HEYP!

Well, if you were there yesterday, you probably felt the same level of excitement as I did over the new ministry launch for student ministries at New Life.  We began new services for high school and junior high called “Velocity” and “Revolve,” respectively. In Velocity, we began a dynamic multimedia-driven series called Cinematic Jesus in which we teach out of video clips. For this service, we taught from the film Transformers and this next week we’ll be seeing how God can speak to us through the film Bruce Almighty. In Revolve, we began a series called Collide and the message was “Colliding with your Direction,” in which we talked about how we sometimes follow the wrong direction in life even though our intentions might be pure.

Attendance was up a ton, with a total of 65 in Velocity and 66 in Revolve, making an overall total of 131. A HUGE thanks goes to all of the leaders and students who helped prepare during this past week and who invested in making yesterday an amazing experience. So next week I hope you can join us in our next week of our new ministries!

As many of you know, there are some pretty big things happening at New Life in the next couple months. We’re making a big shift in student ministries and it looks like God is already doing some pretty cool things in the lives of our students. Over the past 4 months, God has grown our junior high ministry to over twice the number of students each week and we’ve seen some kids make some major movements forward in their relationship with Jesus. We (Sarah & I) have been given the great opportunity to meet a ton of new people on Sundays who are interested in being a part of the junior high ministry. We have also been given the sense from many parents and students that our current Saturday evening service time is too conflicting for many of our families who wish to enjoy the worship experience with their junior high child before dropping their child off to go to the student service.

Among these and several other reasons, we are now making the exciting leap to Sunday mornings and look forward to what God is going to do in an entirely new worship experience for our students during the 10:45am service time. Our junior high students will experience an awesome time of games, music, teaching, and discussion about God in our 75 minute time called “Revolve.”

As excited as I am to see a new ministry take shape, I’m even more excited to see the many exciting ways that God is going to use this next chapter of the ministry to change the lives of our students and families.

So, on August 16th, I hope to see all of you junior high students at our new “Revolve” experience!

Just finished a little work in the basement. Sarah and I are doing whatever we need to in order to prepare to move. For those of you who are out of the loop, we’re looking very closely at a church in Phoenix right now and believe that this may be where God is calling us to do ministry. We’ll see what God does!

In the midst of conversations about ministry effectiveness, strategy, philosophy, and everything else having to do with the rising generation, I’ve found that everything seems to always come back to one thing. No matter how many buzz words we come up with to describe the various trends in our postmodern culture, there seems to be one constant that drives all ministry. This one thing is the centerpiece of why we follow after God. It’s why we sometimes look out into the night sky and wonder if there’s more out there. It’s why we seek intimacy when it’s not time to do so, or why we find ourselves constantly battling our own desires.

This one thing is hunger, and it will always exist in the human spirit. A thousand years from now, when people are looking back at the “pre-historic” 21st century and posturing questions about the internet-boom and other such archaic shifts, there will still be hunger. Real hunger, too, not the kind of hunger you can fix with a Twix.

People will forever be in need of that one more thing that they believe will finally quench their constant needs, and there will remain a variety of other subsets of culture who all claim to have found the one true God, the center of existence, the maker of earth and space and humanity and everything else. Indeed, there will still also be atheists seeking to disprove the existence of God and others trying to prove Him. And the reason will remain: hunger.

We have a deep human need to meet our fulfilled purpose, to find ourselves complete, whole, and fully realized. This need, this yearning, this hunger… it will always remain. And for that reason, Jesus came.

I’ve been reading this book lately about getting things done. It’s by a guy named David Allen. Here’s his website.  I’m sure I’m not the only one (no, really, I’m sure) that let’s his mind wander of into a variety of useless meanderings for no reason at all, or finds himself surfing the internet when he knows that he should be putting together a sermon or letter or making a phone call or whatever. I found a number of other fun websites like 43 folders, Structured Procrastination, and Marktaw.I even found other fun tools to get me back to work.

The thing is, today we have so many professions that are based on “knowledge power.” We’re paid to think, to lead, to inspire, or whatever else. Funny thing is, some of the most inspiring people in history struggled with daily drive and apathy. Indeed, it’s not that uncommon, and we shouldn’t feel like a complete failure whenever we find ourselves wandering within our minds.

Martin Luther struggled with the depressing thoughts of uselessness when he found himself not “accomplishing.” It’s especially difficult when you’re in service roles like ministry, therapy/counseling, teaching, and other jobs that pour into other people. I call these “significance roles” because they are based more on the significance of making a difference than the success of making money or producing for the sake of it. These are the most rewarding roles for those who do them. They are also, ironically, the most discouraging when a person feels like they are failing at their trade.I can totally relate to this.

When you’re a youth pastor, it breaks your heart every time you see a student going down a destructive path. It breaks your heart even more when you allow yourself to say things like “That would’ve never happened if I had just…” But we can’t do that. We can’t play that game. If God is really who He says He is, then we live under grace and forgiveness and our value and worth is determined by Christ, not ourselves. And certainly not our own accomplishments.

So, if you’re reading this and you’re one of the many people in the world that sit around thinking about how much you suck at life, realize this: you do suck. In fact, we all do… seriously, I’m not joking. It’s precisely because we suck that we need God, and that’s a good thing!  If we didn’t suck at life then we wouldn’t feel like we needed God and if we felt like we didn’t need God, we would miss out on life’s greatest adventure in relationship.

