We are faced with a tiny percentage of the population actively involved in the local church. (>10%) Yet, I’m continually perplexed to see no one looking hard at the big, obvious problems of bottlenecks & gatekeepers which keep churches small with a strategy that lost its effectiveness 25 years ago. Most churches have the same exact strategy. It’s the manifestations of that strategy which differ.

TO read the whole article, click on the link…The problem with one-size fits all is… One-size doesn’t fit all.

Back in March, we took over 35 high school students to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and worked with an urban missional community called The Refuge OKC. This trip was not only life-wrecking and life-transforming for our high school students, but it also had the same impact on me and my family as well. This video captures the essence of what The Refuge OKC is all about (I got this video from Tim Ulrich, one of the leaders of The Refuge OKC)…

As a church, LifeBridge (and other churches, individuals, and Christian organizations), has been wrestling with the whole concept of what it means to love your neighbor. Rick Rusaw and Brian Mavis have been instrumental in our church in causing us as a church staff and a as church to think about what it means to be the best neighbor our neighbors have ever had or to love our neighbors not because we want them to be a Christian, but because we are Christians… We are praying for God to show us how to love our neighbors – unprogrammed style…This video sure sketches out what many are thinking, now we just need to color it in!

You can follow both Rick Rusaw and Brian Mavis (and LifeBridge) on Twitter.

Community and The Refuge

Day 3:
LifeBridge high school students are amazing!!! I haven’t seen high schoolers work so hard. We are all definitely being rocked by the Father. Our hearts and eyes are beginning to see people and all His creation in a new and different way.

Praying we can finish strong and for the people we met today.

Community and Refuge (OKC)…

Day 1:
Today was a great and challenging first day serving with the community of believers called the Refuge! Tim, one of the leaders of the Refuge, challenged our high school students big ways to think about living in neighborhoods with missional intentions.

Crazy to think that the building the community of believers live in was a crackhouse and a prostitute brothel… God sure has done some amazing things in this neighborhood!

The talk and prayers of the day are how does Jesus become great and we become less (John 3:30).

Please pray for the Father to work on our students hearts for the hurting and hopeless, and that they can see others the way God sees them. Pray that we can continue this conversation back at home and that we can figure how we carry this over to our own neighborhoods and love our neighbors.

This is an update of our high school ministry mission trip to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma… My thoughts about this trip and experiences, and information about the Refuge will be fleshed out in a blogs series on students loving their neighbors when we get back to Colorado.

This is very interesting and very thought provoking! It has fantastical implications to education and youth ministry. I found it on Jon Wasson’s blog http://www.jonwasson.com/ which I recommend highly as a daily stop-by… You can also follow him on Twitter @jonwasson

Just in case your interested: Listed below are the people I make a point of reading daily… I have my top five and I also have others that I recommend… They are listed in respective order. NOT listed on here are friends and family…

Preachers / Church Leaders:
1. @PastorMark Mark Driscoll
2. @perrynoble perrynoble
3. @JudWilhite Jud Wilhite
4. @stevenfurtick Steven Furtick
5. @tonymorganlive tony morgan
@brittmerrick Britt Merrick
@AndyStanley AndyStanley
@ScottWilliams Scott Williams
@realrobbell Rob Bell

Church Culture & etc…:
1. @donmilleris Donald Miller
2. @theResurgence theResurgence
3. @JesusNeedsNewPR Matthew Paul Turner
4. @MikeFoster Mike Foster
5. @alanhirsch Alan Hirsch / @toddrhoades Todd Rhoades
@scotmcknight scotmcknight
@jonestony Tony Jones
@lensweet Leonard Sweet
@CSLewisDaily C. S. Lewis
@Spurgeon_ Charles Spurgeon
@APuritansMind A Puritan’s Mind

Continue reading →

I have been a mentee in several mentoring relationships and I have also been a mentor in a few others. I have had some bad ones and some that have made me become a better worker, husband, dad, and person. When thinking about seeking a mentor and a mentoring relationship, I have several chief “musts” and “wants” that I use as a filter to help me get the most out of the relationship.

When looking for a mentor, I need to have a mentor who has proven skills in developing leaders, especially leaders that are high capacity leaders. Also, this mentor must be able to challenge and encourage me to dream big and think bigger. I must also be able to relationally relate and trust this individual. My musts include:

• Must have experience in establishing overall vision and strategic thinking
• Must be an authentic leader
• Must have excellent people skills
• Must have previous experience in mentoring high level leaders
• Must be able to relate to me and my situational context & is a good listener
• Must not be afraid to be open and honest with me & challenge me
• Must be a follower of the Way
• Must have an active prayer life
• Must be committed to the mentoring relationship for one year

As far as my wants, I would like for my mentor and the mentorship help me expand my network of relationships. And I would like for my mentor and I to develop some level of friendship. With this, here is my list of wants:

• I want someone who gets sarcastic humor (I definitely have one and would not want to offend them)
• I want an easy-going person
• I want someone who has had previous successful high level leadership experience in a ministry context
• I want someone that can provide exposure and visibility to others in my field or other high level leaders
• I want someone who is available. I would like to be able to contact them to discuss leadership issues that arise

I currently have a mentoring relationship and also a coaching relationship and have benefited from it tremendously. My list of “musts” and “wants” are ideal and I don’t expect and individual to meant all the criteria. However, I would like the  situation and the person to come close. I have also learned that sometimes you need to test the waters and have a trial period when it comes to establishing a mentoring relationship. Have a bad fit can do more harm than good.

