If you have been around, you may have heard me say that I miss being in vocational youth ministry. This was the first year I haven’t been on a youth retreat or a student mission trip or planned a fundraiser or the ten thousand other things youth pastors do. Some of these things I’ve literally done regularly throughout the last 12 years of my life.

Of course, I miss the students but I promise not to get overly romantic about missing all the aspects of youth ministry. For instance, I don’t miss the fundraisers. Not because I’m embarrassed by raising money for important needs but because I refuse to believe that there are so many grandparents celebrating milestone birthdays on the mornings of our car washes.

If I’m being honest, I’m grateful for having this season off. With the arrival of our third and moving to a new community without our family and the supportive friends we had in NJ, it’s been a good thing to not have a mission trip, retreats and various weekend activities. It’s not just being away for those weekends but also the time in preparation, in meetings, in the gearing up – whoever thinks a mission trip consists of a that week has never led one.

Like everybody, I’m still busy – it’s a different type these days. But I do get to be home more at night and have more weekends free. Which has helped us connect with the relationships we were fortunate enough to have prior to moving here and the new ones we are creating.

It’s good for me to feel the honestly of missing so many things in youth ministry. It was a special and important time in my life. Also, it was very beneficial and here are some of the ways how:

Teaching. If you can teach high school and/or middle school students, you can teach just about anyone. I mean that. These kids are smart, they can be tough, they can be short on attention, respect, and can be apathetic to content that is not being graded and may not seem practical. Crafting messages that have been based on Scripture, that are relevant and beneficial to their lives, interesting enough to sustain attention, prophetic enough to challenge, and encouraging enough to proclaim that there is a God who exists and loves us has been the task I’ve been tackling for years. Every teacher knows there never really is a finished product but my current preparing/delivering has certainly been shaped by youth ministry. In teaching in different adult ministry contexts throughout this past year, one of the few things that I have knowingly changed has simply been asking myself, “Who is the audience?” Different starting point, very similar methodology.

So what’s the lesson here? If you suck at teaching students, there may be a place for you in adult ministry? Not really. However, it does seem that working with students really helps in all aspects of communication.

Relational Connection – Youth ministry taught me the difference between being a talking head and the indispensable qualities of being a pastor of young people. Most of us have heard the Howard Hendricks line, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” I was never really impressed with the line, probably because I hadn’t met Hendricks (or that he didn’t know to care about me ;) but everyone who cares about the people they are leading discovers some form of this maxim eventually.  The other thing I learned was while you cannot be all things to all people (even if you consider yourself to be a “people person”)

You cannot relate to everyone, there is no such thing as a “universal personality.” It is impossible to learn every caveat of pop-culture and counter-culture. Part of the reason is due to the way counter-culture works – it’s intentionally exclusive.

So what’s the lesson here? If you can identify with a 14 year old girl obsessed with Twilight, you can connect with anyone? Not at all, simply celebrate all the people in your sphere of influence and build healthy Christian relationships.

Working With Dedicated Volunteers – These volunteers are the difference between the church as a serving body and a professionally pastorally run organization. They work together for sure but when volunteers are not supported by ministry staff and if ministry staff don’t have reliable volunteers, well, not only does the unity of the church suffer but very little execution of ministry and capacity for mission happens.

I’ve been preparing to do the training for our women’s Bible study tomorrow. A lot had gone into the vision of the year long before I was asked to help with the training. There’s a lot of depth to this ministry and there are a lot of people it utilizes. In fact, tomorrow there are separate training sessions for morning and evening respectively. Throughout the year they will be leading their women’s small groups through the book of Acts and I’ve been told that many of them have been leading for years and years and they do much, much more than teach.

There’s a lot of talk about “equipping and releasing” people for ministry and what qualifies as “discipleship” and what is dismissed as a Christian hobby. Dedication to the leading of the Holy Spirit from all is essential.

What’s the lesson here? Ministry involves people, time, training, and empowering others to serve. Regardless of the size of the church, there are a lot of moving parts, consider yourself blessed to play whatever role you are asked.

That last one comes natural for most youth pastors. Many don’t see the fruit of their labor for years.

I’m not going to suggest that everyone should go through youth ministry. For many reasons, I don’t think that’s true and among them is that it seems to limit how God uses people. But I do find myself extremely grateful for all the blessings of having served in youth ministry – the relationships, the memories, and how the experience continues to shape my heart and work today.

It will be interesting to reflect on how I continue to look back on this season. To the reader, feel free to share your insights on youth ministry or your respective past experiences – thanks for reading.

Well, I’m probably writing this post too soon but I’m ok with that.

I’ll play it off as best I can but I was really excited when it was decided that the Sr. High graduates from my previous church were coming to Boston for their “Senior Sneak.” For those that don’t know, the “Senior Sneak” is this elaborate celebration for the graduating class of senior highers and it has become a long tradition at the Montvale Church started by … well we don’t know its exact origins but it could have been King David (because he liked to party).

