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Fine Tuning
January 19, 2008 – 12:47 pm
“I heard an interview with Peter O’Toole. He had a new movie last year. In the film he quotes a Shakespearian sonnet. The interviewer asked him if he knew that sonnet by heart and he said “I know all of them my dear.” Apparently he keeps a book of the sonnets by his bed. It’s the last thing he reads at night and the first thing he does in the morning. He travels with the sonnets everywhere he goes. She picked a number at random and began to recite… “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day…”
It’s a level of fine-tuning. I appreciate coffee. I appreciate music from my BOSE system. I don’t think I fully appreciate the Superbowl the way fans do. My aunt has followed Tony Dunge’s career for a long time. She can watch a play on the filed and say, “Oh, they didn’t do what Tony said to do.” She appreciates the game on a level that I can’t. The wine taster appreciates wine on a level that I never will. I hope some day to be able to tell the difference between gas fired maple syrup and syrup cooked over burning maple planks. I want to be that good at something.”
Check out the whole thing here.
Slowing Down
December 20, 2007 – 2:35 pm
Check out this article from Mark Yaconelli
Author and former pastor Wayne Muller once said that in the United States,
illness has become our Sabbath. When a friend of mine was diagnosed with
brain cancer at 46, time suddenly became a precious gift to her. She stopped wearing a watch. She spent mornings lying in the sun and afternoons napping. She stood in the backyard, remarking at the changing sky and the colors of the trees. She invited friends over for champagne and chocolate. She took slow walks to church, stopping to talk with people and admire flowers. She took pleasure in life.Muller was right. It seems we give ourselves permission to rest, receive
life, enjoy creation, share good food with friends, and be grateful and savor our lives only when we’re stricken with a terminal illness. Sabbath, however, is not just for the sick. It’s a commandment that all people of God take time to stop our activity, step away from our roles, and enjoy our lives.
Fall Retreat(s) and trying times…
December 18, 2007 – 2:36 pm
Hey folks, well, its that time of year, and I’m looking to book the fall youth retreat at Indian Creek Camp, the venue where we’ve had it the past couple of years. The dates they have available that are looking good for them are October 10-12, which is about the same weekend as it has been. Let me know if you know of any major conflicts with that weekend, or if you think it will work for your group if you plan on participating…
Also, I’d like to sort of get a feel for how many of you might like to do a leaders retreat sometime, perhaps towards the end of November. This would be just one night, a Friday afternoon through Saturday evening. Just a chance to pause in the middle of our normal lives and get away and focus on the care of our souls for a bit. Something that will hugely benefit your ministries going into the next year, I believe. Let me know if this is something you would be interested in, and I’ll see what dates might be available for that.
We are living and working in an uncertain and trying time for our denomination. There are fractures and there is distrust even in our own diocese. It is in times such as these where if all we focus on is the problems and the potential for more problems, that we will find ourselves paralyzed by fear—a fear that would seek to sap all potential for ministry in our context.
There are questions as to how the groups will reunite, if they will ever reunite, if the Episcopal church will survive, will there be a single expression of Anglicanism in America, or will we have gone the way of so many other denominations that have splintered into various fragments.
I don’t have the answer to those questions. None of us do. Only God knows what will be the outcome of this, but I do know two things that keep me focused in the midst of these times. The first is that the church has always had times like this, issues that come to the fore and make people examine what they believe and what the church teaches or should teach about these issues. This is as old as the first ecumenical councils. We got our Nicene Creed from just such a conflict. These times are not fun to live in, but they are important in the life of the church.
The second thing I know is that we are called to faithfulness. We may not know what will happen down the road, but I do think we can say that what happens down the road will be the fruit of what we do today. Politics and stress never moved the church forward, it is people staying focused on the mission that they had been called to. Yes, church meetings are important, and yes, we need to talk about these things. But if we let them become all-consuming, then in a very real sense, it doesn’t matter who is right, we will have all lost because the gospel will no longer be being proclaimed as we allow these things to turn us ever inward, instead of outward.
Friends, I don’t know why I’m writing this except that I wanted to share my heart with you. I hope that something in here may speak to your heart as we move forward in this new year of ministry.
