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“Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship.” Romans 12:1

I memorized those words about 10 years ago as a college freshmen. I was naiive. I was stupid. I was biblically illiterate. But I believed those words then, and I live by them today. In my own application to Paul’s words I recognize then and now that it’s not my life anymore… I have offered it as a sacrifice. All of it. My devotion to my calling, the wasting of my material future and physical life, is a spiritual act of worship.

Again this month we are short financially. Grad school came calling. Preschool came calling. Uncle Sam gets his cut in a few days. A combination of expected and unexpected expenses draws a little more money from savings to checking in a constant game of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Life’s expenses are again expensive. Each time this happens to me I start to reminisce about what life could have been like for Kristen and Megan and Paul. Had we stayed on the path of corporate success in Chicago we wouldn’t have this to worry about. The bills always got paid in full. There was always a little extra at the end of the month. We could always surprise someone with a special gift. Vacation? No problem. New tires? How about the best? New clothes? Why not. Yet in the same moments I recall the emptiness I had as I laid in bed at night, longing for my life to be wasted for something more important then getting richer… or more precisely, helping rich people get richer.

In times like this, I am haunted by something a cousin accused me of two Thanksgiving’s ago. She looked across the couch and said, “Leaving a successful career behind to chase a dream comes at the cost our your daughter. You’re doing something to her that isn’t fair, you’re hurting her future without her say in the matter.” You know what? She was right. We made a choice that was a bad choice for Megan. It was not done in her self-interest. The decision we made for her was part of that promise I made… My life is a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. She’s just along for the ride.

I count my life lost. It’s not mine to save since I gave it away as an act of worship. When I internalized that passage year’s ago it had no idealistic expiration date. There may be some tricky way to get out of it in the Greek language, but I meant it to be an everlasting understanding between an undeserving punk and a holy God. I have sacrificed my life in view of God’s mercy He expressed to me. He gave me a life eternally, the least I can do is give a life back to Him that is terminal. People want to talk about self worth… Try this on. Total up the bones, fat, water and other stuff and sell it. How much do you think you’d fetch? $100? $50? Maybe $5?

Yet satisfaction does not come to me when I cannot pay the bills. This haunts me. As a man and father it makes me feel somehow inadequate. Selfishly I desire to make this monthly shortfall known so that it can be corrected. At the same time I wrestle knowing that we live a lifestyle that is far above my ministry peers! How dare I ask for more money when compatriots in student ministry make half or a third of what I bring home? How dare I want a little bit of comfort when they wait in line for food stamps or WIC? Who am I? So… I wait. I acknowledge it as a struggle and a worry. And as a spiritual act of worship, I move on. I give this away. It’s not worth me getting distracted over. The thing I have given my life to is not worth these worries as a distraction. I have work to do.

I read about so much “angst” and people who wish that they were dead. They too want to give their lives away. They are willing to die and be separated from God forever to overcome the pain they have in this life. My angst is not the same. There comes with my miniscule displeasure the promises of better things to come. While I am surrounded by my own prosperity I still count it all crap. If I did not exist, 99% of the treasures we have holed up would be thrown in the dumpster. So this may be a negative sounding rant, but instead it is just a gut check for me… Am I still online with “giving myself away?” Perhaps… We shall see.

This was posted on the YS forums this morning. I’m just in shock.

