Interesting new blog

I’ve come across an interesting new voice in the youth ministry blog-i-verse.

Once A Youth Pastor.

This guy was a youth pastor, and now that he’s not he’s asking a lot of questions about youth ministry effectiveness, essentials, etc.

Pretty interesting. Somethings I agree with, others I don’t. But he raises a lot of good questions. Check it out.

Busy Weekend

Well, beyond::afterhours went really well.  We had 35 students out and we rocked the dodgeball pretty hard.  FYI, for all youth pastors out there,  dodgeball is the easiest event ever.  Loads of fun and easy set up and clean up and all around awesome. So that was my friday evening.  I was pretty tired after wards, and it was a great time, connecting with students and being able to chat with some of the parents too.

Then on saturday, we had to move a bunch of our youth ministry stuff from esperance, to our creekside campus.  So we did that, easy cheese, but Kathy called me and told me that Judah was diarrhea-tacular. So that added to the adventure of the day.  That evening Don, our senior pastor, and Kathy’s Dad, came over to get Kathy’s professional medical opinion on whether or not he should go to the ER for some heart stuff. He ended up going, and spending a few hours there.  And I ended up preaching on Sunday.

So I stayed up a little later than I would have liked and woke up early to prepare, I worked with don’s notes and had to put them in my voice.  That was fun.  It went well for short notice and working with Don’s notes as my template.  There was a lot that could have been better, but it is what it is.

After church Younglife Opendoor had a bowl-a-thon fundraiser that I went to and hung out at for a bit.  They raised a ton of money so that was great.

Afterwards I went home and crashed.  I don’t know the last time I’ve slept so hard and was so physically drained.   Even after I woke up, I just wanted to lay on the couch and do nothing.  The crazy crazy thing is that when I take great naps during the day, I usually can’t sleep at night.  But I slept so good.  Man I was tired.  I feel good today though.

Overly Serious Politics & People Make Me Sad

So I don’t like to take myself to seriously, sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who really gets the joke in my head, and so I like to laugh and I like being around people who like to laugh. I can’t stand people who take themselves too seriously. Life’s to short for that.

That’s why reading about Mike Huckabee’s campaign plane’s game of nap tag was so refreshing. Something that has really come across in the Huckabee campaign is that this guy is a real person, and I can follow a real person.

I have worked with too many people who try to keep appearances, or who don’t want to let people know who they really are.  That’s one of the things that make Jesus so attractive to me.

Here’s the Son of God, who could have come as a conquering king and kicked but and been really serious and scary (which is what many of us believe God is like.)  But he didn’t  Jesus came as a little baby boy, he grew up in obscurity as a carpenter’s son, and when he started his public ministry, he gathered a bunch of regular dudes around him and showed them the way of the Kingdom.  He laughed, he told jokes, he made friends.

Now Jesus had some very serious moments and some very serious conversations and those moments are so emphasized because they were unusual.  My dad is a jokester, but growing up when he was serious I knew he meant it.

I think the problem with the overly serious is that we become numb to them, they become more static that we tune out.

So relax, have fun, laugh at the Joke in your Head.  Smile more.  Jesus has set you free from being overly serious, follow the Jesus way, give people nicknames, tell bad puns.  But don’t be afraid of the truth, and don’t be afraid to speak up when called for.  But have fun along the way.

Perfectionism Quote from The Jesus Way

Read this passage this morning from The Jesus Way and had to share it.

The Way of David it the way of imperfection.  The story David lived and the psalms he prayed provide us with an imagination that is capable of understanding the operations of God to do his perfect work in us, not our capacities to perfect ourselves.  The stories tell us that nothing abou us, whether good or bad, is without significance; the prayers tell us that everything within us, whether good or bad, has to do whit God.  The stories and prayers together free us from a role and performance mentality, free us from the perfectionist expectations of others and perfectionist ambitions we set for ourselves.  If we believingly take in what is given to us in the stories and prayers of David, we are inoculated against the soul-debilitating germ of perfectionism.

…

Perfectionist talk and perfectionist illusions are generated by that fast-talking master of illusion, the “angel of light’ St. Paul warns us about (2 Cor 11.14).

To live in grace knowing that God loves and utilizes our lives even though we are imperfect is amazing.  When we look at David he’s the hero of much of the Bible and he was a jacked up imperfect person, but he knew that forgiveness and grace could be found in the love and mercy of YAHWEH.  And in Jesus we have that love and mercy extended to us.  How Amazing!

Of particular impact when I was reading this was the freedom from “role and performance mentality”.  As a pastor I try so hard to build something that is “successful”  but Jesus loves me no matter what.  If I try something that fail, he still loves me.  It’s his church, it’s his student ministry, it’s his.  He has entrusted me to do my best and point people to him, and that’s what I’m doing.

Jesus called me to teach people about Him and His incredible grace.  So that’s what I’m going to be about.  As long as I am sticking to his call on my life, then that is success.  What mission has Jesus given you?  Are you stickin’ to it?  Or are you trying to do the role and performance thing?  That’s really dissapointing in the long run.  Trust me.

Vision Day 2008 Recap

Yesterday was our annual Vision Day, each year we have focused ona different aspect of our overarching vision and mission.  One Year, Mission Statement, Next, Purposes and Model, and this year we focused on our core values.

In case you are wondering our core values are:

  • A Course of Discovery
    • Creekside is a safe place to ask questions about your spiritual Journey
  • A Culture of Trust
    • Creekside is a place where believers can make meaningful decisions about their commitment to Jesus Christ and conforming their live to become like him.
  • A Community of Love
    • Creekside is a church that encourages people to build a strong relationship with God and others

In an effort to emphasize how each of these values play out in the context of our community we captured three different family stories on video and played them during the service.

Each story was an incredible display of God’s goodness in the midst of the messiness of life, and keeping with our theme that the church is the hope of the world, we saw how Jesus bride really came through for each of these families.  Pretty cool.

The whole sermon audio is available here.

Here are the links to the videos

All in all I felt like vision day went well this year, we had a few technical issues, but the impact wasn’t lessened by them.  If you were there I’d love to hear your thoughts, leave a comment.