Ears to hear...

Typically my blog leans more toward the philosophical than the practical...but perhaps today I can blend the two a little more intentionally.
I'm a youth pastor and very shortly will have been in youth ministry for 20 years...
I've seen and experienced a little over those years, however, I don't pretend for a minute that I have this all figured out.
I love students and will always love students, but not everyone shares my affection for the pubescent masses.
Probably because, now, more than ever, teenagers are direct. Students speak their minds even if it's not polite or socially acceptable...which I happen to find refreshing, but to some, this is offensive.
To the aged ones out there, (anyone over 25) who feel disconnected and like you've lost touch or control or both... Don't worry, we all have those days, but this freedom of speech is striking you as disrespectful or irreverent and so it rubs you the wrong way.
This is more often symptomatic of a generational disconnect than it is a cultural norm, although we have experienced a consistent decline in the respect for our elders department over the last 50 years...but, I digress.
What we, like all other generations of adults before us must realize is this: Students are saying more than we are hearing. I don't think this is a startling new revelation, but, If you really want to connect with the teens in your life, hear them. Don't just listen to them and respond out of your annoyance at their lingo or feigned disinterest.
Actually take a moment and listen...focus and hear them.

In many instances, they are dying for you to hear them. yeah, you might not understand everything that's going on or coming out, but for God's sake...try. You'll never know how significant the effort is to them and the impact that it makes until you do. Though we may never permanently span the generation gaps, we certainly can make the effort to build a few little walking bridges here and there and be amazed at what comes of it.

Though Youth Ministry might not be for everyone, we all have a responsibility to bring those generations along that follow us...at the very least we should try and do it intentionally...Lord knows we're reaping the rewards of the accidental influence past generations of adults have had on the "angry youth" around them.

Stop, look, listen and be amazed.

Oh, give me ears that i might see more clearly, than i do through eyes that oft deceive me...hearing, not only listening...discerning, learning, loving, being.

you say goodbye and I say hello...

Why can't we say what we mean? I mean, really, why is it so difficult to communicate with one another these days?
There are many opinions on this subject, ranging from general civic indifference to the disconnect between people as a result of their digital connections through social media, to those living in fear of their neighbors...and on and on...
Then there are the Beatles...nearly 40 years ago, laying it out in plain, well, mostly plain English. "I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello..."
I think, therein lies the answer...for eternity, we have been living within the ambiguity of our words, daily eking out an existence from within the confines of our misunderstanding.
Bottom line: We just can't sort it out enough to spit it out...
Now, not everyone suffers from this malady. There are those who speak what they mean ad infinitum...incessantly jabbering on about everything and nothing...speaking without thinking.
The key, at least from my perspective is this...think about what you're saying before you open your yap. This may not be an iron-clad solution to our problem, but at least it cuts out the majority of misunderstandings.
This guy Jesus said it pretty plainly..."Simply let your yes be yes and your no, no; when you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.
Ah, maybe that's the ticket...we are so self absorbed that we cannot separate our words from the context of how they, or any given situation affects us personally.
Maybe instead of worrying about what our words mean to us, we should think about what they mean to the other guy before we let them fly...?
I say yes, you say no...

FREEDOM!

One of my favorite "guy" movies of all time and I'm sure yours too, Braveheart, includes many compelling scenes. Not the least of which is the final frame, where Mel Gibson's character, William Wallace, is stretched out for his date with the disembowel-er. With his final word he cries out in both anguish and defiance the word "Freedom"! Leaving many of us with a heart wrenching visual of the price many have paid throughout the millennia for that which we all, on some level, still seek...freedom. Freedom from oppression, freedom of expression, freedom to simply be.
Depending upon your desired outcome and motivation, the quest for freedom always requires some form of rebellion. And therein lies the slippery slope, because rebellion, by nature, leads us toward some very nasty pitfalls. But I digress.
So, if you will indulge me, I will attempt to bring some sense of context to the point I'd like to drive home...
Rebellion is a necessary component in the pursuit of freedom.
I've grown up in church, so my worldview has always been seasoned by that particular influence and I fully embrace the meaning of being a follower of Christ. But this begs a question that perhaps, you've asked in your own cogitations on such things...
What happens to you when you "become a Christian"?
The Apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Corinthian church, "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone the new has come."
Intellectually, I grasp the meaning of what he is saying, but never having really experienced a radical transformation of my own, I have always been curious.
I've heard people who committed their lives to follow Christ later in life say, that they could really tell that something occurred when they professed Christ. It was an immediate difference, like a light being turned on in a dark room. As I've said, this was not my experience. I committed my life to follow Jesus at an early age...somewhere around 7 years old. The motivation for doing so was that the Sunday School teacher was giving out free Bibles to anyone who "asked Jesus in to their hearts".
As I got older I began to understand the concept of what this really meant as well as what sin was and why I felt bad when I did something wrong...conscience and the conviction of the Holy Spirit reminding me that God had called me to live life by His design and the way I naturally wanted to go didn't fit with that.
Consequently, I responded to pretty much every call to ask for forgiveness of sins and weekly re-committed my life to follow Jesus.

