My friend Doug Jones over at Perigrinatio has got me thinking about how I evaluate myself and the efforts of others. In my soul searching I have discovered that I am way too opinionated about things that are really nothing more than preferences or another, different way. I have always been an evaluator. Good or bad, for as long as I can remember I have looked at events, books, ideas, movies, sports teams, etc. through a critical lens. I am not sure why that is…it is sort of just in me.

In my role as director of Sonlife I have had to be about evaluation, critical thinking and constant assessment of our training, products and events for their impact and effectiveness. I have to be conscience of and practice healthy business fundamentals like supply and demand, financial sustainability, cost to benefit analysis, budget projections, staff productivity, etc. I am learning a bit as I go. Thank God I have a team and a board of directors to help me. I have no formal business training and I am a youth pastor as heart so I admit I have some major growth areas. However, when it comes to the efforts of others I am far to concerned with my opinion, what I would do different or what I could do to make something better. This is a problem for me.

We all need to be evaluated and sharpened in our leadership and methods and the truth is there is always room for improvement. I am not against helping myself or others move to the next level, but why do I seem to think that everything that I do is better than what everyone else is doing…?

Now, convictions are all together a different issue. The things I am convicted about I do because of God’s leading and the Spirits prompting. I understand that when I evaluate someone else’s or even my own ministry efforts that I need to do so through the lens of what I hold to be an unshakable truth. Again, that is different. I know the difference between the two — opinion and conviction — and yet for whatever the reason I always seem to blend the two together and pretend that they are one.

Let me give you and example. We (Sonlife) just finished two straight weeks of Merge, an event designed to help students merge their life with God’s story, his intended way of life and his mission to restore the world. It is a good event. Nearly the whole week I was in opinion/evaluation mode. I was looking for things that I would do differently and then communicating those things to people around me. Now, some of them were simple and logistical and in many ways related to those healthy business practices I mentioned above. Others of them, however, were related more to the effectiveness of other people serving in certain roles compared to myself or the way a room was set up or the song selection or the images behind the lyrics on the screen. These are not things I am convicted about. These are things I have different ideas and preferences about. You see my personal conundrum?

I need to be more concerned with who God is calling me to be and what I believe he is ordering me to be convicted about. The jealousy, cynicism, skepticism, arrogance and the need to be better or right have got to go.

Do you struggle with this? Do you find yourself being carried away from your calling and mission by “better ideas” or “other ways”? We need to help each other grow away from this type of thinking.

I just finished reading the book, Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement. Tic Long introduced me to the book a week or so ago. I hadn’t even heard about it until he mentioned it.

The author, Lauren Sandler, is a brilliant author. Sandler is the Life Editor for Salon and she has written on cultural politics and other areas of interest for some very credible publications — New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, LA times, etc. I found her writing very imaginative, a bit sarcastic at times and somewhat over the top at other times. I thoroughly enjoyed the read, however, and if nothing else it was a reminder of just how differently people define evangelical and just how different other choose to live the tenets of it out.

I found her to be a bit of an alarmist but others I have talked to regarding the book have found her quite the opposite. I found myself shaking my head in agreement at times and at other times squinting my eyes and tilting my head as I do when I am a bit frustrated with authors who write about something so important as our youth culture and its movements and then write from only (or mostly) one perspective.

While so much of what Sandler writes about is true (I have seen it with my own eyes and felt it with my own heart), so much of it is from a pocket of evangelicalism that is fighting to survive in the minds and hearts of its own adherents. I wish she would have had a few different experiences in which to view what I find to be a growing number of thinkers and practitioners who haven’t lost our connection to the evangelical tradition but are trying hard to assist in the emergence of a different kind of evangelicalism.

We had another fantastic week at Merge. Youth Ministries attended from all over the US and Canada — Alaska, Texas, California, Massachusetts, Toronto, etc. We even had a couple of mates with us from Australia! Here is a comment from one of the youth workers who attended…

Our time at MERGE has become an Ebenezer that is set up where we can look
back & say, “see God met us there!”

I guess what really struck me was that our kids finally got to the spot
where they were actually working through & talking about the things that
really mattered. How to love & reach out to their friends, What it means to
live as a community of believers, working as a team to do more than serve
themselves, who God really is, what He is like & how much He loves them.

That is good stuff…

I had the privilege each morning to share some thoughts on spiritual formation with the participating youth workers. That opportunity led to a number of very good conversations about our integrated journey of life and faith. I was deeply encouraged by the number of youth workers who are really thinking hard about how to better shepherd their students to live, love and lead in the way of Jesus.

