Category Archives: minister

Housefull

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Last night, we packed over 35 people into our house for a Superbowl party.  Have you ever seen the inside of my house?  If so, then you know this was a superhuman feat.  Our living room is basically a large rectangle.  It only has one practical place to put a television, one practical place to put a couch…you get the picture.  Yet, somehow we had 35 teens and 6 adults in the place.

It was hot.
Loud.
Stinky at times.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.  In fact, those words pretty accurately represent my vision of community.  And when I say community, I want you to know that I don’t just mean a group of people living together in one area, I’m talking about people who get into each others lives and get messy with the details.  That’s the kind of community I mean.  It’s the kind of community where it’s uncomfortable sometimes, it gets loud, and sometimes it’s not just pleasant smells and sights and sounds.  It’s the kind of community that jams all types of lives together in one room to watch grown men slam into each other for the right to be called champions.

It’s eating too many chicken wings, laughing at commercials, and meeting new friends.  It’s five people piled on a recliner.  It’s teenagers, adults, senior adults and toddlers all in the mix.  It’s the way the church should be.  I’m not saying that the church should only get together to watch the game, or that it should be disorganized, but I think sometimes that the church (the body as a whole, it’s people, Christians) forgets that community is sometimes best unplanned.  We get frustrated that we can’t program community, but then the reminder comes, when you open your house to teenagers and the flood inside and fill every available seating area and then some, that community doesn’t come from a program or a plan, but from an open house and heart.

This is why I don’t mind the housefuls of teens that sometimes come over, or why it wasn’t a big deal that I only got an hour of free time to myself yesterday.  See, my job is to point them to Jesus and to foster community, and if nights like last night are what it takes, then so be it.

Transparency

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We talk about a lot of things on this blog.

Ministry.  Parenthood.  Video games.  Bad haircuts.  Love.  In all of it, I have one goal, which is transparency.  If I’m going to run a blog about my daily life, where I share my opinions, tell stories, and expose my life to people, transparency is a necessity.  I struggle for it, and with it, each time I write something here.

I ask myself questions like, “How much is too much?”, and “Did I overshare?”.  The problem with transparency, to me, is that it is addictive.  When I come here and talk about something I’m dealing with, or tell a story about my family, the negative emotions associated with those things drift away.  Coming here helps me to process what i’m feeling and what is really going on beneath the surface of an issue.

A few months ago, one of the guys in my life that I really consider to be a mentor brought up this blog, and one of the first things he pointed out was the level of transparency that I’d been writing with.  Originally, I hadn’t noticed, and I’m being honest when I say that.  I was just writing whatever came into my head and out of my fingers as I typed.  But, as I tried to figure out what this blog would and wouldn’t be, telling stories about my own faults, failures, triumphs, and strengths just came naturally.  I was proud, then, that someone had noticed my transparency even when I hadn’t, because that meant that I was willing to share my life with people.

It’s risky to be transparent in our culture, especially in ministry, where a wrong step can see you crucified for something you’re still in process of figuring out.  That’s a risk I’m willing to take though, due to the fact that transparent people connect with their intended audience more.  Since I work daily with people, I want them to know that I’m approachable, that I’m friendly, and that I have faults too, just like them.  I never want to give off the impression that just because I’m called to ministry means I’m on top of some tall ivory tower and cannot be approached.

So, until something changes, I’ll continue to write about all my problems, my fears, my joys, my wins, my losses, and everything in between.  Because that’s what I want people to know about me: the whole story, nothing edited or censored.  Because, after all, don’t we all long for that?

For someone to really know us, as we truly are?

Reflecting on Wednesdays

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As I am sure it is in every small town, Bible Belt, southeastern youth ministry household, Wednesdays are rough (or the midweek service time -I’ve learned not everyone does it on Wednesday)  This mid week service is game day, what you’ve been preparing for all week, what the prayers have been focused on, what the extra candy has been bought for, what we’re hyped up for.  It’s the equivalent of the Pastor’s Sunday morning.

While yes, we’re fortunate that our children are in mother’s day out on most Wednesdays, I am spending that time doing laundry, dishes, cleaning, going over my own lesson for the night, getting ready for my afterschool job.  When I’m home from work it’s quickly getting ready and out the door to be there at 5 to help with the bus rider kids, set up my classroom, eat supper (Praise the Lord that we have meals at church on Wednesday nights, not just for the fellowship but the service it provides to our families!) get upstairs for Pioneer club worship, teach, and come back downstairs to stay with the kids whose parents are in the choir.

