Tag: Ministry

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2008 Orange Conference Session 1

The 2008 Orange Conference

Opening video…Wow!!! Makes you proud to be a part of the “Church”

Steve Fee – Loved the new song!

Sue Miller

  • After last year’s conference she was challenged in a new way, she was told she had cancer.
  • After arguing with God, she was compelled that God asked her, “Who’s driving?”
  • Challenge to ask God to show us what investment/impact we’ve made.
  • God started to reveal to her how he had used her. – God told her she did exactly what He told her to do.
  • Challenge to realize that you do not need a cancer diagnosis to give your all to God.
  • A note to volunteers…Sue usually hears people say things like, “I just hold babies” “I just lead a small group” “I just greet people”
  • Don’t ever say I just anymore.
  • You get to be Jesus with Skin on to people who are walking through the doors of the church, who needs someone to hug them, to relate to them.
  • This is a very important responsibility!

Reggie Joyner – “Uncensored” Reaching a Prodigal Generation

  • There is one thing that is important in our ministries.
  • Its not truth or message – It’s not family – It’s not leadership.
  • Without this one thing, you do not have a basis for genuine community.
  • Going through a paraphrase of the Prodigal Son
  • This is definitely the Message version of the Prodigal son!
  • Only two people were unhappy about the younger son returning, Older and the fatted calf.
  • What if the older brother got to the prodigal son before the loving father? How would the story be different?
  • Reggie grew up in an “older brother” church! (Me Too!) – This produced a mindset that it took time to unravel.
  • Luke 15:1-2 – “But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” – Jesus hears them and tells them 3 stories; the final story was the Prodigal. He showed them 2 different perspectives to the Prodigal.
  • There are 2 different approaches to sinners: 1. The Pharisee way (The older brother) or 2. Jesus’ way (The loving father)
  • Challenge: Treat every prodigal in the way a loving father would treat his own son! Continue reading “2008 Orange Conference Session 1”
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Final Thoughts on Chapter 2 Chasing Daylight

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Final Thoughts on Chapter 2 of Chasing Daylight by Erwin McManus:

  • Until our bodies return to dust, there will always be a voice crying out within us to move from existence to life.
  • The possibilities that await us in each moment are fueled by the potential God has placed with in us…Its about the kind of life you live as a result of the person you are becoming. The challenges you are willing to face will rise in proportion to the character you are willing to develop. With the depth of godly character comes an intensity of godly passion.
  • It is the process of transformation that we find the fuel to engage with confidence the opportunities placed before us.
  • For some strange reason many sincere followers of Christ have come to think that their passions are always in conflict with God’s purpose.
  • When we delight in God, we become anything but apathetic. In fact, we become intensely passionate. These desires of our hearts are born out of the heart of God.
  • The more passionate you are, the more proactive you will tend to be (even if you boldly do the wrong thing).
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Discontentment

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I guess it would only be natural to do a discontentment post just days after posting about being Content. I have to be transparent. I struggle with a lot of stuff, and it all stems from the church environments that I was raised in. My dad always did a great job of challenging me when we would discuss what I was being taught in my “Christian” school. I never heard him support some of the legalistic stuff that I was being taught, although he did have his opinions at times in the area of music, but God freed him of that long ago. The problem is, we didn’t discuss everything that I was being taught, therefore a lot of it sank in, without me lifting a finger to find out if it was a Biblical truth or if it was merely a person’s opinion. One of those struggles is discontentment and whether it is a bad thing to be discontent, or if it could be a good thing.

18 months ago I resigned as a full time youth pastor to get plugged into a new church plant in our area as a volunteer. I love our church and have no problems with it, but I am discontent. I don’t have the space to tell the entire story, (Email me if you want to know it) but I ended up getting a full time job at a 200 year old Presbyterian church in their publications department and overseeing their web design. Maybe some of the discontentment comes from not fully being able to use my gifts and talents as I once did when I was full time? It is hard going from one environment to a totally different one. Going from a full time pastor to a full time administrative position. I know God called me to preach when I was 12 years old. I had the opportunity to serve in ministry at my families church since I was around 10 and I remember how God kept speaking to me, I would wake up in the middle of the night, and I couldn’t shake it. I didn’t want the calling, but God didn’t ask.

Anyway, I tell my wife that if God sent me to Greenbrier for the sole purpose of meeting some of the people that I have been able to meet, then it would be worth it. I value Shane’s friendship more than anyone will ever know. I have never had a friend that was as sold out and as in love with Jesus as Shane and Hank. I love those guys and I have not known them for that long. My pastor Chuck has been a huge positive influence and was a breathe of fresh air at a time where I needed it. Being on the outside and kind of on the inside of a church plant, I feel like I’ve learned a lot, so I know that God uses his timing for many good things. The problem is, I know that, yet I am still discontent. I was looking at a book that was at our church office the other night waiting for our youth workers planning meeting to start. On the back of the book Bono was quoted as saying that within the next year over 10,000,000 children in Africa would be affected by HIV/AIDS, many of which will lose their life. Did you know that in the next year I will print over 146,000 worship guides? That has nothing to do with the crisis that Africa faces with HIV/AIDS, poverty, pandemic diseases, illiteracy, and other crisis’. Continue reading “Discontentment”

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Team Work

Here is an article that I wrote earlier this month at pdymblog.com…take a few minutes and check out some of the other PDYM State Mentors articles that are posted on the website, you may find some helpful stuff!

