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My summer

August 25, 2011 in Blog, Everything, Life, Ministry with 1 Comment

If you didn’t know, I spent my entire summer interning with the awesome people at Gateway Church in Austin, Texas. Yes, this means that I had to deal with Kenny Conley every day. And other great people at Gateway like Cathy Harwick (the fantastic children’s pastor at Gateway), Corey Schwarz (the south campus children’s pastor who was never, ever mean to me), Linnea Danna (the wonderful Operations Director), and Wendy Justis (she’s the one with the orange hair up above). I also got really connected in Gateway College, the awesome-tastic college ministry at Gateway. I met lots of great people like Mattias, Sledge, David, Colin, and tons of others who are simply too awesome to name here.

I learned a lot of awesome stuff this summer. I met some really awesome people. Time is too short to share it all here. But I’ll share some of it below in blast-out bullet point form. If you want to know more, just talk to me. I’d be glad to tell you. :)

  • Austin is amazing. It has the best food of I think anywhere on the planet.
  • Kenny Conley loves movies. Cathy Harwick likes to get a little crazy. Corey Schwarz has a beard. (And it felt weird.)
  • Small groups work.
  • Trust is essential to a community and to a team.
  • Leaders reproduce themselves in others. They work themselves out of a job.
  • Dreamers need doers.
  • Kids are hurting and broken. They need someone to love them.
  • None of us are perfect. We’re all in process together, growing and becoming more like Christ.
  • Community is critical to growth.
  • Christ shows up in a whole lot of places you’d never expect.
  • We all have something to contribute to the conversation. Listen.
  • Story changes lives.
That’s just a little spurt of some of the things I took home with me. It was an awesome summer. I’m hoping to go back next summer. Maybe sooner. It was good stuff. :)

Listen to Your Country #kidmin

June 21, 2011 in Christianity, Everything, Ministry with 0 Comments

 

I just got done watching the movie Invictus for the first time. And I must say, it was an amazing movie. Probably one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. It’s about the true story of Nelson Mandela using the game of rugby to unite the incredibly divided nation of South Africa in the mid-1990s. Before going any farther, watch the video above for a reference point.

As the South African rugby team enters the last 7 minutes of extra time, the score is all tied up. The team captain, François Pienaar (played by Matt Damon) calls his team into a huddle. The entire crowd of 63,000 South Africans breaks into a song of support for their team. And not only those 63,000, but millions of South Africans all over the country. In the huddle, François says to his team, “Do you hear? Listen to your country! Seven minutes. Seven minutes!”

I won’t ruin the end of the movie for you, but I will say that hearing the voices of their nation completely changes the way the South African team plays. Hearing the support of their entire nation transformed them.

If you didn’t know, I’m interning this summer with Kenny Conley and Cathy Harwick at Gateway Church in Austin, TX. As I’ve been hanging out with them and talking ministry, I’ve come to understand how truly important it is to have the voices of the entire church cheering on volunteers. It’s one thing to have the coach (kids’ pastor) and your teammates cheering you on. It’s something else entirely to have the voices of your entire church behind you! It’s vitally important for you, as the leader of the kids ministry, or any ministry for that matter, to communicate to your church how important it is for your church to encourage your volunteers and let them know how vitally important what they do is to the body! It’ll completely transform the way your team plays. Cheer them on!

One Drop #kidmin

April 10, 2011 in Blog, Christianity, Everything, Ministry with 1 Comment

 

Single boat sailing in a vast ocean

Image from Flickr user Jo Ingate.

This morning in kidmin at Liberty (my church) was awesome. We were using week 3 of the God to the Rescue Easter curriculum, available absolutely free online. It’s really great stuff. Most importantly, the kids connected really well with the message and had a lot of fun. We did some wild and crazy stuff like the Licorice Race (look it up in the Kommunity at KidzMatter.com!) and Human Horseshoes. I tried to greet as many of the kids as I could personally and ask them how their week was going. It was just overall a really great morning.

After the service though, I began to think: there are so many kids that come in and out of those doors every week, and hundreds more just in our community that are unreached. It’s kind of overwhelming to think about. To think: how can I possibly impact the lives of all of those kids? I felt like the lonely sailboat in the middle of the huge ocean that you see above.

But then I realized: I’m not called to impact all of those kids. That’s not my mission. My mission, as a servant of God, is to put what little I have to offer into His hands and let Him do the work. My call is to put the one drop of influence I have to offer into the lives of the kids I minister to. My one drop sometimes seems insignificant in the context of an ocean. But it’s not. My drop, and your drop, and the drop of the dozens if not hundreds of other believers that will minister to these kids at some point in their lives accumulate. And not under our own power. He brings the people into the lives of these kids that they need at that time to be their “drop.”

The next time you’re sitting around and questioning: can I really make a difference? Remember this: you’re just a drop. You’re a meaningful, God-inspired, God-fueled drop. And He can’t wait to use your drop to make a change in the world.

Crushed: Part 1, Savior

April 2, 2010 in Blog, Ministry with 0 Comments

Today, as you probably know, is Good Friday, the day when we remember the death and suffering of Christ. For me, “Good” Friday has always felt like a bit of a misnomer. It’s always felt like there wasn’t too much “good” about it. Our Savior was bruised and crushed. What good could come of that?

It’s overwhelming to think what our Savior endured. It all began that Thursday evening when Christ returned from his passionate, pleading prayer with his Father. Someone Christ had placed into his inner circle, one of only 12 in the world, had betrayed him. Turned his back for money. The guards seized him violently and dragged him back into town to appear before the Sanhedrin. Right as He’s entering this, the most difficult period of his earthly existence, the 11 disciples that were left ran away and denied Him. They hid away in locked rooms while their Lord endured a beating at the hands of his fellow countrymen. He was spat upon. Mocked. Beaten. Lied about. All leading to a false conviction. Crushed.

