Existing or Living

There Goes My Hero

2011-08-11T16:49:00.002-04:00

I love the imagination of kids.

To them, anything is possible, especially with super heroes.

In their minds they can imagine a world where someone really does possess the ability to leap over a building in a single bound, out run a speeding train, or dodge a bullet.

However, as kids get older they begin to realize that what once seemed completely possible was actually just a movie driven fantasy.

With age, super heroes begin to fade, but true heroes are brought to light. Instead of aspiring to be like a comic book character, we begin to observe real heroes in their everyday lives, and our focus shifts to being like our parents, being teachers, a firemen, a policemen, a soldiers, and many other things that are tangible and realistic.

In all stages of life there are people that are ahead of us who are in the shoes that we hope to fill. These people become a type of hero to us. They are people we can observe and talk to. They are people we can realistically see ourselves one day being.

A crazy thing to think about is that you are currently in the shoes that someone wants to fill. Whether you realize it or not, you are someone’s hero.

When you realize that people are looking up to you, and even aspiring to be like you, it causes you to be more intentional in the way you live your life.

Sure, you can be like Charles Barkley and say, “I am not a role model.” But you’re just running from the truth. The question isn’t whether you’re a role model or not; it’s whether you’re a good one or a bad one.

King David touches on this towards the end of his life in 2 Samuel 23.

He ends the chapter by listing off thirty-seven mighty men (or heroes). One man killed 800 enemy warriors with his spear in a single battle.

Another man stood up to the Philistine army after all his fellow warriors fled the battle field. He fought until his hand was literally too tired to even lift his own sword, and when his fellow warriors showed back up all they found was a bunch of ruble and dead Philistines.

One time during battle, three of his most elite warriors heard David longing for some water from the well he grew up drinking from. The only problem was that his hometown well was currently behind enemy lines. These three guys loved David so much that they snuck through the hostile lines, risked getting killed, and drew water from the well for David to drink.

Then my favorite of the mighty men was Benaiah. “He did many heroic deeds, which included killing two champions of Moab. Another time, on a snowy day, he chased a lion down into a pit and killed it. Once, armed only with a club, he killed a great Egyptian warrior who was armed with a spear. Benaiah wrenched the spear from the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with it.” (2 Samuel 23:20-23 NLT)

It is easy to tell that even though these men followed David, they were just as inspirational and influential to him. It’s not just those who are younger than you that look up to you, sometimes your life has an impact on the very people you are striving to be like.

Right before David lists out his mighty men, he gives his last words.

In his last words he’s talking about the influence a man can have on those around him. He can either “Dawn on them like morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth,” or he can be worthless “like thorns that are thrown away…” (2 Samuel 23:1-7)

He uses two metaphors to describe the influence a man can have on those who look up to him. One is life giving, and the other is useless and even harmful.

David understood that the way he lived his life and the way he led the nation of Israel had a direct effect on the spiritual lives of those who followed him.

We all have to ask ourselves, “If someone is looking up to me and aspiring to be like me, how will their spiritual life look?”

Are your actions spiritually life giving, or are they useless and harmful?

As you live your life remember that you are someone's hero!

Project 2-4-2

2011-05-16T10:20:00.002-04:00

I wanted to give a quick recap of “insideOUT” last night, and what we’ll be doing on Sunday nights leading up to summer camp at Snowbird… which will be the best summer camp ever!

We started off last night’s “talk” with me acting like a pumped up motivational speaker who was telling you how to grow a youth group. I started off with “Space!” If you want to grow a youth group you need to give the youth their own specific space. Then you need to fill it with fun and exciting things like televisions and game systems. Then I went on to “Communicate!” We’re about Jesus, and we need to effectively communicate that message. The problem is that too many youth ministers talk above their audience’s head… so if you want to grow a youth group, you need to “d.i.d”, or Dumb It Down!

The whole time I talked about this growth model I was trying to stay in character as the motivational speaker guy, but in reality I was being sarcastic. We have those things, and I can give those “d.i.d” type messages… but that will only grow the youth group without us having to depend on God.

From there we looked at Acts 2:42. This is what the first church looked like. They were devoted to 4 things: Knowing the Bible, Fellowship, Remembering the Cross, and Prayer.

After looking at those four things we continued reading that section of Acts and saw that through the early church’s dedication God added to their number day by day those who were being saved (v.37).

Then we finished with a challenge… what if we stripped away all the stuff that didn’t line up with Acts 2:42? What if we spent the time between now and camp being devoted to Knowing the Bible, Fellowship, Reflecting on the Cross, and Prayer? Do you think God might do something crazy? Do you think our numbers would increase, or decrease?

I know this is completely against most “growth models” for youth groups, but I think we should do it!

So here’s your homework – Think through those four things this week, and start brainstorming on what they look like for our youth group. Then next time we meet we’ll talk through this stuff.
Grab a blank piece of paper, write “Project 2-4-2 Brainstorm” at the top, divide the paper into 4 squares, and let each square represent one of the four things we’ll be devoted to. The key word here is “devoted.” We’re not trying to do this stuff as an afterthought… we want to be DEVOTED TO IT.

Only read the rest of this if you need help brainstorming.

Maybe “Knowing the Bible” means that we all study a book of the Bible together, but instead of just coming and listening to Jeff we all read it on our own throughout the week and then come together to discuss it. What did it mean to the original readers 2000 years ago? What does it mean to us? What areas of our lives need to change if really take it seriously? How can we be encouraged by what it says? Etc.

What are some other ideas on what “Knowing the Bible” could look like for our youth group?

Maybe “Fellowship” means that you grab a breakfast taco with a few people before school one day a week and have a “coffee-like” conversation where you share how you’re REALLY doing… the good things in your life AND the tough things in your life. Saying “I’m fine” is not an acceptable answer.

What else could we do for “Fellowship” as a youth group?

Maybe “Reflecting (remembering) the Cross” means that we put red rubber band on our wrist, and whenever we look at it, or mess with it, we take a second to thank God for sending his son to pay the penalty we deserved for our sins. Then when we “fellowship” we can talk about how thinking about the cross makes us feel… happy, sad, encouraged, or something else?

How else can we “Remember the Cross” as a youth group?

Maybe “Prayer” means we paint a section of a wall in the youth room with chalkboard paint and draw a big line down the middle of it. On one side we write “Prayers Asked” and on the other side we write “Prayers Answered.” Then we all pray for the things people need prayer about, and when one of those prayers is answered (and sometimes the answer might be “no”) we write it down and put a date next to it on the other side.

What else could we do to be devoted to “Prayer”?

There’s no wrong answer in a brainstorm, so use as much paper as you need.

Can’t wait to talk about this stuff.

You guys are awesome!

Church Rental or Church Ownership?

2011-03-29T12:10:00.001-04:00

I can remember my getting my first car like it was yesterday.

I started searching newspaper ads and autotrader (when it was only in magazine format) months before turning 16. I knew what kind of budget I had to work with, so I wanted to figure out what kind of truck or jeep I could get. I picked up off road magazines every month to get ideas of how I would fix up my 4x4 with bigger tires and accessories. I knew exactly how much each fix-up would cost. Of course I didn’t factor in labor costs because I was going to do all of that myself. I was even researching potential jobs, hourly wages, and how much I would have to work to have enough money to do each improvement.

As my 16^th birthday neared my dad began to take me around town to look at different cars. One Saturday we stumbled upon a 1996, single cab, 4x4, Ford F150. I knew it was the right car from the first look. It was almost like it spoke to me.

With every other car lot I hated seeing the car salesman approaching with his card in hand, but this time I was eager. We asked to see inside of the truck and then decided to take it for a test drive. I was falling more and more in love with every mile.

When we got back to the dealership we went inside and my dad started negotiating prices with the salesman. They went back and forth a few times, and I started getting that weird gut feeling that we were about to leave empty handed, and just about that time my dad said, “Alright, we’ll take it.” I kept a straight face, but inside I was jumping with glee!

I was about a week away from turning 16, but my dad pulled the trigger anyways. We got to drive it home and park it in the driveway until I officially got my license.

I think I washed the thing every day that week. Neighbors made jokes about how I was going to wash the paint off if I wasn’t careful.

Now that I actually had the truck, instead of just dreaming what could be, I went to Autozone and bought a book on 1996 F150s. It had all the ins and outs on basic maintenance, and got as complicated as completely rebuilding the engine.

I did my best to keep that truck in perfect condition. I changed the oil right at 3,000 miles. The gas gage rarely dipped below a quarter of a tank. I washed it once a week and kept it vacuumed. I waxed it every 6 months. I did everything by the book.

Why? Because it was my truck. My grandpa once told me that you could tell a lot about a man by the way he kept his truck, and I wanted to make sure that whatever you could tell about me was something good.

Maybe I’m weird, but I still take just as good care of my vehicles as I did when I was 16. The only difference is that I run the gas gauge a little closer to empty before filling it up.

The difference that ownership makes in taking care of something is huge.

If you’re in a rental car you don’t care about getting the oil changed. You don’t care about having proper tire pressure to make sure you’re not getting uneven tread ware. You don’t care about waxing it to make sure you don’t get clear coat damage. You really don’t have any interest in investing any of your own time or own money into the thing because it’s not yours.

A rental car is just something you use when you need it. It’s not something you take ownership in.

I think the rental car mentality is a danger we face with our churches.

The growing trend is to hire more staff to do the work so members and attenders and go and be fed, served, and even entertained. Church becomes something that you use when you need it, but not something you take ownership in.

People have begun to accept that ministry is for the people who get paid, but this is not Biblical at all! Everyone is called to ministry, and everyone should have a ministry they’re plugged into. Stop viewing your pastor as the minister. Start viewing him as the equipper and yourself as the minister. If this happens then you’ll find yourself taking ownership in the church, and the church’s influence will grow far greater than you probably ever imagined.

Camp Fire Smells and the Zestfullness of Christ

2010-11-17T12:38:00.001-05:00

When the weather gets cool and leaves start to change (unless you live in Texas) there is nothing better than getting out in the woods and doing some camping. It’s a good way to use all the gear you bought from REI incase Y2K ever rears its ugly head again.

When you settle in for the night with your perfect spot and you get a nice little fire crackling, it’s time to bust out the perfect camp fire ingredients… marshmallows, Hershey’s chocolate bar, and some graham crackers.

The chocolate bar and graham crackers are pretty standard, so what makes the perfect s’more lies in the toasting of the marshmallow. There are different methods to this… some people just dive right in, set the thing ablaze, and then blow it out before it becomes nothing more than charred remains. Other people keep the marshmallow pretty far away, but just close enough to where it is getting heat. This is the safest way to go about it, but it takes a really long time… and you have to fight the urge to just shove the dang thing into the fire. Then you have the people that are very prideful about their toasting abilities… they find the sweet spot… the spot where the marshmallow gets the maximum amount of heat without catching fire… but it’s always on the verge… one wrong move… one wrong twist of the stick or close hanger where the marshmallow takes a sudden drop in elevation… then the whole thing could literally go up in flames.

S’mores… the perfect campfire food.

