Crossed-Up

So, I am determined to be a blogger again, at least twice a week for 2012. Here goes…

I thought I would start by looking back on 2011 and what things stuck out in my heart and mind, for better and for worse.  So here goes:

Best moment of the year: Tough call as I have been blessed with many amazing moments and they are all important.  For me, it was during a worship service at River of Life, a locally hosted mission week that my church is learning how to host.  It was amazing to see students worshipping, see my dear friend Brian Loper speaking and have my Dad come and loan us his wood working expertise.  It was a great week and I am incredibly thankful for it.  Close calls: A summer night of youth group about grief and speaking and being a part of Colonial Church’s Pyro II camp for middle school students.

Worst moment of the year: A day on youth choir tour. The level of train wreck it was is hard to describe and I don’t much ever want to re-live it.

Best book I read: Tough call.  There are many books that I read or semi-read or re-visited this year but not nearly enough.  I would say for me, best thing I read was The North Face of God by Ken Gire.  It was a great read by an author whose works I had read and forgotten.  A really good devotional write whose books I wish more people had heard of and read.

Worst book of the year: I don’t want to beat up someone who I am sure but a great deal of work into an effort, but I will say this: if someone tries to pass along a curriculum to you and the major selling point is that the author is one of the first millennials to be ordained, RUN.

Where I learned and grew: I am able to say that I made investments in a couple of things that I think have furthered me as a leader and a church worker this year.  One was making the decision to be involved in the Tennessee Conference’s youth ministry cohort.  Through this experience I was able to spend some time with some high quality people, learn from folks like Marv Penner and Kara Powell and grow as a leader.  The cost looked high going in but it has been completely worth it to me.  I also am continually thankful for the help and hope that being involved in Youth Pastors Anonymous has afforded me.

Worst experience of the year: Youth Specialties National Youth Worker Convention in Atlanta.  It is a crazy awesome time I look forward to every year and when it happened this year, I wound up sick and in my hotel room nearly the whole weekend.  And it was the first year I was able to bring my team!  So, I missed seeing my friends, missed being a part of the experience and missed being beside my team as they experienced it all.  Next year’s locations are too far away and I am bummed to be thinking that it won’t be until 2013 until I get that experience again.

Next time: Stuff I discovered and used in 2011.

Early in my youth ministry career, our youth group welcomed in a young man who was new to our community and was being fostered by a family that had some marginal connections to our church.  He and his younger siblings had been undergoing years of abuse at the hands of his biological parents and the state had removed him from their custody and moved them to our town, which was far away from their hometown to escape that abuse.  “Raymond” had some developmental issues from the years of abuse but he was welcomed and well loved by our youth group.

And six months in, during a night of profound worship, Raymond revealed to me that his foster dad was abusing him sexually several times a week and had recently begun threatening to abuse his young siblings.  As you can imagine, my heart broke and I was devastated for him.

And as all the scandal has broken this week concerning an alleged serial abuser at Penn State University, I couldn’t help but think about this moment and some of the things that happened to me and Raymond in the aftermath.  I offer to you some lessons I learned.

1. As a youth worker (paid or volunteer) you have an obligation to do everything in your power to protect children from abuse.  That is your God-given, moral obligation.  Second, in most states, you have an obligation legally to report issues of abuse.  Rather than rehash this information, Youth Specialties has a great article about the legal ramifications, etc. in these kind of situations that is available here.

2. You need to treat all claims of abuse as real, genuine and act accordingly.  Sometimes in the cases of churches, we err and want to give people the benefit of the doubt or downplay the abuse or extremes of it.  At this point in the process, it is our responsibility to report what we have heard genuinely, honestly and without judgement.  It is also helpful for authorities if we can have students detail to them what they reveal to us.

3. Take meticulous notes about what the student has said, when, how, to who.  Your memory will change and drift and is unreliable.  Put it down on paper and in a place where it can be secured.

4. Know your church and its chain of command structure and follow it as best you can.  At the church I worked at, all issues of abuse were to be reported to the senior pastor and it was his responsibility to communicate it with the correct authorities.  Allow that system to work and be prepared to talk to authorities.

