District Assembly, Here I Come!

Hope everyone has a great week- I'll be spending the rest of mine at District Assembly. We'll see how that goes...

In the meantime, please pray for a young man in my youth group. To make a long story short, it seems like he has a large polyp on his colon, for lack of a better explanation. He was taken to a hospital in a bigger city yesterday so they could better take care of him. More tests this week will hopefully tell us why he is having these issues at such a young age.

I just don't know sometimes...

Blessed be your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where the streams of abundance flow
Blessed be your name

Blessed be your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be your name

Every blessing you pour out,
I turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your glorious name

Blessed be your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's all as it should be
Blessed be your name

Blessed be your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be your name

Every blessing you pour out,
I turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, Blessed be your name

This is the song that I heard sung by thousands of teenagers at a Newsboys concert last night. Hands were stretched to the sky all across the venue as they all sang at the top of their lungs. It was an emotionally driven, feel-good moment for most involved.

I know that I can be too cynical at times, but I couldn't help but wonder how many of those teenagers were paying any attention at all to the words of the song. I'm particularly interested in the stanza below:

Blessed be your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be your name

I truly believe that these are beautiful and powerful words, but do we really realize just what we were singing? I've been to about a dozen camps on a few different districts, and I've always been bothered by the emotion-driven worship that we feed our teenagers. Have we sacrificed authentic training and discipleship for a feel-good moment with kids flooding the altar? We get a charismatic speaker who knows exactly what to say to stir a crowd, and the services end with literally hundreds of teens at the altar. On the surface, this looks like a wonderful experience!

My concern is that youth ministers are becoming too caught up in altar numbers, just like some pastors have become too caught up in attendance numbers. My question is whether or not we are doing our teens justice with this movement. If we intentionally prick their emotions and they spend an hour at the altar crying with their friends, will the experience matter a year from now? Have we equipped them for the rigors of the Christian life outside of our protected camp atmospheres?

As a fairly young youth pastor, I can clearly remember my own experiences as a teen a nazarene summer camps. I got "saved" five summers in a row. Anyone else out there have similar stories? I can name you plenty of teens from youth groups I've pastored to experience the same thing- is this not a symptom of a larger problem?

Emotions come and emotions go- which is why I don't want my teenagers' faith or major spiritual decisions to be based on emotions only. We have basically closed the book on preaching "hellfire and brimstone" because we realized that in essence we were scaring people into making decisions. The problem with scaring people into decisions is that they were only scared for a few hours. Their faith wore off as their fear did. Can we not expect the same results from playing to positive emotions? Teenagers won't always have the warm fuzzy feeling that comes with teen camp. Will the decision they made there still hold true in their lives when the struggles of the world hit them in the mouth a few weeks later?

The bottom line is that I feel we have sacrificed true spiritual maturation for tears and snot on the altar.

I'm aware that this is a hastily written post and my thoughts are all over the place, so I may not have been clear or made a valid point at all. This is just something that has been heavy on my heart this morning, so I wanted to share... any thoughts?

So far, so good

Sorry for the delay, blogland. I know that during my hiatus, you all were frantically checking the net every day to see if I bestowed you with any more pearls of wisdom...well your wait is over, my friends!

Of course, I kid.

In news that isn't fake, I implemented a competitive small groups model for my Wednesday night services. At some point during my lessons, we split into small groups- each having a teen captain and an adult- to go deeper with the topic. The groups are "competitive" because they received points for showing up, bringing Bibles, bringing visitors, memorizing a weekly verse I assign, mission projects, and a slew of other random things. Whichever group has the most points at the end of the summer will have their way paid on our summer trip to six flags.

I introduced this two Wednesdays ago, and last night was our first "real" meeting with the small groups. You have to understand that since I have arrived at this church a month ago, I have seen one visitor and one person bring a Bible. Last night we had three visitors, six people brought Bibles, and five people memorized our Scripture for the week. I was quite pleased with the result.

