I’ve been spending quite a bit of my quite/reflection time lately pondering my sin nature. Why, as Paul states, I often find myself doing those things I don’t want to do and unable to do those things I want to do. How is it that the ugly side of me seems to always come out naturally despite some of my best efforts otherwise?

I have lots of ugly parts, but it may be that the ugliest part of me is my self-absorption. I like being me. In fact I LOVE being me, and the rest of the world should like me as much as I do and behave accordingly! I’m painfully aware of my situation and have been taking strides to allow God to do some heart surgery.

While some people may write off ‘little sins’ or small incidents as nothing to worry about, I somehow get bothered by those the most. I have pretty much figured out how not to let my self- absorption manifest in big ways. But the little ways are just as ugly and the remind me that my sin nature isn’t going away any time soon.

A dumb example that reminded me of this just this morning:
The fires in our area of been pretty intense for the past couple of days. Several of our friends have been evacuated, our church has been set up as a fire-relief station and as a staging area for fire fighters. Last night when I turned onto my street the flames were very visible in the not-too-distance. Ashes were falling from the sky and my kids were anxious.

I spent about 30 minutes this morning watching the news and praying for the whole situation.
Then I headed out to my favorite ‘hole in the wall’ coffee shop to do some writing and lesson prep. When I walked to the door, I was greeted by a little note saying that due to the fires and smoke the coffee shop would be closed for a few days. I WAS TICKED! Why in the heck would a little smoke cause them to close? Don’t they know how badly I wanted to tuck away and work? Now I have to be inconvenienced by heading to Starbucks who, by the way, would never think of closing it’s doors! Ugly me. Stupid me. Selfish me.

It’s the little things, our first responses to simple situations that often reveal [...]

Continue Reading “Ugly Me”

Returned from a great weekend away at Y.S. and now I’m about to sit in an all day executive meeting with the church team. Back to the real world!

I spent this weekend at the Y.S. Convention, woke up super early this morning to drive back to the O.C. So instead of my usual weekend wrap up from my ministry I’ll wrap up some of my experiences this weekend.

General Sessions: I really enjoyed the general sessions this year. I think it was primarily because the subject matter of the speakers hit me a bit more personally than usual. I’m a Doug Fields fan, and I get to hear him teach quite a bit, but his message on envy was perhaps the best I’ve heard from him in a long time. Not sure anybody in the crowd could say ‘not me’ to what God was saying through him.

Workshops: I sat in some and I taught some. According to the Y.S team, the workshops this year were some of the lowest attended ever. They attribute it to the fact that the conference is in San Diego and the weather was amazing….probably some truth to that.
My buddy, Phil Shinners attended a workshop that rocked his world. I don’t know the title of the workshop or who taught it, but I’ll do some research and post about it in the future, but the premise was this: We’ve all been taught and probably believe the LIE that we can change the methods without changing the message when in fact every time you change the method you do, in fact, change the message. Really interesting….and a pretty strong statement that, according to Phil, he backed up well.

People: Lots and lots of youth workers and lots and lots of opportunities to connect with old friends. I got to spend some time with two youth pastors who used to be volunteers in my ministry and are now serving the local church full time. Really fun to hear how God is using them.

Middle School Youth Workers: Always my favorite group of people to be around! The workshops were fun and energetic. Last night a small group of about 13 of us went to dinner together and had a blast.

Wow. I saw a portion of this story on the news this morning and found the article here.

I haven’t served on jury duty in about a decade, and have managed to postpone my last 3 or 4 summons, but not this week…which, of course, is an absolutely terrible week to have jury duty.

Instead of being asked to report one morning to see if you are assigned a case, I have to call EVERY morning at 11:00 to see if I have to report that same day by noon. If not, I have to repeat the process the next morning. If, after a week of this process I haven’t been called in, I have served my civic duty. It has made planning my week virtually impossible…everything is ‘tentative’ due to the fact that I may find myself driving to Santa Anna on a moment’s notice.

As I was whining about it, I find myself thinking that If I should ever find myself on trial(falsely accused, of course)I sure hope I have a jury of people who aren’t totally ticked about serving and take their service seriously…so I will do the same if called (hand on my heart as I make that pledge).

- Best quote from the Office this season: “I’m not super stitious, but I am a little stitious”.

- Second Best: “There’s about to be a whole lot of stupid up in here!”

- I found a GREAT coffee shop about two miles from the church yesterday. I’d heard of it before, but had never been there. It’s big, empty, with a super cool atmosphere and vibe. I spent 10 hours there writing 5 small group lessons, editing 4 others and working on a weekend message.

- Next week, I have to write 5 lessons on the life of Moses….I’ve never taught on him before (other than 10 commandments or quick overview), so I’m a little apprehensive.

- Anybody going to Y.S. in San Diego next weekend? Maybe a dinner gathering of JH workers?

- Today I was given my very own hard hat so I can walk around our Student Zone job site whenever I want. When I commented that it didn’t look super sturdy the response was: “These are really just for looks to please the insurance company. Anything that hits your head hard enough to kill you will kill you even if you have a hard hat. ” Not real comforting.

- Funny that we’re teaching a three-week series on the proper way to handle conflict. I am an avoider of conflict and when I find myself in it, I rarely handle it properly. I’m doing most of the teaching, but may be doing most of the learning, too.

Simply Youth Ministry is putting together a catalog dedicated completely to junior high resources and they’re looking for fun pictures of junior high ministry in action.

If you have a picture or two that you’d like to submit (and you have permission from parents of kids in the picture), they’d love to put it in the catalog! Just send a digital copy of the picture to Andy Brazelton at andy@simplyyouthministry.com

My friend, Kerry Mackey, hosts a weekly podcast for church leaders. I am his guest this week as we talk about a different approach to implementing the purpose-driven paradigm in a youth ministry setting. You can listen to it here.

Also, be sure to check back in a couple of weeks when his guest is Matt Casper; co-author of Jim and Casper Go to Church.

An incident last night reminded me that it’s been quite a while since I posted a ‘junior high ministry 101′ thought.

Yesterday afternoon my 10-year-old son, Cole was wrapping up football practice. I had started to put my junk in the car and wasn’t paying much attention to what was happening on the field, but when Cole came to the car he was upset…his eyes were watering and he was complaining that some of the guys on the team were taking cheap shots etc. Being the caring dad that I am I said something like: “It’s football…shake it off”. That was the end of it.

A few hours later as a house full of us were watching Monday Night Football, I got a phone call from Cole’s coach. He said he had noticed Cole was upset when he headed to the car and wanted to check on him. We talked for a few minutes and during that time the coach shared a ton of super encouraging words about Cole and also a few observations that he thought could help Cole on the field and with his relationships with the team.

At the end of the conversation I thanked him for the call. The fact that he even noticed Cole was upset was big…him calling later on to talk to mom or dad about it was HUGE.

A few of the people watching football with me also work with junior highers and we took a second to talk about the power and importance of communicating with the parents of our students. Almost all of the parents in your ministry REALLY love their kids and are super thankful you are playing a role in their life. Your words of encouragement, sharing things you’ve observed, keeping them in the loop etc. may be the simplest, yet most valuable, thing you do.

It took the coach 5 minutes of his time, but he has won me over. I trust him with my son more, I respect him as a coach more, and I respect him as a person more because he made the effort to talk to me.