• 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.

  • When Dreamer, When?

    In the cold dark morning of my day my soul cries for new days, new songs, new delights.

    I wonder where the dreamers are dreaming this morning.

    My heart weeps in disdain for a time and place lost. It lives in my sleep; it dies in my schedule. Such a place feels real but the left side of my cranium conquers the right with alarms beckoning.

    This new day is not dedicated to dream, but to task.

    Yet in moments of stolen shadows, my mind reveals a new day. A new alarm buzzes between my ears calling me to create, basking in the presence of a bee hive of something so fantastic words cannot capture.

    I wonder where actors practice their craft.

    I wonder where champions train.

    I wonder where the beat of the poets rhyme comes from.

    It is at that founts source I want to drink.

    It is at that 7-11 my coffee cup wants refilled.

    I wonder if there is still a place in peoples hearts to imagine new days? New life? New aspirations of inspirations beyond awe.

    Or am I alone in my tears of anticipation?

    I long to cry at creative expressions so wondrous, like dolphins dancing to their own song before your eyes on a lonely walk of solitude.

    I long for moments where awe seems a ridiculous expression in light of my eyes observation and ears hearing.

    Are those moments now lost?

    I see days lost milling with friends pondering in circles of delightful giggles as words create paradigms faster than people with pens can write books about them or lawyers can lay claim to who’s words are whose.

    In anxious tension I envision manifestos so delightful that poets scribe them in a loss for expression.

    People sleep in their seats collected in rounds, as if at the circus, because they fear they will miss the next moment.

    Where do I find such a place. Where is moment so thick with creation that hunger pains and mortgages are checked against the register of the moment and forgotten?

    Where is the place where pedigree is placed behind the streaming flowing waterfall of ingenuity, it’s bars of acceptance overpowered by respect for the moment.

    Where is the place patent laws and egos vanish for the sake of the moment?

    Where is the place that time is irrelevant in the measurement of my day?

    That’s my Zion. That’s my Jerusalem. That’s my city of dreams.

    That’s my alarm.

    Am I awake now? Or am I dreaming when I call it wake and alive when I am dreaming.

    Where is this place?

    Take me there.

  • Level of Difficulty

    Does your skill level match the level of difficulty in your ministry?

    I’ll admit it. I’m a recovering video game junky. Up until Madden 2005 I used to incessantly play anything football EA Sports produced.

    One of the fun things about the Madden games is that you can adjust the level of difficulty to match your skill level in the game. So, if you were new, you could set it to easy and still have a good time. Then, theoretically, as your skills improved you could turn the game up so that it remained challenging.

    One of the great injustices in the ministry world is that there is often a disconnect between the skill level of a staff member and the level of difficulty in a ministry setting.

    In general, those who have a low skill level (new to ministry) are only able to get jobs in ministry locations labeled difficult or expert. Meanwhile, veteran church workers tend to flow towards jobs on larger teams in healthier ministries where the level of difficulty is significantly better matched to their skill level. (Not easy, per se. But ministries which match their skill level.)

    In the past few years I’ve had countless conversations with pastors in way, way over their head. They’ve been in ministry a short amount of time and are in situations with no support, politics leaning hard against them, and socially isolated from people who think like them. They slump their shoulders as we sit down for breakfast, “Adam, am I crazy? Why does serving Jesus hurt this bad?”

    Why are these people hurting?

    Because they are in ministry settings where the level of difficulty is a miss-match.

    The Way it Works

    We have a Darwinian approach to ministry jobs. Our church culture dictates that the newest, greenest, and least capable among us serve at the gnarliest of ministry sites. A youth pastor takes her first time job, replacing a youth pastor fired for sleeping with a student. A worship pastor hired from a larger church to lead a ministry from traditional worship to contemporary. A senior pastor right out of seminary replaces a long-tenured wise owl who retired after 40 years of successful ministry. A children’s worker will accept a calling to a church plant where they have to go out and raise their support while somehow trying to create a children’s program from scratch.

    All expert level ministry jobs performed by newbie staff members. They don’t stand a chance.

    A large majority of these newbies will get washed out of their first jobs in the first 2-3 years. Battered and bruised, about half will lick their wounds and find non-ministry vocations before they’ve even paid off their seminary loans.

