Taking a break

In the midst of this great transition that I have been blessed to have as I leave one church and start at another I have had the great opportunity to have a lot of free time.  In most cases I feel like I’ve been using that time very productively with working out, getting some book/article stuff lined up and going on a lot of lunch dates with my wife.

But, another problem with having so much free time is I have the tendency to get sucked in too much into my online presence. The other day I checked how many tweets I had done in the last few years and it just felt like too high a number to me. And, I realized after lunch with a friend that he knew everything about my life from my Facebook updates.

So I’m taking a break. I took a break from  blogging a few weeks ago and on Monday deleted Twitter and Facebook from my phone.  I haven’t logged in to check them this week either.  This is a big deal for me but one I think is helpful. I’m not giving up on social media and fully expect to reconnect at some point in the next few weeks but for right now this feels good and right to me.

I’m here in Dallas for only 5 more weeks. It’s my hope and goal to be “present” in person with my community here for the remaining time.

On a couple of great notes too I should mention that it has been amazing to see God work this spring.  Just a few days ago I wrote a pretty large check and paid off all our debt except for student loans and a car (those are next.)  That was a great feeling.  I also was just blessed with what is going to be a long-term book writing deal with Simply/Group Publishing.  I’ll be writing a series of HS devotional books as well as two stand alone books that I have been working on for a number of years.

So I guess I’ll see you in a while. Feel free to pray for us as this transition is great and fun and God is in the midst of it but it still is tough to leave great community behind.

Just in case you wondered about Crossfit and my life.

Wednesday: Thoughts for dads “Ruts vs. Patterns”

I’ve recently been thinking a lot about patterns in my life.  Part of this comes from the realization that I really like me better when I’m regularly attending my 4pm Crossfit Class and living into better patterns.  The days I miss my workout because of busyness or traveling I feel down.  Another reason is that I’m in the midst of some big transitions and I’m spending a lot of time thinking about our new life and how all the pieces will fit together.

A “rut” as I define it is something that you regularly do that has a negative consequence.  No one like to drive, ski, bike or walk in ruts. It’s not fun, safe or comfortable. Ruts can come in all forms.  Maybe it’s an addiction to something unhealthy. A pattern of coming home and mixing a cocktail (or 3) or even simply being a overworker, not sleeping enough or getting in the same argumentative patterns with your spouse or kids.  The thing about ruts is they continually get deeper and harder to get out of.

I’m defining “patterns” as something opposite of a rut. As I am looking at this I see patterns as being positive things.  Patterns can help you make good choices. You might want to establish a pattern of coming home and playing with your kids,  helping with homework, regularly making breakfast for the family, having a healthy date night with your spouse, creating good sleep habits, working out regularly.  What I like about patterns is that they can change easier than ruts.  If life changes or transitions you can easier change patterns because in general they can be fluid.

So my challenge this week is simple.  Take a look at your life and evaluate it based on “ruts” and “patterns.”  Ask the question: “What things are you doing that are pretty easily defined as a rut?”  What do you need to do to break free of the negative? The second question is: “What better patterns can you establish this week that will give you life, your family life and your marriage life?”

Again I’m fully aware that everything I write applies to me. I’m working hard this spring on redefining myself and moving into healthy decisions for all parts of my life.  As a funny/sad side note this week I decided to get more sleep. So I’m committed to going to bed at 10pm and getting up at 7am.   9 hours of sleep sounds like a great thing. Unfortunately the last two nights I’ve laid in bed for at least an hour and half before sleeping.  Sometimes patterns are hard to establish.

Wednesday: Thoughts for dads “Random Prayer time in the Park”

Last night we walked over to our local park after dinner. The boys and I threw a baseball around and my wife and daughter walked the dog around and played on the playground. After a while we all sort of congregated over by the area where we feed the ducks.  It’s a beautiful spot and the weather was just about perfect. We started talking about the future a bit and our new lives in Washington.  It just felt like the right place and time to go into some spontaneous family prayer time.

So I asked the kids if they would pray for our upcoming move and our new house that we don’t have figured out yet.  Of course there was a bit of a turmoil about the order we’d pray in and we ended up going oldest to youngest kid (much to my daughters happiness) but then we prayed.

It was a great moment for us.  All three kids prayed with wisdom, discernment and even care for our family.  Danielle and I closed the time of prayer and we just sat there for a while.

So here’s my challenge to you as a dad.  I guess that more often than not you probably don’t lead into these types of prayer times.  I’m a pastor and I don’t do this spontaneous thing very often. But it was right and we clearly needed that time as a family.  My encouragement to you is to do it this week.

