The Blame Game

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Greetings Bloggers,

Every day, when I start out to write the blog post of the day, I take a quick look at Google News just to see what's going on in the world, and to see if it would be worth chiming in on. As I was browsing today, I noticed a couple of headlines:

  • BP probe blames its workers for Gulf blowout
  • Glen Beck blames Liberals for America losing it's honor
  • Obama blames Republicans for holding up legislation
  • Parris Hilton blames cops for illegal search

Maybe it's just today, but it seems like everybody has somebody to blame right now. It feels like we're all angry about something, and rather than own up to our role in why the world isn't as it should be, we're too busy pointing the finger at somebody else.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's in our DNA. At the creation of the world, as God's perfect creation is falling, we see a man pointing at a woman pointing at a snake. From the very beginning, humanity has been pointing the finger at somebody else, as though all of our problems rest solely on their shoulders.

This isn't to say that there aren't times where someone has wronged us and they need to be called out on it. Every day there are times and places where a person needs to step up and accept the blame everybody is heaping on their shoulders. To accept such blame takes guts and boldness.

And that's what's required of all of us, isn't it? To be bold and stand up to accept the consequences when we've screwed up. And if you're anything like me, that happens considerably often. So here's the challenge for us today (because I can't do anything about Glenn Beck or Paris Hilton): don't blame anybody at all for your issues. Even if they deserve it, let today be a day to ask God for forgiveness rather than asking someone else to accept the blame. As always, if something spectacular happens during the day, feel free to share in the comments!

Godspeed,

Jason


What can save you?

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Greetings bloggers!

(WOW! We had over 650 readers yesterday! If any of you have stuck around for today's post, thanks for stopping by! I'm really honored!)

I wasn't so sure about this post, but then after reading some of the comments that came up in yesterday's post, I felt like it was a fitting follow up.

I struggle with daily devotions. There, I've said it! I don't know what my problem is, but the act of getting into a habit when it comes to reading the scriptures on a daily basis eludes me. I'll get a good head of steam going for a while, maybe make it a couple of weeks of reading each and every day, but after a while the wheels fall off the wagon, and it becomes too hard to get caught up.

I don't know if it's the upbringing I've had, or the too many to count festivals and conferences, but I feel like a horrible failure every time I get off track. As a pastor, it's even worse. How could I possibly be expected to teach people about the scriptures if I can't convince myself to read it every day?

This morning as I was thinking over all of this, I was reminded that reading the Bible can't save me. I can read that book every day from now until eternity, but it will never save my soul. It's a proven fact.

I wonder how many things we think will save us that absolutely cannot. As was pointed out in abundance in the comments yesterday, the Church cannot save us. Our financial giving to the Church cannot save us. Our acts of charity cannot save us. Our political views cannot save us. Our love for our neighbors cannot save us. Our tolerance towards other faiths cannot save us. Our weekly church attendance record cannot save us.

We cannot save ourselves.

The truth is, the only thing that can save our souls is the incredible, excellent, surpassing, and overwhelming love of Jesus Christ. I've been kind of shocked at how quickly the people around me and I forget that. We're quick to throw people under the spiritual bus for having a spirituality that looks different from ours, but in truth, we can never take away the love Jesus has for us and for each and every one of our neighbors. That part is eternal.

So remember friends, you are saved by a loving God, not by your works, and not by your acts of righteousness. And remember too, that Jesus' love is so powerful, it covers the people who don't believe in him. (More on that tomorrow hopefully!)

Godspeed,

Jason


Quitting Christianity: What Anne Rice is teaching us all

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Greetings bloggers!

A few months ago, Anne Rice stated on her Facebook page that in the name of Jesus Christ, she was quitting Christianity and was no longer a Christian.

It's taken me this long to get around to this post because that sentence is tough to wrap your mind around. How can a person quit Christianity in the name of Jesus? What's really at the heart of Anne Rice's comment here? What does it mean for those of us who are in the Church and in Church leadership?

Rice's comments make sense in a world where we're told it's perfectly ok to be spiritual but not religious. On the plus side, it would appear to this casual observer that there are more people than ever who are interested in the life and teachings of Jesus. People are opening the scriptures and seeing the God of the Universe who cares for and loves their souls. These people fall head over heels for the savior.

But they simply can't stand his followers.

These folks read the scriptures, particularly the teachings of Jesus, and as their eyes glance up from the page they notice that the people in the pews around them are nothing like the savior has asked of them. They see the horrible things we are capable of doing in the name of Jesus, the way we treat each other, and the way we treat people who disagree with us, and they want out.

