Youth Group Game Idea: Jedi Master

Both of our middle and high school groups played this game this week and they all LOVED it. Its called Jedi Master. 

Here is what you'll need:

• One foam pool noodle
• One blindfold
• At least 25 close pins

Pick a volunteer to be the Jedi Master. Place them in the center of the circle with the blind fold securely on. Cover their clothing and shoes with close pins. Give the Jedi Master their foam pool noodle/lightsaber and tell them to start swinging. Those standing in the circle, on the word GO, have to attempt to grab as many close pins as they can from the Jedi Master without being struck down with fury. If someone is hit with the pool noodle, they must sit down and that player is out. Whomever collects the most close pins wins the round.

A few extra rules (that we learned via trial by error)

• If you are hit and have close pins in your hand, you must drop all your close pins and sit down.
• Don't let the whole group rush the Jedi Master. Allow only a few to attempt to steal close pins at one time. (There will be so much swinging going on not that many will want to go initially, anyway).
• The Jedi Master MUST keep their feet set. They can pivot but can not meander around the circle. They must stand still and swing all around themselves.
• To switch to a new Jedi Master, wait 5-10 minutes and let them play. Once someone is hit, you can make them the new Jedi Master. 
• If anyone is hit ANYWHERE on their person at all, they are OUT. (head shots are fine)

Enjoy!

Experiencing the new birth of Christmas

Every since I was a little kid, I have loved Christmas. Like, at a hyperactive level. Each morning in December, I used to run down the stairs first thing in order to move the Advent calendar to the next day.

When the movie Elf was released in 2003, one of the good friends at the time told me that Elf reminded them of me.

I’ll take that as a compliment.
But honestly, I was most excited about the presents, the incandescent lighting, the decorations, and that tin box full of sugar cookies. The real meaning of Christmas, as we often hear, gets lost, and looking back when I was as a young teenager, it was awfully hard not to be distracted by all the other Christmas “stuff”.

When we hear about Christmas in church, we hear a lot of “God with us”, and that is true, but what does that mean to us today? More important, why should this matter to teenagers?

The author of the gospel of John doesn’t talk about Mary, Joseph, the wise men, or the shepherds. As John often does, he attempts to display a different angle on our Christology. Instead of beginning his gospel in a literal fashion, he does so in a philosophical and theological manner:

In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He existed in the beginning with God. 3 God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. 4 The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.

Jesus’ birth occurred for a host of reasons, one of which was to bring “his life (that) brought light to everyone”. This life and light that Jesus brings is undefeated, inextinguishable, forever glorious and illuminated.

The Incarnation is a powerful mystery in its origin and reality, and yet it is simultaneously accessible to all humans on our most fundamental levels of existence.

God came to be with us so that God could live IN us. The good news of the Incarnation is that, through the new birth of the Holy Spirit, we can not just “go to heaven when we die”, but actually become like Christ here on earth, (hopefully) bringing light and life to all WE encounter as well. The Christmas story is indeed a gift to receive, but it is equally important as a gift to share.

May you experience this new birth for yourself this holiday season. Let us encourage our teenagers to do the same.

Pastoral Response/youth group response to teenage suicide

Last year I had the unfortunate and difficult task of responding and ministering to a teen suicide in our community. Adam was a young man in our youth group that took his own life. For me, it is the first time I have ever lost a close member of our youth group to death; suicide or otherwise.

It still feels surreal.

I still can’t quite believe I won’t see him again, hear his laugh, or have a great conversation with him. I’m not sure it has really sunk in yet.

All death can create feelings of mourning and sadness, but suicide is different. It is so sudden, abrupt. You feel as if a piece has been taken out of you that will never be replaced. This bright, young life with so much promise is over.

Its a punch to the gut, because so many would have told him how much they loved him. So many people would have talked him down, or tried to stop him. The 600+ people who came to the viewing or the 200+ who attended the funeral I officiated would have told him they loved the beautiful, uniquely made child of God that he was.

Ironically, I was reading the book “Tuesdays with Morrie” two days before Adam’s death, and I highlighted this phrase in my Kindle, after Morrie attended a funeral of a friend, Irv:

He came home depressed. “What a waste,” he said. “All those people saying all those wonderful things, and Irv never got to hear any of it.”

