Tag: open question

  • Inside out youth ministry

    A couple Sunday’s ago our senior pastor, Ed Noble, was talking about the inside out revolution underway at Journey. He gave an example about an area of the property where the church used to meet weekly for a big, family dinner. Now that space is used to run a food pantry for families in our community.

    It’s not that the big family dinner thing was bad. Quite the opposite. For where the church was at it was just what was needed. A lot of good was done in that room over those meals. The fact that the room is now used for a food pantry is not a more noble use of the space– it’s just a strategy that reflects both the needs of the community and the heart of the congregation and where we are at today.

    When Ed gave that example it got me thinking about youth ministry. Because, to oversimplify and generalize, youth ministry is typically a “come and get” kind of thing. (Like the family dinners) Volunteers come to serve students who show up. And the church puts on the program because they feel like it’s ultimately good for the church. It’s good, it’s noble, it serves a purpose.

    But what would it look like if we turned our ministries inside out? 

    What would it look like if youth ministry in the local church weren’t seen through the lens of “what’s good for the church” and was built around “what’s good for students needs in this community?”

    That’s no indictment on how we do ministry or even challenging the assumptions upon which our profession is built.

    That’s turning the coin over and asking, “How could this same space, same staff, same budget serve 95% of the population of students in this community alongside of the 5% who currently are engaged?”

    If we believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for all students– what should that change what we do?

    “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.” We all nod our heads in agreement. But what would it look like for youth ministry to truly embrace that?

  • Three types of busyness

    The other day Doug Fields wrote about battling busyness in ministry and offered these 6 action steps.
    1. Declare war on busyness
    2. Go public
    3. Clean the piles
    4. Go to bed earlier
    5. Journal to find the “yes”
    6. Quit lying to yourself

    This is such a crucial topic. As I unpacked these action steps I sliced and diced a particular segment of the argument.

    Forgive the introspection. But I want to dive deeper. Specifically, I think there are three different types of busyness in my life.

    1. Seasonal busyness. When I was a youth pastor FT, that was September & December. September because we launched everything, December because it was Christmas and that’s always crazy in a church. Every type of career faces these… I think they are pretty normal.
    2. Legitimate busyness you just have to push through. This last season was like that for me. Summer 2011 will go down as my most busy ever. But it might also go down as the biggest season of blessing our family has ever experienced. God blessed our socks off for no good reason. It’s been my task just to keep up.
    3. Illegitimate busyness. Where I’m staying busy to hide from something else OR looking crazy busy so people think I’m important.

    As I peal back the onion one more layer and look at busyness types 1 & 2– Pride isn’t the right word for describing how I feel about these. But there’s a certain level of satisfaction in pushing through something and acknowledging hard work for what it is.

    Then there is #3. For me, that’s where the shame and accountability come into play because I can convince myself that I am so busy for such a good purpose. I’m thankful I have friends in my life who call my crap. I try to label 3 as 1 & 2 sometimes… but a true friend knows the difference and doesn’t let me get away with it.

    One thing I know about busyness. I hate when people start a conversation with: “I know you’re busy, but…” I always want to reply by saying, “I’m not hat busy, really.” But then I always wonder… “Why do I look so busy? What is it about my demeanor that makes people think I’m busy even if I’m not?”

    What do you think? Are there legitimate and illegitimate types of busyness? Or am I just trying to slice/dice this to justify my behavior? 

  • I need your camping advice!

    Next weekend the McLane family is going camping. (A non-digital adventure!) Specifically, we’re going to Idyllwild, CA for 3 days and 2 nights.

    We need this

    Summer 2011 has been the lost summer. Especially for me. Leaving YS and starting up 2 businesses meant that we didn’t take a vacation over the summer and I’m pretty much fried as a result. In the last 90 days I’ve worked 12+ hours probably about 75 of those days.

    Our family is in desperate need of R&R– away from projects, school, and anything digital. Why? Because after next weekend the fall gets going like crazy with conferences, cool projects, youth group retreats, yada yada yada. If we don’t do this we won’t get a break until Thanksgiving.

    Here’s the deal

    Kristen and I were into backpacking before we had kids so we know the nuts & bolts stuff about setting up camp. But since we’ve had kids (10+ years) we’ve never gone camping without taking 40 middle/high school kids.

    What we need is help with fun things to do with our kids while camping beyond the obvious stuff like hiking and s’mores and exploring the woods. We know we need to try geocaching…. but what else?

