Last night was our annual Harvest Party. This is a safe Halloween party alternative for families in our community.

It was a great night. Overall, it was well attended and well received. Everyone did a great job! Check out the link for early pictures. There should be more added as the day goes on.

So I was pretty fired up over this article that was sent to me yesterday. Originally, it kind of ticked me off… but I’ve since calmed down.

So I fired off a note to marko at YS. He was kind enough to respond to me… here is what he sent.

1. Do you think that the statement “that you introduce students to yoga or to contemplative prayer practices where you say a word over and over again to put yourself into what Youth Specialties says is a ‘semi-conscious state” is something that came from YS or was that something misread from something you’ve published?

Well, first of all, the only place we ever offered “yoga” (it was called “yoga and stretching”) was at the National Pastors Convention. It’s never appeared as a suggestion in any Youth Specialties materials (for youth ministry), nor have we had it at our National Youth Workers Convention. So it is a bit ludicrous (actually, flat out false) to say that YS introduces students to yoga. But that said, yoga is really just about stretching and slowing down. Sure, yoga, I suppose, could focus on Hindi gods or something – but it can also focus on Christ. We received a couple stomping-mad complaints about the yoga at the National Pastors Convention, saying “putting your body in those positions invites Hindi gods to enter your body.” I’m sorry – this just sounds like heresy to me. If we don’t believe Hindi gods actually exist, then we are we concerned about them entering our bodies? And even for those who would say this is about other dark spiritual forces in the world; well, as believers, we have no fear of them. So the whole “don’t put yourself at risk by doing these stretching exercises” argument is just lost on me.

On saying words over and over again: well that sure is taken out of context. It’s not like we would suggest someone grab any word (“Tree!” “Towel!” “Beer!”) and chant it over and over again – which is her implication. There is a wonderful spiritual practice, however, of repeating a phrase from the Bible and seeing what God reveals to you about it (or about Him, or about you). It’s prayer: not a chant. I think of this as similar to rolling a really good piece of chocolate around your mouth to get the full flavor. The argument against this I’ve heard is the scriptural passage about not praying idle words. But these aren’t idle words – they’re the God-breathed, inspired words of scripture! Again, the application of these line of reasoning against praying scripture sounds darn close to heretical to me.

Short answer: yes, I think they’ve completely misread and misrepresented what we’ve suggested in publications, and what we offer at events. But even if they hadn’t misrepresented things, they would still not “like” what we ARE suggesting!

2. Were you or anyone at YS contacted for this story? (Afterall, Agape Press’s byline is “Reliable news from a Christian Source)

No, certainly not. I’ll be honest: this type of article is RARELY researched. Had we been contacted, we would have been more than happy to engage in dialogue about what we are and aren’t promoting. There’s a website (http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/youthspecialties.htm) that has been maligning us for years on this issue (I’m sure it was one of the sources for the article you forwarded). Look at the list of people and ministries they malign, under the heading Avenues Through Which Contemplative Spirituality is Entering the Church … “:
Rick Warren and the Purpose Driven
The Emerging Church
The Alpha Course
Brian McLaren
Contemplative Prayer
Global Peace Plan
The Message
Willow Creek
Leonard Sweet & Quantum Spirituality
Interspirituality
Youth Specialties
Labyrinths
Richard Foster and Renovare
Brennan Manning
Robert Schuller
Association of Christian Counselors
Misguided Pastors
North America’s Seminaries & Colleges
Ken Blanchard
Robert Schuller
I’m not sure whether to laugh at this (I mean, how did YS ever get on the same list – any list! — as some of these people? And, The Message and Rick Warren and Willow Creek are somehow ushering in Eastern Religion? And, how did Robert Schuller get on the list twice?) or be honored that we’re lumped together with some of these people and organizations (some, not all!).