As I got older I began to get tired of feeling guilty and I began to notice something peculiar in the lives of older people. What I observed, we would now call hypocrisy. As a result I became a little disillusioned with the whole thing, because these were supposedly, "mature" Christians...So, I decided to venture out on my own and reject the feelings of conviction and guilt that were placed upon me, primarily by people who were holding a standard up for me to reach that they weren't attaining to themselves. In this period of time I did what many teens do when they want to express such feelings of disillusionment and confusion and anger...I rebelled.
As I grow older and hopefully wiser, I look back on those years and notice a couple of things about what it means to rebel.
1. Back in the day, rebellion was looked on more disdainfully...
2. Though parents accepted the fact that at some point it would happen, they were ill-prepared to deal with the actual occurrence. (not entirely unlike parents today.)
In the present, rebellion is so common that it really isn't even talked about much anymore, unless the cops get involved or the neighbors dog starts digging up body parts in your back yard...
We've even embraced the appearance of rebellion in the world of church...screw tradition, have a cigar, brew your own beer in your kitchen, cuss while you preach, push all conventional wisdom to the side...be edgy...and why not? It's profitable, rebellion sells books, it puts butts in the seats and gets 20-somethings to go to church, especially if there's coffee involved... and we embrace it, much to the chagrin and displeasure of the older generations.
Now, don't get me wrong, I have intense respect and love for the heritage I have as a Christian and the traditions of the church, but I also love the progress the church has made over the last 15-20 years and if we had to be a little rebellious to get there, then, well, I think it's been mostly positive as well as inevitable...
As wise King Solomon once said, there's nothing new under the sun...Every generation rebels...trying desperately to NOT be like the generation before it, but unwittingly making the same mistakes and perpetuating the classic historical blunders...like starting a land war in Asia, or going in against a Sicilian when death is on the line...sorry, just a little shout out for the fans of the movie The Princess Bride.
The point is this: there is this tension between what we want to be and what we're being told we should be...
So in an attempt to assert our independence and "stick it to the man", we go all anti-hero or try and stick out from the crowd or blend in with the crowd, so as to not be noticed, or whatever your M.O., consequently wrestling with what it really means to be a follower of Jesus...a process that many of us are continually engaged in to one degree or another.
Rebellion, typically is the precursor to freedom, even in God's economy...stick with me now...subject change, ready, go:
Whenever God does something, he does it perfectly...that is His nature.
But, when we get our hands on it, human nature is to distort God's perfection...we make it in to what we want to be, rather than what God intended.
The classic example is found in the creation story, where God breathes into existence, man and woman in the garden of Eden...ultimate perfection; innocence; man in pure relationship with God. But temptation enters the scene, "why be content with being with God...he's holding out on you - hiding knowledge and truth from you..."; "you're not really disobeying, your becoming enlightened...gain control, power, real freedom, rebel...be god."
And that is the classic blunder.
The thing that we perceive to bring "real" freedom to our lives, only proves to bring bondage, heartache, despair and sadness.
You can see it all throughout history.
You see it in man's response to God trying to bring humanity back in to relationship with Him.
God intended for us to live in harmony with him, but he also intended for this thing we call the church to mirror that relationship as a beautiful expression of community and love. Well, men got their hands on this endeavor and in the struggle to work out a process, control, power and jealousy got in the way. We imposed rules and restrictions on one another and in so doing pushed the freedom in which God intended us to live, seemingly, way out of reach. The sad thing is, we do it to one another and we do it to ourselves, withholding the very thing we're looking for...freedom.
Again, we hear from the Apostle Paul, saying to the Galatian church, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."
Jesus was the visible expression of God's desire for us to live in freedom as individuals and as a collective, thus Paul's use of the word, "again". As I mentioned a moment ago, we got our hands on this thing and ruined it...but, thankfully,
Christ brought freedom from empty religion, hollow traditions and hypocrisy...Paul says, stand firm in the freedom that comes from realizing what it is to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Paul also uses the imagery of slavery to drive his point home. He knew his audience would connect with this illustration because under Roman occupation, Macedonia lived with the reality of slavery, as conquered people as well as slaves by birth and indebtedness. Paul knew that those who had been in slavery or who were intimately acquainted with it, would understand what it meant to be truly set free!
Slavery is a horrible part of human history. But as you may know, it is alive and well in the world today. Even here within the borders of the United States of America, women and children are forced into slavery in the sex industry. Let's put this a little closer to home. In Portland Oregon, you will find the 2nd largest sex trafficking market in the U.S. Not far from our doorsteps this hideous reality exists. If you could hear the testimony of those who have been rescued from this terrible existence, you would come to understand the joy, relief, the indescribable feeling of literally being set free.
Though I don't personally know anyone who has experienced liberation from modern day sex trade slavery, I know people who experience slavery of a different kind.
Many people understand what it means to be enslaved by addiction. Perhaps you or someone you know or love has been gripped by the power of alcoholism, drug addiction or pornography and what it does to an individual and their family.
Within these life controlling behaviors lies the illusion of freedom, an escape, a high, a fantasy, that temporarily gives a sense of freedom...but it is just that, temporary and what it leaves behind is a deeper emptiness, because each time the pipe touches the lips or the liquid pours from the bottle into the stomach or the mouse clicks to reveal sordid images, a piece of what once was a whole individual is robbed.
Though the intent of this post isn't to address these issues specifically, they illuminate a point too frequently missed...we are far too often in pursuit of an illusion of freedom and the rebellion that we thought would lead us to freedom only serves to bind us to a far deadlier captor than that which we rebelled against initially.
See, the point here is this: unless you are constantly moving toward Jesus, you are moving away from true freedom, toward a destructive illusion...
I don't want to ramble on too much longer here, but let's not forget, in our culture, one of the most powerful illusions is the illusion of perfection. The perfect marriage, the perfect job, the perfect church, the perfect kids, the perfect life and so on and so on...let me tell you this; freedom does not equal perfection. Because, perfection only happens when you're dead.
Relationship with Jesus brings freedom. Freedom from the illusion of perfection and the need to pursue that illusion.
Reality is this: relationship with Jesus is a struggle, every pursuit of freedom is.
The struggle is visible
The struggle is visceral
The struggle,ultimately brings victory...because in the struggle, we find what we are looking for:
Freedom
Identity
Purpose
All those things we hoped we'd find when we stuck it to the man. Freedom and rebellion go hand in hand. Rebellion is a necessary component in the pursuit of freedom, but it's all about the motivation...the why...Jesus' confrontations of the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of the day was perceived as rebellion...but when you look at the motivation, when you look at the end result, you see clearly, it was necessary and produced for us, Freedom!

