I have an article in the upcoming Winter 2009 edition of The Journal of Student Ministries. As you can tell by the title, the article discusses the convergence of social media and theology. I’m stoked about how the article turned out. It’s such an important topic! I’m also excited to publish my first article in the journal.

This year, I’ve had my first piece in a book and now a piece in a magazine. 2009 has kicked butt!

• October 1, 2009 -- Social Media Tip: Be Consistent (2)
• September 23, 2009 -- My Social Media Event Toolbox (1)

This song makes me smile. I’ll be hood forever.

• August 30, 2009 -- Megan’s New Skills (0)
• July 16, 2009 -- NYC Pictures | Day One (0)

When Stephen asked us to host a small group at our house, one week after attending Harbor Mid-City for the first time, we begrudgingly agreed. In fact, when he told us that Harbor was a church consisting of a few community groups… we were skeptical.

My faith in small groups had been shaken. I was pretty close to making the statement public that I’d felt for a while… “Small groups don’t work.” Most of my adult life I had either lead a teen small group or adult small group and they had always functioned but never “worked” quite like the books on small groups said they would. We had always met, done some sort of Bible Study, prayed for one another, shared food and some laughs– and that was it. The community thing never happened. The caring for one another or feeling connected… it never happened. Those groups were functional and great, but left me longing for that small group experience everyone talked about in the books.

I wondered if small groups were a myth!

Then I met these people. I don’t know how else to explain it but our group just gelled and it’s been a great group from our first meeting. Here’s a few things that I love about having the group at our house each Monday night:

1. We keep the agenda in check. The agenda is that we’re in community together. There is likely a church agenda. Probably that we’d talk about the Sunday sermon or that we’d pray for one another. And sometimes those agendas converge while other times they don’t. Our group has done everything from adopting a refuge family to watching Monday Night Football. Most often we get together and talk about the past weeks message and pray for one another. We’ve had incredibly deep conversations and we’ve had a chili cook-off. I actually think the magical component that has made our group work is keeping the community agenda the only important agenda while keeping all the other agendas in check.
2. We’re game for “one another.“ The core people of this group hasn’t changed that much in the last 12 months. In that time we’ve welcomed probably 25 different people who’ve come and gone. That really is how small groups go. Heck, that’s how churches roll! I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but this group has really taken care of one another.
3. We don’t take ourselves very seriously. Last Monday, we spent about 10 minutes joking about the name of the restaurant we’re having lunch at on Sunday, Pho King. (Pho is a Vietnamese soup meal, pronounced “fu,” exactly like the first half of the F word.) We talk about serious things. We have serious moments. But laughter and hilarity are always within reach.

Each Monday, on my way home, I think to myself… “I’m glad it’s Monday.” This little group has been a testament that small groups can work.

• September 9, 2009 -- Nine Things I Love on 09.09.09 (1)
• May 20, 2009 -- Pushing Back to Find Sanity in Christ (4)

After 18 months of working at Youth Specialties and interacting with youth workers around the United States (and everywhere else) it’s finally sunken in: There are two different things called “youth ministry” with a major gap in the middle.

Professional vocational youth ministry: When I talk about youth ministry this is often my default. These are youth ministries and youth ministry leaders who have formal education, continued training, experience, and live their whole lives thinking about youth ministry. When you talk to them about youth ministry they think of models, books, authors, speakers, ministry ideas, successful programs, historical viewpoints, on and on.

This youth ministry is pretty sophisticated. Like any profession people fall into schools of thought. They have models for doing youth ministry. They have personally written and can defend philosophies of youth ministry. They run programs which implement their well thought out and defended philosophy of ministry. They train volunteers to be proteges for their school of thought. They have opinions about whether a certain models is getting stronger or dying.

For the 20% or so of youth workers in America in this category those nuances matter to them. They are on the leading edge of thinking about Youth Ministry 3.0.

My Church Youth Ministry: They just want to know how to minister to the kids in their church. When they e-mail me or call our customer service line they don’t want to talk philosophy or are even aware that there are different ways of doing youth ministry. They are calling because they have 15 seventh graders in their Sunday School class and they need a curriculum that will work for them. When you ask them about what they are trying to do with the group… you’ll hear the dead air or the exhale and then they’ll say, “We’re Methodist, what works for Methodists seventh graders?”

They don’t know or care about philosophies of ministry. They don’t know or care about ministry models. They haven’t heard of Saddleback or Willow Creek. They go to First United Methodist Church of Middletown– that’s it. They may know that some churches have full-time youth workers but they don’t really care. They have a full-time job outside the church. They have a kid in high school. And the pastor thought they were pretty loving towards teens and asked them to minister to their kids friends. They give of themselves to invest in the kids in their church and that’s amazingly awesome.

