Change

We church folk talk about change a lot. Weekly, we ask people to digest a message (or for my youth group kids 2 or 3) and apply it to their lives. To change the things that need to be fixed and to emerge a better person.

But I've noticed lately how very few people I interact with allow for people to change. We pigeonhole people, expecting the same things out of them even when they have stated a supernatural occurrence has taken place. Of course, this isn't everyone or even most people, but it's something I hear a lot, sometimes even from myself.

I'm taking a leadership class at the Air Force Academy. It's me and like A dozen high ranking military officials. It's still intimidating more than half way through the semester, but I am being challenged like crazy. In the past few weeks we've talked about a concept called "already always listening" which basically states that we think we know what people are going to say before they Say it, so we don't really listen to them. I think we do this with behaviors, too. We think we know how someone "is" so we ignore the work they are putting in.

The counter to this concept is called "standing on nothing." Basically, the pursuit of the idea to not come at a leadership opportunity with a pre-existing idea of what is going to happen, or even what it means to lead or be led. Instead, consider that all things are possible, including the first idea you have, but not at the exclusion of other possibilities.

This is really messing with my head and my leading already. I have been challenged in my own application that as a follower of Christ I should always be practicing these things order to best allow myself to be an empathetic, caring, sold out leader. I don't just want to run people through programs, I want to make a lasting impact on their lives.

As I look back one this weird thing called a blog, which is really a diary for strangers and friends to see, I laugh at how knee jerk some of my posts were. E funniest being when I wrote about my frustrations after a few badly attended weeks at youth group. The last year and months has brought a richness to what I'm doing, and in equal measures I feel ready to tackle it forever and to give a new ch.allege a try. But I know for sure that the last months of giving my character and internal motivations a good vetting, I am a better leader, pastor, Christian man, and probably most importantly right now, father and husband.

I love my family and my youth group kids more today than ever, and I love that God continues to refine me to make me better, and offers hints of greater things even yet to come.

If I wasn't allowed to change as the Holy Spirit breaks me down and those around me just assumed they knew what they were getting, I have no idea where I would be, the ministry I'm involved would be, or my family would be. Thanks to all who exhibit the grace to me to allow me to change. And may I learn to really do the same for you.

Getting Old(er) in Youth Ministry

After getting soundly beat down in yet another game of football today, I had a realization ... at some point I jumped the shark from it being "unfair" for me to play against 13 year-olds to nobody really wanting me on their team.

I started out in youth ministry as an 18 year-old kid, and really I could beat just about any kid at any game (except for you Jon Meyer, you always could beat me but you're 12 feet tall, it's not fair). But time has set in, as well as my unhealthy diet, and it's just not the same. And I'm okay with it if I look at it the right way.

Soon, I'll surpass the equilibrium point, where more years will have been spent in youth ministry than years not. For instance, I'm 32 this year, and have now been driving as many years as I didn't, 16-16. In a few years my ministry experience will pass this point, too.

With the bad of becoming less athletic, fatter, and having less hair, there are goo things, too. I'm better at a lot of things I struggled with when I was younger. Here's some lists:

What I'm BETTER at as a 32 year-old:
Teaching
Vision and Initiative
Spiritual Maturity/Knowledge
Parent relations
self-awareness, including the humility to ask for help to change
planning
letting things roll off my back
doing ministry with other youth pastors
laughing at myself
multi-tasking
... maybe more?

What I'm WORSE at:
Fun ... I am less fun for sure, no doubt
Games, I have to make myself have them sometimes
Lecturing ... all of a sudden I want to give pep talks to kids, weird
Exercising and Eating well, only nominally ministry related, but still ...
assuming the best of other team members and giving slack. Almost as if I operate with a sense of urgency
giving myself slack and allowing myself to not do/be the best at everything, always
... probably more?