5. Do whatever you can to help the abused student get out of the situation.  I share this next part not because I am some kind of superhero youth worker; there are significant lists of things and mistakes I have made in my youth ministry career.  In this case, I did what I felt was right.  As I said above, my senior pastor had the responsibility to call the authorities in our structure.  However, after 2 days, for reasons I can’t fathom, he had failed to do so.  At that point in time, I walked into the local Department of Family and Children Services and began the process of making the initial report.  Because it was my moral responsibility to do all I could to help Raymond and his siblings.

In Raymond’s case, he and his siblings were removed from the custody of the foster parents, moved to a new community and they began a long road of recovery that has involved therapeutic care and counseling.  It also turned out, I was the third person in authority that Raymond had told but the first to take him seriously.  (He told 2 different school authorities in the days before he told me.)  The man who had been abusing him, alongside his wife who was abusive as well, were both convicted and served long sentences in jail.

All of that to say, God calls us to take the role, the position and the power He gives us to serve the weakest, the hurt and the abused.  May the words of Psalm 82 always echo in our hearts and minds: “Defend the poor and fatherless: Do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.”

When I saw George Clooney had directed and starred in a political thriller to be released in the early start of Oscar award season, I was excited about the possibilities that such a venture could produced. While The Ides of March stars a fantastic cast and a few great moments, on the whole it is a bland political movie that lacks the nuance of other, more successful films and the end of the film leaves you in the exact place where you think it will. (And that is not a good thing.)

The film is interesting in that while it is a political movie, it manages to tell a story without sermonizing nearly as much as it could have. In part, the decision to have the film be about the attempt to secure one party’s presidential nomination allows it to be about the motion and effort, not ideas and overall state of the political landscape. The performances of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti in particular as rival politicos is compelling, especially as the lead character played by Ryan Gosling is torn between them.

On the whole, this is definitely one you can wait to catch at a different time and not in theaters. While an interesting premise and well acted, it isn’t very satisfying in the end, as it is simple story of one man’s movement from idealism to political realities.

I am slowly closing in on 20 years being a youth worker. If you count the adventures of being a WyldLife leader in Augusta, GA as a high school junior and senior, I am already there. (Part of those adventures included the creation of not one, but two, national YoungLife policies based on our team’s antics.) One of the things I have discovered over the years is that a lot of churches seem to struggle with how they treat the youth workers that serve them.

So it was refreshing to be at lunch at Youth Pastors Anonymous this week and hear of how a couple churches are doing really fantastic job of caring for their youth pastors. We are blessed to have a couple women youth workers who are expecting in the next 6 weeks or so. And at lunch, they were sharing about some of the ways that their churches had really ministered to them during their pregnancies. They both felt overwhelmed by the showers their churches threw for them, the generosity showed during that time and the willingness the church had to help them have extended leaves when their children are born. It felt good to hear about some churches that are loving and caring for their youth workers well, especially because I have been so blessed by mine.

Several years ago when the economy tanked and as our church was going through some strained financial issues, I approached the trustees about living in a house that the church owned but was empty. It is an older house and had some issues that I knew going in but I also knew the rent I paid in would help the church, as well as give us some options if we came to a place where we had to lower salaries. (Additionally, the church sponsored Boy Scout group uses part of the house as well.) Thankfully, we made it through that and the house was a good decision on everyone’s parts. But there were a few issues. When someone approached me about the house, I mentioned a couple minor things: painting, repair of some minor things on the interior. Once people came to see the house, their list of improvements they wanted to make became huge and substantial. Major issues were discovered, like the need to replace the whole roof. I wasn’t sure what would happen.

The truth is that the house has become a source of major blessing to me, because people have done so much to express their love for me by repairing the house. Funds were raised and a new roof went on. The bedroom was painted, the bathroom upgraded, the moldy leaked on areas repaired and fixed. The yard was cleaned up. (The house I had sat dormant for a couple years). I was blown away. This fall, all the efforts have resumed again. The living room is being repaired, painted and finished. We are a few weeks away from all the windows in my area of being replaced with high end, energy efficient windows, all paid for because the church has been saving my rent money, rather than using it for other projects. When the windows get replaced, it will allow me to have more efficient heating and cooling installed. In short, my church has extreme home makeovered where I live.