I know that the reason they did these things was because of their competitive spirit, but I really don't think that is the most important thing right now. I am trying to develop good habits in them, and if takes a silly church competition to get them memorizing scripture, inviting friends to church, and bringing their Bibles to church- I'm totally ok with that.

really?

Anyone ever heard of an established church of over 200 that has never had an actual budget? I hadn't, until now of course.

Apparently my new church has never even considered keeping a budget- thankfully, the new pastor is all for knowing how much money you have and where exactly it goes. We hope to have a rough draft of a budget within the month. What a mess...

Now, I am also left with the uneviable task of coming up with a proposed 2007 NYI budget. This would usually be a pretty easy task, but take into account that I am only 3 weeks into this job, I don't have any clue what this group is used to spending, I have no previous years' budget to go by, and I don't even know how much money the church in general has to spare. I feel like I'm grasping at straws here... at least it's making things interesting in the office this week!

Decisions, decisions...

Let me begin by thanking everyone who has offered advice on the last few posts on my blog. Believe me when I tell you that your advice has not gone unnnoticed or unheeded. Furthermore- by all means, keep it coming!

My next dilemma will be regarding the make-up of the group itself. Out of about 30 teenagers, only about 7 or 8 are juniors or seniors- the rest are much younger junior high kids. From speaking with some parents of the older kids, it seems that my juniors and seniors are feeling a bit detached from the group recently because of the influx of 6-8th graders.

Historically, the group has always been combined- jr and sr high together. I like the idea of togetherness, but it also makes it difficult to provide material that challenges both jr AND sr highers on a regular basis. It's one thing to have a 10th and a 12th grader in the same class. It's a bit more difficult to have 6th-7th graders and 12th graders in the same setting. During this transitional stage in their life the two groups are worlds apart.

My question is this- how do I reconcile the differences in age and maturity levels? One option I have considered is as follows: We all come together for worship, prayer, and a general lesson from yours truly. At that point, we split into groups and discuss the topic further while making it more relevant or "deeper" depending on the age group. That way we are coming together as a group, but the older teens are still able to discuss things that are on their minds specifically.

Good idea? Bad idea? Got other ideas? Once again, I'm all ears.

EDIT: I am also kicking around the idea of splitting everyone into "family groups" and having my older leaders dispersed throughout them. They learn to be better leaders, and in the process they help the younger and less mature kids grow. Of course, splitting them up into the correct groups is tantamount to making this plan successful- separation by cliques would accomplish nothing.

Long Time, No Update...

... but I have a good excuse!

We made the move to our new church home this past week, and finally the internet and I are companions once again. The trip was a little rough-car problems- but we got here safe, which is all I can ask for.

Our first service was last night, and I handed out a brief survey to try to get a grasp on where the group is spiritually. These are all good kids, but spiritually they are so far behind it isn't even funny. The past few youth pastors have treated the youth group as their personal playground, so now the teenagers' idea of youth group is simply a place to come and play dodgeball. You can't blame the teens for that- that's what youth group has been for them.

Needless to say, I am going to have to start from scratch with these kids if I am going to change the whole way they look at youth group. Has anyone else out there in blogland had to undo the disservice that a previous minister has done? If you have any tips or ideas, I'm all ears.

Getting back to basics

As I have mentioned before, I am moving to a different state in the next couple of weeks and stepping into full-time youth ministry. Coming into this last Wednesday, I only had two more Wednesday night programs to be with my current youth group. I struggled greatly as I started to prepare my lesson for the night- what did I want to leave them with? What do I want them to remember as the last thing I tell them? The Scriptures are full of instruction- what do I want them to keep in mind?

Late in the book of Matthew, the religious powers that be try to corner Jesus with a few questions. One of them was the question of what the greatest commandment was. Out of the 613 Old Testament laws that were recognized, Christ was able to sum everything up in two statements.

Love God with all your heart. Love your neighbors as yourself.

So, last Wednesday I spoke about loving God. This Wednesday I am speaking about loving our neighbors. There are a hundred topics that are important and worth touching on- but if I can get every youth group I ever come in contact with to simply love God and love people...then I will consider my ministry a success.