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It’s easy to foget my biggest ministry is at home.



This is the real reason for my day off! Megan and I are going to go out today on our first daddy/daughter date in a long, long time. It’s so cold, we’ll have to find something fun indoors.

As I mentioned in All Blogs yesterday, this weekend we will be teaching (via my favorite media, discussion) the question “how should a man treat a woman?” in my Sunday School class. I believe we shouldn’t teach students rules… But virtues. “How should a Christian adolescent treat adolescent females?”

Yesterday I bombed my two co-teachers with thoughts. I was expecting them to help me continue the dialogue and come up with good thoughts about how to best talk about this vital subject.

Instead what I got was ignorance. Both fired back, “The first thing we need to do is separate the middle schoolers out of this… They aren’t ready to talk about this.”

That sound was the crashing of two worlds. We have the world where my students live. A place where sex is degraded, girls are to be treated like objects instead of respected, all under the so-called rights of freedom. On the other hand, we have teachers (parents) who have no idea what their kids lives are like on a day-to-day basis.

The biggest critic of this series has a daughter who has been devastated by a boy in our youth group. He probably hasn’t really talked to his daughter about relationship since she was in middle school. It’s sad that she will talk openly with me but has no outlet to talk to dad. My prayer is that these communication lines will be repaired and that this parent will face reality. I love both of them dearly and know they love each other. But they live in different worlds with different expectations.

These are the joys of being a pastor. I’m stuck between old-world ideals and real world reality.

With Thursday mostly gone… Let me reflect on the past 12-24 hours!

Light Force Report: Youth group was great last night. That’s three weeks in a row where it has been solid. A lot of students, good attitudes, good worship, good games, and my inability to communicate God’s Word. Actually, I think the talks in Revelation to date have gone pretty good. The students are feeling good since finals are over, they finally can relax and embrace the “blahs” of the winter term.

Grad school: I leave Thursday morning (2/3) for 3 days of classes at Huntington. As per my usual, I have some classwork to take care of before I go down there. A load of reading and a couple small papers to write. I know I have a research project to avoid as well, but I haven’t even opened the e-mail about it yet. The class is called “Historical Foundations of Christian Ministry” so I feel like I have a good handle on the subject from my undergrad. Basically, the class could be called “Church History and it’s ramifications on Education.”

I am really looking forward to being in Huntington. It will be a good refreshing time and I like being in an academic environment. H-town definitely has the small college town vibe going.

Sex! That’s always an attention-getter. For the next month or so we’re talking with our students about relationships and sex. Here’s some links to research projects in adolescent sexuality. (For you casual surfers… This is research, not kiddie porn!) Lost Children of Rockdale County (Frontline Report)

• National Study of Youth and Religion (UNC-Chapel Hill)
• National survey of young teens sexual attitudes and behaviors (NBC/People Magazine and Princeton University)

I watched the Katie Couric NBC special last night called, 411: Teens and Sex. As “an expert” in the field of adolescent culture I would say that I didn’t learn much new but it was good stuff for parents who are largely in the dark. More on my thoughts about this later.

Northern Ireland: Two team members sent out a gaggle of letters last week and we are daily getting reports back. This week we’ve received about $250 from supporters outside of the church. We’ve also accumulated another 5-6 prayer partners. That doesn’t seem like a lot compared to $16,000. But it’s a nice bit of change. 1.5% is 1.5%!

We will need some big hitters to write big hitter checks though. It’s still early and I know there are plenty of people holding off until the date gets closer.

More… More… More… At the risk of posting an ungodly long entry, I’ll stop here and post more later.

I’ve posted the notes from my talk tonight at here.

Which reminds me that I need to post a link to the download area for my talks here too. I’ll try to remember to add that to the links list tonight.

Last thing, if anyone has seen my secretary could you please send her back to the office. She left to copy some photos about 6 hours ago and I haven’t seen her since. Maybe she is trying to say that I’m not much fun on Wednesdays. Probably true!

This post is peppered by two things.

1. I’ve listened to most of Tom Brokaw’s book “The Greatest Generation” and have a strong sense of longing for that unity that was experienced in the 40s.
2. I’ve seen and heard enough of the neo-liberal agenda to stall, attack, and thwart the will of the American people. It’s clear that with the house, senate, and executive branches locked up that the majority of people want a republican view represented in Washington!

Here’s some things that have me worried…

Hillary Clinton’s attempt to move to the right. This week she, in John Kerry-like fashion, decided she was going to try to redefine her position on abortion. While she didn’t sound as stupid as John Kerry did in saying that “I believe life begins at conception, but I also believe women have a right to chose.” [That’s called infanticide, read some history books!] She’s gone around and explain how her position has changed… But I wonder what would happen if partial-birth abortion came back to the senate? Would she vote against it? It’s ever clear that she is just trying to get some “old statements” and sound bytes out there for future usage.

Short-term memory loss. In the days ahead many American soldiers could die. President Bush has warned the People for months that these murderous people would do anything to make the first Iraqi elections a mess… And he was right. He could come out like that nut Rush Limbaugh and say “I predicted that!” Yet, in an effort to conjure up sentiment against the war, everything in the media keeps saying “worse than ever.” Why don’t they support the soldiers and say “we knew it would be bad, and it is.”

