Month: July 2005

i’m not a wimp about shots or anything but i received my bi-annual typhoid shot for going to nicaragua and my arm is killing me. this has to consistently be the most painful shot i have ever gotten.

i love good comments from people. i really enjoy it when people brag about something i have done or said. it makes my day or night we someone says that what i have lead has been amazing.

of course, i don’t usually grow much from these positive comments that i love to hear. actually, i usually grow the most form negative comments. for me the negative comments usually point the clearest to my weaknesses. in some ways the negative comments are closer to honest critique than any of the positive comments i have ever received.

according to wikipedia criticism is:

the activity of judgement or interpretation … the process of offering valid and well-reasoned opinions about the work of others in a friendly manner rather than an oppositional one.

i need people to “reason” about what i am doing so that it’s weaknesses can be pointed out and i can work on improving those areas. that’s why i joined the weekly group at flickr. weekly is a place where you can post one picture a week and then people offer their criticism concerning your photo. i want to improve as a photographer and the weekly group is helping with that. i love it. the positive comments are good but truthfully i usually learn allot more from the negative comments.

i feel the same is true in ministry. the positive feedback is nice but the negative statements (when we sort through all the person crap that often accompanies them) do the best job of pointing out our areas for improvement. i don’t absorb all that is said with a negative comment because often there is a bunch of personal bitterness connected with some of those statements. yet more often than not there is a nugget of truth to be found within the criticism. that’s what i want to discover. i want to find that small granule of truth and learn from it.

alan, the assistant youth minister, and i are about to start critiquing each other’s messages. hopefully we can lovingly point out each other’s strengths and weaknesses and improve because of it. i hope it works because i know that i need it.

i’m finally back home (actually i got back earlier today). i have eaten, taken a nap, watched the final disc of “24” season 3, and now i am watching “equilibrium“. i still need to process my thoughts concerning the mission trip i just experienced. i did have the chance, along with alan, to talk with one of the leaders of the organization and express my worries concerning it. she seemed to receive it well.

overall the trip did once again confirm that i love my youth. they are simply the greatest youth in the world.

we finished working with our site church today. all of us have loved working with them. the program at night has still continued to stink (mainly because it has been a program).

every now and then i have wi fi access at the mission trip i am presently on and so i now have the chance and ability to post. the trip has been positive and negative at the same time.

first the positive.

• the church we are working with in doing a neighborhood vacation bible school has been amazing. all of the teens and adults have loved the church and the kids. this church is incredibly interested in being involved with their community. it’s great.
• the church has also made us feel very welcome there. they have been very enjoyable to hang out with. we already feel like we belong with them.
• the kids we are working with have been amazing. they are starved for attention, and love being with our teens. therefore, our teens have loved being with them. our teens have befriended the kids of the neighborhood we are in with an intense and great love that i am sure GOD is honored by.
• my teens – enough said. i have the greatest youth and youth workers in the world. i love them. they take any situation and work with it.

now for the negative

• the whole program has been very poorly organized. every leader’s meeting i go to has a volunteer in it rather than staff and the meeting ends up with the volunteer having to say over and over, “i’m sorry i don’t know i’ll have to ask part of the leadership team.” why have a meeting and waste my time if it’s not going to answer questions. the most telling statement of the disorganization is that all of the schedules given to the teens have been wrong. so from the first day all 500 teens that are here have been dependent upon their leaders for knowing what was supposed to happen.
• whoever planned the schedule has no understanding of the developmental needs of teens. consider trying to control middle schoolers as you take their whole saturday and push them through 4 one and a half hour long “training” sessions with only lunch for a break. the sermons weren’t even active in their nature. it was 6 hours of lecture and singing. or consider being forced to keep 500 teens quiet for an hour right outside of the church’s first worship service waiting for the moment that the pastor calls for them to dramatically march into the service and be “commissioned” for all the church to see.
• on the schedule we have free time but in truth it is merely travel time. this translates to everyone feeling tired and worn out.

so the good side of all this is that all the stuff that we have planned and done at our work church has been very positive and our kids have loved it. this means that my teens will leave with a good experience that has brought them closer to GOD and our work church will have been able to use us as tools to extend their ministry. the bad side is that i have basically paid someone else lots of money for me to do my own mission trip, because what they have done has added very little good.

if you can’t tell i’m a little bitter.

i love trying new things – when i’m in a place that i am familiar. the problem is this week i am doing a “new to me” mission experience with some of my youth. it’s called global encounter. thus far there have been somethings that i liked about it and somethings that i haven’t liked about it. the biggest thing i have realized is that i am very comfortable with change when i am in control of it. i do not like having to “float along” in someone else’s sea and be captive to their winds and currents.

of course, this whole thought then turns in on me and i have to start considering if i am forcing teens to “float in my sea” or if i am inviting them to float with me. floating with me is cool but just being in my world that i control is awful frightening. i might have to reconsider some of my creative projects when i get back home.