Every once in a while you stumble into a God thing.  The Journey Parenting Summit this last Saturday was one of those.  We were praying for a game changer- a literal shift in what is “normal” for all parents at JCC and the essential ethos of our culture to change in 3 key ways.

With my new job change last January, job number one for me was to try and get infants through twenty-something adults all operating under the same vision.  The chief way to do that outside of my staff team was to expand our annual student ministry parent’s day into a Generation Ministries Parenting Summit.  Last Saturday was the culmination of months of planning and dreaming.

I was going to pump the 4 hours of material into one brief blog post, but I decided I’ll do 3 instead: one for each of 3 sessions we had during the day.  Each session was taught by a team and served to build upon the last.  Each one tried to get us to stack hands on one of 3 values we were trying to champion.

We spent the first session driving home what is our generation ministries banner cry which over the last 3 years since we wrote it, has become my own personal motto.  This is not only what I try and do as a pastor, but it is the essential core of all of my parenting.  If you asked me what I’m trying to do as a Dad, I’d tell you this vision.  I believe it to the core of my being.  If you cut me, I bleed this.

THE VISION:

I believe we are called as a ministry and as parents in this:  “inviting a generation to understand, own, and live out a life-changing faith in Jesus.”  Here’s how this breaks down.

• INVITING:  not challenging, not pushing, not demanding, not calling, not urging.  As parents, we are inviting our kids to go on a faith journey with us.
• GENERATION: this is not a kid thing.  this is not a teen thing.  this is not a part time thing.  this is a long haul, big time, massively epic calling as parents.  We’re passing a baton onto the next Generation and if we screw that up, we screw up our kids and our kid’s kids and beyond.  I have no other higher calling in life than to entrust my faith to my kids.  (ie: 2 Timothy 2:2 vs. Judges 2:10)
• UNDERSTAND: in a largely Biblically illiterate society, it is of critical importance that we stop simply teaching kids what to think and we start teaching them how to think.  To this end, we must become masters at the craft of asking and responding to questions.  Too much parenting is essentially about behavior modification, which is NOT understanding, it is compliance… and it is a short term win and a long term loss I simply cannot afford.
• OWN: nothing. I repeat. nothing changes between 17 as a senior in high school and 18 as an “official adult”.  If we expect to raise young adults that honor God for the long haul, we must give them the reigns of their own life and faith long before they “become adults”.  We must steadily shift from a control mindset to an empowerment one.  
• LIVE OUT A LIFE-CHANGING FAITH: talk is cheap. I want my kids to make wise choices with how they live and implement their faith into their daily lives.  I want to model that for them and live it out with them.
• IN JESUS: if I help students or even my own kids place faith in me, then this ain’t gonna work.  Our lead pastor put it like this, “We must be very careful that we don’t lead our kids to a Jesus we’re going to have to unlead them to later.” As parents, we are sometimes the Jesus we have to unlead them to later.  I’m not called to be Jesus.  I am called to be like Jesus and lead my kids to Him. There is a massive difference between the two.  

So, here’s CORE VALUE #1: parenting is communal.


If we are to accomplish this vision, we must acknowledge two things about this massive task.

1. THIS MUST BE A ME THING:  This mission must become MY mission.  I cannot expect the church to do this while I’m doing something else.  There’s NO WAY that an hour on Sunday is gonna cut it! We all must bleed this in our homes and daily lives. 
2. THIS MUST BE A CORPORATE US THING:  We must help each other do this.  My kids need other voices.  We cannot do this by merely providing childcare to kids on the weekend.  We cannot do this in our kids ministry when we only have enough volunteers to keep the kids “safe”.  Safe is not my goal.  Safe is the lowest bar I have available.  If we’re going to see our kids, our students, and our young adults embrace these values, then we need an all in, all hands on deck mindset. We need help!

If you’re a parent at Journey Community Church, then you’ve already heard about our massive PARENTING SUMMIT we’re having on THIS SATURDAY!

IT’S NOT TOO LATE for you to join the 450 parents who have already signed up. We’d love to have you.

WHO: all parents of infants through teens.

WHEN: Saturday, March 19, 2011, 8:30am – 12:30pm in JCC’s main worship center.  Check in and doors open at 8:10am.

CHILDCARE and COST: childcare through 5th grade and it’s free!

FOOD:  snack and lunch for your kids.  coffee and light refreshments for you.

WHY:  this will be an epic day of great training and stacking hands on the mission of raising our kids into young adults who love and follow Jesus on their own. Special training by me, Ed Noble, Mark Oestreicher, and our entire Generations Staff team.   Come learn, meet new friends, enjoy a power packed 4 hours, and be prayed for as a parent.

Gonna be an EPIC day!!  See you there!

My first 3 church internships were essentially volunteer.  I was home from college for the summers and the church took an offering for all of us at the end of the summer.  It wasn’t much.  I loved it. I wasn’t there for the money anyway. 

