John Ortberg at Lifeserve Conference

If we really want to help someone grow we will have to help them in a way that fits their wiring. Our great model for this is God Himself, for He always knows just what each person needs.

He had Abraham take a walk,
Elijah take a nap,
Joshua take a lap,
Adam take the rap.

He gave Moses a forty-year time out,
He gave David a harp and a dance,
He gave Paul a pen and a scroll.

He wrestled with Jacob,
argued with Job,
whispered to Elijah,
warned Cain,
and comforted Hagar.

He gave Aaron an altar,
Miriam a song,
Gideon a fleece,
Peter a name,
and Elisha a mantle.

Jesus was stern with the rich young ruler,
tender with the woman caught in adultery,
challenging with the disciples,
blistering with the scribes,
gentle with the children,
and gracious with the thief on the cross.

God never grows two people the same way. God is a hand-crafter, not a mass-producer.

LifeServe Conference

I've just wrapped up my first ever LifeServe Conference in Loveland, Colorado. The focus of this conference was helping train church leaders to equip people to serve. A couple of great nuggets I plan to take back to my team...

• Externally Focused - A huge emphasis was placed on the church being missional (people of God partnering with Him on His redemptive mission in the world). Good ideas were given to help guide the Church into this existence.
  
• Getting Closer to Jesus - We always talk about being a disciple of Jesus. To be a disciple is to follow and get closer to Jesus. Where might we follow Jesus to get closer to him? Where did he hang out? Yep, you got it, the "sinners." We need to rethink where we hang out if we want to be a disciple of Jesus.
  
• Where We Serve - One of the things we at our church have been thinking about is how we might better engage our members. To follow up with the "getting closer to Jesus" point, we're going to have to think of inside the church walls service and outside the church walls service as parallel ministries. We often promote inside the church walls service as "real ministry" and in doing so we limit people and discredit ministry outside the church wall.
  

My favorite quote of the conference came from Wayne Cordeiro. "You teach what you know. You reproduce what you are."

Challenging Church Series

If you haven't noticed, whoever "you" is, I've posted on a more frequent basis over the past few weeks since beginning the Versus series. I figure there must be something to it, so I'm going to keep with the series idea and go with something deeper. I call this upcoming series Challenging Church.

Over the past 3-4 years, my mind and heart have been bombarded with new and old ideas about who and what the church is. I'd like to try to unpack some of these ideas over the next few weeks. I'm not promising well thought out posts or sensible arguments. I just want to try to spit out some major themes that relate to us as the Body of Christ.

As I write these, I do encourage comments. Please remain kind and respectful with them all.

Turning the Page

For our family this summer has provided a number of ends, beginnings, and transitions. One of the biggest was my mom and dad's move from Leoti to Mulvane. It's been a great 8 years for them out in Western Kansas serving God in the midst of a community who embraced my family as one of their own. Melissa, Owen, and I went out for their last Sunday for an emotional 2-hour praise and worship service filled with music, prayer, Scripture reading, and remiscing of what God has done in the lives of many over the past 8 years. Wow, talk about real praise and worship! I was reminded that worship is not about just singing songs, but really giving everything to God. I was privileged to be a part of an awesome worship experience. Praise God!

On a more personal note I continue to transition into the equipping director at the church I serve and find it as challenging and fulfilling as I presumed it would be. Balancing youth ministry and equipping ministry is going to take me further than I can go. Only God will be able to take us to where He wants us as long as we'll get out of the way and let Him.

What are your latest beginnings and ends? Where is God transitioning you?

Tax Refunding

I had no idea how much of an effect having a child made in tax deductions. Our refund this year is bigger than it ever has been which brings with it more choices of what to do with it. One of those options includes a tithe of the full amount. Do people usually tithe (give 10%) out of their refunds? What about tithing out of monetary gifts for birthdays and Christmas?

I'm curious to know your thoughts. Do you all tithe off your refund?

Prioritizing

Ever since my divorce over 2 years ago, I've made it a point to make sure that my priorities are straight. I learned that I can't just say I place God first, family second, and job third. I have to act on it. I was given the chance to prove it this week.
I attended a conference at Southwestern College that began Tuesday. I knew that I would have to leave a little early on Wednesday to get back for church activities, but was excited to be a part of a Q&A with Tony Jones, listen in on a chapel sermon by Mr. Jones, and then participate in a workshop given by Professor Rankin (that's what I call him when he's doing smart guy stuff).
I woke up on Wednesday morning to a call from Melissa telling me that she had a monstrous headache. On top of that, Owen had been exposed to strep throat a few days prior and woke up with a cough.
So there I was faced with a big decision - Do I stay for the conference that I was greatly looking forward to hoping my family gets to feeling better as the day goes on? Or do I drive back home to spend the day being a good husband and dad?
I jumped in my car and headed back to S-town.

