creating enviroments

Ever since I was little I valued my environment.  I remember wanting my own room so bad that I moved into the bathroom, I wanted to create a space that was mine and I could make it how I wanted it. It was kinda weird that I did that and valued that so much.

When I got a little older (like 11) we moved and I got my own room. I spent so much time and effort decorating it and setting the atmosphere. I remember getting the lighting with my lava lamp, halogen lamp and candles just right.  Then I would play music by Mariah Carey and just bask in this comfortable, relaxing environment I created. Again kinda quirky.

When I got older (like 20) I was in college and I remember beginning to create environments to connect people. I started a Bible study for some girls at my house and I threw parties all the time. I spent my senior year connecting some freshman girls to the greater Christian community at my college.  I especially remember spending like 8 hours some days at the coffee shop on campus where every hour different friends and groups of people would come and hang out with me.  They would stop by cause they knew I was there, just ready to talk and hang out. I used that place to introduce people and create this environment for connection.  People thought I was crazy for spending that much time hanging out in one place.

The reason I reflect on it is because I can see how God used something that has always been true of me and kinda weird about me since I was little for something with purpose and for his kingdom now.

What I do for my job with the Young Adult Community is I create and provide environments, atmospheres, for young people to connect and grow in their faith together.

I was organizing my file drawer at work the other day and I found some old excel sheets and just lists and lists of names.  About 500 young adults have been through this ministry.  I was blown away by looking at all these names. People who have found community even if it was only for a short period of time through this ministry. Everyone cycles in and out.  But while they have been around, they have connected with others in a Christ-centered community through an environment.

Though some don't stay long, many others have found life long friends or the people they will marry and spend the rest of their life with all from a strange little quirk about me that God has attached purpose to:  my love for creating environments for connection and relationship in Christ.

new-ness

I went on a walk in my neighborhood last week and noticing how beautiful all the yards were it inspired me to work on my yard and plant some flowers and make it look better.

So yesterday I went out and bought a bunch of yard tools and soil and flowers.  And I really just intended to plant the flowers.  Not until I started working on my yard did I realize how much work needed to be done.  I had piles and piles of old leaves, tons of over grown bushes and branches and weeds. The thing is I didn't even realize it cause from just looking at it, you couldn't tell cause it was just in certain places, not the main part of the yard. But as I started raking and cutting I realized how bad it was and how much there was. I ended up spending 5 hours just preparing to plant.

It felt so good to work hard on something and see a difference at the end of the day. But before I can plant the flowers, I had to get rid of a lot of old dead leaves and overgrown branches that caused clutter. (the picture is of everything I got rid of)

And it just made me realize how God works on us and on anything he wants to grow and make more beautiful.  He has to cut away and remove dead things in our lives, maybe things that once thrived but have lost life. He has to cut away at branches that no longer bear fruit.  Sometimes it's painful and like, ahhh what is God doing? Especially when we want to hold onto the past.  But as I raked the dead leaves, underneath them we're more leaves, wet, rotting leaves with slugs and spiders. It was gross. And it's like why would you want to hold onto that and keep that?

But what he is doing by removing dead things from our lives and cutting away at us is he is getting us ready for something better, something more beautiful and more fruitful.  He is preparing to plant new-ness. New beauty. New life.

"He has made everything beautiful in it's time." Ecc. 3:11

creative best

When I like something, I love it! I've always been that way, whatever I'm into, I'm so fully into it and passionate about it. Right now there are a few prominent spiritual leaders that I look up to and admire so much. I listen to their sermons and messages and study how they lead... all the time. They help my faith grow, they inspire me, and keep me motivated.

I watch them making such a large impact on the world, they communicate the Gospel so effectively, they lead in great, bold ways, they lead people to Christ and they challenge people who are walking with God. 

And I am in awe of that. So much so that I have found myself comparing myself to them. I want to lead like them! I want to do greater things for God like them! I want to speak like them! I want to be a part of a great movement of God like them!  

The funny thing is I am so different than these people I admire so much. I feel myself being like God, if you made me more like this or I had a story like them, then I could be so much more effective like them. My tendency is to want to just copy their style and ideas and I have done this in ministry just because it impacted me so much.

But I feel recently like God is showing me that he doesn't want me to be them, he wants me to be me. He doesn't want me to be another Christine Caine, he wants me to be Molly Ruff. 

