The last few days have been deeply demanding. Not particularly physically demanding (although it was nearly 100 degrees every day and this northerner hates the heat) but certainly emotionally and spiritually. I have been in Managua, Nicaragua the last few days with a team of other speakers and artists from around North America that have a ministry partnership with Compassion.

Like you may be able to imagine, seeing children in poverty — the state of being without — is overwhelmingly wearing on your heart, mind and soul. Some of these children are without hope, some without love, some without food, some without shoes and clothing, some without Jesus, some without a place to call home and the list could go on… It is wearing on me. It is killing these kids—literally.

I am still intensely reflecting on my experience and I am still to close to it to collect my thoughts enough to post about what I am currently wondering around. I can say this much though; seeing children in poverty pushes me to consider who I am, what I have, what I do and what to do.

One of many highlights was the opportunity I had to meet one of the children that my family sponsors. His name is Eliezer. He is 6 years old and lives with his mother and father and his little brother Michael. Eliezer’s father is a baker. He makes about $30 USD a month and their rent is about $27 a month. You do the math… there isn’t much left over.

I visited Eliezer’s home. His home is not much bigger than my college dorm room was, has one small bed, a dirt floor that the boys sleep on and a tin roof in need of repair. I was thrilled to have the chance to spend about 30 minutes with him. I don’t speak Spanish so it was a bit awkward at first but fortunately Compassion supplied a translator. I loved on Eliezer, gave him some gifts and then prayed for he and his family. It was an experience I will cherish forever. It is hard to describe what I am feeling having said “adios” to him.

Do me a favor? Stop what you are doing right now and pray that Eliezer’s father would get more work. If he can get more hours at the bakery he would be able to fix the roof, build some beds, etc. for his family. Thanks for praying. More to come on my experience in Nicaragua.

Tomorrow I am off to Nicaragua for five days with Compassion. I am looking forward to seeing some of what they are up to there. For almost 10 years now my wife and I have been sponsoring a few children in partnership with Compassion and are experience has been amazing. I have wanted to go on what they refer to as a “vision trip” for some time…

We’ll be staying in Managua which is the capital city of Nicaragua. March and April are traditionally the hottest months so I expect it to be nearly 100 degrees each day. I have been to Central America a number of times but never to Nicaragua. Have any of you ever been?

I am really looking forward to engaging with the people, serving in whatever way we end up serving, enjoying some good conversation, food and fun with my good friends Matt Wilks and Ben Rough — and just seeing another part of God’s earth. I fully expect to be deeply moved and challenged when I see some of the conditions that the children are living in — as well as their stations in life.

I am hoping to learn from the people of Managua as much as give. I used to think when I would go on short-term trips like this that I was somehow going to take the poor “out of their misery” just by showing up, smiling and saying “Jesus loves you” or “God bless you”. The truth is I will probably see Jesus resembled more in the faces of the poor children in the outskirts of Managua then I did in the faces of the people at church this morning…

Last Friday night I was watching the NBC Nightly News with my friend Jim Newberry. At the end of the program they did a short but very rich story on a guy named Bill Austin. Bill has given out more than 200,000 hearing aids to people all over the world… He seems like a very cool guy and the story is incredibly inspiring and deeply moving.

Check out the article and video here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18096548/

Perhaps you might find a way to merge this with your upcoming teaching to your students regarding compassion and justice. Actually, this story can fit into a lot of different teaching themes — calling, missional living, sacrifice, restoration, hope, etc…

I spent the weekend in Kansas City. I was facilitating some of our (Sonlife) new evangelism training called Reveal: Joining in the Activity of God for about 60 students and leaders from the KC area and a church from Norwalk, IA. I was thrilled with the way the students and adult volunteers interacted and engaged with the content. The feedback was very positive.

Reveal is an attempt (and I think a good one) to lead students towards a new kind of evangelism. It has 6 parts to it and can be used over a weekend retreat type experience, over a six week small or large group experience or used in a one-day format. Here are the six parts:

1. God Revealed To Us
2. Revealing God Through Our Lives
3. Revealing God Through Community
4. Revealing God Through Genuine Relationships
5. Revealing God Through Compassion & Justice
6. Revealing God Through Conversations and Stories

I am really excited about Reveal as I think it will be a helpful tool for youth pastors to inspire, challenge and equip their students toward helping others find and follow Jesus.

