Credit Tripp & Tyler for creative inspiration. Check out their intro to Andy Stanley at Catalyst on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGcPSIuXZ30
We leave on Friday afternoon for our annual (though not cleverly-titled) GROW RETREAT. We’ll spend time in prayer and silence, hoping to give our students a restful time with God in the mountains.
This year, I did something I have always wanted to do, but never got around to it — drafting a short guide for parents after our students return home. Here’s a brief synopsis: (For the full version click here)
1. Prepare to be an “outsider” to their experience:
Let it be their experience.
2. Tell them you missed them:
Let the first words they hear when they return home be words of affirming love.
3. Let the experience have it’s own “breathing room”:
Avoid talking about school obligations immediately upon returning.
4. Pray for them while they’re gone. Tell them how you prayed when they return.
Pray that your son or daughter will experience God’s love in a significant and perhaps, new way.
5. Create space:
Give your son or daughter the opportunity to talk or not talk about their experience
I heard the story of a youth pastor recently in a big church who staffed his team based on the various high school sub-cultures. So, there was a “goth” specialist, a “jock” leader, a “skater” coordinator, and so on. The various groups would meet whenever their leader thought best and in a setting that most suited that particular subculture. I thought it that was a pretty innovative idea.
It got me thinking about how we do stuff in the Mariners High School Ministry:
GUIDING MINISTRY VALUE: “Be in it”
(whatever “it” is) First with our volunteer leaders and second with our students.
NOT WHAT, WHERE…
Our church serves multiple high schools and school districts. Our staff and volunteers are assigned to particular geographic areas that cluster a few high schools together. In effect, the centralized super campus is decentralized to the neighborhoods in the surrounding areas.
SIMPLE WEEKEND EXPERIENCES…
The weekend used to be our “open door” for new students (and in many respects it still is). But, because our first step for new students isn’t actually at the church — it’s in a home — we have really simplified our weekend experience with two semi-unique twists: 1) Students sit loosely in the areas where their midweek home is located. 2) We don’t utilize our stage. Our speaker teaches and the band leads from the middle of the room in order to create more community and greater connectivity within the program elements and their intended audience.
FOR THE CURIOUS-ABOUT-JESUS… and those who bring them.
Weekly, our area teams create an in-home environment for students to introduce their friends to Jesus and his followers. Typically, the 1-hour meeting involves connecting through relational and intentional interactions, eating together, and a 10-minute message about Jesus.
CONNECTING BEFORE THE SIGN-UPS…
In contrast to the present model of our church and the former model of our own high school ministry, we now form small groups not from an online registration form or sign-up sheet. We’re working on helping new leaders form small groups through the various relational settings in which they lead (like our midweek program). As such, small groups are formed in a more natural setting and manner (most small groups become small groups before the students even know it) but with obvious drawback of a longer set-up period.
“What if the one thing I was looking for most was somehow wrapped up in the things I was most committed to avoiding?”
The context is about avoiding the deep, the dark, and the not-so-wonderful about ourselves — that stuff that we’re terrified someone else might ask us about. Sometimes THAT thing is a habit, an addiction, a behavior, or a decision. Other times it’s something that happened to us, through no fault of our own. In either case, to address it is an expression of weakness and vulnerability.
I wish I didn’t say it. Now, I think about it. It haunts me.
Here’s the message, entitled: SPOONFULS OF LIFE
Here is how our trip went:
- 12 hour drive turns into 18 hours…
- My knee swells for unknown reason.
- Visit a walk-in clinic on the Vegas Strip: that’s a disgusting place to bring your children
- After 2 hours, get back in the car, Amanda gets a $250 (91 in a 75) speeding ticket.
- Make it to Park City, get dropped off at the house.
- I get out of the car step into friend’s truck and go directly to walk-in clinic in Park City (decidely less disgusting than Vegas)
- I receive antibiotic shot and am told come back in 24 hours
- I return to walk-in. They send me to Salt Lake City to the ER
- ER admits me to hospital
- Have surgery the following afternoon to drain infected knee joint (cause unknown – literally)
- Back to Park City Thursday with a home care nurse, IV antibiotics, suction evacuation back hanging from his body, and a wheelchair.
- Saturday: home care nurse removes the “drainage tubes” from my knee.
- Sunday pack up bags and car.
- Sunday Night: have one of the richest and most vulnerable conversations with my friends, I ever could have imagined.
- Monday: 13 hour drive home.
What is crazy… We actually experienced God work in really powerful, challenging, and extremely uncomfortable ways. But, as one Christian mystic says it: people in transition [to deeper intimacy with God] need a holy wound. Truthfully, I would’ve happily settled for a “holy peaceful vacation” or a “holy ice cream cone”. But, if it takes holy wound, then I guess some day I’ll learn to appreciate it.
check out marriedtoayouthpastor for my wife’s perspective.
I had one of those profoundly spiritual moments that I felt I missed as a child in the deep end of my in-laws pool.
The “accidentally” over-chlorinated pool in Bob and Joan’s backyard was where my two oldest kids spent the bulk of their days in San Antonio. My daughter swam the shallow steps, always with one hand on the stairs, lest she have to actually swim. And my oldest son, now 5, spent his time daring himself to touch the deeper parts of the pool — his fear always a bit stronger than him.
Then, on one afternoon…
I held up a diving ring (a brightly colored ring that has supplanted the quarter as the ideal object to sink to the bottom of the pool) and threw it into the deepest part of the pool, just as my son surfaced for a breath . He looked at me, realizing what I had done, and then burst into tears. He splashed me and screamed, “I wanted that thing and you threw it in the pool!”
I splashed back frustrated, “You can still have it. You just have to go and get it.”
Still crying, he blurted, “I wanted that!”
“You can still have it,” I said, now a bit calmer after the eye-sting of the chlorine had dissipated.
“It’s waaaayyy down there, though.”
“I know. But, you can get it. You can do it buddy.”
He hovered there for a bit, scanning the water below. He looked at me again. Then dove. A moment later he surfaced ring-in-hand first, then poorly fitted goggles, then beaming smile.
“I did it.”
“I knew you could do it. I’m proud of you, son. You just dove to the deepest part of the pool. Let’s tell everyone.”
A few soggy footsteps into the house later, my son announced what he had done. Everyone knew he could do it. So, they cheered, not because they doubted him, but because of what he discovered about himself and the deep ends of all pools in all the world. Whatever that is, that’s why Grandma’s and Grandpa’s and mom’s and dad’s and sisters and brothers cheer.
What else is in the deep end? What else is there that I’m afraid to face? What is it that God might actually refuse to give me in order that something deeper might be built (or broken) within me?
In the mountains, in a teeny speck of a town, three and a half hours from everything… I feel like I’m beginning to recover a piece of myself that goes wandering off on really important tasks in my “normal” life.
A mind-bendingly generous family from our church is hosting us at their ranch home. When I say “ranch” I am not intending the picture you might have in your head of a one-story tract home in a master planned community.
Ranch. Like ranch. Cows. ATV’s. Shotguns. Big meals. Big trees. Big nature. It is nothing like my neighborhood — where it isn’t uncommon to get a letter from the HOA informing me that my garage has remained opened too long. No. This is a different world.
It’s a green and unmanicured world. Somehow in all of it — getting away, I haven’t found a new ministry tool. I haven’t seen the road clearly marked out for me for the next forty years (although I did get to look through a pair of really cool night vision goggles). But, I’m simply agenda-less. I eat when I’m hungry (too much mostly). I sleep when I’m tired. I laugh. I pray. I walk. I sing (to myself… why ruin everyone else’s time?). I’m remembering what life was like in summer camp. I’m having a blast.
And, when I’m really still, beneath the giant sky in the thick dark of night, something begins to unfold. Perhaps it’s the bigness of everything. Or, more aptly, a recognition of the smallness of myself. I am learning to listen to God again — to hear Him, to hear His voice, and to receive the love I am so willing to talk about but so often fail to experience as my own.
Tonight was salmon and key lime pie. I’ll still be full at breakfast.
I saw this video when I was on a college retreat with InterVarsity. On the first night of our retreat we watched the 86 minute version of this video. I’m not sure I remember much else from that weekend together.
I used this youtube clip during this past weekend’s message and plan on showing the whole DVD during our “Do Something” weekend for our students to discuss. It’ll mess with you. Shane Claiborne’s notion of “finding your Calcutta” (vis-a-vis Mother Teresa) is at the end of the video.
This weekend, like most, I felt unprepared, rushed, and silently wondering if I was going to be abandoned by God as I started teaching. I taught on the familiar words of Jesus about being “the salt of the earth”. I’ve taught it before. I feel like I know it. I did some additional research on the significance of salt in the ancient world.
I uncovered a lot. The bottom line: salt was essential. Some research showed that rabbis compared the Torah to salt– that in the same way the world needed salt for everyday living, so it needed the Torah.
…The use of salt in the koshering of meat.
…The use of salt in chemically altering the heat output of burning animal dung in ancient homes. (Ray Vanderlaan)
So, I said, “Salt was abundant. It was a part of the everyday life of the people to whom Jesus was speaking [on the sermon on the mount]. The point Jesus was making was that his followers were to be “essential” in the world — like salt.” I thought that this was a fresh insight on the familiar passage. It framed the church in a unique light — be essential for the everyday functioning of the world. I taught our students that the people listening to Jesus (mostly peasant farmers) would be unlikely candidates to see themselves as essential in the shaping of the world. I was on a roll… This was a great message for students (except for the heckler we had during the 11am service — another story perhaps). We prayed. We reflected. God didn’t abandon me.
Then…
Someone after the service came up and said, “I just learned that salt was incredibly rare at that time. So, to compare someone to salt meant that they were rare and precious”.
“Mmm. That…also…sounds… compelling”. The words were slow and encumbered by a newfound fear.
I don’t know if he was right. But, I panicked. I vaguely recall hearing that same statement and the etymology of that familiar idiom about someone being worth his/her salt. But, I didn’t see it in my research. I drove home that day thinking I might have based my message on something in a misrepresented historical context.
I’m already so insecure about teaching every weekend… And now, I get to wonder if I created a false historical reality by some kind of negligence.
Joy.
At least there’s always another weekend.
Here’s the message on SALT, called NOTHING ARTIFICIAL.