Why are families so busy these days? Why is it that we, the church, feel the need to create more programming, more events, and more business for our families? Do we think we can compete with world for the thing that is most precious to our families, and that being their time? The world is ready and already has invested everything it has to keep our people occupied and distracted. The world does things very well and with excellence, and they can because they take a “sky’s the limit” approach, and the world wants nothing more than to distract God’s people from loving Him and their neighbors.

Does this mean that the world is better than the Church? No way! It means that the world knows the stakes are high and they are willing to do whatever it takes, in order to keep people away from what matters most! And that is to seek God and love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, with our entire mind, and with all our strength AND to love our neighbor as yourself!

What should we, the Church do about this?

In response to the question asked, I would like to use the word burden to describe the busyness that we strap to the backs of the people that we minister too. In a sense, a lot of our programs do become burdens to our people, because many times we make them feel guilty for choosing other functions over ours or they themselves feel guilty for not doing enough for God (there are many other reasons as well). Through all the busyness, people have a hard time of seeing a clear picture of the character of God and experiencing the glory of who He is and what he means to them! Can we bask in His glory, when we are busy doing the things God has not asked us to do? Additionally, we take them out of their neighborhoods and distract them with the burden of going to our events and programming…

I must state here, that I am not against programming, because programming helps us meet the felt needs of people (See Acts chapter 6). What I am saying, is that our programming needs to be more than just purposeful, it needs to be focused and strategic. It must free God’s people to be in their neighborhoods to connect and minister the gospel to those that lived around them. Can the Church stop trying to be a buffet restaurant and distract God’s people from getting a clear picture of who he is and His glory. We must free God’s people and give them the ability to love their neighbors who live around them!

What are we doing in our churches to take the burdens of the backs of God’s people, so they can bask in the Glory of God? I’m trying to figure this out, my church is trying to figure this out, and others are as well…

taboo, tabu [təˈbuː] vb (tr) to place under a taboo [from Tongan tapu] adj 1. (Sociology) forbidden or disapproved of; placed under a social prohibition or ban taboo words 2. (Social Science / Anthropology & Ethnology) (in Polynesia and other islands of the South Pacific) marked off as simultaneously sacred and forbidden

n pl -boos, -bus 1. (Sociology) any prohibition resulting from social or other conventions 2. (Social Science / Anthropology & Ethnology) ritual restriction or prohibition, esp of something that is considered holy or unclean Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

We’ve all heard it said before, or maybe we were the ones said it. You know, the hushed tone, the look over the shoulder to make sure no one was looking or within earshot… Sex or more precisely - pornography. There I said it or typed it out anyway. This one word can make a grown men blush; cause mothers to cover the eyes and ears of their young children. This word can devastate homes, schools, cities, governments, and yes churches, especially youth ministries.

I’m not interested in this blog post being a ten step and your “free from the addiction” of porno conversation. Nor am I interested in this post becoming a diatribe of how the church, it’s leaders, and society as a whole have failed from protecting our children and teens from this epidemic. What I want from this blog post is to actually get this subject out in the open or to but it out on the table, for parents, youth pastors, and church leaders. Some have dared to do this, and there are individuals and ministries such as http://xxxchurch.com/ that address this issue, they “dare” to make it an open topic of conversation.

No other time in my sixteen years of youth ministry have I had to deal with this more than this present time. Teens have access to it through laptops, iPads, their mobil phones, iTouches, and any other portable means. They view it, send it, text it, and do it in any means possible. They are influenced and exposed to pornography through TV, peers, and parents. It’s everywhere, but in the Church we generally don’t talk about it – it’s TABOO. Maybe if we ignore the “P” word it will go away and disappear.

I’m tired of dealing with hurt and broken families because of the infiltration of porn in their homes! Can we finally talk about it openly in the Church and make war on it!

In the New Testament there are many passages that deal with sexual immorality: In 1 Corinthians 6:13-20 (READ) we see that sexual immorality (sexual immorality is premarital sex, pornography, sexting, & other like activities) is sin that is done against our own body. When we sin sexually, we tear down our dignity and self-respect. Additionally, when we commit acts of sexual immorality with others, we contribute to their broken self-respect & destruction of their dignity.  Also, if we are Christians, when we commit sexual immorality, we contribute to dishonoring God & particularly the Holy Spirit that lives within us.

• Sexual sin is against our own bodies / sexual immorality destroys our self-respect, dignity, & that of those we do it with

• The body is not meant for sexual immorality (see 1 Corinthians 6:13-17)

• God’s Holy Spirit lives within us, if we are Christians

• We belong to God and were bought at a price (Jesus death on the cross)

One of the things that most people don’t know about me, and wouldn’t guess is that I had a reading problem growing up. I couldn’t read a word until the fourth grade. And unlike most fourth grade boys it was during that time in my life that I came to have a tremendous love for it (thanks to my fourth grade teacher, Miss Jackson and a professor from Sonoma State University). By the time I was in eighth grade, I had read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A thru Z cover to cover… What this means is that I am now an extensive reader. I am known to read about five to six books at a time – I am not a fast reader or a slow reader – I read at the right speed. I also have great comprehension and retention of what I read as well.  (I also had to have speech therapy in school during this same time period)

Some types of reading transport me to another time and another world. Other types of reading help me learn new things, and it helps my own thoughts become clear, and others opinions on things that matter make sense. Reading also enables me to impact those around me, and myself as well.

Here’s are six books that I’m reading right now:

1.     Forgotten God – Francis Chan

2.     Doctrine – Mark Driscoll

3.     Elements of Mentoring – Brad Johnson (for grad school)

4.     Radical – David Platt

5.     The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul Tending for Youth Ministry – Kenda Creasy Dean

6.     The Voice of Luke – Brian McLaren (for our high school ministry fall message series)

So, what’s on your reading list right now? Love to hear it!