• The Bible is Useful

    Recently we took a survey of Youth Specialties customers. The results of one particular question completely shocked me. Here it is:

    When I was looking through the initial survey results I turned around to Tic, and said… “Wanna know why so many youth groups are struggling to keep students for the long haul? There’s the problem, right there.”

    Of our sample of 600 youth leaders 76.8% of them teach mostly topically?

    The words of Paul echoed in my head:

    All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17

    But apparently many youth workers don’t believe this is true. They believe that topics are more important than Scripture!

    Let’s review:

    • All topics are not God-breathed.
    • All topics aren’t useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.
    • All topics are not equipping the man of God for every good work.

    But God’s word is!

    Look at it another way– Most youth workers are getting in the way of this.

    But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 2 Timothy 3:14-15

    Don’t even give me the parent comeback. “It’s a parents role to teach their kid the Scriptures.” That’s a joke. Youth workers aren’t paid to babysit, are they? Certainly, parents have a role in teaching their children. But, as a person called and equipped to teach and reach middle and high schoolers doesn’t teach the Bible– what kind of example is  that?

    Don’t give me the “all the kids in my youth group know the Bible” comeback either. If all you are reaching are kids who were born and raised in the church than you’ve lost sight of what youth ministry is all about in the first place! I would argue that if you aren’t reaching teenagers for Christ than you aren’t likely doing discipleship while going anyway.

    Here’s what I am saying.

    • Get back to your first love.
    • Teaching the Bible is more useful than teaching purely topically.
    • Teaching the Bible is taking students to the primary source.
    • Teaching the Bible is equipping your students for every good work.
    • Teaching the Bible is long-sighted and strategic.
    • Teaching the Bible is teaching a man to fish instead of giving a man a fish.
    • Get back to your first love.
    • If you want to change a persons’ life, you need to get them in God’s word.

  • Amidst the Rubble I Found Hope

    It’s hard to believe that its been 6 weeks since we witnessed this outpouring of faith. In some ways it seems like I just got back yesterday and in other ways its as if it was several months ago.

    When people ask me about my time in Haiti I always try to proclaim this simple truth: It wasn’t what I would have expected. I expected to see mourning and anger towards God. Instead I saw rejoicing and people giving their hearts to God in a way I never thought I would experience.

    Two reasons you should go to Haiti:

    1. God is using the church to feed, clothe, and shelter the masses. In the U.S. we aspire to see our churches be a place like in the book of Acts. Well, its happening in exactly that fashion just a few hours south of our border. God doesn’t need you to go so you can feed His people, but He would love it if you would participate in what He is doing.
    2. The Holy Spirit is moving. Its hard  to shape into words what that looks and feels like. While I went to serve with open hands I was shocked to see that God brought me into the midst of a great humanitarian disaster to show me His glory. Amidst the rubble we found hope. Buried beneath the houses and building was the past. And what remained was people left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. At first it disturbed me, “Why aren’t they trying to make a shelter or create something?” Because instantly a nation knew that God is their provider, he is their protector, He is their shelter.

    If only I had faith like that. Maybe mountains would move? Maybe relationships would be restored? Maybe God would pour out His Spirit in the same way?

  • Romans 7:14-20 Illustrated by Tiger Woods

    This video illustrates this passage so well, doesn’t it? It’s shocked me to see people jump on the bandwagon against Tiger Woods. Shame on us for thinking for a second that he was less a man than you or I.

    “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”
    Romans 7:14-20

    I know there are a great number of strong Christian men on the PGA Tour, I hope that those guys get to walk alongside Tiger– loser to loser– and talk about doing life better.

  • Holy Lens Flare Batman



    Glorious seagul, originally uploaded by mclanea.

    I really like this picture. I’ve been trying to learn how to capture lens flare intentionally… I just happen to catch this at the right moment as this seagul flew overhead. (No poop was a bonus!)

  • Back to Minneapolis

    Minneapolis, Minnesota
    Photo by stevelyon via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    This week I’m headed to Minneapolis for a week of meetings and team building. Since YS is a now part of YouthWorks, we get to be a part of their semi-annual gatherings where they come together to celebrate all that God is doing. I’m digging that.

    Here’s a couple of fun things I’ve been learning about YouthWorks.

    1. The missions team has more than 36,000 people registered for mission trips this summer. Most of them are middle and high schoolers.
    2. We are in the process of hiring about 350 summer staff.
    3. We have about 65 full-time, year-round staff. (Including the YS staff)
    4. YouthWorks has a foundation which gives back to the communities which host missions trips.

    This week I’m hoping to connect with some folks and figure out what people do. It should be big fun in the frozen tundra. Since I’ll be back their at least quarterly– my sidebar hope is to find some fun, funky places to explore.

    Yes, more fun than Chingy and Snoop at the Holiday Inn.

  • My blogging process

    Photo by m-c via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Posting something almost daily at adammclane.com is a challenge. So I thought it’d be fun to write about that process. Perhaps this will provide an insight into my daily life or maybe it’ll even help someone figure out a new process for them?

