Burying the Lead

Students can be incredibly hard to reach. I mean really reach. They’ll be your friend. They’ll talk to you. They’ll even let you develop a perception that you’ve reached them on a deep level…but you haven’t.

My truck was in the shop recently and a colleague picked me up and gave me a ride to the office. En route we drove by a large high school. In talking about it we both instinctively said, “I do NOT miss high school!” Honestly, it was pretty awful. Middle school wasn’t much better. High school is hard, so in order to protect themselves students build up various levels of walls to keep the big scary world out.

As youth ministers we have to climb over the monumental fact that we’re not students with them. We’re not their peers. As much as why try to be “relevant” or “on their level,” at the end of the day we’re still just another adult vying for their attention and claiming the authority to speak into their lives. Once you work, and invest in the relationship, and lose hours at lock-ins and online playing CoD, and sitting in the bleachers cheering at football games, there are still just some areas that won’t let you through. There are just some gates you can’t get past.

And then, usually you have no idea that it’s coming, a student will come up to you and share something spiritually amazing that’s happened in their lives…and they thank you, sometimes you hug, sometimes there are tears. You really have to treasure those moments. And I do. I write about them in my journal. I have a file for things that students hand to me. I even keep scrapbooks of ministries I’ve worked with in the past. All of those things are an important part of keeping your sanity in ministry.

All of that being said, I kind of always thought those moments were amazing, but just an unexplainable mystery of the greatness of God. I mean, how we can get over the disparity of our stations in life, somehow sneak past their defenses and then find amazing rewards…and, maybe I’m burying the lead here, then I read this:

Isaiah 45:2-3

I will go before you
    and will level the mountains;
I will break down gates of bronze
    and cut through bars of iron.
³ I will give you hidden treasures,
    riches stored in secret places,
so that you may know that I am the Lord,
    the God of Israel, who summons you by name.

Holy Frustration Batman!

Luke 9:35-41

                        A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” ³⁶ When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves, and told no one at that time what they had seen.

³⁷ The next day, when they came down from the mountain, a large crowd met him. ³⁸ A man in the crowd called out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. ³⁹ A spirit seizes him and he suddenly screams; it throws him into convulsions so that he foams at the mouth. It scarcely ever leaves him and is destroying him. ⁴⁰ I begged your disciples to drive it out, but they could not.”

⁴¹ “O unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you and put up with you? Bring your son here.”

                I absolutely love this passage of scripture because we see Jesus in kind of a strange place. We’re used to seeing him in miracle mode or teacher mode, but this story finds him in between those places. He’s just come from the Mount of Transfiguration. I suppose you could consider this a spiritual sabbatical of sorts. Just prior to this he had been teaching, healing, calming storms, raising the dead…a busy season of ministry to say the least (and you thought Christmas time was rough). So he took some time away. He went up to the mountain to pray and refocus and get away from the crowds and even most of his disciples. He has this amazing time on the mountain communicating with some old buddies (i.e. Moses and Elijah). He comes back down the mountain refreshed…and here are the people waiting for him, unchanged and needy.

Adam West is easily the greatest Batman
of all time...sorry Christian Bale

                Like I said, I love this passage of scripture. My yearly Bible plan takes me through it at least once and I usually read it more than that in a year. Every time I come away with something different and today I saw something amazing…Jesus was frustrated! Even the Lord of all Creation was frustrated! There it is! Holy Frustration! The divine mandate for my curmudgeon ministry!

I don’t believe he was frustrated that the people had needs, but in their lack of spiritual maturity. Meaning, it’s not about the disciples healing this kid, it’s about the power of God.

 The fact that even Jesus got a little frustrated says a lot about me, and you, and about ministry in general. Here are two new things I took away from this passage:

       1.            Jesus got frustrated…but never sinned.

a.       It’s easy to cloak the cause of sin in frustration. Don’t let yourself get away with saying, “I’m sorry, I only said that (or looked at you that way or treated you badly or threw you under the bus to a church member) because I was frustrated.” Always choose your words carefully!

                                                               i.      “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.”[1]

       2.            The Kid Really Was Possessed!

a.       Just because the people were not where He might have wanted them to be spiritually doesn't mean they were just being needy…the kid was really possessed! The point here is that Jesus, despite his frustration perhaps even to the point of disappointment, still happily worked to meet the need. A wise minister I worked for advised me to always love people where they are even if that’s not where you hoped they would be.

i.       “If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?”[2]

            Jesus, help us to be like you. Help us to be sinless in frustration and to love people where they are.