For the 80% or so of youth workers in America who fit this category, youth ministry is pretty matter-of-fact. There are kids who show up on Sunday morning or Wednesday night and they do what they can to minister to them.

Minding the gap: There are not big steps in between the two groups of youth workers. It’s a gap with a chasm, not a ladder to the next or even a bridge.

It is literally two different things we call youth ministry in America. They all care about the kids in their church. One group is purely interested in the kids in their church. While the other also cares a lot about the greater profession of youth ministry.

• September 17, 2009 -- Towards Holistic Youth Ministry (3)
• September 3, 2009 -- 3 Positive Effects of Recession on the Church (1)

Even if you aren’t a dog person, this video is rad.

HT to Mark

Random Posts

• November 3, 2004 -- Prayer that Changes the World (0)
• December 23, 2006 -- Jade Dragon Gift Distribution (0)

We are entering the Thanksgiving season. And with Thanksgiving arrives one of my favorite foods. The Cranberry.

Invented in 1924 by Joseph Cran, the cranberry is useful for many things. It is delicious. It is tasty. It is tart. It is good mixed with various other fruits. It floats. It is from heaven. It’s amazing canned shape invites my gobbling. It’s juice keeps away urinary track infections.

Cranberries are magical.

More fun facts about cranberries:

• The cranberry is the national fruit of Bermuda.
• There is a Cranberry Festival in Iowa in which the Cranberry queen is worshiped as citizens stuff cranberries in their ears.
• Sacrifices are made to the cranberry god in Nova Scotia.
• There is even a cult band, The Cranberries.
• In 2002, George W. Bush invaded Prince Edward Island for the secret stash of cranberry DNA. It became Dick Cheney’s job to protect the DNA stash in a cave in Virginia until 2008.
• When boiled, the cranberry releases essential oils originally flowing from the fountain of youth. The french word for cranberry is Ponce de Leon.
• When John F. Kennedy declared he was a jelly donut in Berlin, the jelly inside his donut was cranberry.
• The real reason there is a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City is to celebrate the harvest of cranberries in Central Park.
• It’s a well known fact that Benjamin Franklin and Babe Ruth both sat down to eat cranberries with the Pilgrims on the first Thanksgiving in 1619.
• The female cranberry is separated from the male cranberry in the processing plant. Males are bagged and served fresh. Females are canned. Left together they would multiply their goodness and overtake the world.
• Grey Poupon stole their marketing slogan from the Cranberry Growers of America. Originally, the Bentley pulled alongside a limo and the occupant leaned over and said, “Pardon me sir, do you have any cranberry sauce?” There was subsequent legal action settled out of court in 1997.
• Starved for delicious cranberry, Christopher Columbus discovered America.
• Chuck Norris lives on a diet solely of cranberry.
• The red in the United States flag… symbolic of the ancient order of the cranberry… 1749.
• It is against the law to serve turkey on Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce in the city of Cleveland, Ohio.
• Up until 1983, cranberries were acceptable currency in Maine.
• It is good luck to keep a dehydrated cranberry in your left pocket on a Tuesday.

Oh cranberries… you are welcome in my home all the time. But especially in November and December.

Do you know more fun facts about cranberries?

Random Posts

• January 26, 2008 -- Saturday Tunes (2)
• February 28, 2009 -- Saturday Tunes (0)

Sunday morning’s sermon at Harbor stirred in me the desire for the church to be a place of reconciliation.

Stephen reflected on Revelation 7:9-12 in which people of every tribe, tongue, and nation will worship Jesus on His throne in Heaven and asked us to consider if we would attempt to do the same on earth? We live in a melting pot commununity. Literally, within 5 miles of our church are people of many tribes, tongues, and nations. The question brought forth was, will we intentionally worship together as a community or will we allow a church culture to prevail which prefers to seperate on Sunday mornings along racial lines?

I was reminded of this exchange, in 1963, between Martin Luther King and the one-time president of Western Michigan University, Mr. Miller:

Miller: Don’t you feel that integration can only be started and realized in the Christian church, not in schools or by other means? This would be a means of seeing just who are true Christians.

King: As a preacher, I would certainly have to agree with this. I must admit that I have gone through those moments when I was greatly disappointed with the church and what it has done in this period of social change. We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation. This is tragic. Nobody of honesty can overlook this. Now, I’m sure that if the church had taken a stronger stand all along, we wouldn’t have many of the problems that we have. The first way that the church can repent, the first way that it can move out into the arena of social reform is to remove the yoke of segregation from its own body. Now, I’m not saying that society must sit down and wait on a spiritual and moribund church as we’ve so often seen. I think it should have started in the church, but since it didn’t start in the church, our society needed to move on. The church, itself, will stand under the judgement of God. Now that the mistake of the past has been made, I think that the opportunity of the future is to really go out and to transform American society, and where else is there a better place than in the institution that should serve as the moral guardian of the community. The institution that should preach brotherhood and make it a reality within its own body.

