Tag: basketball

  • Good News for High School Students

    I’m always at odds with this reality:

    If Jesus offers good news, what is it about how we do youth ministry that is only attractive to 1% – 2% of the high school students on our campus?

    That always lead same  to a place where I say, “I don’t think we’re doing this right just yet.”

    • Good news spreads like wild fire.
    • Good news is unstoppable.
    • Good news releases energy.
    • Good news releases joy.
    • Good news is contagious.

    In 1994, as a high school senior our basketball won the Indiana state basketball championship. If you’ve seen the movie Hoosiers than you get a glimpse of how important this is to the state of Indiana. It’s a really big deal. Not only do the finals fill the RCA Dome, the same building which hosts the NCAA Final Four, it is a much bigger tournament as every high school in the state got a chance to enter the tournament. So as the final seconds ticked off the clock in overtime and our team was up 93-88… the student body of Clay High School collectively lost it. We poured onto the court. We screamed and danced. And then when we got kicked off of the court we ran around the inside of the stadium screaming, chanting, bouncing, skipping, and dancing! And then we got kicked out of the RCA Dome and we literally just ran through the streets of downtown Indianapolis screaming, chanting, bouncing, skipping, dancing, and stopping traffic to tell them, “We won!”

    That was good news worth celebrating. It unleashed unstoppable joy. It was universal on our campus. It was even universal in our city as everyone felt good about this good news!

    If youth ministry were good news to the high school students on our campus.. you’d see this same unstoppable release of joy. It’d be nearly universal. Even those who didn’t embrace it would be excited it. Good news is worth celebrating, dancing, and running through the streets for.

    I know it. You know it. 1% – 2% of people running through the halls… that’s just creepy!

    The only question is, are we will to think and dream of ways to be good news to our campus so they might desire to hear Good News?

  • Lessons from the bench

    For the last two years I’ve been riding the pine at church. This time has taught me a lot about what it means to be in church leadership.

    From age 16 until 31 I had always aspired to be an up front leader at church. I like being visible. I love speaking, teaching, and preaching. I truly enjoy the grind of regularly doing those things as my vocation.

    Over the past two years I’ve gone from being the person everyone on our church campus knew to being a relative nobody. In athletic terms, I went from being a starter to being a player who sits the bench.

    And just like in athletics, when you put a starter on the bench, the Coach always does it so the starter can learn.

    Here are 5 things I’ve learned from riding the bench at church:

    1. Every attendee gets something different out of a Sunday morning, you can’t control the takeaway or topic one bit. I can’t believe I ever thought I could control that.
    2. The more a church offers the less people are involved in their community. Growing a church by doing less doesn’t make logical sense, but its 100% true.
    3. Never assume people know what a term is or who an author/speaker is that you reference. People in church leadership live in a different world, with different heroes, than the rest of the congregation.
    4. Visibly valuing people is really important. This manifests itself in a lot of different ways. But it demonstrates the church leaderships character in what they put up front.
    5. People in the pews care way more about the staff and their families than I ever imagined. It’s not creepy, it’s not some American idol worship, it’s actually quite sweet.

    If you’ve gone from church staff to church attendee, what are some things you’ve learned through that process that could help people in church leadership?

  • The Double Edged Sword of Awe

    geiserWe are all born with a desire for religious experience. God made us this way. Each of us has had experiences in which the only description of our emotions is awe. These are intimate moments between you and God, a person, or a even location or event. While God intended for this awe to be for Him, our humanity doesn’t reserve them to Him exclusively. It’s a human response of deep connectedness. Most often there is a build-up and anticipation to the experience. You want it to happen so bad, it finally does, and the experience overwhelms you because it is better than you’d imagined.

    Here are some awe experiences people mention as the highlights of their lives.

    – Seeing a bear in the wild.

    – Liftoff of the space shuttle.

    – Sexual intimacy

    tiger_17_425x600– Hitting the winning basket, scoring the winning touchdown, nailing the winning putt.

    – Exploring a beautiful coastline in Ireland.