---

[1] Luke6:45, NIV

[2] James2:15, NIV

Why Mourn a Victory?

Ezra3:10-13

When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments and with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of Asaph) with cymbals, took their places to praise the Lord, as prescribed by David king of Israel. With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the Lord:

“He is good;
    his love to Israel endures forever.”

And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away.

         

            The book of Ezra co-chronicles Israel’s return from exile with Nehemiah. There is some debate as to which story began first, but historical clues tell us that they were concurrent for at least some portion of the story. This passage leaves me with a simple question: “Why mourn an apparent victory?”  In this passage Israel is being restored! Ezra is leading the rebuilding of The Temple of Jerusalem. Nehemiah is rebuilding the great walls of the city. Why mourn? I wonder if only the older generation mourned while the younger generation shouted for joy because the older crowd recognized their part in the exile. Even though Israel had been lost to Babylon for 70 years, this passage says that many of them remembered the original temple. It is certainly feasible that they were part of the sinful generation of Israel that caused God to pour out judgment on them via Babylon.

            I minister to middle-schoolers, high school students, and college/young adult aged students. I see in them such potential for greatness. I see in them such determination that I never saw in myself or my peers. I truly believe that the coming generation of Christ-Followers will see greater things than any of us have ever seen or could dream of. I believe a revival of Spirit and of the Church is coming for them and for us.

            I hope that my generation of ministers can rejoice when we see the young people we work with have great victories and not mourn over the “would-a, could-a, should-a’s” of ministry. If the next generation is to take the Church of Jesus Christ to new heights it is my prayer that my generation of ministers will stand beside them in victory feeling as though we poured everything that we could into them and connected them with Father as much as we possibly could.

            It is my prayer today that I will leave nothing on the table. It leaves me dreaming I will waste no opportunity to reach a young person for Christ for they might be the one to change the world.

            Where does it leave you?

Will You Fight For It?

I well remember them [my afflictions],
    and my soul is downcast within me.
²¹ Yet this I call to mind
    and therefore I have hope:

²² Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
²³ They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:20-23

            If you read the first 19 verses of Lamentations chapter three you will find a laundry list of similes describing Jeremiah’s feelings of loss about the destruction of Jerusalem. They detail how he feels forsaken by God. He says, “…like a lion in hiding, he dragged me from the path and mangled me” (v. 10-11). And then there’s my personal favorite, “He has broken my teeth with gravel” (v. 16a). So how do we get from that utter sadness and despair to these verses talking about the love and faithfulness of God?

            Jeremiah says when he remembers all of his problems he is saddened to his very soul. (Let’s pause here to say that spending your time recounting to yourself all of your difficulties is a recipe for depression anyway.) Then he “calls to mind” three aspects of God that give him hope: Love, Mercy (compassion), and Faithfulness. It’s no accident that he had to intentionally call those qualities of God to mind. Sometimes you just have to fight for it.

            I challenge you today to take a quick mental examination of what your focus is drawn towards. If it is drawn towards your problems and difficulties, it’s time to fight to call to mind the Love, Mercy, and Faithfulness of God. Will you fight for it?

Steer Your Fear

     I'm not a parent, and for the near future plan to keep it that way, but I was someone's child and I work with students and parents on a daily basis. It puts me in a great place to make some observations and I've noticed some cool things over the years. For instance, there are many levels of cleanliness when it comes to parents. Some people will always rinse off a dropped pacifier before getting it back to the child, some don't care. I had a friend once who used to hold the business end of the pacifier in his mouth while getting his daughter dressed and then give it right back to her. This phenomena seems to vary by child. If the first born drops their pacifier it's incinerated like medical waste and a new, hermetically sealed one is installed. By the third child the, "just blow it off" method seems more prominent.

     An important job of parents is to steer the fear of your kids. You don't want them to be afraid of the dark, but you do want them to be afraid of running into traffic. That fear makes them careful until they are old enough to understand and avoid the peril without fear. My wife has an irrational fear of dragonflies that developed from childhood. I'll be honest, not super helpful. My sister was afraid to flush the toilet for a while as a youngster because one of those automatic toilets at the mall flushed with her on it and scared her to death. I guess she thought she was going down with the ship. It's an important to steer the fears of your kids away from things that cripple them and towards things that protect them. It affords them the opportunity to grow to maturity.

