like a fire

We had our first run with the Lectio Divina this last Sunday night. I meant to get pictures before hand but it just didn’t work out. We took out all the lights and added about 50 candles. The only light we had was from candles and the projector. Yes, I know that is not what they used in ancient practices, but I went with it anyway because it kept us from fumbling with books or papers. I set up the media so that it ran itself. Once it was started, no one had to direct it any more than anyone else. That way, the staff was able to be just as involved in it as the teens.

I thought it was a really great night for us. Every student said they really loved it and I got the highest praise from one of our ADD junior high boys. He said that we should do it for longer the next time. So there you have it, God’s presence trumps ADD.

Through the years, it has been more and more evident that most people just don’t have any idea of what their job is or maybe just how to do their job. Ask anyone who has talked to the people in customer service and you will probably hear story after story about how they talked to the most unhelpful, unfriendly person - ever. That job is one that is fairly straight forward. Talk to irate people who are displeased with your company and try to help them with their problem and in the process help them feel better about your company. There are many jobs that are not that clear. The presidency, for example, is a job that is very complex and requires many different functions. Few people probably know what it requires to live a life in the day of the president. Yet we all know when there are things that aren’t going the way we expect. Enter youth ministry.

In youth ministry, there are many expectations in the church. There are expectations placed on the youth pastor from the pastor and staff, the parents, the teens and the rest of the church. It is easy for anyone to struggle with what exactly they should be doing. Obviously clear dialogue is important to manage expectations, but expectations are not always a great source for what we do. Some expectations are unreasonable and some are just unrealistic. I served a church once where the expectation was to bring at least 10 families into the church through the youth ministry per year. In a church where the population was in steady decline and started at about 300, that probably isn’t very realistic. The point is, we have no shortage of voices telling us what to do, and at the end of the day, we all want to know that we are doing our job.

So what should we do?

I think this question is the one that plagues the work of the church. Every person I know got into ministry to help people. When they made that decision, they were passionate enough about that work, that they committed their most vital resource - time. Somewhere along the way, they start to hear voices of expectations. They wonder and question if they are doing the right things, and that questioning undermines there sense of success.

To help myself not drift with the tide of expectations, I made myself a list of things I couldn’t do.

I can’t save people.
I can’t draw people to God apart from the Holy Spirit.
I can’t minister out of a life devoid of the presence of God.

These statements of what I can’t do help me to see more of the things I can do.

I can love people.
I can be in Gods presence enough where some of it leaks out onto people.
I can point to God in the great and hard times.

My criteria for youth ministry is a bit more simple lately. Follow God in his work of transforming people into new creations. I can’t transform anyone by myself, yet God invites me to join him in his work. Transformation only happens in the presence of the Living God. It can be practiced by the disciplines of Bible study, prayer, meditation, etc., but it only happens through the presence of God acting on our lives. That makes my job even more simple. Get people into God’s presence. Help them to linger there. Pray for them to be filled with a longing for the Christ who saves lives today just as he did 2000 years ago.

I haven’t posted a lot lately due to spending lots of time with people. Given the choice, I will always take people over face-time on the internet. But this last week has been one of many ups and downs. Cathy grandmother (Nanny) died Sunday morning and we had services Wednesday. I was glad to hear the stories about the legacy he left her family, but there was a longing there for some of that. It started hitting my identity, though I didn’t know it at the time.

Wednesday night, we had our normal youth get together, but it was far from normal. There were some huge connections that I really loved. I had already planned on talking about the soul and how God gives us a soul with a distinct identity. When we don’t know that identity, it is like we are a coffee pot being used as a baseball bat. Not only do we not make coffee, we can’t hit a baseball very well either. Worse than that, we get damaged trying to hit a baseball if we are a coffee pot.

I was thinking of several things in discipleship that ought to drive our relationship with Christ. In Christ, we see more and more of our identity. I’m not talking about how we are like him, but rather in the transforming presence of God that awakens the inner part of our soul. John Eldredge calls it the heart. Maybe that is it, but what ever you call it, there is something hugely powerful in knowing who you are. I was trying to explain this when a story came back to me.

