Jason Freyer is a youth pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, PA. He enjoys his job so much that he has decided to spend countless hours of his free time writing about it in the new modern medium of weblog, or blog. That brings us here. Welcome to the blog of J, or in its condensed version, J-Blog. Jason writes this blog to be by youth pastors, for youth pastors, but watch with amazement as he dives into other topics as worship leading, preaching, politics, the Pittsburgh sports scene, or whatever else happens to be on his mind. Jason lives with his wife Sarah and their two dogs Marley and Melvin. This is some of the finest third person writing he's done in a while.
I have some more thoughts to continue in the Sabbath series that we'll get to this afternoon. But I wanted to share a moment of worship with you all that I experienced this morning. Sometimes worship creeps up on us. Sometimes it's the absolute last thing we're expecting. I was driving in to school this morning, watching the sun come up over the city across the Liberty Bridge, and this song came up on my iPod and just set the whole tone for the day.
Take a moment today to just appreciate God's creation. Even if it's in a traffic saturated commute to work or school. Put on a song that resonates with you, that speaks to beauty, and just enjoy what God has for you.
This week has been a week of discovery, and it's all leading somewhere pretty special. But I think you should see it develop the way that I did, and so we're going to go through a bit of a series for the next few days. Fun for all I tell ya!
Yesterday was our Veritas kickoff. 3 months of waiting, dreaming, planning, vision casting, praying, and excitement were about to give way to our 6th year of ministry at Westminster. A massive collection of people were involved in making it come together, including student leaders, parent volunteers, and staff people.
Yesterday also happened to be another day in my all-day long intensive class about church planting. As I mentioned in the last series, I want to do my best job possible to be present during the class, and so I've gotten in the habit of turning my phone off at the beginning of class, and not turning it back on again until I get into the car to drive home. I have also completely geeked out and set the following sound as my phone's text tone:
I think that's enough background for what's coming next.
I got into the car, turned on the phone and started to take off for Westminster. As soon as the phone turned on, the texts started rolling in:
"What time do we start tonight?"
"Is so and so going to be here?"
"It's the kickoff, are we going to have the same leadership needs as a normal night?"
"I'm in college, and I'm still getting the text alerts. Can you take me off the list?"
"How much does the corn hole tournament cost?"
These are just the ones I read in the parking space, as texting while driving is dangerous and in no way recommended by the J-Blog. From there I began my hour long trek to Westminster. And every few minutes or so, I'd get another text, and I'd hear the same mario brothers noise. Using my bluetooth headset, I had Siri read the texts to me, all basic questions about what was going on in ministry that night. I may have imagined it, but I think even Siri was a little bit out of breath reading my messages to me as I drove.
I actually started getting angry. Don't get me wrong, if you're one of the people that texted me I wasn't angry at any one person or at any one person's question, but just at the sheer volume of texts I was getting. At first I was angry at the idea that so many people would wait until the last second to ask questions. Then that they had questions at all. Then that gave way to realizing that had I done a better job of communicating what was going on that night I probably wouldn't be getting so many texts. Then I got angry at myself. And then I realized it was just the beginning of the year!
After careful reflection later that night, I realized that the anger wasn't about anything it seemed like it was about. And actually it wasn't anger at all. It was anxiety pretending to be anger. It was the build up of a long period of not resting, of not getting by myself, of not allowing myself to recharge. As I sat on the couch last night and reflected on things, I realized that I was out of the habit of keeping Sabbath.
It's a spiritual discipline that comes and goes for me. When it's an active part of my faith journey, I find that I am much more capable of handling stressful and busy moments. When it's not there, I all too quickly become completely unspooled. It needs to be there, and last night came the realization that it hadn't been there for a long time. Something needed to change.
But then the questions start to arise. What is Sabbath? Is it simply a day off? Is it where no work is done at all? If so, then what is work? And how would you prepare for a Sabbath so that you could resist the temptation to work on the Sabbath? What if no one else takes a Sabbath? What would you say to them? How would you get them to respect the space you need? And what would your relationship with God do on a Sabbath? How would you reconnect the broken places in your faith journey?
All these questions (and so much more) come in part two!
As I've mentioned before, I'm in an intensive class this week (it turned out to be a one week class instead of two) on church planting at the seminary. I think on Saturday you can look forward to a post about this class, as it has been one of the most unique and innovative classes I've ever been a part of. But more on that later.
