Archives for January 2014

Tonight was the restart of our small groups after our winter break for Encounter High School Ministry.  I had a great night with my guys and really enjoyed reconnecting with them.  While we’re still a long way from perfect and even have a “let’s revamp some stuff” meeting on Sunday, there is some stuff that I’m learning that is worth sharing.

Here’s a video that shows 4 small things that seem to be working for us.  It was recorded at Youth Specialties in San Diego this last fall.

If you’re interested in the books I mentioned at the end, check out this blog post called “pick a numba” where I outline this principle and link to some resources.

If you’re interested in the small group talk sheets, check out these links.   They deviate from the style we use when teaching a series.  But each of these should be pretty easy to use and still follow a simple format that requires little to no prep on the part of the leader.

• here’s one on a new year’s resolution tied to 1 Cor 16:14
• here’s one on  dealing with discouragement.
• a set of 5 more I mentioned in the video above download youth ministry soon.

This last weekend I taught at a junior high winter camp for Forest Home and got to take Jake along for the ride.  It was super fun and if nothing else, a great father/son win for me.  Jake and I had a GREAT time.

Anyway, on saturday night, we were talking about living with Love as our guide and not money or relationships or anything else the world sorta taunts us with as a good reason to live.  So to illustrate my point, I decided to come at it from a slightly different angle and show this overplayed and still funny video of some silly ways to die.  (No joke, I bet 75% of the audience sang the lyrics as it played too btw).

Anyway… as tragic as it might be to die dumb, at least it’s over after your stupidity shows itself.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for a God of grace, but there are plenty of times when I think just going to heaven would be better than living in the mess I’ve made.  I mean, it’d be horrible to end a great life doing something dumb like pressing that red button (ha ha.. that one’s my favorite).  But there’s something far worse than dying dumb and winning the infamous “darwin award“.

Dying dumb is one thing.

Living dumb is an entirely different -and altogether worse thing I think.

Really… ponder that.  I’m sure that some people will die in tragic and maybe even dumb ways in 2014. Maybe you will.  Maybe I will.  But even knowing that is true, it is also true that none of us will sign up for that willingly.  On the flip side though, there is a much LARGER percentage of people who will keep on living, but in ways that are just plain stupid.  In other words, more of us will live dumb in 2014 than die dumb.   I wonder what percentage of the population will get to the end of the year and say, “Wow, what a waste.”

I don’t want that to be me.

My hard drive crashed last Wednesday and I’ve spent the last 5 days either dealing with my broken computer or trying to fully get the back up disk to get everything truly back up and running.   Not my plan for 2014.  So far, I’ve spent a day puking, a day sleeping it off, and 2 full days fixing my computers in the last 3 weeks.  I want those days back, but they’re gone.   So all I can do at this point is use them as reminders of what I don’t want to LIVE my life doing.

I really don’t want to waste my life trusting in stuff that won’t last, investing my time and resources into pointless ventures, or choosing to accept the status quo in my life, family, and job.  I don’t want to die dumb.  But worse yet, I don’t want to live that way either.  I don’t want to live for approval of people and miss the peace of God.  I don’t want to live to get rich and miss the joy in giving.  I don’t want to live for success and miss the experiences of the journey to it.

In fact, it was Jesus who called us to a better way to live that would be an abundant life (John 10:10) instead of one stolen and void of purpose.  In the same way however, he also called us to die.  He called us to die to some dumb stuff (Mark 8:34-38) in order that we might live for the real stuff of eternal Kingdom living.

So, I guess the bottom line is…  if dying dumb is bad, living dumb is a tragedy.  Don’t fear death, fear a pointless life.

On cyber monday I found a deal for snow summit lift tickets that I acted on a few months ago.  At the time, I knew we’d be in Big Bear for 2 days and would be on the slopes for one of them, so I picked Tuesday as our day and bought tickets for all 7 of us plus several grandparents.  All was good until on Monday night, when my oldest son got the flu and was sick.  He was the 4th person in the family to get it, so we knew it’d be gone in 24hrs.  As a result, we decided to swap plans and go on Wednesday instead of Tuesday.

However, therein was the problem.  My tickets were good for Tuesday and not Wednesday.  The fine print of the policy says that they now become like vouchers to apply to another ticket purchase and that on Wednesday, I’d have to pay full price.  But I really had no other option.