Part of the Reveal experience in KC was attending a production called, The Prodigal Daughter put on by The Culture House and The Storling Dance Theater. The ballet was a very good production. The dancers were extremely talented and the storyline was great.

Obviously adapted from the parable of the prodigal son, this production is designed to tell God’s story and reveal the grace and love he has for each of us as well as the unbelievable ability and desire to forgive. I think most of the students enjoyed the ballet for the most part but one thing was for sure — ballet is an incredibly creative way to help students engage with the story of God!

This morning a new friend of mine named Ryan Smith drove 2.5 hours from Nappanee, IN to meet with me regarding A New Kind of Youth Ministry. Ryan is the youth pastor at Nappanee First Brethren Church. He has been the youth pastor there for 7 years and is seeking new ways to help his students and volunteers find and follow Jesus.

We had a fantastic conversation about a number of different things including being a new parent (His wife is 8 months pregnant), creating environments for missional living among our students, YS’s National Youth Worker Convention, a new kind of evangelism, authentic living in and among our local communities and a number of other topics.

Ryan and I somehow ended up spending about an hour talking about and thinking around some of the biggest challenges that youth ministry faces today. Whenever I get a chance to ask a youth pastor who is “on the ground” or “in the trenches” a few questions about challenges they see see and/or experience in youth ministry I do — I find that I learn a ton and see things in a new light.

One of the challenges he mentioned has stuck in my mind — complacency. Complacency is a feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, especially coupled with an unawareness of potential danger or trouble. In this self-satisfaction we (youth workers — and me included!) can become so comfortable and secure in our current roles as youth workers that we become unaware of the troubling conditions around us. I think Ryan is right on! There is a smugness about what we do sometimes and the worst part about it is that we often can’t even recognize it.

Complacency is similar to denial in that most people who are living smack dab in the middle of it don’t know it and therefore can’t admit it. I think complacency might very well be one of the biggest challenges that youth ministry faces. That is, complacent youth workers who are conditionally so content with what is happening around them they don’t realize that making even the slightest adjustment to their ministry framework, strategy, model, etc. could result in significant impact.

Do you know someone who is stuck in complacency? People who are complacent can be known to have been doing the same thing for years with little or no impact, stop pushing themselves to learn — they don’t read books, blogs or articles, they don’t attend seminars or conferences, etc.

So I ask you –What do we do with this? What is the best way to help complacent people realize their self-satisfying life and help them get out of it? Remember, if you know someone like this, treat them gently and with love and grace because there is a very good chance they don’t even know they are complacent.

Oh, and we should ask ourselves … Are we complacent?

I am intensely fascinated with creative people. I have never really seen myself as a creative type so being around creative people always inspires and challenges me. Even more than that — it gives me the permission to generate new ideas, imagine, innovate and invent.

I have been reading a short book called, Interactive Excellence: Defining and Developing New Standards for the 21st Century by Edwin Schlossberg. Schlossberg is the founder of ESI Design, one of the world’s foremost experiential design firms that is known for creating physical and virtual spaces for people to interact, exchange ideas and learn from each other.

In his incredibly winsome book, Schlossberg says this…

“…I am interested in the patterns and forces that shape and create culture. I am not interested in learning how to subvert the interest of an audience into things that are for sale or create methods for propaganda. What I am interested in is calling attention to the discipline of looking at the audience as part of the act of composition or design.” (pg. 5)

Schlossberg’s thoughts above have gently pressed me to reflect on how we treat culture, intermittently use the gospel as propaganda and avoid thinking about the “audience” as part of the creative work we call youth ministry. Here are some random thoughts about that…

Are we really interested in the “patterns and forces” that shape culture? Do we really care about what makes culture what it is? Unearthing the “patterns and forces” that make culture what it is can be very demanding work. It can surprise us. It can be messy. It can be frustrating. It can be scary. It can raise anxieties in us we thought we never had. It (the process if unearthing the realities of culture) can also, however, reveal insights to us that help us discover into the most effective way to engage in culture and live missionally. Why does the intellectual, physical, emotional, social and spiritual make-up of the context in which we do ministry surprise or even scare us? I think there are many of us that would rather not encourage our students to engage in culture and instead “subvert the interest” or “create methods for propaganda.” This undermining technique can tend to speak a gospel message of distance and divergence. Instead, I would think our gospel message would be one of intimacy and convergence.