    Yet, a small minority will learn their lessons from these impossible ministry situations and move to more healthy levels of difficulty. Eventually, through survival of the fittest, a small minority manage to work their way into roles that are matched with their skill level… or maybe a little mismatched so that they are in jobs significantly easy compared to their skill level. (You know who you are.)

    In other words, those of us with high levels of expertise gravitate to the easier jobs while our success in roles made to look easy encourages countless others into the flames of despair at the hard jobs.

    The Way it Ought to Work

    Ministry experts should flow to the expert level jobs. Jobs in healthy ministries should hire more newbies for shorter periods of time in order to increase their skill level and help match them with jobs that best suit their long-term skill level and interest.

    This would perpetrate a mantra of healthy churches helping unhealthy ones instead of visa versa.

    But that would be too much like right.

  • The Bible, Made Personal

    Photo by Dave Gilbert via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Perhaps my greatest period of rapid growth in my relationship with Jesus came when I was just 17 years old.

    Each day I worked verse by verse through the pastoral epistles. I journaled questions like, “What is Paul saying?” “Who was this written to?” and “What is God saying to me through Paul?”

    One habit that began then which has carried on to this day is to personalize Scripture.

    Where it’s appropriate, I always read my name into a passage. For some reason that just makes things more real for me. It helps me realize that I’m not reading a historical document meant purely for those people at that time. By adding myself to it I see that the Holy Spirit intended much of the Bible to be recorded and miraculously transmitted through the hands of scribes for generations… for me!

    Ephesians 2:9-10:

    For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

    Ephesians 2:9-10: (for me)

    Adam, for it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith– and this is not from yourself, it is the gift of God– not by works, so that you can’t boast. For you are God’s workmanship, Adam– created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for you to do.

    When I personalize Scripture with the understanding that God meant it for me (and believers forever) I find the Holy Spirit’s of illuminating to run much deeper. I internalize it so much deeper and faster.

    This little method I started as a 17 year old helps me know that the Bible isn’t just truth, it is truth for me.

  • Leading Your Church to Reflect its Neighborhood

    It’s been more than 40 years since Martin Luther King, Jr. quipped, “Eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week.”

    If we are honest with ourselves– churches are nearly as divided today as they were 40 years ago. We call it culture and we call it personal preference. But the truth of the matter is that we just don’t want to rock the boat. (We like the comfort, staff members like their paychecks.)

    So we allow racism, sexism, and a lack of cultural diversity to run rampant in our congregations.

    It’s time those of us called to lead, lead our churches into a new paradigm.

    And it starts with a sober assessment of where our congregations are at.

    Simple measurement tool

    Make a written observation the demographics of your congregation this Sunday morning. (Age, marital status, socio-economic status, race, gender) Then compare what you observe at your church against what the data set of your churches zip code as provided by the U.S. Census Bureau.

    • Does your congregation reflect its neighborhoods demographics?
    • Does your church staff reflect the demographics of the zip code?
    • If there is a disconnect, is your church leadership making serious, active efforts to close the divide?

    Cutting to the chase: While most evangelical congregations don’t have white, middle class theology. They predominantly attract white, middle class congregations. And it’s scary how many church staffs are filled with white, middle class males. (Go ahead, look at the staff pages of 10 of your favorite churches.) That disconnect you observe should lead you to make changes!

    Changing your behavior: If you are like me, a child of the 1980s, you were raised in a dogma of multiculturalism.

    From kindergarten I was taught that all the cultures in my community have value, deserve equal rights, and should be given access to the same things I am given access to as a member of the dominant culture. That value may have been taught to me from a secular perspective, but I believe it also reflects a biblical perspective on how Christians are to live in society as well!

    If you want to express that same value on Sunday morning you need to take some steps (maybe radical ones) towards that value.

    In other words– Maybe you need to change churches? Maybe you need to stop funding something that doesn’t reflect your values and start funding a congregation that does? Maybe you need to lead the way and stop waiting for church leadership to lead you?

    Personal testimony– This is what I’ve done. For the past 2+ years my family has been a part of a congregation that works hard to reflect its neighborhood. At times, it is simply beautiful and at other times it is wholly awkward. But it’s been a radical transformation for my walk with Jesus. So, know that I’m not just pushing an idealism, I’m encouraging you to participate in something that I’m finding tremendous joy in.

