• Time to move in

    Kristen and I had a realization a couple weeks back: We’ve lived in this house nearly two years and, in some ways, we never moved in.

    • There are a lot of boxes in the garage filled with stuff we don’t need, but never took the time to toss or give away.
    • Since we moved into this house we’ve bought nearly no furniture. We’ve had things we’ve used from previous places we’ve lived, but nothing for here.
    • All of the walls are still “rental apartment white”  and bare of things hung up even though the landlord said we could paint and do whatever.

    In short, we’ve lived here for two years but never fully made it our home.

    With baby #3 on the way in February, plus a rental relationship we actually enjoy, we know we aren’t going to move any time soon.

    About Southern California living: There’s a misconception that all of Southern California is a horribly expensive place to live. This hasn’t been our experience at all. It’s not cheap– but it’s not unlike any metropolitan area we’ve lived. (Chicago, Detroit) Renting a 3 or 4 bedroom house in a safe neighborhood is going to be expensive in any big city. When we look at our total housing budget for our house in Romeo, MI compared to our house here, it’s probably only 10-15% higher. How? We pay a lot more in a lump sum to rent but that is made up for in smaller bills in other areas. We don’t pay property taxes, renters insurance is a lot cheaper than homeowners, and our utilities are about 33% of what they were in Michigan. Of course, if we lived in a beach neighborhood or a super nice suburb it’d be more expensive. And if we compared square footage to square footage it wouldn’t be the same as our house here is about 50% of the overall size of our house in Michigan. But it is a little bit of a myth that all of Southern California is crazy expensive to live in.

    Our “make a rental feel like a home” plan:

    • Buy a deep freezer for the garage so we can store up on stuff better.
    • Paint the living/dining rooms, finally hang some pictures in those spaces.
    • Buy a new sofa/love seat for the living room.
    • Build a bed frame for under Paul’s loft with storage underneath. (He stopped sleeping in his loft and has slept on a mattress on the floor for about a year!)
    • Install a wall of storage cabinets in Megan’s room. (Since she’ll be sharing with Tres.)
    • Spend a little time and money sprucing up the front of the house landscaping-wise and get more serious about the backyard garden.
    • Get a nice grill so we will be able to enjoy our patio area a bit more in the warm winter months to come.

    It’s really not a lot. But the hope is that we’ll be able to do a little here and there that will make this place feel like home for the next couple of years.

  • Fact: Brian Berry Hates Boobies

    It is true. Journey Community Church senior high pastor and NYWC presenter, Brian Berry, hates boobies.

    At least, I know for a fact he hates the “I love boobies” bracelets which are all the rage these days with high school students. I’ve heard his rant about them a few times in person, so I was glad he finally blogged about it so I could use this sensationalistic blog title– I’ve been dying to use it:

    I HATE THE “I LOVE BOOBIES” BRACELETS!!!

    I hate them.

    I’ve pulled them off 10 year-old boys on my soccer teams, called out guys in our high school program for wearing them, and questioned girls who walk proudly with them on- the latest of which was earlier today.

    —

    NO, IT’S NOT ABOUT BREAST CANCER.

    Wake up!

    No 16 year-old dude is wearing a bracelet that says, “I love boobies” because his mom has breast cancer. That guy didn’t do the breast cancer walk or raise money for breast cancer awareness and if you ask him to give you $10 to fight cancer and skip the bracelet, you’d raise no money.  He will happily check your breasts for suspicious lumps however.

    My grandma lost one of her breasts to cancer.  She was a breast cancer survivor.  We constantly teased her for leaving her foam “replacement” boob everywhere. “Grandma you left your boob in the kitchen again”.  I can’t imagine in a million years wearing a bracelet that says, “I love boobies” around my grandma who only had one.  Maybe I should have bought her one that says, “I love boob”.

    I was in vegas this summer for 5 hours on our way to Idaho and asked this teen guy if I could take his pic in circus circus.  Read the location as an intentional pun on this stupid pic.

