Shalom

so i moved to the cincinnati area about a month ago. i'm actually living in middletown. the past 4 weeks i've moved into my new home. worked on wedding plans. worked on the house. applied and interviewed for a job at multiple places. i went to chicago to watch the indians get swept at wrigley with 4 of my best friends. been as busy as i have ever been in my entire life, and haven't blogged one time.
so for those who check this blog (all 5 of you) i appologize for not keeping with it in this transitional time of life. but please know, that it will not happen again. well at least not any time soon (besides the honeymoon). i haven't been on twitter. i haven't had a chance to read other's blogs. i feel totally out of the loop. but now that i have the internet at my house and i am buying a macbook pro in approximitely 3 weeks. it's on. so just know that i've been reading a ton and i have some really good ideas that i've been dying to share. i'll keep you posted. by posting. so your posts can be preposted about what to post-post about. i think. peace

leaving my first youth ministry position in two weeks. this is a lot harder than i could have imagined. saying goodbye has been hard for me my whole life. i remember being like 9 or 10 watching my mom leave for the grocery store and i would want to go so bad. i would sit in the doorway as my mom pulled away, eyes full of tears. i know that's really sad because i was so old, but i just loved being with my mom. and then a few years later i remember going to chuch camp and having to say bye to all the campers every year was so hard. i would cry then too. obviously i was a pretty emotional kid. but that's not the point. the point is that because i'm leaving in 2 weeks, i know that it's going to be one of the hardest things i'll ever do. my kids hardly understand why. to them it's just another adult who "cares" about them walking out of their lives. so this transition needs to be saturated in grace. full of peace. i've been trying to help with the transition. it's just not easy. goodbyes are not easy. do you ever struggle with goodbyes? it makes me want to sit in my room and put boyz II men on real loud. do you feel me?

youth ministry is no longer an art. it's become like everything else in life, meaning the leadership of youth ministries look for the next "thing" to do. like an infomercial is going to help. there are now thousands of books and workshops that a youth leader can attend to open their minds to "different" ways to run their youth program. the books and workshops are not bad in of themselves. it's like watching an infomercial for a weightloss supplement. we see how the supplement helped the person advertising for it and assume that we will get the same results. and that's where i have a problem.
first, ministry is supposed to flow from the overflow of our hearts. if i am not being discipled and learning and falling more and more in love with christ, how can i expect my students to? lead by example. but ministry has become programs and busyness. is your youth ministry "cutting edge?" i hope not. is your youth ministry just another thing for students to do during the week? or is it engaging your students to grow and learn about themselves and their lives found in christ? ministry should be messy. but we like to sweep messes under the rug and never come back to them.
second, is ministry about "results"? i don't ever want to be a part of a church that has expectations of "results". like, how many conversions did you have this month/year? or how many teens are attending your wednesday night meeting? i don't care! shouldn't we be focusing on the kids we have? how can we ever hope to see teenagers become disciples if all we care about is numbers?
third, something has to change in the way america "does" youth ministry. people between the ages of 17-30 are missing in our churches. so apparently we've done something wrong. now i'm not talking about numbers here. it's not about numbers. it's about the kingdom. if we only focus on numbers then we lose valuable years with these students to nurture and disciple them. so what are we doing wrong? honestly, most things.
we try to compete with mtv. we try to make things look good because that's what jesus would want. or is it? didn't jesus' ministry look a lot like hanging out. i mean he was rarely alone. he was constantly with people. not neccessarily preaching or teaching. just enjoying people. letting them know that they matter. what would it look like if every church in america stopped focusing on numbers, on attendance, on conversions and just focused on loving people. because ultimitely that's how jesus said he would separate us. the sheep from the goats. those who cared about broken, the lost, the least. and those who cared about numbers, rules and services.

so i had this thought the other day as i was walking back to the office from a local coffee shop. the coffee shop has no relevance, but the walk did. i saw this woman sitting outside on the curb. she was either poor, or pretending to be. either way it directed my thoughts to why is it fair that some people have money and others don't. and then i thought about how barbaric (i don't know if that's the right word) money is. people will do anything to get it. and the sad thing is, one can't have enough of it.
i let my mind run away with it and also my fingers on the keyboard and googled "life without money" and read some really interesting arguments for both sides. so then it made me think about how money rules the world. it always has. it's the anti-christ in so many ways. jesus was a poor man. "foxes have holes and birds of nests" and jesus was homeless. he lived in a way that showed the power of god's provision in our lives. so does god provide money? is money bad? is it good? should we rid of money in the world? am i a communist?

i was watching bagger vance a couple of weeks ago, trying to get into the spirit of golf (that movie always does it for me) and there is a line in the film that i cannot get out of my head.
bagger says, "what i'm talking about is a game that can't be won, only played". the reason that it has been popping into my mind is because of the relevance that quote has to our everyday lives. it's kind of like saying, life isn't full of good or bad choices, it's just lived. i mean isn't what's good and bad relative? what may be good for you could be bad for someone else and visa versa.
so what i'm saying is, i need to stop worrying so much about what's good and bad. i mean isn't life a journey? life can only be lived. life. it is not good or bad. it is just life. good and bad. life. so live it. and be the best you along the way and do it passionately.

i had this dream that i was hanging out with john mayer. now if you didn't know this about me, i'm a huge mayer fan. i don't care too much about his social life, but that dude can make a guitar sing. so in my dream we were both standing in line at chipotle (and he ordered a burrito bowl) and we got to talking about life. he was in town for a show but it wasn't until the next night. i told him that he could hang out with me, but i didn't really mean it. well, he said that he would love to. weird.
so we hung out, girls were flocked to us, i felt popular, cool, valued. i don't exactly what happened after all of that, i mean nothing interesting i guess. but it made me think about how we value people.
i know it was just a dream, but some people say dreams are valuable. this one was for me. i mean if john mayer came to town and wanted to hang out with me, i would be stoked. but why? what has he done that makes him so valued? because he can play guitar well? because he is (was?) dating jen aniston? why do i value celebrities? why are they more important than people in my community. why would i bend over backwards for someone i don't even know? based on what?
"celebrity" and "idol" are beginning to have many things in common to me.

so after reading don miller's blog, i had an idea about things that "i'm over". his is more about things to come, but this post will be about things that people say. so for instance, what phrase and verbal responses are you "over". for some of you it may be "i'm sick of people saying 'i'm over it'". or if you're like me your sick of "i just threw up in my mouth" and "dude, that's sick". things that i have tentatively moved out of my vocabulary. i mean what is that supposed to mean anyway? something positive somehow? anyway, what are you "over"? what phrase and verbal expressions make you tick? or better yet, what movie quote is over done?