Indeed. What a waste.

As I unpack the emotions involved with this sort of tragedy, I hope and pray that my story and advice may help someone else as they walk along those who deal with the ramifications of teen suicide, and hopefully, to avoid it.

There are no easy answers, but there are specific things you can do to lend effective pastoral care:
Give clear guidance & leadership to the family – in moments of trauma, surviving family members operate in a fog or shock. They need you, as the minister, to give clear and affirming leadership. Take as much off their plate as you can.

• Keep your phone at your side at all hours – be ready to reach out, call, and text youth and parents at any hour. 
• Run to God in your pain – encourage others to leverage their pain as a way to lay hold of God, and not the opposite. 
• Keep the focus on Jesus – if officiating the funeral, keep the focus on Jesus as the Good Shepherd, God’s loving sovereignty, and positive memories of the deceased. 
• Keep the focus on love – people need to be reminded of why they are at a viewing or funeral: its because they love that person. All are gathered because they care, and that is to be celebrated. If you love someone, tell them immediately. 
• And mean it – Youth ministers and parents fight for teenagers daily and love them with a passionate love. Live each day to the fullest, and if God ever brings a teen to mind to pray for or reach out to, act immediately. Keep fighting for your kids, and “leave it all on the field” so that if suicide does happen, you can know you did all you could. 
• Mourn with those who mourn – don’t give advice and for goodness sakes don’t say “Everything happens for a reason.” Just be present and weep when you want to weep. 
• Avoid “If only…” – it is so tempting to torment yourself with thoughts of “if only I had done this, etc”. I chose to affirm the fact that we have loved Adam well as a Christian community, which we have. Focus on the positive memories and how you have worked on someone’s behalf. Ultimately, the choice of someone to take their own life is just that: their own choice. Beating yourself up after the fact will not change what has happened. While incredibly sad that someone has taken their own life, there are also other potential suicides you have also possibly prevented over the years. If there is any positive side to “if only” thoughts, let it be an inspiration to reach out to teenagers that much more. God will do what is absolutely best – You will be asked the question, “Is he/she in heaven? Is he/she in hell?”. The short answer is: you don’t know. The long answer: God is perfect. Honestly, none of us really know at the time of death, especially in terms of a suicide where the profession of faith of the individual is in question. It is dishonest to give a false hope, or conversely, a false judgement. The grave is very silent and death is final on this side of eternity. What we can do, however, is trust in Jesus’ words, remember Jesus as the Good Shepherd, remember that a teenager is still a child, and that God will do what is perfect, just, loving, and eternally secure. We are not God, but we can trust in God’s perfect Word and God’s perfect character.

I will always love and miss Adam. I will think of him for the rest of my life. He has made an indelible mark on my life.

Ministry and loving others is a risk. You never know what is going to occur.

However, I think we can all agree its a risk worth taking.

It is always better to love and lose someone than not to love at all.

Keep up the good fight.

Dealing with teenage suicide

Last year I had the unfortunate and difficult task of responding and ministering to a teen suicide in our community. Adam was a young man in our youth group that took his own life. For me, it is the first time I have ever lost a close member of our youth group to death; suicide or otherwise.

It still feels surreal.

I still can’t quite believe I won’t see him again, hear his laugh, or have a great conversation with him. I’m not sure it has really sunk in yet.

All death can create feelings of mourning and sadness, but suicide is different. It is so sudden, abrupt. You feel as if a piece has been taken out of you that will never be replaced. This bright, young life with so much promise is over.

Its a punch to the gut, because so many would have told him how much they loved him. So many people would have talked him down, or tried to stop him. The 600+ people who came to the viewing or the 200+ who attended the funeral I officiated would have told him they loved the beautiful, uniquely made child of God that he was.

Ironically, I was reading the book “Tuesdays with Morrie” two days before Adam’s death, and I highlighted this phrase in my Kindle, after Morrie attended a funeral of a friend, Irv:

He came home depressed. “What a waste,” he said. “All those people saying all those wonderful things, and Irv never got to hear any of it.”

Indeed. What a waste.