    Three main sources of my daily post

    1. I wake up and have something on my mind to write about.
    2. Pre-planned posts.
    3. Rants.

    Typically, I write in the morning. I leave for work at 8:00 AM and I often start writing at about 6:30 AM. Most days I am literally pressing the publish button, hopping in the shower, and dashing off to work!

    1. For stuff I write in the morning.
    These are my journal posts. They tend to ramble more. These are also posts that I mostly write because I have to or the thought will take over my day. It’s hard to explain that, but I think I’ve disciplined myself to wake up thinking about something. There’s definitely a spiritual discipline side to it as well. I’m going on 6 years of daily public blogging… so it’s probably as much a habit as a discipline. But I really dig getting up early to write. And the pressure of having to finish by a certain time helps. (Donald Miller has a great post about using a timer to blog)

    2. For stuff I pre-plan.
    I’m a doodler. And if you’ve spent time with me you’ve probably seen me listen to something, or finish a conversation, and pull out my iPhone to take notes. (I also carry a notebook for this and use Post-its for the same purpose.) I use Evernote to organize that mess into a list. I have one ever-edited note called “blog posts” which is simply a list of things I want to blog about at some point. Some of those items on the list have partial posts that match… these are things I doodle while in meetings, sitting in church, on the trolley, or in a plane. Some of them are just main ideas, some of them are fully edited posts, and some are pictures of things I’ve doodled in my notebook.

    Sidenote: Almost every morning I look at that list and decide do I want to write about something on the list or something on my mind? If I chose to write something on my list instead of what is on my mind, I always make sure to capture a couple sentences of that thing have on my mind for a later post.

    3. Rants
    Rants are a healthy part of the blogger diet. The part of ranting that I’ve tried to eliminate from my blogging diet is the immediate rant. (That’s blogger junk food!) I used to allow something to fire me up and then I’d write a scathing response. Bam, done. My new self-imposed rule is that I don’t publish a rant right away. Instead, I prefer to allow it to sit in Evernote for a while and add it to my list of things to blog about. Then, when I’ve had some time to reflect, I can decide when to publish the rant as well as how I want to edit it. Some of my most popular posts of all time started as rants, fermented, and got re-edited to something else. But a good rant is fun and I let ’em fly on occasion.

    Other types of posts

    There are a couple of genres of blog posts I didn’t include here. These are my more spontaneous posts. Book reviews, family updates, and video posts. There’s not much pre-planning or  deep thought that goes into them. Which is why I typically publish them on weekends or when I’m on the road. And the truth about those posts is that they are more meaningful to me than they are to the reader.

  • This Too Shall Pass

    Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

    HT to PJ

  • I have the same problem with my Porshe

  • Ministry Beyond Behavior Modification

    Photo by philippe leroyer via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    How do you know if Jesus is changing a person’s life?

    How do you know if “your seeds” have landed in “fertile soil?”

    How do you know if the faith a high school student exhibits will stick into college and beyond?

    How do you know if a student is ready to be a student leader?

    We all want something to measure and we tend to measure the easy and obvious stuff.

    Confession Time

    Most youth workers label behavior modification as spiritual growth. That’s how they measure success. “The kids in my ministry sin less than kids who don’t attend.”

    Of course, that’s a load. You’ve probably merely succeeded at making kids religious so that they repress. Which is hardly helpful for development.

    If you’re new in youth ministry let me offer you this little fast forward on your growth as a leader. Behavior modification/sin management doesn’t change hearts. Don’t believe me? Just read the Old Testament. Jesus’ incarnation wasn’t to teach us how to manage sin among religious people. Jesus’ ministry gave up on sin management in order to win hearts.

    Your youth ministry should be about winning hearts for the long haul– not short term behavior management.

  • The plot and sub-plot of every youth group meeting

    Youth group meets every Wednesday evening at 7:00 PM. And every Wednesday night at 7:00 PM a cast of characters arrives on scene. Each character is three-dimensional. And each character is coming to youth group for their own reasons.

    Every Wednesday there is a plot and a series of sub-plots. And it looks something like this.

    Style: Drama

    The plot: Youth group has an agenda. The youth leader picks a topic for the night and has themed everything around it. In tonight’s play, we’re talking about worship. Everything that we’ll do is targeted at the agenda. What is worship? How can I worship? Why should I worship? Let’s worship together. Worship-themed games. And a wall where we’ll write our own definition of worship.

    This is the plot the youth worker, Adam, needs for the night to feel like a success. This agenda must win over everything. Why? The youth worker is in charge, duh.

    The main characters: Here’s a list of fictional characters for youth group, along with what their plot is on Wednesday.

    Ted: Ted was in the parking lot when the youth leader arrived. He’s thrilled it’s Wednesday night because the last thing he wants to do is be home. Ted’s sister is two years older and teases him constantly. That may not be a big deal, but Ted is sick of being teased. He comes to youth group because its a safe place for him to hang out. He’s got a couple of friends who come, too.

