Just call me the word artist

Last night, when making an impassioned plea with someone about an important topic, I asked the question:

Why do you think we care so much?

Now, in my head apparently this sounded much different than it did to the hearers. The question was to ascertain the reason for which we cared so much. And the answer was because we cared about the person to whom we were speaking. But I had no I clue that this would actually be heard as:

What delusional idea convinced you that we actually care about what you're telling us?

That is quite a different question. Those clauses are dangerous when they are ambiguous! Clear communication is so important!

NYWC #6 - Day 3 - General Session #2

I'm still posting about NYWC. Things were so busy and I was so tired that I didn't post about everything at the end of each day.

At the second general session, there was a comedy peformance by Joby Saad - "the village idiot" A band called 4th Avenue Jones performed a genre they call "hip rock soul" or something like that. They closed with something that I think was a cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Ted & Lee performed a drama imagining what process of arranging the room for the Last Supper could have been like. The drama was phenomenal at the convention.

David Crowder Band led worship, with a set that went something like this:
* He Was There
* Undignified
* Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
* Amazing Grace
* You Are My Joy (This was awesome... at Passion '05 they had a video wall which made the tidal wave so... huge... it was wild)
* Oh Praise Him (All This for a King)

Doug Fields, of Saddleback youth fame, spoke at this session. He talked about a problem that's all too common in youth ministry, and in ministry in general, and in life in general. Our lives spin out of control with busy-ness. He talked about saying "No!" in ministry.

Doug compared our lives to trains running down tracks too fast in places that require going slow.

Some of the things that lend to us falling into this trap:
* Seeing students mess up, and thinking that if we did more they wouldn't have messed up
* Conflict (I don't remember in what context he referred to conflict now... my laptop battery was dead or dying and I took notes in the dark, on paper, of all things. Who uses paper anymore???)
* Guilt -- feeling that we don't measure up

But what gets sacrificed in our busyness is this: our heart, our soul, our family, our relationships.

He listed warning signs - we laughed at the first few because they apply to so many of us and it seems comical. The laughing stopped in the latter three. Probably not because they didn't apply to us anymore, but they weren't so comical.
* Constant clutter (office, desks, etc.)
* Addiction to speed
* Extreme multi-tasking (I'm writing this with the television on, a book at my side which I need to write a review of, I have my church email open in a different tab, and a course syllabus with information on the paper I'm supposed to be writing. Am I learning)
* Superficiality - our hurry is the enemy of depth
* Relationship fatigue
* Spiritual emptiness - no time to give attention to our own relationship with God

Questions to ask yourself as a youth minister:
* Who have I become because I'm doing youth ministry?
* Do I like who I've become?

How do we stop this lifestyle?
* Stop being impressed by the busyness of other people. "So, you been staying busy?" That is not the measure of success.
* Cut out the noise - develop a habit of silence and being reflective

Why do we want to say "yes" to more ministry?
What's the worst thing that could happen if we say "no"?
What's the worst thing that could happen if we say "yes"?
* We can lose our marriage
* We can lose our kids
* We can lose our heart for God

In Short
I hope this is not a message I soon forget. It seems like Doug pointed to very little Scripture, but the message seems to be huge. It still rings in my ears and I hope it continues to do so. Things are so busy. And odds are, for the most part, it'll not get easier but harder. I don't want to look at myself in 2 years or 4 years or 10 years and see a man who has given to so many in so many places that he has little to give, and gives less to those that mean the most.

The final question is: to whom or what do I need to say 'no'?

How To Write Unmaintainable Code

Somewhere, someone is probably using code that I wrote. Or maybe modifying it. Wonder how that's working out for them.

How To Write Unmaintainable Code

Calling All Middle School Workers

I was encouraged to see so many people in seminars for middle school at National Youth Workers Convention. I know that a lot of traffic is coming through my blog because Marko linked me, and I want to take advantage of this opportunity to network.

If you're reading this and you work primarily with middle school/junior high, please drop a comment on this post. I'd love to know who you are and get your web site or blog address.

Thanks!

