• QUESTION: mediocrity vs. excellence

    What’s the difference between the two?

    Isn’t the difference between the two a matter of perspective?

    What if my mediocrity was the most excellent thing someone has ever seen? Would it be excellent or mediocre?

    What if my excellent is considered mediocre by someone?

    Since I’m a perfectionist, is there ever excellence? Couldn’t I get to "most excellence?"

    What if mediocre is the best I can do?

    Isn’t striving for excellence in all areas really leading to mediocrity?

    What if I can’t be excellent at anything, is my value diminished?

    Can an excellent plan produce mediocre results? What about visa versa?

    What are synonyms of excellence and mediocrity?

    Is it arrogant to think I am excellent? Why isn’t it arrogant to say I’m mediocre?

    When I hear nebula terms like "excellence" and "mediocrity" I am left with more questions than answers.

    (more…)

  • he’s a good dog

    Kittens002
    A couple weeks ago we picked up two baby kittens.     Both 7 weeks old, Lovely and Explorer are quickly growing up. While this isn’t a big problem for us that they are growing up, they are a growing annoyance to our dog Stoney.

    While Stoney tries to nap they climb on his back, bite his tail, and nibble on his ears. They clinch their sharp claws on his neck and bite his ears when they play. Stoney is very patient to not kill them. Think about it… they weigh about 1/100th his weight! It’s the equivalent of a full grown horse to an adult. He could accidentally swipe at them and send one of them flying for miles. He could sit on one and squash it like a bug.

    Another thing that Stoney has been good about is his health. I had been buying him cheap food. I mean, how tempting is it to buy the cheap food when the dog eats more than 50 pounds of food per month. Over the winter he developed two ugly black spots on his back… each about the size of a dish towel. At first we thought he had just worn a spot bare by laying around all winter. But the more I read online about it, the more I became convinced that it was the cheap food I was buying that had caused this.

    So about 6 weeks ago we started him on a new diet of high protein "expensive" dog food and daily vitamins.
    While he has enjoyed his "treats" he has really benefited in a lot of ways. He has more energy and is his old ornery self. (Complete with leg humping!) And his black spots have progressively gotten much smaller to the point where they are barely noticeable.

    Stoney joined our family about 18 months ago. What a great addition! It’s hard to imagine our family without the big goofy yellow lab.

    Now, if only he could catch that squirrel. We can all dream.

  • Trends vs. Problems

    Numbers at YMX are down. Not terribly down, but down. One thing is true in life… when quantifiable numbers go down I always seem to take notice.

    This is why I am not panicking. This is why I don’t really even care. Less is normal right now.

    While the calendar has 4 seasons, youth ministry has 2.
    School’s in: Defined by youth workers daily/weekly routines of weekly meetings, retreats, lesson planning, etc. YMX gets more traffic when school is in for obvious reasons… they are looking for help on curriculum, issues raised, retreat programming, etc.
    School’s out: Defined by a crazy schedule of daily/weekly routines interupted with the schedule of summer. Students are out of school so they are more free. Loads of churches do VBS and week long camps, mission trips, etc. Obviously, less time spent in the office looking for answers to questions you have leads to less time spent at YMX.

    I think a lot of areas of our lives would be better if we would recognize high seasons and low seasons and expect stuff out of people accordingly.

    Herein is the difference between are real trend and a real problem. If your trend has a traditional downturn and you panic… it’s counterproductive. If you see a downturn right on schedule you should just be able to look at the trends and say, "OK, it’s down now… let’s gear up for an upswing there… when the trends takes us back up."

    Understanding the difference between a trend and a problem is the difference between good management and bad management.

  • Exclusivity in the church

    There has been a quiet, yet interesting discussion going on behind the scenes at YMX. It revolves around a very touchy issue for us: Are all people invited to join the site, or is it exclusive to a certain type of person?

    Exclusivity in anything labeled "Christian" automatically makes people nervous.     To one extreme some feel like since salvation is free and open to all, that most parts of Christianity and the church ought to be accessible to all as well. To the other extreme, some feel like there should be private areas of Christianity that allow for frank discussion away from the eyes and misunderstanding of those outside of Christianity, and in YMX’s case… outside of youth ministry altogether. (The reality is that the discussion is clearly in the middle of these extremes as no one is to one extreme or the other.