dead or alive

So, I came across an article whilst browsing the most reliable, (cough, cough), source of information in the universe...the WWW.
The article was a run-down of recently and not-so-recently deceased stars of music, movies and television and what their estate's net worth was over the last calendar year. It was quite eye-opening to see that some of the names on the list were actually more monetarily successful in death than in life.
Also, it seems you can make a tidy living for your surviving family members from the great beyond, if you have certain marketable characteristics... copyright for music or books as well as the rights to market your name or image.
Anyway, it was morbidly fascinating and got me thinking...
I've made the joke with my wife over the years, that I'm worth more dead than alive...life insurance etc...
But I never thought about it from a spiritual perspective.
Stick with me, this might be a bit of a stretch.
When we commit our lives to follow Christ, scripture tells us we are dead to sin and the old way of life. In a sense we die to ourselves or as Paul puts it; "the old has gone, the new has come."
So in the spiritual sense, we are made alive through Christ when we put our old lives to death. So, when you look at the life you lived pre-Christ, you are worth more dead than alive, because of the total re-birthing that takes place when you commit your life to Christ.
Committing your life to follow Christ might just be the greatest leap your personal net worth has ever taken!
Anyway, just a silly observation...but it begs the question, what is the life your living worth from an eternal perspective?
thoughts to ponder...

What If?

