Hard core readers of this blog will remember that back in June I posted a story about getting a fist fight with another boy in 4th grade. I like to tell this story and I’ve told it several times over the years. It’s a good story with a teachable twist.

After the fight happened my friend Steve’s dad did something odd to put us back together. He took us out to a movie, Rocky IV. I’ve often wondered why his dad did that and a few weeks ago I finally sent his dad an e-mail to ask him why he had done it.

He wrote, “I guess I figured if I forced you guys into a situation where you had to be civil to one another, and maybe even enjoy something together, that you would feel pretty foolish if you started fighting again. I also wanted you to know that I, as an adult, would be watching your relationship and that I had strong feelings about you getting along. Letting down yourselves by quarreling again would be one thing; letting me down, too, would be another.Maybe, too, I was trying to show you that I believed you both were good guys and that you should see the good in each other, too.”

That about summed it up for me. It was about what I had always thoguht he had meant by it. I know that I was secretly hoping that there was this extreme case of religious ferver that he had wanted to get a point across to me… yada yada yada. It just wasn’t the case and I’m cool with that.

But the story that ended back in 4th grade was resurrected. It turns out that Steve’s dad still writes for the South Bend Tribune, my hometown newspaper. Even stranger are two central facts. First of all, Steve’s dad wrote about this incident in an article in Sunday’s Tribune. Second, it’s been very cool to reconnect with Steve as we’ve exchanged a few e-mails about it last week.

After the story back in 4th grade, I can’t really remember if Steve and I remained friends. I do know that I moved away that summer and by the time we reconnected in middle school and high school homerooms, we were never close again. (I’m sure most people can identify with this type of “loss.”)

So it’s been intruiging that what was once “just a PA story” now has some more meaning to me. I have loved getting reconnected… even for a fleeting minute. They say you can never go home again, but in my memory… it’s good to chase down some of those lose ends.

We came back from Camp Michawana this afternoon, and I think we even got back a little early. No one seemed to complain.

I am completely exhausted. I even took a bit of an afternoon nap as we waited for the in-laws to bring Megan and Paul back home. (It’s incredible to have the in-laws so available.) I don’t normally take naps, but I guess it was a sign that I was more tired than I thought.

All-in-all I thought it was a fine weekend. Of course, the overwhelming reality that there will be hell to pay for losing so much money clouds my judgment, but the reality of it was that there wasn’t a lot wrong with the retreat.

Personally speaking, I think the weakest component was me. I wasn’t my best at teaching this weekend. I would call my personal performance “adequate.” I just didn’t have a ton to give. This is telling me clearly that I need to rest. And I need to rest bigtime to recharge. The big question is “when?”

I have another awful week ahead schedule-wise. I love helping with the golf team, but it has drained me. I’m ready for the season to be over… And we have almost 3 weeks left!

A highlight of the trip had to be the low-ropes elements. It clearly demonstrated to me where some of the problems are with LF and also some of the strengths. Also, it seemed that the participants were really willing to commit to changing LF and making it an inreaching ministry. We have a fantastic set of students right now and I look forward to this being a year where lives are changed.

Overall, the church is in a world of hurt. I don’t want to get into it, but you can feel the deflation. I just hope the leaders see it and respond before it’s too late.

Today is the day we leave and I still have about 100 things that I have to do. This is a case where I haven’t really procrastinated… there just haven’t been a lot of spare minutes.

I’ll be finallizing my 4 talks in the next hours and will be running around to get game stuff together as well as dropping our kids off at my in-laws for the weekend. That little 2 hour journey in the middle really screws things up. Life is just like that though.

I’m trying to be content with a bad retreat number. After all of our wrangling… we could only loop 10 students into this. We needed 20 to break even and I’ll be losing about $1000 overall. Great.

All I can say is that we played very well. But we still lost. The overall score was 156-156 and we lost when the 5th score card was counted. This was a tough way to lose a conference title. Very tough on the seniors. That said, of the four seniors two stepped up to the plate and two bowed out. D. Detmer was low man with a 35, followed by N. Stevens at 36.

On the JV side, they are now 6-1 in dual matches after whipping GPN 157-165. That’s right, our JV was 1 stroke away from beating both varsity teams! Some phenomonal scoring by the underclassmen leaves us excited about what’s to come in 2005 and beyond.

This is a poor written and even poorer argument in response to the dialogue I’ve now had with Scott twice. I appreciate where he is coming from, yet my position is not up for debate. I am against homeschooling and Christian schools for beleivers.

Scott, (sorry about accusing you to the recent influx of hits… I think it’s tied to something else.)

Again I thank you for the dialogue. Forgive me for summarizing but time is short. Your argument seems to stem from “I’ve given up because of what the supreme court did in 1990.”

To the individual Christian parent what happens on the supreme court level does not supercede God’s word. God commands all believers to besalkt and light in the world. Does this mean that you may have to put yourself in the way of a lawsuit or even jailtime? Perhaps. But I challenge any administrator to arrest a student or fire a teacher for expressions of opinion or religious ferver.

Annocdotally, when I lived in CA we had a small group of pastors who met weekly to “pray around a school” since they wouldn’t allow us on the campus to visit our students. We very obediently walked outside the schools property (on the sidewalk) and privately prayed for the needs of the students we knew as well as the teachers, administrators etc. About a month into doing this we were stopped by a security guard who told us that the principal was going to charge us with something and have us arrested. Do you know what we said… “go for it. Call the cops now. We will all gladly be arrested for praying.” Of course this broke the ice… we didn’t get arrested and after a few more months and some e-mails… we got a regular prayer request update from the principal.

I share that story to acknowledge that God is bigger than the supreme court. He is bigger than the school board and he is bigger than the ACLU. It is out responsibility as leaders and parents to model to our children that God is a part of the school. He is a part of our school day, everyday. There’s a bumper sticker on my office door that says “As long as there are tests, there will always be prayer in school!”

Here’s my point. On the macro “law level” of setting policy and re-interpreting laws to fit today’s culture, you areright… we don’t have many choices. But on the micro level, we are commanded and called to love God, love people and make disciples. There is room for peaceful cival disobedience. There is room for parents to legally get elected to school boards. There is room for school boards to institute policies that are friendly to religious expression without threatening minority positions. Since when is America ruled by the minority? How come such fundamental questions to American society are not left to the ballot but to judges?

As a parent and a believer. I believe your responsibility is to put your kids in the public school system. I presume either you or your spouse stays home to do this with your children. Would that ministry be better suited to extend to all the children in your kids class than reserved exclusively for your kids?

I am vehemently opposed to this desire to pull evangelicalism out of the public square and into private expression. To me… the issue boils down to that one fundamental question we all have to answer… who am I in Christ and why am I here on this earth. As parents, our mission is clear. If, as the Clinton book title so proudly says, it takesa village to raise a child… why is it that you don’t try to change YOUR village.

To me, the story about the 1990 ruling is a farce. I’m not worried about macro-legislation so much as I am worried about the kids right in front of me. I may not be able to change the lives of the millions of chilren in the public arena… but I can sure try to change the lives of those who live in my neighborhood. To hide my children in self-imposed exile for the sake of setting a standard is ill-advised at best and faithless at worse. Again, whose children are they? (Thankfully, we both agree that they aren’t the states!)

You said “Maybe we’re not as far apart on this as we might appear!”

We can respectfully disagree here. My position is that there is no room in Scripture to constitute seperation from the world. Your kids aren’t any better than anyone elses… put them in the nearest school to you.

I absolutely and vehemently think it is wrong to homeschool an adolescent… unless they have special needs. I have seen case after case after case of completely destroyed adolescents. Utterly clueless to the world and receiving a terrible home based education. As if all learning in high school was in books! Ha! I’ve been sugar-coating this… if I were the president, I would outlaw homeschooling beyond the 7th grade.

Last night I had to do some soul searching and some life changin’. I’m happy to be along for the ride on that.

So far today, I’ve really gotten a handle on getting past my frustration and actually dealing with the problems at hand. The reality is that I am blaming myself for a lot of the problems going on at the church when in fact only some of them are my fault. I can only fix what I can fix. But I am already starting to fix some of the broken things from my post below.

I had a great time today at the school. I purposefully sought out students on my list. I connected with them, and I listened to them. Some of my students are really hurting becasue of stuff LF (and me) have done to them. I can clearly see that I have a lot of work to do. More than that, I can see that all of our leadership team needs to “get back to basics” on the contact front. We’ve just let that slide and we’re paying for it now.

I’m really looking at this as a good “starting over” point. Maybe I even need to evaluate taking a step back from the equipping aspects of LF and get back into the building phase. Before I do that I’m going to have to chat with some gurus. This painful soulsearching may actually be a part of the maturation process for me as a leader and us as a group.

Well, I jsut sent this e-mail out to all of my adult leaders. This is after the worst attendence night I’ve ever had here in Romeo. I’m posting it here because I want others to see that I am not perfect… although I post some pretty nasty things from time to time… my poop stinks too.

Working in ministry has been the hardest thing I have ever done. On nights like this I can honestly say that I would rather work as a stocker at Wal*Mart. In the past few weeks it has been clear that the harder I work, the worse things have gotten. As my e-mail mentions… this will send me on a path of self-discovery. I need to wrestle with my failures and ask God… is this failure the result of something you are doing or is it the result of a sin in my life? Anyway… here’s the letter.

Co-laborers,

Hopefully you are all on your way to bed now. But it will be a longnight for me, let me explain why.I am completely and totally devastated by how poorly LF is going the last two weeks. Not only is there no one there, but enthusiasm stinks and the “group love” feel that I relished only a few weeks ago is adistant memory.

I don’t like working this hard and seeing such pooroutput… for some it makes them want to quit, but for me it makes mewant to succeed more. I want you to know a few things right off the bat…

– I may be discouraged and frustrated… but I’m not giving up.

– I know the habit at Romeo is to check out when things start to go bad… I just want to point out that we need to set a new trend for everyone else to follow… we shouldn’t check out when things get rough… we should put on our hard hats and get to work!

I’m not a mystical person at the core. While I know some of this could be a God thing… I recognize that there are some things I can do tomake sure it’s a God thing. So I’m not ready to accept “perhaps thisis what god is doing at Romeo” just yet. (Sounds like the talk tonight, eh?)

Numbers aren’t everything, but I am a fervent believer that numbers do indicate some things. The reality is that tonight was the smallest number of students in the past 15 months. By my count, there were only13 there. More than that… there is a certain smell of deflation inthe air.

How many would have been there tonight if there parents hadn’t made them come? I don’t think I really want to know… it would make me apply for a job at Wal*Mart in the morning! (Just as an indicator tohow far we’ve gone downhill… a year ago in September we averaged 38students.)

Let’s look at some factors.

– Students have homework or are involved in sports or otherwise busy

– Van kids can’t get there

– Parents lacking enthusiasm for life at Romeo is trickling down to

– Students are making choices among the myriad of “good things” and right now… we aren’t it.

– on and on and on

A simple observation (and you can make the same one with adults at\church) is that students are no longer looking for ways to make sure they are a part of LF… instead they desire to find excuses to not come. The excuse is the symptom of a much deeper issue.

Did you know that there are several students who are begging to NOT come? Did you know that at least one 9th grader is going somewhere else? I know for a fact that the Skomski girls would come if only someone would go pick them up. These are things that we can do something about… let’s not forget that.

As I reflect on this ugly problem I realize that there are some things that are the fault of leadership. (e.g ME!) I am seeing clearly that there are some environmental things that have surfaced that make it clear that we aren’t as healthy as we thought we are. We need to get back to basics and get better at the things that worked so well last year.

– I’ve clearly over-invested in the core at the cost of the group. This has resulted in a clique feel to LF… great if you’re in the clique… terrible if you feel outside of it. As I’ve tried to talk people into this weekends retreat it seems everyone has “something to do” but that’s all they are saying. (In other words… they don’t want to come!) This weekend will be a big part of stearing this clique away from “clique-centeredness” and all about reaching out to the group… I’ll be seeking to breaking the clique up into a mad crazy group of floaters. This will hopefully develop into a “clique with an attitude!”

– I’ve taken your tasks away and made your job too opaque. I can clearly see that you all need something more tanglible to do both on Wed. nights and in your contact work. I’m going to make it simpler for you. I am assigning students for you to contact on a regular basis.” Something as simple as saying “hey… this is Dave and I haven\’t seen you in a while at LF… how are you doing?” would open up a world of conversation. The reality is that people want to be missed and we’re not missing them!

You’ll notice that the core of students isn’t on anyones list… we all love Autumn, LisaB, Andrea, Jon, Michael, and Ted and we have completely spoiled them with attention. Believe me, they will get the attention even without being assigned to anyone. Everyone only has a few students each… you will figure out a way to hook up with them weekly. Maybe it’s a phone call to check on them, maybe it’s that you seek them out on Sunday AM to chat… but we have to do this… and we have to start doing it now! Please don’t skip on it… a little labor will go a long way. Do it on your commute! All of that stuff I’ve given you should be applied to these students… invest in them and I promise you the dividends.