So the question is, can you be spiritual, but not be religious? Is it possible to lead a life of devotion to Christ but not be a part of the community of faith? Yes and no I think. I understand the heart of this feeling, the desire to distance oneself from "organized religion" (a phrase I find pretty funny, because as someone who works in the church I realize that it's seldom organized). I can even understand feeling like you're capable of accomplishing more on your own than you could with a group of infighting Christians.

But the truth is, you need that connection. You need that community. You need encouragement when things aren't going your way and challenge to see things differently when needed. You need to have your viewpoints challenged by caring and loving people who are willing to invest in you. I personally think everyone should be a part of a small group, a team of people who will listen to your life stories and help you put things in perspective. Sure, the Church can be ugly. To quote Augustine, the Church may be a whore, but she's my mother.

So Anne, I see where you might have felt compelled to quit Christianity. But I also beg you to seek out those of us who are trying to make authentic and purposeful communities, trying to live the life that Jesus has laid out for us.

Perhaps we should spend less time worrying about being Christians and worry more about being disciples.

Godspeed,

J


Why we need church unity more than ever.

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Hello again!

I've been working through some thoughts for the blog, and really trying to rediscover what it is that I'm passionate about. As I keep bouncing back and forth through ideas, I keep coming back to how much it breaks my heart to see how the Church (big C = everybody) is divided and separated. There are issues that I think are funny, and issues that make me angry, but there are so few issues that can break my heart like the knowledge that our Church body is falling apart at the seams in some places.

Take for instance my own denomination, the lovely and wonderful Presbyterians. A few years ago now (I can't believe this has been going on that long!) we began a debate on whether or not we could ordain homosexual pastors. Well, actually we dipped our toes in the water of debate by taking back roads and attempting to hide our true intentions rather than open ourselves up to actual honest and authentic debate, but that's all semantics. Since then, we've seen churches engaged in lengthy lawsuits and arguments with their Presbyteries in an attempt to leave. When I get right down to it, I get angry with churches on both sides of this debate. If a church can no longer stay in the Presbytery because of serious and legitimate disagreements, we shouldn't make that harder for them by blocking their land use or trying to sue them broke. We should shake hands and say "Go in peace and love." On the other hand, I don't know that the issue is big enough to warrant picking up our ball and heading home. If we aren't in communion together, we aren't going to challenge each other and we're never going to grow.

I blame Martin Luther. Actually, I bet if the great thinkers of the Reformation were still around they'd be furious at us. Luther never intended to break away from Catholicism, just as Wesley never intended to break away from the Church of England and Calvin never intended to start his own denomination. These guys were deep thinkers and revolutionaries who saw the need for change, but not a desire for division.

Not to mention the things that divided the church then were significantly more severe than several of the divisions we face today. Luther was torqued because the church was trying to sell Christ's free gift of grace, an outrage to end all outrages. Some denominations split these days over the color of the carpet and whether a guitar can be used in worship. Priorities people, priorities.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong here. Maybe there are issues that are bigger than we can work past that I'm just not seeing. But as I mentioned in a previous post this week, I'm also seeing a newer and younger generation of Church leaders stepping up and begging for the Church to rejoin in communion together, to prepare ourselves for the wedding feast of the Lamb on the last days.

What do you think about our divisions? And perhaps more importantly, how do you think we can bring the church back together?

Godspeed,

Jason


Book Review: Hear No Evil by Matthew Paul Turner

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Hello bloggers!

Every vacation seems to come with a beach read. This vacation was also the first to have my new iPad with me, so I did what you would expect of any youth pastor with an inability to focus would do: I spent the first three days trying to decide what to read.

But then, once I got settled in, I landed on Matthew Paul Turner's book Hear No Evil. The first chapter alone is worth the entire price of the book. The only complaint I had was that at times Turner is so funny I laughed out loud, which made reading the book in public a bit of a challenge.

Turner walks us through his upbringing in a Fundamentalist Baptist church which seemed to have a unique relationship with music and the blossoming Christian music industry. It was a little difficult to read through some of the chapters that dealt so heavily with his baptist up bringing, as it was incredibly different from my own Presbyterian Heritage. It's weird to think that there might such a thing as denominational culture shock, but there absolutely is.

Hear No Evil is an absolute must read for anyone with even the slightest hopes of making it in the Christian Music Industry. As someone who spent some time on the inside, Turner exposes some of the more hypocritical nature of the industry. There are lots of stories in the book that I don't want to spoil, but let's leave it at this: Christian music isn't all sunshine and rainbows.

