Priorities

Priorities.

Everyone has them, not matter what your age may be.  When you are a young child, your priority is just that, being a kid, going and playing outdoors, meeting the neighborhood kids, looking both ways and holding your parents hand while crossing the street, etc…  As you grow older, your priorities change, you start having to pay attention to harder subjects in school, and you need to find that first job so you can afford your first car.  You wonder how you can let the girl or guy you like know that you like them without actually telling them.  You move on to college, and decide what career you want to have (sometimes you decide multiple times) you want to find a spouse, and settle down.  You are in your 30’s now, you want to make a name for yourself in your job, you are trying to raise a family and make it all work and mesh together.  The kid’s sports and piano lessons, the golf game you want to improve at, the house you are trying to maintain the mortgage to pay off….  Now you are 50’s, kids are growing up, starting to do their own thing and you are trying to desperately to stay “relevant” in their life (don’t worry you always will be), they are working on choosing colleges and/or careers.  You are wondering why you decided on the career you did and trying to figure out if it was all worth it.  Now you are 80, your kids are gone and married, you have grandkids now and you spoil them every chance you get.  You try to get as much traveling in as you can to see the places you wanted to while you were younger but just couldn’t do, you go to coffee every morning with some of your friends (and maybe some aren’t but they still show up at McDonalds anyways)…. Well you get the picture now right?

So, how far off am I?  Or am I somewhat close?  How we live our life is an indication of what we view as the most important to ourselves.  I started thinking about priorities the other day as I was reading through some different passages of scripture and my attention was drawn to a verse in Luke that says "Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"  Wow!!!!, now that may not seem like much, but if you think about it, those are the very first recorded words of Jesus in the New Testament.  Jesus knew what the important priorities in life really were.  Do we?  If someone is really looking for us, would we really be in the church?  Would we really make sure we were in the presence of God?  Or would they find us on the golf course, or the bowling alley, or at some sporting event?  Where are we putting God in our priority list of life?  Where am I putting God in my priority list of life?

All too often it just seems so easy to sleep in on Sunday morning because we were out late on Saturday.  Or to go to that one sports game on Sunday morning, or to go grocery shopping on Sunday morning because the crowds aren’t as big, or…. Well I think you get my point.  Now, I’m not saying that skipping church that one Sunday morning is going to lead you to a life of Condemnation, but what I am saying is that God sees what our priorities are on any given day.  So what are we showing him in our lives?  One of the biggest things that I see in youth ministry is that 90 percent of the things kids see their parent’s value and give the extra effort towards are things the children will value and prioritize as well.  So, where does not only God, but your children see your priorities being?  Is it on the newest electronics gizmo out there?  Is it on that new designer purse that you see in the store window?  Or is it on something like family meals and devotions together? Making as much effort for our kids to be at a youth meeting once a week as we do for them to be at sporting events every day? 

Where your priorities lie is up to you, Jesus’ was on his Father.  Where are yours?

The Future?

What is one of the most overused and under-utilized phrases that we hear in the church today? Care to take a guess? I am almost positive that every adult reading this has at one point in time said it. Have a guess yet? OK, I’ll just tell you, the phrase that I am talking about is “Youth are the future of the church.” Now you are probably saying to yourself, “it’s not overused, it’s the truth” While that is true from a certain point of view, I really think we need to take a look at that phrase a little closer. Now I agree, Youth is the future of the church, it’s natural progression, young things get older, it happens in technology, in the animal kingdom and in the business world. In 1993 AT&T came out with a series of advertisements I’ll call the “You Will” ads. In it they talked about how in the future there will come a day when you will be send an electronic message from the beach (Satellite Link Internet), or drive somewhere you’ve never been without ever stopping to ask for directions (G.P.S.) They listed Video Phones, Video Meetings with people around the world, Pay Per View Movies etc… Many of these items are no longer the future, but the present and others are already in the past. Or like in the Animal Kingdom and corporate America you see all the time of the younger generation taking hold of leadership to keep things moving and keeping things fresh. In all of those situations, what at one point was viewed as the future, has now become the present. So why is the church the only place that keeps talking about the future without every really embracing it? What I mean by that is the same people who 20 years ago were forty year old people saying youth are the future of the church are the same people who are now 60 and older and are still saying youth if the future of the church. When does youth become the present? Too often I hear of people saying that the young people just are not ready to lead the church, but how do they know unless they give them a shot? How do we know if Youth are not ready to lead the church unless we actually give them some responsibility and work with them, be a mentor to them.