And I couldn’t be more grateful. This past weekend, I was gone to the Catalyst conference and then spoke at a retreat for West Georgia University’s Campus Christian Fellowship. When I returned home, even more work had been done. I knew they were coming and working but I still had an incredible feeling of being deeply loved and cared for by my church. The list of folks is too great to list and I am sure I would miss someone. So, to my church: “Thank You!” I feel loved, cared for, cared about and incredibly blessed to partner with you all in the ministry! Thank you for loving me well!

So I have had the disc of the film Gran Torino from Netflix for about 3 months; clearly, I am a streaming guy.  But yesterday I was nursing a cold from being less than smart about attire and attending high school football games, so I decided to give the movie a watch.

Let me first say, you can’t show this one at church, due to some language and violence issues.  But there are some deeply profound issues raised from the film and how it speaks to church culture.

The basic plot of the movie Gran Torino is about an elderly man (Walt Kowalski) who lives in a neighborhood in Detroit that has shifted demographically to be more minority.  The movie begins immediately after Walt’s wife has passed away and it raises the issues that come from such a incident.  The movie stars Clint Eastwood and is worthy of watching, though the start of the movie does move somewhat slowly.

Here is where the movie made me think:
- Walt has immense issues, in particularly in regards to race, but he overcomes them over the course of the film.  It is an interesting study in transformation.
- I couldn’t help but be drawn into the idea of Walt becoming the shepherd of his neighborhood.  Through a series of events, he becomes the guardian of the people around him because he literally sees that no one else is around to do it.  It deeply echoes Jesus from Matthew 9:36,  where Jesus sees the people as lost and in need of a shepherd.
- There is a world of teachable moments in regards to intergenerational relationships.  Walt is drawn out of his shell by a teenaged girl next door neighbor.  He becomes the mentor of her brother, helping him in regards to many matters as the young man has no father.
- Walt’s interaction with his own family members is heart breaking.
- Walt has some interesting interactions with a young priest who is seeking to help Walt because he promised it to Walt’s wife before she died.
- Lastly, the ending of the movie speaks deeply but I don’t want to ruin it for those who haven’t seen it.

Definitely not a movie for the whole family but there are some part of it that definitely make you think and worth viewing.

This past Tuesday, I was able to be a part of the Orange Tour in Nashville.

The Orange Tour is put on by the reThink Group, an organization that works with churches to help strengthen the partnership between churches and families and also helps churches have a comprehensive strategy for helping disciple children and students from birth through early adulthood.  You can learn more about the group here and their basic philosophy can be found in the book Think Orange.  I have roughly read the book and I have definitely been intrigued by what I have heard.  The last 2 summers when we have attended the BigStuf Conference in Daytona Beach, the leader of Orange, Reggie Joiner, has trained adult leaders and the adults from my church who have been at that have been extremely complimentary about the teachings.  So I was definitely interested in what I was going to hear at the Orange Tour stop in Nashville.

So what did I think?
1. The event is extremely well thought out and put together from the standpoint of trying to teach content to leaders.  Reggie Joiner is a fantastic teacher/communicator and his content for this event is really narrowed in and focused.  I took a ton of notes and I am still processing those in terms of how I can take some of those ideas and make them work in the context of the church I work in.  That being said, I wish there were some places and spots for worshipful reflection and involvement.
(Side note: I sat with some younger folks I am blessed to be friends with and they all in some form or fashion echoed that they wished that had been a part of it.  I think that is a concern we will see reflected going forward as a younger generation is given leadership.  Lecture formatted seminars and sessions are going to be morphed and changed to be given some reflective space as well.  For now, it appears us older guys are pushing forward on the model we have seen and inherited, which mean conferences are 8 hour days of hard driving through as much content as possible.  The next wave of leadership wants the content but wants to give it space to make a deeper impact in our own lives and ministry.)

2. Some of what is said gets some push back from me.  I don’t disagree with much of what is said at Orange in terms of partnering with parents and creating systems that partner and match ministries from birth to early adulthood.  But what I do have issue with is not enough time or energy is given to how do we take those ideas and make that work in mainline setting.  For example, my young friends and I know that the easiest way to create these environments and systems is to make the investment to create a new congregation from scratch with these values, goals, and visions.  But none of us  are called to that.  We are called to live, love, and serve existing churches and it just seems that there is little intention given to how to make transitions happen.  (And in fairness, maybe that is level 2 and the focus of the Orange Tour is level 1.  I just think most of us were ready for level 2.)

