Archives for June 2010

I’m responsible for working with several paid staff at Journey in the student ministries department. One of the specific things I think I must do in order to help us all lead well together is evaluate where we’ve been, where we’re headed, and what we need to do to get there. The summer is a great time to do this while the last school year’s learnings are still fresh and well before the beginning of a new school year is upon us.

To that end, I dreamed up some questions I want to answer with those I help lead. As I sent them off in an e-mail today, I realized that not only did I want them to answer them, but I wanted to answer them for myself too.

I feel in love with and was deeply wrecked by this book.

What Donald Miller has captured in it is something that has just placed it on my must read list for everyone (and that’s a very short list in my world)…. In fact, if I could have given one book to every graduating senior in our ministry, I would have given them this book.

I could go on for hours, but basically, the message on these pages rocked my world even more than when I heard Donald speak about this book at a conference I attended last September. It inspired my heart. I cried. I laughed out loud a few times. It messed with me on a level that has me up at 2am writing about it.

Without stealing the thunder of the book, let me simply say that it is a story about story. It is about what makes a good story and how my life and your life are often robbed of greatness when we create a boring story and a pointless plot. This book scared me: mostly because I don’t want to live the life it warns most are. It scares me because more days than I’d like to admit, I think I make choices that move me out of the dynamic story God has for me and into a much more predictable and pointless one.

Here’s a few quotes and my musings that I’ll be stewing on for quite some time.

“The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won’t make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either.”

• in other words… if someone followed me around with a “reality tv camera crew” or a book script writing team, how much editing and creative license would they have to employ to get anyone to watch/read it? If I am living a life that is so predictable and mundane and risk-free that the audience would flip the channel or put down the book, then maybe something is wrong…. or at the very least, seriously lacking in my life.

“People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.”

• this is super true. Most “boring life stories” are cuz we are too scared to live the really fulfilling one. Real stories require sacrifice, often more sacrifice than I’m willing to make. It’s waaaaay too easy in our world to kick life into neutral. I need to risk more if I’m going to gain more. There is no easy way out of that reality.

“Robert McKee says humans naturally seek comfort and stability. Without an inciting incident that disrupts their story, they won’t enter into a story. They have to get fired from their job or be forced to sign up for a marathon. A ring has to be purchased. A home has be sold. The character has to jump into the story, into discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen.”

• if there was a part of this book I wanted to rip out, it was this section. I hate that this is true. I hate that most of the time, I’ll opt out of the better life for the safer life. I also hate that it often requires the discomfort of an inciting incident in my life to get me to choose the better life. I hate that pain moves me more than joy. I hate that I let peace become comfort become complacency and then I settle into a life that only pain can jolt me out of. Dang it. I want to choose to jump into the inciting incidents in my life instead of waiting for God or life or whatever to throw me into them.

“And once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can’t go back to being normal: you can’t go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time.”

• noodle on that phrase for a while: “the forgettable thread of wasted time” I want to sew a patchwork quilt of life experiences tied together by the meaningful risk of a faith-filled life, not a forgettable thread of monotony.

“You become like the people you interact with. And if your friends are living boring stories, you probably will too.”

• this resonated with me. I want to spend my time around people whose lifestyle inspires me to be intentional about living a life of significance. I want to do life different with people who want to do life different. I want to inspire people who inspire me.

One final note, as I turned the pages of this book, I kept thinking.. I really want to try and meet Donald Miller and maybe even Bob Goff, the San Diego/Ugandan lawyer whose story makes up some of the pages if I can figure out how to do either of those things. I really really want to do both of those things if for no other reason just to say thank you: thank you for living and writing like you are. Dang this book blessed me.

Hey Youth Ministry friends. I’m gonna be at the National Youth Workers Conference here in San Diego again this fall. YOU SHOULD JOIN ME. I’m super stoked to be able to go and to have a chance to teach some seminars and learn from some great thinkers whose seminars/main sessions I get to hear this year too.

Here’s a video to inspire you 🙂

Here’s the FYI on the 2 seminars I’ll be teaching if you wanna join me. The first one is new to me this year. Or maybe I should say the teaching of it in this format is since I’ve been dealing with the subject matter for quite some time now 🙂

“You Suck: Enduring, Learning From, and Responding to Your Critics” (Saturday, Oct. 2 – 8:00AM to 9:30AM )

• Criticism is about as enjoyable and endurable as a root canal, but it might be just as critical to your long term ministry health too. (That’s probably why this seminar as at 8am. HA! ) Regardless, one of the essential skill sets of all leaders is the ability to learn from -and at times- even ignore the voice of critics. This seminar will examine some why we fear criticism, why we need it, and how to respond when it comes.