God = Comma?

I'm not the first one to make this comment, but it's the first time I've experienced it in a painful way.

I received a call today from a worker at Teen Mania who is responsible for organizing a youth event called Acquire the Fire. I took our high schoolers to an ATF event last year and vowed never to do it again for reasons I'll refrain from posting about here.

So anyways, I talked to this girl a little bit about why we would not be attending this year's event, which went fine only to lead her to ask me a question...can I pray for you? I was like, "sure."

And then it began...

God we just thank you............Father.......Lord..........God............Father.........
Lord.........God...................Father..............God............Father..............Lord.......
God.........God.........Father.................God..............Lord....................Lord...........
.......Amen

I have no idea what she said during the "............" because all I could focus on was how many times she was using God, Lord, and Father as commas. Since when did we decide to use God's name as a way to begin and end a sentence or connect two sentences together. Is this proper English? Could there be a more distracting way of praying?

Reader, as I close out this post, Audience, I just want to take time, Reader, to encourage you to not use God as a comma, Friend, and think more about what you are saying, Blog Follower, when you pray, Earthling, and not just babble, Homosapien, as some have the tendency to do, Evolved Primate, and by the way, Person, thank you for the food. Amen. So be it.

Being a Dad

I meant to post this earlier this week, but my week became consumed with writing a sermon. Enough excuses, thanks to my mom, brother, wife, and good friend, I'll be posting about being a dad. So here are my paternal reflections...

• Having a son is awesome! I'll admit it, I was hoping for a boy when we got pregnant. I would have loved my daughter just as much, but it totally rocks having a little boy around. I'm a big time rough houser with him and can't wait for the days of playing catch, going fishing, and doing all the cool things that dads and sons get to do. I enjoyed those things with my dad and I'm looking forward to sharing the same things with Owen.
• Being a parent is tiring. Now let me first give major props to my wife. She is an amazing woman and I can't imagine doing what she does day in and down out. I spend most of Friday with Owen on my day off and by the time Melissa comes home from cleaning houses, I'm pretty well shot. It's hard work!
• I am a selfish human being. I never realized how much I valued my time and being able to do what I wanted when I wanted. A dad truly has to put his wife and child(ren) first. There's just no way around it. I do miss the days that I could take a nap when I wanted and do home improvement projects on Fridays. Gone are those days...for now.
• As much as I love Owen, Melissa comes before him. I'm saying this because I have to continually remind myself about the priority of my marital relationship. Owen takes a lot of time and energy and if Melissa and I don't intentionally take time to work on our relationship, something's going to eventually hit the fan. (I'm not just saying this because Valentine's Day is Saturday and the wifey's birthday is next Sunday)
• God's provision is sufficient. I wasn't really sure what I was getting myself into when we got pregnant. I had no idea how to be a dad. I didn't know how to change a diaper. I didn't have a clue. God gives us the ability to adjust to many different situations in life and He will never give us something we can't handle, although I think He pushes us to the limit so we have to depend on Him. That's ok with me.
  

Inauguration

I'm watching the inauguration and wanted to post as I watch. 44th President Barak Obama...First African American President.

10:49am - Rick Warren is praying...He said "God." People cheered during the prayer in response to Warren talking about Obama as the first African American president. Will he say "in Jesus' name we pray."? Wow, he did...now he's leading into the Lord's Prayer. Very cool. Although Barak is not saying it along with him...interesting.

10:53am - Aretha Franklin - "My Country Tis of Thee" - That lady can sing.

10:54am - Should I be working or is it ok for me to watch this on my laptop at church? I imagine that there are a lot of folks bypassing work right now to witness this occasion.

10:57am - John Paul Stevens - oath of office to VP Joe Biden. I'd be worried that I would forget what I was to repeat. He was too apparently. I'm not sure about that character. O well, not like he'll do anything anyways. What does the VP do? Anyone?

10:59am - Air and Simple Gifts by John Williams performed by violin, cello, piano, and clarinet. I bet those guys' fingers are freezing. Yo-Yo Ma is playing cello. Rock on! So we got a white guy playing the violin, an oriental guy playing the cello, an African American playing the clarinet, and a white gal playing the piano. Nice job on diversity. You know, diversity, an old, old wooden ship used in the civil war era. Nice song!