Democratic bigotry. A few things come to mind along these fronts. The democratic leaning NAACP continues to lean to the left further in support of Planned Parenthood. Don’t they see that roughly 75% of the PP Centers in America are in African American neighborhoods? Then liberal senators are all lining up to take swipes at Condeleza Rice. Shouldn’t Barbara Boxer and Hillary Clinton be excited that this will be the highest ranking woman in American history instead of tearing her down? Isn’t it funny that “the gentlemen from Texas” has added loads of minorities and women to his cabinet when “the honorary black man” Bill Clinton did precious little? Janet Reno and Madeline Albright hardly qualify as examples to the contrary!

All of this just shows why “red states” have rejected the left. They are so out of touch with reality that retooling with the same old faces will fool no one. It is so sad to me that I was left with no choice but Bush in the previous election. (And I’m an evangelical pastor!) If the blue side wants to gain back segments of America they will have to do it without elitist left… Get rid of Boxer, Clinton, Kennedy, etc and retool yourselves with Obama and Lieberman who are moderates. Duh!

just saw this and it got me thinking about vacation! is it June yet? 

Each week I get to Tuesday and think I must have an extra day before youth group. But alas, the alarm clock goes off and Wednesday morning is here.

I have an outline for what we will be talking about tonight. We’re in Revelation 4 and this is the turning point between when the past history ends, we skip over the church age, and we slap right into the tribulation.

So tonight, in line with Matthew 24, we’ll be talking about this 7 year period beginning like birth pains. So I get to tell everyone about when Megan was born. (Sure, we have 2 kids but the 1st one was really exciting!) From there it’ll just go over the pre-trib view and run through the imagery of Revelation 4.

I should have the outline posted by 1 or 2 PM. Then I’ll be depending on Ryan’s site, pastor2youth.com for my the game. The girls took care of the music last night.

Some students are already dreading our traditional February look at sex & dating. But that doesn’t mean we won’t do it… It’ll just be better than they expected. I’ll post some of their blog posts later to show what I mean!

This afternoon I received a rather rude e-mail from a gentleman in Texas. Apparently he was dissatisfied that I didn’t bend over far enough to get him the CD he purchased quickly enough. Nevermind the fact that he purchased a CD that retails for $17.99 for $4.00 and paid for standard shipping. (He could have downloaded the tracks off of a iTunes for less.)

He wrote:

You barely shipped today? I bought it on the 21st That really sucks no wonder I do not have the CD yet. I will definitely let Amazon know you are required to ship within 48hrs.

Here’s the irony of this. I shipped it too fast and spent too much money. Amazon gives you a credit to ship your purchases and I routinely upgrade people to Priority Mail at a loss to me personally since they have pre-packaged envelopes at a set rate of $3.85. So… While he paid for 4-7 business days arrival time I upgraded him to 2-3 days plus I shipped it in less than a business day.

So I wasn’t feeling too sorry for him and wrote back:

I’m sorry if you aren’t satisfied with the turn around time. The purchase was made 2/21 after business hours ended and it was in the mail Monday morning before lunch. That’s less than 1 business day. (Still inside of 2 business days if you consider Saturday a work day,but the post office was closed anyway due to blizzard conditions.) Additionally, while you paid for standard shipping I upgraded you to Priority Mail at no additional cost to you but at a loss of $1.36. (35% of my profit)

By all means, if you aren’t satisfied with your purchase follow-up with Amazon.com.

I suppose this is why I use my gmail e-mail account for these transactions instead of my business e-mail. I would hate to think what such a person would do if he could actually track down where I work. Nonetheless, it’s another $6.49 closer to the Northern Ireland trip.

As a pastor of a small church in a growing town, I am fully aware that the church seems to be reaching fewer and fewer people as time goes on. Most “growth” is transfer growth… These are folks who get sick of one church and come to ours or visa versa. Real growth is when people who don’t believe are converted and brought into the fold… This is rare and getting rarer.

This post is influenced by 2 things that have happened to me in the last 12 hours.

First, I was talking to one of my students and encouraging her to continually live boldly in front of her friends. I would say “just live Jesus in front of them” and she would reply, “I do, I invite them to church but they won’t come.” That same miscommunication went on for a while. I don’t think she ever got the difference between telling her friends about Jesus or inviting people to come meet other Christians and living like Jesus in front of her friends. It’s an over-used cliche` amongst post-modern Christians, but does bear some truth to quote Augustine “Preach the Gospel wherever you go, and sometimes use words.” In her case, her non-Christian friends need to see the benefits to knowing Jesus as Savior and Lord before they are willing to hear about him.

Second, in reading Church without Walls the author makes the simple observation that we don’t know our neighbors. How true. We wonder why the church is so irrelevant in society and yet we withdraw ourselves from society. (Some would say we do this because we think we are better than others, others would say it is because we are afraid of “the world.” I think there is truth in both extremes but think we do this accidentally because we as churches are self-absorbed.)

These two truths are convicting to me. The reality is that I don’t know my neighbors… Or more to the point, I know them enough to avoid them. I know that they are unstable, they are dependent on alcohol and drugs, they are unskilled parents, they shack up, they party and wake up my kids, on and on and on. They exhibit such repulsive behavior that you would think that a loving and well intentioned Christian couple would look beyond the surface and see neighbors who desperately need Jesus. We see it, but we ignore it. We don’t want to get messy.

What a terrible failure I am! Dear God, help me to change. Help me to leave Jesus before my neighbors so I can be a part of a revival of hearts, souls, and mercy in Romeo.