I’m back from 6 weeks of out of town, out of state, out of country, and/or out of the office ministry and family summer experiences and I think it’s time to pick up bloggin’ again.  I’m sure my readership is down to like 12, but to those of you who are still around, let the bonding begin.  🙂

I came home to dive full into several days jam packed with meetings and then 2 days of attending the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit.  It’s like a leadership fire hose of information and inspiration that  always gives my own soul and those of our pastoral team tons to think about.

Today was no exception to that rule.  Bill Hybels inspired me to make hard decisions.  Cory Booker challenged me to let the hope of Jesus inspire me to see the world through hope colored glasses and to “do sumpin” about it.  Seth Godin reminded me that the future is not determined by the economy, but by my own willingness to see every shift in our cultural tide as an opportunity to be seized by someone- who might as well be me.  Steven Furtick inspired me to believe God for all he has promised and to act in faith, especially when it makes no sense at all.

But as much as I loved those lectures/talks/presentations/sermons… the thing that stood out to me again today was the power of a visual illustration in communication.

• Bill Hybels used a flip chart to draw pictures and enhance his talk.
• Cory Booker used the power of story with vivid details to invoke images in my brain.
• Seth Godin used over 100 pictures to support his points, invoke laughter, and inspire the listener to never look down.  Really, it was masterful. 
• Steven Furtick spoke about a passage in 2 kings 3 and challenged us to follow Elisha’s lead and dig some ditches.  You’d have to listen to the talk or read the passage to get the gist of it.  But the power of his message was not just what he said, but what he used to make it stick.  He pounded home just one visual.  One principal that was solidly rooted in one image from the text.  It was the image of someone with a shovel digging a ditch.  Lots of ditches in fact.  He never showed a picture or even brought a shovel on stage. But it either one would have been even more powerful.  

In the end, I bet that if you asked anyone who heard the lectures today, each and every one of them without fail could tell you the visual tools used by these communicators.  Not only was I inspired by their message, but I was reminded of the power of their method.  Steven said that he wished he could give everyone a shovel today as they left his talk, but that it would cost too much.  The point was made.  When those in the audience think about a shovel, they’ll think about digging faithfully where God calls before it makes sense to anyone but those who heard the call.

I think I might just go buy a shovel and stick it in the corner of my office as a reminder. Maybe I’ll carry it around on days I need BIG faith shoes.  I did just that after I heard Jeanne Stevens  speak at the National Youth Worker’s conference in San Diego last year.  She told about the power of a “chainsaw faith” out of Mark 2 and the friends who ripped a hole in the roof of a house to get the paralytic to Jesus.  I bought a chainsaw as a reminder.  It was epic and I rarely forget a great visual.

I love communicators that engage my mind, my ears, and my eyes.

Well, for the last 6 months I’ve written 5 times a week on this blog and I’m heading into a very busy summer.   Tomorrow, I’m going to the desert for a spiritual retreat with 2 friends in ministry for a day of prayer and thinking in the calm before the storm.

Here’s what the next 6 weeks holds for me:

ANNIVERSARY:  I’ll be heading away to celebrate my 17 year anniversary to my lovely bride and do a wedding for some friends in San Luis Obispo.

CAMP AND MISSIONS TRIP:  a week of summer camp with our high school and college students will be then followed by a week of missions in Haiti- literally 3 hours after the first camp ends.

SUMMER CAMP FOR THE KIDS:  I’ll be spending a week with my kids doing summer camp for kids at Journey.

CAMPING WITH MY FAMILY: I’m heading to 5 states with my family on a big ol 2 week road trip: doing a wedding and camping in Nor Cal while water skiing with friends, camping and bonding in Yellowstone, and then camping and hiking at Zion in Utah.