The reasoning is multi-fold, one, we’re sorry for all the generic soda and lame snacks we’ve given them over the years, [Read more…]

This week, I am posting a series on some of the blessings I’ve been thankful for that I haven’t expressed before. So here we go:

First up, I’m thankful for the lessons I learned in youth ministry. Until this September, I had been serving in vocational youth ministry since the beginning of 2000. One of these days, I’ll try to intelligently post on my transition. But until then, know that I loved being a youth pastor.

As I have been enjoying settling into my new position, there have been moments that I’ve missed serving in youth ministry.  Like when the Montvale group (my previous church) shared about their mission trip experience at the end of September (was thrilled to watch my young friend Jorge’s video of our trip). Other examples include hearing about their fall retreat and seeing my new church’s youth pastors lead their respective retreats. Our middle school pastor, Andrew, told an incredible story of one student’s experience last month and among my thoughts were, “I used to tell that story.”

That said, I’ve been grateful not to be away these weekends now with our third child having just been born and two little ones wrecking havoc on our home. My dear wife is a trooper and since she’s taken that Mom’s class led by the Marine veteran, I think we’ve “taken back the beach” – Oorah! Still, I look at back at my time in youth ministry and here’s what I am grateful for:

1. Youth ministry demanded that I be a better speaker and taught me how to hold people’s attention. You think the adult listening span is short, try a 9th grader’s. There are countless lessons I learned by teaching young people over the years from reading body-language, to the way humor works, inflection, pacing, to “what’s in my head is not coming out right from my mouth, now what do I do …. just keep moving, don’t let them sense weakness or lack of confidence … must take back the beach!”

2. Youth ministry forced me to pay attention to practical theology. Many times, I was the first person to explain an essential doctrine like the role of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Not only did this mean that I had to explain these theologies in understandable terms, but I needed to truly think and live them out.

3. Youth ministry helped me to see the world of contextualization. Here I am as an X’er leading Millennials who are being parented and educated by Boomers in an ever-changing society. Add to it that I’m proclaiming a God, that among the things we say about Him is that He is “the same yesterday, today and forever.” Contextualization was the key for learning the balance between relevance and timeless truths.

4. Youth ministry taught me to be a better leader. It taught me how to deal with criticism from students, from parents, from volunteers, fellow staff members, from soccer coaches …. did I miss anyone? I learned the values of listening, decision-making, forgiveness, seeking forgiveness and the need to keep pressing on among other needed lessons.

5. Youth ministry made it clear that they key to ministry is loving people and showing them you care.

So it turns out, that I’m getting back in the saddle. This Sunday I’ve been asked to teach the 6th Grade Sunday School class on “something from church history that doesn’t suck.” I’m a little nervous but I feeling up for it.

Indeed, there were many more lessons gained along the way. If you’re a youth worker, feel free to post yours. If you’re not, feel free to post a lesson you are thankful for in your walk of life.
This week I am posting on why I am thankful for the emerging church movement, Facebook and … Donald Trump.

Each year we go on a “Senior Sneak” where we break the bottle of perfume and show extravagant love to those graduating seniors who were an active part of our group. Over the years, we have found this impracticality to be an appropriate demonstration of our love for them. Every year there is some form of deception (Rahab-esque deception, not Ananaias & Saphira type, you see?). One year, I created a false itinerary, another year I created a packing list with items they wouldn’t need, and one year, we just hid the info from them (they weren’t that bright of a class ;)

This year, we told them the Sneak was cancelled by the trustees because of budgetary concerns, then because we felt “so bad”, we “scheduled” a much lamer lunch after church. But of course, the Sneak was never really cancelled. With the help of their parents, we took them to Boston to see Owl City and enjoy the town.

Every year there is some type of theme. This year’s was “Say Good-bye to High School”. Which explains Owl City. Most of our students loved Fireflies … in 10th grade. But Owl City works well for us. Adam Young professes to be a believer, he creates fun music and he’s not trapped in the Christian sub-culture. The new album was just released last week and I’ve always wanted to take the group to Boston.

I won’t bore you with how the theme worked in and out of our time but we did the typical Boston thing: We spit at Fenway, walked around late at night, did the Freedom Walk Tour, saw the Harbor, ate at Quincy Market and finished our time at the Boston Commons. It was our last stop that was by far the most special. We sat in a circle each person had something said about them by everyone in the group. I allotted an hour and half for this – between the tears, the hugs, and the heartfelt words, it took us a little over 3 hours. It was needed closure. Not only did some things need to be said, it was probably the last time we’d have this opportunity together. It was beautiful and I’ll never forget it.

The best Sneaks are with classes that not only never gave up on our youth group community but sincerely tried to follow Jesus together. And the class of 2011 is special. I told them during the graduation portion of the worship service that in my 11 years of ministry, they were in my Top 10. But the truth is, they are a unique class. They were a big class filled with strong personality types, many very gifted in the arts and they really had bought into what we were trying to do as a ministry (it wasn’t always easy but they hung in there).