By the time we get home by 8:30-9:00, depending on what the choir is working on, I feel like we have fought a battle.  Before we stopped drinking soda, every Wednesday night we stopped for the Baptists’ only allowable vices, Rte. 44 Coke Zeros and a chicken strip sandwich from Sonic.   We were so drained, it felt as if our systems needed a little reward. Now, its a glass of water and a Reece’s peanut butter egg.

Maybe we have fought a battle.  I believe we have.  God is using us (by us I mean everyone who teaches, helps, interacts with the students who attend) to teach His truth.  Which often goes against everything else they are hearing.  Last night our lesson was from Job, he was praising God for making his body, which I totally don’t get because it appeared to Job’s friends that God had cursed him (covered in boils, whole family dead, riches gone)  But Job said, I know that God has made me and showed me kindness!  Kindness!  Can you believe it, in the midst of all that, he praised God for showing him kindness!  I was blown away.  The point we tried to get across though was that God made our bodies, He made them good, and that we thank him by taking care of them.   Since we know that His word never returns void, it always accomplishes His purposes,   I pray that someday, when one of the beautiful girls in our class is doubting that, she will remember that God made her.  He knit her together in her mother’s womb, He curdled her like milk (yep, Job really says that!) to make a wonderful cheese.  I pray the boys will know that God created them for a great purpose, to do His will.  Because His plans are good, to prosper us, not to harm us, to give us a future and a hope.

Crash.

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I’m tired. Very very tired.

For the past three weeks, I’ve been “on.” My ministry friends know what I mean by this: it means that day and night, for almost 3 solid weeks, I’ve been with teens and children, playing the role of the one who always knows the answers, the one who has everything figured out, and the one who holds everything together.

Looking back on it all, I honestly don’t know how I did it. Let’s just run down what my last three weeks have been like.

Week 1 – Vacation Bible School during the day, with youth activities every night, except for Wednesday night, which was parent’s night for VBS. This included a game night, a photo scavenger hunt, an outdoor movie, and pool party.

Week 2 – We left two days later for CentriKid, our children’s camp, and stayed until Thursday.

Week 3 – We were home Thursday night through Sunday night, and started our youth camp, Serve.THIS.City, Monday morning. In addition, I was asked to do my first funeral for a family who had just lost their father in a tragic accident.

Folks, just typing that out made me tired. But, it’s a good kind of tired. It’s the kind of tired you get from investing people’s lives, from late night conversations, from loving more than you thought you ever could, and from seeing God move in new ways.

So, today, I’m going to rest. Expect daily updates to start back again this week. See you tomorrow!

Dealing With It.

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I’d love for this blog to be a record of my successes, both numerous and glorious, something that years from now I could print out and let me kids read so that they would see the feeble old man in the bed in front of them was once a man who really made an impact on this world and really did some great stuff.  If I just wrote about those things, though, I’d be lying about my life.

The truth is, life gets really messy sometimes.  And often, I’m right in the middle of the mess.

This past year has been a difficult year of ministry for me.  Because the way I do things at church, and some of the things I’ve written right here on this blog, people have chosen to leave our church.  I guess this is to be expected; sometimes people just can’t see eye to eye.  The problem with this is that I never intended to hurt anyway.  Anything and everything I do is just trying to follow the will of God and do what He’s calling me to do in my life and ministry.  But, where that gets messy is when it causes people to be hurt.  

The hardest thing is losing friends over a decision you make in the ministry.  This past year, some good friends of ours left the church because of a blog post I wrote.  I got called some names that weren’t true because of another post, but that didn’t mean they didn’t hurt.  I have been called out, questioned, and caused to examine why I do what I do and why I think like I think.  And all of that was extremely time consuming, grueling, and painful.  

Dealing with all that did have one benefit, though.  You never go through pain and survive it without growing afterwards.  Those experiences were painful, and I hate that they happened, but with God’s help, I was able to grow as a person and a minister.  This past year has also been one of the most fruitful times of my life spiritually that I can remember.  I’ve gained friends, understanding, confidence in my position, my wife and I have grown closer and I feel like I’ve become a better father.  All of that goodness came with a price though.

As a human being who has been hurt and is a “fixer” by nature, I wish I could have my friends back.  I wish I could repair those broken relationships.  I wish I could make decisions that left everyone breathless and drew more and more people to our church and to what God is doing.  But then, I remember something…..I can’t do it.  I never have been, and I’m never going to be able to.  

Only God can.  When I remember that, that’s how I deal with it.