    Ted’s sub-plot for Wednesday night is that he needs to feel loved somewhere. He doesn’t get that at home. And he’s not sure if the church can make him feel loved… but his new girlfriend sure is making him feel loved. So if he’s not feeling it this Wednesday, he probably won’t come next week.

    Linda: She just wants to make it in the room. She’s been crying off and on all day. Not like in a dramatic way… but in a “I need to go to the bathroom” kind of way. Linda doesn’t know what to do because she is about 5 days late and might be pregnant. She doesn’t want to tell Mario because she knows he’ll freak. Her eyes are sore from crying and she’s completely on edge. She told Jill, Mary, and Christy what was up because they go to youth group with her and love her.

    Linda’s sub-plot is she’s freaked out because she isn’t sure if she’s pregnant or not. And she doesn’t even want to think about what would happen if she really is. That’d cause drama in every corner of her life. Youth group, school, and especially home. Yikes, her mom doesn’t even know she’s having sex. And the youth leader, Adam, that dude doesn’t have a clue. And she might just slap Margaret. That kid is so happy and she had the nerve to ask her on Facebook why she’s been a bitch all day. That kid doesn’t have a clue.

    Margaret: She’s everybody’s best friend. At least she thinks she is. She calls everyone each Wednesday after school to make sure they come to youth group. She helps lead worship, she helps Adam plan youth group activities, and when she isn’t getting straight As at school she is doing pretty good on the soccer team. Her home life is meh, but it doesn’t seem to faze her. Sure, her parents are getting a divorce, but God is in control, right? Plus, Adam and the other youth group leaders come to her soccer games– they are the only family she needs.

    Margaret’s sub-plot is tat she wants the night to be awesome. Youth group has made a big difference in her life, she knows she is loved and safe, and she feels like if people will just give it their all, they will all love Wednesday nights and the youth group will really start to grow.

    Mario: Mario loves coming to youth group. It’s silly, it’s fun, he learns a lot. He likes learning about God. For the first time in his life he feels like the stuff about God is making sense. He hasn’t told Adam yet, but at the retreat he prayed the prayer and has been reading his Bible every day. Speaking of the retreat, for the last 2-3 months since the retreat… he’s been giving Linda a ride home from church. It’s kind of funny because everybody knows they are going out but no one really suspects anything.

    Mario’s sub-plot is that he looks forward to youth group on Wednesday night so he can see his friends, learn about Jesus, and give Linda a ride home. He knows it’s crazy… but they’ve had sex on the way home every Wednesday for like 9 weeks. There’s no way he’d miss a Wednesday night. No not ever.

    Carrie: Carrie is really quiet on Wednesday nights. She comes a few minutes late, brings her Bible, and just kind of goes through the motions. She comes to everything, loves Adam’s teaching, and just likes youth group because its a distraction from her home life.

    Carrie’s sub-plot is that she comes on Wednesday night to get away from a verbally abusive home. Nothing she does is good enough for her parents. She feels unloved and youth group is the only place she feels safe. But no one at youth group would know that because she’s terrified to tell the truth about her dad, the pastor.

    Jill, Mary, and Christy: They’ve spent the whole day praying Linda isn’t pregnant. Well, they were praying when they weren’t asking their friends if they should tell a teacher or Adam. So now they feel a little guilty that about 200 people at school know Linda might be pregnant but that doesn’t really matter because if she is… everyone needs to know anyway, right? And if she isn’t pregnant than those 200 people will know that prayer works.

    Their agenda is that all they can think about is their friend Linda and her uterus. They are just going to play along tonight and not say anything. And then they are going to go home and Facebook chat about it some more.

    Adam: Adam just wants Wednesday night to be over with. He’s super tired and had a bad day. Staff meeting went way late. He couldn’t find the ingredients for the game he wants to play. And he’s annoyed that the elders are thinking about cutting his budget to go to NYWC this Fall. Adam got rushed through preparation because he was dealing with a problem between a parent and a former student who is now in college… like all day Tuesday. Adam thinks his lesson plan is solid and that this is what God wants him to teach. But he’s really frustrated that the students just don’t seem as into it since the retreat.

    Adam’s agenda is to be faithful to the plan. His gut is telling him there’s a lot going on with his students but the truth is, there’s a lot going on in his life, too. So Adam just wants tonight to be over with so he can go home and watch some TV he’s DVRed and see his kids before they go to sleep. He’s really frustrated, too. Since the retreat there’s been a lot of apathy among the students. Which is weird, it seemed like everything at the retreat went so well?

    What’s the point of the story: A lot of time in youth ministry we think that the plot of our lesson plan is the real story of our ministry. We go home feeling great if the lesson went well and kids seemed engaged in the plot. But when you look at all the sub-plots coming on Wednesday night– you see God is waiting for someone to intervene– and we go home frustrated because our gut tells us it could have gone better and we just don’t have a clue why. Sadly, we allow the plot to override what our students desperately need.

    Students are bringing the mess of their lives to the church and asking, “Can God help me with ____?“ And we’re answering that question by distracting them with games, music, and a lesson that isn’t answering their biggest question.