But you can’t recreate the s’more experience in your kitchen… you can try… but a key tool to making a legitimate perfect s’more is a campfire.

Campfires are great when you’re in the woods. You love the smell, you find yourself just staring at hot coals as they change to different shades of reds and oranges, you contemplate walking on hot coals like the contestants on Fear Factor… but no matter where you sit the smoke always seems to find you. Sure, you fight it for a little bit in hopes of the wind changing directions, but you eventually move your seat only to have the smoke find you again.

Smelling like campfire is unavoidable when you’re anywhere close to it.

The smell doesn’t bother you when you’re in the woods, or when you’re around other people that smell the same.

But when you get home to a nice clean house you are immediately aware of how much you stink! You want nothing more than to get out of your nasty campfire smell infested clothes and to jump into a piping hot shower… which of course, you’re not fully clean unless your zest fully clean.

When we encounter Jesus through God’s Word it’s like we just came from a camping trip and stepped into a clean house. We realize that we are dirty and in need of a deep cleaning, and we have three options: we can try to ignore the conviction and go surround ourselves with more people that smell just like us. We can try to clean ourselves through our own good works; or we can respond to Jesus’ call to come to him.

The crappy part about encountering Jesus is that we realize we smell really bad and we don’t possess the ability to make ourselves clean.

The beautiful thing about encountering Jesus is that he wants to make us clean through his works (which is the only way to be made clean) and he doesn’t want anything in return. He is the ultimate bar of zest soap.

You can ignore your smelliness, you can use your own soap and still smell funky... which is like putting deodorant on after you realize you smell... it doesn't work, or you can be fully clean through the work of Christ... and you're not fully clean unless your zest fully clean.

Bad Days Turn to Laughter... and Important Realizations

2010-08-20T15:45:00.003-04:00

Sometimes we have bad days, bad weeks, bad months, and even bad years.

I recently had two bad days… but what made them bad?

I just moved back to San Antonio. There was much excitement and anticipation for the job I was going to start the next Monday… but before I started the job I had a week to rest and relax.

The summer was busy with youth ministry stuff, but on top of that I had to deal with the heartache and the emotional rollercoaster of leaving a ministry to go to a new one.

I wanted a week just to refuel…

So I said my goodbyes, packed up my house, drove cross country and arrived in San Antonio ready to take it easy for a few days before hitting the ground running.

Well, my second day back my truck got broken into. They stole my messenger bag with my laptop, bible, and journal, they stole my GPS, and they stole my ipod. With the stolen goods and the damage done to my truck I was out over two thousand bucks.

Not a good day.

Then the next day I needed to get a new drivers license and new license plates… simple enough, right?

I started off the morning by googling “dmv,” I couldn’t find a number that didn’t bring me to an automated system… I just wanted to talk to someone who was real. I pushed a series of “1s,” “2s,” and “3s” to get to the information that I thought I needed, but never really had confidence that I got what I needed from the computer lady’s voice.

My gut feeling was right.

I showed up to the DMV, waited in a long line, only to find out that I needed to have my truck registered before I could get my license.

Then I spent some more time driving around trying to find the Tax Collector’s Office to get my truck registered. I waited in another long line (but not as bad as the DMV) only to find out that I needed to have my truck inspected before I could have it registered.

Once I got my truck inspected I went back to the Tax Collector’s Office and got my truck registered. Then I made it back to the DMV… waited in line again only to find out that my old driver’s license, social security card, proof of insurance, and registration wasn’t enough… I needed a birth certificate or passport as well.

So I went to get my passport, drove back to the DMV, went to the front of the first line, got a number, only to wait in a seat for another hour before being called to the nice lady that would eventually take my picture… so I thought.

I got to the lady that would take my new picture and issue my Texas Driver’s License… I gave her all the documents, ready to step back to the black line and have my picture snapped… but then she asked me to stick my head up to this vision tester thing and read line 5. I couldn’t do it! I could read line 4, but not line 5, and therefore she couldn’t legally give me my license. Turns out I needed to go get glasses.

Another long and frustrating day.

Why were these two days bad… well I had a lot of valuable stuff stolen and I had to deal with the DMV and Tax Collector’s Office in the same day.

What do we do with bad days?

We can beat our steering wheels and yell at the top of our lungs with our windows up (cough cough)… we can sing hakuna matata… we can calmly say “serenity now,” or we can scream “SERENITY NOW!!!”

I’m not going to hide behind a blog on this one… I’m pretty sure I almost lost my voice yelling in my truck like an idiot. Maybe I have anger issues? Or maybe I just needed to go through a process.

Some time has passed and I can tell the story of the two bad days with laughter. Does it still stink that I lost a lot of money? Yes. Does it still stink that I lost a lot of important files on my old computer? Yes. Does it still stink that I lost A LOT of music on my ipod that I LEGALLY bought?! Yes. Does it stink that I have to be inconvienced to go get my truck fixed where the guys broke into my truck? Yes.

All of that stuff still stinks, and it still kicks up some ill emotions inside me if I let it, but I ultimately know that all of my stuff is temporary… one day moth and rust will destroy all of my things… whether they’ve been stolen or not.

What do we do with bad days? We have to move on.

I think it was Pat Green who said, "Wouldn't life be awfully boring if the good times were all that we had?"

I’m moving on.

Here's the most important thing to take from this blog post... maybe I should have put it first?

Through this I came to realize something... maybe this was the reality check I needed to make me realize that I need to consentrate more on the eternal things in life.

I hope and pray that my heart hurts more for the potential loss of eternal things, like souls, than it hurts for the loss of temporary things like computers and ipods.

Things can only go up from here!

What Do Youth Ministers Do During the Week?

2010-05-18T13:34:00.002-04:00

What do Youth Ministers do?

I know this is a common question people have… “What do youth ministers do?”

I think the perceived answer is that we just hang out with students on Wednesday night, show up to a few sport events, and then we spend the rest of our time searching youtube and stalking people on facebook.

The crazy thing is that as a youth minister I often feel completely swamped, and then when someone asks me what I do during the week I start to trip over my words because I really don’t know what to tell them… which makes me feel like maybe I do just waste time.

The problem is that with ministry there really isn’t a consistent schedule, so what you do can’t be defined in 9 to 5 terms.

The following is a look at what youth ministers do:

Sunday mornings I get to church at about 7:00am. This gives me an hour and 15 minutes to spend time in prayer for the day, clean up the Sunday school and organize it (students never pick up after themselves), print off the Youth News, and go over the Sunday school lesson one last time.

At 8:15am I go to the early service which starts at 8:25am. This gives me 10 minutes to shake hands and say hello to people. None of these people are my youth (because they don’t come to the early service), but I love knowing the whole church, not just those related to my ministry, so this is a cherished time.

From 8:25am until about 12:15pm I am in a service, helping out with logistics, or helping out with youth Sunday school.

After church its lunch time! When we only had one Sunday school, and the majority of the youth went to the 11am service we used to go out to lunch as a big group, but that doesn’t happen so much anymore. But Sunday lunch is a great time for fellowship. It is never quick because of the crowds and long waits… so you can either take it as it is and enjoy it, or get frustrated. I like to enjoy the conversation with others.

After lunch I normally get back to the church around 3:30pm. From 4pm – 6pm we are either preparing for meetings, in meetings, or preparing for family fusion. Then from 6pm – 7pm we have discipleship classes, family fusion, or some form of small groups.

Throughout the week I spend time in the office doing random things that include, but are not limited to: responding to emails, making phone calls, writing notes to youth, planning trips and taking care of the front end work to make those happen, evaluating different aspects of the ministry and thinking through how we can improve on them, studying current youth ministry trends, assisting other staff members, doing random projects assigned by Jason (my pastor), finding and turning in receipts, creating a “Youth News”, working on Sunday school material, and other random odd jobs. These take up about 9 hours of my week.

So we’re at about 18 hours of work… what else do Youth Ministers do?

If I was only in the office 9 hours a week I would probably get fired… so I am in the office more than that, but I intentionally schedule time to do things that aren’t really “office work.”

The main time I get to teach/preach/talk (whatever you want to call it) is on Wednesday nights. Contrary to popular belief, I do not have an incredibly sticky memory where I can pull everything I learned from seminary off the top of my head and teach it to students in a way that makes since to them. It takes time to prepare a message. I would love to have a full day to work on my Wednesday night message, but I normally get about 6 hours (3 hours on Tuesday and 3 hours on Wednesday mornings at the coffee shop).

“6 hours?! Does it even take that long?! And you wish you had more time?!”

Think back to speech class in high school or a communications class you took in college. Remember how much time it took for you to prepare a 5 – 7 minute speech? You had to research the topic you were talking about, think about a good introduction to hook people’s attention, have good transition points, appeal to logic, appeal to emotions, and then have a strong conclusion. You had to think through how to get people to visualize what you were talking about, illustrate points, and then practice it to get more comfortable. I promise you that 6 hours flies by!

On top of preparing the message for Wednesday nights I have to get things in order for the actual youth service. This includes preparing worship in song, setting up the music equipment, practicing with the band, straightening up the room, setting up for an ice-breaker, getting informational handouts ready, and etc. I am able to give about 3 hours to this stuff. Then the actual Wednesday night program goes from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.

So now we are at 29 hours. We’ve covered Sundays, Wednesdays, and office time… what else do youth ministers do?

Meetings… these take up some time too. We meet as a whole staff on Tuesdays from 11am – 1:30pm. This includes a staff devotional, leadership equipping, and getting all of our ducks in a row for the week, month, and beyond. Then I have a separate meeting with my other boss (Ralph, the minister of education) and Kristin (the children’s director) once a week to make sure that we’re on the same page and that our ministries continue to complement each other. Then on Wednesdays from 1:30pm – 2:30pm we have a “creative meeting” where we go through all three worship services on Sunday and make sure they all flow smoothly and that they do not take up more than an hour and 15 minutes.

Meetings take up about 4 to 5 hours of the week.

On top of office meetings there are other key times to meet with people. I do hospital visits once a week, I meet with other youth ministers (either in person or on the phone) to encourage each other, bounce ideas off of, and build and maintain relationships. I visit prospective members who have visited the church. And then I try to meet with parents of my youth or youth leaders throughout the week too. These types of meetings take up about 4 hours of a normal week.

So we are at 37 to 38 hours of a work week now… “What about hanging out with youth? I thought that was all you do? Do you do that at all?”

On Wednesdays I get breakfast with high schoolers from 7am – 8am, and on Thursdays I get breakfast with middle schoolers from 7:30am – 8am and then I the middle schoolers to school in the awesome church van which takes up about another 30 minutes. Those times are regular, but there are other random times that I hang out with youth as well… like at football games, basketball games, baseball games, throwing the Frisbee or football, grabbing coffee, playing basketball, working out, eating food, and whatever else I can do to meet them where they are at. Unfortunatley I only get to hang out with youth for about 5 hours of the week, but I’ll take what I can get.

So the normal work week of a youth minister is probably around 42 to 43 hours of work if you try to put it to paper.

So why in the world do we get burned out, why do we feel like we work non-stop?

