Month: September 2004

YS Forums -> An open letter to Mike Yaconelli.

i’m a youth specialties forum junkie. i’m not really sure when it happened (i think around my 50th post i was hooked) but i know that it is true and there is no use in trying to deny it. i enjoy the banter, humor, encouragement, and fights that take place on the forum. i enjoy the fact that i am sometimes challenged to reconsider what i believe and sometimes i merely want to slap someone upside the head because they can’t understand what i’m trying to say. it’s an enjoyable place that i like to visit every now and then (actually i like to visit it alot).

i ran across the above thread and it has left me a little confused. i understand what mark riddle is trying to say in his letter but i don’t understand how a ministry could get to the point that someone could say this about that ministry. mark riddle’s basic point is that youth ministry separates teens from the church and thus is failing. i would have to agree that when a youth ministry does separate it’s teens from the rest of the church then it does fail. you set these teens up for a fall. you set them up to think that the rest of CHRISTianity will be one big “youth group” and when that doesn’t happen they simply turn their back on CHRISTianity. this is my problem with some (and i do mean “some” here) para church youth ministries. they separate teens from the church and IMHO guarantee that those teens won’t become a part of a church after high school. i think it’s destructive.

my problem with mark riddle’s letter is that i don’t see how any effective youth ministry can become like what he is describing. adults becoming involved within the youth’s lives and the youth becoming involved within the lives of other church members is a natural thing within an effective youth ministry. i don’t see how it can be any other way. maybe “youth groups” can separate from the rest of the church but youth ministries have to be a part of the church. the whole measure of a youth ministry is whether or not it is building up the bride of CHRIST, so how could the teens and church not be involved within each other’s lives.

10 reasons why your church sucks

a very interesting article. i’m not familiar with ginkworld but if the rest of the article are like this one then i believe i will start reading it regularly. the whole article details a former church member responding to an abusive church leader over why he has left the former church and is now going to another church.

i wonder what someone would say about our church. i could attempt to answer but truthfully it would be very biased and not really accomplish anything. i think we would do a lot better than the church that is addressed in this article, yet i’m sure that there are some who have had bad experiences with our church before who may say the exact same statement about us. i know we can’t get it right with everyone, but a lot do hope that we are usually doing a pretty good job.

hurricane ivan scared a bunch of people around here and started a MASS evacuation from new orleans, which is below sea level. tuesday afternoon i received a phone call from a run-away teen shelter in new orleans asking if they could stay with us. i told them that would be great but i would have to check with our pastor of administration first. turns out he had already told the red cross that we would gladly be a shelter for any needs that the red cross had – they put us as a secondary shelter asking that we stay open, ready, and available for them – most likely to be a meals location. this meant we had to be open for the red cross and i had to call the shelter back and tell them we couldn’t. turns out this wasn’t a problem because within the 10 minutes it took me to find out we couldn’t host them and then call them back they had already received a call from a camp in texas saying they could stay there. i was pretty disappointed. i really wanted to be a part of helping them.

wednesday morning i went to substitute teach in our church school. druing the day my administrative assistant came running into class with a smile on her face and said “they’re here!”

“who?”

“the teens from the shelter … and the have babies!” she was extrememly excited about the chance to help the teens and the chance to hold the babies.

it turns out that they had left new orleans soon after our conversation the previous day and it had taken them 13 hours to make the usual 1 hour trip from new orleans to baton rouge. they needed a break, saw the church, and thought “they’ll help”.

this was great. what was even better was that my leadership team, teens, and parents had already stepped into action. some of them had driven by at the right time, noticed the vans, and stopped to ask what was up. before i could ever get over to see out visitors (it took me about 30 minutes) our parents, kids, and leadership had already taken care of them. food was found. toiletries were brought. diapers were purchased. it was all done before i could even get over there. everyone encouraged them to stay and rest as long as they wanted to and every need was met. i was actually a little disappointed because all i actually got to do was go buy some water – every other need was met before i ever got there. these teens and their leader were refreshed and it wasn’t because we had set up a program or trip for the adults and teens. nope they saw the need and decided for the glory of CHRIST they needed to do something about it. 7 hours later they left to finish their trip.

this would have been good enough but there was more. after our youth service last night i received a call from one of our youth. he said he had just heard from a former boss at jason’s deli that help was needed in making meals for emergency workers in the area east of us that don’t have power. he had already called some of our youth and wanted to know if i wanted to come. “sure” i said and i told him i could get some more.