After I finished this book, I was so in love with Turner's writing style that I picked up a few of his other books on my Kindle for iPad app, and I'm sure I'll be reading them soon. But in the meantime, I highly recommend following him on twitter (@jesusneedsnewpr) and checking out his blog (be warned: he sometimes gets a little edgy...but then again I like edgy!). As for Hear No Evil, I give it two thumbs way the heck up!

Godspeed,

Jason


Caption Contest.

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While we've had a lot of readers, and some pretty lively Facebook conversations, we should have some fun and take advantage of it with a good old fashion caption contest!

Come up with a funny caption for the photograph above and leave your entry in either the comments or on the Facebook post linked to the post. And in fact, we'll offer up some real life prizes this time! Deadline for entries will be 5:00 tomorrow. I'll pick the funniest caption, and the winner will get a free entry for the Veritas kick off if they're a student, or a lunch with me at my favorite spot (Sarku Japan) on the day of their choosing.

Good luck!

J


Where do you get your news?

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Greetings Bloggers,

Home from vacation, and while I'm headed back to work on Tuesday, I figure I should make the best of my free time while it was left. After all, we had close to 300 hits here on the blog while I was away! Thanks for reading!

This week I covered some pretty dicey subjects from the news. We talked about the "Mosque" at ground zero, the issue of homosexual marriage and prop 8, and my overall distaste for Christian Rap. With the exception of the rap business, I posted most of what I did for two reasons: 1) because I had a fairly strong opinion on each of these issues, and 2) because they were all over the news. While I was working through each of the issues, you may have noticed that I took a couple of cracks at the media. I'm not wild about them.

Politics and spirituality in my mind don't mix, or at least not in the way that we seem to be mixing them these days. For instance, often when a person takes the bible very seriously and reads it on a daily basis, that person and those actions are labeled "conservative." If a person is serious about social justice, that person is typically labeled "liberal." So what happens to a person like me, who takes scripture very seriously, and is serious about social justice? Are we liberal, conservative, centrist? Or is it perhaps that the labels from our political system do not apply in any way to our faith system?

Which leads us to our problem with the media. Pick a station, any station to get news. Fox = Conservative. CNN = Liberal. MSNBC = Very Liberal. Even though TV is my chosen mode of transportation, it turns out newspapers, blogs, radio, and other forms of news media all fit into these left or right categories. So if you want to gather information about a news story, particularly a story that might affect your faith, which station do you use? Who do you turn into? I'll leave that up to the comments section tonight, leave a note and tell me where you turn to.

Enjoy the new layout!

Godspeed,

Jason


Prop 8 (And what it means for you!)

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Hello friends!

I've been seemingly getting more and more controversial around here the last couple of days, so why not go the whole nine yards and bring up gay marriage again.

Let's start in the owners manual. As my beautiful and talented wife pointed out on her blog (http://sarahfett.blogspot.com/2010/08/homophobia-is-gay.html) (my linky thing is broken or something...sorry) the Bible is fairly clear on homosexual behavior, but fails to say anything at all about homosexual orientation. According to the Scriptures, you can feel however you want, acting on it is a bit of a problem.

I understand that the question of whether or not homosexuality is a sin or not is a pretty hot button topic, and that I don't know where I am, but let's push it as far to one side as we can take it for the moment and say for the sake of argument that it is 100% a sin. Let's say that a person is actively engaged in a homosexual lifestyle (a phrase that makes as little sense as "christian coffee shop," but whatever) but has accepted Jesus into their hearts as Savior. Wouldn't that make them beloved forgiven sons and daughters of God? Wouldn't that wipe clean their transgressions? Wouldn't that put them in exactly the same boat you and I find ourselves in?

But Jason (I can hear some of you screaming through your computers), they're living in sin and are not repentant of their sins. Fair point. Did you know that we have hard evidence that 74% of Americans age 18-34 are in that very same place? They knowingly participate in a forum of sin and debauchery, directly in opposition of Romans 1:25-31. They openly admit it, and in fact it's become such a part of the American culture that we have adopted part of the lexicon of this sin into our everyday lives.

I'm referring of course to Facebook.