In his service, Anna
What Youth Ministry Can Be
December 12, 2007 – 6:16 pm
Part One: Laying the groundwork
What basic understanding must be in place in order to provide good groundwork for the youth in that ministry? Throughout scripture we see examples of God calling young people to do his work. If God can use, and in fact, wants to use people of all ages, then we as the adult member of the body of Christ must take on as our solemn responsibility the discipling and equipping of our children, teenagers and young adults.
When God called Jeremiah to be a prophet, he was still young enough to consider himself a child and doubted that he could do the task at hand. God’s response to him was this: “…do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ … Now I have put my words in your mouth.’” (Jeremiah 1:9 NIV). In the same spirit, Paul instructs Timothy, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12). This God hasn’t changed. He’s still putting his words in the mouths of young people, and they still have the capacity to set an example for us all. Most of the time, all they need is for someone to start them training for godliness.
Just prior to the verse in 1 Timothy, Paul urges Timothy to “train yourself to be godly,” painting an image of rigorous, daily practice. We all know that physical exercise does no good if only done haphazardly, and the same is true of striving to be godly. But if we train daily in the practice of godliness with the young people entrusted to our care, then it is possible to “Set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.”
Paul’s next instructions are to “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and teaching. Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid hands on you” (vv. 13-14). Here he not only outlines habits that are part of striving every day for godliness, but recognizes Timothy’s gift. This highlights two elements that are often lacking in our ministries to youth.
The first element is the gift. All the youth in our sphere of influence have spiritual gifts, but often no one helps them to realize this. A college girl once came to me after having taking a spiritual gifts inventory, and said, “Wow, I have gifts?” And I asked her, “What, did you think God left you out?” Her eyes widened and she said, “I guess I never thought of it that way.” All of our youth have gifts, but many of them perhaps think that God somehow left them out. This must be addressed in our ministries so that the kids can realize that God has equipped them to do His work.
To call out the gifts in our young people takes the body of elders. This is the second element. Too often, the church as a whole is not as committed to the youth of today being equipped for ministry as they are committed to the youth minister equipping the youth for ministry—when they are older of course and have learned how to dress like grown-ups do. This cannot be. Our youth need the recognition from the adults that they are gifted. It’s not enough to merely have the youth minister or the adult volunteers recognize this, but the church as whole, the body, must take part of recognizing the gifts of young people to empower them to step forward in the calling God has placed upon them. Granted, most youth don’t have a well-defined idea of what calling is. However, as they are mentored by adults in the church, who continually affirm the gifts that God has given them, then they will be able to start actively walking the path that God has for them.
Graduating from church
December 12, 2007 – 6:14 pm
“Slipping through the cracks” is a cliché used for many things, but unfortunately it’s all too familiar in our churches. Mostly it’s come to define what happens to many kids as they transition out of high school youth ministry.
From The Journal of Student Ministries Read it all
What Story is your Church Telling?
October 14, 2007 – 9:40 pm
Take a look at some of the upcoming or newly released movies next time you’re in a theatre. Fantasy books-turned-movie such as Eragon, Stardust, The Golden Compass and The Seeker have popped out in rapid succession, making me wonder if there’s something going on here that we should be paying attention to. While these movies may be a blatant attempt by studios to cash in on the box office returns of the Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and, of course, the now ubiquitous teen hero, Harry Potter, I think there’s more going on here.
See, from the studios’ perspectives, they’re just making what they think will sell to the most marketed to audience in our culture—teenagers. But what is selling is worth noting. All of these stories have something in common. Young people setting out on dangerous quests to change the world.
And these stories present possibilities to ponder such as people have a purpose and a destiny, and concepts like you can’t use evil as a means to an end because in the end, evil will always win. Teens are gobbling up stories that involve young people risking their lives for others, sacrificing their wants and needs for the protection of others, enduring great hardship to achieve their goals.
Such stories stir something in our spirits, dawnings of a realization that maybe, just maybe, we’re in a story that’s bigger than we are.
I was privileged to hear Sarah Arthur, the author of The God-Hungry Imagination (Upper Room Books, 2007), speak. She read a passage from The Two Towers where Aragorn and his traveling companions, Legolas and Gimli, encounter the Riders of Rohan and inquire after their friends the hobbits, who have been kidnapped. When the Riders haven’t heard of Hobbits, they try asking about “Halflings” and one of the Riders responds:
“Halflings! But they are only a little people in old songs and children’s takes out of the North. Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in daylight?”