Part of the class is that we are to pair up with someone as a prayer partner and spend some time each day praying for each other and for the class. My prayer partner Judy and I meet every morning before class, and start our day out with the exact same question:
"How can I pray for you today?"
On the surface, particularly to those of us who are in ministry, this can seem like such a meaningless statement. We might throw it out there the same way many people answer "Fine and you?" to the question "How are you?" without thinking. It's built into the job, it's part of the lexicon, it's an afterthought, it's not much to worry about or get excited over. But being on the receiving end of that question for the last few days, it's really been a humbling, inspiring, and encouraging experience for me. Perhaps it's the weight of the question itself, or perhaps it's even that the asker in this case isn't asking it in an afterthought kind of way. Judy is legitimately asking to step inside my world, and join me in praying to God. What an honor!
When a phrase is staring to lose its significance for me, one of the things I try to do is to move it to places you wouldn't usually expect it. We anticipate hearing the pastor ask "How can I pray for you?" in a church building, especially on Sunday. We expect it at certain points in a conversation. We expect it in all kinds of places. What if we started using it outside of where it was expected? What if we started asking people how we can pray for them at work? What if we started asking them out to lunch or coffee, just to see how best we could pray for them? Are you asking your students, whom we all spend a great deal of time entertaining and teaching, how you can best remember them in your prayers? Are you then remembering to pray for them? Weekly? Daily?
Prayer is a powerful agent. Prayer is the connection point between God and us. To have someone offer to pray for you is humbling. It leaves me at time speechless, because it's one thing to think that God would have time for my needs and worries (a whole other discussion) and it's another thing to think that another person would have that kind of time. So take an opportunity today to step into someone's life, and offer up some prayers in their direction. You might just make their day!
Hello friends! This week marks for several students (including this author) the return to classes. In my case, I'm in a two week long intensive class which will leave me very little time to blog. And so I've set up these auto-entries to explore what it looks like to bring your A game to your work in the classroom. This week is all about being the best student!
And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.
It has been said, correctly I believe, that most preachers only have six sermons that they preach. Six topics, all arranged in a different way, presented each week. I've thought about this long and hard when it comes to my preaching, and of course it's true. I really only have about six topics that I feel are in my wheelhouse. One of them is the concept of worship, and allowing worship to happen everywhere we are. Can you worship in the supermarket as well as you worship in your church building? Can you worship as well in the office as you do in your local chapel? And, more to our point here today, can you worship as hard while you're doing your school work as you do when you're singing your favorite hymn?
The suggestion sounds absurd at first. School work as an act of worship? School work is often an excruciatingly painful experience, that students literally sing nasty songs about at the beginning and end of each and every school year. How could this be seen as an act of worship? How could this be something you praise God for allowing to be a part of your life.
You realize that somewhere, somehow, along the line, participating in your studies is in fact doing what God created you to do. If you subscribe to the idea that God has a plan for your life (and I surely do) then God obviously planned for you to learn what you are learning, and to study is to exercise that call on your life. Perhaps it's difficult, but perhaps it's difficult in the same way that lifting weights is difficult to an aspiring athlete. Yes, it's not the most fun in the world. But it provides an opportunity for growth and excellence later down the line. You are learning in school to gather skills and talents, and ultimately use them in whatever vocation God is calling you towards.
A few ideas to keep you worship focused when you're studying:
1. Start every study session with prayer and scripture. Each morning, I read through the Presbyterian Church's daily lectionary. I read the morning Psalm at that point, but I save the evening Psalm for my daily study time. Whether I'm reading, or writing a paper, or any other kind of school work, I want to spend a bit of time in scripture and in prayer. Set up a little worship service for yourself right at your desk. (Incidentally, it's pretty cool to be able to go to a school where we begin each class with prayer. If you don't, gather together with a few Christian friends before each class and pray that your time of learning would also be a time of worship.)
2. Focus on where God is leading you through your studies. Again, maybe it's a little bit easier for me knowing that I'm pursuing a calling to ministry, but if what I mentioned above is true then God is calling you somewhere, and your studies are the road that takes you there. It's easy in the middle of the journey to forget where exactly it is you're going. A dear friend of mine gave me a pastor's stole for when I graduate, and I have it hanging next to my desk. Every time I sit down to read something I don't want to read, I try my best to remember where I'm going, and where this thing is leading me.
Just some thoughts. Thanks for hanging in there on this series! More to come tomorrow!