As I unpack the emotions involved with this sort of tragedy, I hope and pray that my story and advice may help someone else as they walk along those who deal with the ramifications of teen suicide, and hopefully, to avoid it.

There are no easy answers, but there are specific things you can do to lend effective pastoral care:
Give clear guidance & leadership to the family – in moments of trauma, surviving family members operate in a fog or shock. They need you, as the minister, to give clear and affirming leadership. Take as much off their plate as you can.

• Keep your phone at your side at all hours – be ready to reach out, call, and text youth and parents at any hour. 

• Run to God in your pain – encourage others to leverage their pain as a way to lay hold of God, and not the opposite.

• Keep the focus on Jesus – if officiating the funeral, keep the focus on Jesus as the Good Shepherd, God’s loving sovereignty, and positive memories of the deceased. 

• Keep the focus on love – people need to be reminded of why they are at a viewing or funeral: its because they love that person. All are gathered because they care, and that is to be celebrated. If you love someone, tell them immediately.

• And mean it – Youth ministers and parents fight for teenagers daily and love them with a passionate love. Live each day to the fullest, and if God ever brings a teen to mind to pray for or reach out to, act immediately. Keep fighting for your kids, and “leave it all on the field” so that if suicide does happen, you can know you did all you could.

• Mourn with those who mourn – don’t give advice and for goodness sakes don’t say “Everything happens for a reason.” Just be present and weep when you want to weep. 

• Avoid “If only…” – it is so tempting to torment yourself with thoughts of “if only I had done this, etc”. I chose to affirm the fact that we have loved Adam well as a Christian community, which we have. Focus on the positive memories and how you have worked on someone’s behalf. Ultimately, the choice of someone to take their own life is just that: their own choice. Beating yourself up after the fact will not change what has happened. While incredibly sad that someone has taken their own life, there are also other potential suicides you have also possibly prevented over the years. If there is any positive side to “if only” thoughts, let it be an inspiration to reach out to teenagers that much more. God will do what is absolutely best – You will be asked the question, “Is he/she in heaven? Is he/she in hell?”. The short answer is: you don’t know. The long answer: God is perfect. Honestly, none of us really know at the time of death, especially in terms of a suicide where the profession of faith of the individual is in question. It is dishonest to give a false hope, or conversely, a false judgement. The grave is very silent and death is final on this side of eternity. What we can do, however, is trust in Jesus’ words, remember Jesus as the Good Shepherd, remember that a teenager is still a child, and that God will do what is perfect, just, loving, and eternally secure. We are not God, but we can trust in God’s perfect Word and God’s perfect character. 

I will always love and miss Adam. I will think of him for the rest of my life. He has made an indelible mark on my life.

Ministry and loving others is a risk. You never know what is going to occur.

However, I think we can all agree its a risk worth taking.

It is always better to love and lose someone than not to love at all.

Keep up the good fight.

People over Programs

Our middle school ministry has really be exploding lately, as in numerically. Not the violent sort. Its been a tough lesson learned, but over the years I've realized the importance of people over programs. Youth workers/ministers are notorious for pumping up games, pizza, crazy antics, pizza, games, etc. When a huge crowd arrives it may temporarily pump up our ego, but what measurable results are there after its over?

I recently went to a National Day of Prayer gathering in my community and there were three other youth ministers present from churches in my community. One of these peers walked from student to student, talking very briefly with them, and began pitching his upcoming summer camp, handing out flyers and the whole bit. It seemed like he only showed up to partially pray, but mostly to further his ministry’s event.

I’m all for evangelism, and I love summer camp, but it felt like the wrong venue.

I realized that youth ministers (myself included) have a tendency to focus so much on the EVENT that we forget about PEOPLE. If we aren’t careful, we can fall into a sort of evangelical-pharisaical ministry practice, focusing more on “doing” and less on simply “being” with God’s people.

Jesus always focused on the person in a relational sense, and then ministry could flow from that. Flipped the other way, it can quickly become about ego, numbers, and “salvations”. I’m all about seeing students get saved, but I want to do it God’s way, not in a way that has me charging ahead without listening to the Spirit’s guidance.