The truth is, 46 years later, not much has changed. Churches are still largely segregated in America. You could argue, as this CNN article points out, that we prefer our Sunday’s segregated.

• There are major, separate, evangelical movements within the white, black, Hispanic, and Asian communities. There are relatively few places where those churches intersect. I will lovingly say that 5% of churches are truly mixed. But I am probably rounding up.
• Within my own culture we tend to hold our personal preferences above all else. We are fine with other ethnicity coming to our churches so long as we don’t have to give up our style of worship or preaching. We hold our worship styles as canonical!
• White males dominate the leadership landscape within American evangelicalism. Look at most conference line-ups or take a walk around a Christian bookstore or look at the top 20 Christian albums and you will see white male dominance. Are white males the only spiritual leaders? I don’t think so.
• Open a phone book and you will likely see, in most communities, a white, black, Hispanic, and Asian version of the same church. 99% same doctrine, but we prefer to form different churches rather than deal with intentionally segregating. It’s not just a white church issue… it’s evangelicalism as a whole not dealing with this issue!

Something about that is anti-Revelation 7, isn’t it?

A few years ago I was at a leadership retreat in which we were asked to bring up our dreams for the congregation. The small Michigan town we lived in has a vibrant Hispanic population and a historic black community dating back to the Underground Railroad. I said that one of my dreams for the church was that there wouldn’t be three congregations in town separated by race (but not doctrine) but that we would figure our a way to have one church. I was laughed at and mocked for weeks. “We just aren’t ready for that.”

And by “that” I suppose they meant dealing with their racist tendencies for the sake of the Gospel.

In America, lines of segregation are alive and well. We all know it. People use their positions of power to invent new “legal” ways to segregate people all the time. But what are we willing to do about it?

Want to see segregation alive and well in America? Head to a school board meeting when they talk about re-districting. Or head to a planning commision meeting when they talk about building an apartment complex. You will see the dominant culture take up arms so that “they” don’t allow “them” in their school or neighborhoods. Apply some nouns to those conversations and you are right back to Brown vs. Board of Education.

It is amazing to me that no one I know would be upset– or even notice– if they worked with people of another race (or gender.) It wouldn’t even be an issue in the workplace. For the most part it wouldn’t be an issue in our own neighborhood.  Even in our own families race is not much of an issue. Six days per week our society has integrated. It’s not perfect but we’ve come a long way.

And yet on Sunday morning… race (and gender) are major issues! This must change and we all know it. The question for leaders today is simply, “What are you going to do about it?”

I am proud to call Stephen my pastor. He stood up on Sunday morning, not to cheerlead the efforts our church has made in the last two years, but to remind us that we have a long way to go. I hope the small successes we see at Harbor are just the beginning of a wider movement of reconciliation on Sunday mornings for the sake of the Gospel. First in our community, but also in America.

• August 11, 2009 -- Why I Stand Up to Bullies (2)
• July 29, 2009 -- Multi-Generational Communication (0)

My sleep patterns have been seriously jacked up since coming back from Cincinnati. Last night I was up super late– 7:15 PM. Yesterday, while in church listening to Stephen preach one of his best messages ever, an emotion came over me. I realized something and it sent chills down my spine. It’s not just me that is struggling to find rest right now. It’s everyone I know.

We are all off-kilter on rest. Even when some of us rest, we are still working or thinking about work or dreaming up things that result in work. Even in our rest, we are chasing after kids. On and on. In our rest, we are not really resting at all.

That’s why this week I am praying this Psalm as a prayer for myself, my family, and my friends. I pray that we find rest:

Find rest, O my soul, in God alone;
my hope comes from him.He alone is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.

My salvation and my honor depend on God ;
he is my mighty rock, my refuge.

Trust in him at all times, O people;
pour out your hearts to him,
for God is our refuge.
Selah

Psalm 62:5-8

• September 21, 2009 -- Warp Speed! (7)
• June 8, 2009 -- Signs of Health (0)

Dang! Thankfully, the Mountain West Conference took care of this. I can’t believe the referees only gave her a yellow card for this. My guess is that her soccer career just ended.

• March 29, 2009 -- Unreal Soccer Skills (1)
• September 8, 2008 -- Grace vs. Karma (1)

Something tells me this guy is looking for a new job. The news story reported that he was actually only slightly injured. And those boxes… all vodka.

• November 6, 2009 -- Tool for the forgetful child (1)
• September 16, 2009 -- Commuter Stories (1)