Facebook is a center for little more than gossip, isn't it? Youth leaders, back me up on this, when was the last time you had a meeting where you DIDN'T hear someone say "Did you see what happened to so and so on Facebook?" or "Well everyone on Facebook is commenting on so and so's page" or "I have to get home so I can check on Facebook and stalk people." We all know that Facebook is a place for little more than gossip at best, and slanderous talk at worst, and according to our passage in Romans (typically used to oppose same-sex marriage) we see that it's a sin. Yet most of us unrepentantly continue to live a life consumed by this particular sin.

If you want to get a good feel on how severe a sin is, I would venture a guess that the number of times Jesus mentions it in the Gospels is a pretty good indicator of how important it is to God, right? Do you know how many times Jesus mentions homosexuality, orientation or behavior? Never. Zero. Nada. Go ahead and check me out on that, but while you're doing it, check out how many times Jesus talks about divorce, and then count the number of divorced people in your congregation. We seem eager to forgive them (as we should), but Jesus had some pretty harsh words for them. If we're going to be harsh with our homosexual brothers and sisters, then shouldn't we have some harsh words for those who have been divorced for reasons beyond infidelity? Or do we need to be harsh with anyone at all?

The trick is, if we're going to make the claim that homosexual behavior is a sin, and that is absolutely the worst thing we can say about it, then friends it's time to stop treating those folks like they're living a great life of debauchery while you and I are living a holy and blameless life. No one is blameless. Probably the most under rated and forgotten part of God's gift of Grace is that is levels the playing field. I am certainly no better than you, just as you are no better than me. In Christ's eyes, we're all the same.

As I mentioned on the blog yesterday, you and I have two jobs as believers in Christ. We have to love the Lord with all we've got, and love our neighbors as ourselves. If you keep reading you'll find the third job, to go and make disciples of all nations. These three things above all have we as Christians been called to.

I can't find on Google an exact breakdown of how much was spent on Proposition 8, with legal fees and propaganda and advertising and what have you, but I bet if we could it would be an astronomically big number. If you were a person of homosexual orientation, and you looked at the sensational amount of money the church was willing to spend to keep you from being happy, what are the chances you would be willing to accept Jesus Christ? What are the chances you would be ok hearing a person talk about the freedom that Christ has to offer? What are the chances that you would be wanting to walk through a door and find love in a church? Probably slim to none.

The truth is, we can't force everybody in this country to be Christian through the laws we pass, which is essentially what things like Prop 8 are trying to do. If your church or denomination is uncomfortable with gay marriage going on, that's fine and that's your choice. But we shouldn't force that choice on people who don't know the love and forgiveness of our savior. It's a religiously free nation, and if Jews are allowed to celebrate Passover and Muslims are allowed to celebrate Ramadan and the best you can come up with for the reason homosexuals can't marry is because the bible defines marriage as between a man and a woman, then we can't tell people it's illegal. It's simply not our place.

The bottom line for me is that I celebrate and worship a Savior, not a religion. Absolutely nothing would make me happier than to share with each and every person on the planet the great and surpassing love of Jesus. The truth is that I don't think we can do that while we're angrily telling people what they can and can't do. Let's start with spreading the love of Christ, and then move on to other issues as they come up.

That love of course applies to the comments on the blog and Facebook! I'd love to have a lively debate, but let's keep love first and foremost in our hearts. Game on!

Godspeed,

Jason

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:W Market St,Breezy Point,United States

The Mosque at Ground Zero: My Thoughts

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Good morning friends!

While we're up here at the beach house, we have access to something that Sarah and I have missed a little bit more than we probably should: Cable TV. Yes friends, that endless stream of "information" is back in our lives. And while we've been using it appropriately every day (CSI: Miami, NHL Network, and Ghost Hunters to name a few), there have been times that we've turned our attention to things we probably shouldn't (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and The Daily Show to once again name a few).

It's been interesting to remind myself of how if you watch CNN for any extended period of time, you'll come away feeling like a story is impacting each and every citizen of the union for days at a time, but the fact is it's impacting almost no one, they just use the story to keep people watching. When you go without the 24 hour news channels for a while, you quickly realize that most of the stories they offer are not as big as they make them out to be, nor will they have any impact at all on your day.

That said, I want to make sure people are reading my blog, so I'm going to imply their very same tactics and talk about the Mosque at Ground Zero here in NYC.

Truly, since we started turning on the TV here, almost all you hear about is the proposed Islamic Community Center in Manhattan. I hear CNN rant about it, I hear Keith Olberman rant about it, I hear Glen Beck rant about it, and then at the end of the night I hear John Stewart make fun of all three of them for ranting about it. It's as though this story is the only thing that matters in the United States right now.

