Archives for April 2008

I’m way past trying to be cool for high school students. Maybe I could pull it off when I started full-time at 22, but bottom line, I’m just an old fart in their world today. I don’t think I impress them much, and honestly, I don’t spend too much time trying. I’m supposed to be an adult in their world who cares, not an adult who acts like one of their peers. They have peers and truth-be-told, they don’t want me to act like one anyway. So, in order to relate and not be dismissed as irrelevant, I just try and genuinely care about what they care about.

This means that I’m ok with a lot of music styles and good with learning what they’re listening to and why. I frequently ask to give whatever their ipod has on it a listen. I’m good with hearing about their hobbies and understanding the things they like to do are not the same things I like or liked to do. I’m ok with sucking at texting or being a lousy musician or the fact that I can’t dance or talking about tatoos or discussing why it is they like the rod they just stuck through their tongue or if they can pull the one out of their lip to shoot soda out of the hole it leaves behind… etc. I’m good with a lot of our differences I think.

However, one of the cultural trends I can’t get my mind around and constantly hound students for is the sag that some of our guys have going on. (For the record, I’m kinda glad that most of the girls stopped wearing the low cut jeans and most of our guys stopped wearing their sisters pants too. Yep, that emo thing killed me.) Anyway, I’m ok with some droop in your drawers or a little freedom from a butt hugger wrangler jean trend, and I’m not sure we should outlaw the sag like some town in Georgia or Alabama or something I recently read about. But I will say, I don’t get why anyone would be willing to wear a belt around their knees to keep their pants up or be so dedicated to the droopy drawer that they’ll walk 4 steps, pull them up, and then walk 4 more steps. I’m ruthless about doggin’ the students in my group who insist that plumber crack is cool and that I should be fully aware of the color of their boxers. Last week one student was sitting on a stool in our small groups and I kid you not, his boxers were so visible that when he sat down, his pants were not even touching the chair.

So tonight, when my dad sent me this pic. I laughed out loud. This cartoon kills me.

When I started as a youth pastor at 22, I would frequently get accused of being one of the students on our trip.

When I was 25, my claim to fame was getting carded for buying spray paint for a church sign with a bunch of students from our youth group.

Well, today I was on the phone and answering questions for a mom about a spring retreat that we’re going on this next weekend, and after about a 50 questions, I told her that I would feel safe taking my own kids on the trip. She then said, “Oh, you have kids? You sound like you’re 17”.

I wanted to say, “No freaking way!! That’s so cool… Yeah, I’m the youth pastor you send your kid to on the weekends and I’m 17?” But I restrained my balding head and just told her I was 36 and had been taking high school students on retreats for 14 years now.

Evidently I need more face time in the main service. Several months ago I did a funeral with a family that has attended journey for like 8 years, and didn’t even know we had a youth ministry and just last weekend I answered a bunch of questions for a mom that had missed the information we put in every easter program and the 2 weekends following. Maybe we need like a student ministries booth every weekend or something.

My family and I, along with 15 other students are going to Uganda this summer to work with an orphanage for 2 weeks. Then we’re sending the students and adults from Encounter home and my family is staying behind to hang out with my sister and her family who are currently living there on a missions project. My parents will be there too. So it should be quite the memory. However, the total cost for the missions end of the trip about $4000 per person, so we have lots and lots of work to do.

On our families end, TJ and Tyler and I went to help a family move from Journey on Saturday morning. They, along with 3 other high school students helped us to raise $250 for our team.

Today, after school we went to go get our passports (Side note, um… TJ and Tyler’s passports had expired, Jake never had one, and Shannon and I’s were stolen out of my car, so um $455 later, we were done with passports. Ouch.) Anyway, my family took in a bunch of recycling we started collecting at church. 3 weeks worth of cans and bottles amounted to a $50 loot. I never thought I’d be finding $50 in the trash, but over this school year alone, I bet my family has collected about $400 in cans and bottles for the kids school or our church.

I’m going to start sending some letters out this week to some of our friends and family who might want to help us change the world, a few kids at a time. I’ll post that letter on this site soon for all of you who drop in here and maybe feel like you’ve been a part of my family’s journey while you follow my blog. That way you can join in helping us send our family to Uganda too if you want.