So He was led before the Roman leaders. Again abused and beaten. After some legal wranglings, He was brought before a tribunal of the Roman leader, Pilate, and an angry mob of Jewish people. Pilate’s wife tried to warn him about Christ’s innocence. Pilate tried to get the people to release Jesus. Instead they stood below and screamed “CRUCIFY HIM! CRUCIFY HIM!” Pilate, so distraught at what he was about to do, washed his hands to declare his innocence. Then, subjecting himself to the will of the people, sent Christ away for punishment and crucifixion. Christ’s innocence was crushed.

He was led to a whipping yard. Blindfolded and forced to lean over a post, He could see nothing. Suddenly, the area was filled with the CRACK! of the whip coming down. Shards of glass and stone wallowed their way deep into His flesh. Suddenly, the whip was ripped out of his back, snapping connective sinews clean off. Again the yard was filled with the crack of the soldier’s whip. Each successive time hunks of flesh, muscle, and blood came flying off Christ’s back and into the crowd. He was in such suffering and so dismembered he was barely recognizable as human. His body was crushed.

But that wasn’t all that was in store for Christ this day. The soldiers led him away and shoved a crown made of inches-long thorns into Christ’s skull. He cried out in wails of pain as the thorns drove themselves through flesh and bone alike. They mocked him. They cast lots for his clothing. His spirit was crushed.

Appearing as nothing more than a heap of blood and disemboweled flesh, the guards cast a cross over his back and screamed at him to stand up. He carried it oh so short a distance before he collapsed, weakened and exhausted from the grueling punishment he had received. A bystander named Simon was asked to take up that cross and carry it the rest of the way. They soon found themselves atop a hill just outside of the city, known as Golgotha. Here it was that Christ would breathe His last. Simon lay the cross down, and the soldiers threw Christ’s body upon it. They took massive hammers and nails longer than anyone can imagine and drove them through what was left of his hands and feet. Much like the nail pierced Christ’s muscle and bone, Christ’s cries of pain pierced the area nearby. Christ’s life was crushed.

Even in His suffering, the love of Christ was brilliantly displayed through his actions. A thief being crucified next to him asked, and received, Christ’s forgiveness. He wouldn’t save himself. He loved us too much. He even cried out to his Father, that He might forgive those who had done such horrific things to him. Christ’s human body could be crushed, but His love could never be.

Suddenly a wave of darkness swept over the land. For 3 straight hours this enveloping darkness covered all, leaving just the agonized screams of those being crucified to fill the air. At the strike of 3, he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The people whispered and wondered if maybe he was calling Elijah. Suddenly Christ spoke the words, “It is finished,” and breathed his last. All around the city the earth began to quiver and rip open. The curtain in the Temple, the great curtain that separated us from God, ripped in two. Tombs opened up and out walked dead ancestors who entered Jerusalem and spoke with many. Something big had happened. The divide between us and God had been crushed.

Many other things occurred after this. Christ’s Godhood was affirmed. His death was assured. His burial was completed. He had been crushed. So what makes this Friday so “good?” It wasn’t the crushing of Christ. It was the crushing of the divide. It was the crushing of pride. It was the crushing of sin. Our Savior was crushed, out of His mighty love, for you and I. That’s good news.

Toyota and Children’s Ministry: Part 1

April 1, 2010 in Blog, Ministry with 1 Comment

Unless you’ve been living in a hole for the last few months, you know that Toyota has had to recall millions of vehicles around the world due to mechanical problems. As you may also know, Toyota’s CEO, Akio Toyoda, gave a testimony before the US Congress several weeks ago about the situation. This series is going to feature some quotes from that testimony, and what we, as children’s ministers, can learn from what he had to say. So let’s begin.

I fear the pace at which we have grown may have been too quick.

-Akio Toyoda

In some Christian circles making this statement about any kind of ministry would be condemned as outright sacrilege. Surely if we’re growing it’s a good thing, so let’s just keep doing it! Unfortunately, this can’t always be true.

Businesses know this quite well. Take MySpace for example. They experienced explosive growth and hired a ton of people, but hadn’t planned for long-term success and stability. Now, they’re just a speck on the social media radar. Take Toyota as another example. They rapidly expanded their dealer base across the country and built plants and hired people to support this growth. As a result, they had massively increased sales of their products. However while they may have had more customers and more money rolling in, the company’s structure simply wasn’t ready for such a massive influx.

Churches are especially vulnerable to this. We may suddenly see huge growth in numbers and be simply overjoyed. Growth is good, and a sign of a healthy church. It really is a great thing. The trouble comes when suddenly our children’s ministry, already underfunded and understaffed, has suddenly swollen from 50 kids to 250 kids. What do we do now? We can recruit more volunteers, hire more staff, and throw more money into it, absolutely, but all of those things take time. If we need 50 volunteers next Sunday and we’ve only got 20 right now, you can’t train 30 more people in a week. Money and buildings and staff and volunteers and all of these other things can help, but they don’t get at the root of the problem.

The root is structure. Small churches tend to run like, well, small churches. They are set up structurally to be small for the rest of their existence. Ask any strategic planner and they’ll tell you: that just doesn’t work. You don’t buy a house with 1 bedroom if you’re planning to have 15 kids. Yes, you can remodel and add on, but it’s a messy thing trying to rebuild the proverbial “house” while we’re living inside of it. It may work, but your chances of getting frustrated are so much higher.  Yet ministries who want, someday, to have 5000 members still set up like a ministry with 50 members.

Your church, and especially your children’s ministry, must be structured to grow. Always be prepared for an influx of 25 more kids suddenly. Structure things so that as you grow, you’re simply filling in the structure, not rebuilding it.

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