    (more…)

  • error report

    You know… YMX is a pretty complicated beast. What started as a tiny little site for my friends now reaches all sorts of people, attracts a lot of attention, and has some pretty complex coding that makes it happen.

    Yesterday I discovered a mistake. I’m in the process of trying to fix it… but the result is that the site is generating 2-3 errors for each forum post that people view. Amazingly I discovered that there were nearly 300,000 errors in the error log!

    There is a spiritual metaphor here, isn’t there? Sometimes in life we know there is a "known issue" that we can chose to ignore. It may seem small but it ends up affecting all sorts of things. James 5 talks about some people even being sick because they have a problem (in that case, unconfessed sin) that is actually making them ill. Whoa… a little thing can not only cause spiritual havoc, it can result in physical havoc too!

    James provides the answer: Just like the code on the site has to reach out for help in order to fix the
    root of the problem, James tells us that if we want to get better… we need to confess that sin in order to move on.

  • This week’s bulletin cover rocks!

    Standout_bulletin4
    I know, I’m a dweeb for mentioning something I did and calling it great. But this weeks bulletin cover turned out really nice.

    What does God want for you? Um… guess you’ll have to come Sunday morning and figure it out. I’ll complete the dweebness with a shameless plug… www.romeochurch.com

  • 10 Years Ago

    Adam_contactOn June 21st, 1997 Kristen and I got hitched. Hard to believe that we’ve gone a decade and are still going strong.

    Since we already had our big anniversary trip, tonight isn’t going to be that special. But if you see her… tell her thanks for putting up with me for 10 years.

    10 years? Where did it go? Fast!

  • Two odd but true internet rumors

    There are two oddities floating around the internet. Both are completely real and both make us all laugh a little and scratch our heads.

    Exhibit A: Ted Nugent and David Crowder Band team up for their next album, Remedy.

    Exhibit B: Someone snagged this picture of Snoop Dogg reading an Andy Stanley book.
    Snoop

  • a little mid-morning comedy

    Lostcat
    As I was typing that last post something quite funny happened in my neighborhood.

    Two adults are slowly driving around my neighborhood in a minivan yelling for their cat. They are coasting around the block saying "meow!" "ro-ooow!" "phoenix!"

    It makes me wonder… "How many cats would be willing to run up to a minivan?" "Why wouldn’t they just walk?" This is living proof that some Americans are so lazy they literally won’t even walk around the block to look for their cat.

    I can’t lie. Sitting here on the porch I openly and loudly laughed at them.

  • Zealous stupidity

    Tonight is the first Middle Madness for Light Force: Summer Style. What that means is that starting at 7 PM, I’ll be running around and playing crazy games with middle schoolers.

    We started Middle Madness a year ago to try to help a glob of incoming 7th graders get acclimated to Light Force.
    I liked it so much that I decided that we would do the same thing with this year’s glob of incoming 7th graders.

    Now, I’m not a middle school expert like Jason Raitz, Mark Ostreicher, or the rest of the virtually insane people whose lives are "Middle school-centric."

    What I like about middle schoolers is something I’ll call "zealous stupidity." I mean that as a compliment actually! Call an adult that and they get all huffy. But call a middle schooler that and they get it. They are like something launched out of a rocket. Going a million miles per hour and don’t care what gets in their way, laughing all the time. They have passion for things that makes no sense and they have energy for things that makes no sense. (Which is why some 9th graders are convinced that they are superheros and can handle playing 2-3 sports simultaneously.) They’ve not been refined to the way adults try to do things reasonably. And the laziness of high school has not set in. Middle schoolers are 1000% passion.

    In that regard, middle schoolers are just like God. God goes after people with zealous stupidity… a love that makes no sense. A love that goes all the way to the darkest corners of our lives and brings light and hope and a smile when someone realizes that there is no use, no resisting, no reason… just giving themselves over to him because they’ve been overcome with His zealous stupidity for lost people.

    A couple weeks ago, a person got upset with my use of the word "stupid." He felt like since I was calling students to a "stupid faith in Christ" that I was calling them to a life of unintelligence. He was particularly annoyed that I told the group that God would take 90% passion and 10% brains over 90% brains and 10% passion. He said, "Christians ought to be intelligent. There are Christians with brains."

    I seem to remember Jesus encountering a bunch of religious people with 90% brains and 10% passion a few times. It’s pretty clear from his choice of disciples that he’ll take passion over brains 25 times in a row.

    This is why I love middle schoolers. Passion, passion, passion.