Hello friends! This week marks for several students (including this author) the return to classes. In my case, I'm in a two week long intensive class which will leave me very little time to blog. And so I've set up these auto-entries to explore what it looks like to bring your A game to your work in the classroom. This week is all about being the best student!
I can think of at least 30 people just off the top of my head who are more qualified than I am to write this post. I'm married to one of them! But all the same, as I've said a few times already in this series, my expertise comes from well cultivated failures.
For example, my desk both in my office and here at home are perpetually cluttered. If you are willing to apply the label of creative to yourself, chances are you are intimately familiar with this idea. Throughout history some of the worlds most creative people have been the messiest. Something about the creative person doesn't want to be held together with the walls of traditional organization. We feel oppressed, which ultimately leads us to holding signs of protest outside some important historical landmark, which of course we do to avoid having to clean.
My youth pastor told us an analogy once. Imagine you had a pet goldfish in front of you. His name is Bob. Bob swims along quite happily in his two gallon bowl, with the colorful pebbles on the floor and the plastic scuba diver you threw in for good measure. And yet as you stare at Bob, you realize that Bob is really quite confined. After all, two gallons is not a whole lot of water! And it seems that from time to time as Bob is swimming, he forgets that there is glass there holding him back and he smashes his face up against the wall. Finally having enough, you reach in and grab Bob from his fish-bowl prison and set him out on the table. "There," you say, "Now he's free to go wherever he'd like."
Bob will only flop around for a few moments in this new freedom before he dies of suffocation. For Bob you see, the boundaries are what keep him alive. Without the bowl to contain the water, Bob doesn't stand a chance. For as much as creative people want to throw off the oppressive boundaries of organization, it's really what keeps us alive.
There's no need to go overboard. You probably don't need complex filing systems or rolodexes for contacts or even fancy database software. But you need enough organization to know which way is up. You need enough to keep track of things.
Like I said, I write from a place of failure. I've screwed this up enough that I think I've got a pretty good handle on how to do it right now (finally after all these years.) And so what follows are a few tips I've come up with over the years for keeping organized while at the seminary. Use them at your peril:
1. Get in the cloud. If I write a reminder to myself on a sticky note, that sucker will be lost within 20 minutes never to be seen or heard from again. And so thankfully, computer technology has advanced in such a way that notes are with you wherever you go. Welcome to the cloud! I use a free program called Evernote. The notes you take on your laptop can be with you on your smartphone or tablet, or even in a pinch you can access them in the computer lab through their website. You can also search through notes, which has become increasingly handy as you get closer and closer to exam time.
2. Be Consistent. When I was in high school, I changed the format of the notes I was taking just about every class. Sometimes I would take notes in an outline. Sometimes I would take them as a stream of consciousness. Sometimes I would doodle my notes. I've found that actually all three of those methods can be affective, just not at the same time! When you sit down for a class, and get a feel for what kind of teacher your professor is, pick a particular format for your notes and stick with it. It will make finding what you're looking for at exam time a little bit easier.
3. Reminders in predictable places. I have a calendar on my computer and phone that I set up with all of my exams and project due dates. It dings a few days out from when something is approaching code red level danger. But I also make sure to have a heading at the top of each page of my class notes for Assignments as well as Handouts. This is so I can go back later and see exactly where in the timeline of a class particular handouts or outlines showed up in my binder.
These are just a few examples of what I do to keep myself organized. Ultimately you need to find what works best for you and stick with it. If you have any suggestions, the comments section is all yours!
This morning at roughly 9 AM, a gunman walked into the Empire State building and opened fire. Ten people were shot, and two of those (including the gunman) died. This is the 3rd mass shooting to impact the United States in the last two months. And this doesn't even include the unfathomable amount of gun deaths that happen each and every day in our country that don't get the benefit of being covered on CNN. We are as a nation, as literally as we could possibly make it, killing ourselves.
As best as possible, I try to avoid politics on the J-Blog. This could easily find its way towards a discussion on gun control, laws regarding carrying concealed weapons, background checks, or limiting sales of ammunition. This are all important topics, and I have strong views on all of them. But in our political climate today, I am certain that a discussion on any of these issues on the J-Blog would only lead to a food fight where nothing would be accomplished. Don't believe me? Turn on CNN right now and see who's talking. I can't even watch the news where I am right now, I'm just guessing. People will argue and argue and argue and get exactly nowhere. So let's leave that behind for a moment.