So… the next time I’ll pick up this blog again with any measure of regularity will be early August.  Welcome to my crazy summer and to my faithful few readers… see you in the fall.  Enjoy your summer.  🙂

One of my favorite and most privileged roles in life is that of Dad, and in our house, along with it comes the role of “field trip Dad”.  As a result, over the last 6 years of having several of my kids in elementary school, I’ve been to over 20 field trips in San Diego.  I’ve seen the same aquarium, the zoo, the park, sea world, and mission trails multiple times.  I’ve sat on yellow buses enough that I have the pre-trip speech memorized and I even know to be quiet when the teacher raises their hand and starts the finger count down.  I can pack a mean brown bag lunch with only stuff you throw away when you’re done and have used my God-given whistle to grab the attention of the crew for the teacher on many an occasion.

About 75% of the time, it’s me and a bunch of moms, so I usually just stick with my kid and whatever group of their friends I’m responsible for to avoid the latest mom gossip.  My joke with my wife is that I’m trying to avoid the dreaded “mom thong” sighting that happens far too often when at the tide pools or any other field trip that has mom’s bending over to show a kid an animal and the rest of us her choice of undees.  I’m just sayin’…. way too much info ladies.

Anyway,  last week was the last field trip of Tyler’s elementary school career.  I wrote about it here in a guest post on my friend Doug Field’s blog.  The “cliche” phrase that “time does fly” might be the most truthful cliche in the world.  Dang it. I get tears in my eyes just thinking about all the stages we’ve passed and how few seem to really still be ahead of me.  I love my kids but their fast becoming young men and women…. too fast really.

Somehow, each time I went, I started snapping a “my kid and I” pic. I surfed through my photo pile and found a grip of them. I created an album in facebook of them for friends here.

In case you can’t view those and in honor of my kids and Dad’s day weekend, I grabbed the last 4 and put them here.  Thanks for making my life richer than it should be TJ, Tyler, Jake, Becky and Billy.  You each are a treasure.

I told you yesterday that I’m not the hugest fan of graduation ceremonies.  Both of my boys who are graduating were also giving speeches.  They both did GREAT!!  I really couldn’t be prouder of TJ and Tyler. Then today, shortly after TJ’s speech, i got this twitter from Danny, a friend of mine who is also a youth pastor at local church in our community:  “congratulations.  TJ did a great job with his speech. You should be one proud dad.”

That tweet was super encouraging and got me thinkin’… youth pastors often go to events for students in their ministry.  I have done my fair share of that, seemingly less now that my own 5 kids have so many things they need me at.   But nevertheless, when you do go to them, sometimes it can feel like an exercise in futility that no one will notice because there are often hundreds of people also there to watch.

So, here’s 4 ways to make the most of a ministry obligation so it doesn’t feel like a waste of time.

BE NOTICED:  This does not mean become a spotlight that everyone sees.  It just means that if you show up to an event and never make sure you’re seen, the “wasting of time” feeling will rapidly increase. Don’t come and then go away without first making sure your presence was scene by the one you came to watch. Danny’s twitter is one way to do that.  I never actually even saw him.  It was specific enough and subtle enough to tell me, “Hey, I’m here” supporting this moment.

ENCOURAGE:  Send an encouragement note, a text, an e-mail, a twitter comment… pretty much anything will do. But just make sure you encourage those  who you came to see in a timely manner.  My friend’s twitter did this too.

DON’T STAY FOR EVERYTHING:  Sometimes you have to, but most of the time, you can pick and choose.  Come for the first 30 minutes of graduation or the last quarter of some sporting event.  I have no idea if Danny left.  But I would have.  In fact, we sent one set of grandparents to go on a 35 minute walk to starbucks and bring some back while the name announcing went on and on.  TJ was called liked about 10 people into another 500 names- so we had A LOT of time to kill.  If you’re not family, just come for part of an event.  It will still make a huge difference and save you tons of time.  Besides, most people won’t expect you to stay for all of a swim meet or a 4 hour track meet or a 3 hour graduation.  Check with the student and come at the optimal time for them.

TAKE PICTURES: this is a great way for you to be “seen”.   Send a picture you snapped as an encouragement.  Put it on facebook and tag them.  Lots of options here.

