• Christian Wimps

    Not my life story, hopefully.Photo by ttarasiuk via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Note: This post is a note written to myself. If you want to write yourself in on it, that’s cool. But this post is for me more than it is you.

    Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. Joshua 24:14

    And he said to man, ‘The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding.‘ Job 28:28

    The LORD confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them. Psalm 25:14

    For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you. Isaiah 41:13

    I’ve had enough of the fear talk.

    If I listen to one more youth worker talk about feeling lead to do something but he isn’t sure the parents will go for it… I’ll scream.

    Let me get this story correct.

    Called by God to lead these kids, stirred by the Holy Spirit to go do something, and what stops you is fear of parents? A board? Dudes in suits? Getting fired?  Sure seems like you have some horrible, crappy, weak theology.

    I can imagine Abraham having this argument with God. “Oh, you want me to leave everything and move my family… cool. Let me check with my wife first before I commit. And then I’ll need a realtor. And lemme check with my insurance guy to make sure it’s safe. Do I have to take my kids? If so, wow I don’t know. Are there good schools over there?”

    Know what God would have done? He would have found someone else. And Abraham wouldn’t have been the father of a great nation.

    Reckless vs. Fearless

    I actually think a lot of people confuse these terms. They are not synonyms. You can lead a ministry and a life that is fearless without being reckless. That doesn’t mean you aren’t going to get in trouble… in fact, I can guarantee you that a fearless life will be dangerous. But being fearless doesn’t make you reckless. One lifestyle takes risks for the sake of taking risks while the other takes risks because they are convinced it is the right thing to do.

    Fear this

    SPOILER ALERT: Reading the New Testament all of the characters die in the end. OK, so there are two who aren’t really dead by the end of Revelation. Jesus gets killed (for you) and then comes to life again and is seen by a bunch of people before ascending into heaven. And John, who writes Revelation, isn’t quite dead yet when he writes the letter documenting the end of the world. But most people think he died in exile because he pissed off the Emperor of Rome.

    So, if I have this right, [yup , checked my sources one more time] if you live a life like Jesus did or his disciples did… there’s a pretty good chance you should be on a trajectory where someone wants to take you out. And you probably won’t be very popular with the religious establishment. And that retirement party? Yeah, don’t plan that.

    Where are all the men in the church?

    I sit in church wondering the same thing.

    Maybe they know deep down inside that they don’t want to hang out with a bunch of wimps? Maybe, JUST MAYBE, more men are looking at the God of the Bible and comparing it to the faith of the churches leaders and thinking: Nope. Not the right guys.

  • J.R. Organics Farm Tour

    We’ve got this crazy idea that we want to know where our food comes from.

    It’s odd for me to think that oranges grow in my backyard but an orange I buy at Vons probably comes from Australia. Walking through your grocery store there are literally foods from every corner of the globe.

    Supporting local agriculture

    Not only do we like knowing where our food comes from, we’d prefer if it came to us locally. Of course, a growing chunk of our produce is coming from our own backyard. But as we learn how to do that (and time that) we’ve depended on the CSA (community supported agriculture) of JR Organics in Escondido. They help us city dwellers maintain a connection with farmers in the country.

    Since January, our family has gone over to the North Park Farmers Market each Thursday to pick up our box of produce from the farm. I don’t get to go very often, but when I do Megan dutifully leads me through the various vendors to “our table” where a member of the Rodriguez family takes our recyclable box and hands us a new one full of fresh fruit and veggies.

    Yes, we probably pay a little more per item than we would at the grocery store. But we know where the food comes from and we know that the money we pay goes directly to the farmer… no middle man. No corporation. No buyer. No warehouse. Stuff in our box Thursday was likely picked Tuesday or Wednesday. You can taste the difference.

    The Tour

    As the pictures show, we went on a tour yesterday. The kids started off with high expectations and were let down that it wasn’t as much fun as Sea World from the time we left the car. But as you can see as the tour goes on, they get more and more excited. I loved watching from a field away (they had an adult tour and a kids tour) our kids running up and down the hills as they explored and learned about farming. At the end of the tour the family rolled out the red carpet and fed us a fabulous lunch of fresh stuff from the farm. Soups, salads, juices, roasted veggies, chicken, and an amazing dessert.