On top of the normal work week there are always things going on at the church. We have weekend retreats, summer camps, mission trips, service projects, community events, and other random things throughout the whole year. While Fridays and Saturdays would ideally be days off there always seems to be something to attend on a Friday night and/or on Saturdays. Take a camp for example: Youth ministers work a full Sunday, then they are on the job for 24 hours a day until the next Saturday, and then they are back to it on Sunday. Once Monday rolls around they don’t get that Friday and Saturday (which we supposed to be days off) back… unless they use vacation time (which is 10 days a year). I guess what I’m trying to say is that we tend to fall into doing stuff on Fridays and Saturdays and we never really get to rest up and re-fuel.

I can attest to being burnt out from ministry… I wish it was as beautiful and perfect as people might think from the outside looking in… I’m sure everyone wishes they could work at the church because it’s a breeze… but it is more time consuming than you might think.

After a year and a half I got completely burnt out and fell into depression… this led me to seeking out counseling to keep my sanity. So I now meet with a counselor once a week. I didn’t factor this into my work week, but I think I could because it is extremely beneficial and helps me to do my job better, and to do my job with more joy. So if you factor in the drive into Atlanta in morning traffic, the meeting, and the drive back, you could add another 3 hours to my work week.

I guess I can’t speak for all youth ministers, but hopefully this gives you a general idea of what we do during the week… It’s not all raindrops turning into lemon drops.

Give Me Leg Room and an Armrest Please

2010-01-04T16:03:00.003-05:00

I recently took a trip up to Louisville, and the night before I left, Jason (my friend/pastor/boss) asked if he could use my truck. At first, it sounded like a great deal. He would get a truck which would give him the capability to haul the things he needed to haul, and I would get a car and cut my gas costs in half.

However, right when i got on the highway I was paranoid from the bigger vehicles tail-gatting me... I was hugging the right lane, waving people by, and fearing for my life. Then about 45 minutes into the drive I began to get really uncomfortable. I had less leg room than I was used to, I didn't have an armrest, and the driver seat just wasn't that comfortbale.

I quickly realized that I am spoiled by the comfort of my truck. I have leg room, I have a great armrest, I have a big comfortable seat, and I could care less if someone wants to tail-gate me, because I feel that I would win.

I think it is safe to say that as a culture we HATE discomfort.

I am getting ready to work through the book of James with my students this semester, and I am pumped! BUT, it is very countercultural. Right from the start he tells us to joyful embrace trials... trials are not comfortable. Our culture takes great lengths to relieve even the smallest amount of discomfort, so you can imagine how difficult it will be for us not only to stop seeking comfort, but to live our lives in such a way that we joyfuly embrace and endure the discomforts of this jacked up world, fighting to see them as a necessary means for the progression of our sanctification.

For the rest of this semester I will update the blog with point illustrations, but beware, we're going to HAVE to let James make us uncomfortable. We are basically going to demolish this fake superficial happiness that our world pursues and show how to have a deep and firmly rooted faith that brings to true joy.

Stay tuned...

If I Could Be the Coolest

2009-12-14T15:40:00.002-05:00

Who do you look up to?

When I was a kid I wanted to be like Mike… “If I could be like Mike…”

I remember I always wanted his shoes. For years my mom would never buy me the Jordan’s, and thankfully so, but one year I got those bad boys.

I remember I was talking about those shoes to the youth one night as we were talking about how things of this earth perish. I asked them if they knew where those Jordan’s were today? Someone said, “The dump!” to which I replied, “No… a glass case.” I kept a serious face for a moment before informing them that they were right.

I really wanted to be like Michael Jordan.

I just went up to Kentucky and had the privilege of hanging out with my buddy who coaches some 7th grade guys in basketball.

We got to the gym a little early, and he was asking me if I wanted to mess with the kids and tell them that I was a former NCAA basketball player.

When the guys arrived I was shooting around, and Coach Ben told them that I went to Texas Tech, which is true, and he never told them that I played basketball, but they jumped to that conclusion.

One of the kids immediately began to talk trash and yelled out that Texas Tech got lucky in one of its recent upsets.

I walked over to him, debating whether or not to engage in some trash talk with a 7th grader. I decided to hold back all the words I wanted to say in defense of my team, and I just said, “This is luck…” Then I threw the ball behind my head towards the goal from the three point line. To everyone’s surprise the ball hit perfectly in the square on the backboard and then swished through the net. I was shocked, but I kept a straight face.

The kids went crazy, and kept asking me to do it again. I was trying not to burst out laughing, and Coach Ben looked his team straight in the eyes, and came to my defense, “You don’t do that twice…”

Kids are always looking for someone to look up to. Hopefully it is their parents, or a quality role model. I would have loved for these 7th graders to look up to me, but what would be the good in that? I do not live there, and they would never see me. They might have a short lived impression that I am cool because of my lucky shot, but the person they are looking up to is Coach Ben. You can see it in the way they follow him as their coach, and he is a great Christian man for them to look up to.

In the same way that kids have people they aspire to be like, we should have people we aspire to be like.

It is important in the Christian faith that we have someone tangible to look to and model our lives after. Paul set this example to the churches he invested in, and we should strive to live our lives in such a way that we could say the same. Ultimately our goal is to be like Christ, so the hope is that the things we display, that we desire other people to model, are the qualities of Christ that are shining through in us.

Who are you aspiring to be like? And I am not talking about the Sunday school answer, “Jesus?” I am talking about someone that you can tangibly see living life, and model after them.

Another nugget to chew on is who is aspiring to be like you? Think about the people who look up to you and think about the way you live your life. Whether you realize it or not, someone is looking to be like you, so what kind of example are you setting?

What a Beautiful Truth

2009-10-05T13:11:00.002-04:00

Today I was chatting with one of my good friends from Texas Tech who also went to seminary with me. We have a ton of memories with each other, and he is a friend I can truly say I’ve lived life with.

I started off a g-chat conversation with retelling one of our favorite friendship memories… all in quotes. I would quote my line, then I’d quote his line, and this continued until the story was told. There was no elaboration to the situation, just great one liners that would only capture the moment if you had actually been in it.

Just the thought of that night brings a huge smile to my face, and pondering the play by play results in great laughter.

When he had read through my series of quotes his response was immediately, “hahahahahahahaha.”

To that I asked him, “Do you think when we get to heaven God will say, ‘What in the WORLD were you guys thinking?!’”

Then he said something amazing… “I think he’ll say, ‘You have no idea how much grace I’ve given you.’”

I literally was put back in my chair when I read that… it just hit me. I mean, I went from the sitting halfway off your chair, kind of hunched over your computer with your fingers ready to type back a response position, to the sit completely back in your chair where your heals lift up from pushing with your toes and make you recline position… thinking, “Wow! I love the gospel.”

Last night at youth I talked about our hearts and how we can actually harden them towards God. Then one of the ways to keep our hearts from being hardened was to continue to preach to ourselves.

What kind of stuff should we preach to ourselves? Well, we can start with knowing that God has given us so much grace!

“You have no idea how much grace I’ve given you…”

Think about that, and let that truth result in a greater love for God and His Word… “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…”

If You're Not First You're Last

2009-09-09T12:16:00.002-04:00

Put a group of guys in the woods for the day and two things will happen… when it’s light outside something will be built, and when it’s dark outside something will catch fire. We love to build things and take things apart. When I was a kid I loved working on my bike, building ramps, and making forts out in the woods.

We also love to fix things, and if something is broke and needs to be fixed, with the right tools and enough knowledge we can fix it.

I think this is the way we view prayer. The world is broke and needs to be fixed, so we view prayer as a tool and a means of fixing it.

We have to get out of this mindset! Prayer is not a tool that works, but it is part of a relationship with the almighty creator of the universe.

Christianity affirms that God is all powerful and all knowing, and when people begin to think through this they eventually ask the question, “Well, if God already knows and is going to do what he is going to do then why pray?” This is a legitimate question, but it is routed in an understanding of prayer as a tool.

God wants us to make petitions to him and ask him for things, but he wants us to do so in recognition that he is the one who provides all… he provides our meals, our clothes, and the air we breathe. He wants us to understand our dependency on him and he wants our faith to increase in him knowing that he will always provide what we truly need.

Our prayer life increases our trust in God, and our trust in God allows us to grow deeper in our relationship with him. In other words, it is not mechanical, it is relational.

A college student had a great question, and I think anyone outside of the box on Christianity would have something very similar. He asked why Christians argue so much and cause hurt and scarring with one another. Then he asked why human’s will (which he determined was the cause of arguing and fighting) overpowered their faith in God… shouldn’t faith in God keep us together and not tear us apart?

I basically wrote him a book for a response, and I’ll save you the wordiness, but it all starts with our pride. I explained how our beliefs come from a source, and those sources can be read into conservatively or liberally, and when something is left to interpretation people will have differing opinions on what it means. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone thinks theirs is right… if they didn’t they would get a new one. We argue because we think we're right.

Arguments are inevitable, but the way we come out on the back end reveals the power (or lack thereof) of our faith in God.

Faith isn’t something that you have or don’t have.

We all have faith, and it is continually increasing or decreasing. If you eat at McDonalds you have faith that the food was prepared right, because you really have no clue what happened behind those closed doors… unless you awkwardly try to peak through the little lamp warmer thing that they feed the food through. But the more you eat there the more your faith increases that your food will be prepared right.

Faith in God isn’t that simple, unlike food, we can’t see or touch God. But our faith in him is either increasing or decreasing all the time. My fear is that we visit fast food restraunts more than we truly visit with God.

When our faith is weak we find ourselves being divisive after arguments and unable to keep the body of Christ together. When our faith is strong we find ourselves reconciling after arguments and keeping our focus on the big picture of bringing God glory in all things.

So how do we increase our faith in God?

We pray… not as a tool, but as a relationship. It is the same thing as McDonalds… the more you go and don’t get food poisoned the more your faith increases in the way they prepare their food.
Well, the more you pray to God the more your faith increases that he will take care of you.

The adverse effect of this is that the less you pray the less dependent you will feel on God. Then the more independent you feel from God the more dependent you fell in yourself. Then the more you are dependent in yourself the more you fill yourself with pride. Then the more you fill yourself with pride the more you will find yourself entangled in sin.

Your pride robs God of his glory.

Why pray if god already knows? Because your lack of prayer will result in God being robbed of his glory, and that IS NOT something you want to stand before him and be held accountable for.
God has invited us into a relationship with himself, and prayer is a means to grow more intimate in that relationship.

Never stop praying.

I pray that our faith will continue to increase and that we will keep our focus on God’s glory.

Summer 2009

2009-08-19T15:36:00.001-04:00

It’s been a while.

The summer months were crazy, and I was not able to keep up a blog. God has taught me a ton, and I wish I could capture it all in few enough words to have people actually read it, so here is my best to capture the highlights.

First, summer camp was amazing. Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters is the most amazing summer camp any youth could attend.

Second, Senior Trip to San Antonio was a blast. I am pretty sure all of them are sold on things being bigger and better in Texas… except for the beaches.