“nope. i’ll take care of that. you just come if you want to.” is what he told me. today i took my wife and kids with me to the warehouse to find that 15 youth were already there making 3,500 meals. they had set the whole thing up. they called. they organized. they reacted.

i am not sure i have ever been so proud.

they get it!

right now everyone is freaking out about hurricane ivan. some schools have already canceled, the mayor of new orleans has told people to evacuate the city, my neighbor has boarded his windows and then additionally propped up those boards, the roads in baton rouge are packed with people fleeing from mississippi and new orleans, and the governor of louisiana has declared a state of emergency. all this for a storm that hasn’t even decided where it wants to go. i’m not one of those fools who says “i can withstand this thing” but it all seems a little too soon for me. let’s wait until tomorrow to figure out what is going to happen. then run away like scared little girls.

after four weeks of waiting my shofar finally arrived. it’s great. i ran around the church today shouting “A sword for the LORD and for Gideon!” and blowing the shofar as loud as i can. if only i had brought some clay pots with me to church today. i could have smashed them and made the image complete. i’m not sure if anybody else thought it was funny but i did.

wednesday, we are going to celebrate a very CHRISTianized version of rosh hashanah. i’ve been researching the “days of awe” as much as possible. i am finding the whole thing fascinating. if it wasn’t for the fact that it is impossible to follow all 613 mitzvot i would want to be jewish. the tradition is so amazing.

the beauty of being a follower of JESUS, the jewish messiah (besides for the salvation and freedom and such) is that i am able to somewhat enjoy and participate within the jewish customs that HE would have participated within during HIS time on earth.

the parent organization (pbs – parents backing students) of the church’s school put on a 5th quarter tonight after the football game (we played lawless and it wasn’t much of a game – pbs 42 / lawless 0). pbs put the 5th quarter on taking care of all the details and i got to just walk in and say hey to my kids, meet some new ones, and basically just visit. i loved it. i didn’t have to organize anything, take care of details, order any pizza, or stay to clean-up. it was their ballgame and i was just a guest. i thought they did an excellent job with the whole thing and the kids seem to have a good time.

youth ministry wise parkview has been going through another attendance boom. when i first arrived at parkview we had between 15 & 25 teens showing up on wednesday nights for the view. they had gone through a rough time with the old youth minister leaving and the interim youth director. the group had shrunk from 100 – 140 showing up on wednesdays. slowly but surely things began to change and after 3 1/2 years we are averaging over 100 again. the great thing is that we’ve done it without gimmicks. we are not the “fun” youth ministry in town. in fact, i sometimes wonder if we might be boring. sure we change everything around all the time but we don’t do alot of “youthy” stuff. we worship, serve, and enjoy each other. that’s about it.

anyway here’s what sparked this trip down memory lane. tonight at the 5th quarter i had a senior in high school tell me he was going to start coming just because of the message series we are doing. this is the first time this has ever happened to me. here’s the kicker. the series is not a “youthy” message series. over the next 4 weeks i’m talking about the jewish “days of awe” and their relation to CHRISTian belief and practice. i would suspect a kid to come just to hear about relationships or GOD’s will for my life or something else like that. yet this is the first time i’ve ever had a teen say they were going to start coming to church just to hear a certain message. it’s not even like his a “spiritual giant” that we’re stealing from another church (which i hate). he doesn’t go to church anywhere on wednesday night because his home church doesn’t have a service. so he’s going to start joining us for the midweek service. not because it’s fun, not because of games or gimmicks, not because of a light show, or rocking music. nope because of a message series. i also tend to think that he knows that our kids and our adults love each other because of their love for GOD. i love my church and i love the youth ministry that i get to work with.

the title says it all (except i would add their parents to the list of greatest also). yesterday one of my kids and her mom came by my study with a huge frame in their hands. the frame contained a matted collage of pictures from our recent nicaragua mission trip. it is absolutely amazing. i can’t come close to figuring out how much time they spent on making this 3′ x 4′ montage. there was a card with it telling me how much they appreciate me. of course, they don’t realize that it was attitudes like theirs that made the mission trip so tremendous.

i love my kids (and their parents)!

i’ve recently started cyber-visiting the youth specialties website forums and found some of the conversations quite good. i have also realized that two other things:

1. i don’t like a large percentage of youth ministers.

i actually found this out at a youth ministers’ meeting. i know this sounds odd but i simply find that a large number of youth ministers are overly concerned with numbers, have large egos, and strive to be hip. i am definitely not cool and i have no desire to be cool. in fact, i probably have the desire to be even less hip than i already am. i do not constantly try to know my students’ lingo, or what the top bands are, or dress in the latest fashions. i pretty simply love teens. i’m also not real concerned with how many kids we have (thought we actually have one of the largest youth ministries in town). i get fed up with people telling me how many they had for “such and such” event and then pressing me for how many we had. i think i am going to just start telling people that i’ve run all my youth off and i’m about to be fired. maybe that will shut up the talk about numbers. it might be fun to watch how they respond.

2. some people on this board have way too much time on their hands.

i was able to keep up with a few of the threads over the weekend but then tuesday came along and work began again. it was hard but i stayed in the conversations. that is until today. how in the world youth workers continue posting at the rate they do boggles my mind. i haven’t posted once today because i’ve been trying to catch up with the parts of the discussion that have gone on since i’ve been working. wednesday is one of my busiest days, with the view and such. it takes me all day to get things ready for the worship service that night. how can these other ministers manage such a large commitment of time with these boards. it blows my mind.