The Pre-Vacation Check List

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.

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.

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

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

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

The iPhone cometh to Verizon

(Click for full size)
From Maclife.com
Brilliant.

Disciples are law abiding citizens

Ok, I've been kind of dragging my feet on this post, mostly because I think I've been looking for a way to explain it away. We tend to do that to any pieces if scripture that we don't like, don't we? We might get angry at Thomas Jefferson because he took a knife to the bible and cut out the parts he didn't like, but at least he was honest enough to do it. So after a couple of weeks of thinking through this particular scripture, I'm going to do my best to not explain anything away, but to just comment on it as I see it.

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear not the smallest letter, nor the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom if heaven." (Matthew 5:17-19 TNIV)

Are you keeping kosher? Do you keep the sabbath? Do you have the Torrah memorized, so that you might be able to try to keep trace of the over 600 commands?

Me either. And according to Jesus, that may be a problem for us.

One of the ways some people explain away this piece of scripture is to say that Jesus is about to update the law, to give us a new way to live. Even if that's what's going on here, I think you are about to see that the law that Jesus is about to hand out is even tougher than the law that came before it. When it comes right down to it, Jesus is teaching us that Disciples cannot just float through their faith or their life.

I don't want to over simplify this, but i want to give us a place to start. I think those of us particularly from the reformed tradition have leaned about as heavily on the concept of grace as we can possibly lean, and that's a good thing. But lets not forget that faith is grace mixed with action. Lets not forget that if our hearts have truly been transformed by Christ's amazing love, then there should be an outward display of our reaction to that love. And we're about to truly see what Jesus believes that reaction should be.

Buckle up!