    If you are a church leader who is taking a serious look at bridging the divide between the Sunday morning demographic you have today and the one you’d like to see in 12 months, may I suggest some action steps?

    5 Radical Steps Towards Becoming a Congregation which Reflects its Neighborhood

    1. Hire staff members that reflect the demographics of your zip code. (Race, gender, marital status, age)
    2. Require all paid staff, from the janitor to the senior pastor, to live within the zip code of your congregation. (Give them a few months to move, make it financially possible, remove staff members who won’t move within 12 months.) Take it a step further by requiring all board officers to do the same.
    3. If you live outside of the neighborhood, lead the way by moving into the community your church is trying to reach. Don’t contribute to the disconnect– lead the way!
    4. Get involved in neighborhood issues. Lead the way on issues of justice, advocate for the poor, let your congregation be a voice in the community. (Here’s 10 suggestions for your church to be good news to the neighborhood)
    5. Adopt a local public school. The local schools are the access point to the people your church is called to reach. Get involved, not as an agent of adversary, but as a community partner. (Here’s 10 suggestions for your church to be good news to the local schools)

    Is this a magic growth formula? Of course not. But as you take these steps you will earn the trust of a community who has learned to ignore you. When you care about what they care about and when you reflect who they are, you will be amazed at the social currency this will earn your congregation.

    I recognize that these steps may seem extreme. (And I’m certain someone will tell me that firing staff for this is unbiblical) But that’s the nature of leadership, isn’t it? Sometimes God asks you to push past what you are comfortable with or what feels right to do what is right. Remember the rich young man in Matthew 19? He asked Jesus how he might enter the Kingdom of God, but he left disappointed because the cost was too high.

    The reality is that if those in leadership don’t take radical positions so that their actions reflect their theology, the church will never change.

    We simply cannot survive as a viable faith if we continue to act as agents of discrimination on Sunday morning. The church cannot be the most segregated place in our culture. It is time that the church take a good, hard look at who they are in their community and make some radical changes.

    It’ll never get any easier or cheaper to do so than it is today.

  • Grover smells like a monster

    Between this and the Katy Perry thing, Sesame Street is a viral video factory!

  • Rules for Public Transportation

    We are a one car household. Fortunately for us, we live in a city where you can get away with having just one car because we have a decent public transportation system.

    Our transportation system, San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, also has a policy that permits bikes. This allows me the daily privilege of riding my bike to the trolley station, than taking my bike on the trolley with me, than riding the rest of the way to work.

    But riding public transportation definitely has some rules. Social norms that make the experience much more pleasant.

    1. Always wear headphones. Even if your headphones don’t connect to anything but your pocket, always wear headphones.
    2. Don’t stare. Look at your phone, look out the window, or stare at the floor. Just don’t look at anyone unless you want to talk. Making eye contact is an invitation to conversation.
    3. Don’t eat. It may seem like an efficient thing to do. But you never know when you’ll see something gross, smell something really gross, or have the awkward opportunity to eat in front of someone who clearly hasn’t eaten recently. Just don’t eat.
    4. Help people who are obviously lost. This is the joy of living in a tourist town. I never mind helping someone who is genuinely lost. They all have “the lost look.” example: My home station is San Diego State University. The funny part about helping people from there is that they have to really listen to understand why I am telling them to go a certain way. If they are going downtown it might make sense to go two stops further away downtown and transfer to a different trolley line. When you look on the map it looks further and the wrong direction. (It is) But it is actually significantly faster because the other line goes directly where they want to go with fewer transfers. Riding the trolley isn’t like driving. You want the fastest route, not the shortest.
    5. Be aware of what is going on. I’ve taken public transportation both in San Diego and Chicago frequently enough to know that there are sometimes dangers to be avoided. The general rule of thumb is, “If it feels bad, it probably is bad.” The good news in San Diego is that they have closed circuit cameras everywhere. If something did happen (I’ve never seen anything truly bad happen) there is a good chance it got caught on camera.
    6. Discretely take pictures or video to giggle at later. Oh, I know this is probably a social faux pax to mention. But I have seen it all on the trolley and sometimes people don’t believe me.
    7. If you ride regularly get to know your riding partners. The funny thing about this is that you “know” people but you might not know their names. But you know that one person gets on at this stop and reads a book every day. And another gets on and always sits near you. Or one lady is always in a hurry but is claustrophobic so won’t ride the first elevator because it is too full. You may not “know” these people, but regular riding partners will make you feel more secure.
    8. Know your schedule. If you ride for a while you get a sixth sense about when your bus or trolley runs. I know if I leave my house at 7:58 I have a good chance of catching an earlier trolley. Or if I don’t leave right at 5:00 PM from work, I might as well hang out another 10 minutes.
    9. Keep smiling. Sometimes the trolley drives me nuts. But any time I’m a little delayed or stressed out by a minor inconvenience (like a person dying on the trolley and delaying it 2 hours) I just remember that I don’t have the expense of a second car and I’m not sitting in traffic thinking about my next oil change. Taking public transportation has limited stress in my life– and for that, it’s awesome!