11:05am - Chief Justice - John Roberts Jr. - oath of office to Obama. His middle name is Hussein? I didn't know that. That's weird. He did it! Not without a little fumbling around...hehe. Now they're shooting lots of canons.

11:07am - Obama presented as President. On to the speech. (Pastor Troy just stepped in and watched over my shoulder). Pretty good speech. A couple references to God and Scripture.

11:30am - Speech is over and now its on to the work. Enough talk.

11:32am - Benediction by Rev. Joseph Lowery

Down With the Sickness

The Just household has been a breeding ground for bacteria over the past month. Multiple ear infections, a cold, and a sinus infection have each pitched in to make the start to 2009 a not so pleasant one. With sickness comes medicine and numerous visits to the doctor. We've done antibiotics, benedryl, tylenol, claritin, and ibuprofren. A significant amount of time and money has been spent trying to get the Just's back to health.

Our physical health has a great deal of influence on how our days play out and we are very cognizant of when our bodies just aren't right. We spend a lot of time, money, and energy keeping ourselves healthy and getting our bodies back to health when we're sick or hurt.

My friend Tyler made a good point the other day as we were discussing our past lives as athletes. We used to spend at least 2 hours a day practicing during season to become the best basketball, football, or baseball players we could be. Nobody blinked an eye at such an idea and practice. Yet, when it comes to training our bodies on a spiritual level, we fail to take the time to get ourselves into the best shape possible.

I guess we can come to a few conclusions using these observations.

1. We believe that our physical bodies have a greater effect on our everyday lives than our spiritual lives do. Were this not true of us, we would spend more time training our spiritual bodies
2. We find greater value in our physical bodies than in our spirit. We see very tangible results when we feed our physique. We can look in the mirror and know that our work has paid off. Our spiritual results are not as tangible although they are recognizable.
   
3. We have separated the spiritual from the physical. This Greek approach has infiltrated our Western society causing us to no longer see how the two are one. In Hebrew culture, the physical and spiritual didn't exist. They were one and the same. We've managed to divide them and place greater emphasis on the physical.
   

So what? I don't know. Just thought it was interesting. ;-)

Equipping (a review)

Saturday's workshop with Vernon and Charlene Armitage went better than I expected. You always wonder how church members are going to react to something that will bring about change to the church. Those in attendance that day (mostly staff and people on church ministry teams) were very receptive to the Biblical mandate of Ephesians 4. I'm excited to see how God will work in our church.

Kansas Christian Ashram

I'm not going to go into detail about what the word ashram means and where it came from, but basically its a vacation with God. I'm currently finishing up here at the Kansas Christian Ashram in Sterling, KS. Basically its a family camp with a strong focus on our relationship with God. Last year was my first year to be a part of this ashram and I was fortunate to be invited back. I have the opportunity and privilege of leading the youth part of the camp.

One of the practices that takes place during the ashram each year is the healing service held on Friday night. This is an incredible practice and I hope to bring some families from FUMC Salina next year to experience this. Holy Spirit really moves during this time and this year was no different. I witnessed some amazing things. Two young men who were a part of the group I led accepted Christ tonight, a church family laid hands on and prayed for their pastor, an anointing of a young lady who is disabled by the same pastor organically happened, and many tears were shed.

Right before this all took place a plea went out to those in attendance (probably a total of 60 people including youth and kids) for an offering to help cover costs for this year. Attendance was a little down and the cost of camp had gone up. The number of $2000 was put out there and I thought to myself, "No way this will happen with such a small number of people here." A song was sung during the offering and the money was counted. Over $2,500 was collected. BLEW ME AWAY!! I had to leave just to collect my thoughts and take God out of the box I had put him in.

The saying is that there are only two things in life that are guaranteed...death and taxes. I'd like to add another guarantee...God will always surprise us with what he can do when we trust him and surrender to him. My faith is so small compared to the people at this camp. Praise God for the ways he works and for the people he puts in my life to show me just how far I have to go.

Offer Accepted

Yesterday was a wirlwind of a day once 4:00 hit. We went and toured a home yesterday at 4:00. We walked in, took a few steps, and knew that this was the house we wanted to live in. We made an offer at 5:30 with a great amount of anxiety because we knew there was at least one other offer coming in at the same time. Fortunately we came out on top and the GOOD LORD has blessed us with a wonderful home that we hope to move into on July 1. Praise God for his guidance and provision! HERE is a link to see more about the house.

