What is Success?

Today our church staff met after service. It was probably the first staff meeting in a long time that I didn’t leave feeling like I wasted my time. I feel like I voiced my thoughts clearly and accurately.

My youth ministry is struggling in the traditional sense, we have low numbers and there are kids who are starting to flake out on God. But at the same time we are scucceeding with the new leaders that are coming on board, and their are students that are being transformed and that’s really exciting.

I am trying to grow this youth ministry naturally, and not based on events and hype. We grew last spring on hype and that only lasted so long. I want to see this thing succeed based on the natural growth that comes from lives being transformed. I want to see students take the responsiblity to grow the ministry numerically, while I facilitate their growth spiritually. I think that is what an organic ministry looks like.

We will still do events and get people excited and fired up but it’s really not about the hype, it’s about the foundation. People look at the walls, but they don’t always inspect the foundation. Those are my thoughts for today, and I pray that I am heading in the right direction

Arggh

Well I’m back. two posts in one day, that’s quite an accomplishment for me. It does feel good to write these things down.

I have been dealing with two students lately who have been doing some pretty stupid and wreckless things. It’s beginning to feel like they don’t care about it, and all the time that I’m putting into this is for nothing.

Why can’t people see that I’m not judging them when I ask questions based on their past history? Why do people always want to turn around and place the blame for their struggles on other people? What’s the point of working with people like that?

Anyway. I feel like there is something happening that is so sublte but so monumental that I’m both afraid and excited. I don’t know what it is but I’m excited about it. We’ll see

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I should really spend more time updating this thing. Or maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should only write when I feel the need to write. Maybe I should adopt that mindset on preaching and teaching. Maybe I should only participate in those activities when everything thing within me is crying out a clear and concise message. Maybe that’s the problem with the church in America.

We have a tendency to preach out of obligation, but not always out of full bodied passion for whatever God has placed on our hearts. Maybe the preachers who yell and scream and get fired up for Jesus have something going. They clearly have the passion, maybe we can work on the substance with some of them.

I have been working my way through the book of James this past summer with the youth group. Trying to teach on having authentic faith. I feel like it has been a struggle trying to get the students to engage this subject matter. My desire is to build a safe place for teenagers to gather and grow in their faith. And I think the first step is that authenticity. Maybe I’ll just preach this whole series over again to get the point across. I doubt it but maybe that would get the job done. :o) Who knows.

God is really shaking up my spirit lately. Some things have been going on that have frustrated me and I would like to get to the heart of it. I have shared my frustrations with the frustrations and I have not seen any major results. We’ll see what happens.

The fact that I voiced my frustrations is a major victory for me. Usually I have a tendency to hold everything in and let it build beyond the point of meltdown, but I am learning from my lovely wife that that doesn’t actually solve anything. So I am taking risks in these relationships and not just being a pushover. I have no problems helping people but I don’t want to always make up for their negligence or (sometimes) incompetence. But like I said, we’ll see what happens. Writing things down helps my stress levels a lot though so I think I’ll be posting a lot more often now.

water or ice

The quest to figure out this new emerging culture has consumed much of my thought life lately. I feel that the church hase woefully failed to read they culture changes until it was too late, and the changes that they church just caught onto are now passe’.

I feel that the church needs to be a place where every generation can glorify God, together. But with the compartmentalization of age groups in the modern church that makes it almost impossible. Is it possible to create a church that embraces all ages and worship styles and reaches the culture? How about not just reaching the culture, but shaping it? Isn’t it time that the church gets out from under the rock it crawled into in the 20th century and begin to shape culture again? Isn’t it time that hollywood and the music industry look to artists of faith for leadership?

I feel like the church needs to transform itself every 10 to 15 years, maybe faster as technology and style evolve. The seeker churches have a limited shelf life unless they begin to reinvent what they mean by the term seeker. That goes for all churches, who are we trying to reach?

Perhaps we need to hold onto our traditions a little looser. Perhaps we need to take a lesson from water, which is always in motion, and as it moves faster and faster it spreads farther and farther (steam). But if the church is inflexible it’s ice. Ice can melt but it take time. The church should see itself as fluid in the changing culture, moving, advancing.

The church shouldn’t be a faucet, but a deluge.

elusive hope

Hope. It is very illusive. I have spent the last few weeks trying to figure out what it is that I have hope in. I know that I can’t put hope in myself. Because I seem to always let myself down. I can’t put hope in people because they are too much like me. But I trust Christ. And that’s about all that I can hope in and for. That’s a very encouraging thought. That I don’t really have to have hope in the people around me, or the things around me. I can focus all of my hope on one thing. Jesus.

I am a youth pastor, and I lead a very small youth group. I have been there for about 4.5 months and I love it. But, I have been putting too much hope in my ability to lead this group, and I get very discouraged when this happens because I always realize how much I suck. I can’t be all that I need to be. But the nights that I just say, “OK God, this is all in your hands. Do your thing.” Everything goes amazingly better then I could ever imagine. I love that.

first post

My name is Jason. I have a deep passion for helping students experience the joys and challenges of the Christian Journey. The main reason that I am starting this Blog is to collect my thoughts in one place and hopefully if someone comes across my Blog, they would find encouragement and hopefully an occasional challenge.

What does it mean to be a Christian? Where can I draw the line between fundamentalism and passion for Jesus? Those are the questions that I am dealing with personally.

I wouldn’t say that I’m having a crisis of faith, but I am trying to discover who I am in my faith.

I went to a Bible College, and I earned a degree in Biblical Literature. I learned a lot about the Bible, but not a lot about being a passionate Christian. My denomination is a traditionally fundamentalist denomination and that’s great. I love my denomination, I love the structure, the support, the foundational doctrines, but I’m not as uptight as “they” have traditionally been.

This whole transformation that is going on in my life, is very confusing and a little upsetting, but everyday I have a small victory in my love for Christ, and my love for people. And that encourages me greatly. But it’s interesting because I can’t just go around and share these concerns with everybod, so I am coming here to share my concerns, and my thoughts. Hopefully I won’t become a Heretic or anything. I desire to have an authentic lifelong faith, that is constantly growing, and daily being amazed by the grace and power of God.