    The tour provided a rich afternoon of learning and connection to the farm. As we drove away Kristen and I just couldn’t stop talking about how nice everyone was, how cool the farm was, and how excited we are to see more than 100 people show up for the tour. (It sold out!)

    Find a CSA

    If you live in San Diego county and are looking for a CSA, I highly recommend JR Organics. They aren’t the cheapest option out there, but they are fantastic.

    Believe it or not, CSAs exist all over the place. If you’re ready to give it a try, check out this link to find one in your area.

  • Steps of Justice

    Kristen and I are making friends with Phil and Amy Cunningham of Youth with a Mission.

    Lars Rood kept telling me, “You need to meet Phil and Amy, you’ll love them.” Lars even took the first step and set up a dinner where we could all get together. He was right.

    It’s not hard making friends with them. In fact, our hearts beat for the same types of stuff in life. Justice, Jesus, adventure, family, and a good taco. The big difference between Phil and myself is that Phil is doing a lot of the stuff I only dream about. In other words, he’s brave while I’m a wuss with a keyboard and a camera.

    Steps of Justice

    Last month, when Phil was gracious enough to take me to Tijuana for a day, he showed me something he was just about to launch. It was this very visual and powerful 30 day prayer journal he is calling Steps of Justice.

    Let me encourage you. If you hear about injustice in the world, whether in San Diego county or your neighborhood or on television in far away places, and you wonder how you can get involved… this is a great little resource. Allow Phil to take you on a journey, show you some of what he’s seen, and allow the Spirit to challenge you along the way.

    Here’s the pitch

    Phil is giving this thing away. You can go to the site and download a free version right now. He’s a little too nice if you ask me. Phil and Amy are full time missionaries, they have poured their lives into this little resource, at the very least pay $5 to download the high resolution version. Better yet, order some hard copies for $6 for your small group or youth group. It’d be a great encouragement to them.

  • What Happens When BP Spills Coffee

    Sadly, this about sums up the response so far.

    Pretty happy about being a BP shareholder right now, lemme tell you. Great investment!

  • Ah, Subjectivity

    “Subjectivity” has been the word of my week.

    On Tuesday, I released a list of the top 20 youth ministry blogs.

    Just like people argue incessantly about sports polls– there has been a lot of discussion about the release of my poll. Thank goodness no one gives these folks time on ESPN. I’d go nuts!

    I knew it would create discussion, debate, and maybe even some sour grapes. I even warned the call center at work that they may get some calls complaining. (Which never happened) But I felt strongly about making the poll public. Transparency, right?

    I knew/hoped/even prayed that by publishing the list it would make the entire genre better. At least that’s my working theory.

    Like it or not, the youth ministry blog genre has been fading for the past 1-2 years. Several of the bigger names (some of which are friends of mine)  have either stopped blogging, slowed significantly, or started to morph their blog from a blog to more of a resource/ad driver site. And I thought, subjectively, that if I drew some attention to the genre it just might wake up the once vibrant community.

    Of course the poll is subjective. It’s created by a human. 66% included a composite of publicly available stats, all of which are dependent on the individual blog being set up correctly and pinging those ranking sites. (More subjectivity) Additionally, the method included a 33% weighting specifically called “influence.” I took the top 50 blogs statistically and pushed out a survey asking 20 of the top 50 to rank each blog on a scale of 1-10 for who they thought had the most influence in youth ministry. (Can it get more subjective?) I even asked that group, “Who is missing from the top 50?”

    Only 2 new blogs were suggested, neither of great statistical influence.

    So there was a bit of subjectivity in every arena. Even in the 100 or so blogs who got indexed there was subjectivity since it was limited to my ability to find the blogs in the first place.

    This is the nature of any poll or rankings. There is criteria, but the creation of the criteria is subjective no matter what. My hope is, just like in sports, enough people will want to move up and the end result is that it makes the genre better.

    Competition isn’t always bad, is it? Doesn’t it, on some level, make people try harder to be better?

    Bottom line: I’m loving the discussion. And I love the fact that people are thinking about youth ministry blogs once again.

  • The Resurrection of the Cottage Industry

    Photo by James Whitesmith via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Is this the best time ever to start a small business? It sure seems like it!