    Photo courtesy of Brian Berry

    Look… at least he has one that really says it… “I love your boobies”

    Read the rest of his blog post here.

    He has a point. Certainly, they are all over the place and the people raising money are clearly using the word boobies to get boys to buy bracelets which allegedly help raise money for breast cancer research.

    I think this is worth talking about with our students.

    I’m pretty sure that young men and boys just love boobies and enjoy the opportunity to have a reason to declare it publicly.

    Plus, the word “boobies” is fun to say. Just ask my 7 year old.

    My only real thought

    I’m glad Lance Armstrong’s bracelets didn’t say, “I love testes.”

    Now that would be awkward.

  • Getting away from pendulum thinking

    Our culture is dominated by pendulum thinking.

    We have a tendency to think in extremes. There’s something in our cultural make-up which makes it difficult to think about minor corrections as we default to massive swings.

    It’s “either or” thinking… and it drives me mad.

    It’s been going on for a while. In fact, it is engrained in Western thinking.

    An Example

    Nearly a decade ago, I worked at an Evangelical Free Church in Northern California. Part of the job offer was that I would pursue ordination within the denomination. As I began the steps in that process I was assigned to read a series of books about the denominations history. I was shocked to discover that deeply engrained in the history of the denomination was a protest mentality from the fringes of the protestant reformation. The very word “free” in the denominations name was a protest against Scandinavian Lutheranism. They were free from Lutheranism! The Lutherans had a hierarchical structure, churches were interdependent and structured into synods. In response, the E-Free world had a lack of hierarchy. The Evangelical Free Church of America won’t even call themselves a denomination. They are a group of  autonomous bodies tied together by historical culture and common beliefs. (Er, that’s what a denomination is, isn’t it?) Lutherans had ornate churches so E-Free churches tried to make their buildings stark white and plain in protest. Lutheran churches had a problem with pastoral abuses so E-Free pastors have virtually no power in their congregations. On and on... so much of what made the Evangelical Free Church distinct was actually pendulum swings from their past life in Scandinavia. I’d set those books down and think, “Only by God’s grace could such a rebellious attitude reach lost people.”

    More Examples

    • A church replaces a highly relational pastor with one who prefers books to people.
    • A company used to sell gas guzzlers, but now they just sell hybrids.
    • A country goes from electing a very conservative president to a very liberal one.
    • A person retires, having lived in Cleveland their whole life, and moves to Costa Rica, sight unseen, for retirement.
    • A family hates pets their whole life and on a whim they buy 3 dogs.

    Pendulum thinking is interesting, isn’t it? It assumes that the only way to change is to go from one extreme to another! We don’t live in a culture of nuanced differentiation– we live in one filled with extremes.

    In all likelihood the change you are looking for, the growth in your organization, the new product that will balance your budget, the educational principle that will revolutionize your classroom, and even the happiness you seek is not going to be found in the extremes.

    One pendulum swing just leads to another.

    What you are probably looking for is just a little bit to the left or the right.

  • Thank You, YMX

    Yesterday, we we went public with a decision to end Youth Ministry Exchange after about 5 years.

    For the last couple of years it has been trickling and trickling… and so we figured, “Why not just have a celebration of life and let it pass now instead of letting it go from 200 members per day, to 100, to 20 (where it’s at now) to 10, to 5?”

    I’m thankful for YMX and the hundreds of core people who made it a vibrant community. 200,000+ posts— yowsers! While there were a couple thousand members– there were 100-200 regulars who made it not just a forum, but a forum community.

    Five years ago, about this time of year, I started to get an inkling of an idea that I wanted to create a new home for the defunct YS forums. There was a core group of about 20 youth workers who did an AOL group chat just about every night. And when YS closed their forums about 5 other forum sites popped up as substitutes… but none of them were run very well.