Now, before I get people up in arms saying that there time is up, that’s not the point I’m trying to make, far from it actually. The point I am trying to make is, when are we actually going to give our high school and college age students the chance to be relevant in the church? When are we going to give them some responsibility in leadership? If not, we are just going to keep running into the same problem, of our younger members leaving the church during their college years. Why would they want to stay at some place where they are always called “the future” and not taken seriously in “the present?” Maybe some of you are saying right now “we have some younger people leading singing in the church.” That’s great, but is that true leadership? Are we actually making the youth of our church a priority? Not just offering them classes but giving them an opportunity to lead classes. How many deacons do you have in your church under 30? Do you have any? If you do, then great, if you don’t, well why not? Are they not qualified yet? What is the magical age that makes someone qualified? How do we make people qualified?

This situation is really something important that I think all churches need to look at a little more closely. I will put it out there though; the Youth is not the future of the church just like the seniors are not the past of the church. All the church members are the future of the church just like all church members are the past and the present of the church. So let’s stop trying to make the distinction of who is what part of the church and start realizing that we are all the church of today and tomorrow. I don’t think God would want it any other way.

Hey how are you? Do we really care?

How many times have you gone to any location, be it church, school, work etc... and when you walk in the first thing someone says to you is "Hey how you doing" How do you respond back to them when they ask you. Or better yet, what is your non verbal response. Quite often in today's society the greeting of asking how someone is going is more of a simple formality instead of a genuine question, wouldn't you agree?

What I mean by that is when you ask "how are you doing to someone" are you actually giving your unconscious effort to make it show that you really care how they are doing, or are you saying it in passing as you head to your seat/class/office. The reason for asking how someone is doing is to actually know how they are doing, not to just use that as your communication for the week. Say a friend asks you how another friend is doing because friend number one has not had a chance to talk with friend 2 but you have, however all you did was say hey, how are you doing" in passing. You didn't actually wait for a response and therefore you cannot give a true answer yet you probably will tell them, "oh there doing fine" am I right?

I think one of the major problems with today's society is that we have been trained to ask a question to show care without actually showing much care at all. It is something that needs to be changed, the world is always moving at the same speed even though society tries to speed it up even quicker. I say lets slow the world down. Spend time getting back into a meaningful relationship with others, show actual care for how people are doing. We were created to crave relationships for a reason so why do we run away from it so much?

How do we show love to each other in our greetings?  Are we showing Love at all?  What exactly is Love?  Is it an idea?  An emotion?  An actual tangible thing?  I asked some of my youth kids yesterday to define Love for me and after some struggling with it they came up with "Love is God" O.K.  Yeah that’s true, but doesn't it still seem like a kind of Sunday school answer?  What is God then??????

If Love is God (yes) Then Love (God) is the Key that unlocks our souls.

Does love always win in our life?  Contrary to the popular car window stickers out there, unfortunately I don't think it always does.  I mean how many times are there you could have shown love to someone in your life (or even someone in passing) and you didn't.

I still think you have to choose Love, it doesn't just win automatically. 

But, it is the answer.

Want to show love?  You can start, by having a true greeting to one another.

Can we compete? Is that what we are called to do?

I think many church youth ministries have it wrong.

Pretty bold statement?  Maybe, but I think there is something to it.

Maybe I should rephrase that comment, maybe it's not so much that they have it wrong per say, but they attack it from the wrong direction.

What are we using to draw kids into youth ministry?

Pizza and Video games?  They can get that at home, or just about anywhere they want.  But wait, what, we don't have to pay for the pizza, oh I'm there.....

Why do we try to compete with the world.  Shouldn't we try to get the world to compete with us?  Get the world to offer what God (and we as youth pastors can offer)  A genuine relationship? 

Now, I'm not saying that pizza, gyms, videogames, coffee bars etc..... are bad, in fact far from it.  But are we making them the central focus of what our ministry is.  Or are we making the focus of our ministry showing the relationship God can offer and wants to have with them.