 

How do you disengage?

For a while now I’ve been struggling with being “in between”  two lives.  I’ve got the life we’ve been living the last 5 years here in Texas. A church I love and friends and students who are important to me.  At the same time I have this new life that is getting closer and closer and all the stress, expectations and anxiety that comes with it.

I’m not very good at disengaging from things.  People will tell you that one thing I am particularly good at is responding rather quickly to e-mails and texts.  It’s an area in my professional life that is a positive but also has some negative parts to it.  Sometimes I just need make space away from things

So we are moving in 2 months. I’m not planning on traveling up to Bellevue for at least a month and I’m trying to disengage from the future and just be present where I’m at.

I know I’m not alone in this struggle. Often times in the youth ministry world we become overly engaged in the lives of students and families. It sort of comes with the territory of having a job that really never seems to quit. We can literally spend all day with people and there is always more we could be doing.  I’ve never really struggled in the area of creating boundaries between ministry and life but I know many people do.

I guess what I’m asking is how do you do it. I know some of you will just say you don’t answer e-mails or your phone on days off. I get that. But what if it’s a bigger thing you are anticipating like my move?

 

What’s Your Leadership Style?

What’s your leadership style? Do you value tasks more than relationships, or do you care more about people than getting the job done? The answer could say a lot about how you lead and how others perceive your leadership. We all naturally value one over the other; it’s not wrong, it’s just how we are wired. However, it’s important to know which way you lean so you can make adjustments to become a more balanced leader. Youth workers who understand their leadership style are in tune with how their leadership impacts parents, students, adult volunteers and other church leaders. When you know your leadership style you can craft your interactions with key people in more intentional ways and you’re more able to achieve key goals. Take the LeaderTreks Youth Workers Leadership Style Assessment http://www.leadertreks.org/leadership-style-assessment/

Blissful Ignorance: Never a good thing #symc

Yesterday I was sitting in a glass enclosed atrium on the 3rd level of a hotel in downtown Louisville.  I received a text message from a friend asking if we were ok. I wasn’t sure what he was worried about so I asked him and he mentioned all the Tornadoes heading our way.  After I told him that no one around me seemed concerned he said that was probably because they had never been in a tornado.

Now in general I tend to not worry too much about things like that. But, I’ve never really lived in a place where a lot of natural disasters happen.  Yes I’ve been through a few earthquakes and some fires but nothing like a major storm.

This morning I read in the news how many people have died or had their lives radically altered because of the destructions of the Tornadoes that touched down only about 20 miles from here.  And here I am sitting and writing in my glass atrium again.

Sometimes I wonder how I’m supposed to live my life as a Christian when things like this happen.  I’m not the most unaware person around. Because I’m almost constantly jacked into the web I tend to hear and find out about things pretty quickly when they are happening. But, knowledge and info of things is one thing and actually doing something to help is totally different.

Without overly spritualizing or trying to make a message here I will just close by saying that I feel like I need to be more aware of the signs and sirens around me and work to figure out how to respond when I know something is happening.  And yes I’m talking more than just tornadoes. I think all of us are more aware of the signs and symbols in our own lives that indicate when there is some sort of problem we need to respond to.  Whether that’s a personal issue, marriage issue, work issue, family issue or something else.

Blissful Ignorance doesn’t make the problems go away. 

Wednesday: Thoughts for dads “People before Things”

I realize this post is a few days late but I’m going to still title it as I did because it keeps the continuity of the series.

Today I’m going to simply share a thought that I was given in a counseling session this week.  If you missed that we are heading into a relationship with a counselor please read this post.  Most of you know that we are embarking on a pretty major change in our lives and moving across the country. With that move comes some great stress. But, even   when stress is great it still causes anxiety and other issues. We’re trying to get ahead of that and make sure we have someone to talk to in the process.

As we were talking our therapist said that she wanted me to focus on one thing this week and that was this idea of “People before Things.”   Where this came from was what I would call my need for “order” and “patterns” in my life and especially as I parent.  But she correctly pointed out that sometimes that need for structure affects everyone around me and not in a good way.

So on a practical level what does “People before Things” mean to me this week. 

1. It means I worry less about the state of the kitchen after I make a meal than I do the people eating it.

2. It means I forget about time and my obsession with being early everywhere and more about how I encourage and love my family in the mornings.

3. It means I release myself from feeling pressure to take care of things when I could be spending quality time with people.