NYWC #5 - Days 1-3 - Pictures!

Jeremy and I are all excited cause we just arrived at the National Youth Workers Convention!


Jeremy modeling the "man purse" or "murse" provided to Youth Specialties n00bs like us. I guess they want to be able to spot us in the crowd. Or they knew we wouldn't bring bags in which to carry all the free stuff they give us.


Jeremy and I all excited about being in the general session. We were excited a lot.


Marko


Crowder leading worship. It has been phenomenal! Jeremy and I spoke with Solley briefly earlier today which was kind of fun. He seemed like he remembered us from a few weeks ago when he played at our church. Of course, it may be that he plays that role with a lot of people and just fakes it. :-) I really do want to avoid making these guys and others like the speakers into celebrities. Or maybe that's just a mask for feeling intimidated in approaching them. :O I guess in the end I just want to look as cool as possible.


I went to a seminar for creative programming for middle school ministry. It was really encouraging to see all of these other people there learning about ministering to middle school students. You can't tell very well from the pic but it was a pretty big sanctuary with a bunch of people in it!

NYWC #4 - Day 2 - Tony Campolo on Apologetics

I debated for some time on what seminar I should go to during this slot but I'm glad I chose this one. It wasn't what I expected from a seminar on apologetics. It might be better titled: Tony's Commentary on Various Philosophies and How They Relate Christianity and American Christianity.

He commented on perspectives from:

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Existentialism
• Marxism

He observed that sociologists see cultures creating gods as a way to worship themselves, and basically said this is what American Christianity has done in various ways. If we describe the God we worship He ends up looking like a White Anglo-Saxon Republican. See Romans 1.

Psychologists may say people's faith is the sum of their experiences. That doesn't determine our future, though, which is a much more important question. We get drained by both the guilt of the past and the anxiety of the future. Jesus covers both of these though.

While in seminary we are taught to read the Bible in the original languages so we'll be able to identify with ancient Hebrew writing and understand it. However, a Marxist would say that is not enough - there were poor Hebrews, rich Hebrews, slave Hebrews, etc. They all have their own language. Campolo basically said the Marxist are onto something and we should read the Bible like the oppressed and poor read the Bible.

Campolo basically said everyone is existentialist. Billy Graham made a choice to believe the Bible was true without empirical validation. We do the same thing.

Parting Shots
I really appreciated this session, although this post may not really show it. Campolo is a good communicator. This session was probably more about showing how the American Church has fallen short than about apologetics, in some ways. I'm really tired so that's why this is all very abbreviated. Campolo is a big fan of Compassion International.

Joke from Tony
A sociologist is someone who, when a gorgeous woman walks in the room, he looks at everybody else.

NYWC #3 - Day 2 - First General Session

My first general session for NYWC! The atmosphere reminded me of Passion '05 which was there in the same convention center in Nashville (and to plug for them, it'll be there again in January '06, and it's awesome). It was sweet to be there worshiping with 7500 other youth workers.

After seeing some YS people for the first time (Tic, MarkO, Karla Yaconelli), the Skit Guys presented a skit about the prodigal son. Later Ted and Lee did a skit showing dialogue between Abram and Gabriel regarding the coming birth of Isaac. I was impressed with both of the skits.

Jars of Clay performed, and it was my first time actually seeing them. Their set went something like this:

1. God Will Lift Up Your Head
2. Waiting for the World to Fall
3. All My Tears (iTunes Original)
4. Nothing But the Blood

David Crowder Band continued the worship. I was glad they were here because... they're awesome... but I just saw them a few weeks ago at my church, but I was running around taking care of things and didn't get to spend as much time worshiping with them. Their set included:

1. ?
2. No One Like You
3. Here is Our King
4. An older praise and worship song

Mark Yaconelli preached from Luke 7:11-17. He taught that the way of Jesus is a downward road, not an upward one. One of the funnier moments of his teaching time (and one that encapsulated the message well) was his statement that he wanted to start a ministry called 12 and one's trying to kill you. If you have that, you are following Jesus' model. If more kids are coming you're doing something wrong. The suggestion is that if too many kids are coming you should tell stories they don't understand and don't answer their questions. :-)

Key Points

1. Our ministry begins with looking -- we should look with compassion at our students.
2. We must trust that the presence of Christ in our ministry is enough.
3. We have all that we need - and we had it before NYWC. God will honor our gifts and desire. All the power, creativity, and comfort we need is there because Jesus is walking before and with us.