Let's clear up a few things before we go any further. The word "Mosque" is probably inappropriate here. From what I've heard and read (which admittedly isn't that much, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) this will be a community center, offering activities and recreational opportunities to the community at large. It will indeed have some space to pray upstairs, but it is not an official house of worship where people gather each week. Also, the words Ground Zero are a bit over-exadurated as well. The news networks can't seem to agree on whether it's 2 or 4 blocks away from Ground Zero (we could launch into a whole debate on how it would be seemingly impossible for these "news" agencies to spin a measured distance like "blocks", but who has the time?). I spent the better part of the day walking around New York City, and 2 blocks is a bit of distance. Sure I'm out of shape, but I broke a sweat walking two blocks when Sarah and I accidentally got off at the wrong subway stop and had to walk back to our car. 2 blocks is not "right next" to anything in this city. It becomes even less so when you realize that those two blocks are often filled with sky scrapers that block out things like the sun.

But this of course is a youth ministry driven blog, and thusly a Christian driven blog, so I'd like to set aside any and all political ramifications of this issue and speak to those of us who are bold enough to claim to be disciples on how we should be responding here.

Jesus was once tested on what the greatest commandment in the scriptures were. In a stunning moment of clarity (usually Jesus answers these questions with a more confusing question), Jesus replies "Love the Lord with all your heart, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. All of the laws and the prophets hang on these two commandments." What this means for us is that if you are acting on something, and you think it jives with a piece of scripture, yet doesn't allow you to fully love God or love your neighbor, you've missed part of the message. Something is wrong. So when we Christians are taking a look at the "Mosque" story, if our hearts are filled with anything less than love for the people involved, then we've failed in some capacity. Yes, it's a messy situation. Yes, people who claimed to represent Islam did a horrible thing on September 11th. I strongly recommend we re-associate ourselves with some of the things people have done who claim to represent Christianity (The Klu Klux Klan, The Crusades, Slavery, Apartheid, and Christian Rap just to name a couple) to get a feel for how easy it is for a religion to be mis-represented. Islamic extremists are not the same as all Muslims, and in fact they are a GROSS misrepresentation of the values and ideals taught in the Koran. So when I look at our Muslim brothers and sisters, I don't feel hate. I feel compassion. I feel empathy for what they've had to endure because of the foolishness and evil intentions of the vocal few in their midst. My heart is full of love, and in fact it's because that's what Jesus insisted it needed to be full of.

The second thing is we have to be honest and look at the goals these folks are trying to acomplish. To build a community center is (I would assume) an attempt on their part to better the community around them. They are attempting to make the world a better place. Take a quick look at one of my favorite Scriptures, Matthew 25:31-46 and ask yourself a hard question: Are they doing a better job of following Jesus' commands than we are? Sure, there are Christian community centers all over New York City and the world, and they're doing fantastic work. But every time I hear a Christian spout off on one of the "news" networks, I wonder how much time and energy he or she put into that appearance to speak against the "Mosque", and how much good that energy could have done if applied in a different direction. They're trying to better the community, and we're trying to stop them (or at least that's how it's playing out in the news). What if instead of investing our precious time and energy in opposing something beautiful coming out of a different religion, we tried to create even more beautiful things in our religion? I mean, I don't want to turn this into a competition between the Christians and the Jews and Muslims as to who can improve their community the most, but honestly if we were in such a competition, we'd be getting our butts kicked, and we're the ones told to love our neighbors as ourselves.

These are just my thoughts. Again, I understand that this is a difficult subject (just wait till tomorrow when I think I'm going to tackle Prop 8!), so I welcome criticism and encouragement. But above all, let's remember the call we were given, to love God with all our hearts, and love our neighbors as ourselves. If our conversations don't line up with that, what good are they? If our actions don't line up with that, they're worthless. If our lives don't line up with that, are we truly to call ourselves disciples?

Godspeed,

Jason




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:W Market St,Breezy Point,United States

Getting in the way

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Greetings friends,

While I'm on vacation I've been blogging about some thoughts that have just been floating around in my head as relates to youth ministry. Today, I'm going to tackle something that really upsets me, so I hope not to offend anybody, but I feel like there are some things that need to be said.

I remember when I first started in youth ministry, and had teamed up with a collection of the youth workers in our neighborhood on a big worship night. The town I was in had several youth ministries and churches, each of us having a fairly small number of students. The thinking was that every now and again we could get together, and feel like one big group. If you ask me, this was down right biblical. I don't think Jesus had denominations in mind when he established God's Kingdom on earth. But believe it or not, that's not the point here.