Remember, Things of the world pass away, Sega Genesis just doesn't pass for fun like it used to anymore  cell phones, computers, they all keep changing and eventually they lose the luster that they once held.  But what about Relationships?  That is a thing that everyone will always need.

Come to church, come to youth group, because we want to spend time as a group, actually getting to know eachother.  We want to see you grow in your faith, we want to help you discover what Christ actually did for you.

Is your ministry more about fun and game, or about Growth and Fellowship?

Is mine??????  Sometimes, I'm not so sure

But it should be

Ask, Seek, Knock

Warning:  This was written after several cups of coffee and maybe a pop or two this morning trying to get a kick start on the day, but none the less it was written here so I'll share it, hopefully it make sense to you, if not,  sorry, I'll try to fix it later  :)


⁷ “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ⁸ For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

-Matthew 7:7,8

Ask, Seek, Knock.  3 seemingly easy things to do right?  Yeah, maybe not so much.  In fact, they are very very hard.  But why are they so hard?  Why is it so hard to communicate with God?  With each other?

Why does the word Ask come first?  Did Jesus for some reason decide to order the words by how many letters are in them?  I doubt it.  Was it becasue it was the only of the 3 that started with a vowel?  Ha, ha, I'm pretty confident that wasn't it.  Does it even make a difference as to which one comes first?  Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, I had never really thought about it..... until now.

I don't know this thought came to me becasue I'm preparing myself for a crazy weekend with Jr. Highers on a retreat by coming up with things that make no sense at all, or if there really is something to this.  But I think Asking is the central key to both Seeking and Knocking.  I mean if you really think about it, (or over think it like I'm probably doing)  To Seek and To Knock both involve the need to ask.

One of my hopes is to let this verse be more of a key in my life, to often I've struggled with Asking, I've never been that good at it, usually I just try my best to take care of situations myself (usually finding it doesn't work very well)  How about you?  Do you Ask first?  Do you ask the questions at all?  Or are you trying to keep it all bottled up inside and not let anyone know.

Before you can seek what God wants you to find, and before you can enter into the house of God, you first must ask.  Once you do that, you'll find what you need to find, and he'll invite you in to the already opened door.

Sounds like something we should do with eachother more too.

Living life into 2011

Happy 2011 everyone!!!  Once again it is a New Year and for a lot of us, that probably means New Year’s resolutions.  Recently a youth pastor friend of mine from Texas sent me an email of an article she had read recently (written by Rev. James Martin)  Included in it were 12 things he knew on his 50^th birthday he wished he had known at 25.  Reading them I thought I would include 10 of them as good things to do/know in the New Year.  They are as follows.

1. First up: Stop worrying so much! It's useless. (I.e. Jesus was right.)

2. Being a saint means being yourself. Stop trying to be someone else and just be your best self. It saves you heartache.

3. Remember three things and save yourself lots of unneeded heartache: You're not God. This ain't heaven. Don't act like a jerk

4. Within you is the idea of your best self. Act as if you were that person and you will become that person, with God's grace.

5. Don't worry too much about the worst that can happen. Even if it happens, God is with you, and you can handle it. Really.

6. You can't force people to approve of you, agree with you, be impressed with you, love you or even like you. Stop trying and just be the “you” God wants you to be.

7. When we compare, we are usually imagining someone else's life falsely. So our real-life loses out. (I.e. Compare and despair.)

8. Even when you finally realized the right thing, or the Christian thing, to do, it can still be hard to do. Do it anyway.

9. Seven things to say frequently: I love you. Thank you. Thank you, God. Forgive me. I'm so happy for you! Why not? Yes.

10. Peace and joy come after asking God to free you -- from anything that keeps you from being loving and compassionate.

What do you think?  Do you find any of these that could apply to you in the New Year?  I know there are some things that I could work on and apply to my life (nope, I’m not perfect either and I’ll be the first to admit that.)  So let’s work on some of these together and make 2011 a great year, with God at the center of every day
Prayers and blessings to you in this New Year
Brent

Book of John and the Fruits of the Spirit

One of the things I did over the Christmas break was to work on organizing lessons that I have done in the past for Sunday School.  Not long ago I was doing a 12 week study on the book of John and I found myself re-reading through some of the notes I had. One particular week we were into John 15 talking about the Vine and the branches.  Now naturally for when you’re studying scripture you are always bound to jump around to different chapters and even different books that can relate to the one section of passage that you are trying to focus on and this past Sunday was no different.  Through the course of conversation we stretched out into Galatians 5 and more precisely, the Fruits of the Spirit.  Now I find it interesting that really all of us know these, but do we really know what they are?  For the sake of this writing, I’m going to include all of them, along with a dictionary definition.  So here we go…

Love:  a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.

