- Spring Break was a really needed/awesome pattern interrupt for me.
- Looking forward to seeing my dad in Florida at the end of May
- THIS will most likely be my next phone.
- Got to rank 70 on the new Call of Duty game. Might not seem like a big deal to most…but I havent been that committed to a game in years.
- Relationships continue to be challenging for me. Hard sometimes to separate out YOUR part with others part when you get in a conflict.
- It’s been awesome studying/listening to the Gospels for my seminary class going into this Holy Week.
- Thirty Seconds to Mars is coming to PDX in May…anyone interesting in going?
- Not sure I will be watching IDOL anymore this season…just seems to have flatlined for me this season. Dont really care if anyone wins it.
- God is doing a new thing.
Monthly Archives: March 2010
Floating Thoughts
The Soul of Parenting
Growing up did either of your parents tell you that there are things that you simply wont understand until you are a parent yourself? My mom still loves to tell me this frequently…usually when she is trying to express the unique love a parent has for a child. Recently I watched the first two episodes of LIFE a new Discovery Channel series that follows in the footsteps of their award winning Planet Earth series. I am usually not the nature show kinda guy (I am from Detroit remember?)…admittedly I tuned in because it was in HD and was narrated by Oprah. Surprisingly I was sucked in and enjoyed learning about the complexity of life in the animal kingdom.
In the first episode I was particularly amazed at the story of what great lengths a mother frog will go for her babies. She climbs all the way to the very top of a very tall tree with a tadpole on her back, which is the equivalent of miles for her to travel to drop her baby in a pool of rain water formed in a center of a plant. Even more amazing is that she doesn’t do this once but multiple times for each of her little ones and continues to feed them with her own eggs for weeks! Amazing! Later on they shared about a giant octopus that once pregnant finds a cave and lays there to her death to simply take care of her 100,000 baby eggs. Now that is devotion! I see that kind of devotion in a lot of the parents I work with in middle school, parents working multiple jobs to get their kids through college, some driving everywhere under heaven to make sure they are socially involved. Sadly I also see some lacking the short of devotion needed to raise a kid in today’s world…ones who seem to have given up a long time ago and are merely hoping they turn out well.
Oprah quotes someone saying that the “soul of parenting is the capacity to sacrifice.” I think this is what my mom is getting at…this unique bond between parent and child seems to be instinctual scientists might say. I however believe it has to do with us being like our Daddy…that whole “made in His image” thing? The heart of our Father is to sacrifice for His children, which is the very thing we celebrate this Easter week.
If you haven’t yet check out LIFE on Discovery pretty cool stuff.
It’s Still Raining
I was sure by now, God, that You would have reached down
and wiped our tears away,
stepped in and saved the day.
But once again, I say amen
and it’s still raining
as the thunder rolls
I barely hear You whisper through the rain,
“I’m with you”
and as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise
the God who gives and takes away.
And I’ll praise you in this storm
and I will lift my hands
for You are who You are
no matter where I am
and every tear I’ve cried
You hold in your hand
You never left my side
and though my heart is torn
I will praise You in this storm
I remember when I stumbled in the wind
You heard my cry to You
and raised me up again
my strength is almost gone how can I carry on
if I can’t find You
and as the thunder rolls
I barely hear You whisper through the rain
“I’m with you”
and as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise
the God who gives and takes away
I lift my eyes onto the hills
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth
I lift my eyes onto the hills
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth
What Does America Need?
I don’t know if you share my anxiety these days about the future of our country, but it seems like every where I look I read an article or hear a story about how America is on its way out and that we have lost our grip as the world leader we once were. While there are a myriad of issues we could point for our decline I think few would deny it is happening. I am reminded of Lincoln quoting the bible in his famous speech on slavery saying; “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” To me this is the central issue facing our country’s future; our lack of unity. Even in my short 29 years I have felt the shift happening…a shift from unity to a lack of unity. I mean what unites us these days? When you walk into a 7-11 and find yourself among 8 different ethnicities half of which speak another language what on a very basic level do we share as Americans? Just the fact that we live here?