So, when I arrived at the ticket window first thing on Wednesday morning, I decided I would ask if they could help me out and bend the policy, but honestly I expected to have to pay the full price. I said, “I know I’m asking for a favor, but I was wondering if I could redeem these tickets today instead of yesterday. I arbitrarily chose Tuesday as our ski day originally when I bought the tickets.  I didn’t miss it because of weather complaints and I’m not trying to redeem them on a weekend.  I just had a sick son and we could not come.  But we’re here today.  Is there anything you can do for me?”  Without asking a bunch of questions, she just said she’d have to get manager approval.  So, when her manager came, I expected to have to explain it all again.  However, when she sat down at the desk, she didn’t dig for details. She just started to do her magic without asking a single guilt trip question.  She verified my order was correct, collected the funds for the additional rentals I needed to do, and let us redeem our tickets.  I was shocked and grateful for how easy that was.

It’s rare that I find people today that bend “policy” toward the intention.  When I chose Tuesday and showed up on Wednesday, I had broken the “rules” but not the intention behind them.   I was so thankful that the employees at this place got that.

I’m not much of a red tape guy or a policy maker.  In fact, most of the time I’d avoid them at all cost if I could, but sometimes in youth ministry, we have to say something like “If you don’t do _______, then you have to do _________”    In families it takes the form of “when you’re 13, then you get to do ______”   In everyday life the policies of people take the form of tradition and become the fulfillment of statements like “that’s just what we do” or in the negative, “I’m sorry, but that’s not what we do.”

But, even if there’s value in developing normal patterns or policies, I hate it when they get in the way of “common sense”.  There may be value in the policy or tradition, but there’s also value in breaking those patterns based on the values behind them. So, in the case of my most recent experience with snow summit this week, I was at odds with their policy.

This whole thing reminded me again that I’m not going to live my life by policies, but instead by values.  When the policy or tradition no longer supports the value that prompted it, then I’m going to drop it.  I was so thankful for the employees at Snow Summit who totally understood this.  They saved me hundreds of dollars in additional fees and reminded me that this is how I want to live.

I will give my loyally to purpose and values, not rules and policies.

My family and I were spending a few days in a 5300 square foot “mansion” of a home for vacation this winter.  It was massively discounted to me as a rental from a friend of a friend kinda deal.  But sadly, despite my eager anticipation to stay in this great casa on the hill, it’s been quite a let down really.  Certainly not due to the size of the house.  It’s massive with 6 bedrooms, 4 1/2 baths, 2 decks, and a beautiful view of the valley below.  No, the problem is in the smaller details.

We keep blowing circuits cuz of crazy wiring.  Doors don’t open.  Showers don’t work.  There’s full size comforters on queen size beds.   Not to mention the fact that the carpenter in me is having a heart attack in this place.  Seriously, I’m not sure that there isn’t even one room in the house that I wouldn’t ask, “Hmm.  Wonder what they were thinking there.”  Walls are wavy, baseboards are weird, drywall is cracking.  But the kicker for me is this finished kitchen floor.  Twice, they made some kinda effort to put poorly placed pipes into the structure of the home by making up for bad craftsmanship with even worse finish carpentry and masonry.   There are so many ways to cover up this kind of stuff.  This is not it.

plumbers, tile guys, & finish carpenters are having a heart attack right here.

So, it’s a beautiful home that is awesome at 100 yards.  But from 10 feet, is still a long way from being done right.

But that’s not just true of this house, it’s also true of  families, marriages, jobs, cars, opportunities, and even churches.  Almost everything looks awesome from a distance, but then you get up close and you realize, “There’s a lot of clean up still to do.  This ______ wasn’t as nice as I thought.”    Some people go crazy trying to fix things, turning an appreciation for detail into an obsession with perfection.  Others just ignore it and say, “who cares?  It so doesn’t matter.”  And I agree, both are valid points from time to time.  Some stuff doesn’t matter.  However, if what you’re trying to create is a lasting impression to be celebrated, then you also know that there is no piece of art in a nice gallery that ignored the details.   The homes we love are the ones where the architect and the interior designer and the finish carpenters all worked together like a fine symphony.   The things we celebrate in life are the things where people paid attention to the details.

It’s the details in a bride’s bouquet,  the placement of food on a plate by a chef, the seamless and hidden engine wires of a hot rod rebuild, the finish cuts on a handrail… it’s even the design of a simple graphic that can cause you to stop and take note of details.  And the details, are what makes all the difference in the world.

The shakers, were known in the early 1800’s for simple, yet amazing furniture.  It has stood the test of time for hundred’s of years due to it’s amazing craftsmanship which I read once came from a believe and mantra they held onto:  “Give your heart to God and your hands to work.”  In other words, they saw the details of a piece as an act of worship to God.  So they cared about not just joining two boards together, but how they were joined together.  They wanted to be subtle, yet sophisticated.  And because they did, shaker boxes and furniture is still celebrated a hundred years after it was crafted.