My pastor at the time was pretty upset about the notion of us partnering with other churches, particularly churches who might have a different political leaning than our church. I don't remember much of the specifics, because I think I was in some sort of low-level rage that only appears in movies, but what I do remember is how mad I was. I remember my face being red as could be. I remember storming out of his office into mine, slamming the door. Basically, I remember being a 22 year old fresh out of college little boy.

Now I'm a 27 still immature as could be little boy, but I have a bit more of a framework to form my argument with. You would think this was an isolated incident, the denial of partnership on the grounds of political issues, but in fact it just happened to a good friend of mine. His pastor specifically asked him not to partner with us, because of something our senior pastor supposedly said that gave away our political leanings one way or another. So today, I want to speak for a second to senior pastors, and issue a challenge.

I challenge you to find any of the following words in the Scriptures: liberal, conservative, democrat, republican, progressive, new age, redneck, or hippie. I mean, if the argument some of you senior pastors are making is as serious as you make it sound, surely you can come up with a place (or ideally several places) in the Scriptures to back up what you believe, right? The idea of denominations, and even further the idea of denominational isolation are in there too, right? Jesus mentions that you should only associate with people who are righteous and agree with everything you agree with, right?

While you're looking for those Scripture references, let me throw one at you for your consideration:

"Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all." (Ephesians 4:3-6)

Is keeping away from the people who believe in Jesus yet disagree with you politically sound like making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit? Is withholding spiritual experiences from teenagers because of something their senior pastor said in that vein? Have we made every effort? Are we still making every effort?

For whatever reason, it seems like youth ministries are starting to get the hang of this. Every year, I head to the National Youth Workers Convention, and I spend a long weekend with youth workers from every possible denominational heritage. And every year, I am completely unaware of our denominational differences. For those four glorious days, we are one faith, following one Lord, one Father of all. And I'm not over-stating it when I say that it feels like heaven. We're going to have to deal with each other for an entire eternity, we might as well start getting used to it.

I love when youth groups partner together, pull resources together, and put on events with the aim of reaching as many students as they can for Christ. Not making as many Presbyterians or Methodists or Catholics as they can, but sharing the love of Christ with as many as they can.

Now for sure, I bet there are youth pastors out there who are every bit as guilty of this as I'm blaming senior pastors for. But in my experience, we seem to be the ones trying our very best to tear down the dividing wall. We may disagree on everything from gay marriage, abortion, predestination, which party God wants us to belong to, whether or not we should belong to a party, what to do about war, how to best support our troops, what color the carpet in the sanctuary should be, or whether women should be pastors, but we all tend to agree that we are sinners and that we're sunk without the love of Jesus Christ. Could you all do me a favor and set the rest aside, and let's work together on better understanding that grace and our need for it?

I think we'd be pretty amazed at how much faster we could run the race!

Godspeed,

Jason

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:W Market St,Breezy Point,United States

Our kids need more.

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Hello again my friends!

I'm afraid I might live and work in one of the most over indulgent communities in the United States. I'm sure some of you out there would give me a run for my money, but Upper Saint Clair is an incredibly affluent community, and it's even getting to the point where several of the people we work with have this sense of entitlement, that they deserve what they're getting because of all the hard work they've put in and what not.

Admittedly, this is a tough place to do ministry in when you consider that Jesus on more than a couple occasions talked about rich people and how difficult it would be for them to enter the kingdom of heaven. When almost half the world doesn't have access to clean water and is forced to live on less than $2 a day, those of us who have water coming out of a tap are considered rich. But how do you get that message across to teenagers who are given a bmw on their 16th birthday? How do you teach them about what entering the kingdom of heaven really looks like? How do you instill kingdom values in them?

Simple. Tell them how much more they need.

Show your students how fulfilling it can be to offer help to someone who needs it. Show them how warm and amazing the smile of a person in need can be. Tell them how much richer your life is because you've made it your goal to bring the Kingdom down to earth. I firmly believe the problem isn't that our kids want too much. Rather, the problem is our kids don't want enough, or at least they want the wrong things. I mean, think about it. When Jesus invites the rich young ruler to give up everything he has, he's not inviting him to do so and then sit around wallowing in his nothingness all day. Jesus is actually inviting him to take part in something much bigger than his stuff. Jesus is inviting this man to follow him. Though our rich young friend didn't see it, this was worth more than anything he already possessed.