    • Countless brilliant minds, long cooped up in boring corporate jobs, are on unemployment and unable to find new corporate jobs.
    • The internet has made the world pretty flat. You have a good product? You can move it online for about the same per unit price as the big guys.
    • Culture has a distaste for big business. Enron, big banks, BP, Monsanto, Wal*Mart– we’re all questioning if we can trust giant. But we know we can trust local.
    • The genie has left the bottle. With all of that knowledge leaving big business… these folks know how to run a business, are well networked, and know all the tricks of their trade.
    • It’s never been cheaper. Seriously, in a bunch of states you can legally start a business for less than $100. Using existing free tools like Craigslist, Etsy, or Ebay you can advertise a product for free. (Or darn close to it.)
    • People are more willing to buy thoughts, ideas, designs, and concepts than ever before! Consultant isn’t just a fancy word for unemployed anymore.

    If you are thinking about it, let me encourage you on two quick things.

    1. There is no time like the present. I started my first company in 2005 and sold it in 2008. It wasn’t scary. It was fun!
    2. While I don’t agree with all the MBAs out there that you need a business plan to start a small business, I do think you need to do the 30 minutes of work in setting everything up legally. Get a Tax ID, get a business bank account, get a business license if its require, form the right tax entity to protect yourself. None of that is hard and you don’t need a lawyer to do any of that.

    Here’s a bi-product I love. All of those small businesses need a website. Which supports my cottage industry.

  • Is this a safe place?

    Photo by ekai via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    About 10 months ago a group of people sat on Chris’ back porch talking about starting a youth ministry for our church, Harbor Mid-City. As we chatted, dreamt, and prayed about this ministry one of the things that came out was… “We want it to be a safe place for students to explore a relationship with Jesus.”

    That phrase stuck. It actually became a part of our ministry description which we recite during every meeting. “IOB is a safe place for students to explore a relationship with Jesus.”

    That phrase got tested a bit last night.

    Stephen, our teaching/senior pastor, came to youth group last night to teach on and invite students to participate in baptism. His teaching was pretty simple… this is what baptism is, this is what it symbolizes, this is who should get baptized, this is how our church does it, we’d love it if you would consider getting baptized. He did a great job.

    I could tell during his teaching time that some students were uneasy about this whole thing. They didn’t feel safe. It wasn’t that Stephen was teaching anything bad or that they were intimidated in any way or even that he was manipulating them to make a decision they didn’t want to make– there was just something about the truths of Scripture that Stephen was saying that gave the room a funny, rare vibe.

    You could see it in their posture. You could see it in the way they looked at him. You could see it in the way they listened to his talk.

    To follow-up, we broke up into small groups and the leaders were asked to dig a little deeper with the students and ask if any of them would like to be baptized.

    Three responses from my circle that tested me in my response.

    • Is there any way I can get unbaptized? My parents baptized me as a baby and I don’t want to follow God.
    • I’m not ready to get baptized. I understand the Gospel and I get what Stephen was talking about, but I’m just not ready to put my faith in Jesus yet.
    • Why did my parents baptize me? If they made a covenant to God than they didn’t live up to it at all.

    Mince no words. These were questions that pushed me back to that discussion 10 months before. Was IOB really a safe place to explore Jesus? If so, how I responded either validated that statement or invalidated it.

    Open questions for readers:

    What would be answers to these responses which would communicate that IOB isn’t a safe place?

    What would be some “this is a safe place” answers to these questions?

  • Slow motion fun

    I think we’ve all had this moment. I love the relationship between the youth pastor, the students, and the senior pastor.

    If you had a day to play with a sweet slow motion camera, what would you shoot?

  • Good News for High School Students

    I’m always at odds with this reality:

    If Jesus offers good news, what is it about how we do youth ministry that is only attractive to 1% – 2% of the high school students on our campus?

    That always lead same  to a place where I say, “I don’t think we’re doing this right just yet.”

    • Good news spreads like wild fire.
    • Good news is unstoppable.
    • Good news releases energy.
    • Good news releases joy.
    • Good news is contagious.