Letting Her Go

No, I'm not letting my wife go, she's way too good to me. What we are letting go of is the house that we were supposed to have moved into in March. To catch you all up, we put our house up for sale in December and had it sold by early February under the impression (what was told to us by the sellers) that we would be able to get into the newly remodeled home sometime in March. March came and went. April did the same. May chose to be a copycat.

So here we are in June still without a house. We've been so fortunate to have friends from our church that have let us stay in the back side of their house that is an apartment on its own with a separate entry. But all our stuff is still in storage and its pretty hard to bring a newborn home to a place that isn't home.

So here's the update. We just heard from the sellers again this past Monday and they are now saying the house will likely be ready for possession in August. Well, pretty sure that's not going to cut it. I'm going to take the high road in this post and just say that we are not pleased with the sellers and this whole situation.

So we've let it go. We are no longer working with this couple and will be moving on. We feel that by hanging on to the house we still have a backup plan, which gives us a little bit of control over the situation. We want to hand it over to God and allow Him to guide us. So that's the scoop. Pray that we'll follow God in all our decisions especially this one.

Getting It All Down

I have to write my thoughts now, otherwise I'll forget them.

So we've talked a lot about narrative, story, and journey and using that as a context to form ministry, theology, and God. With this, God has a metanarrative, a grand story that encompasses all people throughout all of history. God is always working to redeem and restore the world through different mediums whether it be individuals, nations, or groups of people. Within that metanarrative are individual narratives/stories that we each have that define us and help us to discover how God has worked in our lives, which gives us evidence of who God is with the stories of Scripture. If we don't start here, we start with systematic theology which looks to figure God out through things like ecclesiology, eschatology, christology, soteriology, etc. With systematic theology we seek to figure God out. With narrative theology, we discover who God is and interract with Him in the metanarrative.

Ok, so we realize the metanarrative and the narratives exist to form what we know as reality. It's here that ministry exists. Andrew Root (Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry) gives us a way to work within this context through what he calls place sharing. Place sharing recognizes that others have a story and we come alongside them with our own story and place these within the context of the metanarrative. So instead of youth ministry seeking to build a relationship so that we might reach an end goal of say conversion, getting saved, or getting them to say the sinner's prayer, we are now interested in helping guide them in a way that encourages them to see God in their own story and also to see how they fit into God's story. Cool!! In this we go from seeing the student as a project (having an agenda for the relationship) to working from the motivation of sharing stories. We also go from being an "I/it" relationship to an "I/Though" relationship (Buber)

What we have to be careful to not do is just be a disseminator of information and advice. Rather, we should be a type of life coach who encourages individual thought that is consistent with Scripture and who we know God to be through that. We still use Scriptural principles to help guide the student in a way that helps them to discover who they are and who God is. Within this we must let God be God and trust that He will be. We engage in the relationship knowing this.

So couple this with the idea of who Jesus was. Jesus was fully human and fully God. As one who was fully human, we discover what it is to be fully alive. Irenaeus says, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive." To be fully alive is not doing the right things just because they are the right things to do. Rather, our motivation to do the right thing is an outward expression of who we are as followers of Jesus and agents of the missio Dei. We live out who we are because we know who we are. Root says, "The adolescent is already ontologically (in the being) what God desires him or her to be: human. Relational ministry is about helping adolescents be authentic human beings as determinied by the incarnate, human Christ.

Last thought...I've been reading through Mike King's book Presence-Centered Youth Ministry and his point is that in ministry we should guide students into spritual formation through the presence of God. In other words, youth ministers are to help students commune with God. We do this through communing with God in our own lives and then creating spaces and opportunities for students to do the same. When they commune with God, the Holy Spirit works to guide them in a life that is holy and righteous. Again, we trust God will do what God does. That's His job, not ours.

Blah Blah Blah

Here's the video I wanted to post last night. You'll have to forgive the poor quality. I wanted to make sure to get all my thoughts out, so I changed the image quality setting. I also want to apologize for the random thoughts. As I mentioned before, I was really spinning in figuring out what was being said and discussed. I think I've got some better connection now. I'll post those thoughts later. You'll hear the rippling brook in the background...great setting!!

Dead Battery

I did another video today, but unfortunately the battery in my camera died so I can't transfer it. I hope to purchase a spare tomorrow and post. So here's a few thoughts I've had today...

