Camp Fire Smells and the Zestfullness of Christ

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.