This organization (lighthouse trails), as well as the book referenced in the agape press “news” piece (I find the name of that news agency to be highly ironic) have a few very interesting (and revealing, and not very helpful) approaches:
They do not connect with anyone to verify anything. They merely form opinions (which they call fact) based on books and web stuff.
They are HUGE into “guilt by association”. For instance: if an author writes a book with a questionable comment in it, and one of our authors says it’s a worthwhile book to read (which, of course, to reasonable people does NOT mean an endorsement of everything in the book!), and we’ve published the endorser, we get accused being part of the problem. There’s a great example of this on the lighthouse trails site (actually, dozens of them): there’s a section called “How are Youth Specialties and Thomas Keating linked?” They have a page about how Thomas Keating is terrible for this or that. Then, they link to a very old webpage from the YS Sabbath event (which hasn’t been offered in three years) that suggests a Thomas Keating book as reading. This is how we are “linked”!
This one really troubles me: they seem to (I’m not 100% sure on this, but it seems to be the case) malign anyone who even suggests that we should listen to God. Their position SEEMS to be that God said everything God will ever say in scripture, and that’s that. So this is where people like Rick Warren get lumped in – he has suggested, in print somewhere, that listening to God is a good thing (actually quieting yourself and physically/spiritually listening); and that constitutes eastern mysticism to these folk.

3. Surely you’ve heard this argument against ancient spiritual disciplines… especially since there are some which share names with Eastern practices, how do you combat the differences between Eastern mysticism and the upsurge in popularity of Christian disciplines?

A few responses:
Christianity IS an eastern religion. It has all its roots in the East! It’s a bit baffling to me that people lose sight of this, and insist on creating a false separation between eastern religions and (apparently) western Christianity.
All truth is God’s truth. By this I do not mean that all roads lead to God. Quite conversely, I’m saying that all truth – any truth that exists on earth or anywhere else in the created universe – emanates and originates from God. Since we are co-heirs with Christ to all God has created, God’s truth is ours to claim. If a Buddhist is using a breathing exercise to bring some peace to her life, well, more power to her. But that should have no bearing on whether or not I choose to focus on my God-created breath – every single breath given to me by a loving God – as a way of focusing my otherwise distracted attention on my God.
There is a rise in interest in eastern mysticism – this is true. But it doesn’t freak me out. God’s response to Moses, when Mo asks what he should say when the people ask who his God is: I AM. In other words, “the fact that they do not know who I am has no bearing on who I am.” So I don’t spend a ton of effort on “combating” eastern mysticism. Sure, I want kids to understand their faith – which includes theology, not only experiences. But I want them to live their faith – not just understand it. Jesus says, “follow me”; not, “learn about me.” It’s active and lived and calls for experience.

To wrap it up a bit, Adam: Youth Specialties exists to serve youth workers; and we are driven by our passion for Jesus, and for helping youth workers expose teenagers to the passionate Jesus who loves them so perfectly. We serve the whole church, from every imaginable denominational persuasion. We’d love to serve the people who are accusing us of ushering in eastern religions – though I doubt they’ll want to be served by us.

You know, I can think of a few instances in my sphere of influence where a local church has really hurt someone recently.

And I wonder to myself, “How can we do this? Why can’t we treat people with more respect and love? Why are the people who give so much hurt so often?”

Then I am reminded that I am a Calvinist. We hurt because we are predisposed to hurt. To self-protect. To… we just do it because it is in our nature.

Dear Lord, fill our churches with joy and love that comes from you. Ours isn’t working.

You know, I got this article forwarded to me today. And it really hacked me off.

For the past 6 months or so the staff has wondered if we were past stuff like this. Apparently fundamentalism is alive and well in the hearts and minds of people in our church… people I really like. It’s a tiny but loud minority.

Why I think we need to have a major change in our church

1. I think fear [fundamentalisms only grasp on people] is holding us back from reaching our community for Christ.
2. I think fundamentalism is a different gospel than I believe in. Most fundamentalist I’ve interacted with believe intellectually in grace and mercy… but don’t practice it practically.
3. It frustrates me that articles like this are based on such crap journalism. Did they interview YS? I didn’t think so! The goal is fear-mongering instead of truth.
4. We need to focus on the future instead of holding onto the recent past.