So imagine its the year 2020…just ten short years from now. As you are filling out your census form…will China have surpassed us as the leader of the free world? What does America need these days more than anything else? Personally I think what need to regain is a story that unites us…a story that our values and laws flow from that we all agree on. America is a lot different from she was back in 1776 and she is a land of many stories.
Wildfire Wrap
Attendance
Below average.
Talk
A decent end to the PAUSE series. We ended talking about finding God in the painful times. While I definitely think I could have done a better job with the talk, the student I interviewed did awesome. Near the end of the talk I interviewed an 8th grader who has cancer. I asked him one question; “How have you seen God in your fight with cancer?” His answers were real and encouraging. Definitely felt like the students were on the edge of their seats when he was sharing.
Volunteer Involvement
We were back to a strong showing from our volunteer team, can only think of two that were out on our whole team. This clearly had an effect on our small group time and the behavior during the program.
Music/Program
It was our game night this week…and we decided to try something alittle different. We gave the girls extended small group time since they usually say they dont have enough time, and let the boys come back into the gym to play some basketball. The plan seemed to be a good idea, except for the fact that a number of girls wanted to watch the boys and felt it was unfair to just make it a boys game night. So they left their groups to come and watch the boys play bball. Next time we are going to have to work on keeping it a secret or something…
For the WiFi we showed this short but sweet video of a Monster Truck doing a backflip;
Final Thought
Wildfire will be on break for the next two Wednesdays. The first week for Spring Break and the following week due to the Way of the Cross experience taking place in the Gym. I’m looking forward to the break and encouraged my leaders to enjoy it to its fullest because once we are back from break we go straight through till the end of June.
It is always fun to hear of students going to Hawaii, Palm Springs, Arizona and SunRiver and yet you get to spend yours in your living room! Though it would be nice to get away to somewhere sunny, I am happy to just have some extra time to get caught up with school and enjoy some extended video game time 
Never Enough Staff
One thing in ministry that is tough is not focusing entirely on what you think you need when it comes to staff. I know moving from a team of 5 full-time staff people down to 1 working in our middle school ministry has been a tough transition over the past 6 years. I read this article yesterday and it bothered me a bit…I think in a good way.
You’ll Never Have Enough Staff
When I was hired to join the team at Granger we had 400 people and 5 staff members. And we all did everything. I remember in those early days thinking, When we can just hire one more person, then things will be good. Or I’d visit a church with 15 or 20 staff and think, Man—must be nice to have so much money and so many staff members. Someday when we get there—life will be nice!
I’ve now been at Granger more than fifteen years. I’ve seen it grow from 400 to more than 5,000. I’ve served with a church staff team as small as 5 people and as many as 95. And we have never had enough staff. It has never been comfortable. We’ve always gone into every year wanting to hire more people than we’ve been able to. And over the past three years—we’ve actually had to reduce staff while the ministry continues to grow.
I’ve visited hundreds of other churches…and I’ve actually never talked to a pastor who thought he had enough staff. I’ve never met a team who had so much money they could hire anyone they wanted.
Whether yours is a church of a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand, if your goal is to accomplish the Great Commission, you will never have enough staff. If you think you’re the exception and you have enough staff, then you need to get a bigger dream. Are all the people within driving distance of your church already following Christ, growing in their faith, and taking steps in their spiritual journey? No? I didn’t think so. If you think you have enough staff, you may need to ask God for the perspective to see the need around you!
And you know what? Not having enough staff is a good thing. It forces us to our knees. It requires that we get really smart about the priorities of the church. It compels us toward creativity and innovation. And it makes us get serious about leveraging the time and talents of our volunteers.