First, I had an uneasy feeling all day that what was being discussed was placing me in a position as a youth minister to just let people be people and whatever they did was ok because that's their story/journey and who am I to infringe anything upon them. So this was really tearing me up all day. Then I had dinner with 3 Catholics and a Baptist. It was awesome! They expressed the same concern as me and helped me to see that I wasn't the only one struggling with the discussion that was happening. Let me be clear. The presenters, Mike and Chris, were not the one's I was struggling with as much as some of the discussion coming from those participating. A couple comments really kicked my kitten....

-We were speaking about our roles as youth ministers and how we are to come along side students in relationships and empower them to make good choices. A comment was brought up that this person (Mr. G) felt uncomfortable telling somebody that they were wrong in what they were doing because the actor was actually acting on a deep need they had that was unfulfilled. Mr. G didn't want to get in the way of allowing the actor to do what they needed to do.

-Another comment had to do with God's agenda and how this person didn't think that God had a specific plan for them from which they were to not stray. This person was moving away from the idea that God had a plan for us that we should strive to seek out and live. Perhaps this person was speaking about specifics, which I do agree with. But she was more speaking to the idea that God comes down and meets us where we at (which I agree with) and doesn't place us on any particular path. (which I'm not sure I agree with) Perhaps we first need to define what we mean by path. This could all be semantics.

Regardless, both of these comments made it appear that God is working relative to that person in such a way that we should not interfere, but allow for that individual to continue living it out so they can discover who God is to them. This bothers me for three reasons...(1)I find great comfort and power in God's use of others to come into my life to "interfere" in a way that brings me along in my journey and (2) I find a lot of relativity in statements that include "for me." I understand that God works in us differently dependent upon where we are, but the "for me" language creates a God that is for me and nobody else. Surely God is more than just what He is to me? (3) Why is it that we are making God come to us? Aren't we to pursue Him and His righteous, holy, perfect, awesome will? Isn't there an absolute truth that we are searching for?

So yea, it's been a pretty tough day as I've wrestled with this. I don't have it figured out and probably never will. I'm curious to hear other thoughts.

Ironic

I listened to part of a Christian talk show today - don't know which one - and the guest brought up an interesting point. If you've been watching the news lately, you've heard that 16 year old celebrity Ashley Simpson is now pregnant. It's plastered all over the media right now and is as big, if not bigger, than the presidential race, Iraq, and the genocide in Darfur at this present date.
Isn't it interesting how this pregnant, young, out of wedlock, mother-to-be is such a hot topic all during the time of the year that we as Christians celebrate the birth of a boy who was born to a young, out of wedlock girl about 2000 years ago? Ironic.

Discussion and Dialogue

Yesterday I had a great conversation with two of my close friends before work. Mike, who is currently a seminary student, had written a paper for a class focused on homosexuality and the church. So Mike, Kevin, and myself took some time to discuss his thoughts. I'm not going to get into the whole discussion, but afterwards I was talking with Kevin and he brought up something I had never thought about...the difference between discussion and dialogue. He gave his definition of the two words...

Discussion - I tell you what I believe so I can convince you I am right and vice versa.
Dialogue - You tell me what you believe so I can understand you better and vice versa.

See the difference? The agenda of discussion is to prove I'm right while the agenda for dialogue is to better understand where you're coming from. As I see it, Christians many times have no problem engaging in discussion, but dialogue takes a different attitude. It's hard for us to make this shift because for so long we've all been convinced that we are right. I'm not denying that there is truth, but what happens if we don't fully have that truth figured out? What if the truth that we think we have figured out appears to have holes? Shouldn't we listen to others' experiences and at least give them time to share where they are at rather than just dismiss them?

I'm reminded of a term I learned while reading Scot McKnight's 5 Streams of the Emerging Church. McKnight uses the term "chastened epistemology," which he defines on his blog - "the Subject (you and I when we are attempting to “know”) is always involved to one degree or another in knowing the Object (what you and I are trying to “know”). Humans are limited and fallible — every last one of us. Therefore, everything we know and everything we articulate is to one degree or another limited and influenced by who we are and what we think and what we want to be true." In other words, because God is fully unknowable and we are fallen individuals, no matter how convinced we are that we are right, there is still the possibility that we are wrong.

This is the attitude I believe we should have as we enter into dialogue with others.

A Wise Young Boy

This brought a tear to my eye...take a listen...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCdZwitrNoY