Tag: andrew marin

  • Stellar Day

    Yesterday was a banner day for me. I came home late last night completely exhausted but also invigorated as well.

    What happened?

    #1 Andrew Marin comes to Harbor. All throughout the fall as I got to know Andy it became more and more clear that he needed to talk to our church staff. I was talking to Stephen about the Marin Foundation and I was talking to Andy about the bridging going on between cultures here and everyone was interested in getting together. So I was able to connect the two yesterday morning. It was awesome to have our local leaders so interested and desperate to learn how to move forward in a Christ honoring way. Andy was able to share his story as well as some strategies with the teams here. I can’t wait to see how this continues to blossom!

    # 2 Oceanside Youth Workers Network. A new friend, Kevin, from the National Network of Youth Ministry invited me to come to a local network up in Oceanside. I am so glad I drove all the way up there for lunch. (about 45 minutes each way) Just to be with my people was greatly encouraging. I love praying with youth workers and hearing what they are up to. Of course, I was able to tell them about Planet Wisdom, YS One Day, and DCLA… but that was so secondary to hearing their successes, challenges, and prayer requests. It was one of those “with my people” lunches. Fortunately, I get to do the same thing up in Escondido next Wednesday.

    #3 Working the booth at National Pastors Conference. About 3 in the afternoon I headed down to NPC to relieve Dave from the YS booth. I got to talk to a lot of senior leaders about their youth ministries and how YS can help keep them trained and encouraged. It was also a fun time to meet some people face-to-face, like Mark RIddle. One difference I noticed between NPC and NYWC is that NPC seems to be much more of a networking event than NYWC. Than again, it could just be that I’m noticing all of that a lot more now?

    #4 Fun day for me with online publishing. I had a super tight schedule yesterday, before I left my house at 6:15 AM I saw that Todd Rhoades had mentioned one of my blog posts on Monday Morning Insight. I was like a school girl when I saw that, very exciting. Also, Patti published my latest article over at YMX called, “Is Justice Up to You?”

    #5 Newsletter changes. Each week at work, I help produce and send out three newsletters for YS. Over the past few months we’ve been revamping two of them. Yesterday, we sent out the first major change as the YS Parent Newsletter became the Real World Parent Newsletter. I love that we’re now tying that into our brand spanking new parent seminars. I’m a big fan of “do stuff that makes sense” and this is one of those deals. I know a lot of parents of teenagers read my blog… so make sure you subscribe using this link.

    On top of all of this there were a couple of other really exciting things for me. A friend handed me his book… I’ve been praying with him through the process and it was awesome to see it in print! And I’m working with an organization to tell the youth ministry world about something super cool. More on both of those things soon.

  • Love is an Orientation

    I’ve been so impressed with Andrew Marin and his work to help bridge the church to the homosexual community. Check out Andy’s promo video. If you want to buy his book, you can join me in pre-ordering it from Amazon.

  • The Chicago Edition

    Each week I have fun shooting the podcast. But this particular episode was special because we had the opportunity to do a Chicago special.

    The concept of a Chicago special really didn’t come to me until Cathy and I got off the plane in Chicago. We had Andrew Marin booked to do the devotional and I knew I wanted to shoot my parts at North Avenue beach… then it hit me. If we added Jason Raitz from Willow Creek we could complete the Chicago-trifecta. Thankfully, Jason was able to squeeze us in. And just to show us he was a pro he did his segment in one take.

    Some tidbits about this episode…

    We shot Andrew Marin’s part on the rooftop deck of his condo. Technically, we walked past his deck to the unfenced part so we could shoot the city in the background with no fencing. If you look carefully… behind Andrew is Wrigley Field. Cathy went up there with me even though she is afraid of heights. We were about 15 floors off the ground, Andrew sat down about 5 feet from the edge… and Cathy stayed back a good 20 feet taking pictures. She was a trooper!

    Then we drove over to North Avenue beach.     When Kristen and I first started dating this was a favorite spot. In fact, just 100 yards north of where I shot my parts Kristen and I had our first real date. Romeo students will recognize that spot as well, we always took our mission team photo right there.

    From there, we went out to Willow Creek to meet Jason. I’ve known Jason a few years and I really love his passion for middle school students. The thing a lot of people probably don’t know about Willow is that while they have massive middle and high school ministries, they are 99% run by volunteers. As Jason shares in the podcast, a big part of his role is setting up those volunteers to lead small groups. With a staff of 4-5 full time folks they lead something like 1700 middle schoolers. Think about that… 4-5 adults oversee an organization that impacts 4-5k people any given month, including parents.

    When it was all said and done, shooting this 11 minute video and all the travel time was about 12 hours of our day. Totally worth it. I hope we get to do more location-based podcasts soon.

  • NYWC Sacramento Post Thoughts

    Let’s see. I am home from my first NYWC as a staff member. Looking back over the weekend I have a lot of things floating around my head. Here are some quick reflections.

    #1 People are people. This isn’t profound to me but I kept getting asked, “What is _____ like?” I don’t know a nicer way to say it than the obvious, people are people. I met tons of folks… both general session speakers and youth workers and they are all pretty much the same. Just normal folks.

    #2 I told the truth. It’s a little weird being on staff at YS because people will flat out ask you for the world. And while my ministry with YS is to encourage and resource people while building community I simply am not able to do everything I get asked. Typically, I’m a people pleaser and I have a hard time saying no. But this weekend I made sure I didn’t commit to anything I didn’t actually have the ability to do or the desire to do. And since I was often out talking to people, when they asked questions that I knew the answer to, I just told them the plain truth. A few times that was “I’m really not able or qualified to talk about that.” But a few other times it was more like, “Let’s go check it out together.”

    #3 I have all new respect for the events team. Wow. I mean WOW! I know that there were times when they were overloaded, but Tic’s team makes it look easy. I bow to Holli, Michelle, and Yost. On top of that there are the volunteers who pull off all the little details. Not only are they giving up their time, but they take so much ownership of the event. Plus, a lot of them are new friends of mine.

    #4 This year was profound-er than ever. Tony Compolo laid a smack down on us last night. I think Andrew Marin is the sleeper for those going to Pittsburgh and Nashville. I don’t want to do any more spoilers than we had on the live blog.

    #5 It’s weird being an insider. Yeah, that’s self-explanatory.

  • Talking about homosexuality in the church

    Homosexuality is one of the 1000 pound gorillas of today’s evangelical church. In other words there are a lot of people either struggling with gender preference themselves or someone they love is. And the churches silence on this issue has lead to a ton of people feeling like they cannot connect to God.

    Into that understanding, Andrew Marin presented on Friday night. In a very loving, Christ-centered manner, Andrew challenged NYWC attendees to begin figuring out how to build bridges between kids who are either gay or thinking they may be gay and a loving, forgiving, and grace giving God.

    As his part of the session ended I prayed that the Holy Spirit wouldn’t let this discussion die when Andrew left the stage. It’s my hope and prayer that this is just the beginning of the evangelical church taking this 1000 gorilla seriously. My favorite quote (paraphrase) of Andrew’s time, “If you think this issue doesn’t pertain to your church just know that there are gay people in your church. And if there truly aren’t any people in your church that are gay, and this issue hasn’t come to your ministry yet, you’ve got the opportunity to do something now so you don’t screw up.”

    Discussion question: Beyond an annual “talk on homosexuality” how can you help your ministry build bridges with the gay community in your town? How can you help facilitate a loving way to connect homosexuals to your ministry?