Ministry is about relationships: our relationship with students, (more importantly) our volunteers relationship with students, and everyone’s relationship with God. If we forget that and focus only on events and flash, our ministries can have the outward appearance of “health” when in reality they will have no longevity, and the discipleship we worked so hard for in the live of teenagers will not carry over into their young adult years.

Its a lot harder to slow down and seek relationships with students over event planning. It takes time, patience, risk (especially if you’re an introvert) and so much more. But it is what God is calling us to do.

God sought us out first for a relationship with us (1 John 4), shouldn’t we seek to do the same with students?

Boys think about one thing....(the dating message)

Its true.

Boys think about one thing.

Sports.

Seriously though, this coming week we'll be discussing dating, relationships and all that is involved with that whole bugaboo.

When I was in high school, thoughts of finding "the one" consumed my life at times, almost to the point of consistent distraction and/or occasional depression. Many young people look for someone to "complete" them, but the focus is all wrong. As Jesus says, "wisdom is proved right by her actions."  I focused constantly on what I didn't have, and I was usually miserable as a result. I so desperately wanted a girlfriend, but never got one at the time.  

Now I'm incredibly thankful it shook down that way.

Instead of looking for "the one", we should be trusting God to make us "be the one" for someone else...down the road. Instead of focusing on what we don't have (i.e. a boy/girl friend), God wants us to focus on what we do have (Jesus, the Spirit, godly friends, sports/the arts, activities, our church, etc) and celebrate those things, trusting God to provide "the one" at the right time.

This is a radical shift from celebrating selfishness to celebrating thankfulness, from being led by the flesh to being led by the Spirit, from demanding your inheritance now as opposed to letting it come at the right time.

You're not single because you're only nice to girls (or because you're "ugly").

You're single because singleness is actually a gift.  Singleness provides you time to focus on what's most important and to trust God to provide when God knows you are ready. 

Singleness allows us space to be reminded that who we are sexually is not our main descriptor in life.  

Singleness allows you time to answer the question, "Would you date....you?"  Are you honestly the kind of person, at your stage in life, who is ready to give themselves over to another person in a healthy way that eventually leads to marriage?  Would you date someone who is in the same place as you are right now (emotionally, spiritually, etc)?

If you're not ready to date "you", then what steps do you need to take now in order to develop qualities you want to see in your future spouse?  

How can you develop the qualities of a good mate now so that when you meet "the one", you're actually ready for it?

If you wait to date and focus on becoming the right person, you are able to let God be in control of your relationships. 

But what if you're already dating someone?  There is nothing wrong with dating at a young age.  Dating isn't wrong (God put that desire within us for a reason) but it is dangerous to do so at a young age.  The pitfalls are many, and very few emerge unscathed. If you are dating someone, boundaries need to be in place.  Boundaries establish value, not hindrance.  Purity is a blessing, not a burden.  

We'll post more about that next week!  

Epic Fail: how we can learn from our failures

Here is the transcript from the first message in our Epic Fail series:

When I talk about fails tonight, its about moral failures when we know we screwed up and can make it right..  I’m not referring to when someone you love gets sick, or passes away, or disaster.  Some things are not so simple they can be explained as “it happened for a reason.” Or that it happened “for our good”.

 Our moral failures, however, we can learn from.

The myth of “be safe”

We’re not talking about this to make anyone feel ashamed for failing.  We’ve all failed and will fail.   All of life can be a risk.  Its always better to try and potentially fail then not try at all. Where do we see Jesus praying this?  Where do we see him admonishing people to “be safe”?  

Where do we see the disciples or people in church history concerned about failure?   The possibility of failure is always present.  God doesn’t call us to be afraid of failure or to “be safe”, he calls us to be faithful, in prayer, willing to be used by God.

Some fails are avoidable.

If you are responsible at the beginning, some fails are avoidable. That's wisdom. Putting things off isn't just lazy, it's a spiritual issue. If you devote work for Christ you do it well and do it quickly.

Story. Me skipping school mom saw dad said "what if I skipped work everyday?" Burn. Fail would've been avoided if I was just faithful with my task, which was simple: go to school and do the work. Was it fun at the time to go to school?  Not always.  But it was certainly better than getting busted for skipping school and getting in trouble, that’s for sure.