    – Worshipping with thousands of believers at a conference.

    – Meeting God for the first time at a retreat.

    – Starting your own business and earning your first dollar.

    Most often, these are intensely personal moments of awe. The experience defies description and is often too intimate to even talk about. Even during the moment your emotions run high.

    This is the first edge to the sword. It’s a good edge. The pursuit of this high and the after effects/remembrance of this high produce tremendous energy for people. This religious experience forms a deep bond between that individual and that event, object, or person. It is something they shared that was intimate and powerful.

    Industries exist to help people pursue this experience, don’t they? We seek the awe-inspiring moment and wise capitalists provide tours of Ireland and Yellowstone. Religious events build anticipation for these moments knowing that they will draw thousands of seekers. How many clubs, bars, and dance clubs exist for the sole purpose of a common meeting ground for people seeking a sexual experience? On and on.

    But that sword has a second, more dangerous edge to it, doesn’t it? Once you have this religious experience you seek to have it again. I mean, if the high of that moment… seeing the bear… crossing the rope bridge to a tiny island… having a killer day with a new business… sinking the putt to win the big tournament… it will never be the same as the first time.

    In fact, many industries sustain because they know there will always be people who are seeking the second experience. They are in the exhilaration/disappointment business. They know that a weery businessman will lay down tens of thousands of dollars to go on tours of Ireland again. And then when he doesn’t find what he is looking for he will go to Scotland, Iceland, and the Gallapogos. The sex industry exists because people are seeking a more amazing sexual experience than “that amazing time.” Parents will relentlessly drive their children into sports in hopes that one day their kid will have the amazing experience they did of scoring a touchdown to win the big game. Certainly, many youth groups thrive because teenagers are seeking to repeat an intense religious experience they had at a retreat.  Get-rich-quick schemes work because people remember that one time when they made easy money and they want it to happen again.

    The truth is this. The secret is this. The learning point is this. Once you have that amazing moment, don’t try to repeat it. It will never be the same the second time. When you take someone back to that spot… it’ll be awesome for them… but a let-down for you. If you can’t handle that let-down, just let that awesome one-time experience live in your memory.

  • Why High School Basketball is Awesome

  • Open Letter to the NCAA

    Dear NCAA,

    Congratulations on another year of controversy! Congrats to Tim Tebow and the Florida Gators. They are the BCS Champions but not the National Champions. This year we clearly don’t have a National Champion because your system is broken.

    Congrats to USC. Congrats to Texas. Congrats to Utah. Congrats to Florida.

    Each legitimately claim they are National Champions this year! That’s right, with 5 BCS games, 4 of them ended with a team legitimately and openly claiming they should be the National Champion. (The fifth game played by Cincinnati and Virginia Tech didn’t deserve to be a BCS game. The Holiday Bowl was really the fifth BCS game. Did you watch it? It was a great game! How did the Orange Bowl go? I didn’t hear anything about it. Was it on TV?)

    And yet the BCS claims this is somehow fair? Just because the bowls make bucketloads of money doesn’t make them right! It’s time you, the NCAA, kicked the BCS to the curb.

    We all know that in every other NCAA Division IA sport there is a playoff. And we also know that in every other division in college football there is a playoff which ends with a national champion. It’s time the players of Division IA determined who the champion will be on the field instead of in a vote.

    Here’s are two simple solutions:

    Option A: After Thanksgiving weekend take the top 16 teams based on the AP/Coaches polls and put them in a simple bracket based purely on their rankings. #1 plays #16 and so on. With 4 rounds the best team may not win, but the hottest team will. Since win did the #1 team in the AP/Coaches poll win the Division IA basketball championship?

    Option B: Set up a system where each of the top 11 conference champions get an automatic bid to the playoff. Then have a committee chose 5 at-large teams and place them in a 16 team bracket. Just to clarify, that’s the Big 10, Big East, Big 12, ACC, Conference USA, Mountain West, MAC, Pac 10, SEC, Sun Belt, and WAC. Yes, that means that teams like Notre Dame don’t get an automatic bid. Tell the Irish to get over the 1960s slight and join the Big 10. How will those conferences determine who is their champion? It seems like most of them are smart enough to figure that out. Playoff. Conference Champion. Rock, paper, scissors, who cares? They pick their best team and you take that.