I was jogging on the track at the recreation department where I work out. The track over looks a total of four basketball courts throughout the building. As I was running I couldn’t help but notice two teams of young girls, probably around the ages of 10 or 11 squaring off. This one portion of the gym is surrounded by about a fourth of the track so as I was jogging I could see several plays transpire on the court and every time I made it back around the court I could watch more of the game.

On one of the teams there was this one girl, for some reason she just stuck out to me. She was the fastest by far on the court, she rose about half a foot to a foot over the rest of the girls, and her presence simply commanded attention. If I didn’t know any better I would have thought her dad or mom played for a professional basketball team, the way she took control of the game. She was grabbing offensive and defensive rebounds, splitting the defense with her dribbling, sometimes taking it coast to coast with the opposing team barely being able to keep up with her speed, unfortunately her team was losing. As I rounded the track over and over I noticed one thing, this girl. She never passed the ball, she always took the shot, but the one problem was this…she had a weakness…her shooting. No one could match her speed, her height, or her other skills, but she could not shoot the ball. I watched her shoot up close and far away, but she never hit it. She would ignore her teammates that were closer to the basket and wide open so that she could take the shot, no matter how well she was defended, she never shared the ball.

Watching this play out made me think about how there are a lot of youth ministries that continuously lose. Too many lead youth workers think they have all of the skills that are required to lead their ministry and they neglect those around them that may be stronger in a specific area than they are. Just like with the girl basketball player, she possessed certain skills, but she could not have been the best shooter, however she thought her skills trumped the skill of the shooters. Maybe a lead youth worker has a degree that they worked very hard for (and paid a lot of money to earn) and they feel that this automatically gives them all of the answers to successfully oversee a youth ministry. Or, maybe a lead youth worker compares himself to those on his team and thinks more highly of himself than he does his youth ministry teammates so he feels he must control every aspect of ministry around him to make it run effectively. Viewpoints like these only lead to individual focused ministry versus team focused ministry.

When a lead youth worker has viewpoints that are focused more on self than on the leadership team, sadly the outcome is failure. It is no wonder why youth leaders can pay hundreds of dollars on conferences and seminars and still not see success and health in their ministry. If only youth leaders would learn to pass the ball to our teammates who are qualified in the areas where we are weak, we could see some of our failures turn into successes. As a lead youth worker it is okay to be confident in the gifts, talents, and skills that God has blessed you with, but it requires godly humility to recognize that it takes more than those skills to accomplish great things. Pass the ball to a teammate this week; ask for their opinion on specific ministry items, ask them to take the lead in a ministry area, operate in your strengths and allow your team to operate in theirs!

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The Bi-Vocational Youth Pastor

Here is an article that I just wrote for the PDYM Neighborhood (Newletter), its posted at pdymblog.com, go check out some of their other posts…they are very good!

I love Erwin McManus’ book The Barbarian Way. It has helped me change the way I look at the huge and awesome God that I serve. The theme of the book is about living out our Christian lives, as either Barbarians or as civilized Christians. As my perspectives changed, my heart changed, and with those changes I believe God took the opportunity to challenge me to see if the changes were genuine.

It wasn’t too long after I read the book for the first time that I felt God moving me out of my comfortable position as a full time youth pastor into a world that I had experienced before, but on a different level. God was calling me to serve as a bi-vocational youth leader. I believe there are two different types of bi-vocational youth leaders, the first is the leader who gets paid by a secular job and a minimum salary from their church, the second, is the leader who is paid by a secular job, but they are in a church that cannot pay them in their current situation (The full time volunteer leader). I don’t know what God has in store for me in the future, I never thought he would have called me out to do what I am doing now, but he did, and all I can do is follow, but in this journey I have learned so much, so here are a few highlights:

Bi-vocational is Uncomfortable: Life is already busy enough! When I was full time at my previous church I had a full schedule and at times I wondered how I would ever get everything accomplished. However, it was easy to have full days to focus on the ministry tasks at hand. Bi-vocational leaders have to balance work, ministry, family, and personal time and on top of it all we have to manage personal spiritual growth as well. It is uncomfortable, but God uses the uncomfortable. I have to rely on him more now than I ever have. It was real easy to rely on myself and the time that I had to devote to student ministry when I was full time, and that is why I believe the more comfortable we are, the easier it is to look to ourselves rather than to God.

Bi-vocational is Humbling: There seems to be a negative connotation in the pastor/youth pastor field when it comes to bi-vocational ministers. It’s almost as if bi-vocational ministers are considered ‘coach class’ versus ‘1st class.’ If bi-vocational youth workers look to other ministers for some kind of approval, many times it’s not going to come, and discouragement can easily set in. I get the grunts and the weird looks when I tell other youth pastors what I do and my situation. I have had people ask me, “What, you couldn’t handle it full time?” and I have heard others say things like, “Well, he/she must not be qualified since they are part time or a volunteer.” The criticisms and judgments are out there, but once again, it comes back to God and the position he has put us in, when we realize that it is God and not us, it humbles us to put all of our trust in God’s plan and not man’s opinion.

Bi-vocational is Rewarding: Bi-vocational youth workers have a distinct advantage over full time ministers. They have the opportunity to work and do life with those who are not believers. Full time ministers get bogged down by the details of the church and do not have the opportunity to spend a lot time with those in the world. Bi-vocational leaders have the opportunity to broaden their understanding and their methods of reaching out to unbelievers. My rewards are different than this. Another church hired me for publications and websites. I am working in a larger church and I get to watch and learn from a larger staff than where I serve in student ministry, and I believe God will use that in the future. It’s real easy to look at what we don’t have and all of the negatives of our situations, but if we are definitely in the position God has placed us in as bi-vocational leaders, then there are more rewards and positives surrounding the situation than you can see.