When you fail, how do you respond?  

Feeling shame after we fail is to be expected, and shame doesn’t feel good.  You want to make it go away as soon as possible.  But running from your shame, and your failure, is one of the worst things you could ever do.  

We all fail:  don’t let shame hold you down.  What is shame?  Its our conscience helping us know right from wrong.  But what is our conscience?  

Don’t run from conscience.  Shame is God trying to get your attention to help you make better decisions.  Shame is how we can learn right from wrong.  Shame is not a bad thing.  Those who are wise and make good decisions are those who listen to God’s counsel through their conscience, through their shame.  Listening, and learning from, our shame can help prevent more failures in the future.  Is this easy?  Not at all.  Its actually one of the most emotionally difficult things to do.  

Its a choice to learn from your shame.  Its a decision to seek to grow in wisdom at any cost.  Its a choice to learn from shame, a choice that should come from your love for Christ.  You want to do better because your love him.  Don’t just learn from your mistakes because you have to.  Do it because you want to honor God in all that you do and because you love Jesus.  

Failure is how we learn

Crosby scholars and my dad story - failed, grounded for 73 years, no (home) phone, super tense.

The Bible is full of flawed people who made mistakes and God used them anyway.

God is with you.  Remember God’s character

Deut 31:6 - Be strong and bold; have no fear or dread of them, because it is the Lord your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you.”

Psalm 111:2-4

2 How amazing are the deeds of the Lord!

   All who delight in him should ponder them.

3 Everything he does reveals his glory and majesty.

   His righteousness never fails.

4 He causes us to remember his wonderful works.

   How gracious and merciful is our Lord!

God has never failed and will never fail.  It can be hard to imagine someone who has never failed.  In fact, everyone you know has failed at one time or another, but God hasn’t.  

In fact, if you truly believe in God, failure should not even be in your vocabulary.  Total failure sounds like there is no hope, no future, no silver lining, but for those who know the Lord, we know that our failures are not the end.  God is with us in our failures.

Let’s look at the ultimate epic fail, or so it seemed to everyone at the time:  the cross.  When Jesus was given a fake trial and crucified, it looked like the biggest epic fail in history.  The movement was over, his followers were scattered, all was lost.  Then God proceeded to take what looked like death, and turn it into life.  Not only was Jesus raised from the dead, God then poured out the Spirit on the early church, as you heard this morning in Sunday school, to bring radical change to the world.  

28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. Rom 8:28

When you’re in the midst of a gigantic fail, its very hard to see anything positive out of it.  But if you keep faith, and trust God, God can use it for the good

- this applied to Jesus as well.  

Jesus was faithful to God to the point of death, whatever the cost.  Clearly in the garden of Gethsamane the night before, as he prayed all night long, Jesus was struggling.  He felt the weight of what he knew he had to do, and was so crushed the Bible says that blood emitted from the pores of his skin.  Jesus was willing to fail in the eyes of the world because 1) he was faithful to the will of His father and 2) he knew our sin had to be atoned for.  

Jesus willingly entered into this “ultimate fail”...out of love.  

What failures are you struggling with?  How is shame holding you down?  Accept the forgiveness of God and move on.  Shame can force us to pick our offering back up and hold onto it again.  You are forgiven.  Leave it on the altar.  Confess your failure and keep on moving.  

Maybe someone has failed you.  God calls us to forgive them.  Forgiving someone won’t change the past, but it can change your future.  God’s forgiveness can turn your fail into a bright future.

God doesn’t want you to stay stuck in your yesterday.  He want to set you free for today and tomorrow.  

Just be Good for Goodness Sake?!?

If you haven't heard, a group called American Atheists put up a billboard in NC recently:

I'm not going to take the bait and bash atheists, malign them, or decry this billboard.  Atheists are people that God loves, that I love, and its a free country.  They are just as free to post things like this billboard as religious people can post their own billboards, which are occasionally horrible.  I have admiration for atheists:  they don't take pat answers, they are open to engaging to intellectual scrutiny on a variety of issues, and they take pride in using reason.  They don't just swallow whole any teaching that is given to them.  There are lessons to glean there.  