Third, I really felt convicted to help out with areas of ministry outside of my church, especially helping those in need who are in poverty right on our front porch in the Atlanta area. I had a chance to work with a kid named Justin Johnson who was a homeless teen. I bent over backwards for this kid calling shelters, employers, case workers, and anything in between. I found his sister in Waco, TX and had her trying to help him too. Then right when everything seemed to be going right, he went off and stole our children minister’s computer. In his stealing spree he took a few other people’s stuff and got himself locked up because he was already on probation.

I have never felt stabbed in the back like this before. His sister (at first) told me not to help him, other people around me told me to be careful, and this whole thing was just draining… then he goes off and steals from us. He proved everyone right, and added fuel to everyone’s arguments on why these people are hopeless.

However, in the mist of this I was given the most simple piece of wisdom and encouragement by Wayne Morgan. He said, “Jeff, you stick out your hand… sometimes you pull people up, sometimes they pull you down, sometimes you just have to let go… whatever happens, the important thing is that you stick out your hand.”

This situation has left an impression on my heart, and that simple saying will be passed on to a lot of people. Thanks Wayne.

Fourth, Guatemala was a ride. I think a lot of people would go down there and want to change their way of life, but their way of life isn’t broken… it works just fine for them. They do not even know that they are in poverty. However, many of their relationships are broken. There are a lot of fatherless homes, and there are a lot of people who have been burned by the church in the past and have hate towards Christ because of it.

We had the chance to share the good news of Jesus Christ with a lot of people down there, and about 30 people ended up responding to the call.

In Santiago we told the story of David and Goliath, and when we tried to transition to Christ most of the kids turned and started walking away... But one kid stood tall and proud and said, “In the name of Jesus there is power!” This kid was probably in 2nd grade, and his proclaiming this truth brought warmth to my soul. After the translator explained what he said I got down on one knee to be closer to his level, and I asked him to tell everyone what he just told me. I really hope and pray that he raises up as a leader for Christ in his community.

After the rest of the team left for the states, Chad Hambrick and myself stayed back to speak at a youth leadership conference. It was supposed to be in Guatemala City. It wasn’t, it was “3” to 5 hours away in the Central American Jungle where it felt like you were walking through a hot tub that had a deep end. We were supposed to ride down there in a car. We didn’t, we rode in an old school bus on the hump where the tire is. We were supposed to have our own room. We didn’t, we slept in a room fit for about 25 students, but it had about 50 kids crammed in there. This part of the trip was clouded by miscommunication, but I’m sure there was some important lesson that I forgot to learn.

Now summer has gone, and the fall semester is here. I look forward to what God has in store for me, and for First Baptist Covington. I have high hopes with the Student Ministry, and I really think we can rock this county for Christ (does that sound like cheesy youth minister talk? I think it’s wearing on me).

Stay tuned, and I’ll keep the blog more up to date for the months to come.

Busy Lives and Folded Arms

2009-06-24T13:30:00.003-04:00

One night I was playing basketball up at the YMCA and met a guy who used to be in ministry. He actually was a youth minister before he got burned by his church, but now he is a social worker in the heart of Atlanta.

After we had finished playing we got to talking about his history with the church and his current work. He had actually spent time working with a seminary and doing guest lectures.

He told me that one time he brought a homeless friend and posted him outside of the classroom, and then divided his class into two seperate roomes. So you have two classrooms next to each other, both full of seminary students, and a homeless man sitting on the wall between the rooms.

Before he split the class he gave them instructions. They would work together on writing a sermon on the Good Samaritan. He gave each group a certain amount of time to create the sermon and told them that it should be easy because this story was so well known. After the allotted time was up, each class was to send half of their group to the other group where they would compare each other’s sermons.

This might be a little confusing, so let’s say there were 20 people to start with. 10 people went to one classroom, and 10 went to the other. Once each group finished the sermon 5 from the first room went to the second room, and 5 from the second room went to the first room.

As the time wound down each group hurried to put the final touches on their masterpiece. When the time was up they hurried to the other classroom to preach a message that would capture the historical value of the parable, but at the same time bring relevant application to this day and age.

They basically told the story from the Bible and then plugged in modern day figures to capture the weight of what was going on. You could have a Baptist preacher passing a man with a blowout in the side of the road hurrying to get to church, and then the head deacon doing the same thing, but the person who stops to help is a gay man who happens to also be the town atheist, but he is the one who shows compassion.

After each group presented their sermon they pulled the class back together in the first room and the teacher (the man I played basketball with) gave his take on the story… except instead of plugging in a pastor or head deacon passing someone with a blowout, he plugged in seminary students passing a homeless man in need to preach their sermons to one another. Wow! Can you imagine the weight of the story sinking down on the seminary students as his homeless friend stepped foot in the classroom?

Where is our heart for the needy? Where is our heart for the homeless, the sick, the diseased, the widows, the orphans, and the lost?

Here’s where I am struggling… it is easy to put some money in a love offering for a benevolence offering, it’s easy to go down town and buy some homeless guys a meal, or even give them some spare change to keep them from following you, it’s easy to help out at a soup kitchen twice a year… but what about really investing in their lives?

I recently had a crazy encounter with a transvestite (that’s another story), but it led me to go downtown and hangout with some homeless people. I got a lot of people asking me for money, some being very honest about wanting marijuana, and others just wanting a bottle of water, then everything in between; but the crazy thing is just about all of them either initiated or asked to be hugged. This really messed my heart up… what a simple and easy thing to provide… but what a great need… a need to feel cared about.

A week after hanging with the homeless a homeless teenager showed up at the door of my church. We had just finished up our early service, I was heading to teach Sunday School, and someone pulled me aside and said that someone needed to help this guy.

The temptation was to pass him off to someone else… because, hey, I’ve got to go teach; but at the instant I was reminded of the Good Samaritan and the story of the seminary students.

I talked to him for a second and could tell he was strung out on something… which I later found out that he was strung out on something and hung over. I could tell that people were uncomfortable around him… and to be honest, he was very uncomfortable to be around. He was making a lot of fidgety movements, and he kept opening his eyes extremely wide and moving his neck out like a turtle (hard to explain).

I decided that I didn’t care what people would think, and I took him to the college and career Sunday School class. I told him that if he hung out there they could instruct him how to get to the service afterwards, and if he came to the service that I would take him out for lunch.

We went to lunch and I found out a lot about his life story… man, so many of us have it so easy… and the whole time we were talking I had thoughts going through my head… “Should I let him crash at my house? Will he steal any of my stuff? What if he goes crazy and kills my dog? Should I get him a hotel room? Should I try to contact his mom or sister and let them know where he is? Do they honestly not care about him?”

After a good while of talking I led into the gospel. I wanted to make sure that even if he didn’t feel loved by those around him that he could have true and complete love from God. He wasn’t like most homeless guys I’ve met that know all the answers already, and tell you that they’re covered by the blood… he was clueless to the gospel and told me that he was an atheist until that morning, and now he didn’t know what to think.

We eventually parted ways, but sure enough the next morning he showed up to our church again wanting to see me. He asked if he could fix stuff around the church, but we have a protocol for that, and plus I couldn’t leave someone I didn’t really know unsupervised, and I was too busy catching up on work to babysit him. I told him that he should use the time he had to walk around town and try to find a job, but he didn’t want to walk in the heat. I felt bad, but I ended up telling him that there was nothing I could do for him at that moment, and I encouraged him one last time to go try to find a job and he ended up leaving the church visibly frustrated at us.

What do we do with this? How do we help people? Can we truly help from afar, or are we going to have to get our hands dirty and truly love these people who are hard to love? What did Christ model for us? Are we easy for God to love?

The answers seem so clear cut and easy… but it’s not easy… it’s really hard to come through when you’re face to face with the situation. I’ve said it before, but I think Solomon hit the nail on the head. The temptation is to busy ourselves with work and other things to the point where we don’t think about the needy, or we just fold our arms and act as if the task is too big to actually put a dent in what needs to be accomplished… either way, we end up doing nothing.

I don’t know how this will all unfold in my life. I wish I could say that I am selling all I have and going to live homeless and give every paycheck to helping the needy, but that seems far from my heart right now. Sure, it has this almost radical romantic appeal to it, but the reality of that coming to fruition seems so far off.

Maybe I’ll never see the guy again, or maybe he will show up again tonight or tomorrow or in a few days… but whether I see him again or not doesn’t matter because we’ll always have the poor and needy, and I will be faced with a very similar situation sooner than later, and when I do, how will I handle it?

Pray for the needy. Pray for my heart. Pray for First Baptist and how we can help. Pray for the universal church and how WE can help. Pray that we would model the life Christ modeled for us, and that we wouldn’t harden our hearts towards obedience. When you pray “Thy Kingdom come,” don’t let it be vain repetition, but search your heart and seek out ways that you can bring what you are praying for into part.

I fear the day when I stand side by side with the once lame and needy and know that I did nothing.

I Hope Ants Don't Become Giants

2009-05-20T13:48:00.003-04:00

Have you ever kicked over and ant pile? What is the cruelest thing you have ever done to an ant? When I was a kid we used to stick these awesome firecrackers called “M80s” into the ant hill and blow them up.

The M80s would litterally leave craters in the ground. Then ants would find themselves in the trees trying to figure out what in the world just happened. Then they would hurry down to get back to work. It always seemed so sad that they would get right back to working on rebuilding their home.

Doesn’t that seem ridiculous? Look at the life of an ant… they just do the same routine thing every day. A kid blows up their hill… and they rebuild it.

But think about our lives… what if someone was on the outside looking in? We live in boxes, then we get into moving boxes and go to bigger boxes, then we get back in our moving boxes and return to our smaller boxes… it seems so routine and sad doesn’t it?

I’ve always been told by older and more wise people that life will just keep getting busier and busier, and that I should cherish today, but I have the hardest time trying to wrap my head around a busier schedule until I reach another season of life… then I find myself envying the simple days that I should have cherished.

The other day I got into the best argument of my life. It was intense, back and forth, and consisted of numerous “one-ups.” Then when all was said and done, I stinkin lost!

I was walking by the playground and a bunch of kids saw me. They yelled my name from afar, and then came sprinting to the fence line. It really made me feel good inside that these kids were pumped to see me.

I took a couple of their noses, a girl took my nose and ate it, then they tried to get me involved in a game of tag… but everything took a turn when one of the kids made a derogatory comment… “Your nose is pork!” I didn’t even know what that meant, but judging by the other kids’ reaction I could tell it was an insult! I quickly responded by saying that his ear was pork, still not knowing what that meant.

This went back and forth as we named different body parts and said they were pork. By this time all the kids had left their areas of play and joined the crowd of bystanders. What started out as a group of kids excited to see me turned into a group of kids pulling against me in hopes that their peer would trump me in this intense game of pork insults.

I had to venture back to kindergarten to get in a proper mindset for this galactic battle. I remembered one time a kid told another kid that his head was so big that it would explode and it trumped all other insults. So I thought I would put an end to this argument once and for all… “Well, your head is pork!”

BOOM! It was done! All the kids hung their heads in shame knowing that they had been defeated as a whole.

Every kid hung their head in shame except for one… the kid dealing the insults. His head remained high and proud, gleaming with confidence. As the other kids began to slowly walk back to the play ground, he boldly proclaimed, “YOUR WHOLE BODY IS PORK!!!”