    In 1994, as a high school senior our basketball won the Indiana state basketball championship. If you’ve seen the movie Hoosiers than you get a glimpse of how important this is to the state of Indiana. It’s a really big deal. Not only do the finals fill the RCA Dome, the same building which hosts the NCAA Final Four, it is a much bigger tournament as every high school in the state got a chance to enter the tournament. So as the final seconds ticked off the clock in overtime and our team was up 93-88… the student body of Clay High School collectively lost it. We poured onto the court. We screamed and danced. And then when we got kicked off of the court we ran around the inside of the stadium screaming, chanting, bouncing, skipping, and dancing! And then we got kicked out of the RCA Dome and we literally just ran through the streets of downtown Indianapolis screaming, chanting, bouncing, skipping, dancing, and stopping traffic to tell them, “We won!”

    That was good news worth celebrating. It unleashed unstoppable joy. It was universal on our campus. It was even universal in our city as everyone felt good about this good news!

    If youth ministry were good news to the high school students on our campus.. you’d see this same unstoppable release of joy. It’d be nearly universal. Even those who didn’t embrace it would be excited it. Good news is worth celebrating, dancing, and running through the streets for.

    I know it. You know it. 1% – 2% of people running through the halls… that’s just creepy!

    The only question is, are we will to think and dream of ways to be good news to our campus so they might desire to hear Good News?

  • Affluence, Influence, and Activism

    Photo by lewishamdreamer via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    The byline of this site is: Crazy enough to change the world. On Twitter I alter this slightly, my bio line says, “The sane need not apply for the position of world changer.”

    Both of those boil down to a basic question in my life.

    How do I maximize whatever leverage I can acquire to help Christians be more Christ-like?

    Within the church there seems to be two primary ways to gain leverage.

    1. Affluence. The American church is pretty simple to manipulate. It pains me to say it but we all know it to be true. We even come up with cute little phrases to put in books affirming it. “An unfunded vision is just a dream.” Affluence is the fastest way to exude leverage on a Christian organization for change. There are a lot of Christian leaders who would balk at that– I don’t care, you know it’s ultimately true. If you are a leader of a Christian church or organization in America, budget is the fourth member of the Trinity. Budget is the silent elder. Budget is the ultimate accountability partner. We refuse to learn how to do ministry for free, so budget is power. So if you want to exude some leverage in any Christian organization, write a big check. Heck, just waving a big check is generally good enough.
    2. Influence. This is the great hope of all of us not born into money or lucky enough to buy Apple stock at $27. Many of the great voices in the American church today were not born into it. They acquired leverage through wise use of talents. (Either gifted by the Holy Spirit or just flat out gifted) These written/oral communicators are, in many ways, prophets to the church. In many ways, the local church leader is looking at these national church communicators and emulating them. People study their speaking mannerisms. People dress like them. People flock to hear them speak. People buy their books. And when a leader gets really powerful people model their churches after these prophets.

    An observation

    There are too many in category two trying to leverage their influence to affluence.

    There are not enough leveraging their influence to actualized change.

    Just because affluence is the fastest way to change any Christian organization– this doesn’t make it right. And, as we’ve seen over the last 50 years, leveraging affluence to change the church doesn’t make the church more Christ-like. It seems to just make the church more church-centric and less community-centric.

    Where are the activists?

    On Saturday, I watched a documentary about Paul Watson. Where is that guy in the church? The dude took a bullet for a freaking whale!

    On Sunday, my pastor talked about Nelson Mandela. Where is that guy in the church? 26 years in prison for his cause and came out hating no one.

    Where are the Martin Luther King, Jr’s? Where are the Mahatma Ghandis? Where are the César Chavez’s?

    Why is there no one in the American church willing to take a stand and leverage their influence for real change?

    There are a lot of strong opinions. But no one seeks to offend even when the offense is offensive. There are a lot of great ideas, but none of the people espousing those ideas are willing to spend the night in jail. There are a lot of offenses in the American church, but no one is wearing a bullet proof vest to preach on Sunday morning because we are offending people with truth to the point where we think someone might take a shot at us.

    Why is that?

    As Christians, we believe that Jesus is the solution. We believe that Jesus didn’t just come to save us, we believe we have been placed here on this planet to make things better.

    Do you want to know who is worth following? Find a man or woman who is calling Christians to love their neighbors like Jesus did, love justice like Jesus did, and leverage their influence for big/little things that matter.

    Follow those people.

    God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing. Ephesians 2:10 The Message