Joy:  the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying.

Peace:  a state of mutual harmony between people or groups, esp. in personal relations.

Patience:  the quality of being patient, as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like.

Kindness:  the state or quality of being kind, a kind act; favor

Goodness:  The state or quality of being good.  Moral excellence; virtue.

Faithfulness:   true to one's word, promises, vows, etc.

Gentleness:  kindly; amiable

Self Control:  control or restraint of oneself or one's actions, feelings, etc.

So there they are, the Fruits of the Spirit, along with a definition.  Have you ever looked at what the actual definitions of the words are?  Are they the same as what you would have said it was?  That is one of the things that I like to do when preparing lessons and such, I like to make sure I have the actual definitions if we are going to key on.   So how do you compare to that list?  Which of the items on that list do you feel are you strong point?  Which ones do you feel you need to work on?  I posed another question to the students on this and I thought it was interesting how the answers came back.  Many people believe that the better connected you are to these attributes (the more you try to exemplify) in your life.  The closer you will be in your relationship with God.  Now while I think this is a valid way to look at it, I believe there is another way to look at it as well and it is this.  The deeper you try to be in your relationship with God, the more time you spend with him every day, the easier these attributes will play out in your life.  But the verses (Gal. 5:22-23) doesn’t end there.  It finishes with “Against such things, there is no law” Wow!!  Have you really thought about that?  There are hundreds if not thousands of laws that we have to live in accordance with every day.  What side of the road you drive on, wearing a seatbelt, how many hours in a week a student can work, even how you treat people.  That is what really floors me; there are laws that tell you how you have to treat people.  It is sad that we even need to have those laws.  God tells us right there in Galatians what we need in our lives.  If we could just follow them think about how much less we would have to worry about.  Now I am no less guilty of not being able to follow these fruits as the next person.  It’s hard to do, unfortunately, that is our nature.  But I’m asking you to help hold me accountable to them, and I will do my best to do the same for you.

God Bless.

Untitled

I’d like to take your mind on a little journey or two if I may.  Now normally, if you were in my youth group, I’d do like most people to do and ask you to close your eyes (well maybe, provided I knew you wouldn’t fall asleep due to having 5 big glasses of Mt. Dew each of which contained 4 extra sugar packets a piece.)  But since this is written instead of verbal, well, the whole closing your eyes thing might not work so well.  Anyways….

Imagine if you will, that your favorite college football team who at the beginning of the year wasn’t expected to be very good has exceeded everyone’s expectations.  They have won every game they played so far, some with ease; others are nail-biters that they pull out at the very end.  Now, here they are, the last game of the year for their conference, and they are playing the only other team in the conference that also has not lost a game.  Win this game, and you go to the National Championship, to play for the chance to hoist the trophy that will label you as the best football team in the nation.  The stadium is packed, the grills are getting lit left and right for the pregame tailgate, everyone is cheering, playing catch, slapping each other on the back, playing the teams fight song, wearing the team colors and everything else that would go along with the occasion and you have been given free tickets to roam the sidelines and a halftime locker room pass, you just have to be to the field by 7 AM….. 

Or, if you don’t like football lets go for music.  The piano is quite an amazing instrument and you have an opportunity to hear a free concert of a modern day pianist/composer whose skill rivals that of Bach or Beethoven.  You have been selected to hear this concert and have been given front row seats in the Boston Symphony Hall to hear an exclusive, one time only concert of songs that you have chosen exclusively.  There is a slight murmur of anticipation in the Hall as this is the only concert that he will perform of this nature ever and you are the only one who will get to meet with him after the 7 AM concert….

Now, be honest, in either one of these situations (or any other situation that you might think of) do you think that you would ever tell whoever game you the tickets, “thanks, but no thanks”, I would just get more out of these settings if I would be able to just be by myself for it.  Or you would say to me, sorry I can’t, I’m going to be out late the night before seeing a movie with my friends and I just don’t think I will be able to get up on time for it.  I don’t know about you, but I think if it was I who was offering the tickets to you and you gave me that response, my jaw would probably hit the floor.

