Tag: vision

  • Is your strategy as big as your vision?

    Our vision is to provide high quality, age-appropriate experiences which invite every student in our community to experience the Good News of Jesus Christ. This could be the vision statement of any youth ministry team in the country. Like you, I’ve seen vision statements like this in youth ministry literature, on youth group websites, and…

  • Do I have a vision problem?

    visionless: it is my claim that this is the most attractive but most insidious yeast undermining religious communities. Vision has a devious way of focusing our attention outside of ourselves to some lofty external goal, rather than keeping ourselves committed to love and service in the community, then as a result beyond the immediate community…

  • Uncommon Ideals

    Maybe it’s because I have a deep connection to the cold, dark sea and waves crashing on the shore? But I was totally infatuated with the filmmakers vision for this piece. My only wish is that there had been more surfing shots!

  • Over-communicate with your leaders

    Over-communicate with your leaders

    Want to avoid confusion with your team? Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. I define a leader as someone who takes people somewhere they would otherwise not go on their own. All-too-often, as I look back on my life in leadership, my tendency is always to get a mile ahead of my team because I have under-communicated the…

  • You need clarity and focus

    Paul’s teacher has been on us for a few months to get his eyes checked out. She’d tell us, “He squints to see the board” or “He says he has to sit up front. I think he needs glasses.” I assumed, just like his big sister, that he’d need glasses eventually. Everyone in my family…

  • When Dreamer, When?

    In the cold dark morning of my day my soul cries for new days, new songs, new delights. I wonder where the dreamers are dreaming this morning. My heart weeps in disdain for a time and place lost. It lives in my sleep; it dies in my schedule. Such a place feels real but the…

  • Funding the Dream

    Like any person who comes up with a lot of ideas… I’m used to getting shot down. The pill of reality I swallow every day is that only about 1 in 20 of my ideas are worth seeing to fruition. Thankfully, God has put people with the gift of discernment in my path so I…

  • How do we get to Youth Ministry 3.0?

    I’ve been wrestling with the concepts of Marko’s book, Youth Ministry 3.0 for a long time. Actually, before I worked a YS I had been going through a prolonged set of discussions at Romeo saying in a thousand different ways… What I’m doing isn’t working anymore. The problem was simple. I was trained and experienced…

  • Two Kinds of Medium Sized Church People

    Here are some more thoughts on the medium-sized church crisis. My post the other day attracted a fair amount of comments and attention… and I was pretty frustrated that people jump to the issue of money. I only think that the money problems of current are bringing the Medium-sized church crisis to the forefront. At…

  • Grace vs. Karma

    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.…