders in our ministry they need to be really good at looking engaged when, in fact, they are merely observing.
The end result is that our actions are teaching people that in order to be a leader you need to be able to disengage at church.