NYWC #2 - Day 2 - Critical Concerns (Continued)

Oops
This morning, after having been through about six hours of the Critical Concerns course, I realized that I had been attending the wrong course. Not that it's not the one we paid for - it's just doesn't have the same goals we expected it to have. We expected to learn about how to build a leadership team, cast vision, equip the team to serve, etc. Boy, were we wrong. This morning it finally sunk in that it wasn't that Mark just hadn't got to that stuff yet -- he wasn't going to. The time was to be an experience in improving communication and group dynamics. Now that I look at the description on the web site I see some of that coming through:
Imagine a day when your leadership team embodies the reality of the gospel—when personal issues and agendas are overshadowed by a corporate calling, and when students are drawn into community. Imagine a day when you understand, love, and encourage each other, where vision and ministry are developed collaboratively, where all of your team is contributing fully with their gifts and with passion—a day when you are doing ministry in ways you never dreamed of. It's not a dream, its Gods intent for how we can function as people in ministry. This highly interactive & experiential course is one giant step towards this new day. Come together as a team prepared to be disturbed, inspired, pushed, enlightened and—changed. This course is designed for youth leadership teams of three or more.

Teaching
Anyway, today was largely about practical ways to improve communication in the midst of conflict. Mark used a volunteer and had the volunteer carry on both sides of an imaginary conversation with a person with whom he has conflict. The volunteer also commented on the conversation from a 3rd-person perspective.

Confession
During the experiential time, rather than actually doing the activity, Jeremy and I talked (about the topic at hand), I wandered around looking for the free coffee (to no avail... what's up with that?), I bought some coffee, and I caught up with my girlfriend for a few minutes. Sorry Mark.

Common Ground
We picked up on some of the different points of view that came up yesterday about the whole positive intention discussion. Today Mark finally said that one could/should tell students that when they do certain things they get robbed of God's good plan for their life. I think that brought some unity on the topic at hand (not that that was necessarily the goal). But the idea that one would never tell anyone they should not do something is disconcerting. I understand grace, and encouragement, and that we don't live under the law. Being able to call sin sin is different.

Mark the Conservative
Mark claimed that he is probably more conservative than most of the people in the room, and that his purpose wasn't to teach us but to give us room to process things.

Mark vs. Eminem
I feel like that the idea of 'teaching' things only to get you to think, even though they may not be true is not unlike Eminem saying that he doesn't mean the things he says in his songs, it's just entertainment. The analogy definitely falls apart, but there seems to be some relation. I don't really believe/mean that, I just said that to make you think/entertain you.

Finally
I appreciated my Critical Concerns course with Mark. I feel like we can probably take home some of the strategies for healing team dynamics. Like I said, we expected something totally different. Really we're trying more to build our leadership team up than we are in a state where we have a bunch of conflict to work through, I think. Maybe we'll get pointed to some resources to help us do that this weekend.

Take-homes

• It'd still be cool to have an Irish accent
• Read descriptions of seminars before you sign up

NYWC #1 - Day 1 - Thursday p.m. - Critical Concerns Course

First Impressions
I was terribly excited arriving at the convention center tonight. The volunteers were very courteous and welcoming to us as first-time volunteers. We were given sweet man purses to pack around, and a piece of flair for our lanyards to identify us to all as newbies.

Critical Concerns - Leadership Team
Tonight my fellow youth minister Jeremy and I attended the Critical Concerns Course led by Mark Dowds called Discovering the Power and Freedom of True Community as a Leadership Team. Mark has a thick Irish accent which made it entertaining just to listen to him. And we understood probably 98% of what he said, although I think there were a few sentences in a row that I totally didn't follow. He said something about protecting his family and I started cracking up because it sounded straight out of Braveheart. Yeah, I know that'd be Scottish... but Marko does wear utility kilts.

