Youth Pastor

Hello friends,

Last night was our weekly youth ministry meeting, known around the world (seriously) as Veritas. I'm climbing my way up to being here at Westminster/Veritas for 5 years, and last night I was struck by something that I think we need to recover in Youth Ministry.

My denomination doesn't bestow upon me the title of Pastor just yet, that's something that comes with ordination and an painfully long seminary degree. And while I'm super respectful of that process (sometimes), I'm going to have to go ahead and steal the title a little bit early. Not because it's a ego thing, actually it's quite the opposite.

The word pastor has its origins in shepherding. A pastor was someone who had a flock, and someone who took care of the flock. We borrow this word because of passages like John 21:15-19, the idea being that Jesus has left us to care for his flock. And so that youth group you have isn't just a rambunctious group of kids that you have to keep entertained for a few hours once a week. They're the flock that God has given you, and they're the flock that you have to take care of.

Each "sheep" has their own story, their own needs, their own desires, their own hurts. Each "sheep" has its own needs in terms of pastoral care, and a truly good youth pastor will take the time to minister to each kid as if they were one of the flock.

I get it, not everybody is in this gig for the long haul. Not everybody is going to stick with it for life. Some of us are using youth ministry as a means to get some church experience under our belts before we move on and become "real pastors." That's fine, I get that it takes a special (feel free to interpret "special" in any way you see fit!) kind of person to do this as a career. But at the end of the day, the students God has placed in your ministry are still your flock, and God has asked you to care for them.

A program will never care for sheep. A flashy preaching style will never care for the flock. A christian hipster with TOMS shoes (more on this later) won't feed the sheep. Only someone who recognizes that the flock needs the life-giving nourishment of Jesus Christ and is willing to do what it takes to lead them there can care for the flock.

So today, go ahead, even if your denomination doesn't support what I'm about to say, call yourself a youth pastor. But know that it comes with a lot of weight and responsibility!

Godspeed,

J

On being a rudder

Hello friends,

Someone once told me that there are two types of leaders: Sails and rudders. Leaders who are sails are usually up front, visible, and easily identifiable. You can see the sails of a boat from a long way off. Leaders who are sails typically own the front of the room. They do their business with a microphone, or a large personality. Frequently, they are the ones who get all the credit too. Usually, this is the type of leadership I find myself in. Preaching the sermons, singing the songs, being the "up-front" guy.

This past weekend however, I got a chance to be the rudder, and I kind of liked it.

We went on our annual ski retreat to Camp Harmony and Seven Springs. This is an event we've been doing with some of the other congregations in our area for about 3 years now, and it's growing and growing each time we do it. I love doing ministry with my friends, but I have noticed in the years past that when three different churches come together, there are too many people who are sails for us to all be upfront. Someone needs to take care of the behind the scenes stuff.

Rudders aren't seen. In fact, a lot of people might not even think they're all that important to the operation of a sailboat. But they literally steer the ship. The boat doesn't function without them. And so rudder leaders are those who keep to the behind the scenes work, who try to facilitate things so that they're running smoothly. I spoke once this weekend for about 15 minutes, but other than that, my leadership was behind the scenes stuff. Dealing with the sales people at Seven Springs, organizing the technology for worship, renting the vans for the trip, keeping things organized. I absolutely loved it! Not that I don't love being in the spotlight, I do that too. But for once, it was good to get a different perspective of leadership.

I don't know about your ministry situation as you're sitting here reading this, but I all but guarantee that you have rudder leaders in your group. Almost everyone does. And all too often, they go completely un-noticed. My encouragement to you today is to say thank you to your rudder leaders. Things would not run smoothly without them, and what they provide to the ministry is every bit as important as the sail leaders upfront. So pull them aside this week and say thank you. I know I will!

Godspeed,

Jason

Building our own Jesus

Hello again friends,

Most of my work at the Seminary these past few weeks has centered around the so called quest for the historical Jesus. Summerizing hundreds of years of scholarly work in two seconds for you, it is an attempt to find the "real" Jesus, divorced from the agenda and theology of the Gospels, and focusing only on provable historical facts. If I'm more than honest, it's about as exciting as watching the grass grow.