3. I am thankful that the Tennessee Conference of the United Methodist Church staff for children, youth and young adult ministry were at the event.  Patty and Brad are both friends and it is helpful to see them wrestling and thinking about how to lead through the next generations.  I am equally thankful that they are organizing a day for us to get together to process some of the things we learned and heard at the Orange Tour.

All in all, the tour stop was worth the investment of time and energy.  A huge thanks to the Crosspoint.tv folks for hosting the event at their Bellevue campus.  I have watched as they have grown and it was exciting to see the Bellevue building, which is a renovated Circuit City building.  (I occasionally visit one of the Sunday night worships at Crosspoint.tv when I need some spiritual nourishment and don’t have to be “on” as a leader.)  Thanks to the Orange team for putting the event on.  They did a great job in leading and I was blessed to get to visit with some of their staff, who seemed genuinely interested in hearing from me and my perspective.  So if it is coming near you, I’d recommend it being worth the time, especially if you are a staff person and can bring volunteers and/or the pastoral team from your church.  Here is the list of upcoming locations.

I am having a rare moment when I’ve got something worth lifting up, in addition to being challenged to write more. (That and I am delaying moving my office at the church. With good reason. Think about your local library. Now double the number of books. Now move them down a hall, across an underpass, up an elevator and around a gated upstairs track. A box at a time. Into a room that may or may not handle them all. That is what I am staring down.) All of that to say, I wanted to take a moment and talk about what has been a wonderful part of my life the last 5 years: Pyro II.

A few years ago, Brian Jones and I were friends at nearby churches in the suburbs of Atlanta. When we started, we got together occasionally and swapped out ideas. Then, we began to meet more often, talking less about ideas for great games and more about what was happening in our lives. Eventually, we were a pretty tight group of folks and I counted them among my best friends. When I was asked to resign, Brian and his wife Danielle were some of my best supporters and encouragers. When I landed in Nashville, they were ecstatic for me. Not long after, they got a call from Colonial Church, Danielle’s home church and they returned to be in ministry there in Minnesota. A long way from where we started and odds were against us staying in touch.

Then, in the spring of their first year there, Brian asked me to come be the speaker at a camp the church had long run called Pyro II, so named from the original camp Pyro, which was an experience for younger kids. I was able to make it work in my schedule and was amazingly blessed to be a part of the week. Here are some of the reasons why Pyro II is the best middle school camp you’ll never get to attend.