I wonder what would happen if we viewed details like the shakers did?  What if they small stuff really is worth sweating a little?

What if on the next family vacation or youth group event that you plan, you pay attention to the details of the car ride there, not just the destination?

What if on your next date, you pay attention to what you do and where you go and how you look and turn the humdrum into one to remember and celebrate.

Maybe on your next e-mail to the team, don’t just punch out data, but format it so that it is easy to skim and where the most important details stand out the most.  Then over time, more people will open and actually read them and you’ll get more information across because you cared about the details.

On your next presentation, give some effort to add visuals to your stories and watch the memories and get it factor of your audience come alive.

Seriously, if you and I just give the details a little love and attention, we’ll take the forgettable and turn it into the celebrated.  The difference is -and always has been- in the details.

11 months ago in Feb of 2013 I sent this brief Facebook message to a student who I hadn’t seen in a while.

I tried to contact you a grip of times and was stoked to see you on our facebook page today. How are you? Where are you these days? You’re dearly missed.

She never responded.  That is until out of the blue, last friday when I got this short but cutting response:

Sorry it’s taken so long for me to respond I had a lot of anger to work through….if I had to write a review of your high school ministry this would be it…..

Superficial, clique-y, not at all welcoming, got abandoned by one of my small group “leaders”, wish I hadn’t wasted four years of my life trying to fit in and voice my opinions…..hopefully they’ve changed since then.

I’d love to tell you that the next 3 messages in the conversation with her went better, that she agreed to meet with me, and that we are on our way towards a healthy friendship restoration.  But that’s not the truth.   I’d also love to tell you that this is the first letter like this I’ve ever received as a youth pastor.  However, that’s not true either.  In the last 20 years of doing this job full-time, there have been days when e-mails, hurtful comments (regardless of their validity), or just that critical voice in my head that won’t shut up made me wonder if what I was doing was even making any positive difference in the world.  Some days are just like that.

I’d also love to tell you that this kinda stuff is unique to me.  But it’s not. Every pastor I’ve ever met has had this kinda stuff come across their desk and thanks to the invention of e-mail… sending them is quick, cheap, and evidently pretty easy too.   It’s not even unique to me in my own church.  Just in the last 30 days, several unhappy people left scathing comments on “comment cards” in our church to express their discontent with everything from leadership decisions to preaching illustrations to how finances are handled.  Really, if you let it, this kind of stuff will ruin you and has run many a soul straight out of ministry.

In fact, this kinda stuff has run people off leadership boards, out of churches, off of teams, out of businesses, out of neighborhoods, out of friendships and I’m sure hundreds of other scenarios.  Criticism can be just plain brutal and the strong desire/need I had to personally process and navigate this stuff is what led me to write “Criticism Bites” in the first place.

While it is also true that not every e-mail is negative and that I could post a couple of really cool things students said about our youth ministry in beautiful Facebook status updates, there is this stupid reality that we tend to weight the negative 1000x worse.  Jon Acuff calls it “critics math.”  It’s where 1,000 compliments plus 1 critical comment = 1 critical comment.

So if you can relate to this, and this junk is part of your own reality, I can tell you two things I’m personally doing to push back:

#1. I’m intentionally and regularly doing things to connect my own heart and soul with God.  The truth is, the more my identity and peace is wrapped up and tied to people’s happy opinions of me, the less able I will be to navigate their words.  When I’m good with God, then I can take the bomb of a critical e-mail to God and invite Him to examine it with me.  We can then decide together to head it or chuck it. I don’t have to hide it or let shame cause it to run me into a corner.  I can bring it out in the open and invite God and others to examine it.  But if on the other had, I’m disconnected from God and counting on affirmation from people to fill my soul, then crap like this is a death blow.  It’s the antithesis of critics math.  Maybe we could call it “peaceful math”:  1 person at peace with God + 1000 people unhappy with them = 1 person at peace with God.    The Apostle Paul said it like this in Galatians 1:10- “Am I now trying to win human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”  So, the more I serve God, the less I am slave to the comments of my critics.

#2. I’m committed to writing encouragement notes. lots of them.  My goal this year is 2 per week or about 100 this year.  I got no where near that in 2013, but this reminder on January 3 caused me to re-up this value and say “enough is enough”.  I’m not going to fight this reality with defensive posturing or e-mail bantering back and forth.  I’m going on the offensive.  I’m making it my goal to fill inboxes and mail boxes and ears with words of affirmation and encouragement.  Maybe, just maybe, one will providentially land on someone’s desk on a day when it can call out the lie of scathing criticism they received that day too.