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Need an audio file?
As site worth playing with if you’ve got time. Wise Words by Cool Men (an archive of famous movie lines in audio format)
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The leftover bits are funny…
Today we were creating a video to promote Main Street. I needed some "in between" stuff to make the video clips flow together. (Which we did get eventually!) We had 15 minutes to shoot this and well… we got about 5 minutes worth of outtakes and errors out of it. This isn’t going to win any awards, but I thought it was good enough to toss up on YouTube for folks to enjoy.
This is proof that I shouldn’t be in television. It’s not as easy as those guys on the tube make it look.
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the next 12 songs
I haven’t done this for a while… so why not? It’s an election day special. These are the next 12 songs coming up on my iTunes shuffle.
- Lunch Lady Land- Adam Sandler
- Graceland- Paul Simon
- None But Jesus- Hillsong United
- Enough (acoustic)- Chris Tomlin
- Yellow- Coldplay
- Rosanna- Toto
- God Be Merciful to Me- Jars of Clay
- Awesome is the Lord Most High- Chris Tomlin
- Roxanna- The Police
- Sucker- A New Found Glory
- Time and Tide- Basia
- Rescued Ones- Robbie Seay
OK, that was a little embarrassing .
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What are some problems facing youth ministry today
A YMX member is writing an article about "Issues facing Youth Ministry today" And asked for my thoughts. I don’t know if he’ll use any of my thoughts, but here are some of the things that came off the top of my head. I’m no expert on youth ministry and the thing has gotten so big that I think it’s almost impossible to really say "these are the issues" without some serious study… but these are just things I have observed.
What do you see as some of the
main issues youth ministry is struggling with today?o Youth Ministry still
struggles to identify universally what it’s primary mission is… discipleship,
evangelism, or something else.o A lack of standardized
requirements to be labeled a “youth worker” (Such as, training or education or
certification)o Within the local church
there are still people who see YM as babysitting.o A general
uncomfortability with the role as “indoctrinator” by youth workers in the local
church.o A straying away from
teaching the Bible into a pure social/entertainment thing.o A lack of understanding
of youth culture and no desire to learn it.o Absolutely no ability
to connect adolescents to the body after they graduate.
What do you see as some of
the main issues youth ministry is responding to effectively?+ Serving
their communities.+ Getting
kids excited about being in the church+ Allowing
students to develop leadership skills+ Being an
entry point to kids of all backgrounds to the church+ A swing
towards small groups ministry+ Most youth
workers are very authentic to their kids+ A desire
to do ministry outside of the church and where kids areIn what ways does
youth ministry need to change?+ I think as
a profession we need to develop some standard goals. Why do we do youth
ministry? How does one get the label as a professional youth worker? What are
the standard things ALL youth ministries should be doing? Stuff like
that.+ Youth
workers need to care less about attracting kids and care more about fitting
their youth ministry into their church model and visa versa.+ Youth
workers need to get serious about training their adult
volunteers.+ We need to
get past games & music and into something deeper. In the 1980’s Dan Spader,
president of Sonlife, said “It’s a sin to bore a kid with the gospel.” I want to
revise that to say, “It’s a sin to never teach a kid the gospel.” I can’t tell
you how many times I’ve heard a kid from other youth groups who visited our YM
say that they have never heard the bible taught to them. When ministries begin
teaching solely topically, they are truly missing out on something big.We’ll see what happens with the article. I hope he gets a lot of different perspectives on his question.
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Burn baby burn
Not sure why I got a kick out of this. But I finally got my leaves to burn. There is something very primal about staring into the flames of a fire, burning stuff, and tending to a fire. I always think of it as a pre-historic television… you sit around the thing to keep warm and the stories start to come out of you.
I was also glad to see this primal fascination alive and well in Paul. Let’s just hope he doesn’t express this fascination in the house.
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Ted Haggard
Like a lot of Christians, I’ve been watching the news unfold on Ted Haggard of New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Read the press release Read the story of CNNAs a pastor, I have several thoughts on this. Some may be surprising but here are some of my reactions now that things have gone from "accusations" to "admissions of guilt."