    What about the money? In case you didn’t know… March Madness makes a bucketload of money for everyone involved. Just share it. Champion gets 4 shares. 2nd place 3 shares. Final 4 teams get 2. Everyone else gets 1 share. How is that not fair?

    For the bowl games not included in the playoff allow them to pick teams like they do now and have exhibitions. Their fans will still come. They will still be on TV.You know that line of arguement is

    What about the big bowls? Do what you do now! Pick 8 bowls to be the Saturday of Christmas. In case you haven’t noticed all of the non-football fans will go to the mall and all of the football fans will stay home and watch TV. You’ve got 4 BCS games on New Years so that’s covered. Then the Championship game could be the weekend between the NFC/AFC Championship and the Super Bowl. I don’t know about a lot of other football fans, but I’m willing to move New Year’s day to line those final 4 games up with the NFL’s schedule. Do we have to talk to Congress about that? Let me know… I know some people over there. President Obama emails me all the time.

    It’s about the money! Fair enough… trust me… give us a playoff and it’ll be just as big as March Madness. Rabid fans really will go to 3 bowl games! Ask the guys in Vegas to kick in a few bucks.

    Who gets the championship? This is where the fairness ends. Make the championship game the Rose Bowl every year. It really is the grand daddy of them all. The Rose Bowl is beautiful… make it there every year. Tell the Big 10 and Pac 10 to earn their way in and get over it.

    Thanks for your consideration. Get to work on that and let me know.

    God Bless America and God Bless the NCAA,

    Adam McLane

  • Shut up and dance

    Love this video. I literally laughed out loud. Not the fake “LOL” kind either. I’m sure it was a choreographed stunt… but man it is still really good.

  • Put up or shut up

    Growing up we played a lot of basketball. A core component of playing basketball, especially the driveway versions, is learning to talk a good game. There are people who can’t play but can talk a good game. And then there are the best players who don’t really talk much but just flat our put up numbers.

    Eventually, it comes down to this simple phrase in pick-up basketball: Put up or shut up.

    I think that phrase explains why so many people get fed up with church: They talk a good game about the poor, mercy, seeking justice, living out Acts 2, exemplifying Matthew 5, or preaching the truth. But at the end of the day they don’t “put up.”

    Church leaders, if your church talks game it doesn’t have… please stopped talking like you have game. At the end of the day, allow your game to speak for itself.

    That’s the best marketing advice I could ever give to a church: Put up or shut up.

    Wanna grow your church? Put up or shut up.

    Wanna have the best youth group in town? Put up or shut up.

    Wanna help people losing their houses? Put up or shut up.

    Wanna start a killer small group ministry? Put up or shut up.

    At the end of the day you need to allow your church game to speak for you. People are tired of the hype. They are tired of hearing what you want to do. They don’t want to know your vision statement.

    They want to see it.

    So stop talking smack and get to work!

  • Don’t play horse with this kid

    This brings back some memories. When we took students to Chicago for a mission trip with ICI, we had endless gym time to practice all sorts of trick shots. Something tells me this guy was unstoppable at horse.

    Now I just need a video with extreme carpetball shots and we’d be all set.


    Since we’re talking high school and we’re talking basketball.     Check out these variations on basketball. I grew up playing most of these “in the slums of Granger, Indiana.” OK, it was the rich suburbs… but hyperbole is just too much fun.

    Twenty-one: all vs all, first to 21 wins. (I could write a book on local variations of 21. The game is different all over the country!)
    Make-it-take-it: team game, score a basket and your team keeps the rock.
    King of the court: multi-team game, your team wins a game to 10 and you keep playing.
    Knockout: all-vs.all, start at the free throw line and try to knock out the person in front of you.