Ohhhs and Ahhhs resounded throughout the playground. Smiles stretched across the kids’ faces. Shouts of joy rang from the top of the swing set. I think some kids even leaped and through their fists in the air.

I knew it was over… the warm feeling of victory quickly escaped me as I was certain that the argument was over, and I was not victorious… defeated by a kid. And the worst part is that I still have no clue what the meaning of pork is, and why calling someone that carries so much weight.

Here’s the thing… I miss those days. I often look out my office window and wish I could step back into childhood when things were so simple. They don't worry about making a truck payment, or having a check come in before bills are due. They’re not thinking about retirement or having a good healthcare plan. Life is simple… play wall ball, chase this girl or that guy, or spin around until I feel sick... all equally good choices.

Come to think of it, we’re kind of like ants rebuilding their mounds… we’re so busy, and the things we busy ourselves with seem so important at the time, but from the outside looking in those things are ultimately meaningless.

I really think we need to simplify our lives and start investing in the eternal.

One day all of our earthly treasures will pass away. Designer jeans will wear out, cars will break down, things will go out of style… fill in the blank… whatever it might be, if it is of the earth it will pass away.

This is tough for us because we are so caught up in the now; but the more we separate ourselves from perishable things, then the more we will experience true freedom and true happiness in this life. And I’m not talking about this superficial happiness that is preached in the health wealth gospel… I’m talking about true happiness that can only come from walking in line with God’s intended order.

I hope we start taking more time to weigh our investments and focus on the life to come. Maybe it means selling your stuff and giving to the poor. Maybe it means giving a burger and talking to a homeless man about his situation. Maybe it means giving your life to ministry. Maybe it means getting more plugged into your church. Who knows where God will lead you... I only ask that you listen and be obedient.

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus... and the things of earth will grow strangely dim..."

One Bite at a Time

2009-05-05T15:26:00.003-04:00

“You couldn’t stop the earth quake, you can’t fix Los Angeles, and you’re not going to be able to heal him.”

I went and saw the movie “The Soloist” the other night, which turned out to be quite delightful. I don’t think I’ll ever purchase it for my own library, but I would recommend going and seeing it.

Jamie Fox plays the role of a music prodigy that becomes mentally ill while at college in Ohio. Eventually he finds himself homeless in the streets of Los Angeles where the character played by Robert Downy Jr. (a columnist) discovers him and finds inspiration to write a story about his situation.

At the climax of the movie everything completely falls apart with the soloist and Robert Downy Jr. finds himself sitting next to his ex-wife pouring out his heart. It is at this moment she replies, “You couldn’t stop the earth quake, you can’t fix Los Angeles, and you’re not going to be able to heal him.”

I think this is what overwhelms so many of us as a society. We see all the sickness, poverty, and injustices around us, and then we realize that the surface has just been scratched as we take notice of these problems being magnified in third world countries... we get to the point where we feel like we just can’t do anything about it.

King Solomon had a similar reflection in Ecclesiastes chapter 4. He presents a very similiar observation to the world and then provides two ways in which we can respond to the evil that surrounds us: One is to fold our arms and give up; and the other is to keep ourselves so busy that we lose sight of reality.

How true is this of us today? We either completely give up because our efforts cannot even make a dent, or we busy ourselves with our own lives to the point that anything outside of our world is either opaque, or worse case, merely a fictional tail.

Wednesday morning at Chick-Fil-A we took prayer request, and a few of the high school girls commented on how they had a lot going on. At this point Pete Carter stepped in and offered some fatherly wisdom. He gave some simple advice that I have heard before, but it is often necessary to be reminded of such things.

He asked Laura if she knew how to eat an elephant. “No!” She replied, with a puzzled look on her face. Then he paused, and just looked at her for a second, and I butted in, “One bite at a time.” Then Pete chimed in, almost to echo me, “One bite at a time!”

So how does this tie into pushing back the evil that surrounds us?

First it is important to understand what the gospel is. I think some people mistake the gospel for taking care of social issues. But here’s the problem with that, the gospel is in no way tied to anything that we do… it is by grace, through faith alone. Then as a result of the gospel in our lives we should long to see justice brought to these social issues.

My fear is that we can become so overwhelmed with all the evil in the world that we never do anything about it. What if the Church started to take care of social issues instead of letting the government play the churches role? What if we had a positive influence on the society around us? What if non-Christians stopped thinking of us as self-centered bickering intolerant jerks, and saw us as an accurate representation of Christ?

Let’s face it, people are going to hate us because they hated Christ first; but people didn’t hate Christ because he went around healing the sick and caring for the oppressed. They hated him because he claimed to be God.

If we’re going to start impacting the world in a positive way, we can’t look at the big picture and become overwhelmed. We are going to have to take one bite at a time. I like the way John Randles puts it... "One day you'll be sitting on your front porch and your grandkids will ask you "What's that out in the yard?" Then you can say, "It used to be an elephant." And when they ask what happened to it, you can say, “I ate that sucker!”

As you observe all the evil in the world do not become overwhelmed and ignore it or give up... take one bite at a time and encourage those around you. Remember these three things: You cannot eat an elephant in one sitting. Many hands makes small work. And, if we all did a little, we could all do a lot.

A Reminding of the AWE in Awesome

2009-04-13T22:32:00.002-04:00

I can remember hearing numerous times growing up that nothing good happens after midnight.

But what about just being outside?

I’ve always loved the night. There is just something about it that is awesome.

I’ve never been an insomniac or a huge night owl like some of my friends, but I do prefer to stay up a little later than I should.

I had a buddy in college that stayed up way too late all the time, and then the summer after our freshmen year he decided to work a night job at Krispy Kreme. He would stay up all night making hot donuts and throwing away old donuts by the trash bag full. Then when daylight rolled around he would have to wear one of those stupid looking beauty rest masks so he could actually sleep.

That summer was one of the best summers of my life. I worked outside washing cars, so I had a tan and cash in my pocket. Then when I wasn’t working I was either at the lake skiing or riding my mountain bike. It was a hard life, I know.

Well one night I couldn’t sleep and I had a ton of stuff on my mind. So at about 3am I through on my Camel Back Hydration System, put a light on the front of my bike, put on some head phones… I actually was using a walkman so I could listen to the radio… and then I hit the road. I really didn’t have a goal in mind, I just needed to clear my head. Then after a few miles I came up on the big bright Krispy Kreme “Hot Now” sign.

I wasn’t sure if Jay would be working or not, but I road through the drive through anyway to find out. I’m sure they had seen a lot of weird things at night, but I’m pretty sure I was the first shirtless mountain biker at 3 in the morning.

I tell that story to let you know that there was something about being on my bike (doing something I love) and being outside at night that helped me clear my mind. But was it something more?

I have recently been taking a ton of late night walks with Bearick (my beast of a dog). The other night I was taking my normal rout, hoping Bearick wouldn’t take a second dump because I already used his handy dandy poop sack picker-upper… and then I caught myself staring up at the sky. It was beautiful. The moon was full and the stars were still bright.

I got back to my house and just went and laid down in my backyard staring at the sky and pondering how amazing God is. What is man that God is mindful of him?

The daylight sky is pretty amazing too, but you are limited in what you can see. I’ll be honest… if I ever go to the beach I will still look at the shapes of the clouds and try to figure out what they look like, but the day time sky falls short. It falls short in painting the full picture of how small we are in this universe. It isn’t until you see all the stars and reflect on how many light years away they are, or catch a glimpse of splendor in watching a shooting star sparkle across the sky that you can really REALLY just feel small.

Who are we that God could place the galaxies in their place with the tips of his fingers, but when it came to humanity he slowed down and shaped us with his hands, creating and forming us in His image? How incredible is that?!

I think late night stares into the sky are good for our souls because they help us clear our minds. I think they help us clear our minds because we can be reminded that an unfathomably HUGE God is watching over us and is working all things together for our good so that we might better reflect the glory of His Son Jesus Christ.

You don’t have to have a mountain bike and friends that work third shift, and you don’t have to have a huge dog to walk… you just have to have a piece of sky to stare at. I think it would be good for your soul to go outside some night this week and just spend 30 minutes gazing towards the heavens and thinking about how incredible the God we serve is. Then think about how awesome it is that this same God loves you with a love that transcends anything our minds can even begin to comprehend.

Happy star gazing you guys!

Mancation

2009-03-16T10:33:00.003-04:00

Shortly after I first arrived in Georgia I had to take off for Texas to go to a wedding. At the same time I left for Texas, Jason (my boss and friend) left for a “mancation.” It was a great concept. He went out to California, worked at The Ranch guiding white water rafts, and then he came back to civilization about a week later.

Ever since Jason took a mancation I had wanted to take one of my own. Well, for some reason the last month had been kind of a funk for me, and I can’t really explain it, but I really needed to take a vacation… or better yet, a mancation!

One of my good friends from Texas Tech lives in Colorado Springs and we had been talking about me coming to hang out for over a year now, so what better time to hit the mountains than ski season?

I really didn’t know how all of it would pull together, especially since I was broke and even had to ask my mom to wait a week before cashing a check that I had written her; but through some great people everything came together. Paul Robbins approved my vacation time, Anna Agee helped me get a flight through using some of her buddy passes with AirTran, Mrs. Ann unexpectedly gave me some spending cash, then Megan McLane provided an awesome couch to sleep on and used two of her buddy passes to reduce the cost of the ski lift tickets.

If it were not for all of these people then I would not have been able to pull off my first mancation. I am so thankful for each of them, and they probably have no idea how much it all meant to me.

Back to the funk... I was in desperate need for some spiritual refreshing, and the Colorado Rockies, in part, provided just what I needed. God has always had a way with my soul through the mountains, whether it is the Appalachians or the Rockies, there is something about the mountains that always seems to help me walk a little bit more in step with God. However, as awesome as the mountains were, they were not the main source of the spiritual refreshing God gave me.

What was it that brought me back? What revived my heart? What was it that brought joy to my spirit and soul? I believe God brought this to me through a genuine friendship.

God never intended us to walk through this life alone. I know there has often been the desire in my heart to retreat from this world and go live in the wilderness away from all the junk that life has to offer, but weekends like this bring me back to a greater knowledge of why God desires us to live in community with one another... why God doesn't want us to live out in the woods by ourselves.

Granted, money did provide the means to my mancation, but money did not provide the happiness.

The few days I spent in Colorado were filled with great community. Looking through pictures and using a thousand words to explain each one; covering miles of mountain roads while listening to great music; exchanging stories of lives lived thousands of miles apart; reminiscing on stories of old that brought back great memories; constantly fighting tiredness to squeeze the most out of every waking minute; taking picture after picture for future enjoyment; carving through the fresh powder of a recent snow and bombing mountains at intensely unsafe speeds; and all the while enjoying the company of a great friend while beginning a friendship with someone totally new. It was through these precious moments that God restored happiness to my soul.

