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This is the new cell phones that Kristen and I upgraded to today. Just in case someone really gives a rip! 

I’m Back!
After 6 days of being with students 24 hours a day, we have finally come back home. I am honestly not fully ready to “formally” report on the trip yet but I would like to share just a little about what we did.

A place to start
Last year, we took our students to Inner City Impact because I knew for 100% certainty that they could do the work. Going into it I was 98% sure of the same thing with this team… but it isn’t how it turned out. This trip was not a home run like last year. Sure, they did a lot of cool things but they just didn’t hit it out of the park like they did in 2004.

Some lessons learned, a painful place to go
After reading some of the blog entries from students who went, I think I must again search myself to see why the heck I even bother with student ministry. Why is it that a “high point” feels like such a stinking failure?

1. Students are adolescents no matter how much you like them. This is pretty hard for me to handle a lot of times. You let a student into your life and you get into their lives… But in the end you always lose. They are here in front of you to take what you have to offer and you rarely get anything in return. Case in point. For the past year I have heavily invested in 3 young ladies. They are born leaders. I expect them to lead… And sometimes they do. But it’s becoming clear that I need to invest somewhere else. On the trip to Chicago my “alpha female” did not lead the girls together. She disintegrated them and when she was confronted it only got worse. “I’m tired” is no excuse for leading rebellion.
2. Adult leaders have a hard time stepping up to the plate. I’d be a liar if I said that I wasn’t disappointed in my adults on this trip. They are fantastic people and I love them. However, their inability to turn the moods or deal with tension (which they created) is tough to cope with.
3. I was not a good leader on this trip. I am big enough to face my own mistakes. I limped into this trip and I didn’t have a lot of energy to help “fight for the trip.” I was too tired most of the time to really get involved and figure out why all the girls were mad at all the boys 99% of the time. Also, I should have gotten in my adults faces about their inability to deal with the krankiness. I should have prepared them more for the tiredness factor. I should have told ICI no about helping with clubs. There are a lot of places I failed and I will have to deal with them. Going into it I felt like I wanted to push the group to see what their breaking point was… It was the first time I had really seen a LF group break down. I am not sure how to process that just yet.

In a later posting I will run through the multitude of really good things that happened in Chicago. Right now I have to finish IMing a student who has been key to my frustration. At least we can work it out somewhere!

I will be back next week! I am off to Chicago for my first of two student mission trips. Check back April 3rd, 2005 for updates.

Feelings, where are they?
I “do church” for a living. Teaching others about God and helping to bring them into fellowship with God through worship, action, prayer, fasting, etc is what I do every single day. I am one of the few who get paid to do this and I truly love it. Even though I often get asked “what do you do again?” most people realize that it is hard work. What they can’t see tangibly day-to-day they feel and experience through how they are led by the pastors here.

I am here to tell you, ministry is primarily hard work on the soul. What you see on Sunday mornings or at a youth group event isn’t magic… It takes planning, time, physical preparation, and a watchful eye while the services are taking place. Creating an environment conducive for humans worshipping God, humans are by nature curious and defensive creatures, is an art which is very tricky to master.

But at the end of the day, when the worship service has ended and all the people have cleared out from youth group, I am often left feeling nothing during a worship service. There is often so much going on to make the participants free to worship that I miss out. I leave exhausted instead of refreshed. Emptied instead of filled.

Looking back
Most people go into ministry because they have had some level of “success” in the pews. They can worship well and learn from God’s word “good enough” to actually help others see and feel what they are seeing and feeling. I would put pre-ministry self in that category. What God taught me on a daily basis poured out of me because I was full! But, if I had to be honest about our youth group time and even our Sunday AM service… I feel nothing… I feel like I have nothing to give. I am left longing to feel something, anything. Usually at the end of a Wednesday night or Sunday morning I am exhausted… I got to “put on” church but I barely experienced it or benefited from it personally. Our worship service leaves me longing for times when church was simple. I don’t say this to say I am longing to get out of ministry, but simply to acknowledge truth. I need to be recharged just like everyone else and I long to feel connected to God in a corporate way the way it used to be.

Looking at today and beyond
Tonight’s Good Friday service begins something deeply personal for me. I will be fasting from sundown today until breakfast on Sunday morning. Over the past few months of regular fasting I have felt deeply connected to Christ during my times of fasting and prayer. I can see that what is coming out of me is better than it was before. My talks are better and more pure. My life is more stable in the midst of chaos… on and on.

No solutions, just sharing
I am also fighting a strong urge inside of myself to “fix” this problem. There isn’t really anything I am looking to do differently. I can’t just not work on Sunday’s and Wednesday to feel free to worship. It doesn’t work that way. I know that the problems I am experiencing are the result of long-term exhaustion. While I have recognized that I am in desperate need for rest & recuperation I am also fully aware that I have a couple more months until my vacation begins. Rest, not physical in nature, will help free my emotions and allow me to once again feel worship.

With my last post about grad school being so down, I thought I would post my feelings about getting my last bit of homework done for the “stupid ass class.”

Along those lines, I’m not sure why… but my wife doesn’t find me saying “git-r-done” to be that much of a turn on. Huh?