General
Honestly (tonight) we talked very little about leadership teams. But it was still a good session. We began by sharing in small groups how we would spend our last dollar if we know we only had one "are" (hour) to live. We then recorded and shared what we were committed to for our selves, our family, and our community. We talked about reasons that we cave to others' desires when they conflict with our own commitments. Reasons such as acceptance, being nice (like we think Christians should be), job security, and others were mentioned. I think one of the big reasons is simply a lack of confidence or insecurity. We aren't firm enough in our convictions to stick to our guns when they come under fair. And when I say we I mean I.

Illustration
We did some experiential illustrations demonstrating how when we find our identity in Christ and the teaching of Scripture we can voice our convictions with confidence. Mark pointed out the difference in how people react to people that project confidence - it's much more convincing and endearing when someone projects conviction about something than when they only seem to half-heartedly believe it for themselves.

4 Models of Talkin'
Mark briefly explained four models of interaction between people -- conversation, discussion, debate, and dialogue. He described dialogue as ideal, a situation in which people learn through the words. They are not pre-rehearsed as they would be in a debate, and there is a discovery of truth. This area was somewhat post-moderny in that he talked about how if we all work together we can fit the truths together. He referred to the illustration of the blind men and the elephant in which each man comes to believe different things about what an elephant is because they're all feeling different parts of the elephant's body. On a side note, I appreciate someone's observation that there is another character in the story -- the observer (a king in some tales) that is watching all of this transpire. He sees the blind men with their partial truths, and knows what the elephant truly looks like.

Theotokos
Later we launched into a discussion about how we react to people in the midst of conflict. Mark when to great lengths to demonstrate that despite a person's actions, he believed that everyone had positive intentions for everything. Actually, later he said that he wasn't saying that it was true, but that if people believed it then they would live more Christian-like. Anyhow, he motivated this by pointing out that all humans are created in the image of God. He identified this as that within each of us God has placed desires that are good. We analyzed a few different situations in which people annoyed/frustrated us, yet at the heart they had a positive intention.

Conflict in the House
At this point in our discussion of conflict there was... well... a little conflict. There was some protest to the idea that behind all actions there was positive intention. Positive intention was defined pretty free and loosely, though, so it could mean such things as getting attention, expressing independence, releasing frustration on someone who could take it, etc. Independence was singled out as one thing which God wanted people to have. I didn't nitpick this in the session, but really I would say that if God wanted to produce anything in us, it would be dependence, not independence. As I talked with Jeremy later, it seems like maybe this was meant more in the sense that people have their own independent relationships with God, not born out of learned patterns from parents or that sort of thing.

Calvin in da House
Mark was talking about helping bring out God's image that resides in everyone, moreso than laying down laws for people to follow. Some people were concerned with all this talk of the good in people. Isn't a major part of the gospel that no one is good? (Romans 3:10) Mark then jumped to talking about Calvin and said that Calvin believed that human beings were "effaced" - that the image of God was entirely removed, that our hearts were black. He said posited that one possible reason for Calvin teaching this was that he projected his worldview into his teaching (that may not be exactly how he phrased it, which is the case for this whole post). Mark said that Calvin's upbringing was parallel to Freud's in some way, which apparently was bad. He seems to prefer the view that the image of God in mean is "defaced"

Parenting
The ensuing discussion drew in more critics, as some pointed out that they didn't want their kids making the same mistakes they did -- that we should not just be standing by seeing the positive, bringing God's image out of people - but we should actually help students avoid sin -- point it out to them, set down rules for them.

Tying This All Together
I really felt like the discussion jumped around the topic at hand quite a bit. I really feel like the premise of the discussion was to be that by recognizing the motives behind people's actions we can better relate to them and resolve conflict. However, Mark did motivate this with the discussion of being made in God's image. But where all did this end up going?