We need to tell our students how much more they need, and how much they need to rely on the gospel of grace. Then, and only then, will it be a little bit easier to do ministry in our affluent neighborhoods.

A little bit.

Godspeed,

Jason



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Rockaway Point Blvd,Breezy Point,United States

Artificical Authenticity.

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I've been in a few different situations where people around me will be talking about youth ministry and how they go about being the youth leader they are. Some will promise to be the biggest and wildest youth leader on the market. "These kids just respond to people who are willing to go over the top!" Some others try their very best to simply be the pipeline through which the Bible is transmitted. "I do my best to get out of the way, and let the Scriptures do the talking." Still others come across as the happy fun times best friend that we all wish we had in high school. "I'm taking the kids to Disney World!"

What always cracks me up is when I visit with these various flavors of youth ministers in their homes, when the students are nowhere to be found, or their elder board isn't watching their meeting time. On more occasions than I would like to admit to, these folks are two different people: The people at their jobs and the people they are the rest of the time. This is a personality disorder at it's worst.

What happened to authenticity? To actually allowing your students to see who you are and what you're like? What's wrong with showing students that you're actually a bit of a nerd? What's wrong with sharing with them when you don't feel like you have it all together? Would your ministry really collapse if you let your personal life into it? Would your personal life collapse if you let your ministry into it?

I'm not saying kids need to come by your house every day and eat all your cookies. But I am saying that trying to figure out the best way to be authentic to the kids is probably going to lead you to something that isn't very authentic. Authenticity it turns out doesn't come with a game plan.

The formula for youth ministry used to be something like this: Cool guy likes Jesus. Teens like Cool Guy. Teens like Jesus. It was almost a sure thing for a while there, to the point where you could just throw a pizza party and drench kids in your awesomeness and get a 10% increase at your next altar call. But I think the formula has shifted, or at least I think it needs to.

Maybe the formula should be something more like this. Broken Youth Leader NEEDS Christ. Broken Youth Leader is willing to show Students just how much he/she needs Christ, and how much Christ has come through for them. Teens begin to understand their dependance on Christ. Years of discipleship and mentoring begin.

If you try to convince the world around you that your sin is small, the world around you will come to think that your savior must be small as well. So my friends, let's put the artificial authenticity on the shelf and pull down the organic kind. I think it will serve Christ better in the long run anyway!

Godspeed,

Jason


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Location:W Market St,Breezy Point,United States

The Pre-Vacation Check List

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Greetings readers!

I'm finishing up some rendering on the last couple of videos I had for the week, and thought I'd offer some thoughts on what's going through my head.

I don't know if I love or if I hate the last Friday before a vacation. On the one hand, it's the beginning of the end, and relaxation is not very far behind. On the other hand, before any of that relaxation can come down, there's a laundry list of things that need to be done. Add on top of that the fact that I decided to host a party for our volunteers at my house on Saturday and take a guest speaking gig on Sunday, and the list gets longer and longer. Silly J, silly silly J.

It's harder still because a couple of vacations ago I left some things undone before I left, and so my whole vacation was interrupted by text messages from confused volunteers. Relaxation was nowhere. My head stayed right in the office, even if my body was parked directly in front of a TV.

So my goal today is to get everything wrapped up before tomorrow. It's a tall order. What are the things you feel like you need to take care of before a big break?

Godspeed,

Jason


Some good thoughts.

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Hey friends,

One of our Veritas Alum has posted a pretty thought provoking blog post, and I thought I'd spread the word so we could all engage in the conversation. Take a read, and be sure to share some thoughts in the comments.

http://crazywhitenation.blogspot.com/2010/08/is-being-rich-sin.html

Thanks gang!


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Leading without feeling like it.

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Greetings friends.

I don't at all know what my issue was, but on Sunday I was a complete and total crank pot. I was super easily irritated. I made it through sound check with this low level nuclear reaction going on just slightly beneath my skin. When soundcheck was done, I sat in the back by the sound board and I was honestly amazed I had made it through the whole morning without yelling at one of the members of my worship team.

But then, as I was staring at my cup of Starbucks, I realized that the hard part was yet to come. The hard part was the 70 or so people who were about to walk through that door and look at me as a leader for their worship experience for the week. How could I possibly lead people in worship when my truest and most honest emotion that morning was anger? What if I let my anger show through in the worship leading? I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds behind the sound board, and prayed. I told God the truth, that there was no way that I would make it through the worship gathering without the Holy Spirit's assistance. I begged him to show up, rip open my heart, and give me the strength I needed to get through the service.