     "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
               wisdom;
          all who follow his precepts have good 
               understanding.
          To him belongs eternal praise."

-Psalm 111:10

     This thought is short and simple. We get caught up in that word "fear." We think, "That's only for the Old Testament God. The NT God is all about love man!" Never forget the OT God and the NT God are the same guy. 

     Also, ponder this. The God who created the universe, with all of it's nuanced greatness, had to squeeze the concept of our need to be awed, amazed, and a little afraid of the glory and power of his presence into our language. It's sort of like trying to play a Beethoven symphony on the triangle. There just aren't enough notes to describe it adequately.

     So when scripture talks about "fearing God." Think of it as the fear our parents steered into us. Just like a healthy fear of electricity helps you to mature from childhood to adulthood in a healthy way, a fear of the Lord allows you to mature from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity. 

The Energizer

     I am a youth pastor. One of the privileges and dubious honors of youth ministry is over-nighters and lock-ins. A “more seasoned” minister than myself once told me that each lock-in takes one year of a youth pastor’s life. I’m beginning to come around to his point of view. Last weekend my students, some of my leaders, and myself played laser tag from 11:30pm to 7:00am with maybe 2 minute breaks between rounds. It was exhausting, but it was tons of fun and probably one of the best lock-ins ever.

Who do you depend on to give you more life?

     Over the course of the night we played a variety of games like Elimination, Capture the Flag, and Royal Rumble. The variety kept it fun and made the night go by super fast. One game we played was particularly interesting. It was called “Energizer.”

Here are the rules: 

1. Each player starts with 25 lives and 100 shots.

2. One player is the “Energizer.” This player shoots his own team
mates. Each time he hits a team mate they get +25 lives and +100
shots.

3. OBJECT: Stay alive, defend your energizer, and destroy the enemy’s energizer.

     I was the energizer. Let me just go ahead and say…it was stressful. “Pastor Justin I need more lives!” PJ, help I’m out of shots!” “Pastor, I need help!” It was like that scene from Bruce Almighty where a divine Jim Carey is overwhelmed by prayers and pleas for help. (Maybe I didn’t have the weight of the world on me, but at 3:00am it was certainly stressful).

      Students, one of the real blessings of life as a youth pastor is being there for students who have hit a spiritual stall or roadblock. We YP’s work very hard to cultivate real relationships with our students so that you will come to us in your times of spiritual need. People, parents and students, often say thank you after they have navigated through a difficult time and my frequent response is, “It’s what I do.” I promise I don’t say that flippantly! That is not my Schwarzenegger one liner; it’s my view on what God created me to do. So to the students who are reading this, from my church or not: Talk to your Youth Pastor. He or She wants to help you, to pray with you, and love you through the tough times of life. That said we have a second job as well.

     Colossians is a book of the Bible that is really a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Colosse. He wrote them many things about how to live and he gave them many words of encouragement. Then he finishes his letter with this statement:

Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. (Col. 4:12)
     You see Epaphras was the man who had founded the Colossian church. He planted it and watched it grow and his prayer wasn’t that his church would grow, but that the believers created by it would be mature and fully assured. Another important task of the Youth Pastor is to get you ready to spiritually take care of yourself. Students, there is going to come a day when your Youth Pastor can’t be your Energizer for your dwindling faith. You will reach a point of no return where you can’t fall back on that person anymore or it won’t be enough. Ask yourself if you treat your Wednesday night youth service like life support for your faith. You come in dead and expect the worship band and your pastor to rub the paddles together, yell “Clear!”, and shock you back into faith in Jesus. That only works for so long before you flatline.

     Students, I want you to know that today, I’m pledging to renew my efforts for you in prayer. I will “wrestle” for you in prayer. I will pray that you will not need to fall back on someone else to give you a spiritual booster shot so that you can keep on living, but will, “stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. I hope you will renew your efforts to grow up big and strong…in Jesus.

TINSTAFL

          At my high school Economics was a filler class. It got only one semester and it was paired up with American Government so it was boring by association. One, I’m sure it was a Monday, my econ teacher told us one day about the glorious “TINSTAFL Principle.” He was so proud of this word because none of us knew what it meant. TINSTAFL is an acronym for “There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.” It comes from people who use free stuff as “bait” to suck you into a sales pitch. They may offer to buy your lunch or to give you a week at beach front resort, but you’re going to hear their sales pitch or time-share presentation. It’s never free…never. 