Christ came that we might live life to the full, and one aspect he modeled this for us was through living life in true community. When we walk in step with how Christ modeled for us how to live then we walk closer to our maker. And when we are walking close to our maker there is a great refreshing to our soul… a refreshing that gives us a taste of the community we will have in heaven.

It is my prayer that I never take for granted the friends I have, and that I remain ever thankful to God for the moments where he gives us a taste of his glory. This week I tasted God’s glory through friendship, and I am thankful beyond words. The best words I can say is that my soul smiles because of the great friends God has placed in my life.

To all who have walked a season of life with me, or who are currently walking with me, I thank God for you. Thank you for being my friend.

Slippers on My Feet

2009-02-17T21:40:00.003-05:00

At what age do moms stop dressing their children?

The last time I can remember my mom picking out a full outfit was in second grade. It was a yellow shirt (probably from JC Penny) and some stonewashed jean shorts.

I hated jean shorts because they weren’t comfortable. That is one trend I hope never comes back! The corduroys can come and go; heck, even bellbottoms can make a comeback, but I want jean shorts to stay away!

In 1992 I moved from Omaha, Nebraska to San Antonio, Texas. I went from the north were coke was “pop” and entered the republic of…

My elementary school had a bicycle rodeo! How stereotypical. But it was awesome! I loved riding bikes as a kid, and this was an opportunity to show off my skills.

In 4th grade the bicycle rodeo came around. It was my second rodeo and I had full intentions of winning this bad boy. But there was one thing that might hold me back… jean shorts! I hated those things, but my mom would still lay them out for me to wear. I think she had faith that I wouldn’t mess up picking out a shirt, but she wanted to have control over what pants I wore… I guess she knew too well that if she let me pick them out I would do just as I did.

She left for work about an hour before I took off to school on my bike. Once she was clear out of site I took the jean shorts, threw them in my closet and pulled out my Umbros. I don’t even know if that brand is still around, but they were comfortable light weight shorts for playing soccer or something.

Flannel was also in at the time. I liked the flannel shirt. So I was rocking some black athletic shorts with neon writing that read “umbro” with a red and black flannel shirt. I had no style. I dressed only for comfort.

I didn’t win the rodeo, but I did place! And it was probably due to my complete comfort while riding my bike.

I miss the days when comfort had the ability to override style.

Here’s the thing though, we still love to be comfortable. It may only be in the comfort of our own home with the blinds pulled shut… but there is nothing like a good pair of sweat pants with a ratted out old holey shirt that is considered inappropriate for public, and don’t forget to throw in the house slippers!

However, we must not let our faith become something that is out of style… something that we only show in the comfort of our own home when no one can see.

I have recently been reflecting on how uncomfortable our faith can be. Just the other day I was at a coffee shop and I felt the urge to go witness to a table of high school guys. I was busy studying, but every time I looked up to gather a thought I would see them and think I should go strike up a conversation.

But honestly that would have been uncomfortable. I kept thinking, “Well they look like good guys, I bet they go to a church down the street…” or “I would, but I don’t want to interrupt their conversation… it looks like it’s going pretty well.” The fact is that it would have been uncomfortable. How horrible is that?! I am a youth minister and I found myself making excuses not to witness.

Witnessing is uncomfortable almost ALL the time… but I think this is almost by design. Then we have to recognize that it is only by God’s power that we can fully proclaim His good news.

Then last Sunday during worship I noticed someone lift their hands, only to quickly put them down after every head and eye turned to see if they had a question or something. People are uncomfortable worshiping as the Spirit might lead them because it might seem out of the norm.

We become disgusted with the demoralization of society but then we are scared to influence it for the sake of comfort.

If we don’t break these walls and break out of the norm then we will continue to lose ground with our Christian influence and we will continue to have dull worship.

What are some areas of comfort you believe are holding back Christians?

It is my prayer and hope that these walls of comfort would continue to break down in my life and in the lives of others. Please join me in this destruction, and let’s see what lies on the other side. I’m willing to bet it is very beautiful and worthwhile!

We Will Give You 3 Months Pay as You Look for a New Job

2009-02-07T23:16:00.007-05:00

Today I went to the gym to get a lift in before I started the rest of my Saturday festivities. I did all the lifting I planned on doing, but my last set made me a little light headed. I had planned on jogging home, but instead I decided to take my time and walk. I still had my headphones in and caught myself in this moment where I felt like I could be in the video of the song playing if it had a video.

I was listening to Sigur Ros who I have just recently been turned on to (great music). I was walking by a chain link fence that surrounded what used to be a tennis court. There were some weeds that had grown up in the grass area that separated the sidewalk from the fence, and the wind had caught them just right as they swayed to the rhythm of the song. I couldn’t help but wonder if a camera could capture what my eyes were taking in as this song softly played in my ears.

Music is simply inspirational. I love music, and I realize its power to tug on heart strings. I’m sure that with the right construction of worship songs in a service you could appeal to anyone’s emotions and create for them an amazing worship experience; but we must be extremely cautious with these types of inspirations.

Please don’t hear me wrong, I believe God delights in well composed and well played music; I believe God works through people’s speaking talents and their abilities to paint amazing pictures in our imaginations; but we can’t get caught up in trying to create a worship experience.

I recently reread a book called “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” where the author walks through the negative affects Sesame Street had on education. Learning became fun and kids began to like school… as long as school was like Sesame Street.

I think the same goes for church. We can make church fun and set out not to bore students, but we must be extremely careful with the environments we create. Sure students might begin to love church if they have drama, games, buildup worship songs, great public speakers, and buildings designed to cater directly to them… but what happens when they leave the youth group? What happens when they love church as long as church is like youth group?

I feel like we're constantly battling people who want us to try this model of ministry or that model of ministry. We are constantly dealing with people in the church who want us to do more gimmicks to get students in the doors. We are constantly dealing with these people getting inside our heads as we evaluate “success” on their terms.

What would happen if a student ministry running 50 students scrapped all of its activities and dropped down to 12 students? What would happen if the youth minister was only able to deeply invest in three of these students? What would happen if all they did was go throughout their town and teach the gospel and minister to people’s needs?

To the consumer driven society, which influences the church, that sees a business not turning a profit and recognize it as a dying business they would probably see this ministry as a dying ministry. To those who run a pumped up Wednesday night program for the sake of “getting them in the door,” they would probably see this ministry as unsuccessful. To the church that is more concerned with Sunday school attendance than the actual material being taught this ministry would be seen as digressing.

Would this youth minister keep his job very long?

What is more important, doing ministry to please the eyes and ears of the masses or doing ministry to glorify Christ? That answer is easy, to glorify Christ; but what does a ministry set out to glorify Christ look like? Does it look like its dying in the eyes of the consumers, or does it look like its exploding? Does it dwindle down to nothing before shaking up everything?

We can inspire students through all sorts of things, and any cult can pack out a room; but what should youth ministry look like? Should we be creating an atmosphere that makes church fun and set students up to leave the church when church no longer appeals to their emotional needs? Or do we set out to build disciples through Christ-centered teaching that historically won’t appeal to the masses?

If Jesus were a youth minister how would the consumer driven society that has its hands in the inner workings of the church evaluate his ministry? Successful or unsuccessful? If Jesus were a youth minister in your town which church would have the greatest numbers?

Would Jesus keep his job at the average church?

If you’re still reading I might need to apologize… I really don’t even know where I am going with this… I just needed to get some things off my chest; but if this has spurred any thoughts in your mind please leave a comment and let me know.

Perfect Messiness

2009-01-14T21:15:00.002-05:00

I recently came up to Kentucky to take two j-term classes at Southern. I forgot how much I loved this place. Louisville, Kentucky is by far one of the coolest places I have lived, and I’ve lived quite a few places. It has a real unique flavor to it.

For lunch today I hit up one of my favorite Louisville Originals, El Mundo. It’s this awesome Mexican place that could hold its own even in the streets of San Antonio, Texas. I ordered the lunch combo, took a seat, and admired the unique atmosphere as I awaited my tasty meal. They called out my name, and as I picked up my plate the cook made sure to mention, “Be careful, the plate’s very hot.” Which of course, drew my attention even more so the food that would soon be in my belly.

Taking the plate in one hand, I swung by the counter that held the silverware and I grabbed a fork, knife, and napkin, and made my way back to my table. I sat down, took a deep breath, and I caught myself in this paused moment… realizing and admiring the perfect messiness of my plate.

There was a carne asada filled burrito nestled right next to a cheese enchilada, both covered in enchilada sauce with melted cheese. This was complemented by a mound of black beans and Spanish rice, with a little scoop of diced tomatoes mixed with cilantro. The whole plate seemed unified by a layer of sprinkled cheese scattered across the plate with a light line of sour cream curving from side to side to complete the aesthetic appeal. Is your mouth watering?! Because it should be!

This plate was completely messy, but completely perfect, all at the same time.

I can’t help but reflect on the messiness of the church. As a minister it is so easy to get caught up in the programmatic nature of the church. We have a stinkin program for EVERYTHING… and this inevitably leads pastors to evaluating their success, or their effectiveness, by the smoothness of these programs playing themselves out.

We fall into this pit of thinking church has to be pretty, as if God could only move in a church that has clear cut lines. In this model church becomes an event that has to be well planned. While I am definitely a proponent of a church service being well planned and having a natural flow to the service, I am adamantly against a church service that might as well invite you to sit back and grab a popcorn and coke as you prepare to be entertained on the level of a downscaled U2 concert.

We cannot be so caught up with having all of our ducks in a row that we miss doing effective ministry.

Christ does not beautify the church by making it neat and pretty. He does not beautify the church by only inviting those from cookie cutter homes to join the festivities. He makes the church beautiful by showing his amazing grace and mercy to a completely undeserving people.
He unites Jews and Gentiles, Blacks and Whites, Hispanics and Asians… he unites intact homes with broken homes… he unites preppy people with biker people, tatted up people with white collar people, hip hoppers with punk rockers, and the list could go on and on. He takes the messiest, most undeserving people, and makes them complete. This is what makes the church beautiful.

Will you join me in celebrating the perfect messiness of the church?

Maybe if we celebrate this then we will be more effective in reaching the poor and broken hearted, the orphans and the widows, the absentee fathers and the drug addicted mothers, the homosexuals and the hookers… maybe if we celebrate this, then we can start making progress in doing our part in bringing God’s kingdom, for His glory.

Let’s stop getting so caught up in the wrong things, and let’s join together in worshiping Christ as a unified group of jacked up messy people. Maybe the worship won’t have an amazing entertainment factor to it… But, hey, I would rather worship with people who are spiritually poor, broken hearted, understanding of mercy, and hungering to know God more over a well polished group of modern day Pharisees any day of the week!

Thank God for his perfect messiness.

Lincon's Hat

2008-12-08T14:04:00.002-05:00

What would you say if I rolled a golden cow in front of a mirror and the reflection was you?

“In god we trust”

I was praying this morning and really started thinking about that statement. I started thinking about all the views there are of God. I have recently come into contact with a few Mormon’s and some Jehovah Witnesses who both claim to have a proper understanding of the God of the Bible. Then there are Muslim’s and numerous other monotheistic religions out there that would all claim they know God.

