The YS Conference

This last weekend was the annual Youth Specialties C0nference, this year in San Diego. I've been going to the conference ever since I started youth ministry, so I guess this year's conference was the 8th one for me. Overall it's a great conference. I enjoy the general sessions (most of the time) and the seminars are good. The best part to me is simply being away with some of our volunteers and being able to just talk together, hang out, and deepen those relationships. The conference tends to repeat itself over the years. I found that the seminars this year weren't all that great for me. I was disappointed with the ones that I went to with a couple of exceptions. But the general sessions this year were great. Maybe the best ones we've had in years. I just found the worship times to be great, and the speakers were fantastic. Some of the highlights for me were :

• Gary Haugen with International Justice Mission - I loved his stories of freedom, and how his organization has rescued hundreds from slavery in India. He challenged us that the church should be concerned with Justice, and that it is one of Jesus' primary message to all of us.
• Doug Fields, Saddleback Church - His talk was great. He normally talks about youth worker stuff, how-to _____, etc. but this year he focused on a spiritual theme, which he called Ministry Envy. He talked about how most of the time when we put down other ministries it is because of envy. It was a real challenge to watch my tongue and to not allow envy to creep into my life.
• Francis Chan - the highlight of the week for me. This guy always blows me away. He told us of his fear for his daughters as they begin to grow up. He has come to realize that he can't do anything to make his kids fall in love with Jesus, and that ultimately it is only God who can draw people to himself. I know for me that was a powerful and much needed reminder. I've watched so many students walk away from God and it just kills me. I want to tell them just the right thing that will change them, and yet ultimately it isn't up to me. He called us to be so passionately in love with Jesus ourselves that we can say "Follow my example while I follow Christ." He called us to be people of prayer. He told us about how he had struggled this last year with the Bible and with his church. He realized that he wasn't teaching the whole bible, and wasn't really believing it and acting on what he read. He asked the question "If all I had was the Bible, and it's all I had read, would I come up with the current model of church?" Wow. He told us about how he went back to his church and asked the elders to change some things, including giving away 50% of everything they take in. He had me in tears as he talked about ministers needing to be people who are madly in love with Jesus. He ended by having his daughter come up on stage. She jumped into his arms and wrapped herself around him. He said that this needs to be the picture of us in our relationship with Jesus.

All in all, it was a good conference. I got to connect with some friends from other churches and other ministries, which was really good. I got some new books, a few freebies, and had a good time. Musically, David Crowder Band was amazing, and Phil Wickham was unbelievable. Next year's conference is back to Sacramento, where I once shared a floor with the Sacramento Kings basketball team. One of the players hit on my wife, but that's another story for another time...

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The ALCS

Most people that know me understand that I'm a huge baseball fan. Of course, my Angels got swept right out of the playoffs, so naturally I'm rooting for Cleveland to take it to the Red Sox. Part of my daily ritual in the morning is to check out mlb.com as well as ESPN's baseball site to see scores, articles, etc. I was just doing that today and one caught my eye. It is about Paul Byrd, the former Angel, and now current pitcher with the Cleveland Indians who is starting tonight against the Red Sox. The article is entitled "Paul Byrd's struggle to walk with God." I linked it so that you can go there and read it if you want. I was just really blown away by the way this guy lives out his faith in the world of professional baseball. He's not a flashy guy, he readily admits that he doesn't have it all together, and he's totally honest about his struggles with sin like lust and cheating. Anyway, it looks like he'll be publishing a book sometime next year and I'm really looking forward to getting it. I appreciate a guy like him living an honest life, being honest about his struggles, trying to maintain his integrity and play the game well. Far too often "Christian" athletes stand up and thank Jesus for whatever, and then turn around and embarrass us all. So it's a refreshing change. Now let's just hope he can figure out how to pitch to that Red Sox lineup.