You see, as I pour over the countless scholars who have submitted their own idea of what Jesus must have looked like, I realize that the "Jesus'" they're all coming up with look incredibly like the scholars studying them. If you are a liberal, non-violent scholar, you tend to build a liberal, non-violent Jesus. If you are a conservative evangelical scholar, you tend to build a conservative evangelical Jesus. Where it turns truly comical is when these scholars lose their creations upon each other, noting how absurd it is that the other side could ever craft something like that.

I hope that as I work with the students at Veritas, I'm not presenting myself dressed up like Jesus. I hope that I'm letting Jesus have his way with my entire life, including the part of my life that defines who Jesus is to me. I hope I am less concerned with the answers of who the "real" Jesus is, and more concerned with the questions the REAL Jesus is asking of me (Have you fed my sheep today Jason?) God created us in His image, and it is our job to find ourselves in his vast expanse, rather than placing him into our world...

...however tempting that might be.

Godspeed,

Jason

Hitting the books

Hello friends,

Now that the dust has been shaken off from the trip to Haiti (actually, not true, there's still a ton of dust on all my shoes from the trip) it's time to get back into work. Today being my day off, I'm trying to get caught up on work for school.

I left school for the trip with a 98% in the class, and I'm trying with all my might to hold on to that score. I've probably mentioned on the blog a few thousand times that I'm not a very academic minded person, and so doing well in school is a brand new thing for me. And so I'm trying to strike this balance in my brain that I'm absolutely struggling to find: how good is good enough?

I have limited time during the days, working full time, being a full time husband, training for upcoming summer cycling events, and trying to keep a band together and practicing, so school has to find it's place in that scheme of things. However, I'm not paying $1000 a class to sit around and do poorly, so I'm certainly going to give absolutely everything I have.

Does anyone else out there feel caught in the tension between the two? I'd love to hear some thoughts, if only to know that I'm not crazy and all by myself!

Godspeed,

Jason

Haiti Update #4: Live Simply

Hello again!

I am back in cold, nasty Pittsburgh. Of course this makes me sad, but not nearly as sad as leaving my new friends in Haiti. I absolutely loved my time there, and I loved getting to know the people we got to know.

Anyone who has ever done a mission trip like that before knows that it is all but impossible to boil everything you saw, experienced, heard, and learned into a single take-away. But as we traveled, I was reflecting on it, and realizing how the concept of living simply came up again and again on our trip, and how my life back here in the 'Burgh has a tendency to be anything but simple.

Take for instance eating. In Haiti, we had three square meals a day, and that was really it. There wasn't a whole lot of snacking in between meals. The meals we did have were amazing! Pasta, barbecue beef, stuffed shells, and all kinds of sides to go with them. But for all the more I ate at meal time, the removal of snacks from my diet for a week made me lose weight I'm sure (I've been to scared to step on the scale and be proven wrong!), and just made things a little bit easier. I was in the airport on the way home, and thought about getting my usual road-trip snack of twizzlers or m&ms, and realized that I didn't need them, I just felt like I did. (That's a theme that might come up again and again in this post!)

This morning I woke up and turned on CNN as I often do, and started to feel a little bit sick to my stomach. Every morning in Haiti I would wake up at 6 AM, grab a cup of Pastor Pierre's famous coffee, and go to the roof to do my devotions and watch the sunrise. After about the third car advertisement this morning on CNN, I wondered if I really needed to put myself through that. Wasn't it much better when I was just simply watching the sunrise?

I have heard tell of people coming home from Haiti and selling all of their clothes. I left everything I took with me in Haiti, and I'm beginning to think that my closet might under-go and over-haul. Do I really need 20 $15 shirts? Or could I sneak by with a little bit less?

The temptation is to react wildly I think, to throw everything overboard and start over. But sadly, that's not practical or even possible in a lot of cases. My take away is that for an entire week, I lived as simply as I could, with Haitian people who have mastered living simply because their situation demands it of them. To truly live in honor of the trip we took, I'm going to do all that I can to live simply. To spend less and to give more. To worry less and to love more. To shop less and to pray more.

I'm sure there will be more thoughts as the week goes on. But for the moment, it was an awesome trip, and I thank you all for your prayers while we were away. If you wouldn't mind transitioning and start praying for the paper that's due in two days...

Godspeed,

Jason

Haiti Update #3: Veritas South

Greetings friends!

