I've had an amazing week!

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Greetings bloggers!

If you will forgive me for a moment, I'd like to be proud of myself right here on the internet. This week I followed through on some pretty radical life goals, and I'd just like to share about them.

  1. Calories. I started two weeks ago counting calories using a App on my iPhone. My goal is to lose 2 pounds a week, which is a relatively healthy pace. Since then, I've been pretty consistently under calories. Truthfully, it wasn't even that hard. I just had to think a little bit more about what I was eating.
  2. Pounds. That said, I've lost 4 pounds in those two weeks. While I'm not interested in the numbers as much as I am interested in how I look and feel, I've got to say that feels nice.
  3. The Bike. I think this is the accomplishment that I'm most proud of. Since Sarah and I moved to our new house in February, I had been saying that I was going to ride my bike to work more often, like I used to in Murrysville. Last week I rode a couple of times, just to see how it went. Then this week, I decided to set a goal of riding my bike to work each and every day this week. With some motivation from my friends on Facebook, and a little help from mother nature, this morning I accomplished that goal!
Not that I want to say that I doubted myself, but I totally did. I didn't think I would stick to it. But here I am, and I'm sitting in victory! Not only that, but man do I feel good! My spirits are up a little bit more (not that they were down, but you know), I have a little bit more of a spring in my step, and I'm not as tired as I usually was.

Beyond even all of that, the healthy and the weight loss and all of that, but I have felt truly connected to God in this season. Riding my bike used to be one of my favorite things to do while I was a kid, and re-connecting with that this week has been amazing!

They say that three weeks is what it takes to truly form a habit, so we'll see what next week holds! And truthfully, a lot of what got me going through all this was the support of my twitter/facebook friends, so feel free to hop on and encourage me through this! Thanks you guys!

Grace and Peace,

Jason


Underestimating Middle School Students.

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Greetings bloggists,

This is a slow day in the office, so this post comes partly from being bored, and partly because it's a topic of conversation that has come up again and again around here lately. So what I'm telling you is that this post is simultaneously not well thought through and critically important. Do your best with it.

The question I've been getting a lot recently is "How much can a middle school student handle?" It comes up in a lot of different situations. Sometimes it's when we're talking about theological debates that we don't think MS students are deep enough for. Sometimes it's about sex and what kids are or are not into. Sometimes its about leadership positions, and how young students may or may not be able to contribute to the program. I don't mind questions or asking questions around ministry. What bugs me about this situation is that the question is typically asked with a tone of suspicion. When a person asks "Can a middle school student really handle the sex talk?" what they really mean is "A middle school student can't possibly handle the sex talk, can they?"

First of all, it's critically important that we all drop our innocent acts and realize that middle school students are engaged in sexual activity. It's happening in their homes and (I would wager) in their schools and (I'm certain) on their phones. If they're capable of participating in sexual activity, then certainly we can (and should) have a discussion with them about sexual activity. Turning a blind eye to it doesn't help it. (End of soap box)

Ed and I have been talking about this a lot lately as well. Ed works primarily with the middle school students around here, and it bugs him too when we sell our MS students short. The truth is, they're capable of a lot more than we give them, and in fact they often times desire that level of depth. They want to go deeper in their prayer life. They want to understand the boundaries of sex. They want to have a theological debate. But too often their teachers and (sadly) their parents don't think they're ready for such things and the need goes unfilled (or worse, filled by the negative culture they're surrounded by).

Obviously, we can't generalize. It is true that there are some middle school students who might not be ready for the depth we're talking about here. But the danger is to assume that group to be the norm at the expense of students who desire more. If their hearts are there, we need to give them what they're looking for.

Grace and Peace,

Jason


Shameless Plug

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Hello friends!

I may or may not have something else later today, but I would be remissed if I did not mention that my wife has thrown her hat into the blogging ring, and that you should become a regular reader and commenter.

http://sarahfett.blogspot.com

See you soon.

J


Book Review: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

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As I noticed earlier this morning, I have yet to officially review the book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller, and this is an absolute shame. Honestly, it's been one of my favorite books of the last year. I finished it a while ago, but I'm seriously considering going back in for a re-read. It's that good.

The book follows Don as he begins working on plans for a movie about his book Blue Like Jazz. (Side note: what could be my only real complaint about the book is that there's no mention of when said movie might come out. I'll be first in line I can assure you!) Some movie producers come to Don and being working on a screen adaptation of the book. Don starts noticing that the producers are saying the story of the book needs to be updated a little bit if people are going to spend money on it. In other words, it's not interesting enough. This would probably be all well and good except Blue Like Jazz is a memoir, so to say the story isn't interesting enough is to say that Donald Miller as a person isn't interesting enough.

And that's when things get interesting!