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Jim and Casper

I recently finished the book "Jim and Casper Go To Church" and wanted to blog a bit about my thoughts. The book is co-written by these two guys, Jim and Casper. Jim is a former pastor who has written books and curriculum on evangelism. Casper is a proclaimed atheist. The book is the summation of the two of them traveling around the country going to different churches and conversing about the things that they see and experience. Jim's premise is that for most of us who have been in the church for a while, we need a fresh set of eyes to look at things and to be brutally honest about the things that they see. The point being that an outsider's perspective (the very person we ought to be trying to reach) is often very different than those of us on the inside. To be honest, I hate that language - outsider, inside, etc. I hate drawing those lines, but for the sake of understanding the book that's how I think Jim himself would say it.

Anyway, the book is a great read. They go to some of the most well-known churches in the country, including Saddleback, Willow Creek, Potter's House, Imago Dei, Mars Hill (Seattle), even Joel Osteen's church (as a side note, it's kind of funny that I don't know the name of that church, just the celebrity pastor - which is exactly the kind of thing Casper tends to point out in these churches). Casper has some pretty keen insights into these churches, things that bother him, and other things that impress him and have him asking more. Before I get into those things, one question I have about the work that Jim and Casper have done is this: Should we care what an atheist thinks about the church? I definitely think the church exists more for those who aren't a part of it than it does for those who are. However, I wonder if we ought to focus on spiritually interested or seeking (another loaded word) people rather than atheists. I suppose I know the answer to my own question. The fact is that when I say atheist I often assume someone who is closed off to the gospel, or to the church. However, Casper is clearly not closed off - which is an important distinction. He makes the point that he is "currently an atheist", because at this point in time that is the best explanation for his understanding of the world around him. However, he is open to the idea that that could change. He asks Jim to be equally as open - which is really important. Are we as Christians confident that following Jesus is good and true and that the evidence points to him, to the point where we don't have to be so close-minded that we can't consider other opinions or other explanations? The problem I think with many Christians is that we believe we are right, and that's it - end of story. Yet, we want an Atheist, a Mormon, a Hindu, a Muslim to be open to our ideas. If Jesus really is the Truth, we shouldn't be scared of looking at other faiths or belief systems in all sincerity, because it should always point back to Jesus.

Ok, to the book. Without going through it chapter by chapter, or church by church, I think some of the common themes that keep coming up are really interesting. The main question that Casper keeps asking is "Is this really what Jesus called you to do?" Wow. To me that is such an insightful question. It's a question that I need to constantly ask of myself, my ministry, and the way I spend my time and resources. He points to some of the flashy stuff that tends to happen in churches as a way to "attract" new or seeking people and he sees production, shallow message, wasting money, promotion of Christian celebrities, and lots of things we don't intend to communicate. The things that tend to stand out to him as significant are people's stories. He is moved by testimonies, by stories of how churches are getting their hands dirty and being the hands and feet of Jesus within their communities. He sees to intuitively understand that Jesus stood for the poor and the oppressed, and the followers of His ought to be about the same things. He even talks like this is the kind of thing that might get someone like him to be involved in a particular church. In fact, one church he attends is a friend's house church. He talks about the consistency he sees in that friend, between the message of Jesus and the content of his life. I think that is quite profound.

Casper also seems to see the inconsistency between many churches spoken message and their unspoken message. What I mean by that is that many of the church services he attends seemed to be focused on the benefits of Christianity for its adherents, rather than on the benefits for the world. Much of it is me-centered. He hears promises of wealth and prosperity, of health and healing, and a lot less talk about the value of this faith on its own. Is the gospel about what I can get out of it? Is that really it? I hope not.

At any rate, I'd really recommend the book. There's a lot more I could comment on, but I know they have a website with message boards, etc. that you could look up and read more about. But you should definitely pick it up and read through it - particularly if you are involved in a church and have been for some time. The way we see things is so very different than the way that a new person views it. For that alone - this book is worth the read.

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Formulaic Faith

This summer I read Donald Miller's book Searching for God Knows What. It's really an amazing book. It's been one of those books that has stayed with me for quite a while since I've read it, partly because of my own thoughts, but also partly because some of the high school students in our group have been reading it and talking about it with me. As I read it, I began thinking about doing a teaching series on some of the ideas that Miller addresses. So anyway, this week I started that series.