    I talked to Kristen about it and she was kind of meh about the concept. “You don’t really know much about that kind of thing. And you really don’t know much about running an internet company.” Both were completely true but I took that as a blessing! Then, a few weeks later, I brought up the idea with Todd Porter after he visited our church. He got really excited– which added energy to the idea.

    So, mid-November 2005, I put together a private chat with 5 people I thought were strategically the right ones to talk about this idea. That discussion generated even more energy. And in early December 2005, we were open for business.

    I spent $72 to start the company. And the first 24 hours we made over $250. It was awesome!

    As time went on, the company went about 1,000 directions as I tried various initiatives. Business plan? Um, I didn’t have one! How could I? I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it.

    From 2005 to 2008 we continued to grow… this was really the peak for YMX. We published a lot of user-generated content, we pushed out a regular newsletter, we had a podcast, the forums were vibrant, and some of our satellite sites were doing pretty well.

    In truth, I had no idea what was next. I was learning a lot about business along the way but I wasn’t sure I knew how to navigate YMX past a new hurdle. Subscriptions were declining, interest in the web content was skyrocketing, and the site was struggling to pay the bills.

    Thankfully, in June 2008, Youth Specialties stepped in and ended all the angst. They bought most of the web properties and hired me to come help them figure out how to bring some of the flavor of YMX to YS.

    About the same time Facebook took off. Then Twitter took off. And forum communities hardly seemed to be the wave of the future that they once were. We infused some serious marketing efforts into YMX as part of YS. But it was obvious that masses of youth workers were going to flock to Facebook and Twitter while the decrease of interest in YMX continued to decline.

    Certainly, there are those who think that the forums could have prevailed if I had focused more attention on them. I don’t value my presence there quite that much. I only had 4,000 of the 200,000 posts. Hardcore forumites know full well that in the last year or so I’ve largely turned the reigns over to Patti Gibbons and the rest of the moderator team. It just wasn’t humanly possible to do the work I needed to do at YS while maintaining things day-to-day at YMX. I heard the grumbles but couldn’t really do much about it. I think if those people saw the world from my vantage point they would have invested energy in the same places I did.

    It was a two-way street… I was doing the best I could in my new role. And the moderator team did a great job ministering to the forums.

    So, long-story short, we went public with the decision yesterday. It was a bit more sad than I expected. It truly felt like the end of an era.

    It was a good era and one I’ll be fond of forever.

  • Second Fiddle

    Second Fiddle

    Last night, a co-worker posted a link on Facebook to a Mint.com blog post called, “Top 10 Things That Determine Happiness.”

    That post resonated with me because a lot of people in my life are unhappy because they don’t want to be happy. They seem to have a co-dependency with angst. And they tend to take it out on me because I’m a generally happy person.

    Here’s a couple of my favorite parts of the list:

    No.10 – Having a short memory

    Are you one to hold grudges? Do you need the jaws of life to pry forgiveness out of you? Well, don’t expect these attributes to contribute to your happiness or to your overall health for that matter. This ability to forgive and forget, to go with the flow, is frequently cited by researchers of centenarians as being a key factor in their ability to live to see their 100th birthday.

    No.5 – Developing a skill

    According to psychology professor Dr. Timothy A. Pychyl, the route to happiness is simple enough, “Live it, don’t buy it.” This is especially relevant in the modern world, where instant gratification can be purchased — but only to a point, before it hits a wall.

    He quotes a professional base jumper, who says, “You’ve got to have the passion to do your time. If you haven’t done the time, you just can’t get there.” He goes on to argue that only by paying one’s dues through time, effort, devotion, and experience can we, “develop the rich experiences that make life meaningful.”

    No.1 – Liking yourself

    Liking oneself is arguably the principal characteristic of happy people. It’s been revealed in study after study after study: happy people like themselves. They think they’re pretty great people. They have high self-esteem, meaning they think highly of their own intelligence, they consider themselves to have strong ethical standards and to have far fewer prejudices than others.