To that end, here’s some pics I took today… that I’m sure will be great memories for TJ cuz I took them while I was bored stiff listening to hundreds of names being called. :))  Ha Ha.  My 300 mm zoom searched the audience for randomness. I have no idea who most of these pics belong to… but enjoy:

I’m not the biggest fan of graduation ceremonies.  I didn’t even go to my own college graduation- which my mother is still a little annoyed about.  I don’t like them cuz I think they are very long, usually overly hot in temperature, and very boring.  Kinda like watching my kid play baseball.  You really have to value the team, because most of the time, I’m watching someone else’s kid play baseball or someone else’s kid graduate.

But nonetheless, I have 2 graduation ceremonies to go to this week.  One was today as Tyler graduated from 5th grade and one is tomorrow for TJ’s graduation from 8th.  I’m super excited for them and very very proud of them both.  I wouldn’t miss it for the world, unless I could watch my own kids graduate and then peace out :))

Today, during Tyler’s graduation, each kid was given a “scroll” (read random poem rolled into tube and tied with string) at graduation and asked to complete a sentence with a single word as it was handed to them.  Each of them was given a scroll and then they said into the mic,  “When I grow up I want to be a __________”.   As I sat there and listened to something close to 100 5th graders tell me what they wanted to be when they grew up, here’s what I learned:

NONE OF THEM WANT TO BE A “BLUE COLLAR” WORKER:  Not one kid said they want to grow up to be a contractor, plumber, electrician, finish carpenter, tile layer, concrete worker… nothing.  Not one. I wonder if this is just our school or if it’s a symptom of a larger culture that does not value “work ethic”. I don’t know why I noticed this group necessarily, but I just found it interesting.  (No one said anything about working for a non-profit… religious or otherwise either)

WE HAVE MADE HEROES OUT OF ATHLETES:  3 students said they wanted to be teachers.  One said a cop. One said a fire fighter.  But the largest concentration (I bet at least 15 students) was to play some kinda sport professionally.   I listened carefully several times over as a 4 foot high boy told me that when he grows up (presumably really UP), he wants to be a professional basketball player.  Really?  It’s crazy to me that playing a sport can be a vocation.  (My own son said he wanted to be a professional soccer player)  Awesome.  Unlikely, but awesome.  I love to play sports, but I still scratched my head at each of these.  Some I’m sure said it just cuz they love the game and presumably, they want to do what they love for a lifetime. It’s kinda innocent on one side.  But, the other side is that many of these kids want to be athletes because deep down inside, we’ve told them in our culture, those are the real heros and they’ll make you rich, famous, and happy.  And that’s not true.

WE ALSO HAVE TAUGHT KIDS FROM A VERY YOUNG AGE THAT CAREER AND IDENTITY ARE ONE AND THE SAME.   And I don’t think it’s healthy.  It’s logical. It’s just not healthy. It’s the natural answer to the question “When I grow up I want to be a ________”.  But I still don’t think the best answer to that question is a vocation or that it’s the best question to encourage students to profess on their way out of elementary school in the first place.

I don’t think the identity thing is helpful.  In fact, speaking from my own vantage point, I think a lot of pastors see their job as their identity.  It is a constant struggle for me to not do this. When we do, the result is that it literally destroys the pastor when ministry falls short.  Not just because the ministry fell short, but because there was so much riding on that decision.  When we are our career, everything becomes about “us” instead of the mission.  If a child is taught they “are their career”, then when they lose a job or make a mistake, they don’t just affect their take home pay, they lose a piece of themselves too.

I also don’t think it’s helpful in terms of vision.  I think I would have much rather the students told me a character trait or an issue they wanted to fight for in their future than a career goal.  How very different and even inspiring this moment could have been if it was more about them and less about a job.   Instead of,  ‘I want to be a teacher or engineer or fashion designer or police officer, etc”, I think it would have been awesome to have heard student say, “When I grow up, I want to fight poverty, I want to be a peace maker, I want to show compassion in the medical field”.  Maybe I want to be “a trusted friend or a trail blazer of new ideas or a man/woman of great faith.”  Anything other than just a “job title”.

Perhaps we’d all be better off (regardless of age or vocation) if we asked ourselves a fresh today, “who do I want to be when I grow up?” instead of “What job do I want to make some money doing”.