Youth Ministry and Me

If you hang around evangelicals for long enough you will start to here things like, 'Hillsong songs are all Jesus is my boyfriend type songs'.  This critic seems to apply to any song where if you replaced the word Jesus or God you could perhaps imagine singing part or all of the song to your boyfriend/girlfriend.  For example a song might say, I love Jesus or You (clearly implying God) are my everything.

I would now like to make a radical suggestion.  At least a suggestion that is radical to my mind.  What if this so called 'Jesus is my boyfriend' critic doesn't actually reveal a shallowness in the songs lyrics but an idol in the heart of the person criticizing.  Our society is filled with false ideas about how one person (your boyfriend or girlfriend) can fulfill all your wants and desires, can make you eternally happy, will love you no matter what etc.  That's what pop culture sings about all the time (mind you actually mostly these days pop music sings not about relationship but random sex so the critic may also reveal a lack of cultural awareness?).  The critique, I can imagine singing this song to my boyfriend, might actually just mean you have bought a lie.

Jesus is the only person who can fulfill all our hopes and dreams.  Jesus is the only person who can really love us no matter what we do unconditionally forever.  It seems entirely appropriate then to replace the idol of our boyfriend/girlfriend relationships with Jesus who loved us and who we love.  That we should make Jesus the object and centre of our love, affection and desire not our boyfriend or girlfriend.  Your boyfriend is going to fail you.  Jesus will never fail you.

My Google alerts stumbled me across this interview with our new Vicar's (aka Senior Pastor's) wife.

Looks like it would be a great blog for all you ministry wives out there!

Fellow HTD pastor Jono Smith has posted a great little post about how he wants church to a safe place for people to express their emotions.

I've weighed in to the debate in the comments section.

Check it out here

One is good the other sucks

I get really excited by watching people grow.  By watching people take on their faith as their own. By watching people fail but have the humility to admit it and seek God’s grace to continue.  I love watching people learn, love and investigate, to see the difference Jesus is making in their lives.

But I’m constantly pressured by a variety of forces, my own stupidity and sinfulness chief among them, to sit in my office and do admin, to organise the many activities coming up in the following month, to make sure I’ve got enough people and leaders available to staff our programs…  It’s very draining and it’s not really my strength.  Yet even though it’s draining somehow I actually find it easier.  Even though I dislike it, and I’m not that great at it, I often find myself choosing to organise things or do admin rather than get involved with people.  I seem to do this especially when I’m feeling emotionally or physically drained.

So what’s the solution?  I’m unsure.  But now that I’m aware of the problem, I’m working harder at catching up with people when I don’t feel like it.  I’m yet to catch up with someone and not be completely energised, even if the conversation is an awkward or hard one.  I’m also yet to organise a program and feel super good.

I think it’s also all related to how much I’m relying on God to provide everything I need to serve him.  When I’m too focused on myself, that’s when I spend hours in my office being ineffective and trying to organise things.  But when I remind myself that I can do nothing and that God can do everything, that’s when I take risks for the Gospel.  That’s when I will make phone calls to people, or organise to meet people, even though the idea is scary, I’m reminded that the benefits are great.

It’s so simple when I think about it.  Do these kind of feelings resonate with any other people involved in youth ministry or ministry out there?

Over on Tim Chester’s blog he has a great post here about how the way we spend our time and money reflects that we actually think of church as a show or an event rather than a community or a family.

Tim also has a new book on porn due out soon.  Be sure to check it out and get your hands on it as no doubt it will be fantastic!

Do you think you primarily think of church as an event or a family?

Andrew is going to be the new vicar here at Holy Trinity Doncaster where I work as the Youth Minister.

Andrew is married to Heather and they have two married sons and one grandson. Prior to coming to Ridley in 2005, Andrew worked in IT while leading an independent evangelical church plant at Curtin University. He has also been the senior pastor of St Matthews Anglican Church in Shenton Park, WA, Anglican Chaplain at Macquarie University, and National Director of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES).

Andrew is also the author of a number of Christian books on the Old Testament, hermeneutics, and apologetics and has a passionate interest in helping people understand the Old Testament as Christian scripture and in training preachers. He regularly speaks at conferences around Australia, volunteers as an international facilitator for Langham Preaching, and has trained preachers in expository preaching in Australia, Pakistan, South East Asia, South America, and Papua New Guinea.

John Harrower gives us some advice from Paul Barnett on how to prepare for a sermon.

Barnett spoke recently at the Diocese of Tasmania Clergy Conference. Another speaker there was one of Australia's most experienced youth pastors, Tim Hawkins.

How good is it that a Diocese has Youth Ministry so high on the agenda that it gets Tim Hawkins to speak to all it's clergy.

If Tassie can do it so can Melbourne (that's a challenge to anyone from the Melbourne Diocese who may read this blog). Give youth ministry a proper priority!

So, I've been thinking quite a lot recently about community in the church. I was reading a chapter in a book called Small Group Leaders Handbook about community in small groups and I came across these interesting statements:

Things Overheard in a Community-less Small Group

From What's Best Next:

This is the “secret” of those people who “do so many things” and apparently so many difficult things. They do only one at a time. As a result, they need much less time in the end than the rest of us.

This is a good blog. It's about productivity. It's written by Matt Perman who works for Desiring God. It's called What's Best Next. What's it about? In his own words:

"This blog is about two things: (1) how to best manage our lives and work, and (2) how to best think about the way that the businesses and non-profits that we work for — and communities that we live in — should be led."

This is a great reflection on sexual sin in ministry and how to avoid falling into it and ruining your life and your ministry.