– I’ve gotten so involved with my own contact ministry that the reason you pay me has gotten muddled… to people outside of the core it looks as though golf is all I care about. (Did you know that at least one deacon and another board member thought it was a job? I’ve never made a cent off of it and I don’t want to.) I’m not sure how I’m going to work this… but with 3 weeks to go in the golf season I’m seeing that the price has been too great this year. As much as I love it, and as many fantastic things have come out of it… it still comes at a high cost. It’s unlikely I should continue past this year.

– I’m calling a parents meeting fora Sunday in October. I meant to do this as soon as school started, but it’s gotten pushed around. Parents need to be on board with changes we have made as well as the simple nuts & bolts of what is going on… I need to be better at communicating with them.

I want to end this with the good news. The good news is that we know LF is a good ministry. This is without question. We know we are teaching truth and God has used us in the recent past to change the lives of students. I recognize that if we get ahead of this problem now… and really all focus to get it back on track… that this can be a real turning point for what God wants to do in Romeo. God wants to use these students as an instrument of seeing many students come to faith in Christ… and I know you all want to be a part of that. (So there’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!)

Have a good night. I think I can sleep now.

Adam

p.s. One last thing. I really need you guys to be honest with me. If you’ve observed something that I haven’t covered… especially about me… I would like to encourage you to let me know. I can see that I need to reflect on some things and change some of the ways I am doing things… but your feedback is important to me. thanks

As this is surely going to be buried in the comment section, I just thought I would post my response to Scott’s comments here.



Judging by the sudden number of hits I’ve had… he’s posted a link to this on some webpage.

Scott, this is where I think that Christians have falsely given up.Think of all the legal wrangling, hassle and money you have invested in homeschool defense. No… take that same zeal to participate in the public school forum for the greater good of both children of believers and non-believers. It’s a matter of access. Since you stand on the outside of the forum… your voice is meaningless. But as a dedicated parent of your school district you have a voice that must be heard.We all know that the seperation of church/state is artificial. It was clearly not the desires of the founding fathers and is a misrepresentation of truth. The Supreme Court was wrong and the congress did not act to defend the constitution as the check/balances are designed to work.On the local level, you will find good people who intend to work for the good of the children. Your voice belongs in that mix and homeschooling is a distraction from that argument.At the end of the day the question becomes… who’s children are they? Are they yours? Are they the states? Or are they God’s? My view is that they are God’s children under my stewardship. As a steward of the child… it is my responsibility to expose them, lovingly and with guidance, to the realities of the world. To do otherwise is unloving as a parent and setting the child up for disaster when they eventually do enter the public forum.Here’s a quick question. If homeschooling is so good… how come no one is paying for research to prove it is? Who is doing longitudinal studies on the ramifications? Where are the numbers? How much $$$ from Christian parents is being wasted on seperatist activity instead of invested in the community? What about time? How many man-hours are spent volunteering for Christian schooling and homeschooling when they could be invested in making life changing impact for non-churches children.My whole point is that it is a shame and a sham that Christian parents are so faithless as to harbor their children away from the world. It is man-centered thinking and only looking at “what’s in it for me?” When the real question should be “what’s in it for others?”Explain to me this… how is it that homeschooling/Christian is morally acceptable in light of these arguments.Isn’t the real issue prayer in schools? All the rest is a mask for an faithless response to a real problem… so someone made Christians angry in the 50s and 60s… should we just take our ball and go home… or should we fight?Thank you for being willing to enter a dialogue. Though I disagree with your position I really do respect your intent.

hum the theme song from the 70s game show now!

In all seriousness we had to confront a sophomore golfer today about some rumblings of point shaving today at practice. This is one of my favorite students and I would hate for it to be true. At this point, it’s not even an accusation but just a warning of “we’re watching you.”

Golf is a game built on integrity. If you haven’t got that, what do you have? Hopefully this is the first and last post on this.

In the past couple of days, as I’ve been seeking the counsel of the Lord about this trip as we begin to finalize details and formulate a team, I have also been learning of some more details.

One that is worth noting is that it looks possible that we will be hooking up with a Romeo missionary while in Croatia. This should be fantastic. Please join me in petitioning the Lord that all our schedules would work out to make this happen.