    If I could be so bold to add one to the list, for youth workers, it would be:

    No.11 – Embrace your role as second fiddle

    Being satisfied in your ministry role will mean not being the most important person on your church staff. Ultimately, your role is to elevate the overall ministry of the church. When the student ministry is successful it compliments the overall mission of the congregation. The position of second fiddle is nothing to be ashamed of as it often earns many of the perks of the person in charge, but with little of the pressure of being the star. Conversely, the least satisfied youth workers tend to carry an attitude of, “I don’t play second fiddle to nobody, I’m a leader!” This disconnect between their role in the organization and where they see their role leads to dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

    What do you think? Is a key to happiness in youth ministry being satisfied in your role that you’ll never be the star?

  • When your kids hate church

    When your kids hate church

    My kids don’t get excited about going to church most Sunday’s. That’s putting a nice bow on it, isn’t it?

    Let’s take the pretty bow off for the sake of this post.

    They hate going to church.

    Yesterday, I sat in the car with a child who refused to participate. Not all Sunday’s are like that. But sometimes the feet literally stop moving and the tears start flowing. It’s hard to look in your child’s eyes and see them tearfully say “please don’t make me go,” and then force them to go.

    I can’t stomach it. That is, clearly, not the type of relational connection I want my children to have with Jesus.

    To my dismissive friends– it’s not just our church. It’s pretty much any church we’ve tried out. Trust me, we tried to blame the churches we attended. It’s not their fault. And it’s been going on for a very long time. Yeah, they even hated churches I worked at.

    I don’t know any other way to say it. They hate going to church.

    [Insert our painfully banging of heads against the wall.]

    [Insert the fear of all the comments I’ll get with suggestions for how to make them love going to church. I know, it’s easy for you. Thanks in advance for reminding me I’m a failure.]

    [Insert Freudian comments and Freudian comments veiled as Bible verses– trust me when I say we’ve thought them all already.]

    As a parent I could get lost in the emotions of this. I mean, how is it that mom and dad can have a first love… Jesus and his church… and our kids aren’t loving what we love?

    This is where the rational side of our brains takes over and comforts us.

    • We don’t want them to fake it for our sake.
    • We want to raise independent, critical thinkers. That includes giving them the freedom to question us within the boundaries of our authority over them.
    • We believe Jesus wants to capture their heart, not their body. It’s OK if that takes time. Jesus’ offer to love the church stands the test of time, he is patient.
    • We recognize that there is a difference between rejecting Jesus and not liking the action of going to church. They don’t hate Jesus, they hate going to church.
    • We believe ultimately that it’s more important that the kids go to a church their parents love than one that the kids love and the parents tolerate. I find church strategies that try to hook parents with a McDonald’s approach to kids ministry often have equally crappy methodology elsewhere.
    • We recognize that some of the reason they don’t like church is that daddy used to work at one, like 60+ hours a week. And repairing the equation that church equals dad loving other people’s kids and making other people’s kids a priority over them will take years to repair.
    • We are willing to find expressions of church they might love. We’ve introduced Awana on Wednesday nights. It is is so developmentally appropriate for them that they are really digging it. (Even though it makes dad cringe a bit.) And this summer they will go to camp. For Kristen, Awana was a big part of her middle childhood. And for me, camp was huge from about 4th grade through high school. (Even though letting them go for a week makes Kristen cringe a little bit)
    • We are willing to look in the mirror enough to recognize that being compliant at church does not equate to loving church. When I went to church as a child, I hated it and swore that I’d hate it forever.
    • We aren’t going to give up simply because they don’t count down the days until Sunday. Their attitude towards church doesn’t drive us to make stupid decisions as parents. So it’s not like we’re going to stop going to church as a family.
    • We are willing to lose the occasional battle for the sake of hopefully one day winning the war. That’s a crude way of saying we don’t force them to participate. We expect that they will, but allow them some ability to say no.

    Maybe I’m not supposed to talk about this? Maybe writing this makes me look bad? Or maybe, just maybe, my kids are normal?