This second one is one I’ve done several times and it has gotten some great reviews and has even graduated into a the big ol’ 2 1/2 hour time slot. Anyway, I’ve had lots of people bump into me somewhere at some youth ministry gig and tell me they’re using the stuff from this seminar in their day to day ministry responsibilities. I even had a former student who is now a youth pastor in the Sacramento area ask me if he could have the notes to teach it to a group of youth pastors he leads in a network. It’s very practical and something I’m using in my ministry daily too. Super cool how this little life learning has been a blessing. Join me if you think it might be good for you too.

“The Big Picture: How to Develop a Coordinated, Year-long Calendar and Teaching Plan” (Saturday, Oct. 2 – 2:00PM to 4:30PM)

• Ministry can be all about the tyranny of the urgent. When it is, the result is limited creativity, high stress, and usually low volunteer involvement due to the immediacy of the needs and short term demands. This seminar is all about changing that by helping you to develop a teaching and events calendar that lets you get ahead and get others involved. We’ll show you how to create a visual calendar that you can use to stay ahead, discuss ways to get group ownership, as well as talk about practical ways to make a calendar year that creates momentum instead of a constant drain on you, your ministry, and families.

Recently I’ve been reading like crazy… probably making up for my lost time studying Greek every spare moment the last 9 months 🙂 Since I spent several hours on planes last week, I had ample time to do just that…. which will lead to a few blog posts. Here’s the first.

One of the books I read last week was called “Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements” It’s the latest survey-summary type book from Gallop and the same people that created StrengthsFinder 2.0 (a book about discovering what you’re good at and how to leverage your strongest passions and skill-set for maximum impact)

Wellbeing, instead of helping you discover your strengths, ironically… kind of assesses your weaknesses in an attempt to try and help you to develop a well rounded life. They claim that one’s wellbeing can be summarized in 5 basic areas of your life, based on a worldwide survey:

• CAREER WELLBEING (enjoy your job)
• SOCIAL WELLBEING (good friendships/relationships)
• FINANCIAL WELLBEING (stress-free finances)
• PHYSICAL WELLBEING (healthy eating and exercise)
• COMMUNITY WELLBEING (feeling safe and invested where you live)

My mom is starting a new era of her life next week. She is retiring from 25 years of teaching. I flew up to Nor Cal to go to her staff retirement party on Tuesday and it was so great to see and hear how my mom’s friends have such a deep respect for her. I was super proud and teared up more than once as her friends shared stories about her. It was clear to me:

• My mom has navigated 25 years in the secular school district in a way that her colleagues respect her for, even writing a silly song they all sang to her expressing it.
• My mom has a passion to teach and does it well. One teacher said, “She could teach a rock to read.”
• My mom has shared her authentic life of faith and family with them, so many of them knowing the stories of her children and grandchildren
• My mom LOVES the kids in her classroom and she is so important to them. They are the reason she teaches. Her colleagues had the kids in her class now and even some former kids write little suggestions and draw pictures about what she should do with her new found retirement “free time”. Lots of them wrote about how she should go to Africa, be with her grand kids, and spend time relaxing. One little girl broke my heart though. She wrote in her broken english, that Mrs. Berry should not retire and she should keep teaching because she loves my mom. I asked my mom this little girl’s story and she told me she was a little second language girl who had lost her mom to cancer at 5 yrs old. For this little girl, my mom clearly represents stability and hope. What a solid thing for a kid at such a young age in tragic circumstances. Oh I pray this girl finds many more Mrs. Berry’s along her education journey in the years to come.

I took this picture of the roses in my parent’s front yard on our way out the door to the party and it seemed so poetic. The ending of a beautiful legacy and life of service to her community and the budding new flower of stories untold. I know that for my mom, retirement is not an end, but a new beginning of a new era of adventures.

Here’s to you mom and dad. Welcome to retirement. Welcome to the chance to influence your friends, family, and community every day in ways that are directed by your desires instead of the demands of your work schedule. Enjoy your marriage. Enjoy your days. Invest in the Kingdom of God. I for one, can’t wait to see how God will use these years of your lives in amazing ways.

Oh… and 3 cheers for frequent flyer miles. Southwest will surely know you by name soon. 🙂