We talked this week about the problem of understanding faith as some kind of formula or recipe, where when we do this, God does that. I went on a Christian book web site this week and typed into the search engine the words "How to". The results were crazy! There were hundreds of books that had these words in their title. Why is it that we've taken this rich, mysterious, deep faith that we have and made it into a three-step process? Why do we want so badly to have a simple formula to follow? I think it comes down to an issue of control. When we follow a formula or a recipe, we know exactly what we are doing, and we know exactly the outcome to expect. The thing about biblical faith is that it tends to be messy, never the same twice, and often ends up with people doing crazy things. I think that scares us. That sounds like there's no control.

I think it also has a lot to do with our consumerist society. We are used to having a problem, a need, a desire, and being able to go out and find exactly what we want to fill that need or desire. I kind of think of it as infomercial faith. Every infomercial has the same basic format no matter what they are selling. There's always the guy who is way too excited about the product. There's also the guy who asks the obvious questions and is apparently really slow because he doesn't understand until it's been described three or four times. You know the guy - "Wait a minute, are you telling me....?" But they all promise the same basic things - it's easy to use, great results = happier life, and at very little cost to you. It doesn't matter if it's an ab machine, a cheese grater, a blender, a vacuum, or a machine that does all of those things, the promises are the same. And for some reason, I think that many of us have seen the effectiveness of this message and taken a God that's hard to understand, and a faith that often leaves us with more questions than answers, and tried to package it in a similar fashion. It's easy to use, it will make your life better, and at very little cost to you. Is that really the gospel of Jesus?

Call me crazy, but that kind of simple, packaged, formulaic, recipe-like faith just doesn't interest me. I don't believe there is a "how-to" book we can follow that tells us what faith is like because I believe that faith is about a relationship with a person, not a formula. Relationships are dynamic, changing, growing, they ebb and flow, they feel close at times, further at other times, and there's no "how-to" in the world that can teach you how to navigate that. Think about the relationships you have, whether its a friend, a spouse, a father or mother, a son or daughter. If I followed a book about "How to be married" and simply followed the steps outlined in said book, I think I might be looking for a new wife in no time at all. Love isn't formulaic. There's not a three-step process to being in love. My wife doesn't want me to follow a list of bullet points in my love for her. She wants my heart. In that way, Miller says faith is a lot more like falling in love than it is following a formula.

But some have argued that faith is a sort of formula. Scripture says things like "If we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved" (Romans 10:9-10). Isn't that a formula? Confess this, believe this, and you will be saved. I guess I would just argue that saying something out loud, simply going through the motions, the right mechanism, doesn't save us. Confessing that Jesus is Lord is a relational statement. We are declaring the fact that He is our Master, He is the one we follow, and not ourselves. The title Lord implies a relationship. There's not really any way around that as far as I can see. God is constantly saying in the Old Testament, "I don't want your sacrifices, I want your heart." Jesus condemns the Pharisees with the same kind of fervor - telling them how incredible it is that they go through all the law and seek to follow it down to the smallest part, and yet they have missed the whole point of the law! They have no relationship with God, he doesn't have their hearts. I fully believe that God is less concerned (not unconcerned, just less concerned) with what we believe, and even what we do, than he is about having our hearts.

One of the real problems in the church that I think we're beginning to see a bit of resistance to in the Emerging Church movement is that we have really stressed knowing and doing the right things, and not so much of having a heart that is being transformed by a relationship with Jesus. We've stressed an intellectual faith over a relational faith. We've told people that faith is easy - just follow these steps. We've told them it will make their life better - happier, wealthier, healthier. We've even failed to tell them the cost - it might cost family, friends, possessions. Faith isn't simple. It isn't a formula. It can't be put into a "How-to" book. It's a constant, everyday, growing and changing, dynamic, exciting relationship with the living God. I'll take that kind of faith any day over a formula. If I can put God into a chart or graph and understand all the dynamics of the Scriptures and easily discern his will - then he must not be that great of a God. I'm reminded of Isaiah who says "Your ways are not my ways, nor your thoughts my thoughts."

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