  • Google honors John Lennon

    One of the most fun jobs on the internet must be to be on the team that plays with Google’s logo. I love this little doodle. Maybe I’m in love with the style or maybe the music? All I know if this is just too cool.

    I want to be a dreamer, forever.

    ht to Michael Novelli

  • Control and Social Media

    All day yesterday I got hit up by people excited about Facebook’s announcement of their new groups feature. (Actually, this is a very old feature with some newish features.) Mashable wrote about it. Techcrunch wrote about it. And tons of youth workers were left saying, “This thing is going to be great for youth ministry.”

    Here’s what I’m thinking. No one, not even the creators of Facebook, can predict what the next cool feature on Facebook will be.

    Mini-rant about Mashable, Techcrunch: These are now just hype factories for the big social media companies. I’m tiring of their private parties and exclusive access. All that tells me is they are all in bed together. Other than publishing social media companies press releases, their utility is gone for me. My trust for those sites impartiality has vanished.


    Open Theory Never Works in Closed Systems

    When it comes to social media hype never equals mass appeal. The best you can do is create something and hope people discover it and like it.

    • Google spent plenty on Buzz and it has largely been a failure.
    • Apple spent plenty on Ping and it remains to be seen if its anything but a music version of LinkedIn.
    • Tumblr never intended to be the new Xanga but it is.
    • Formspring.me never intended to be hot with middle/high schoolers, but it was on fire last year.

    That’s the funny thing about social media. Open system theory defies hype and that’s what makes it amazing. Big companies and their R&D departments [and overhead and patents] simply can’t predict what will be hot. (And almost always shoot themselves in the foot because they need ROI when the only way to grow is to acquire customers.) So the game isn’t now, never in recent history has been, about creating cool things. It’s about masses of people (cough, 12-19 year olds) adopting the technology as their own and it spinning out of control in unexpected uses.

    Closed system thinking implies that you can control how your users interact with your product. Apple is really the only organization on the planet that gets away with this. They decide what features you will like and they force them on you and you like it. But every time Facebook tries it they get hammered by user backlash. Microsoft learned the hard way that this just forces customers to another product like Apple or Linux. Their latest media campaign is a direct attempt to lie to you by convincing you that their ideas are really your ideas. “I’m Adam and Windows is my idea.” Windows isn’t your idea. If it were it’d be free.

    Open system thinking implies that users control how they interact with the product and the owners/app developers respond. This is the secret ingredient for Apple’s recent success. Twitter will be the first to tell you that they do everything in response to how users utilize their app. To some extent, this is why Facebook has survived to date because the app developed on their open API have people hooked on crap like Farmville. (Their growth of late has been in middle-aged folks using Facebook for gaming, largely at work.) I’ve done dozens of consults with ministries and businesses trying to make a name for themselves with a new technology– I tell them all the same thing, which they balk at. “If you want to be big, build a Facebook app that your audience will love. Then, when you have their trust (and personal information) launch your own site. It’s about users, not money.”

    This is why I teach social media principles and don’t do a lot of tutorials

    I don’t know if Facebook groups will be hot among high schoolers. But I do know that the same principles I’ve used to engage people online for more than 10 years will always work, no matter what the technology.

    Principles are timeless while technology is is an ever-morphing magma of response.