The book centers on Don editing his life, trying desperately to tell a better story. Through it all, Miller challenges us to live a better story. He questions us the whole way through the book, wondering if living the way we're living is good enough for us. Would anyone come to see the movie of our lives, or would it simply be too boring? And he does all this questioning not as a high and mightier than you author who has an idea about life, he does it at someone who has tried to live a better story, succeeded, and invites us all along on the journey.

This book has in recent months has changed my world in a variety of ways. The biggest (and most evidently successful) was our confirmation class this year. Rather than trying to just flat out teach them things, I did my best to invite them into the story of God. I'm trying to get on my bike a bit more and lose some weight. I'm trying to teach our youth group to tell a better story with their lives. The moral of the story is whether you find yourself working in a church situation or not, this book is incredibly relevant to all of us!

Pick one up at Amazon today!

Grace and Peace,

Jason


Donald Miller=Hilarious!

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First of all, I'll have to dig a little bit further through the blog, but it seems as though I never got around to reviewing A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Don Miller. This is a travesty! I'll get right on that this afternoon, but in the mean time I'll sumerize by saying you need to get to your local book store and read it. Now. Go.

In the meantime, enjoy this humorous video. H/T to Stuff Christians Like.


More thoughts on race and the church.

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God spoke: "Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature (Genesis 1:26)

After yesterday's blog post, and reading a quick article on Relevant magazine, I discovered I might have a few more thoughts to weigh in on the issue of race and the church. Forgive me if I'm a broken record.

One day during confirmation class this year I held an open Q and A with the kids. One of the first questions that was tossed out was "Was Jesus white?" I wasn't exactly thrown off by this question. If you walk the halls for even a little bit at Westminster you will find several (dare I say tacky) paintings depicting a Jesus I've grown up with all my life. He's got long hair, a stylish beard, a beauty contest sash, and skin that is (somehow) whiter than my own. I could understand why the student might be confused. I spent a little bit of time talking about how Jesus came from the middle east, and actually (almost a little ironically) would have most likely looked like one of the people we have so quickly labeled enemies.

That almost always gets people going. To think that Jesus would have looked like a member of the Taliban.

What scared and perplexed me even more was last week when, following confirmation Sunday, that same student and I were walking the halls by my office. He stopped and stared at a painting of Jesus for a couple of seconds, and asked me if I was sure that Jesus wasn't white. I said "I'm certain of it." And his response sent chills up my spine.

"Then why do we have some many paintings of this guy?"

As I said in the post yesterday, the emergent church is not alone in it's segregation. The Relevant post correctly points out that the most segregated hour in the United States is on Sunday mornings. We go with people who look like us. We do more than that too. We go with people who act like us, who think like us, who talk like us, who vote like us, and who flat out are like us. Westminster is no exception.

The danger in this movement in the church is that we are more likely to have pictures (both physical and mental) of a Jesus who doesn't at all match the glory and grace of the Jesus proclaimed in the Gospels. Being white is one thing. But what if we start to assume that Jesus would vote for our favorite political party? What if we start to imagine that Jesus would worship with a guitar in his hands? What if we start to assume that Jesus would only hang out with people that look like us? What we're doing in those situations is that we are creating God in our image, rather than the other way around.

Like I said, Westminster is as much to blame in this situation as anyone. But it doesn't have to be this way forever. One of my favorite scripture quotes comes from Ephesians: (make) every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." If our churches are segregated, then we are not making every possible effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit. So let's start! Even if we're lone voices in our congregations, we still need to make every possible effort to maintain unity. So let's start today!

A lot more coming today. The brain is spinning!

Grace and Peace,

Jason


The Emergent Church: Sidetracked?

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Hey friends,

By no means do I pass myself off as an expert in the Emergent movement, or Emergent Theology, or whatever you might call it. But I do have a passing interest in the emergent conversation, and so when I saw a few articles today that caught my attention, I thought I'd pass along some thoughts on my very-seldom read blog.

First, Sojourners had an article in it's magazine titled Is the Emerging Church for Whites Only? Frankly, this isn't a bad question, but it might be limited in it's scope. As I read I realized they were correct on a number of points, that most of the "leadership" (we'll address this later...) are white men. Even if you don't want to label a "leadership" group for the emergent movement, certainly most of the authors and vocal proponents of emergent are white dudes. I haven't frequented many emergent congregations, but my take on the ones I have visited is that it's mostly white people. Sure, this is an issue, and it certainly should be looked into. But I would argue that the problem extends well beyond the walls of the Emergent Church. I work at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Upper Saint Clair, which is about as Emergent as a five point theology lecture. We're also incredibly single sided when it comes to race. We are predominately white. By no means am I celebrating that fact, or making excuses for the Emergent Church. I'm simply saying that the problem extends well beyond the walls of that particular group. I agree that we need to take action on this, but I think first we're going to have to examine our hearts and figure out what the best action would be.