What do we do with this? Do we side with the relativist who says these all hold bits and pieces of the truth, but none can know what is absolutely true? By no means!

That is another discussion in and of itself. Here is the main concern in my contemplation, how many people in America claim to know the same God I claim to know, but have a totally different view of who he is? Where are these views formed?

You often hear people say, “Well, my God would never…” Then you look at instances in the Bible where God does just what they said their God would not do.

Here’s the problem… People have created a god in their image, and made him out to be who they want him to be. He would not create someone a homosexual and then say that being homosexuality is wrong. He would not send someone who did more good than bad to hell. He only sends the Hitlers and child molesters to hell. Everyone else gets in on the “You did your best” card. The list could go on, but I’m sure you get the gist of where I’m coming from.
So many people trust in a god that has not been revealed to us through scripture, so many people believe in a god that doesn’t exist… and to be completely honest, THIS IS PURE IDOLATRY.

People are trusting in, and serving, and worshiping an idol.

Let’s be honest here… if our God can be defined by us then he is not worthy of our praise.
God must be defined by something that transcends us, His holy and revealed Word. We are the finite trying to understand the infinite. So what we have of his revelation is more than enough to lead us to a basic understanding of him and a saving knowledge of him, but it is not something we can fully wrap our minds around.

God cannot and will not fit into a box that we’ve created.

Please do not form an idea of who God is without scripture at hand. If you do this then you will create a god in your image. What a manipulative trick Satan has used. Sure, a golden cow would be easy to spot and destroy; but we’re not looking at a cow… we’re looking in a mirror.

In what God do you trust?

From Finger Tip to Finger Tip is the Same Length as Your Height

2008-10-22T15:02:00.000-04:00

A simple question was asked to me the other night. This simple question had a simple, yet complex answer. One of my students asked me, “Do you cry?” The simple answer was, “no,” but the reason to the “no” is very complex.

I do not think it is more “manly” to not cry, and I even think a good cry can be healthy. However, for me, I can count on one hand the number of times I can remember crying.

The only answer I could give him as to why I do not cry is that I have become numb to most things in life. Being my friend can be a very frustrating thing because I tend to keep people at an arm’s length. This is not healthy, but it is something that I began to do from a very young age.

My dad was in the air force, and that caused us to move quite a bit. I never wanted to become too close with anyone because I knew when I moved again it would be emotional and sad. My parents were always perplexed at how well I took the moves, but the reality was I did not become close with anyone in order to make the moves easier.

It is a very scary thing to open your heart up to someone. This makes you vulnerable to heart break. Let’s face it, sometimes you have very dark areas that you do not want people to know about, because you fear that if they knew about them they would run.

I guess to put it simply, letting someone know your heart is a great risk, and it is much easier to keep people at an arm’s length.

I fear that so many of us have kept God at an arm’s length. We sit in church services and attend Bible studies week in and week out, but we experience little transformation in our lives. It is almost as if we fear letting God truly take hold of our hearts.

God does not delight in the petty “sacrifices” we make for him. At least in the Old Testament they had to get their hands dirty. But in reality, our hearts are in the same place as those in the Old Testament. We feel that if we make some sacrifice of our time to attend church, or a sacrifice of our time to lead a Bible study, or if we sacrifice the “fun” of doing worldly things, that God is somehow delighting in our actions.

It is almost as if we give God this, this, and this, then we can justify keeping this, this, and this (fill in the blanks). We keep GOD at an arm’s length because we know if he takes hold of our hearts we will have to undergo some major surgery, bones will have to be broken, cuts will have to be made, cancers will have to be removed, and ultimately it is going to really hurt before it gets better. So we keep him at a distance and offer him crappy sacrifices while we go through the motions and deceive ourselves into thinking we are just fine.

Christianity has become vain repetition to us.

The imagery of a deer desperately panting for water, knowing that a quench of its thirst truly means life or death, and comparing that to the way we should thirst for God, seldom sets of an alarm in our heads. We do not thirst for God as we should, and it is because we have become numb to him.

When we run from God it will feel like freedom at first, but in the end, we will end up enslaved to something that is beyond our own will power to return from. God is most distant when he does nothing to discipline us in our sin, and this is a very, very, very dangerous place to be.

So here I am evaluating many aspects of my life and finding areas where I am attempting to keep God at an arm’s length. And here I am trembling as a pray an extremely scary prayer… “God capture my heart, lead me to repentance, and discipline me in the areas that I do not want to give up.”

I pray for all of us that God would not be distant, and that he would take action where actions needs to take place so we can escape enslavement and live in his freedom.

If you can pray this with ease, please do not pray it. Take the time to evaluate your heart and understand your condition before God. Know that the perfection God requires has been provided in Christ, and that nothing you can do can make you right before him. But also know that God does not take this lukewarm junk of keeping him at an arm’s length.

Give God your all, for her deserves so much more.

A Moment of Transparency

2008-10-08T10:33:00.000-04:00

There was a time in life when I was really good at hiding things. I could be in the darkest place spiritually, but on the outside everything would look great. I would write songs that would be crying for help, but I guess no one actually listened to the lyrics, because looking back on them, I was desperate.

Thankfully I have had a few close friends in life that I have been completely transparent with, and these guys truly know me. I’ve written before on the importance of community (see “From Coke to Coffee”) and these are the men in my life that have walked step by step with me.

However, now I am far from all of these friends. I am living in Georgia by myself. My family is all in Texas, and my closest friends are in Texas and Kentucky. I do have my pastor who is a good friend, but do to the nature of our work relationship we just don’t talk about certain things.

Here I am being open and honest. This isn’t a blog that is a cry for help, or a cry for sympathy… it is just me trying to be transparent and human. I don’t want to fool the world. I don’t want to fool those around me. I want people to know my heart.

Here’s my heart on my sleeve…

I’m extremely discouraged right now. I feel like I’m failing at “ministry.” I want to give up on my “philosophy of ministry” and pursue something with immediate success. I’m wrestling with whether or not I am doing an injustice to the church by not appealing to the emotions and senses of this youth generation to” get them in the door.”

This youth ministry started out with a boost in numbers, which, even though I said was not my concern, was actually really encouraging to both the church and me. Then some of my youth started asking great questions about the Bible and this was also encouraging. But now the numbers are on the decline and the questions have ceased.

Am I fooling myself into thinking that my youth are growing spiritually? Is spiritual growth a false security to make me at ease with the numbers declining?

What about my friends’ youth ministries that are exploding? Are they seeking after God more than me? Maybe that’s why God is honoring their youth ministries? Is my own spiritual bankruptcy robbing the church of a better youth ministry?

I know that God can speak through the most incapable of people, and I know that God will lead people to a saving knowledge of him with or without us. But I also know that God honors those who honor him, and that he blesses our preparation.

What will happen when the church evaluates me? What tangible thing will they hold onto to decide whether or not I am doing my job? Will it be based on how effective of a trip planner I am? Will it be based on how many kids have been baptized? Will it be based on how much numerical growth the youth group has experienced? Will it be based on how much knowledge my youth have of the Bible? What will they use to evaluate how good of a job I am doing?

So what am I in this for? For the numbers? For the questions? For the number of kids getting baptized? Or for God’s glory? I pray that I would not take my focus off of God’s glory, but I battle with this on a daily basis.

I am honestly not looking for you to encourage me or tell me that things will be okay or to tell me that I’m doing a good job and to keep up the work. But I am asking for your prayers. Please pray for me and pray for my youth.

So if you’re one of the many that has asked me “are you doing okay?”, and I haven’t had a chance to actually have a deep conversation with you… then here’s the answer… no, I’m not doing okay. But I’ve been here before, and I’ll climb out again.

I Sold My First Guitar a Long Time Ago

2008-09-19T15:33:00.000-04:00

One of the perks to being a Youth Minister is getting free meals. I’m not so much referring to people picking up your tab, but the meals that are prepared at people’s houses.

I really do cherish these times. It’s so nice to sit down in someone’s home and have true fellowship. One thing I’ve noticed that is without fail in the “south” is that dessert is always baked and accompanied with coffee. If you know me, you know that I love coffee, so that is often more enjoyable than the desert.

Recently I had dinner at the Morgan’s house. All of their kids (none being youth) have been incredibly shy towards me, maybe it’s the beard, who knows? But from the moment I stepped into their house they opened up.

Ame took me straight to her incredibly clean room and immediately began to destroy it! Abigail kept trying to pull me into her room to show me her bed and how high she could jump on it, and then Ame would quickly pull me back to her room. Wallace was still pretty shy, but he did manage to keep from tucking behind his dad’s leg the whole night… and anyone who knows Wallace knows that is making headway!

After play time, after dinner, and after dessert, Becky wanted to pull out Wallace’s guitar.

When I first heard that Becky wanted Wallace to learn to play guitar I had two thoughts: First, I flashed back to 1992’ when Acky Breaky Heart hit the airwaves and I was first inspired to play guitar. I was 8, quickly became discouraged, and put the guitar down for four years until I picked it up again. So I wondered if 5 might be too young? Second, I thought about the possibility of Wallace being a youtube sensation… a 5 year old guitar prodigy! And that would be awesome to be able to say, “Yea, we jam together.”

Once the guitar was out I strapped it on (without adjusting the strap… adjusting a guitar players strap is like moving someone’s car seat). I hit the first chord and it sounded out of tune. I tuned it up, and quickly discovered that the guitar was not in tune with itself. I would go into the technical side of things, but let’s just leave it at it doesn’t sound as good as it should.

As far as instruments go, this is all Wallace has ever known… a junior guitar, ran through a mini amplifier, that isn’t in tune with itself. He might think it sounds good, and he might think that this is just the way guitars are, but there is so much more!

I think this is how we so often think of life… we see things as they are and just except them. For example, I’ll give you money on the account that I get the same amount back; or love those who love you and if someone hates you then it’s okay to hate them back, or at least show strong dislike; people strugle with depression, some people are gay, and the list could continue. The point is that, these things are accepted as normal, but in fact, this is not the way God wants it to be.

Here’s the thing, we can live life like an out of tune guitar, and maybe that’s fine because it’s all you’ve ever known; or we can live life straight up like an August Rush Orchestra where every instrument is fine tuned, playing in perfect rhythm, in majestic harmony, in all its glory and splendor.

One path will lead you to destruction and the other will lead to life.

I want to challenge you to explore how Christ modeled for us to live. Take the time to pick through the gospel according to John and take notes on the people Jesus hung out with, the things that he concerned himself with, the things he taught his disciples, and etc. I think you'll find that there is a better way to live life than just excepting the way things are.

What would happen if we loved our enemies... that in the same way we hope that the Holy Spirit conforms our flaws into the image of Christ we had that same hope for people that hated us? What if we served others, even those who have nothing to give in return? What would happen if we actually lived a life that reflected Christ? Maybe if we stopped being a "church" of the world, and started living as the Church in the world, we would truly be light to darkness and people would start to know Christ.