“A man may do both,” said Aragorn. “For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time.” (p. 434 of the one volume edition).
In this short exchange there’s a sense of past, present, and future, along with the possibility of legends walking the earth. In her book, Arthur observes: “without a past or a future, it’s difficult to find meaning in the present” (p. 26).
We live in a world that has lost its stories. With the modern age came a sort of snobbery towards things in the past because what we had accomplished in the present was so amazing and so advanced that suddenly past generations looked benighted and hopelessly behind where we found ourselves rapidly ascending towards the pinnacle of technological and scientific breakthroughs.
Without a past, however, there’s no way to learn and get a vision for our place in a larger story, or have hope for a future. Mere achievements alone do not suffice.
And our young people are longing for connection to a narrative that is bigger than they are. As Arthur puts it, “ the church is the living story we’re inviting young people to participate in” and then asks, “What kind of story is your church telling?” (p. 30).
In order to reach our young people, “we must become bards: poets charged with the task of keeping and imparting the stories, languages, values and beliefs of a culture. We take the many texts of our hearers’ lives and thread them through the warp and weft of the Christian narrative until patterned meaning emerges” (p. 31). We take their stories and help them fit into Christ’s story, giving them a past, present and a future as they learn to be his disciples.
And we can build on the opportunities presented us in the stories they are connecting to now in the form of the books and movies mentioned and show them how legends really do walk the earth in the God-man, Jesus Christ, and what that means for their lives.
What story is your church telling?
An immature post for an immature blog
October 11, 2007 – 9:04 pm
If you are signed into wordpress while looking at a wordpress blog, then you’ll see a blue tool bar at the top of your page with a series of drop-down menus that allow you to access your dashboards among other things. The far right tool bar, as I just accidentally discovered, is labeled “blog info” and the last option on the drop-down menu is “report as mature.”
And that word struck me. “Mature.” Of course, the meaning in the context of the drop down menu is that someone has posted x-rated content on their blog, something wordpress.com tries to discourage. But instead of, say, reporting as “lewd” or “inappropriate” we have to report this material as “mature.”
The fundamental implication would be, then, that those who do not wish to view this material are immature.
Of course, none of us strives to be immature. We even have ideas in Scripture that we want seeds (lives) to mature (Luke 8:14), and is equated with having reached fullness in Christ in Ephesians: “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (4:13). (See also 1 Cor. 2:6; Phil. 3:15; Col 4:12; Heb. 5:14; James 1:4 NIV).
So we are told to strive for maturity in Christ, and yet one of the things I would think of as being a marker along that pathway to maturity in Christ would be refusing to view “mature” websites…
Where am I going with this? The clash between the kingdom and culture stood out to me as I reflected on this, and it shouted to me how we as the church, and especially we who work with youth need to help our students through meaningful rites of passage in teaching them what it means to be mature in in Christ and in practical ways in life as adults.
So here’s to being immature mature people!
Nooma #17 and #18
October 11, 2007 – 6:58 pm
Nooma video #17 is now available, and #18 should come out in November!
Nooma 017 Today: How much time and energy do we spend wishing things were how they used to be? We often think about times in our past when things were different and want our lives to be like that again. Some of us have even come to believe that our best days may actually be behind us. But if we’re in some way hung up on the past, what does that mean for our lives now? How are we and those around us affected if we’re are not fully present? If we’re longing for the way things used to be, what does that really say about our understanding and appreciation of our lives today? Maybe we need to learn to embrace our past for what it is, in order to live our lives to the fullest, right here, right now.
Nooma 018 Name: We all compare ourselves to others. Some of us even
wish we were someone else. But why are we so concerned with what other people think, say, or look like? Maybe if we really knew our true selves, we wouldn’t focus so much on other peoples’ lives and live more in tune with the life God wants for us. The NOOMA series is comprised of short films with communicators that really speak to us. Each NOOMA touches on issues that we care about, that we want to talk about, and it comes in a way that fits our world.