- It treats the gifts of young adolescents with respect. Pyro II uses older high school and college students to serve as cabin leaders for the camp of 7th through 9th graders. It is amazing to see them lead with their hearts, gifts and time. This year’s crew of counselors were fantastic, some during especially difficult weeks of dealing with counselors. I am always amazed at the level of maturity counselors bring to the week and how it pays off
- No one is better at recreation than Brian Jones and his team. A huge part of Pyro II is the games. During each morning, there is a rotation where about a third of the camp spends time in a game. They are always amazing. After lunch, there is usually some epic camp-wide games. (Last year, we played life-sized Hungry Hippos. This year: Angry Birds. Amazing!) Each night there is a game that has just that right amount of “run around in the woods and be scared” quotient that you want at summer camp. It is truly epic and one of the things that kids love about camp.
- Club. Yeah, they borrowed the term from Young Life but each night has a great worship service. The band does a great job of mixing fun sing along and worship music. But mainly, the kids bring it at club. They come dressed wildly with all kinds of weird outfits and designs. They dance, sing and worship all out. This year, on one of the best nights of club, I sat in the back and thought “Heaven is going to be a whole lot closer to this than it will be what happens at my church on Sunday mornings.” It was a powerful thought and I was glad to see students give me such a glimpse into heaven touching earth.
- Leadership. Brian has long worked with Nicole Lindsay. Nicole is one of the great youth workers I know. She is young but her life has given her great experience; and she is a Pyro lifer, having been around camp for nearly her whole life. When people talk about great youth ministry lead teams, Brian and Nicole should be near the top of the list; there are few people I would drop nearly everything to go work with and for, but I would definitely do that with them.
Every summer they have interns and what we affectionately refer to as the Monkey. This year’s interns (Katie and Sydney) and Monkey (Jack) were epic. I know the amount of work that it took to pull off the games, plans, etc. that we did and I know the interns logged tons of hours this year to make it happen. Jack was an incredible worker, doing whatever was asked, whenever it was asked of him. They all see and understand that the behind the scenes stuff is ministry as well and gave willingly to that cause. That is a hard grace to find among young leaders. How Brian and Nicole do it every year is amazing.
- Location: Just a super shout out to Covenant Pines Bible Camp. It has everything a summer camp should have. Water fun, blob, hayrides, slushies, semi-grungy cabins, and a good chapel. Without the fantastic facility to pull off all the ideas, camp wouldn’t be nearly as fun.
- Purpose. Every year, we have worked hard at building a theme, supporting it and having a clear goal. As the guest speaker, it is so important and helpful to have those things; too many times I get asked to speak on “whatever”. The themes and the work that is done in putting together the Pyro II talks always stretch me and make me strive towards being a better communicator. I am incredibly thankful for that opportunity and what it has meant to me.
- Friendship. In addition to all the people listed already, I am honored to have Michael Adkins be a part of camp with me. He is an additional hard worker for the week but also an encourager, a leader and a teacher. He helps shape and hone messages, encourages me when I feel like I am losing my way with talks and he is a great roadtrip companion. He has been a great part of the Pyro II experience with me each year. And each year, we dream a little more about what it would take to bring this experience to a camp in the southeastern United States. Maybe the summer of 2012? 2013?

So, there it is: the best middle school camp you’ll never be able to go to.

I could go on and on about the camp experience. I just know it always touches me deeply to be a part of it, to be able to share the truth of who God is and see God use my gifts as a part of it. Truly blessed!

First off, a confession to those who may be new here: I am a nerd. Unabashedly so. Grew up loving science fiction and superheroes and the like. Still love them and dream of a day when I can make a living off stories I write and be an awesome volunteer for some church’s youth ministry. So this movie review of Thor is going to be what I thought and what I think the normal person who lacks my nerdiness would think.

First off, this movie should be seen as part of a greater series of films. Before the first Iron Man movie, Marvel, one of the big two comic book companies, basically auctioned off the rights to their characters to movie studios and allowed them to use them to make movies. In some cases, that idea worked well (the first 2 X-Men movies) and in some cases, not so much (the Wolverine: Origins debacle). But with the Iron Man movie, for characters not already auctioned off, Marvel began making a movie universe that is tied together and moves towards convergence. With that in mind, here are the films that are tied together: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk (Ed Norton version, not the Eric Bana version), Iron Man 2, Thor, this summer’s upcoming Captain America film culminating in next summer’s Joss Whedon directed superhero team film The Avengers. So Thor plays a part in that sequence and does so very well.

Thor is about the Norse God of Thunder who through a variety of circumstances has to come to Earth and has to learn because he is a bit of an arrogant jerk. His brother Loki is also involved in the process and I don’t want to say too much about the plot, etc. because the short review of this film is “Go see it.”

Even if you aren’t a comic book nerd, this film is solid summer blockbuster. It has moments of great humor, a bit of realistic romance that (surprisingly) doesn’t end up with the couple bedding one another when days of knowing each other, a story of change and redemption and some good fight scenes. I think most people could go in and appreciate it as a decent summer film.

Some things this movie does well:

• Casting. Ever since Marvel took control of its characters, casting has been a hallmark of fantastic decisions. Chris Hemsworth was plucked from obscurity to play Thor and he does so amazingly well. All the parts work well together. I especially would lift up Loki’s portrayal by Tom Hiddleston, a character who I thought would be difficult to pull off and he does so amazingly. Great decisions all around on the cast.

• Pace. This movie is set in 2 places: Earth and Asgard. One of the great things about the film is that the balance between the two locations is handled extremely well. Just as you might be getting bored with one place, it shifts to the other. It is well paced and moves the story along, even at a 2 hour time.

• Story. It is a great story and one that anyone will appreciate and be able to understand. The pace, pitch and tone of the story are great.