I dare you to go to your local drug store, buy all the bottles of Pepto they have, and then proceed to paint your walls with it. I make that dare, because that's almost exactly what I've been doing all week here in Haiti! We built a new school through the Westminster capital campaign, and they are just now getting around to painting it. The trick is though, we have to do the painting while the students are in school. The teachers here must hate us, because all of the students watch us through the windows of their class room, and some even crowd around us during the breaks. And while the color of the bright pink paint seems to be burning a hole in my retina, it's nice to have a project that has a definite end. You don't often get that on mission trips like this.

We did have one incident yesterday where a student kicked over a bucket of blood red paint on the floor. Panic ensued, as students ran in every direction to avoid being yelled at by the teachers and administrators. But somewhere out there there is a boy with a bright red shoe, and he is our culprit. Tom and I worked as quickly as we could to run water on the paint, but the floor doesn't have a drainage system, so we couldn't do a whole lot with it. So now the school in La Croix has what would appear to be a generous crime scene on the floor!

And then there was last night. I've had a lot of highs as a youth minister, but nothing that could compare with what was going on last night. We decided, since we're in the same time zone, that we would have Veritas South here in Haiti. At 6 we played some games, introducing the Haitian students to "Chubba-Chubba-Can-Can". They didn't quite understand it at first, but once they realized just how mean that game can make you be to your friends, they lit up and started getting a bit violent. At 6:30, I attempted to give what I thought would be a 30 minute talk, but apparently my translator was very good, because it went by in only 15 minutes, leaving us with about 20 minutes to kill. I grabbed my guitar, and started singing some of the songs I had heard the students singing through the week. Then, after almost each song we sang, we'd sing it again, and the kids would teach it to us in Creole. Sheer beauty I tell ya. Sheer beauty.

Then at 7, we Skype called our friends back home at Veritas. I don't know about the gang back home, but it was an awesome experience for me and for the Haitians. They really seemed to enjoy seeing what a youth group in America looked like. We shared a couple of thoughts together, and then after the call both youth groups prayed for each other. It was a spectacular time! As we were leaving and making our way back home, one of the students looked at me and said "So...we're doing this again tomorrow night, right?" Any suggestions for Veritas games that we could play here in Haiti would be greatly appreciated!

It's been an awesome trip. I can't really wrap my mind around all that I've seen and heard, but I'm sure that will be part of blog posts to come. Thanks again for your continued prayers. I think at the moment, we just need prayers for the team's energy to power through these last few days before we make our way back home to (snowy) Pittsburgh.

Godspeed,

Jason

 

Haiti Update #2: Education

Greetings again faithful readers!

The picture above is the view from our rooftop circa 6:45 this morning. The sunrise here is unbelievable! This strikes me as rather odd/sad, because the sun rises just like that in Pittsburgh, but I'm never attentive or awake enough to notice it. Something to work on in the future I'm sure.

Yesterday was our first real work day here in La Croix. The morning went by rather slowly, as we were all looking for ways that we could pitch in and help out, but the jobs were few and far between while the students were at work. But around lunch time, we found ourselves needing to paint 20 chalkboards for the school. This has contributed to my hands having a slightly greenish tint to them for what would appear to be the remainder of the trip. This morning we used our brute strength to carry those bad boys across the square and into the school.

In the afternoons, we've been helping Reeny with her English classes. That has been the most fun part of the trip for me at least. Yesterday we were working on the difference between the words "reading" and "writing", which is rather difficult with a Haitian accent. But man, the look on the kids faces when they figured it out, that was worth more than a solid brick of gold.

In fact, education seems to be one of the biggest and most important aspects of our trip and our mission here in La Croix. Bobbie has her chemistry class, those of us who are mechanically inclined (and the fact that I fit in that category should scare us all) are working in the school building that Westminster's capital campaign raised funds for. Reeny has her English class. Paul is building a computer workstation for the kids with state of the art education software on it. It's truly amazing to see how much learning has been going on down here.

I hope I'm learning too. My biggest prayer in all of this is that God is at work in me, educating me in the ways of his Kingdom through these beautiful children that we get to meet each and every day. I think that he is, but if you wouldn't mind joining me in that prayer, that'd be spectacular.

More to come.

Godspeed,

Jason