Now of course I’m sure you are thinking to yourself right now, “Brent, no way I would say no to those opportunities, if I had to be out late the night before, so be it, I just won’t sleep much, but you can count on me being there.”  O.K.  Great, but now let’s say you are presented with another opportunity.  This one involves being able to go to a concert hall type building, give you the opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with others as they are really getting into the piano, the drums, the brass, the organ and the guitars.  After that you listen to the 20 to 30 minute motivational/teaching speech about how to improve yourself, how to do better, how to think clearer… (Yes I’m talking about church) and you tell me “thanks, but no thanks, I just can’t worship God with others, I need to do it on my own,” or maybe you tell me “I would, but I was out late the night before and I just don’t think I’d be able to get up in time for it.”

Has anyone other than me wondered no matter how much or little sleep we may get, will have no problem agreeing to go to a big game last minute, but when it comes to an event that happens on the same day at the same time of the week, we continuously just can’t get ourselves out of bed for a church service that probably doesn’t even start till 10 and won’t even take 2 hours of your day?  (I’m not even going to get into night church for now, that might just take way too much time of one more hour)

“You see, God, it’s like this: we could attend church more faithfully if your day came at some other time. You have chosen a day that comes at the end of a hard week, and we’re all tired out. Not only that, but it’s the day following Saturday night, and Saturday night is one time when we feel that we should go out and enjoy ourselves. Often it is after midnight when we reach home, and it is impossible to get up on Sunday morning. We’d like to go to church and know we should; but you have just chosen the wrong day.”  - (author unknown)

Has anyone else ever thought this? 

Now, this is probably not something you would expect to see in a church/religious type of magazine, but I think it is an interesting quote that I recently.  What really is Sunday to us?  What really is Sunday to me?  Sunday is an interesting day.  Sunday is known in the Christian world today as a “day of rest” But what does a day of rest consist of in our life.  Now before I get any farther in this I feel like I first need to make a disclaimer.  This is not meant to be something to day anyone is “Holier than anyone else” but instead it is meant for all of us (myself included) to take a look at just what Sunday is for us. 

O.K. to continue…  So Sunday is a day of rest, I think we would all agree on that right?  So what exactly does our day of rest look like?  Now, we always know when Sunday is going to be, it doesn’t change, it’s always at the same time of the week so we can easily be ready for it.  It always comes the day after Saturday and the Day before Monday.  So what does your Sunday consist of?  Sleeping in?  Going to church twice?  Going to church once and then going golfing?  Going for a long walk?... the possibilities I believe are endless.  But it let me to think, is what we do on Sunday allowing us to rest, or is it allowing us to relax?  Some of you might have just thought right there “Brent, what are you talking about?  What’s the difference between rest and relax?”    To be honest with you, in today’s societal definition of the two, I don’t believe there is a difference, but something I like to do is to look some basic words up and find what the true definition is, well according to Webster anyways.  So here it is:

Relax:  to make less tense, rigid, or firm; make lax: to relax the muscles. To diminish the force of.

Rest:  refreshing ease or inactivity after exertion or labor.  Or a supporting device; support.

Does anyone else notice a difference between the two?  I thought of an interesting way to look at it. Do we hope Sunday is a day of diminished force?  Or do we hope for Sunday to be a day of support?  Now like I said, I’m far from perfect and sometimes something may come up where you just have go somewhere/do something on Sunday.  But is Sunday the only day that we can go golfing?  Is Sunday the only day that you can go to a ball game?  Often we may here, “our child can’t stay out late because they have school in the morning”.  Or “I should probably get going so I can wake up for work in the morning”  When is the last time we heard “I should probably get going to make sure we are able to make it to church on time in the morning”?  The purpose of this is to just get us to think about how we treat Sunday?  Is it really a special day that we set aside to worship God with fellow believers, or for the most part do we just treat it like every other day?  Is going to church twice on Sunday really that bad?  Is going even once a week that hard to do?  Another quote I recently read and I will close with it says  

“Our great-grandfathers called it the holy Sabbath; our grandfathers, the Sabbath; our fathers, Sunday; but today we call it the weekend.

Wow!!, have we ever really thought of it that way?  What do we call it?