Let's instead ask ourselves some questions. What has been the reason behind the most recent uptick in violence in our country? I mean even if you want to discuss the gun control argument, nothing has happened lately to make guns more or less accessible. And yet, it feels like (at least to this blogger) that violence is on the rise around here, with the shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin, and now New York. What gives?
And then we have to ask the question, what are we to do with this in our ministries? What are our students feeling as a result of these attacks? Fear? Sadness? Anger? How do we best respond to them while we may be feeling the exact same things? What does the Bible have to say about these shootings? For that matter, what would Jesus' response be to all of this? Something along the lines of "Those who live by the sword die by the sword?" Or would his words be more harsh? Or would he share how broken his heart was that people living in our society could become so emotionally unbalanced that they feel the need to inflict such violence as a result?
What is our role in all of this? There is so much evil that happens in the world as a direct result of my ignorance (sweatshops, less-than-fair-trade practices, etc) that I wonder if I have a hand in these violent outbursts? People seem more than willing to pass the blame around to everyone from politicians to video games, what if we all carry a share of the blame? What if ignoring that in favor of passing the blame to someone else actually contributes to the problem? What if our political climate, with all the arguing, bickering, negativity, and attacking actually leads to these situations? Maybe not directly obviously, as if some super-pac put the gun in someone's hand, but indirectly.
What if all of this violence, and even the lack of civil discourse in our country, is happening because of a vacuum of hope? What if people are resorting to outlandish arguments and outbursts because they don't see another way forward? What if Christians across the country and political spectrum are called upon in Scripture to bring hope to the world, to bring light into dark places? Would those two ideas mean that we are failing our nation? Would those ideas mean that we are failing our God? How would you begin to inject hope into our situation now? Where would you start? Can we afford to continue living the way things are going? Can we afford any more hopeless situations?
Hello friends! This week marks for several students (including this author) the return to classes. In my case, I'm in a two week long intensive class which will leave me very little time to blog. And so I've set up these auto-entries to explore what it looks like to bring your A game to your work in the classroom. This week is all about being the best student!
Last spring, my good friend Justin Bowers held a conference for creative people. It was amazing! Artists of all varieties were present, including musicians, photographers, filmmakers, painters, writers, chefs, dancers, and many more. And while it was amazing to spend time in the hot tub each night (gotta love a retreat house that comes with a hot tub), it was fun for me to see how creative people interact with each other. It was fun to see how people could feed off each others energy. It was fun to learn from other people about how they approached their craft. It was fun to watch how they approached things other than their crafts!
In my opinion, creative people make the world go round, and not just because I feel like I am one! I think that people who approach even the most mundane things with an eye towards creativity, with an eye towards making something that no one else has made. I love people who can start with a blank piece of nothing and end up with a work of art.
Maybe it doesn't feel like it at first, but school (of all kinds!) is a great place to express creativity. In any number of disciplines, whether writing a paper or taking a test or giving a presentation or even doing (gulp) math homework, you have an opportunity to make something where there was previously nothing. You have an opportunity to create. Perhaps I'm alone in getting goosebumps when that thought washes over me, but I don't think so. I think creating is something primal. I think it goes back to our creation, to being made in the image of God. At that point in the story, really the only thing God has shown himself to be about is creating. God loves speaking a fresh word into chaos, and having something beautiful appear. Each time it happens, he can't help but repeat the refrain. "It is good."
This is why the idea of plagiarism is so ugly to most of us. The idea of taking something that someone else created and claiming it as your own is a cop out. It's lame. It's boring. Sure it's stealing, and there's a lot of punishment that can (and will) come from that. But from that primal place, it's like saying to God that you don't want to be like him. You don't want to create something new on your own. You'd much rather take the easy way out.
This is why I obsess over papers. Writing is one of my chosen art forms, and I don't ever want to do poorly on an assignment because of poor writing. All of the papers I wrote last year, I took a picture of the outline before I started writing, and a picture afterwards. Because it's just so fulfilling to start with nothing and to end with a (and I hope I'm not over stating this) work of art. It speaks deeply to me. It speaks deeply to the soul.
Perhaps you don't see it that way. Maybe for you school is just that thing you do, drifting from class to class and finishing up busy work. God knows there are teachers and professors out there who only ever assign us busy work, and I think we'll all agree that they are the pits! But take some time this year to be creative. Allow yourself to go down paths you might not otherwise go. Allow yourself to make something out of nothing. Allow yourself some freedom and flexibility to bring art into your academics. Let yourself proudly wear the label of a creative.