Nerd moments:

• The reference to gamma radiation and the Hulk
• The appearance of Hawkeye. (Non-nerds, the 3-4 minute deal with the guy with the bow and arrow will pay-off in the Avengers.)
• The post-credits scene. Excited to see where and how all that could go.

All in all, I recommend Thor. Appropriate for all ages really and a great summer film that insures that Marvel may still keep making more and more great films.  If nothing else, it is the best appearance of Thor since Adventures in Babysitting.

So, the summer movie season is here.  And first out of the gates was the 5th in the series of the Fast and the Furious movies: Fast Five.  This past weekend, I took a break and went to see this latest installment and here are some of my thoughts on the film.

First, if you are interested in seeing a movie that will be given serious consideration when the Oscars are announced, this isn’t the movie for you.  Simply put, this is a summer blockbuster film.  The Onion parody below does a nice job of explaining it:

That being said, if you like movies about fast cars, hijinks and the like, this movie has it all.  The cast is reuniting all the significant people from the previous movies, notably Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster.  Additionally, there is the presence of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, serving as the hard-edged cop hellbent on tracking down the fugitives and working himself into the sequels.  (Think Tommy Lee Jones’ character in The Fugitive with more cocoa butter and HGH.)  Of course, there are ridiculous scenes, right from the start of the film all the way through the end.  But on the whole, if you like this kind of movie, it is a good kickstart to the summer.

Note: For a hilarious take on the film, let me recommend to you this episode of the BS Report, starring Bill Simmons and Adam Carolla as they breakdown the film and partially the franchise.  (I don’t recall it being too vulgar but Carolla is involved so I am going to tag it with the NSFW).

In the last few years, it has become apparent that my youth ministry needs a break.

What I mean is that we have a tendency to go full on, all year round and it has exhausted me, my staff and my volunteers.  I will never forget 3 years ago having to basically prop up interns through a week of Vacation Bible School that started immediately after we got back from a fantastic youth choir tour.  When we should have been focused on relationships and helping kids take a powerful spiritual event and integrating it into their lives and we were having to worry about how the water balloons were all going to get done.  (And hey, the water balloons DO have to get done…)

Since that summer, we have looked at spaces and places to try and slow down our programs.  But here is the problem:

• Summer makes absolutely no sense to me to slow down.  It is the one time of the year when it feels like we have the most access to students and to shut down during it would be a waste.
• Fall and the start of the new school year means that we have a fresh momentum naturally, not to mention be a bridging new students into their new groups as we welcome sixth graders into middle school youth and freshmen into high school youth.
• Winter has been a fairly successful time for us, as we bounce back with the start of a new calendar year and we have a large denominational trip in January that helps us springboard as well.
• Spring has always been a wash.  I don’t mean that we get nothing done.  Our attendance does dip some, sometimes really significantly.  It is harder and harder to compete with sports, banquets, concerts, etc. and where a school system may have played nice and stayed away from Wednesdays and Sundays in the past, those days are past now.  Plus the general church calendar is usually filled with more things between Holy Week, Easter, church-wide picnics, church yard sales, church clean-up day, not to mention activities recognizing graduating students.  (Can you tell I haven’t had a Saturday off in 6 weeks?)‘

Which brings me to my bold idea: what if spring was the season we took and slowed down in youth ministry?

I truly do think for my group, it has some significant advantages.  Here are a few just off the top of my head:

• Being off in spring would allow leaders to be at more of the games, concerts, etc. since we aren’t trying to still manage to have weekly youth group
• Having spring off frees up time to get ready for summer stuff.  Our summer is going to kick-off from now on with a mission week we host, so having some time in the late spring especially would be a huge help for us.
• It would give us time to plan some strategically for the fall and especially transitioning students.  (6th, 9th and graduates)
• It lessens the burden on kids, who often times are feeling guilty about their spring schedules and lack of ability to be at youth

So, that is my latest crazy idea.  I don’t know if we will ever try it.  It seems disjointed and out of context on some level with the rest of the congregation and parents.  But I could see a time where a dramatically slowed down schedule in April and May could reap huge benefits the rest of the year. Just something I am thinking about.  I would love to hear what your spring looks like in youth ministry and if you still feel the same tension about it that I do.