Many of them, however, believe the misconception and stereotype that you have to check your brain at the door in order to be a follower of Christ. 

What I will point out about this billboard, however, is this:  why do we feel this drive to "be good"? (even for goodness' sake).  

What is the origin of this desire?  Why do we even care to try and "be good"?  

For one to engage on a search to "be good" implies that in your current condition you have the capability to not be good.  When I search for something such as "goodness", it implies that I know that I am not always good, and that I need better actions to rectify the situation.

Atheists may agree on this, but we would arrive at a different causation for the effect.  I would call this instinctual/covert movement towards goodness the natural human response to sin.  We know we are sinners, and we attempt to satiate our conscience via our attempts at good works, with or without God.

  Ultimately, this work is fruitless, because no one can make themselves perfectly righteous.  Only faith in Christ, whose perfect sacrifice of righteousness on our behalf, can make us "good", all of it grace.  All of it a gift of God on our behalf.

Many have begun to believe in God when they realized how perfectly impossible it is to try to be good, all the time.  You can't do it.  Why is that?  

An atheist may say they want to be good simply because its sensible and reasonable, even if that flies in the face of a true Darwinian perspective of the world, which on an animalistic level should be each man for himself.

It boils down to this:  when I have a hunger for goodness, it implies that I was made to know goodness, just as my hunger for food and water reasonably implies I need food and water to survive. 

God is the only one who is good, all the time.  We are made for God and to be in relationship with God.  Our actions speak louder than our words, whether we admit it or not.

What does Student Discipleship look like?

Per my last post, I made the distinction between a culture of convenience versus a culture of discipleship.

Ok, so now comes the "so what"?  What does discipleship look like for a modern teenager?  How do we practically do this?  You could summarize these below with:  You spend time with God's people, you spend time in God's Word, you spend time with God.  Time is the consistent theme here.

Here are some specific ideas:

• "Big church" worship attendance:  As Eugene Peterson says, "I'm not myself by myself".  You need other Christians to help you grow in your faith.  God is Trinity.  God is in eternal community, and God desires all people to be in holy community with each other.  This is what is going on in heaven right now, and we should attempt (imperfectly I know) to recreate that here on earth.  We need to worship God to grow in our faith, we need the sacraments (communion, baptism) and we need other Christians to grow in our faith.  Faith formation is encouraged when we surround ourselves with godly people.  Teens are not a separate part of the church.  You are a part of the "Big C" Church.
• Youth group attendance:  Notice how I made this separate from "big church" attendance?  Both have distinct qualities that are valuable, and I don't think its responsible to say, "Well, I went to church so I can skip youth group" (or vice versa).  To be fair, I realize how difficult it can be to show up to youth group (or even church) as much as you would like.  My wife made the great point a while ago that when she was in high school, she didn't attend youth group every week, but it was still vastly important to her.  Her church was, and is, a huge part of her life and worldview, even if she wasn't always present.  I get that, and that was part of my story as well when I was in high school.  But here's the deal:  we did in fact show up on a mostly regular schedule.  Eventually, there is no substitute for "getting in the game" and moving off the sidelines.  
• Bible study/Bible reading:  In 2015, the amount of information we can receive is staggering.  We carry the equivalent of super-computers in our pockets that are full of apps.  We have a HUGE amount of Bible resources for our phones (like the excellent, FREE YouVersion Bible).  But when given the choice of reading the Bible versus checking our Instagram, we lean toward Instagram.  Why are we always tempted to do the thing we know we shouldn't, even if that thing is not necessarily bad in itself?  Notice how we're never tempted to do anything good, like "Hey man, you should mow the lawn without being asked." or "Bro, catch up on that Bible reading.  Everyone else is doing it."  No, we're always tempted to move away from God's best for our lives.  I think its time we look through these temptations and see them for what they are: a distraction from the Enemy.  It is NEVER a mistake to engage with God's Word and to grow in your faith.  NEVER.  And considering the resources at our disposal, there is little reason not to do so.
• Service:  This is hugely important, especially to today's generation.  They want to see authenticity to gauge if something is legitimate or not.  For me, service at places like CCC and other trips were probably the main faith former in my younger years.  But look, anyone can serve others.  I just read an article about a group of "vampires" in New Orleans who served food to homeless people on Easter last year.  What's the difference when Christians serve as opposed to other groups?  The difference is that 1) we follow in Jesus' example and 2) His example is love, true love without selfish ambition, without the desire to make a personal statement.  Christians serve for the sake of serving, so that God is glorified and other people's lives are blessed.  When Christians serve we hope to emulate the greatest form of love, as Jesus said, "There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."  We serve because we want to be like Jesus, the ultimate servant, and not to show our good works or to be saved by those good works.
• Personal holiness:  Ok, super tough one here, but very much achievable.  John Wesley was big on growing in personal holiness (becoming more like Jesus), and this goal has much to do with what the Spirit does in our lives.  Obviously, we don't want to become Pharisees (saved by our works, religious arrogance, look down on others, forget the outsider), which is the dark side of this goal. Holiness is not about WHAT we know; holiness is about WHO we know.  The more you hang out with Jesus, the more you become like Him, the more you want to make the right choice, for His sake, because He is worth it. Again, it goes back to the need for Christian community to help further this goal in your life, because we need accountability, confession, and love from other believers to be growing in holiness.