Some of this is related to my previous post, but I look at it differently. Not all of this is good, nor bad. The question to me is facing reality and embracing the opportunities in both sides. I know a lot of people older than me get offended when I talk about feeling "old", but let's face it: youth ministry is stereotyped as a young man's game. Not a lot us make it this many years or this age without either trying to move up, quitting, or being asked to move "up".

Are there others out there examining this?

Fixing My Dysfunction

I'm not perfect. Shocker, eh?

But in that room to be imperfect, I have been trying to come to grips with what exactly it looks like to change those imperfections. I have been obsessed with the concept of change lately. And I want to be able to change those things that I see and others have pointed out about me. We talk in the church a lot about change, but rarely allow people to do so with grace ... and I know at least for me, even more rarely do I actually take a hard look at myself. If you have the patience to listen to a sermon I gave on change, you can click here.

Recently, I've noticed weird moments of anger and borderline depression. I wasn't sure why or what they were until a chance meeting at Starbucks with a friend and a dad of some of my students. He's not the talk-y type, but he helped me in about 30 minutes realize a bunch of stuff. The chart I posted above is a result of that conversation (you can click on it to see it bigger and more readable).

I have a lot of work to do in order to figure out a natural flow of changing this in the everyday. The thing is, for my own sanity and the sanity of my family and loved ones, I need to make it happen. Even for my students, I suppose. In a weird way, I feel like this is the chance for me to really connect the changes I ask people to consider from the platform of my job to my own day-to-day.

Depending on how vulnerable I feel, expect follow-ups.

And join me in embracing the concept that real change is possible, and that it starts with the courage to first name the alternate reality we'd like to live in, and second make the necessary adjustments to do so. With God's help, these things are going to look very different for me soon.

A Punk Kid at 7-11

I am just finishing up the second session of YMCP, a coaching cohort for youth ministry. It meets in La Mesa, about six highway miles from the neighborhood I grew up in, which is huge for me.

Those who know me well know that I'm a sappy sentimentalist. I say with little shame that I teared up when I drove by my old house and schools today. i even went to the 7-11 that my friends and I spent countless hours in, playing Street Fighter II and stealing candy. It's sacred space.

The funny thing is that as I pulled into the parking lot some middle school punk was walking up to my car, holding his arms up at me, and bobbing his head towards me like an angry chicken or something. I'm a guy, I know what he was going for: trash talk.

I got out of the car and he scootered up to me and started doing it again. now, if you know me well, you also know middle school boys don't intimidate me. i asked him in a joking way, "Why are you acting tough, what're you, like 12"? He cussed me out and was gone.

Now, there are a few reasons while this short exchange means something to me. One, he reminded me of me. It was like looking at myself as a 12 year old, talking trash to people that could kill me with a flick of a wrist, hanging out at 7-11 for no good reason. He had probably just got done stealing some candy.

Two, I had just driven through Santee where I went to three years of my four high school years at West Hills. When I entered Santee on Mission Gorge Road there was a huge sign that said "Welcome From the Churches of Santee" or something along those lines. I had never realized how many churches there were in Santee, because I never met a youth pastor from one in high school. I never saw a youth pastor from one at school. I never heard a kid talk about his youth pastor. And etc.

Now, I'm not writing an indictment of youth pastors in Santee. There might be now, and could have been then, great youth pastors doing great things and I missed it. But running across that kid at 7-11 and that sign in Santee reminded me why I love what I do - I'm looking for kids like me that aren't against Jesus or anti-God, they just have never had the chance to "get it".

It makes me think about what outreach to youth really looks like, both in general and in my ministry right now. I want to continue to be a campus presence, to have kids ask who I am, and to continuously introduce Jesus into lives in meaningful ways. The practice and execution, the specifics ... Those things might get tweaked and change, but that heart can't. We need multiple ways, new ideas, crazy thoughts, bold approaches. We need to not just ask a kid if he knows where he's going when he dies, but ask him if he really knows what it means to live.

A foul-mouthed time warp "me" taught me that tonight at 7-11 in El Cajon. I hope I remember.