On a pretty regular basis now I am wondering why on earth I am in graduate school. It’s not that I don’t like the education and it’s not that I don’t see the value. It is a simple matter of time.

If I had about 2 times the hours in a week than I have now, I would probably invest in my children more and work less. But I just don’t see or feel the drive for more education. This decision isn’t left to just today, but if I did have to decide today whether or not to continue at Huntington, I would walk away.

Perhaps this has a lot to do with the stupid ass class I just took. In fact, I am no where near where I need to be on the last 2 papers or the final that is all due next week. I’m not even in the right zip code. On the undergrad level I occasionally took an uninspiring class, but this one was just pathetic.

To make matters worse, the prof I had is one of the deans of the grad school. About halfway through the class I felt like I was wasting my time by showing up. It’s not that the class was elementary… But it is more that it is elementary and common knowledge. I know I am annoyed with it right now, but I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve learned anything valuable in taking this last class.

So what’s next? I dunno. I suppose I must finish the classwork. Afterall, I have paid for it. I will also so that if my next class is just as stupid… I will be checking out. I don’t care if Huntington has such a great MA in Youth Ministry, I simply will not waste my time. It is time away from ministry and time away from my family. I am all for “taking care of the basics” but not at the cost of the two most important things in my life!

Another thing. It seems that Huntington has decided to rework the Youth Ministry major. If it means I can take more classes with Dr. Rahn and folks of his caliber then I am in. If it means more of these boring mind numbing classes than I think will likely skip out. More on this later.

I have busy work to work on!

our fist stock purchase

No sooner did I post that last message when I found out that our stock order went through. With that, Kristen and I are now partial owners of an American insitution, Coca-Cola Company.

Mixed emotions
In a way this makes me feel a little old. 28 year olds don’t buy company stock, do they? Pastors don’t buy stock, do they? Young parents don’t buy stock, do they? Kids from blue collar homes growing up in a blue collar town don’t buy stock, do they? Apparently they do.

Done with money, now back to work!
Yep, wasted enough time on this for today. I’m off to the office and then later I’m off to the high school. If I don’t do this stuff, my stock will go down!

coca cola, our first stock purchase

Today includes a scary time for me. (Give me a tough meeting with a high school student any day compared to this!) I am in the process of buying my first real shares in a company. I can’t believe how much this has me in stitches… but I think I will be like this until I see a transaction confirmation from E*Trade. As the markets are just now opening and I am a small and tiny investor, I don’t know what to expect. More updates to follow.I’m a long-time mutuals buyer, but this stock buying this is massively different to me. Yikes!

A Difficult Battle
This whole thing with Terri Schiavo is very strange to me. To say that it is a difficult thing to comment on would be an understatement. Of the blogs that I regularly visit, Pastor Ray has touched on it while all the rest seem to be ignoring it.

As I look on the whole thing I have to admit that I am pretty ignorant of the major issues. The whole “I believe this” and “I believe that” all seems to be awash because Mrs. Schiavo didn’t tell anyone and didn’t have a document detailing her wishes. For over a decade people have been trying to put words in her mouth so that they could get their way. Then here in the last 12 months or so it has become a national news story. All of a sudden the same names and faces that pop up over right to life issues nationally start to speak out about a case where they know what you and I know… the media stories. From where we sit we look at this case as a “Roe vs. Wade” type of thing when in fact it is not. It should be a private family matter.

A Personal Battle
The reality is that since Mrs. Schiavo didn’t have her wishes in writing (we wouldn’t have even heard of this case if she had) no one knows what she really wanted. Her husband says that she wouldn’t have wanted to live like this. Her parents say they should keep her alive for as long as it takes. The courts are taking what the husband says and what the court appointed doctors think and are trying to make a difficult decision. If I had to put my two cents in about it I would say that it is a personal decision that should be left to the husband alone. If I had to make the choice I think I would try to error on the side of life but it is not up to me. When the Schivo’s got married they became eachothers help mates. He should know her better than anyone and it seems fair that he should be able to speak for her.

Fair Warning
I have resolved inside myself to not be Terri Schiavo. Perhaps this will be a good “teachable moment” for the church to step up and say “we all should have a plan for these types of things” and point to someone who can help people get living will or some document like that.

A Stark Reality
I work with “the invinceable” adolescents of the church. It seems far fetfched that they “get this case” or it’s importance since most of them have no cognative ability to see that someday they too will die. That they too may end up in similar circumstances as Mrs. Schiavo. So maybe this whole this is just a personal reminder for Kristen and I? That’s more like it.

After last week this week seems like an ice cream social. My main things to accomplish this week really are rest and preparation for our mission trip.

There isn’t a ton left to do for either of those. I am planning on vegetating all day Thursday and Saturday this week.

Today my AM bible study crew decided to tackle the book of Romans. I will admit that I directed them towards this choice a little, but it will be fantastic nonetheless.

Around lunchtime I am meeting with a parent to begin studying hermeneutics together. For him, it will be the first exposure and for me it will act as a good refresher course. After that I’ll be meeting with my worship team to prepare for the Concert of Prayer at LF manana.

Tonight is the beginning of our last corporate fast this Lenten season. What a great ride it’s been. I’ve regained an appreciation for corporate fasting through this and I still intend to fast between the Good Friday service and Easter morning. We’ll see.