So our pastoral staff had a meeting last week that pretty much was all about jackin’ with reality.

It was about muddying the water of certainty.  It was about saying, “Hey, see that box your world’s in, let’s see if we can break it.”  Not that we wanted to declare everything broken, just that we wanted to try and crawl outside our skin and look at this thing called church from a different angle.  So we brought in a friend who has been thinking and reading in a different vein and invited him to mess with us.

He started by asking us to write down the answer to this question:  “What are the non-negotiables for me in ministry?  Like practically or theologically or whatever, what would cause me to quit if my church told me I could no longer do it?”

We were given like 2 minutes. Here’s the non-negotiables I wrote down in this brief time:

• Work in line with my giftings and talents.
• Don’t settle for mediocrity
• Embrace process more than product
• Theology is active, informed by history, but not controlled by it. 

Not really sure who keeps putting the curtain back up, but I’m pretty sure Jesus took it down. Read for yourself:

“And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split” (Matthew 27:50–51)

THEOLOGICALLY SPEAKING, in case you’re unfamiliar: the jewish temple has always had a curtain in it.  A BIG BLUE/RED/PURPLE COLORFUL CURTAIN!  The curtain was there because God was sending an image of Holiness to the people.  There was an acute awareness that there was sin in the camp, God wanted no part of it, and it required a sacrifice to be made right.  Literally.  So the priests offered a sacrifice on their behalf and out of grace, God forgave them.  Once a year (on the day of atonement- Leviticus 16), this was done on the altar that was in the “Holy of Holies” (Exodus 26:31-35) Only the High Priest went in… and only cautiously at that.  Failure to do this right could literally cost you your life. (Leviticus 16:2)

When Jesus paid the price as the ultimate sinless and blameless sacrifice, this system was donezo. (Hebrews 9-10)  No more sacrifice. No more separation.  Now we can approach God’s throne with grace and confidence because we’ve been forgiven in and through the blood of  Jesus. He was and is the perfect sacrifice and as our high priest, and in response, the CURTAIN WAS TORN IN HALF by God and gravity. (Hebrews 4:14-16, Galatians 3:26-29)

There’s really not supposed to be anymore separation between God’s people and the Holy presence of God. So much so that Peter destroys the priesthood of a few and elevates the priesthood of all believers. (1 Peter 2:4-9) So much so that Paul says the Holy Spirit dwells in us now, not in temples and behind curtains.  We’re not only NOT separated, but we’re the new temple.  (Ephesians 2:19-22)

PRACTICALLY SPEAKING, no matter how torn the curtain is.  There are always those who want to mend it.

PASTOR VS PEW:  This comes up all the time.  Some want there to be a curtain between the pastor and the pew.  We see this in architecture.  We see this in people’s “us” and “them” language.  If you’re on staff, you’ve been told “Yeah, but you’re paid to do that.”  If you’re in the seats, you’ve probably been told a time or two that the “real followers of Jesus” are the ones who work full time at the church.”  Both are garbage.  I’ve been working in a paid staff of a church for almost 2 decades now.  And I’ve come to hate the curtain.  I see it all the time.  For this reason alone, I loathe the term “pastor”.  I hate what it often stands for in a lot of churches and most people’s mind today.

COME ON IN VS CLEAN UP FIRST:  Some churches and youth ministries and families and you name it… some groups of Christians find themselves moving the curtain from the Holy of Holies right to the entrance of the building.  You can’t come in here till you fix that thing you do.  Till you deal with that desire you have- and especially if that desire is a sexual one.  This is a holy place for holy people. Get a needle and thread, put the curtain back.

MALE VS FEMALE:  Some separate spiritual spaces, not according to integrity for modesty or confidentiality, but simply because you don’t have the right body parts to be in this club.  This curtain is so thick in some places that lots of people believe God put it there on purpose. It’s also way too thick to dismantle in this paragraph.  It’s suffice to say that you’ll find this curtain outside of some church office doors.  Mostly you’ll find it in front of the stage.

POOR PEOPLE VS RICH PEOPLE:  This one’s popular today.  Especially in America.  You’ll find this curtain between the pews and down the rows.  Sometimes you’ll find it around neighborhoods and in churches.  And both groups put this curtain up. The poor will mock the rich and the rich will mock the poor.  It’s uber cool today to celebrate the inner city and mock suburbia.  We evidently are gonna put the curtain somewhere on the freeway off ramp or gate your neighborhood with it.

Get knife. I’m pretty sure Jesus will give it to you if you ask. Let’s cut the curtain up again!

Oh.. and on a totally random note and just for the record. I hate curtains in general. If I had my way, window coverings would be banned from everywhere but your bedroom.  I love big open window. I really love them if they fold open and disappear. Fresh air and full light are both amazing.