4. It means I begin creating patterns and systems that free me from guilt when I don’t accomplish what I feel I need to.

5. It means I wrestle more with my kids on a pile of clean laundry instead of needing to put it all away first.

6. It means we no longer live with the belief that our family of 5 will be held to unrealistic expectations.

7. It means that I will fight hard to chill, relax and release.

8. It means that there is nothing more important than the people in my life.

I realize that some of you who read this and don’t know me well might think I’ve got major issues.  Probably would be helpful at some point to have Danielle write a guest post saying I’m not really that bad. I’m just at a stage in my life where I feel a need and even some pressure to make sure that I am creating the best possible situation in my family for us all to thrive. The scary reality is that we only have 12 more years of our kids in the house.  I want them to be able to look back at their growing up years and have amazing memories of how much their parents loved them, each other and Jesus.  Even more scary is my oldest is 11 so we possibly only have 6 more years with him.

I write these weekly posts just to encourage dads to walk on this journey with me. I’m far from perfect and don’t expect you to be perfect either. But, as we journey on this road together I hope we can encourage each other to grow as we partner with our wives, follow Jesus and love our kids.

Youth Ministry: The Dark Side of Student Leadership Teams #symc

I’ve been thinking about this for a while but have never really put my thoughts down in a blog. Last week I was with 28 churches at Fuller Seminary starting a year long “Sticky Faith” intensive cohort program with my new church.  At some point we started talking about our ministries and in particular someone asked a question about how we handle “Student Leadership Teams.”  In a perhaps overly cynical and snarky moment I spouted out that I thought one of the main reasons we have these groupings of students is for control.

Let me unpack this thought a bit because I think that there is some truth to this.  First, most of us in the youth ministry leadership world have been frustrated a number of times by our students not showing up to things.   We’ve lost money, momentum and sometimes even respect as student/families see us do something that is lame.  Second, we should probably confess that we feel pressure to get students involved in leadership and important roles within the ministry because people who have been doing it for a long time tell us its important.

One frustrating thing in Youth Ministry is that we can’t “make” any students show up for anything.  We are not like their football coaches, band conductors, dance teams or tutors. We don’t have that type of relationship in our youth ministries where there are actual consequences if they don’t come.

Unless we form a leadership team.  This is where the control piece comes in.  When we form a leadership team we generally have applications, interviews, expectations, consequences and rewards.  In many ways we create a system where we have some sort of control over the students so that we can make them come to our events.  We now have a built in group of students that we know will come to our stuff.  We probably even have a requirement that they invite all their friends and tell them how great it will be.

I think this is wrong.

The problem is I don’t know how to fix the system.  I once had a student leadership team at a church that had almost 60 students on it. We had twice a month meetings and an annual retreat.  The retreat was a big deal and the main reason that people joined the team.  We didn’t do a whole lot with these student leaders but they knew they couldn’t miss our “training” times (not sure what we actually trained them in) and the retreat was actually fun.

I believe in giving students leadership roles and getting them involved around specific events that they themselves are excited about.  But I’m against the “leadership team” approach to youth ministry because I just don’t know if it’s always done with pure motives.

Would love to know what you think.

 

Wednesday: Thoughts for dads. Structure and Control are unfortunate cousins

A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog post about “Peace” and specifically I talked about the need to help create peace during that morning rhythm for my family.  I can say that I feel like it’s going better for us.

I was thinking about the same morning routine yesterday and was wondering about how closely related Structure and Control are. For example I like our mornings to have a lot of structure. It’s just the way I operate. I know that we need to walk about the door at 7:40am in order to do carpool the easiest and not get stuck in a long line up of cars. So I back everything up in the morning all the way to me getting out of bed with never hitting the snooze button at 7am.

That structure is good for me because I value and need it. It’s often good for our family too because we need to know what we are doing.   But what if I have kids and a wife that are not that structured and who have the great ability to “flow” with the morning and make changes as needed.  Specifically,  what if my wife who is more “in tune” with the emotional needs of our kids recognizes that one of them might need a little extra sensitivity  in the mornings? And what if that awareness says we are going to probably not get in the car for an extra 5 minutes?

Well unfortunately when I don’t allow for those changes to happen in a fluid and healthy way then I fall into the world of control.  If the structure and schedule becomes more important than the people then I am teetering on the brink of it being unhealthy.

So just another quick dad thought and challenge.  Take the next couple of days and think about routines and patterns you have.  Think about how they are helpful and conversely when they are not.  Ask yourself the question if this is a situation where structure and patterns are good at what point do they become unhealthy.

As usually too know that I’m praying for dads today. I think that generally a lot of us are doing great things and care deeply about our families.  I write these posts just to encourage us to grow. I appreciate all the feedback and responses I get as I walk this journey with you.

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