“…anointed me to preach the “good news” to the poor…” (Luke 4:18ff)

I get the whole “in the world but not of the world” deal. And I get that there are some things about life outside the bubble of protection we sometimes hide under called, Christianity that are alarming, concerning and downright troublesome. What I don’t get is why we often spend more time in our ministries making sure that our students are not “of the world” and very little time helping them understand what it looks like to be equally concerned and passionate about “being in the world” or living missionally.

Understand me, I think spiritual transformation is vitally important and I am not choosing one over the other. I fully believe that we all should be working away from “conforming to the patterns of this world” (Romans 12:1-2). But why are we allowing the “patterns and forces” to scare us into an unwarranted way of thinking that can result in an ineffective and idle ministry?

Also, I often wonder why we are so afraid to let the “audience” participate in the life of the church. This confuses me. I cannot reconcile why many youth pastors try to make sure that their students are protected from the “patterns and forces” of life outside the bubble. And in doing so, leave the accessibility of and the association with a genuine community so hard to enter into. We invite and welcome people to follow Jesus but many of us are so nervous to allow culture and the “patterns and forces” that direct it into our community that it ultimately directs us away from our mission of blessing others through God’s love and restoration.

On another note, we talk like we love kids and that our student communities are ripe with acceptance and belonging. But how disingenuous is that “love” if our primary but often underlying goal is to “subvert the interest” or use the gospel message as “propaganda” rather than letting it stand for what it is — a plausible or sufficient story that can meet and/or fulfill all of one’s needs, hopes and dreams.

The Schlossberg quote above got me thinking that our creative methods to show and share the gospel can not be based out of a fear of the “patterns and forces” of culture and therefore turn the gospel into some “propaganda” based story. Rather our creative methods must be based on a trust in the gospel truths of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and Pentecost.

Just rambling here … any thoughts?

This morning I read the following and thought I would share it with you all. It is from one of my favorite books, The Illumined Heart: The Ancient Christian Path of Transformation by one of my favorite authors, Frederica Mathewes-Green.

“We think of theology as an intellectual undertaking, an attempt to construct a systematic, comprehensive explanation using tools of ordinary reason. But for earlier Christians all theology, teaching and preaching, had the practical aim of assisting the believer toward theosis.” (pg. 27)

Mathewes-Green a bit earlier in the reading defines theosis this way…

“…one’s essential being is permeated and filled with the presence of God. It is something more than merely resembling Jesus, more then merely following. It is [total] transformation.”

Have your students ever heard of the word theosis? Have you?  I am not trying to be or to come across as demeaning or insult you if you have never heard of that term/concept.  I just hope you’ll investigate its deep, rich and life-changing meaning and share it with the students you are shepherding.

I had the chance to speak at SOULstice last night in Minneapolis. It was great fun. I spoke on the discipline of confession or telling God the truth. Scot McKnight in his book Jesus Creed provides some great insight into what confession means and looks like. I borrowed most of my thoughts for the night from the book…

If you do not already own a copy of the Jesus Creed get one and if nothing else (although I think you will find the whole book extremely helpful) share the section on becoming a truth-teller with your students. There is no doubt that you and they will benefit from Scot’s thoughts on confession and the result of awakening forgiveness. McKnight also gives a great teaching outline from Luke 3 when John the Baptist is baptizing people in the Jordan…

Brian Mowrey (pictured below in the middle with the black guitar) shepherds the Soulstice community. Soulstice is a really diverse community of people both in race and age. Their vision is to experience the rhythm of change together. I love that vision…

Brian is a very gifted emerging leader with unbelievable talents and potential. I look forward to seeing how God continues to use Brian in the coming days. If you are ever in the Twin Cities on a Sunday evening or you live in the area currently and you are looking to experience worship with a God-loving, people-loving community then participate in the gathering of Soulstice.