Ever since I moved to San Antonio, I’ve found the radio stations here lacking. They play too much of the same stuff over and over and over. 99.5 KISS still plays Limp Bizkit. Who still listens to Limp Bizkit? They play classic rock too, which I’m not saying is bad, but if I wanted classic rock, that’s what KZEP is for. Mix 96.1 plays a bunch of pop crap. KJ97 is okay because at least it’s the faster country I generally like. And no offense, but the Christian stations play horrible Christian music. What is missing is a good alternative rock station.

Luckily, I can use my iPhone and the Radio.com app to stream one of my favorite radio stations from Los Angeles. I can’t get enough of the world famous KROQ. Take some notes, other radio stations, they’re doing something right here. Here are 3 reasons I love KROQ:

1. Format – KROQ plays everything from indie to ska to reggae to punk to alternative. They play good ol’ 90s alternative rock like Third Eye Blind, Eve 6, and Blur, contemporary “indie” style bands like Of Monsters and Men, Mumford and Sons, along with the unclassifyable Foster the People. They play ska like Sublime, and old punk bands that I don’t know the names of. Throw in Marley for good measure.

2. Variety – They don’t overplay their stuff. Sure, KROQ plays “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye but they don’t play it 40 times a day like Mix 96.1 does here. They actually play some of Gotye’s other music. I never get bored listening to this station. And I pretty much like everything on it. Sometimes there’s a song I don’t care for, but most of the stuff they play is my type of music.

3. Discovering new bands. I mentioned a couple of these bands above, but I first heard Mumford and Sons, Foster the People, The Dirty Heads, Of Monsters and Men, and Sublime with Rome all on KROQ first. That’s a pretty eclectic mix these bands have grown to be some of my favorites.

So those are 3 reasons I love KROQ. It’s right up there with Pandora with all the listening I do.

One of the first tasks I assigned to my summer intern was to start a blog and make her first post answer the following questions:

• “What do you want to get out of the summer?”
• “What do you think God wants you to get out of the summer?”

It seemed only fair that I, as the questioner, be willing to answer the questions myself.

These few things have been in my mind lately. They fulfill, I think, both of the above questions.

1. Learn to base my self-worth in Christ, not in the perceived success of my ministry. This is the hardest one on the list, because I have to admit my deepest character flaw: I base my self-worth on how well “my” ministry is doing. From this error flows the other few points on this list. God has blessed the ministry at my church a lot since I’ve been here and I’ve made some incredible connections with parents and students and we’ve had some crazy and awesome adventures. But all that can mask my insatiable need for approval.

2. Learn to find contentment in the journey. I believe God has given me the ability to be a vision caster, someone who can look into the future 1, 3, 5 years and say, “I want our programs/ministry to look like this.” While this can be a gift, it can also be a curse, because I find myself never content with the now. God is doing beautiful life-changing work now, despite the incompleteness of the student ministry. And in many ways, the ministry will never be complete. I need to learn how to find contentment in messy and incomplete ministry.

3. Learn how to sabbath. I like to work. All the time. In some ways, work is therapeutic and I use that as an excuse to continue working at home. The temptation is great being single and living alone. My desire to always be in work-mode comes from a fear that if I stop working, my “project” (ministry) will somehow fail. Because I have a tendency to find my sense of self from the state of the ministry, the fear of ministry failure keeps me in high gear constantly.

4. Learn to find the fullest joy in the niche of God’s Kingdom he’s placed me in. This is a silly thing to admit and I’m a bit embarrassed to say so, but when I lived in California I fell into the temptation of wanting to be famous. Not like, Hollywood famous, but famous in the youth ministry world. I got to meet a lot of great people, and some high profile youth workers, you know, the ones who write books and work at megachurches. And in a lot of ways I wanted to be like them. But slowly and surely the Holy Spirit led me to the conviction that I was focusing too much on myself and not on where God was placing me. But God has me here, in this place, for such a time as this, and it doesn’t put me in the spotlight. That’s good, I think, because I could easily mask this problem with my ego. I need to learn how to be the good and faithful servent who just gets his head down and does ministry, for no other reason than to be obedient to God. Not for fame, not for recognition. Simply knowing that God is using me for something bigger than I could ever do by myself.

“… he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, …” Acts 17:26-27