I also feel that God used this class to bring out the best from us as youth leaders. They were sharp, servant-hearted (though extremely busy) and always wanting to dive deeper. They read Don Miller, Scot McKnight and a good few had read Gabe Lyon’s Next Christians (a gift from this year’s Winter Retreat). How cool was it that on the Monday of the sneak, USA Today had a feature entitled “Can Cause of Social Justice Tame Our Culture Wars?”. (Not sure if we thought that was God providentially winking at us or maybe USA Today always runs stuff like that).

They are also special to me because of where they fit in my own life. Many of them were in the room when I announced publicly for the first time that we adopted Nathan. They were among the first to hear that Susan was pregnant with Dylan. And then again, that we are having a baby girl this September. In lesser of life importance but still very cool moments, we watched the Giants win the Super Bowl together and we cancelled Sr. High Youth group to watch the Yankees beat the Phillies in ’09 (we just knew it would happen in Game 6). We served on mission trips to New Orleans, an AIDS Camp in the Bahamas and picked up trash together and various other things. Looking back on it, I’m moved by how much we did together over the years.

I told them that I don’t know who I am going to argue with now. The Class of 2012 is much smarter, much more polite, and they already agree with me ;). But truly was an honor to be their youth pastor during their high school years. While we will always be brothers and sisters in God’s family, things will be different from this point on but these are the days I am extremely grateful for Facebook (because you don’t really have to say good-bye, just “See you around”) and these are the days I feel blessed to be a youth pastor.

God’s grace to the Class of 2011 and don’t forget Mark 12:29-31!

Over the weekend, I heard about this woman named Cindy Jackson who has had over 60 cosmetic surgery procedures and has spent over $100,000 on the work spanning the last 25 years. Oddly, she doesn’t look terrible at all. In fact, if I saw her at Shop Rite, I’d think she was another 50 year old woman. But she is not ordinary, she actually holds the Guinness Book of World Records for most cosmetic surgeries. She is even now a cosmetic surgeon consultant (which has to be a real easy job :) and she’s dating a 29 year old dude. Perhaps in her world she has it all. Obviously she has money, the attention of men, she probably has a loyal following of women who are cheering her on as she fights the war on the aging process.

If she was a comic book character, she’d be armed with a scalpel and sleep in a botox chamber and fighting against an ugly character named Dr. Hideous. (I should totally pitch this to Comedy Central later today. Oh wait, I’m hanging out with students later  – Oh well).

Now I am not against plastic surgery procedures, I think in some cases, it’s a worthy consideration. But I do start getting nervous when we talk about teen-agers and plastic surgery. By now you may have heard stories of 15 year olds going under the knife to fix certain birth defects. In some cases, they may be a good idea in the same way that braces are. In other cases, it seems likely that such procedures will have a negative impact on students and society.

What does it say about us as a society when we admit to treating you better if you looked a certain way? We might be inclined to react and say, “Hey that’s how society is!” Believe me, I know. I was the sole minority in my school until 10th grade and the only kid with a middle-eastern shnoz in the county – I remember. But I remember also thinking that my identity can’t solely come from my appearance and like all adolescents, the search of “Who am I?” began. But what does it say about the society?

I’ll be the first to say that things are different today than they were in the late 80’s-early 90’s and it would be foolish to only compare the way things were to the way things are. As a youth pastor, my heart goes out to the teens of today for the many different types of pressures they endure. And while I would like to remind them that there are incredible blessings about being a young person today, I get that it’s hard too. I remember one of our female students explaining the number of girls in her school who have undergone procedures to help them look great in a bathing suit. And I’ll never forget the line, “It’s not just the people at the beach who see you, because of Facebook everyone sees you!” Indeed things are different today.

I don’t want to cite examples of what I deem as legitimate and what is not, it’s too judgmental (I think we can all agree that lypo-suction is not a moral issue right?). And I will be the first to say that this a gray area and that’s ok too because I like gray areas. But I will say that it seems wise to say that cosmetic surgery to fix things like birth defects is quite different than cosmetic surgery to attempt at looking “perfect”. Cindy spending $100,000 and sixty procedures articulates that quite well. I submit that deep down inside she would prefer the unconditional love of a man that truly loves and accepts her faults and all than to be with a 29 year old guy who may not be around when the money and botox run low.   And even more importantly, I hope she genuinely “accepts herself”.

This is among the many aspects that I love about the Christian ethic. It demands that we treat people the way we would want to be treated. It reminds us that we are all flawed and in need of redemption and it offers us identity in our most original design by the Creator Himself. That cannot be found in 6 weeks of recovery after the initial consultation. Which brings us to another question, “What does it say about a society that accepts and loves people for who they are?” I know some may scoff at the idealism here. And it’s true and with the risk of more scoffing, I’d like to add that this “heavenly society” offers that we live the good life forever with our Maker and Redeemer. This is where identity is found and nurtured. And it’s my hope that those searching can find it.