Because the truth was I couldn't just step up to a microphone and tell people "I'm not feeling it this week." At the risk of being super cliche, the show must go on. It was a moment that happens incredibly too seldomly in my life, where as I was taking the first couple of steps onto the stage, I realized that I was completely and totally depended on the Spirit's leading. Without him, I would fail completely.

It's always amazing when the things that we teach and hypothesize about actually turn out to be true. I have heard it said (and have probably said a few times myself) that when we empty ourselves out, and lean entirely on the Holy Spirit of God, He will show us the time of our lives. When we get out of the way for the Spirit, he tends to do wonderful things. There were no outlandishly awesome moments in worship on Sunday, butterflies didn't come and land on my head at any point in the worship service. But the whole way through the set, I had this peace and this joy in worshiping that I hadn't had in quite a long time. Things just felt right.

Now the trick is, how do you get yourself to realize that even if you feel like you're having a good day that you are still worthless without the Holy Spirit's guiding? How can I feel that way every Sunday? Or is it that you have to go through the difficult times sometimes to purge yourself of your own ego? I don't know. But I'll never approach an "off" day of Worship the same way again.

Godspeed,

Jason




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Flip the Switch

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June 2nd, 2010--9:30 PM
I collected my things, placed my laptop gently in my bag, turned off the lights, and walked out the door. This is the end of the final Veritas meeting of the year, our 38th meeting of the year. The way our schedule plays out is not for the faint of heart. We very rarely cancel meetings, only when there's a holiday or when there's a snow storm of biblical proportions. (I'm looking at you February)

Ed and I sat in our office that night, knowing that we were done for a while. We had run a very good race, but we're tired now, ready for a slow summer (ha ha ha ha ha ha) and a little bit of rest. I didn't want to write another talk. I didn't want to organize another lock-in. I didn't want to do anything with our Youth Ministry. I was done for the summer, and as several of our awesome parents would tell us in the next couple of weeks.

July 30th, 2010--7:00 PM
I stepped off the stage from a special guest speaking gig with my friends over at the Bible Chapel. I was the speaker for their Teen Madness event. While most of us usually have one big night of a kick off event, the Chapel has three. But Tree Anthem was playing the gig, and they asked me to speak, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to get out there and speak a little bit.

As I walked off the stage, I felt incredibly good about what I had just spoken. Everything I used was new material, an attempt to shake the dust off of whatever might have passed by in the couple weeks of break I had. But the feeling that took over wasn't expected, though it certainly was familiar. I was ready for Veritas to start again. My brain flooded with new ideas while I was sitting in the worship center, just 10 minutes removed from speaking. "Bring it on" I thought, "I am ready for the year."

I wonder how the switch gets flipped in us. I think we can certainly all relate to how I was feeling in June, ready to take a break, step aside, and if we're really lucky go crash on a beach somewhere for a while. But then most of us come back from a couple of weeks of rest and are more energized than ever to hit the ground running, with new ideas and lesson plans and events. But how is it that we get from one to the other? How is it that we go from never wanting to see a youth group game again to test driving the new uses for pudding we thought up in our free time?

And what happens to people who don't have the switch flipped? Those are the clearest examples of burnout, aren't they? The people that just can't look at another powerpoint presentation, another bible study, another round of dodgeball. Their summer goes by like the rest of us, but when they hit the other side, they have no desire at all to do what they used to love so deeply. The switch is never flipped, and they enter a new condition that doesn't usually end well.

So what does the switch look like for you? Is it the end of a yearly vacation? Is it seeing the kids again for the first time? Is it some other ritual you take part in? What gets you going for youth ministry each year?

Godspeed,

J


Hitting the blog reset button

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Hello friends!

We seem to go through this every now and again, don't we? I get a little bit bored with what I'm working on at the J-Blog, forget to post, and then go months and months without anything showing up. Eventually, a reset post like this one will appear. Sorry about all that!

But we are indeed about to push the reset button, and try to get the blog back to what it's supposed to be about: Youth Ministry. I think we got a little bit lost when I was essentially writing through my devotions for you guys, as if any of you were the least bit interested in what was going on in my head. Plus, let's face it, we were doomed from the start to get through a 30 part series. I don't have that kind of attention span.

So here we are. Back to the basics. I have a couple of post ideas, and I'll try to get one or two going this afternoon, just in time for the rush hour drive!

Godspeed,

Jason