I’ve been to churches in which the pastors do everything and the church members see it as their responsibility to warm the pews and “keep the pastor accountable.” Where is that in the Bible? Instead of agonizing over how to find the money to hire staff, what if you spent your time figuring out how to motivate the members to take part in the ministry. Your church may have a long and rich tradition of laziness. The pastors or leaders who preceded you may have bought into the lie that they were supposed to do everything. They may have spent their time teaching the congregation about the nuances of transubstantiation, but forgot to mention that God wants them actively involved in the lives of others. It may take months or years to transform your church into an army of volunteers that influences your community through service and love.
(the original article can be found HERE)
You May Not Know…
Even people we know really well can have stuff about them that never seems to come out in normal conversation. I thought I would share with you some things you might not know about me;
- I have always wanted to learn piano
- I like to entertain/cook for others…love the show “Kitchen Nightmares.” I have always wondered what it would be like to work in a restaurant.
- In high school I wanted to be a commercial airlines pilot, then a psychologist/counselor.
- I am about a third of the way done with a Masters of Divinity at Western Seminary.
- Sometimes I still can’t believe that I live in Oregon…seems weird sometimes when I think about it.
- I am a recovering OCD…just kidding of course, but I do like my stuff nice and clean.
- I take ten pills each day between Crohn’s meds & vitamins.
- I was born in Dearborn Michigan…which is also known as the birthplace of the modern automobile.
- Is deathy afraid of being single past 30 (got till Nov 6).
Be patient with my SPACES series…more are coming, just want em to be good!
Wildfire Wrap
Attendance
Average.
Talk
Continued our new PAUSE series talking about how we need to Pause to experience God in our everyday lives. I stressed that we dont have “spiritual” lives…that God is everywhere and therefore everything is spiritual. At the end of the talk I challenged the students with an assignment to spend 60 minutes during the next week looking for God in their everyday lives. Hopefully they will accept the challenge and see God around them.
Volunteer Involvement
Well it didn’t start off very good…we were down 5 guy leaders. However once the news was out Tyler offered up a couple of his worship team members to fill in AND Jeff got in early from a business trip and decided to come in. Also Austin and Debbie shined tonight dealing with a behavior issue. Lately we have had a group of guys skipping out, walking to the store during our program.
Music/Program
The game for last night was the Turkey Bowl. As usual students love this game and do pretty well knocking those pins down. I took a video to show you alittle bit what this game is like.
Worship was great…though Tyler had to talk to a couple of boys up front who were being very distracting. Worship with middle schoolers has always been challenging as some of them dont get what we are trying to do no matter how many times we tell them. For the WiFi we showed this weird video that I found yesterday morning;
Final Thought
Doing ministry to nearly 200 students has to be a team effort. The more I experience nights like last night the more I realize we really do need to expand our team. All of guys absent last night had legitimate reasons to miss and we need to better support them and minster to the students by having co-leaders in each group. So probably for the last time on my blog this school year I am asking once again if you or someone you know would like to co-lead one of our small groups. Working with students has been one of the most rewarding things in my life and has taken my faith to the next level.
Floating Thoughts
- Tomorrow night is our Wildfire Volunteer meeting. We made a huge move this year in doing just 4 meetings instead of 9. I think it was a great move though you definitely sacrifice a lot of community building time…which I think we could have done a better job creating outside of the meetings.
- Got tickets to go see my Dad at the end of May…excited for that as I havent seen him in a long time and it helps that he lives in sunny Florida!
- I made it to rank 60 on Modern Warfare 2. For those of you who don’t play you wont understand, but those who do get it
- I hate how unpredictable health can be. The last month has been a tough one with Crohns…and yet I’ve seen a reduction in symptoms over the last week. I decided to try probiotics again…a significantly higher dose than I tried in the past. It’s hard to say whether or not it was the probiotics or something else that helped…
- My Spaces blogs have got a lot of traffic. If you havent seen them check em out…the basic idea is to show you via video some of the Spaces I find myself in on a regular basis (Spaces 1, Spaces 2)
- Still waiting to hear back on my taxes…first report is that I owe $1ooo! That would be the first time in my life I have ever owed anything.
- I’m thankful for a lot of wise people in my life that are currently helping me make a tough decision.