But then, Tony Jones through his blog wrote a couple of responses to the original article. Now, I think Tony is an amazing thinker, and an incredible theologian. However, I think he may have overstepped himself a little bit in these articles. A few thoughts just in case Tony's reading along with us:

  1. Responding to Sojourner's questions about race in the Emergent Church by attacking their issues with the GLBT community is about as blatant an example of trying to remove a person's speck in the eye with a plank in your own as I've ever seen. Ok, maybe they're both planks, but still. That wasn't the point of the original article, and it shouldn't have been the point of the response. Right from the title of Tony's response, I get the feeling that he's just calling Sojo stupid and that there won't be any good points in the article. That's silly, because there were some pretty solid points in Tony's first post, but they were tainted by what I perceived to be a pretty childish stance on the issue. If we're going to have open and honest debate (which, I hope happens on this blog as much as anywhere) then we need to make sure that we stay focused on the issue at hand rather than pointing out someone else's issues to take the heat out of our hot kitchen.
  2. In a couple of places in a couple of different articles, I've been hearing whispers that the Emergent Church movement is dead or dying. I sure hope not! I honestly think that the Emergent conversation is one of the best things to happen to the Church since Matin Luther picked up a hammer and nails and went to town. I agree with the Sojo article that the hype has died down, but we're still needed to ask questions. We still need to make sure that the direction we're taking the church is the absolute right direction. We still need to challenge each other in love and respect. I certainly hope that the Emergent conversation isn't dying out, and I certainly don't think it is. We have a long way to go...
  3. That said, again and again and again in his response to the Sojo article, Tony reminds readers that there is no leadership structure to the Emergent movement. Of course I get the thought process behind that. If a single leader takes charge of the thing (or a group of leaders for that matter), then the Emergent conversation will be less like a conversation and more like a denomination or an organization, which doesn't sit well with typical emergents. That's all well and good, but I feel like lately we've lost our sense of direction in the conversation. Perhaps the Emergent conversation hasn't died out, but rather has finally hit that awkward silence that occurs on nearly every first date. We forgot what we were talking about. I don't know that the Emergent movement needs a specific leader, but I think it for sure needs those of us who are passionate about the movement to stand up and start asking questions again. Questions are what fueled this thing in the past, and questions are what will fuel it again in the future.
So these are just a few of my thoughts on the emergent movement. I'd love to hear some of yours in the comments!

Grace and Peace,

Jason


Do a dance

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Greetings friends!

When was the last time you too some time to celebrate your ministry? I feel like a lot of times as youth pastors we work on encouraging each other, trying to tell each other that though our jobs might suck at times, that it's for an important purpose and all of that. This is all very true, and incredibly necessary, but I wonder if we're also spending the appropriate amount of time celebrating.

Case in point: This weekend was HUGE for us at Veritas. Friday and Saturday we took our leadership team (both students and adults) on a retreat to work on some system upgrades for our program. It went swimmingly! We worked through a series of small but effective changes to implement into our program. Nothing that's going to stress us out too hard, but at the same time small changes that will make a TREMENDOUS difference. The weekend left me feeling energized, encouraged, and ready to get to work on making a better youth group for our students and their families.

Sunday was Confirmation Sunday. Unlike last year, I walked away from Confirmation class feeling super encouraged and energized! It was an amazing group of kids, and the few subtle tweaks that we made to the system wound up working just as well as could possibly have been expected. On Sunday, we capped it all off by having the kids read their statements of faith and doing some storytelling for the whole congregation. It was an incredible time of worship for me.

At one point on Sunday, while I was walking around in the bowels of the church, I did a quick little jig. It had to happen. There was too much good going on! I had to dance, and I didn't care if anyone saw me (though thankfully no one did).

When was the last time you danced over the things that were going well in your ministry? When was the last time you recognized how well things were going? If you're in a dark season, can you take some time out of your day to search through the darkness and find the bright spots? What would it take to make you dance?

Let's dance together!

Grace and Peace,

Jason



I'd like to speak at your Church/Youth Group/Whatever

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Hello friends!

Just wanted to jump in real fast and let you know that I'm looking to speak out a little bit in the not too distant future. I've been busy with Confirmation and all of that (more on this later), but now my schedule is freeing up a little bit, and I haven't spoken out in a long while. It really helps me keep myself sharp to speak at other people's groups, so I'll do it for pizza or something like that! If you're interested hit me up in the comments!