          I serve at an amazing church called Evangel Community Church here in Northeast Atlanta. We just finished a week long session of outreach. We call the week CityReach (Check out a CityReach rewind video here!) and for us it’s just about simple acts of kindness. We give out water at the T-Ball Park and packs of gum outside of the Italian restaurant here in town. We feed firemen and policemen and we monitor school lunch rooms so that teachers can get a break. We cap the whole week off with a blow out Family Funday with free food and inflatables and we give away groceries to the first 125 needy families that show up. There was one question that got asked over and over at each outreach and with a confused look, “It’s free?”

          I was thinking about how “free” these things were the last few days while recovering from the outreach whirlwind. We do tell people that the items and services they are receiving are free, but that’s not really honest. Someone has paid for all of that gum, and doughnuts, and bottled water. In this case it was our church budget and the generosity of our congregation that bore that burden. It’s not free…more accurately it’s a gift. It cost someone something, just not you.

          For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
1 Peter 1:18-21

          Often times archetypal evangelists talk about salvation as a free gift. They’ll even pull out a $20 and ask someone to come down and take it. They say, “It’s free, c’mon somebody come and take it!” and then they tell you that your salvation is the same way. They are wrong. That money wasn’t free. It cost the evangelist 20 bucks! It was just a GIFT. Salvation wasn’t free either. You see our sin was so great that GOD had to die for it! God! Is there anything more valuable? Think of that next time someone tries to convince you that something sinful is no big deal.

          There’s a new hotel in Las Vegas called “The Cosmopolitan.” Apparently they believe the “Sin City” moniker is a bit too much. Their new slogan is “Just the Right Amount of Wrong.” Please hear me when I say, there is no right amount.

          Sin is a big deal and TINSTAFL applies to salvation too. It’s not free, it cost God his Son and it cost the Son his life. It IS however, a gift. Have you received it?

          …if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Romans 10:9

Good Christian B-Word?

I posted this a year ago and thought it was worth a repost since ABC just released the show last Sunday now and calling it "GCB" and "Good Christian Belles" instead. Sneaky...

March 9th, 2011:

          I just read an article posted by a friend that ABC is developing a show for TV called "Good Christian Bitches." The article is slamming ABC and the producers for even dreaming to create such a show. The article sums up the plot, "The plot centers on the life of reformed 'mean girl' Amanda, played by 'Talladega Nights' actress Leslie Bibb, who returns to her hometown of Dallas to find herself fodder for malicious gossip from the women in the Christian community." The proposed tagline for the show is,"For Heaven’s sake, don’t let God get in the way of a good story!"

          This does not shock me. I expect the world to be the world. I expect non-Christian people to do things that a Christian would consider offensive and vulgar. That's the currency that the world, especially moder median, often deal in. I'll offer this for you to chew on and maybe this will give us some perspective.

          There is a sadness in my spirit connected with this story and it has nothing to do with the negative perception cast by this show. My sadness comes from the fact that, if we really thought about it, this is a totally feasible concept. The article quotes a "Christian publisher" named Tessie DeVore saying, "A show like this can damage perceptions [of Christians in this country]." I'm sad to tell her that it is apparently too late. Perceptions already seem to be damaged.

          If Christians in our world and The Church (capital letters on purpose) were functioning correctly this would be a rediculous concept. The sad reality is, it's not. The concept of this show is totally believable. This falls at the feet of church leaders (myself being one of those). We must work harder to cultivate a culture of love, respect, and purity of living. Let me say, before I go any further, that this show focuses on the problems of one gender, but this problem transcends gender, age, nationality and socio-economic identity. It is not just tied to females.

          I cannot give you a silver bullet to fix these problems in The Church. I can't explain why the ideosyncrocy exists within The Church that allows us to accept gossip, backbiting, clicks (from students to adults and across gender) are perfectly acceptable in The Church of our modern era. I can tell you that there IS hope for something better. There IS at least one way to pursue a resolution to this problem if we cannot fix it outright. Galatians 5 tells us that we should purue, "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." It says that against those things there is no law. I think that means you can't go wrong pursuing those things in your life.

          If The Church were being The Church this wouldn't be a news story because it would be laughable. People would say things like, "That's silly, Christians don't act that way?" Instead it's totally beliveable.