Archives for March 2009

There’s some things that hurt more in ministry than others. It’s inevitable that people will not always be happy with me and that attendance is a roller coaster.

It’s a bummer that some students inevitably don’t connect with youth group and try as a I may, they find it’s not a place they want to be or just don’t fit.

While I don’t love any of the above scenarios, I’ve come to live with them as something that I can’t always solve nor am I always called to solve them.

However, the ones that I can’t seem to shake and that cause me to vacillate between depression and angst the most are those who simply leave my ministry with little or no notice- especially when I was heavily invested with them or they were on our volunteer team. I was teaching today on division in the family of God in our youth group and how it hurts God, the family, and the influence of the church in the world. As I taught, I have 15 years of ministry and pastor-type conversations and I could fill pages and pages of broken funk in the church family, but the ones that weighed me down today are the ones that are the freshest.

In the last year or so, I’ve lost several volunteers and a few students due to changes in our church or some unknown reason. I’d love to know, but they often just walk away.

• two of them left with like a days notice.
• three left without ever having a face-to-face conversation with me
• when I call, several of them refused to answer and never returned my voice mails. I always quit after 3.

I never know what I’m going to say when and if I run into them. I have so much more respect and understanding for those who God moved on for one reason or another and actually tried to reconcile things before they left. Even if we agreed to disagree, at least there was closure.

Perhaps that’s what I’m missing. Closure. Without ever officially telling me what or why, or refusing to do anything about it via conversations in the future, or a refusal to see if there’s a way to fix it has left me feeling like the family is divided and reconciliation is not an option. From where I sit, that leaves me heavy hearted and feeling like a failure some days. I don’t think it’s the Body of Christ at it’s best. I wonder sometimes if it’s even the Body at all.

Ok… I might be twelve because the mere thought of this post already has me laughing.

The reason I’ve titled it as such is because today I posted the following on my twitter feed: “ate a skittle I found on my office floor, & based on the methane that just left me- it was laced with poison. paint is peeling off my walls”

This resulted in a slew of comments.  Since it also posts on my facebook status, that generated some comments, and a few old friends directly texted me too.  Been a while since anything I said generated that kind of response.  Methane is powerful stuff evidently.

• 1 or 2 people reprimanded me for my juvenile behavior. At least I think it was a reprimand.  I was laughing at all the other stuff too hard to decipher if they were serious or sarcastic. 
  

• Several of my old ministry students and volunteers piped in from my first decade in ministry.  These comments caused me to laugh out loud.   I guess I am still 12. 
  

“I’ve known you way too long and worked way too close to you to believe a skittle had anything to do with your gaseous stench!”

“I remember a little story of someone driving on a high school trip and locking the windows and letting one go…because his truck was full of girls who were chatting non stop.”

“Your butt is the only one I know that can send everyone in a ski boat diving for safety in the water.  No poison skittle can do that ha ha :)” 

Oh man.  Maybe one day I’ll grow up, but those memories are still super funny to me. 

I was originally asked to teach a seminar on student leadership at PDYM this year but then a few weeks before they decided to drop the seminars and just have several of us share a 5 minute blurb.  Yeah, well in traditional Brian form, I think I tried to push 10 pounds of material into a 5 pound sack.  I’m not sure I actually breathed in the 5 minutes I was sharing.  I should have just dropped it and shared one point and one story… but I’m not that smart.

Anyway, I posted my thoughts and some downloadable resources over at the PDYM community site too.  So again, if you’re one of the handful of youth pastors who read this blog, head over there and steal and tweak at will.

I’m part of a group of pastors who are committed to doing and help others do youth ministry that is healthy and helps kids find God at all different places in their spiritual journey.

To that end, I posted two posts on our community blog tonight.  If you work with students,

this one might make you laugh

and

you might be able to rip some ideas off this one.

I’m at the Purpose Driven Youth Ministry Conference and in a session on evangelism I was shown this video.  It echoed a recent conversation I had with our teaching pastor at Journey about Hell.  In which case, there was some irony in the discussion because some people who hold very passionately views about hell, don’t talk about it with very many people- and it would seem it’d be something you’d warn EVERYONE about all the time.  We asked the question, “If you really believe this, then why aren’t you telling everyone?”  I tried to ask myself that question too.  In light of that, this clip from self proclaimed atheist Penn of the “Penn and Teller show” is convicting, challenging, and inspiring.

So the question is:  If I believe what the Bible teaches to be true, then why would I ever apologize for taking the time to tell others about what it teaches?