    Leave me a comment with your favorite camping tip and help our family make some memories next weekend. 

  • Why aren’t more people good?

    Photo by René C. Nielsen via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Maybe people don’t like to do good because they haven’t gotten bored with being bad?

    I had this thought while listening to an episode of This American Life called, Superpowers. In one of the stories a researcher spent months going to bars and asking patrons which superpower they would like to have and why.

    Most people either answered that they would like to fly or that they would like to be invisible.

    As the research continued, he discovered that while some people claimed they wanted to fly or to be invisible for the sake of doing good, in actuality… when they were totally honest… they wanted to use their superpower to do things that were naughty. And while flying sounded kind of fun, they really just wanted to be invisible so they could see people naked or steal stuff.

    That’s when I started to wonder: “Maybe people with superpowers do good stuff in the world simply because they’ve gotten bored with being bad?”

    Think about it. The question Barbara Walters always asks a celebrity doing good in the world is always along the same line of reasoning. “Bill, you are the richest man in the world. Why did are you giving it all away?”

    And the answer is a meme. (Poor people like us, we love to hear the meme.) “Well Barbara, you can only own so many houses and meet so many famous people before you realize that there must be something else more meaningful in the world.”

    Yeah, I’m calling them on that.

    You know full-well that someone like Bill Gates or Angelina Jolie or Warren Buffett or Oprah Winfrey are doing so much good in the world only after they have gotten bored doing some really bad stuff. There are only so many Maserati’s one can crash. Or sports teams one can buy. You can only have bald eagle for dinner so many times. You can only buy so many islands. You get the idea.

    Tiger Woods isn’t the first and he won’t be the last suddenly wealthy person to buy a yacht called Privacy and line up 10-20 women.

    You don’t wake up  thinking “I’m bored with this life, I need to commit to doing really good stuff from now on” until you hit rock bottom. You discover that only when your wife shows you a drawer full of Maserati keys. Or you wake up on your bathroom floor surrounded by a bowl of chocolate covered baby sea turtles you didn’t finish, Ben Affleck passed out next to you, a half a pound of cocaine, and a random baby in your closet.

    The first thing you do with newfound wealth is never give back. It’s always consume, consume, consume. And the epiphany comes when you took it too far.

    Back to my reality

    Photo by Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    When I think about my own life, my own free time, and the people in my life… each day we are faced with a similar choice. With the time I have available, will I do something productive for society or will I do some consumptive?

    • Do I volunteer more hours serving the people of my church?
    • Do I go play golf?
    • Do I go on a kick-butt vacation?
    • Do I go on a mission trip?
    • Do I attend a charity fundraiser?
    • Do I buy a big plasma TV?

    In the end, given the choice, I do some good in the world and I do some bad. (Not that those things above are horrible or anything. But you get the idea.) But if I’m honest about my motivation for doing either of the things above… it’s more often about mood than principle.

    At the same time, as a leader, I’m often in a position of trying to motivate people to do something for good. And sometimes we are left scratching our heads and wondering, “Why aren’t people busy doing good?”

    Maybe the answer is simple. Maybe they aren’t busy doing good because they haven’t gotten bored being bad?

  • 5 Things Leaders Do

    Image by Jean-François Chénier via Flickr (Creative Commons)
    1. Drive people around them nuts
    2. Piss off critics
    3. Take you places you would/could never go on your own
    4. Care deeply about the goal, but even more about the people under care
    5. Celebrate victories

    I think the opposite it true, as well. I know someone isn’t really a leader if they…

    1. Are laid back about their work
    2. Worry about what critics say
    3. Talk a lot of crap, but don’t ultimately take you anywhere you couldn’t go on your own
    4. Care more about the goal than the people under care
    5. Worry more about the next goal than celebrating a victory

    I don’t know about your world. But in my world everyone calls themselves a leader. These are some criteria I use to tell the fakes from the for-reals. What are your criteria?

  • Church of the world and not of the church

    I’ve begun to wonder what church would look like if Sunday morning worship stopped being the central focus of the church’s ministry.

    – What if Sunday morning were a celebration of community and a rallying together of community groups?

    – What if we came together purely for communion, prayers, and a simple message pushing us back to community groups for discussion and implentation?

    – What if instead of investing the time it takes to put on a worship service the church staff served the community and offered leftovers on Sunday morning?

    – What if the program of the church were just serving the community?

    – What if discipleship were of “while going” activity as Matthew 28 suggests?

    – What is going to the church were seen as a negative in light of being the church?

    – What if churches intentionally sold their properties and chose to meet in the public arena?

    – What if each community gathering became a place to serve the poor a meal?

    – What if community groups pooled their resources and invested in their own projects?

    Why not these things? Probably because in America we don’t do this things. In America we do much the opposite. A successful church in the eyes of the American evangelical church has a big building with a big worship service attended by thousands of people. It flashes wealth on its stage. People come to be seen. People come to be awed. People take pictures. The Sunday morning worship service takes the most talented people in the community and locks their time into serving the worship service… a one hour event!

    The common church lives to serve itself with nominal efforts to reach the community where the building happens to be. In essense, a “successful congregation” lives as a barnacle on its community. It pays no taxes but receives millions of dollars in income. It says it exists for the community where it resides while importing most of its staff and spending most of its resources on things that don’t actually benefit the community. Traditionally, the successful evangelical church demands access to the communities resources when they desire, but the opposite courtesy is not offered back. It often houses the best facilities in town… but acts like a country club by limiting their access to members only. The chamber of commerce can’t meet there. Local charities cannot have their events there. The school cannot use their gym or have a tutoring program there. How about housing a community development organization? Yeah, right… not in our church… we have worship team practice. Simply put, the public is not welcome at most churches.

    I don’t really think Jesus intended for the church to become a barnacle on its community. I believe he desired for his church to be the bedrock of the community. I long to see my own church give more and more to the community it serves. More importantly, I long to see churches everywhere lean into practically meeting the needs of their community.

    Success for each congregation should be defined in context. Enough with the copycat compromise.

  • Dropping out of big church?

    This morning on the YS blog I wrote about an impending crisis in rural churches in the United States. It was based on an excellent story in last week’s Time Magazine. Here’s the link.

    So here’s what I see, call me crazy. I am curious if anyone else thinks the same thing.

    1. Big churches getting bigger. This attracts the vast majority of talent out there. Most people I know in smaller churches would love to “move up” to a big church. Moreover, people seem to like the megachurch model. I don’t get it… but I can see how my friends really like it.

    2. Big church pastors are one of three types of people. Either they are the alpha dogs who thrive on the hype and long for more production value, bigger numbers, and bigger Jesus. Or they are uber talented and feel like their big church misses the boat, misuses their talents, mismanages funds, etc. Or they grew up around that big church and now work there, they just love it because its all they know and they don’t have the education to get a job elsewhere. This is a gross generalization… but it’s merely for dramatic effect, ok?

    So, here is what I’m wondering. I’m wondering if all of these middle people eventually get sick of the relative safety of their paycheck, reject the hype and production of big church, and decide that they will be bi-vocational rural church planters or pastors of all these churches who are lacking pastors.

    Simply put, will these middle folks in jobs they need but don’t really like start dropping out of big church life to intentionally take on the smaller churches so desperate for a loving and qualified pastor?

  • Grace vs. Karma

    Without karma, how do you get stuff done in the church?

    Yesterday’s message got me thinking about the mistake many people, even church people, make in regards to grace. Here’s what those two terms mean and why they are opposites.

    Grace is receiving unmerited favor. In other words, you get what you don’t deserve.

    Karma is the effects of your past deeds is your future experience. In other words, you get what you pay for.

    The Karma Conspiracy. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Most people in ministry believe in grace but practice and perpetuate karma in their ministry. Not all, but nearly all.

    1. I missed my kids soccer game because I was preparing for my message on Sunday.

    2. Come be a part of God’s vision and serve at the spaghetti dinner.

    3. Partner with God in the vision of our church by tithing.

    4. Join a small group this fall and be a part of what we’re doing.

    Now, you’ll see those statements and not see the karma connection. Since I’ve been guilty of all four of those let me translate into what most (nearly all) pastors are thinking when they say these things.

    1. If I work hard good things will happen in my church.

    2. I am capitalizing on your false belief that working in the church will merit favor in order to fill a job roster.

    3. I am exploiting on your belief that if you give to God He will give more back to you.

    4. By asking you to do something you don’t want to do, I am perpetuating your false belief in karma with the hope that you’ll discover grace.

    See, this is a tricky thing. And I don’t think any pastor does it intentionally. Yet I think that karma is so engrained in our culture that we perpetuate it unknowingly.

    Question: How do we stop this? How do we allow grace, true unmerited favor from God, to permeate everything we do in ministry and in life?

    Hint: I think both the problem and the solution are found here.