  • SDSU beats Air Force

    When I decided to buy season tickets to San Diego State I have to admit that I did it on a whim. In 2008, they were horrible. But they got a new coach and I figured that for less than $100 per seat, I couldn’t lose.

    My hope has always been that my kids would learn to love football the same way I learned to love football… on Saturday’s with dad at the stadium. Last season was a bit rough. The only thing the kids liked about the games was spending some time with me and our trip to Rite Aid to load up on candy to take to the game. This year, with the team noticeably better, they’ve started to get into it a tad more.

    Last night was a huge win for the program. But it was also a huge win for Paul becoming a football fan. For a big chunk of the last five minutes of the game Paul stood on the back of the seat in the row in front of us, shoulder to shoulder with me, screaming “Defense! Let’s go Aztecs! Defense! Oooooo!” (And stuff like that.)

    When we scored, he joined in the chorus of high fives. When we recovered the onside kick, he shouted YES!

    It was a cool bonding time for us.

    Here’s a couple of videos I took on my phone from the beginning. (I’ve got kind of a meme going)

    National Anthem (Ahem, that’s not me singing, that’s the guys in front of me)

    Football team taking the field

    The video above is from 619sports.net. They are local sports nuts who have created a name for themselves by doing a local sports blog. I had a similar idea to do this in Romeo but never got around to it. Kudos to them for creating something out of nothing.


  • Hit Me with God’s Hammer Today

    A few weeks back I wrote about something I call, the Pastor Man Up Movement. (PMUM) There’s something about PMUM that annoys me and I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what it is.

    • Is it that its mostly men and I have a strong desire to see women lead? Maybe a little.
    • Is it that its mostly racially homogenous? Maybe a little, but I’m a white male too. So what do I know?

    While both of those things annoy me a tad about PMUM speakers/writes I can’t say that its contributing to the distaste I get when I hear one of these people talk about leadership.

    I’ve been trying to search myself so I can articulate it. (And I want to be careful that I use words like “annoy” and “distaste” so people aren’t thinking I’m just some bizarre hater of well-known PMUM leaders.)

    But here is one thing that I know doesn’t resonate with me when I listen to them talk about leadership:

    Leadership isn’t about celebrating yourself.

    Leadership is about moving people to do something or go somewhere they couldn’t go on their own.

    Ultimately, one thing that bothers me so much is the celebration of self. You hear introductions that laud how much they’ve accomplished. How much money they raised. Where they went to school. How many people go to their church. That they are the founder of their congregation which is larger than yours. How often they meet other famous leaders. And why you should believe that every word flowing from their mouth is like little leftovers that the Holy Spirit forgot to include in the canon saved especially for you, as if it were milk and honey saved just for you… this one time.

    Want to know who I want to admire? I want to admire a person who leaks transparency. I want to hear from a person who doesn’t want the microphone. I want to admire a person who doesn’t know how many books he’s sold or how many people go to his church or how many staff members he has.

    I want to hear a speaker who stands up and tells the audience as her into, “Want to know why people follow me? Me too. I haven’t got a clue. God is doing it through me. I’m just a knucklehead. Know that I’m a sinner and it’s by grace that I’m standing here today. My husband and I argued about me making this appearance, but I guess we just need the money. And the message I’m about to deliver this morning– don’t get hung up on it. I have a staff who helped me and I have delivered it for 14 times. I call this my $22,000 sermon. After today, it’s my $22,500 sermon. Don’t be impressed with me today, be impressed with how God is using me to minister to you today.”

    I know that isn’t exactly inspiring to most. But its the kind of leader I like to follow. (And its the kind of leader I aspire to be.) I don’t know if people would spend $100 to listen to a series of speakers talk like that. But I do know it’s worth $100, for me at least, to hear the truth over and over again.

    Just hit me with the hammer God has gifted you to hit me with.

    Honesty preachers to me.

    Transparency preaches to me.

    Humility preaches to me.