"That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse.  We have far more interesting things to do with our lives.  Each of us is an original." ~ Gal. 5:26

When you watch "The Voice" or any show like that, the thing that makes the difference between a good artist and a great artist is when they "know themselves." You hear a judge say something like, "You know who you are, you have a unique style that makes to stand out, I haven't heard anyone like you." And they are criticized if they sound exactly like another famous artist because they are similar but not as good as the original.

So I am asking God to help me lead like I would lead. To help me speak and lead out of my personality and who he has made me rather than who I want to be like. Here are some verses that are helping me in this:

"But if you are content to be yourself, you will become more than yourself." ~ Luke 14:11

"Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life." ~ Gal. 6:4-5

When I try to imitate an original, it never comes out as good.  It also takes way less work and creative energy to copy. But if I spend less time looking around at others and more time listening to God and what he wants me to do, it's more work, it's more challenging, it's more creative energy, it's more focus and it gives him way more room to work out something new and original through me. 

This challenges me to do the creative best I can with who I am and the ministry he has chosen me, not a cheap imitation of someone else, but me to lead. I will sink my self into that.

unstuck

I love routine. I love getting in a pattern of what is easy and predictable, but that makes it easy to get stuck.

In ministry I have gotten stuck in my ways of doing things. I have found certain things that have worked really well in the past and so I keep doing them, trying to get the same results. But I find that it is dangerous when I begin to trust a method or a model, because that means I trust that more than I trust God.

Some of the things I have developed in the past that worked so well came out of the willingness to change things, be creative and take risks.

I remember a dying church my parents once worked at. At one point like 20 years ago they were a thriving church, the most popular church, drawing tons of people. They found a pattern that worked. But over the 20 years they we're unwilling to change anything because at one point what they we're doing worked so well. They were stuck, trying to get the same results by doing what they've always done.

But times change fast, people change, things evolve and because they didn't evolve with the culture and they didn't change methods to stay relevant they began to die.

Some people just don't like change though.  But we get over it, just look at how many times Facebook has changed things, at first some people hate it, but then we love it, then they change again.  They are always improving and staying relevant and ahead.

It's true what Marc Driscol says, we struggle with "Methodology vs. Methodolatry" The methods should change, the principles stay the same. But when we get stuck in our believing our method is the best and only way to do it, we begin to idolize our methods.

God is freeing me from being stuck in methodolatry. I have made decisions to take steps of faith again, to be creative and take risks. These risks may fail. That is okay, I will learn something and move on, try something else.  I'd rather be following God's movement and leading, even when I'm unsure where we are going, than staying stuck in the monotonous method because it worked at one point.

A new willingness to get unstuck in routine makes me depend on him in whole new ways. It's more work, it's uncomfortable, and it requires more faith... and that is how I know he is leading.

Tailor-Made Christianity

Over the past few months I have really been wrestling with the idea or the question, "What do people want???? (in church, in sermons, messages, talks, worship)" Especially young adults. I have been talking with people and reading books about it.

The past few days I have been driving myself crazy with these questions. Because I watch people come and go, come and go so fast, so often. And I'm like why do they not stick?

I think I am trying to find one pat answer like, "This is what my generation wants." I want to discover it and offer it. But as I talk to different people I am seeing different people want different things. 100 people could say, "I want deep teaching" and that could mean 100 different things. And as I think about church and our culture something clicked, something made sense to me this morning.

In our culture we can tailor make anything to meet our exact needs and wants. Think about how we order food, "No mayo, extra cheese, dressing on the side, wheat bread not white." When I got back from Spain I was overwhelmed by all the choices I had at McAlister's because in living in Spain, you just ordered a drink and didn't even choose the tapa (small portion of food) they brought you and certainly didn't tell them how to make it for you. Or think about your cell phone, think about the thousands of app's you can choose from to serve your life exactly how you need it to. We live in a tailor made culture.

So that is why I think we see people cycling in and out of churches. They go to this church for worship, another church for the sermon, and another church for community. We are tailor making our Christianity to serve us exactly how we want it to.

So maybe I am asking the entirely wrong question. Maybe the question isn't, "People, what do you want??" Maybe the question is, "God, what do you want for the people?"

And if I let him dictate that for me as I lead this ministry instead of trying to tailor make something to meet every want and desire of every person, I can just simplify it and follow God's leading a step at a time, trusting he knows the needs of his people best. I can lead by following his lead.

hard hitting preaching

I have been leading a young adult ministry for about 2 and 1/2 years now. There has been one consistent thing I hear people say about the kind of preaching and teaching they want. And that is that they want "hard hitting" messages. "We want meat, we want deeper teaching, we want you to slap us in the face with the truth, we don't want sugar coated messages, we want someone to tell us like it is."