Grace and Peace,

J


Ephesians 6:5-9: Slaves and Masters

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While it might surprise you to hear this, not everybody in the world thinks that slavery is unfair. Actually, it's even alive and well here in America, as sex slave trading goes all too frequently unchecked. All this is to say that if you think that we as a society of human beings has moved beyond the issue of slavery, you are sadly mistaken.

But that's not the only point.

Paul's instructions to the slaves in this passage is that even though their situation might not be fair, to truly respect Christ and Christ's work in the world, you should perform the duties asked of you regardless. He even equates the work that they are doing as work unto the Lord, not work unto the masters that are over them. I don't think this is an advocation for slavery by any means, but what I think is hidden here in the passage is the subtle notion that occasionally in life we're going to be asked to do things that don't seem fair. A few hard working volunteers in churches often end up doing the work of the rest of the congregation, frequently to the tune of 20%-80% (As in 20% of the congregation does 80% of the work). As a guy who frequently found himself in the 20%, it was easy to complain and make a big stink about how it's not fair that I had to do all that. In short, I think Paul would tell me to take my self out of the equation, and realize that my service is to the Lord. I think there's a HUGE lesson us often over-loaded youth pastors can learn there.

But again, that's not the (only) point.

Paul writes this letter to a crowd of people that presumably contains both slaves and masters. How awkward is that? What would it look like to address a crowd of people that contains a group that owns humans AND the humans they own? How do you have a church like that? How could such a group continue to exist and serve the Lord?

Making an admittedly large leap of logic, I wonder if this passage has something to tell us about the different personalities we have in our youth groups. Maybe instead of slaves and masters, we have jocks and band geeks. Maybe we have the group of kids that loves to play the wild and crazy games like dodgeball, and the group of kids that would rather spend that time with scrabble. We have both sets of people sitting in the pews listening to what we have to say, and both groups need to be fed.

How do we feed both groups? How do we make sure that every person in the room is able to connect with the life-altering message of Jesus Christ? I don't know if I have all the answers, but it's something I'm going to continue to struggle with.

More later today, this post got finished late!

Godspeed,

Jason


Falling Behind

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Hello bloggers!

I am planning on finishing the Ephesians series. I've actually finished the reading, I'm just way behind on the writing. I have a new battle plan for us too when we get done with Ephesians, and I'm pretty excited to get started with it. But first things first, we have to wrap up, so I'm going to get on to that later on today.

Don't you hate falling behind though? I've been pretty on top of things lately, but I can tell that I'm starting to lose pace with the to-do list. Not just with the blog, but with things in my ministry and even in my personal life. I'm not behind yet, but I'm working on it!

What do you do when you start falling behind? What are some of your tips and tricks to snapping out of it and picking up the pace?

For me, it's all about beating back resistance and just getting some stuff done. So if you don't see a blog post about Ephesians today, please feel free to come to my office and punch me square in the face.

That ought to take care of things!

Godspeed,

Jason


Resurection

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I don't really think this needs any further explanation. Happy Easter friends!

Resurrection: Rob Bell from The Work of Rob Bell on Vimeo.


Ephesians 6:1-4: Kids vs Parents

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Good morning bloggers!

(Note: I said in the last post that we would go to nine, but there's just a lot of stuff to digest here in just the first four verses. We'll pick up the rest later!)

Raise your digital hand if you've had a student ever complain about their parents? Of course you have! Everybody in youth ministry has had at least 50,000 kids complain about the way their parents are treating them. Which, tends to be hilarious to listen to, as it usually has something to do with a punishment handed out that any rational third party observer would agree was just and fair. Once again, it all comes down to perspective!

I often wrestle with how to offer parent/teenager relationship advice on either side of the spectrum. My policy is and has been for quite some time to never offer parenting advice to parents. Even when I'm really pressed, I try to wiggle my way out of it, because the pure and simple fact is that while I am a youth leader and a (hopefully) purveyor of youth culture, I don't have any children of my own. That limits my perspective. What might make perfect sense to me as a youth leader might be missing some fairly obvious points that parents are quick to catch on to. Typically if I see some areas where parents could improve, I might ask questions. But I try my hardest not to offer advice.

Here, Paul tells us that the relationship between parents and children is important, if only to make our life here on earth a little bit better. And the truth of the matter is that when students and parents are getting along, everyone's just a little bit more joyful. So the one piece of advice I have to offer is this: watch the ways we communicate. While I'm not a parent, and I'm a little bit old to be a child, I've come to realize that about 90% of the fights and arguments that happen between kids and parents happen because of bad communication. So my recomendation to parents and kids is to take a moment and make sure you clearly understand the other person before you jump to any kind of conclusions. And my advice to youth pastors is to try your best to be a third party observer when kids come to you for help with their parents. Listen not for who's right and who's wrong, but listen for the breakdowns in communication.

Tomorrow we'll go from 5-9.

Godspeed,

Jason