"If I Can Control Him I Don't Need Him"

2008-09-10T12:04:00.000-04:00

If you're sitting at my desk it doesn’t take long to find out that I’m a Texas Tech fan. I have an awesome red coffee mug with a huge double T on it, and then I have another Texas Tech cup for reinforcement. At the foot of my desk is a Texas Tech floor mat (thanks to my sister who is a UT grad), and then the most prized of all my Tech things is hanging on the wall.

No, not the Texas Tech football shirt (which is pretty cool), but my diploma… I have my Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing degree hanging up in all its glory.

Man, I’m proud of that thing. College was such a great time in life; but what they didn’t tell me in marketing was that there aren’t a lot of marketing jobs out there. Most marketing majors seem to end up in sales.

When I was in seminary I decided that I needed to have a job where I was making enough money to live. That ruled out most part time jobs. But I did find a part times sales job selling cars. I thought to myself, “Well I guess I do have a degree in marketing… how hard could sales be?” Big mistake!

I’ve always had a love for cars. When I was a kid I had a ton of hot wheels, and I used to go to car races with my dad all the time. Then when I turned 16 I started washing cars at a local car was called "The Wash Tub" in San Antonio.

Working at the Tub was a great job. Some people hated the heat, but I was making 10-12 dollars an hour… so the heat really didn’t bother me too bad as long as my pocket was stuffed with one dollar bills at the end of the day. My base pay was $5.50 and then we made tips on top of that. The harder you worked the more cars you would finish, and the more cars you would finish the more tips you would get. It was simple math to me. The more I worked the more money I made.

I continued this trend of working with cars once I entered the car sales business, but I ended up hating it! A little bit of the hate was routed in the fact that people just don’t like car sales man; but I worked at a really reputable company and I was paid a flat commission, which made me not the normal car sales man.

The reason I hated it was because you failed 90 percent of the time. If you sold a car to 1 out of every 10 costumers you were considered a success. But the thing was is that you could work 40 hours and make absolutely nothing, or you could work 8 hours and make a thousand dollars.

The amount of money you made did not directly correlate with the amount of hours you worked. This took its toll on me so many times. It didn't matter that you knew eventually things would pan out... when you were working a lot of hours and not making any money to show for it, it was just depressing.

While sales managers tell you that you need to be in control of the sale, ultimately it is the person buying that is making the call, and you can't control that.

The fact is that we like to be in control. We are control freaks (especially guys).

This last spring break some friends and I went from Kentucky to Florida. There were five of us, and two of them did not have cars. Then one of them had a jeep wrangler which just wouldn’t work for the trip. So it was between my F150 and a ford explorer. Of course I volunteered to drive. Some people might think I was doing everyone a service by sacrificing the miles on my truck for the trip, but the fact of the matter was that I wanted to drive.

I hate riding with people. Some people follow too close, other people multitask while driving, and some people are flat out bad drivers. I’d much rather be in the driver seat and be in control of the vehicle.

Let's face it, maybe it’s not driving, but everyone has something they want to be in control over.

I think this is why salvation is so hard for people to grasp.

We want to control God. If we do x,y,z then the outcome is (fill in the blank). So many people think that if their good deeds, which they can control, outweigh their bad deeds then they get into heaven. If you do good then God will bless you, and if you do bad then God will curse you… so as long as the good outweighs the bad then you’ll ultimately be blessed with heaven.

I can remember being in New York City and sitting down at the ESPN zone with a guy from Tennessee. We got to talking about life and he asked me what I was doing. I told him that I was in seminary and that I wanted to do church planting to reach the 20-somethings age group (that has since changed).

After he found out I was going to be a minister he started telling me about his lineage,\; how is grandma was a Christian and his mom was a Christian, and that when he died they’ll tell God to let him in; and because he tried to do good that God would let him in.

At this moment I was faced with a decision, do I want to talk to this guy about religion or do I want to get back to talking about college football? I’ll be honest, sometimes theological talk hurts me head and I need to talk about something light. I chose to take the rout of religion knowing that I might offend this guy and make things awkward.

I looked at him, my tone slightly changed, and I tried to make the gospel as simple as I could without robbing it of anything, and I told him, “Here’s the thing… you just said you ‘try to do good’, and that implies that you sometimes don’t. God doesn’t just want your good to outweigh your bad… he requires perfection.” At this moment you could see the wheels turning in his head… you could see it on his face… he might as well have said, “Then who can be saved?!”
After a short pause I continued, “But here’s the beauty of the gospel, what God requires, he’s provided.”

He was floored, he had never heard the gospel presented like that before.

Now that the conversation had taken a more serious turn, he looked back at me and said, “You know what… there’s a whole nother group that needs to hear that message and it’s the 40-somethings. I wouldn’t just tell that to 20-somethings, but I’d tell that to everyone.”

Our salvation isn’t something that we can control. God blows this idea, of us being able to control him, out of the water in the book of Job. Their thinking was the same as ours, if you do good God will bless you and if you do bad then God will curse you. Job was being cursed therefore he must be doing bad things; but that wasn’t the case.

God wants to make clear that we can’t control him by our actions.

Salvation is a tough thing to grasp because it is by Christ alone. Even if we completely fulfilled the law we couldn’t earn salvation. The law was never intended to save people… it was to point people to God. This means that the “good things we do” are not a means to salvation, but a result of the good work God is doing in our hearts.

What a beautiful place to be in… to know that no matter how many good things you do you will not be any closer to right standing with God; and no matter how many bad things you do you will not be any further from right standing with God. Our right standing with God comes from faith in Christ, and nothing else! We have no room to boast.

I think Derek Web said it best, “No more my God, I boast no more.”

From Coke to Coffee

2008-09-02T22:28:00.000-04:00

I can’t wait to be a house owner. I really don’t need a big or fancy house, but you better believe I’m going to have something unique. I want to take a collection of ideas I’ve gathered from all the cool coffee shops I’ve been to and just make my own creation. I’m not talking about this fake/corporate coffee shop look, but something truly unique.

Is it sad that I’ve become such a coffee shop junkie that I basically want to create one to live in? Don’t tell me what you think… I just wanted to throw that out there.

Anyways, one thing that I have to have to complete my awesome future home is a huge front porch. I want a great backyard too… but the front porch is going to complete it.

I can’t wait to get up at 6a.m. and fix a pot of coffee (dark roast), walk out of my coffee shop haven looking home to my front porch, and just sip the morning away.

Later in life I am completely fine with my neighbors saying there are three things that are certain in life, “Death, taxes, and old man Martin hanging out on the front porch.” How cool would that be?

Sadly our societies are moving away from front porches. People get up, get into their car, open the garage, commute to work, come home, pull back into their garage, close the door, and go about their individualistic lives.

We have become so impersonal… yet we’ve mastered the cheap, meaningless, shallow “hey how are ya’s.”

“Hey, how’s it going?”… “Oh, things are going well.”… “Awesome! Well we need to catch up soon.”… “Sounds great!”… Done.

We need to transition from coke to coffee.

What I mean is that coke is fast… it’s a cool refreshing quick fix. Let’s face it, sometimes you just need a coke (and I mean coke in the southern since… sprite, root beer, mountain dew… all equal “coke”). But like I said, it goes quickly. You load your fountain drink down with ice because you want the thing borderline freezing, only to get frustrated with how quickly you hear that annoying “straw sucking at the bottom of an almost dry cup” sound. Sonic is a catch 22 for me.

Coffee, however, is something that you drink slowly. It starts out way too hot, and you just sip on it until it gets to the right temperature. But you can’t be careless here, because if you wait too long it gets nasty cold… so you have to be thoughtful in your approach to drinking a great cup of coffee. Coffee is something you sit down over and talk about life.

We have to move from quick shallow hellos to deep meaningful conversations.

How many people truly know you? And I don’t mean they know what you drive and where you’re from… but truly know the depths of your heart?

How many people do you truly know?

As glorified as the self made man is in our society, and as tempting as it is to want to just withdraw from this consumeristic/entertainment driven world we live in… we were not created to live alone. Community has been perfectly modeled for us in the Trinity; and community is actually necessary for us to live within God’s intended created order.

I want to encourage everyone to sit down over coffee with someone this week and to have a deep meaningful conversation. Start a true relationship with someone that you can truly know and that they can truly know you. Be vulnerable and honest, and see where the conversation leads.

If you are living life by yourself and not sharing the depths of your hearts with others then you are merely existing… but if you are openly bearing witness to what God is doing in your life with others then you are tasting more and more what it means to truly live life, and to live it well.

Introductory Matters

2008-08-25T11:30:00.000-04:00

I recently moved to Covington, Georgia from Louisville, Kentucky; and before that I was living out in Texas. I would venture to say that besides my friends and family, one of the things I miss the most is tex-mex food. Now some people in Georgia have no clue what that is… but then again, people in Texas most likely have no clue to what a “pot-licker” is.

I guess I love tex-mex because of its unique flavor. I am sure many of the same initial ingredients are used to cook southern food that are used to cook tex-mex, but it’s in the way that the ingredients are complied that bring out the incredibly delicious flavor that arouses the taste buds of Texans and those who visit the great state on a daily basis.

Now that I’m hungry, let’s take a quick turn to our life journeys…

Everyone has a walk of life which they have begun and are in the mist of, and of which they will one day conclude. But until that conclusion comes each person seeks their own meaning to this world. Some people settle for merely getting by, others seek greatness and continually fall short, and still others accomplish great things whether they will ever be known for them or not.

I can remember taking a personality quiz when I was a senior in high school and there were four basic categories that you should fit into. Everyone in class fit overwhelmingly into one of those boxes, but I scored equally among all of them. My teacher said that it meant I was still searching for my identity; but I thought it just meant I was well rounded.

Since then I have taken many journeys… both physically and spiritually; and in each of those I would say my identity has easily been found, it is just still in the process of being fine tuned.

My identity is in Christ, but what does that mean, what does that look like?

I’ve seen countries where the majority of people despise the United States and Christianity, and in their minds those two things are intertwined. To them we are merely living in a pool of hypocrisy, and they want nothing to do with us or our defining religion.

I’ve met people that act as if they have everything figured out, and they feel as if they are enlightened because they have concluded if there is a God, no one could truly know him.
I’ve met people that are completely lost and openly searching for meaning.

And then I’ve met people that look so beautiful on the outside, but in their inner being they are completely torn apart.

In all of my journeys and in all of the people I have met along the way, each place and each person has a very unique story with many essential characteristics. All of these things have left an impression on me and added beautiful things to my character… everything around me serves a purpose in shaping and molding me into whom I will become, but none of those things define me, they merely add flavor to the mix.

But to those who are searching for meaning and identity, how do they handle the environments which they surround themselves with?

Do they let their surroundings add flavor to who they are, or do they let their surroundings identify them?

I contend that if your identity and worth are not in Christ that you will let your environment define you and control who you are. You will be unique, but not in your own way… not in a Christ-centered way… you will be unique in the way that society has formed you to be.

Remember this: We are called to be in the world, but not of the world. Therefore, let’s not be conformed to the perishable darkness that surrounds us, but let’s be transformed by God’s imperishable Word.

I hope that you join me in this journey as I seek to unpack some answers to what it means to truly live life in Christ. However, my greater hope is that you do not go through this life merely existing, but that you would truly live life, and live it to the full.