I have posted the following prayer before. But as I drove home from Merge I was reminded of it and found it fitting…

A Prayer for Today’s Youth

“…Be present especially with the young who must choose between many voices, Help them to know how much an old world needs their youth and gladness. Help them to know that there are words of truth and healing that will never be spoken unless they speak them, and deeds of compassion and courage that will never be done unless they do them. Help them never to mistake success for victory or failure for defeat. Grant that they may never be entirely content with whatever bounty the world my bestow upon them, but that they may know at last that they were created not for happiness but for joy, and that joy is to him alone who, sometimes with tears in his eyes, commits himself in love to thee and his brothers. Lead them and all thy world ever deeper into the knowledge that finally all men are one and that there can never really be joy for any until there is joy for all. In Christ’s name we ask it and for his sake. Amen.”

–From Frederick Buechner’s The Hungering Dark

I spent last week with about 200 students and youth workers from around North America. It was fantastic! Mike Novelli, the assoctiate director at Sonlife oversees our Merge event. Actually, he not only oversees it he is really the creative genius behind it. There is a team that gives tremendously helpful input and Mark Novelli and Kelly Dolan of Imago Media produce the event — but Mike is really the guy who got us all excited about the concept a couple of years ago. Tomorrow I am back at Merge 2 with another 500 youth workers and students. I can’t wait!

You can learn more about Merge here: http://www.sonlife.com/merge/

This past week was great for a lot of reasons. Students engaged in God’s story with passion and inquiry that amazed me, youth workers were able to get a glance at an applied learning model for youth ministry and they responded to it very favorably. I got to hang with a number of my friends — Mark Miller author of Experiential Storytelling, Tic Long from YS, Mike King and Topher Philgreen from YouthFront, Matt Wilks our director of youth worker initiatives at Sonlife, Jen Howver from VOD Communications, Calvin Russell and Mike Harder two of our regional directors at Sonlife and the list goes on…

This week I am looking forward to seeing some of my friends from Youth Ministries Australia. They are coming up to see the event as they are leading the Merge event (they are calling it Immerse) in a couple of cities down under. Should be another great week!

Earlier today I had a Video SKYPE conversation with one of my good friends. He asked me as he regularly does, “Chris, how are you?” I responded as I regularly do by saying, “I am doing really well.” He didn’t accept my response this time. He said, “You are so full of crap! When are you going to give me the unedited version of how you are doing?”

After 30 minutes or so of catching up, he sent me away to read a section of a book called, Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner. Here is a bit of it…

“I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition — that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else.

It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are even if we tell it only to ourselves — because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real things.”

Perhaps you will be as challenged by these words from Buechner as much as I was. Today, tell a friend who you really are. It feels good. I promise. I just phoned my friend back and told him a few of my secrets. At the least, tell yourself so not to accept the “highly edited” version.

Blessings friends!

I had a conference call this morning with the senior leadership team and youth pastor (not on the senior lead. team) of a new but rapidly growing church here in the greater Chicago area. Very nice people. Great hearts and an obvious passion to see people live, love and lead in the way of Jesus.

I was first introduced to this church when they attended our Enroute Learning Experience over a year ago. I have had the privilege of sharing in their journey from a distance as they update my with emails and phone calls. I would name the church (because I think it is such a cool place!) but the senior leader asked me not too, which is also very cool…

The church is only a couple years old but has grown from 50 people to about 350 people in less than two years. They are not trying to build a huge church and they do not see numbers as important — other than the fact that they need to move forward with expanding their staff in order to best serve the people. So, numbers are important to them but only in the context of being sure they are laying the foundation and basis for a staff community that can truly serve people. I get a very cool vibe from these folks…

It is an innovative church really seeking to discover ways to (these are my words to follow) help people belong to a community, recognize and experience God in the journey of life and join the others in the community as they seek to join God in his mission to restore the world.

The main issue they wanted me to help them think through was specifically related to their growing youth ministry. Here is the question they asked, “What do you think about us hiring a mature adult, maybe a man or women in their late 40’s to early 50’s, who has raised teens to come along side our youth pastor for mentoring? This person would give the bulk of their time to investing into the parents of the children and teens in our church, helping them to realize the importance of their active role in their kids’ formation. What do you think about that?”

Wow! What a great question! I was speechless — truly a momentary loss of words. I was totally expecting the normal next hire staff positions to be thrown out. You know, the worship person, the outreach person, the programming person, the creative arts person, the administrative person, etc. But no! One of only a few times in my consulting experience this church came to me with the very idea I was going recommend to them. Very fun. Once I shook out the absence of words in my head, I said, “Great idea! Let me know if you need help finding this person.” And then we talked more about what this person would do, the advantages to the position and the disadvantages, etc…

I was deeply encouraged by this phone call. (I know my friend, Mark Riddle would be too. Mark, I wish you would have been on the line with me!) What a great move — hiring a person who has raised teens to mentor the youth pastor and invest their time primarily in inspiring and equipping parents in order to see themselves as (and be effective at being) the critical piece to helping their own children grow spiritually.

So, this made me curious. Are any of you thinking along these lines? Would this be your next hire? Has it already been your “next” strategic hire?

Whatever comes to your heart and mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.

AW Tozer