I met last night with a group of 8 or 10 middle school students from the Nashville area. The purpose of the meeting was partly leadership development, but we spent most of our time discussing the “biggest issues” that young teens face in today’s society. Among these issues were things like fitting in, drugs & alcohol, & sexuality.

But probably the most telling of all of these issues, in my opinion, was that of image. Every student in our group said that they feel pressured to “look good,” be thin, and wear name brand clothing. To them, the worth of a young teen today is based upon the way he/she looks, and if someone is “ugly” or overweight, then that teen is considered uncool and isn’t allowed into the most popular social circles.

I asked these students how many of them knew what the word “metabolism” meant. To my surprise, every student knew what the word meant on some level. After all, this is a pretty big word for a 10-year-old. Metabolism is a very important thing to these students because, if they don’t have high metabolism, they fight an uphill battle for acceptance.

I was bothered when I asked how many students knew what the word “evangelism” meant. Not one student raised their hand. Keep in mind that each student in this group has been raised in church.

Can you believe it? Ten students raised in the church, every single one of whom knows what the word metabolism means, yet not one was familiar with the word evangelism.

I think that sometimes in the church we mistakenly believe that young teens shouldn’t be presented with words like evangelism because they are “too big” or “irrelevant,” but if they can understand a word like metabolism and have it deeply affect their lives, then why should we not use equally complicated words? Why do we think that somehow our students are incapable of understanding words that are, admittedly so, no more complicated than the words they are so familiar with, not merely on an educational level, but on a very social level as well?

Are we selling our students short by giving them a spoon-fed, unchallenging version of Christianity? Should we not call them to a life changed by the gospel that cries out for their hurting friends who do not know Christ? Is this merely an ignorance of vocabulary, or are we failing to provide an adequate understanding of our calling to be an evangelistic change agent in the world?

Whatever the case may be, we certainly need to evaluate the way we approach our students. The church must not merely be a reaction to the trends of our surrounding culture. It is not enough to simply respond to image issues, drugs & alcohol, sexuality, and the other things our students face. Our students cannot merely me “avoiders” in a world of brokenness. They must be captivated by the heart of God for their friends. They must be saturated with a heart for evangelism.

We get to know God even better when we practice.

There comes a time in each of our lives when we can’t simply sit around any longer. It’s just not enough to say we follow Jesus. We have to add some skill to our passion. We have to add some practice so that when the game day of life hits us hard, we can be ready to face the challenges we encounter. We must learn to fast and pray so that we become more dependent on God. We must study the Bible, worship, and learn the discipline of tithing so that we can unveil the character of God. And we must serve and spend time together as Christ followers so that we can help each other grow in love and character. In essence, we must practice what it means to be a follower of Jesus, because life is not merely about knowing that God loves us. It is about learning to return the love passionately toward God and find ourselves wholly committed to His purpose for our lives.

The first thing God wants me to do is tell others how He changed me.

I have a friend named Ashley. When I was in high school, we went to prom together. We have been close friends for years now and even today, as we have gone our separate ways in life, I regard Ashley as a good friend and remarkable person. A few years ago, Ashley was diagnosed with a bone cancer in her leg. Everyone she knew was devastated for her. She was 19 years old. After several rounds of chemo and multiple ups and downs of treatments and tests, the doctors had all but given up on her. Then, one day, with no warning, she went into the hospital to take some tests and the spots of cancer had mysteriously disappeared. Since that time, Ashley has had other bouts with this horrible disease. But at that moment, the elation of what we saw made me want to tell everyone I knew, which I did.

When anything this amazing happens, we want to tell as many people as possible. This is why we have the New Testament today. A bunch of guys were so amazed at God’s love for them through Jesus, that they wrote letters to everyone they knew and told as many people as possible. When we become followers of Christ, the Bible instructs us to tell people, and it says to do this through baptism. As amazing as it is to experience God’s love in our lives, we should never hesitate to take the first steps in letting people know about the great change He is working in our hearts.

Following Jesus means drawing a line and stepping across.

What are you committed to? Is it worth it? No matter where we are in our spiritual journeys, God is always there pointing out that His plan for us far exceeds the plans we could make for ourselves. When we commit our hearts to Christ, we might feel like we’re not ready, like we might get hurt, or like we might lose the people we love. The truth is, however, that we will never be ready for God. He is simply too big, too powerful, and far to incredible for us to ever measure up. That is the wonder of God’s love. No matter how small or unready or unwilling we are, He loves us and has plans for us and wants us to commit to something worth living for: namely, Himself. So have you committed your heart to God’s purpose for your life? Have you surrendered your life to His plans? If not, could this be the day to “nail it down”? Perhaps at this very moment, as you encounter these words, God is whispering into your ear: “Commit, my child. Commit to my son, Jesus. Commit to me.” There is no greater opportunity than this, so go ahead. Draw a line in the sand and step across into this uncharted place that we call Christ following.

The truth of God’s love for us is one of the greatest mysteries ever introduced to the human race. Why would God, being so powerful and incredible, ever want to love people so small, so broken, and so messed up as us? Yet God chose, before the creation of time itself, to adopt you as His child and give you a life worth more than anything else in the world. Jesus said that the reason he came to die for us was so that we could “have life, and have it to the full.” Can you imagine, as awe-inspiring as our relationship with God is now, how full life will be when we meet Him in Heaven?

When we encounter the love of Christ for the first time, something begins to change in us. It becomes easier to love, more exhilarating to worship, and more exciting when we get to know God better. We become transformed. We begin to evolve.