Someone suggested I repost this here since this forum gets a bit more traffic. If this isn’t allowed, please delete this. Deep breath…I can do this this…I’ve had to admit some hard truths to to myself and my associate pastor this year.I was raped (again) at the beginning of last year. I spent a good 6 months in denial until it got to the point where my body couldn’t take it anymore. My senior pastor noticed me crying in church one day last summer and after a couple of weeks, I managed to admit to him what happened. He was the first one I told about it. He’s been very good at supporting me through this and some other things. He kept quiet about it at my request and I’ve spent the last year or so trying to figure out how to deal with this and keep some shred of sanity.About a month before we left on our mission trip, I decided I had just better mention the bare details about what’s been going on to my a.p. I figured if I ended up waking up in the middle of the night screaming from nightmares (which usually isn’t a problem since I live alone) it might be nice if someone had some clue what was going on. She was supportive of me during the mission trip when things got a little rough for me and I needed some time just to “be.”Fast forward to about a month ago. I got highly overwhelmed one night, decided I had enough and well. Put it his way…I still have the scar on my left wrist where I sliced it open. I told my sp about it, and we talked some. It took me another week before I managed to screw up the courage to mention it to my ap. She was supportive enough, but seemed more worried about me getting past the pain so I’m a good role model for the kids.I know I need to be a good role model, and I’m not worried about that or about being the happy, perky one around everyone. Just yesterday I had a church member comment to me that “it’s so nice to see [me] so happy all the time.” So I’m quite the actress.Unfortunately, I’m nearly too good of an actress. I’ve since decided that I don’t want to deal with this anymore and it isn’t fair to make anyone else have to deal with it either. I’m fairly certain that it will eventually blow up in my face. I’ve been sort of on shakey ground this past week or so, but I’m still hanging in there. I’ve been in the midst of pushing everyone away who would ever think about caring about me (don’t get me wrong, it’s not even a large group of people in that category, but still). I know I’m setting myself up to eventually fail, but I’m tired of all of this.How in the world do I wrestle all of my huge faith issues amongst all of this mess, take care of myself and still be the good role model that I’m expected to be? I was actually a bit surprised that I wasn’t told to stay from the youth after I admitted all of this, but apparently the ap realizes I can do this. And I can…that’s not the issue. I’m just worried about sacrificing my sanity in the process.Please don’t tell me this is the wrong time for me to be diving head first into this ministry. I know I can do this. I *WANT* to do this. I’m just questioning things right now.

Today is the first day of school for Romeo. I could not be more excited about the year to come for my students.

There is something majestic about sitting where I sit and watching students grow up, mature and leave. In a way it is sad, but in another way it is terribly exciting. As I think back on the last 12 months and reflect on just how much students have matured I am simply amazed. 12 months ago I had a fresh crop of freshmen who were scared of the first day of school. They literally had nightmares of what was to come. The first time I saw them on campus they were all like deer caught in the headlights. In one way they knew what they were supposed to be doing, but in the other way they were just lost. To see them begin this fall as sophomores is incredible. They know what to expect, they know the routine… And well they are just sophomoric. At the same time, another round of freshmen comes through. Optimistically petrified.

I have some students who will flourish at the high school. They instantly fit in because they are proficient at a sport, or excel in a certain discipline. But the majority will be fish out of water.

On the flip side, let the reminiscing of summer gone by begin. I will guarantee that my upperclassmen will bring up all the fun we had this summer by Sunday. The cycles of school life utterly amaze me.

With school finally here, this also means that Light Force will be kicking off very soon. We have a lot going on and a lot to do over the next few weeks. I’m guessing that the first 4 weeks of LF will determine how good or bad things go for this school year.

Like always, I’ve got golf. We had a nice practice round this morning and a party at one of the student’s house this afternoon. They are off Tuesday and regular practice begins Wednesday. We have an important league match this week in Grosse Pointe to cap off the week.

With LF, this is a communication week. I’ll be sending out postcards to the students and letters to the parents. Hopefully, I’ll finish the new website design and get that online as well as finalize most things for this fall. The big “new thing” that we are launching right now will be the midweek Bible studies. I am excited about this since this will truly show where some students are spiritually. This will also help our Wednesday nights be more appropriate for where that group is at. It was just so hard to try to squeeze the Bible study into the 90 minutes we get, plus more than half the students wanted to have nothing to do with the regular study. So, while we will all be working on the same thing, Wednesday night will be more complete for the majority.

Wednesday & Friday nights are party central. We have our Fall Kickoff party on Wednesday and our first tailgate of the year on Friday night followed by a bonfire. Also… it’s time for the peach festival. http://www.mipeachfest.com/ Unlike a lot of lifelong residents (of which I am not) I think the Peach Festival is cool. We are looking forward to experiencing it a little more now that Kristen is able. (Last year Paul was only a few weeks old) The noise isn’t as bothersome as people complain about, nor is the crowdedness. In fact, we found the whole thing to be a lot of fun last year and we are all pumped up about it.

On Friday, the guys played very well with 2 students at or below par. Unfortunately, they came up just short as Adams defeated us 149-148. We had them beat through 5 golfers, while the last match ended with the #1 players came in at 38 vs. 33. Both good rounds, unfortunately for us it was for the wrong team.

This may be one of those rare occasions when I wish I was out of church work and back into the business world. I’m biting my tongue today because something was royally screwed up and it’s going to cost the church some cash.

Let’s just say, I miss not being able to fire people. A person who is volunteering may be completely incompetent and lazy but there isn’t much you can do about it. They don’t show up to do work that they said they would do… can’t do squat about it. They do a bad job. Not much ramifications. They say they are with you, but when they aren’t there are no consequences.

Let’s just say… this is a frustration of working with people who in a round about way you work for. It’s not worth getting out of what I do… it’s just a general frustration that you can’t look at some people who are not doing their jobs and quote Donald Trump, “You’re fired!”

About a year ago I gleefully took over maintaining the church and youth group websites. It was a lot of fun. Each Monday I would spend about half of my day tweaking it all and making it look nice and getting all the latest and greatest updates out there.

But now, I don’t like it too much. Frankly it’s a pain in the ass. The church has yet to invest in DSL which means that uploading and downloading take hours instead of minutes. Put that together with the slowest computer on the planet (e.g. my work PC) and a total lack of the right software packages and you’ve got something that just eats my time. Gobble, gobble like the Thanksgiving turkey!

With that said, I’m here at work today on my day off revamping the Light Force website. I look forward to making it look tight by the end of the day.

this is a typical shot of the McLane kids. How can anyone not love these kids? 

As promised, the varsity golf team is strong and the JV is rough around the edges. Today we played a tough match against a distant non-conference rival. With one JV person missing, we came up short again today to start the season 0-2. Varsity did good yesterday and one player even went to -1 on the round.

Some bad things from today. Cell phones. Tossed clubs. Missed opportunities to help competitors. It’s stuff that drives me crazy because it negatively reflects on the program. We strongly desire to be a program that does the little things right. I don’t even care so much that they lost, but it was how they played that made me and the other coaches mad. We shall see how the stern talk we gave today is played out.

A very important match with Rochester Adams on the varsity side of things Friday afternoon. More on that later.

I’ve noticed lately that I have a bad habit of saying “we” when I really mean to say “I.” It’s quite odd since I will be talking about something and then I’ll notice that I meant to say “This is what I want to see” and instead it will come out “This is what we want to see.”

Perhaps even more annoying than this little habit is that there are times when I stop myself and say something really stupid, “What, do I have a mouse in my pocket… what I meant to say was…” I think this makes me look and feel more stupid than anything else.

There are lots of details in the works for fall programs. Everything kicks off next Wednesday with Light Force. In the meantime, I am busier than ever with the golf team. (We are now officially 1-0 on the season after we trounced Eisenhower yesterday on their home course.) The good thing about the golf season is that morning practices are over. This is good for me since it will allow me to actually get work done before I head to the golf course for my volunteer job.

Along the same lines, I’ve had increased spiritual questions from students on the team. This is both good and alarming. I make no bones about who I am or what I do, but my biggest fear is that people will start to assume that I am there for evangelism or something like that when in fact I am simply there because I want to be a part of the team and support the community. So, while my working for the team does constitute contact ministry, my purpose in being there is primarily to better the team. If I wasn’t a golfer who with some passion to see junior golf excel in Romeo, I wouldn’t be there.

We also had some drama last night as one of our students was touching another student in an inappropriate way. That sounds worse than it was… let’s restate that as “there are some raging hormones in the youth group.” I intend on stopping this in it’s tracks as nothing provides more disunity than dating among the group. More on that later as I mention it to the parents.