What Church Looks Like

This is what the church should be doing more of. It's exciting to read about this kind of passion for service.

Now, I'll admit, I don't know these people and I've never been to their town, but I've got to imagine that a church serving its community this way is making an impact. As much as I don't like how "externally focused" is becoming another buzzword bandwagon model for churches to jump on, I love the heart that this church has been planted with to observe, serve, and be in community with... its community. We in God's Kingdom should all be so externally focused.

What's Being Distributed?

I was just reading the Ethur blog and came across a post that included this quote:

"The future is here. It is just not widely distributed yet."I think it is important to take a look at our efforts and evaluate whether we are distributing the future or the past. Some organizations/individuals clearly do one or the other. When looking at what you pour your time, energy, ideas and resources into, which one do you think you're helping to distribute?

This made me think of Jesus' words, "the kingdom of God is at hand..." in Mark 1. Jesus was the very presence of God, Himself, here on Earth. God's kingdom isn't just some far off, mystical, "somewhere up yonder" place - it's His people here and now, living in His presence, as His body. We should be Kingdom distributors.

Think about your "time, energy, ideas and resources"... Where are they going? What are you pouring your self and your life into? Preserving what you've had... or distributing what is to come?

"Father...Your kingdom come, Your will be done - on Earth as it is in Heaven."

From Blank Slate to...

We have a large room in our church facilities. It used to be the worship center, but when the new auditorium was finished a few years ago, this room became known as the chapel. It's used for weddings and funerals on occasion and for 1st - 6th Grade Children's Church on Sundays and our Jr. High and High School worship on Wednesday nights. For the next 12 weeks it will also be used for a special class one of our elders is leading called The Truth Project.


We've been talking about how we could use the space more effectively. See, the problem is that the rooom is pretty much a blank/empty room with a cross on the wall and padded pink chairs. Our discussion has basically come to the point of deciding just what the best use of the room will be. It's blandness makes it usable for all the above mentioned things, but ideal for none. We want to use it to the best of our/its capacity.


One of the options is to turn the room into more of a youth & children's ministry friendly place. As the youth minister, this idea has some appeal, but when it comes to specifics, I'm not sure how things will play out. When someone says to me, "Here's a big empty room. What would it look like to make it more ideal for youth ministry?" my mind starts running with ideas that, frankly, scare people.


I don't want to spruce it up with a new coat of paint - I want to tear out a third of the stage and rebuild a different one in one corner. I don't want to trade in the pink church chairs for a more youthful color - I want to replace them with living room sets and lounge chairs. (Not mouse infested throw-aways either, btw.) I want to create with our students, a home away from school.


I want to redisign the room to reflect the values and mission of our student ministry. One of our catchphrases that we've been floating around the past month or so is "Bringing Students to Life... and Taking Life to Students". We could make this room a life-giving space. A homey, holy refuge not just for "our kids", but the students of our community. (Here's a link to an article I found talking about the theology of this kind of space design... interesting reading if you have a few more minutes.)


I'd appreciate your prayers as we discuss further just what we're going to do with this room. Whatever we do, may we honor God.

Summer's end...

Well, racing's over for the season. I think I ended up 4th, maybe 5th, in points - which isn't bad considering I missed so many weeks. The racing was a blast and it was great to meet some new people and spend some good time with the students that helped me out most weeks. The sad part of it is that my timing belt broke about two laps from the finish of the last race. If you don't know... that's really bad. Most engines will basically tear themselves apart if the belt breaks... I haven't dug into it yet to see if that's the case.

Dakota started preschool this week. He doesn't always respond too well to being told he has to do what everyone else is doing, so this should be an interesting experience. When we pulled up to the Y (where the preschool is), he wanted to go in the main doors and around to the back of the preschool "so we don't have to go through all that crowded part." (which was where everyone was lined up waiting to take their kids in). He doesn't like groups, but there's one little boy from our small group at church who is in his class, so he followed him around all day yesterday.

We also got started back into our regular schedule in our student ministry yesterday. I'm still wondering what adjustments we can make to be more effective, but right now I'm at a loss. A lot of the students just seem to be coming with no expectation of God having anything to say to them. Almost like it's just such a part of their routine that they're sleepwalking through it. Time to wake up...

Membership vs. Mission

I just read a great article called No Members, Just Missionaries in the Catalyst Monthly that arrives in my inbox every 4 weeks or so. (I also shared some thoughts along these lines at the church picnic a few weeks ago.) Just thought I'd post a couple quotes from the article:

One of the surest ways of becoming suspect to mainline evangelicalism is to actually reorient the church around the mission of Christ.

The article then talks about how for a long time, the American church has sent out missionaries to far away places to fulfill the mission of the church there - while settling for adherence to ritual here at home. But the globe-trekking 'missionaries' have grown up into leadership in the church and are now calling the church to join the mission they should have been on all along.

Their calling isn't to pastor churches that focus on the happiness of its
members, but to mobilize the church for the purpose of fulfilling God's mission of reconciling the world to Himself. We used to send our missionaries out, and it kept the mission a safe distance from us. Some how they broke back in and decided they were not going without us.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. The idea of "membership" is focused on self. What can I get out of it? If I pay my dues and follow the rules, what do I gain? Frankly, there's no place for that attitude in the church. The attitude of Christ led him to leave the comforts of heaven - the privileges and perks that come with being the Creator of the Universe - and become one of us in order to reconcile us to His Father. Where is that attitude in the church today? Thankfully, it flickers in places, but the world needs to be able to see a church that is bright with the light that's created when we humbly set aside all claim to what we think we deserve - in order to pass to someone else what we know they need.

Why do we even need church membership anymore? (That is not the same question as "Why do we need the church?") Is it only a way of 'keeping score' between different teams? I know this slaps the face of institutional church practice, but I wonder if membership and mission can even coexist? And if they cannot, how many more churches will have the guts to say "we have no members here...but here's our mission"?

"I feel like I'm married to Peter Pan" ~ Eileen Flynt

Here's a story about a man named Mike Flynt who got kicked off his college football team for fighting and is now coming back onto the team - 37 years later! Yes, you read that right. He's 59 years old and he's made it back onto the team. He'll be playing college football at 59 years old.

There's a myth in youth ministry that you grow out of it. That eventually, you're just too old to keep up with students. That after so many years, you just can't relate to kids anymore. But if a registered member of the AARP can play college football...

Will he get hurt? Maybe. So do the young guys.
Has he worked hard to stay in shape? Obviously.
But what a story!

Blessings?

This Sunday night, I'm leading worship and preaching for an annual event that we do here called "Blessings Beneath the Bluff". It's a hog roast / all church picnic / fun time / celebration of God's blessings held at the foot of the bluffs here in our area. But I have a bit of a problem... (and writing out some of these rambling thoughts is helping me find solutions)

It's way too easy, in celebrating God's blessings, to focus on the blessings and forget about the Blessor and His purpose for blessing. So I want to challenge the people to stop thinking of blessings as something which they collect for display. It's not that it's bad to receive blessings (obviously), and it's definitely a good idea to praise God for the way He blesses our lives and our church. But, too often, we stop there. It's an immature perspective on blessings that allows us to thank God for the sunshine and simply bask in it. I don't want to bask.

I don't want to enable our church to bask (which is our inherited Western tendency). So instead of talking about the various ways we've been blessed, I'm going to push for our people to be blessings. Throughout the OT, God talked about His people not just as 'blessed' - but as 'blessings'. They themselves were blessings for others. Even as early as God's promises to Abram, He spoke of Abraham being a blessing for others. After he gave Israel hope of restoration in Ez. 34 (and calling them blessings) God continued to reasssure them with the episode at a valley full of dead bones (Ez. 37). "Just like I did that, I'll put my Spirit into you and you will live." For what purpose? To be a blessing? Just maybe...

I'm going to hit on James' take on wealth when he said that the man in "humble circumstances" has "high position" and the "rich man" should "glory in his humiliation". It's not what we have that is evidence of our state of "blessity" or "unblessity" (again, I know those are not words) - but a "man who perseveres under trial" is called blessed. Following through the first chapter of James, you hear him telling us to actually do what the Word says to do. Hearing Him without doing what He says is pretty much worthless.

And that is often where we get stuck. That is where many churches are more "bluff" than "blessing" (I'll definitely be playing with those words Sunday night). I'm reminded of Casting Crowns' "If We are the Body" Are we blessing our community? If our church disappeared, exactly how would our community be worse off? Do we settle for "membership" at the expense of "mission"?

We need to stop asking "What do I need to do to get blessed" (A close cousin of "What's the least I can do to pass this test?") and ask instead, "How can I bless our valley?" Primarily, by living a life that leads the way to Jesus... By loving my neighbor the way only Jesus can... By actually stopping to help that guy beaten at the side of the road... By giving a drink to that lady that looks so thirsty... By letting that kid get close enough that I might get hurt...

Incidentally, if you are looking for more ways to 'be a blessing' check these sites out:
Compassion (give a kid hope)
Kiva (small interest free loans for businesses in underdeveloped places)
Blood:Water Mission (clean blood and clean water projects in Africa)
The Junky Car Club (I love their slogan "Living with less, so we can give more.")

Wind and Water

I'm not quite sure, but I think I just felt my paradigm shift! I've grown up in the church and seen too many people and too many churches that seem to be completely out of touch with reality - living in some kind of lalaJesusland where all the messiness of life is wrapped up in a nice sugary bow just after the second commercial break so put on a happy face and pretend everything's alright. A broken world can't relate to such a nicely facaded (not a word, I know) church, so they stay away.

Because of that experience, I've talked a lot about the church needing to be more relevant in our communities in order to reach those communities. I've never advocated going overboard with gimmickry (yes that is a word, actually) in order to entice consumers to listen to our Jesus-spiel, but I have endorsed an approach to taking down traditional walls that don't need to be there any more in order to be 'relevant'.

This effort to be relevant carries the implication that the church is falling behind culture and needs to catch up. A Catalyst TV podcast I just watched (#4 I think) showed a clip from a couple years ago from one of my favorite pastors, Erwin McManus (and no, I'm not just agreeing with something because he said it). He asked the question "Aren't you tired of trying to be relevant?" Why are we playing catch-up? Why are we not leading the way?

The time is way overdue for people in the church to live lives that lead the way. I still want to lead students who don't live a church life AND a separate school life. I still want my students to live amongst the mess of life in such a way that they are leading people to the Water they really need. I still want my students to keep their head out of the clouds of religion and live in relationship with Jesus and his people and our community. But maybe I need to find a better term than relevance. We're not playing catch-up anymore. As we follow the Wind, we'll lead the way to the Water.

Great Idea!

Found this on the CCT page. This club was started when someone put some feet on their faith. Living with less, so I can give more - great idea!

Solid Rock trip

Just got back from a climbing trip with Solid Rock Outdoor Ministries. This was a student leadership retreat for our student ministries, and it really went well. One of our weaknesses over this past year has been in the area of leadership. Just as I was coming into the ministry here, the students who were the leading students of the group graduated. They are a great group of students and the student ministry felt their absence. So I chose a handful of students who I hope will become the leadership team of Wind & Water and invited them to come do a little backpacking, a lot of climbing, and a great deal of searching out God's heart. Not all of these students would call themselves leaders, but I wanted to get them to see the potential that I've seen that God has put in their lives.

The trip went really well - from cooking meals together over a little camp stove, to huddling under the tarp while it rained, to just spending time together surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery of God's creation. It was good to develop a deeper level of trust between the students and myself and between the students and each other. I'm looking forward to seeing how the challenge will play out now that we're back home...

Fuel for the Fire?

I've wondered at various times in my ministry if I was heading for burnout. There are times when it seems like I'm just churning away, getting nowhere, burning up all my fuel. I used to think that all I needed to do was just spend more time reading Scripture to solve that problem. More fuel = more fire, right?

Besides the obvious problem of thinking that simply cramming more Bible-time into an overworked life will automatically result in peace and tranquility, Bible knowledge just isn't the fuel that I need. Don't read that wrong. I didn't say that the Bible is not needed or necessary. We can't live without it. We can't really minister without it.

But God Himself is the only power sufficient for ministry. If I'm doing ministry out of anything other than His Heart ~ I'll cook myself. God wants me as a living sacrifice, not a charred carcass that only vaguely resembles the life that once dwelt within it. One of my favorite passages is Philippians 2, where Paul points to Jesus' humility as the attitude that we should have... It's God working in us... Do everything without complaining... hold out the word of life... As I read this passage this morning I couldn't help but think of times of spiritual exhaustion when those words are clouded in my life.
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Mark Driscoll has posted a number of videos about burnout and related issues called "Death by Ministry" on his Resurgence site. If you've ever just felt 'run over', take some time to check them out. I got a lot out of the first 7 sessions and will listen to the last 4 when I get back from this week's student leadership retreat. (A couple days of camping, backpacking, & climbing will be rough on my out of shape body, but great for my tired soul!)

More Jr. High Camp thoughts

Jr. Highers are great. They're fun. They're always exploring. They offer up a never-ending variety of olfactory concoctions that always staves off boredom... But being in charge of a camp full of them caused me great stress. I still have hair, but I'm sure more of it is gray now!


I like camp to be pretty laid back. It's church camp, not boot camp, so there's a good amount of freedom in the schedule. As you and I would both expect, some Jr. Highers at our camp took advantage of that freedom in some pretty negative ways. When they came and explained what they'd done, they actually painted a far worse picture than what actually happened.


The knee jerk of most of the camp staff was send them packing. Call the parents and get them out of camp immediately. Since I was the dean, though, the call was mine to make. I've never been one to do things the easy way, so I didn't kick them out. I'd given them the freedom to choose. They chose poorly. But the consequence (of which there were many) was not going to be that they go home. I didn't feel like they'd learn anything that way. So I offered grace enough to keep them there.


It struck me that we're all the same. God gives us way more freedom to choose than what I'd given the campers. And we all go around picking on the weaker kids and making messes for someone else to clean up (that's a sanitized statement of what they did AND what we do). We take the freedom that God gives us and misuse it for our own benefit and positioning. And God gives us grace that allows us to stay in camp.

Jr. High Camp thoughts

So a couple weeks ago, I left for Jr. High camp. Came back for a weekend and went back to camp for Sr. High week. Our network of churches in our area of Nebraska, Wyoming, and South Dakota utilizes a great facility in the Black Hills of SD called Kamp Kinship for our summer camps. It's a nice retreat center that is a far cry from the spartan cabins of my youth at camp in the mountains near Lander, but I was able to recapture a bit of my camping tradition that the students really got a lot out of...

At Lander, we always took a hike up to a peak called Candy Mountain (at least that's what we all called it). I always loved that hike and looked forward to it every year. The Black Hills are nice, but there really wasn't a summit close enough to the camp to be suitable for this type of event. The camp does have a tradition of making some kind of excursion off campus though each year... usually into town for putt-putt, a water park, go karts... stuff like that.

I kind of figure kids can do those things anytime, so this year I wanted to do something a little bit different. I was the dean for Jr. High week, so I had the ability to make that happen. (Why they put someone in charge who's only been with the group for one camp season is beyond me, but they did!) The theme of the week was "Be still and know that I am God." so something out in a peaceful natural setting seemed appropriate. We ended up taking a hike along a path that followed a creek up to a swimming hole. (Probably not appropriate for church camp, but the hole was called Devil's Bathtub. I'm pretty sure some of the kids peed in it just for the symbolic spiritual significance!)

With 98 of us, that was no small deal. I had been assured, though, that it was a pretty easy trail... I passed that assurance on to our students. Note to self ~ don't trust Ryan's childhood memories! The trail crossed the creek (sans bridges) more times than our Jr. High boys' voices cracked during the week!

Sidenote: a student with cerebral palsey didn't really want to go on the hike, but I promised him he could do it. We'd help him as much as he needed. If the trail was too tough for him, we'd do whatever we needed to get him through... Nice, reassuring things. His response: "No it's not that... I'm just LAZY!" He made it to the destination and had a blast in the process - just like everyone else!

I wasn't sure how this choice of hiking over water slides or go karts was going to go over, but the kids loved it. (And it turned out there was a bit of a rock water slide anyway!)

A little musical diversion...

I was tagged by Knotter a friend in the blogging world.

If I were to list what I was listenning to intently right now, it would be Future of Forestry over and over. (A great band you may have never heard of.) But since that's not really what the tag is all about, I'm hitting 'random' right now and here's what's coming out in the next ten slots...

1. - Sarah Kelly, Still Breathing
2. - Sarah Kelly, In Your Eyes (so much for random)
3. - Jadon Lavik, His Name Shall Be Called
4. - Audio Adrenaline, Rejoice (Whoah! That's been a while!)
5. - Jars of Clay, Faith Enough
6. - Future of Forestry, Sunrising (I promise I didn't cheat!)
7. - Tree 63, I Stand for You
8. - Jars of Clay, Only Alive
9. - Tree 63, I Will Never Be the Same
10. - Audio Adrenaline, You Still Amaze Me

Realized part way through that this is only pulling from 'recently added' (although not new) stuff - explains the 'unrandomness' of repeating bands! Oh well. That's some of what I just heard. Maybe I'll edit this post and do a more diverse 10.

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Here's a better random sampling (and a much better playlist I might add - that wouldn't get me kicked off the radio show I'm on)

1. - The Fray, Fall Away
2. - Chris Tomlin, Uncreated One
3. - Disciple, Scars Remain
4. - Newsboys, I Am Free
5. - Falling Up, Escalates
6. - Sanctus Real, I'm Not Allright
7. - Fair, The Dumbfounded Game (another great band you may have never heard)
8. - Pillar, Awake
9. - Sarah Kelley, Still Breathing (The song that never goes away!)
10. - Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Christmas Jam (the epitome of randomness!)

I suppose I should tag someone, so how 'bout Gman, Kari, and Meghan

--Incidentally, the next 2 random songs that came up was Thinking of You from Future of Forestry (those guys are awesome) and Grace from U2 (another of my favorites).

Knowing God...

Getting the last few things put together this week for Jr. High camp next week. We're focusing on Psalm 46, leaning toward verse 10's "Be still and know that I am God." So I've been thinking of what it really means to know God.

I'm tired of church stuff that leaves people unaffected. Tired of churches and youth ministries that simply make their way around the carousel of activity without changing lives. I'd hate for this camp to be simply another full week in busy schedules that are filled with apathetic activity. My prayer for the week is that students would come face to face with their Creator.

Because that will change a person. I think, if you enter into a real conversation with God, you only have two options: outright rejection of Him or living a life of worship. I just don't think there's room for authentic encounter with God to result in.... more of the same.

You Can't Cancel Church.

Last year a bunch of people I know and interact with online were all upset about some churches "canceling church" in order for families to be home with their families on Christmas morning. Others have lamented how some congregations "cancel church" on the Sunday night of the Super Bowl. Well, the issue has come up again...

A church in KY has forgone its normal Sunday morning schedule in order for the whole congregation to go to a special screening of Evan Almighty. Now, I haven't seen the movie yet, so my comments have a limited perspective on why or why not seeing this movie together could be a good idea.

But here is one thing I do know. There is nothing we can do to 'cancel' church (or 'skip' it for that matter). The church isn't the place we meet on Sunday morning. It's not the sitting around and the singing of songs and the hearing of sermons. The church is the Body of Christ, alive and serving in the world today. And that cannot be canceled.

I'm not saying that our weekly gathering to worship together is not important to the life of the Body. But if that one gathering (or two...) is the full extent of our worship, then we are only weakly gathering (and I'd hesitate to call that worship). If we can't break from the routine for something a little out of the ordinary once in a while, then are we holding to tradition, or is tradition strangling us?