So, I was standing in an upstairs room in our church building the other morning looking out from a large picture window.
The panoramic view was truly breathtaking.
Fall had arrived in all of its splendor, setting fire to the hillsides as leaves took on the brilliance of their grave clothes.
The vivid color splashed across the scene in front of me got me thinking about how the seasons are a metaphor for our lives.
I know this is not an original observation, but nonetheless, I was struck by its veracity once again.
We, like the trees, experience the seasons of life with similarly visible effects.
We don the green of spring as the buds on the branches let loose their feathery captives...life is fresh, hopeful and fraught with possibility. As time passes we find ourselves, like the leaves, painted with the broad strokes of time and circumstance.
Though we would wish it away if we could, the inevitability of growing brittle and frail becomes a consistent reminder that we too will and must fall.
With every dip in temperature and hint of breeze, we quake, anticipating the gentle release that sends us twirling toward the earth.
Now, this could be a really depressing little tome that I've crafted here, but, let's look at it from a different slant...
What if we view the seasons of life from a more, shall we say, spiritual and perhaps positive perspective?
What if we then, are the tree and not the leaf?
What if we chose to see the leaves as indicators of spiritual growth in our lives and the seasons as opportunities to promote the same?
Because, we all have seasons in which our lives are rife with foliage and full and fresh and alive and we revel in it! But, conversely, we have those seasons in which things get a little, shall we say, dry, and possibly even barren, much like the tree in winter. But what then, if we chose to take those moments, knowing they, like the seasons, come 'round regularly and made provision in our lives when we are without "fruit", to build up a storage of (spiritual) nutrients, not unlike the measures an arborist takes to insure the health of trees and prepared ourselves for the eventuality of Spring!
What if, knowing that those times do come when we have more exposed branch and less leaf, we utilized those moments to drive our roots deep and shore up our foundation?
What if, instead of complaining about those seasons in which the drizzle and cold temper our fire and enthusiasm, we chose to build a fire of our own, using the prunings of wayward limbs that served no purpose but to distract from the shape we were designed to take?
What if then, when Spring came, we were ready to explode with growth that came from intentional, focused preparation instead of our usual and at times reactionary repose?
What if?

Step up your game!

Hi, my name is Troy and I'm a recovering American Christian.
I've been an American Christian pretty much my whole life.
Oh, I've had measurable periods in my life where I was less dedicated to Christ than others...but I've never really not been a Christian.
Growing up in church kind of has a strange effect on a person...especially in America.
We have this really odd perspective on what it means to be a Christian.
In America we tend to think that the church is for us, that the church exists to serve our "needs", cater to our whims and always make sure we are comfortable.
I'm not proud to say it, but, I bought in to that perspective for a while...a long while. Oh, I served in the local church,"did ministry" and paid my tithe...but it wasn't until 1997, when I had my first opportunity to step across the borders of America and see Christians, real Christians, thriving in conditions I found abhorrent, that my perspective began to change.
Since that time I've had the privilege of visiting some other countries and inter-acting with Christians in places like Eastern Europe, Central America, The Caribbean, Southeast Asia and been able to see what Christian life outside the American matrix is like.
Did you know that people actually have to walk to get to church? (uphill both ways) And once they get there, they don't have cushy chairs or pews on which to rest their weary legs...they might even have to sit on the floor...
Wayne Cordeiro, in his book The Divine Mentor, tells a story about visiting China and speaking to a group of pastors and church leaders who rode a train 13 hours to get to where he was speaking. Once they got there, they sat on a wooden floor with no air conditioning for 3 days and listened intently to Wayne speak. Only a few of these Chinese church leaders actually had a Bible, so they would share scraps of paper on which they had written portions of scripture that they had memorized. Out of the 20 leaders Wayne met with, 18 of them had spent time in prison because they were Christians. (gathering in a non-government sanctioned church in China carries with it a mandatory 3 year prison sentence.)
Ladies and Gentlemen, what have we become? Over-indulged? Yes. Self-righteous? Yes. Self-indulgent? Check. Entitled? Absolutely. We are most certainly, lazy, pathetic excuses for what Christians are called to be...and I am one.
At the end of his visit with the Chinese church leaders, Wayne asked if he could pray for them. The most amazing thing occurred in that moment...They wanted Wayne to ask God to help them become like him. What they meant was, that they would be able to enjoy the freedom of religion that we have here in America. But Wayne, in a moment of great wisdom, said; "No, i will not pray that you become like us. But I will pray...that we become like you."
As a recovering American Christian, my prayer for myself and for the American church is that we do grow to become more and more like our Christian brothers and sisters around the globe who live like what the Apostle Paul described in his letter to the church in the city of Philippi: "but whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes through the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain the resurrection from the dead."
My name is Troy and I'm a recovering American Christian.

God - or vending machine?

I've had some conversations lately that have caused me to really think about what I think about...I know, that's a rough beginning to this post, but, bear with me.
We, as human beings, have this startling capacity for self-deception.