When I served at Westminster PCA in Pennsylvania, there was a guy there who was unashamedly known as a virgin. It wasn’t because he was unattractive. In fact, this guy had plenty of opportunity. He was on the basketball team and was quite popular. Many of his team-mates gave him a hard time about it. They told him that he was missing out and that he would never have an opportunity this good again to sleep with as may girls as he wanted. I guess it finally pushed him over the edge, because eventually he let them know what he thought about them. I’ll never forget it.

He said, “I can be like you in five minutes. You will never be like me.”

I think that kind of conviction comes from identity. I don’t know if it possible to stand up for what you believe without a strong sense of who you are, knowing that you are loved and accepted, actually making a choice that is better, and/or full of confidence in what you believe.

I think that points to a necessary component of discipleship. How are we helping this generation see who there are, know that they are loved, know their choices are better if they are centered in God or confident in what they believe? Is it possible to disciple apart from that?

I haven’t posted in a while and basically I can’t apologize. I don’t even wish that I were sorry that I haven’t taken the time to write. Life has just been too overwhelming for me to have wished for documentation of it.

The Basics:
I still have no job
I still haven’t been to church here
I am still wondering if I should even be in ministry any more

I am still asking God a lot of questions.

Instead of answering my questions, I think God has chosen to ask some of his own. Maybe its being around Alabama and so many fields, but I am seeing my heart being renewed through that metaphor. God is tilling the ground of my heart. I realize this is a wasted image for many of you, but I will try to explain.

Tilling is the process of breaking up the ground and turning it over and over until it is all mixed up. This has many benefits to the soil and the plants growing in it. Tilling aerates the ground and gives it new life. It works organic matter into to the soil for better decomposition. It interrupts disease and pests by burying them or exposing them. The best time for tilling is in the fall, because it takes advantage of a whole season to prepare the ground for planting.

People have used shovels and hoes to till the ground in the past, but now most people use a tiller. That is a machine that has many blades on it that rotate. To till the ground, you stick the blades into the ground and watch them break the ground and loosen the soil until it is a nice powdery consistency that you would be able to ski on.

Does that sound like something you would like to do to your heart? Me either. But it is needed especially in context of growth. I have been tilling, or I should say that God has been tilling, for over six months now. That means I probably have a lot of bad soil, or it could mean that it just takes longer to till the heart than the ground. Either way, it is a painful process that brings things up that I wished would stay buried. It buries things that I like on the surface. It breathes new air into my heart and allows some old things to decompose.

So the nitty gritty is that my heart is on fire and is being worked over. Though it is a painful process, I expect to see a lot of new growth on the next season.

I recently was asked some questions by a fellow youth minister and I was reminded of something when writing out my answers. Thanks Tim!

If you don’t know the word above, then you are very normal. This is a word I came across in reading the Dune series by Frank Herbert. Basically, this word describes the time between realizing the desire for a thing and acquiring it. I don’t know if this is an American thing, but most people I know are not very good at this exercise. We aren’t very patient and we don’t particularly look at the time it could take to achieve some of our dreams.

I was reminded of this by a devotion by Mike DeVries. He likened it to landscaping. Nobody uses seeds anymore. They just go buy a plant, seeds take too long. I have also noted that when people buy plants, the put them too close together not allowing for the growth that will occur if they don’t kill the plants first. Not planning for their growth and spacing them out might just kill them before they have a chance to reach maturity.

I wonder how often we do this in the church. We want growth, but how do we plan for it. More important, how good are we at waiting for it. There is a great book that I read to my daughter Jane fairly regularly. It is called The Carrot Seed. It is the story of a boy who plants a carrot seed and waits patiently for it to grow. Everyone keeps telling him it won’t grow, but then one day it grows. The last line is great. It has a picture of the boy hauling the enormous carrot in a wheelbarrow and it says, “Just as the boy knew it would.”

Our faith should be like this, I think. Our churches should be more like this, I think. We should be willing to wait to see how God is working and growing things beneath the surface.

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.—Philippians 2:12-13

It seems like this is the process of our lives. That is to realize the dreams of the new heart God has given us and the effort of working and waiting for them to come to pass.