Here’s my plan, even though no one cares what I think… and since it’s my blog I can dream a little

1. Make it known that we are distancing ourselves from fundamentalist. While we still love those who have gone before us, we’re past it and we aren’t looking back.
2. Drop our name and pick up a cool name for our church. We’ll still honor the last 165 years, but the name should go back to it’s original name.
3. Tell those who are holding on to grudges from years ago to get over it. The past is the past. Confess your sins and move on.
4. Simply embrace the future… let go of what’s holding us back… and passionately and relevently move on. I want to see us be the oldest church plant in the world!

OK, got that off my chest. Now back to reality!

This morning at my Bible study we talked a little bit about the “secret mission.” At this point, they are having a hard time even finding C. They are going to purposely have to seek C out and change their habits in order to make the connection. But they are still on the case.

Lemme share something amazing. I spent another “all Sunday” session with a former student doing work on my house. It leaves me thinking to myself… What is this all about? Am I on to something?

So far, 3 years into FT ministry, I’ve rarely been “successful” with guys. There are always guys in my group, I always invest in guys, guy stick around… But I’ve never felt like we were attractive to guys. All of “youth group growth” has come with ladies. Don’t know why, but it’s true.

So yesterday, we ran conduit in my back yard all afternoon and until 11:30 PM. It left me wondering… Is sharing my life like this, in essence pure masculinity, going to lead to more effectiveness in reaching men? I don’t know… I don’t worry about silly growth strategies… But it did make me wonder.

Long term effect: The conduit looks great. We’re not done yet, but it is going to add a lot of safety and value to our house.

Right now, 20 feet from me… is the motherload of Halloween candy. We’ve been told that our block gets hundreds of trick-or-treaters so over the last couple of weeks we’ve been gathering more and more candy. Well, yesterday Kristen decided to put all of that candy in a big laundry basket on the porch to get it out of the way. I gotta tell ya… when I pass that thing I have the hardest time not picking up candy. Especially since Skittles are in there. That is just wrong.

If you think about it, give Jonathon a jingle or drop him and e-mail. They recently left God’s country [Michigan] and relocated to SC. I think it’s fair to say that things haven’t worked out the way they had hoped and they could really use some encouragement.

With Sunday out of the way, my “big secret” is that I have a quiet couple of weeks. We have the harvest party on Wednesday night… so no tlak to prepare. Then we have the Chicago College visits this weekend… so no Sunday school. I’m looking forward to a nice easy week. That will give me lots of time to settle into our newly completed offices.

Here is my profound thought for Saturday morning: Whoever invested the coffee press, he’s a flippin’ genius. I could never make good coffee with our old Mr. Coffee coffee maker. Even if I followed the directions, set the timer, walked away, and came back at the perfect time… my coffee always sucked.

But with the coffee press, I can do it. I boil water, put the stuff in, wait 3 minutes… and push the plunger down. Next step, pour coffee. I can do that.

A private joke between my wife and I has now officially gone public. For the past year or so Kristen has been hooked on allrecipes.com. I don’t really know what she does there… but I know she goes there a lot and spends a lot of time looking at recipes. So much so that I started to joke with her that she was always on the PC looking at “girl porn.”

Well, I’ve joked with her so much that a lot of people know about her innocent addition. In fact, she is spreading her addiction throughout the ladies of the church.

In other news it came to my attention that two of my students have a date tonight. This was a shocker to me! I have been pretty famous over the past 3 years in sniffing out this kind of thing. But I missed this one and only found out about it when the girl’s mom called me to ask what I knew about the boy. Let’s hope that it both starts and ends well. My thoughts on adolescent love are well-documented here on All Blogs. These things are always like watching NASCAR. There is always a wreck. They call it “a crush” because it crushes. Oh well, I hope they have fun!

As of this moment, Kristen and I have no credit card debt. Incredible! I don’t even remember how we got in that mess to begin with. (8 years ago) But we are now out of it.

The only debt we currently have is “good debt” of our house. But that is a bigger project. Praise God for little victories like this. YES!