We can talk ourselves in to believing just about anything, as long as we agree with ourselves... I've taught the last couple of weeks in our Wednesday night youth gathering about this subject. And last night, I camped on the point that we have to be careful, because we can give in to the tendency to use the Bible to support our facades or errant opinions, because they help us create the "reality" we desire instead of the one of which we are actually a part.

So, without getting too deep into the proper interpretation of scripture and the need for context when doing so, here is the best way I know to avoid our subtle tendency to twist God's promises into our plans or false reflections of what they really are.

That tendency is held at bay if we commit ourselves to seek God. Seeking God isn't always going provide instant solutions to life's problems. However, it will cause us to realize that there is much more going on around us than the silo of ourselves. We are involved in a much bigger story! A story in which God resolves the disappointments of life in ways that far exceed our shortened line of sight.
God's ways are not like our ways, His plans, though always for our good, often don't match our consumer - get it now, mentality.
Our difficulty is that our sight is just limited enough that we can't see past the end of our own nose.

"We will seek Him, and we will find Him, when we seek for Him with all our heart."

(a couple of thoughts for this post were borrowed from an article in Relevant magazine; The Most Misused verse in the Bible, by Chris Blumhofer.)

Holy Cow!

Father forgive me. It has been nearly two months since my last blog post...
o.k. So, I'm renewing my commitment to do this blog thing. I hereby, place a block of time in my ideal week to complete a weekly blog post. I will not use twitter as an excuse not to blog and I refuse to allow facebook to be the only forum through which to engage in meaningful exchanges of thought and opinion.
I have had an amazing week. You really need,every once in awhile, to get away and allow yourself to hear from other people who are effectively engaging in the same field of work you are. (or one related to your chosen field) It is so refreshing to hear that other people are wresting with the same issues you are and to be challenged by their successes. I don't know about you, but I draw energy from those kind of first hand experiences and exchanges. Yeah, yeah, i know, you can read books, bring in an "expert" with whom your team can consult, watch a dvd...blah, blah, blah.

Every once in awhile, annually at least... Take a few days, get away, attend a conference, (maybe one that isn't sponsored by your denomination, organization or other directly associated or affiliated groups) and just soak it up. Let yourself be taught, perhaps by people you don't necessarily agree with...just listen. And be amazed by what you will take away. If your profession doesn't offer, require or encourage such things. Then just hop in your car, keep driving until it's warmer than where you came from, head west until you reach the beach and then just camp out for a couple of days. Get some sun, let the sand trickle between your toes...and maybe get a few waves. No, definitely get a few waves and then, just breathe. Ever allow yourself to do that? Breathe. In and out...pretty amazing. Anyway, enough rambling...starting to sound a little mushy. Have a great week. I'll be back.

WOW!...or MOM spelled upside down...

O.K., so i haven't been very faithful to my blog lately, but i definitely need to throw this one out there into the blogosphere!

If you read my last post this will make much more sense to you, but anyway, my mother has been in the hospital for 2 months and three days, most of it in ICU, and I haven't actually spoken to her since just after Thanksgiving...but today, I got to hear her voice through the telephone!

So Troy, what's the big deal? you ask...(even if you didn't, I'm giving it to you.)
The sound of another human being's voice - especially one you have a particularly deep connection with, is an amazing thing.
It's like hearing from an old friend you haven't talked with in years...just the sound of their voice elicits a torrential rush of emotions that connects with specific memories and occasions in your mind like spring rain as it splatters on the sidewalk.
This particular voice has a deep connection in my psyche. It is the very first voice I ever heard.
Hearing her voice, gives me that sense that everything is going to be o.k.
Like the time I was trying to learn to ride a bicycle and went careening off the road and landed deep in a tangle of blackberry vines...

Everything is going to be o.k.

Some of you are wondering when I'm going to turn this in a spiritual direction, so lest I disappoint you...
As much as I draw comfort from the sound of my mother's voice - there is another voice that I long to hear even more desperately than hers.
Even more desperately than the sound of my wife's voice, or my children...
The voice I want to hear more than anything, the voice that has been more consistent that the spring rain, or constant in it's delivery of comfort, is the voice of my God.
You see, the voice of my mother is just confirmation of what God has been saying all along. "it's going to be o.k."

I hope you have people in your life from whom you can draw comfort and care.
However, I have much greater hope that the voice that stills the palpitations of your heart when cataclysmic events touch your life is the voice of God.

Because truly, His voice is the first one we ever hear...and the only one that can guarantee, everything is going to be o.k.