1. I’m glad that the truth is coming out. I think that Mr. Jones
actually did the right thing. Just like we should expose darkness in
other people’s lives… we need to live authentic lives. Clearly, as is
in the press release, Haggard has done something terrible and needs to
address it before moving forward. (I think the blatant lies to the
media and the purchase of meth were themselves enough cause for removal, now that he has confirmed the sexual side of it… it’s just clear that he needs time away from ministry to heal.) I don’t claim to be perfect, but one of the reasons I am so transparent about who I am is exactly this… look at me for who I am. I’m not perfect at all but I don’t try to hide it either.
2. As New Life moves forward, I hurt for Ross Parsley and the rest of the staff. They
have a lot of work to do to repair a sense of trust with people who
feel like they’ve been deceived by someone they trust. I think the
swift action of the governing body is actually the first step to
repairing that. I also can see how replacing him is going to be tricky.3. I hurt for his family. I can’t imagine the horror of realizing your dad has been living a double life for so long. It’s one thing to go through a life of "living publicly" like all pastor’s kids must do… but to then see all of that crash down in front of the world, pure and total horror.
4. I’m excited to see that they are looking at a restoration plan. This is honorable and loving even in the midst of Mr. Haggard blatantly sinning before the whole world. (The initial denials that we know so far… confirmed by Haggard.)
5. I still hope that the constitutional ban on gay marriage passes in Colorado. After all, that was Mr. Jones’ agenda. I hope voters still show up at the polls and do what they need to do.
Let this be a call to all men/women in ministry, get yourselves in a real accountability relationship. Not one that glosses over the simple stuff… but that cuts to the heart of the matters and drills down to what’s really going on.
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Sunday Starts Early
There are several categories of people who attend the typical church. (Massive generalizations)
- Casual: Hey man, I’m here.
- Here to play my part: Hey, I’m here and I want to worship and I want to serve too.
- Church is my life: Am I ever anywhere else, because all I ever do is come here?
Every staff person I know at a local church wishes they were in that second category but for the most part is in the "Church is my life" camp. I want to say this, all of those are healthy and pleasing to God.
So, it’s 6:45 am on a Sunday… what is the typical pastor doing?
I can’t speak for the hundreds of thousands of pastors out there… but this is what a typical staff person is doing.
- Praying (Crazy, I know)
- Preparing (Finalizing whatever they are doing for Sunday morning)
- Practicing (Just like any profession… pros practice)
I like to get up early on Sunday’s. I generally roll into the parking lot about 7:20 and I’ll leave the property about 12:45. My role is to help the service run as smoothly as possible. We go over all the technical aspects most people wouldn’t think about for a service. Lighting, audio, who says what and when, musicians practice, doors unlocked and lights on, make sure volunteers and paid staff are where they need to be, on and on… my personal favorite is "the unknown job." Every single Sunday something "comes up" that is new, urgent, tragic, pressing, unexpected, odd, funny, painful, embarrassing, or otherwise needs to be handled.
Someone takes care of almost every detail to make a Sunday morning service happen, hopefully smoothly. And in the typical church I’ve served in… all those little details only get noticed when someone doesn’t do something just the way it’s always done. It’s a tricky business eliminating distractions from worship and creating an environment where people can be comfortable enough to take the next step with God… but it is also quietly rewarding. Few things in life bring a pastor more pleasure than seeing the little things they do amount to or result in something really big happening in someone’s life.
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Hay Ride Tonight
In just a few hours we’re going to go freeze together. The whole crew from Light Force is meeting together for a hay ride. Man, I haven’t done a hay ride since I was… well, since I was in youth group. 9th grade? 1990? Yikes, been a while.Right now it’s 44 degrees at the McLane house. Let’s hope for a sudden heatwave across southeastern Michigan! It should be a good time though. We’re meeting at the church at 5 and I suspect a rowdy good time.