• Conflict management through seeing intentions of other person
• Is Total Depravity for Real?
• If we're simply encouraging students to live a certain way that already exists in them (revealing the image of God that is in them) isn't that legalism?
• Why would I never tell my kids to not do things that are wrong, favoring only encouraging them to do right
• Is this Pavlov's dogs for humans?

Nick's Commentary
It seemed like the original premise was very practical advice about conflict management but it took us down a lot of different roads. I think I'm pretty cool with what I thought was the original premise and with the idea that man is created in God's image. I don't know that it follows from that that our teaching should only be focused on bringing God's image out of people. The gospel is about God meeting our need, not about us getting encouraged in the right way to blossom into a state in which we see that we have no need. I don't want to get all theological about this, and I didn't challenge Mark or anything (although it would be quite ironic in the midst of a discussion about conflict and not backing down from your convictions). I am fine with his original premise I think but he stuck to taking the discussion of being God's image bearers down several different paths, and he stuck to it... except when he said he wasn't really saying that it was really true that everyone had positive intentions behind their actions... but that people would live more Christian-like if they followed that advice. So really I was a little confused that he pressed the issue so much of the time, but then was willing to pull back and say maybe it wasn't true.

But perhaps he was just making us think. In which case he did it.

Take-Homes

• Stand firm on your convictions, on God's promises, and convey both of them with confidence.
• If in your interactions with people you seek to have a winner and a loser, if you lose you're a loser, and if you win no one will be there to help you.
• I wish I had an Irish accent

DISCLAIMER: I could have really mangled some of this but basically this is how I understood either the teaching or the discussion. If it's not in quotes I'm paraphrasing, and there ain't nothing in quotes above!

Fall Retreat

I was away this weekend at a fall retreat for our youth. Thanks so much to all of you who joined us there as adult volunteers.

Jon's teaching was great, and Garrison Band led us in worship. They played a bunch of Passion '05 stuff, which was cool with me.

Our students made an awesome video mimicking MTV's Next, but rather than a dating show it was simply a girl looking for happiness. They did a phenomenal job.

I didn't get much sleep this past weekend, but I had a great time! The weather was awesome -- it was nice and sunny during the day, and at night it cooled down enough to have a sweet bonfire. Yay for s'mores.

Oh yeah, middle school guys were up till like 4 a.m. the first night. I was not a happy camper. They did better the 2nd night, though, fortunately.

Concert

Last night David Crowder Band, Shane and Shane, and The Robbie Seay Band played at my church. It was an awesome time. It was my first time to see the Robbie Seay Band, although I'd heard good things about them.

Some 1200 people came out and worshiped together. Crowder is still terribly weird. (Don't misinterpret that as dislike, though.) It was fun to be around a concert in a sort of behind-the-scenes fashion. I ran errands and worked with security.

That's all for now.

Michael Spencer's Apology

Michael Spencer, the "Internet Monk", posted this apology to his family. It's a touching, honest look at ministry and family.

Thanks to Steve for pointing this article out.

Events of the Day

I called a HVAC guy to come fix our furnace. He taught me some stuff about fixing furnaces, and told me that there was plenty of room in this world for God. And aliens. Then while I was settling up with him for the cost of the furnace, he told me about his computer and offered to upgrade my Powerbook to OS X Tiger. That's right, the furnace repairman offered to upgrade my operating system. He bought five licenses to tiger because he has 2-3 Macs and it was cheaper that way. So, perhaps I will upgrade for free, courtesy of the guy I just met tonight.

Tonight there is a lock-in at church; I went for a few hours to help run some games. During the last round of Underground church, I was the church, and I hid under a pool table, but then I decided to go somewhere else, so I stood up. But my knee slipped out of joint, and there I was in the dark with my knee out of joint and 20-30 kids about to come barreling in looking for me. So I popped it back into place and slid back under the pool table.

Tomorrow I'm going to see a student production of the Wizard of Oz; that should be pretty sweet.

I guess that's it.

320 people arrested for sorcery - Yahoo! News

I hope Christian missionaries overseas are able to make clear that the supplies they bring are not gifts from the natives' ancestors.

This was one of Relevant's daily slices.