I once heard a wise Youth Minister here in Melbourne talk about how the people who fall badly in ministry due to major sin, are usually the ones who never think it will happen to them. He described how if a builder is walking on the roof of a house he is always making sure he has his eyes on what he is doing otherwise he might fall and tumble off the roof of the house. Like builders on a high roof, ministers should expect that they could fall at any moment if they take their eye off the ball.

Mark Driscoll has a series on Leadership and how it can be a lonely task.

It's worth reading if you're a leader.

I could identify with a number of the things on his list.

All of us have probably heard the old statistic that goes something along the lines of, 85% of Christians made a commitment to follow Jesus before they reached age 18. This statistic is a good one, although hard to find a good quality source to back up. A show of hands in your church however does tend to yield this kind of result (which is terrible statistics).

Anyhow. I came across this stat on Twitter today:

"97% of evangelical Christians will die without ever sharing their faith with a single person. - Campus Crusade"

Check out this suggested list for determining successful ministry:

1. The number of cigarette buts in the church parking lot.
2. The number of adoptions people in the church have made from local foster care.
3. The number of pictures on the church wall of unwed mothers holding their newborn babies in their arms for the first time.
4. The number of classes for special needs children and adults
5. The number of former convicted felons serving in the church
6. The number of phone calls from community leaders asking the church’s advice
7. The number of meetings that take place somewhere besides the church building
8. The number of organizations using the church building
9. The number of days the pastor doesn’t spend time in the church office but in the community
10. The number of emergency finance meetings that take place to reroute money to community ministry
11. The amount of dollars saved by the local schools because the church has painted the walls
12. The number of people serving in the community during the church’s normal worship hours
13. The number of non-religious-school professors worshiping with you
14. The number of people wearing good, free clothes that used to belong to members of the church
15. The number of times the church band has played family-friendly music in the local coffee shop
16. The number of people who have gotten better because of free health clinic you operate
17. The number of people in new jobs thanks to the free job training center you opened
18. The number of micro-loans given by members in your church
19. The number of churches your church planted in a 10 mile radius of your own church

Seth Godin says:

If you invent or launch or market (and you're human) it's likely that you have the voice of the critic in the back of your head. It's natural to fear what they'll say, and if you're not careful, you'll end up redesigning your product to please them before you even launch it. (see full article here)

Part of my study at Ridley involves me being in the Missional Leadership Learning Community. As part of this Peter Corney (Vicar at St Hillary's for 23 years) came and spoke to us about 'Going the Distance'. It was a great talk and I took some notes, which I'm going to reproduce here for your benefit.

Peter Corney

• always build teams around you
• build prayer support for yourself
• get a mentor (but be honest, you won't be totally 100% open and honest with them so don't promise it! He then sidetracked to make an interesting point about how all humans crave intimacy, with others and ultimately with God. But the road to intimacy is vulnerability, and all people are afraid of vulnerability and therefore aren't good at intimacy. I thought this was an exceedingly interesting observation that I'll think and blog more about no doubt.)
• take regular time out (every day in prayer, every week with a day off, every month to go somewhere and be silent with God, and yearly by taking all your annual leave).
  
• plan your professional development
• structure your day/week/month - USE YOUR DIARY
• be prepared (poor preparation leads to pathetic performance)
• be well organised
• prioritise family time (it's not worth having an 'awesome' ministry but losing the love and respect of your children or wife for it).
• Make sure you structure your time because you have so much discretionary time in ministry

• Prayer (when where and how you pray will vary depending on your life stage, it doesn't have to be at 6am in the morning, if you have young kids for example, this is probably impossible)
• Read God's word (might be small bits everyday, might be longer times of personal devotion with God's word 2 or 3 times a weak). Start small and work up to it.
• Keep short accounts with God and with others (if you sin, sort it out straight away)
• Manage your finances (be careful and be well thought and and generous in your giving, model it for those you lead).
• Watch your appetite (if you're eating too much, drinking too much, watching too much tv, ask yourself what your trying to escape from, and deal with it).
• Make a list of things you will never do/you will always do (eg. I will never harbour resentments, I will always admit quickly when I'm wrong, I will always be honest, I will always remember I'm preaching for God, not the approval of man).

1. In your relationships with peopel do you notice that you are moving away from people rather than towards them, i.e. you don't want to be too near people much? (you'd rather stay home and watch tv than deal with people).
   
2. Are you becoming cynical?
3. Are you shifting responsibility for how you are feeling about life and your ministry onto someone/thing else? (eg. My boss sucks, my youth are so apathetic that's why I feel bummed)
   

This is a really great and helpful idea from Seth.

"Let's define "bear shaving" as the efforts we go to do deal with the symptoms of a problem instead of addressing the cause of the problem. A rare Japanese PSA (now long lost to the copyright gods) showed a girl shaving a bear so it could deal with global warming"

What problems in your ministry or life have you only shaved the bear, instead of really fixing the problem?

Seth Godin has another great blog post about how tactics can drown out our strategy.

The essence of what he says, we need to focus on our strategy and not be distracted by the tactics we use to achieve them.

It's a bit like how churches might have a strategy of making mature disciples but get stuck running Sunday services because that's a tactic we know how to do and it's easy to measure success... We ran a good service, we have succeeded, however, everyone has gone home no more mature...

Click here to listen to me preach on the book of Philemon.

Main point: Christians are duty bound to act out of love towards their fellow believers.

Philemon is an example of how a Christian should act out of love towards a fellow Christian. A radical way of life!