    Checking what I assume against what is clear in Scripture preaches to me.

    Chest-bumping doesn’t.

  • When adults tell the truth

    I’m glad I took the time this morning to watch this video. A couple of my friends shared it, and I didn’t know what it’d be about, but I want to encourage readers of my blog to make the 12 minutes to hear Joel Burns story.

    Bullying really is a big deal in the lives of teenagers. And, as Joel documents, it’s especially difficult for LGBT teenagers.

    It really doesn’t matter what you think about “the issue.“ At the end of the day, if you are anything like me, I know that my calling to youth ministry is tied to a desire to advocate for teenagers of all varieties. And, at the heart of Joel’s talk, there is a simple and powerful truth which has helped prevent suicide for generations…. “This too shall pass. Life gets better.”

    This video was a good reminder to me. There is great power in the words of caring adults in moments of vulnerability. When we dare to tell the truth in love, now matter how painful it is to share or to hear, we help students.

  • You’ve Got to Want It

    Ministry isn’t family friendly.

    I know people in youth ministry from the “biggest and best churches” in America. And I know people in youth ministry in the tiniest churches in America.

    And both people have the same complaints and struggles– ministry life sucks for family life.

    My response to that?

    So what? Cope and deal. Do the best you can.

    Ministry people aren’t alone in struggling to put family first. Any and every profession has the same struggle. Our desire to make full-time ministry this heroic effort and sacrifice to our family is humiliating to the people who make the same sacrifices to finance our vision. Not to mention– nearly half the people we are trying to reach are single parents who have to put work first in order to just keep their family afloat.

    The reality is that “family first” is a marketing line that has been repeated to the point where we think it is some sort of biblical by-law. It’s hardly a biblical mandate. I seem to remember Jesus’ call to his disciples being to leave family and put him first. Offering yourself as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1) doesn’t have an out clause for parents of young children. On and on… there simply aren’t calls to a a life in ministry, biblically, that are “family first.”

    It is something we believe to be true which just isn’t in the Bible.

    Sorry.

    Even in an agrarian society, which you hear family-first people constantly refer to, it’s not like dad has a stay-at-home job. Have you ever visited a farm? Family-friendly workplace is not a description I’d use to describe a dairy farm. Or a family growing corn. Or even our local organic farm that supplies our CSA.

    Family-first people also reference pre-Industrial Colonial times as this idealistic time of parenting where mom and dad patiently did homework or taught a skill to their sons and daughters. What history books are these people smoking? I could point to any biography of an early American success story and their life was hardly “family-friendly.” It’s funny how revisionism is a two-way street, isn’t it?

    The Secret Ingredient of Success

    Success, by any definition, has not changed in its core ingredient, since the stone ages.

    You’ve got to want it.

    Or you’ve got to steal it.

    Let’s assume that you the type of person who prefers the former over the latter.

    You’ve got to want it more than the person next to you.

    You’ve got to outwork, out-hustle, out-whatever everyone you know.

    You’ve got to wake up wanting it.

    You’ve got to lay your head down in knowledge that you didn’t want it enough.

    You’ve got to throw balance out the window.

    You’ve got to Cats in the Cradle it.

    The bottom line is that if you are driven by some ideal of success, however you define it… it’ll own you more than you own it.

    And the reality is that once most people figure out that the dreams they had as children involved all of that– they redefine happiness around a new kind of success.

    That’s why “family first” is a different mantra of success.

    That’s why successful people get on Oprah or Barbara Walters and tell the camera that they chased success and they lost their family and now they have regrets. But they aren’t giving success back. They aren’t returning the awards or the money. They are spending their time on easy street trying to make up for lost time.

    Can I be in full-time ministry and put my family first?

    Call me a heretic. But I don’t think that’s what Jesus called me to. I think in the New Testament example Jesus called us to put family second.

    Fortunately for me, I’m married to a woman radical and crazy like me. Together, we get it.

    Jesus first, family second.

    Don’t buy the lie.