My friend Jessica and I were talking about this the other day. Our parents generation like the very "seeker sensitive" kind of teaching, light, simple messages, nothing too overly challenging, so that when people come to church for the first time they don't get scared off. And now our generation is kind of retaliating against that style of church. At least that is what it seems like... or they are wanting something different.

So I have been trying to figure out what exactly "hard hitting teaching" means. Here are some of my theories:

They want passionate preaching. They want someone to preach to them with passion, excitement, boldness and seriousness.

They want to be called to a higher standard. But they aren't sure what that standard is.. or maybe they know deep down but they want to hear it, they want to hear it from someone who is living that standard and can model it, but also say it in a blunt, honest, "I'm telling you like it is" kind of way.

They want extreme challenge. They want to know what do I need to stop doing completely? What do I need to start doing? What can I and what should I strive for? It's almost as if they are saying, "just tell me how to live this out and tell me bluntly."

They want to know how. They want to know how the Bible applies to real life and how to actually live it out.

They want to be uncomfortable. Kind of like a child who hates being disciplined but deep down really wants it and needs it. The discomfort of hearing the challenge and feeling the need to change somethings about their lives.

I don't know, this is just what I am picking up on. And maybe I'm wrong, I could just be listening to too few voices. But if it is true or somewhat true, part of me says to all that, "the deepest most challenging message is the fact that you can't do anything to save yourself and earn God's love." Some of that to me seems like tell me the rules to be good enough, but the truth is you never will earn it, you have to admit you're too weak, too broken, and too disobedient to do it on your own. And you just simply have to trust the saving work of Christ and accept and trust his grace and forgiveness.

But on the other hand, Jesus is very challenging, he says you have to give up everything to be his disciple. And on the other hand, I find myself loving bold preaching too. I listen to sermons from Steven Furtick every day, who in my opinion preaches boldly and holds nothing back. He preaches with a contagious passion and energy for the Gospel. I love it. So here is a short clip from one of his sermons, an example of what I think a challenging message is.

http://vimeo.com/32915458

Risk and Investment

In Matthew 25 Jesus tells the parable about how a master gave 3 servants different amounts of money. Two of the servants doubled the master's investment. The third one said, "Master I know you have high standards and hate careless ways, that you demand the best and make no allowances for error. I was afraid I might disappoint you, so I found a good hiding place and secured your money. Here it is, safe and sound down to the last cent. v. 24-25 msg.

He was afraid to take a risk, to invest the money, because what if he lost it? What if he failed with what he was trusted with? So he played it safe. He took the sure way, the way in which he was guaranteed to still have the money. It was comfortable, he didn't have to be creative or change anything he was doing. He could just hide it and continue on with life as normal.

"The master was furious. That's a terrible way to live. It's criminal to live cautiously like that! If you knew I was after the best why did you do less than the least? The least you could have done would have been to invest the sum with the bankers, where at least I would have gotten a little interest." v. 26-27.

Obviously in this parable Jesus is the master and we are the servants. I have been thinking about this parable and my own life and ministry and what kind of job I am doing to multiply the investment God has given me. I like to play it safe. I like consistency, routine, I like what is predictable and comfortable. So this is a very challenging passage to me. Jesus says very challenging things, I am spending time studying his words in the Gospels and he makes some extreme calls and challenges. Here is what he says at the end of this parable.

"Take the thousand and give it to the one who risked the most. And get rid of this "play-it-safe" who won't go out on a limb. Throw him out into utter darkness." v. 28

"Throw that worthless servant outside, into utter darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (niv)

Dang, I mean that is strong language. But it implies the high importance of multiplying his investment.

The only way we can multiply it is to take a risk, a step of faith, to "go out on a limb." When I fall into the routine of ministry and doing what is comfortable cause it is easy, I stop taking risk, I stop depending on God's spirit to do the work, to do something great. I want to multiply what I've been given. So recently I am asking God what risks he wants me to take, what do I need to change? what does going out on a limb in ministry look like right now?

I'm not sure of the answer yet, but I know my desire to make the most of his investment is stronger than my desire for the routine and comfort of hiding it. I don't want to live out of fear of failure if I take a risk, but rather dependence on Him when I try something I can't predict or control or guarantee will succeed. Jesus guarantees that it's worth it:

"Take the thousand and give it to the one who risked the most."

"For everyone who has will be given more and he will have an abundance."

"Risk your life and get more than you ever dreamed of."