Lastly, we're going to do all these things in a messy and imperfect way.  Why?  Because we're human.  Because this is real life.  Because we have the tendency to know what we ought to do, and yet we don't do it (sin).  We may take two steps forward and one step back (or five or six).  This is why God shows us grace, because God loves us.  Because the love of God cheers us on.  Because God wants to see you succeed.  Because God does not look down on you because you are young.

All of Jesus' disciples were under the age of twenty, most likely.  Jesus chose people back then to accomplish incredible things, and Jesus is still calling young people today to do the same. 

Becoming more like Jesus is one of the most counter-cultural things you can do.  Partying? Easy. Everyone does it.  Boring.  Having petty fights and drama?  Happens too much.  But living for Jesus? Thats tough.  Not a lot are doing that.  It requires sacrifice.  That's a pretty rock'n roll thing to do.

What about you?  What has worked for you to help you grow in your faith?

Serving A Former Drag Queen

Its Monday, July 13th 2015 and I'm painting the window sills of a former drag queen in Granite Falls, NC.

"Oh, I was a drag queen for 26 years.", Steve tells me.  "The money was good. Its who I was."  Along with a successful career as a backup singer for many well-known country singers, Steve would moonlight as a drag queen singer, often singing hits by Loretta Lynn.  His fame as a Loretta Lynn impersonator grew until Loretta Lynn, upon seeing Steve on a VHS tape, demanded to meet him, which got him started on his country music career.

The past four years, however, have been hard for Steve.  He is 51 years old and has returned home after many years of traveling.  Based on complications of his former lifestyle and frequent drug use, he is home bound, unable to work due to a debilitating bone condition.  Steve now spends his days watching old country music on television, trying to make ends meet, fixing up his old house he inherited from his father, and dealing with family members who want money.  "They want money", he says "and I don't have it anymore."

This is a typical day serving at Carolina Cross Connection, a Christian outreach ministry for youth and adults.  Participants are split into "CMGs" or Christian mission groups and are assigned work projects each day.

Steve's house is my assigned project for the day, and to be honest, we all loved him.  We weren't intimidated by his past.  We didn't seek to judge or coerce him.  We did, however, paint his porch and cut his grass.  We did listen, talk, laugh and share a day together.  We played with his dog. We hope it encouraged him on his path to greater health.

"I'm not much of a Christian," Steve tells me near the end of the day, "but I do believe in the Lord.  I know that much."

"That's what makes you a Christian," I tell him.  "Believing in the Lord. Thats all you have to do."

He looks at me and silently nods.

In that moment of solidarity, I realized we, all people, we are all in this crazy life together, no better or worse than anyone else.  We all need the Lord.  None of us are good enough.  We are all sinners.  We all need each other to get through this life.  Its only the love of Jesus that allows us to truly love others, see through their past, and love them without condition.

Jesus said you have to give your life away in order to find your life.  When we bow down to take the form of a servant, we become the greatest.

I look forward to seeing Steve again one day, and I pray for his health.  May we all love others without limit and without condition.  It is the great hope of the world.