After church this Sunday, my wife and I are traveling to our new church in Minnesota. We’ll be on the road for a couple days, me driving the U-Haul and towing my car while Dana drives the new Saturn Vue we just purchased last Wednesday. We’ll spend two nights on the road and arrive at our new home early Tuesday afternoon. Although I sometimes queue up blog posts to automatically publish while I’m out of town, I haven’t had much time for that lately. I apologize, in case anyone cares.

If you think of it, I’d appreciate prayer while we’re on the road: for the vehicles, our safety, and all our stuff. Thanks guys!

Dana and I just arrived home from spending a couple days in Minnesota searching for a house. It’s hard to believe the move is less than two weeks away! Dana put a lot of time and energy into finding good housing options for us before we flew out there and, thanks to the help of a special friend up there, we were able eliminate a lot of options before we even arrived. Still, we checked out a lot of houses in only two days. It was tough to find a house that suits our needs and is also within our budget, but we did it! We decided to rent a house from a family that volunteers with the youth group and then buy something around this time next year. The house we’re renting is huge, plus it’s right on a lake and only 5 miles from church. At first we thought the house might be a little too big for us, but given some thought and creativity, it’ll be perfect for cozy meetings and entertaining students. We’re very blessed to have such a nice house provided for us as we move into the area.

More pictures of the house
Video of the house on YouTube

[youtube]JHhXWwq0XOM[/youtube]

My time in the Dallas area has come to an end. Dana and I have enjoyed our time here and will miss all our dear friends, our church and the students we’ve come to love so very deeply over the past several years. It wasn’t an easy decision by any means, but we feel that the Lord has led us to accept a new youth ministry position at a church in Minnesota. We’re excited about the move and the ministry God has in store for us there, but it’s still hard to leave our comfort zone here in Dallas and transition to the opposite side of the country. It’s especially difficult for my wife, a born and raised Texan, who’s never seen more than two inches of snow in her life and is leaving all of her family behind. Fortunately, my whole side of the family seems to be migrating to the Minneapolis area, so Dana and I are looking forward to settling closer to them as my two sisters-in-law both deliver new Schmoyer babies into the family this summer. It looks like my sister will also be moving there within a couple months and possibly my parents whenever they finally retire.

So now comes the crazy time of packing, saying goodbyes, leaving security and venturing out into something new. Pray for us as all this continues to unfold and I use my final couple weeks here in Dallas to set up as smooth of a transition as possible. Our last Sunday here is Sunday, February 11, and I officially start at Alexandria Evangelical Covenant Church the very next week, February 18, as their new Youth Pastor.

You can check out my wife’s blog post about it here.

This Christmas my mom asked that my brothers, sisters and me write a list of affirmations about my dad for her to compile together for him in a book. Since “words of affirmation” are his primary love language, she thought this would be the best way for the family to communicate our love and appreciation for all he’s done for the family. How fitting to begin my blog for 2007 by expressing my thanks and gratitude to him publicly.

Thanks, Dad, for everything and your influence that has helped shape me into the person I am today!

• You’ve modeled servanthood to me.
• You’ve shown me what it means to be the spiritual leader of a family.
• You’ve demonstrated that church and God should always be our #1 priority.
• You’ve instilled positive spiritual experiences within me.
• You listen to our tough decisions and respond with wisdom.
• You set an example for humility.
• You’re dedicated to your family.
• You’ve shown me that serving others is more important than serving myself.
• You’ve challenged me to take every situation to God in prayer.
• You showed us respect by listening to us while disciplining.
• Your love and support for me is very evident in all that I do.
• Thanks for teaching us family values and investing into me personally.
• Thanks for modeling diligence and faithfulness in spite of difficulties and opposition.
• You’ve challenged me to pray about every decision, big and small.
• Your love and support is always evident.
• You taught me that scripture is dependable and is the foundation of life.
• You’re a great model of the necessary balance between ministry, family, relaxation and staying fit.
• Thanks for caring so much about our upbringing that you invested countless hours into home schooling us.
• Your continued quest for knowledge and understanding inspires me to do the same.
• You willingness to try new and sometimes uncomfortable things challenges me to do the same.
• I pray that one day I will be able to pass on to my children the abundance of spiritual knowledge and insight that you’ve passed on to me.
• Thanks for modeling a life that is devoted to God.
• Your constant availability to your young children shows how much you care for us in being a stable presence in our lives.
• Thanks for immediately changing your ministry responsibilities when I asked you to attend my wrestling matches.
• You helped me choose friends wisely and encouraged me to be the one to influence them.
• You taught me that the heart and romance are immensely valuable and should always be addressed with prayerful consideration.
• You demonstrated that your wife always comes before children and ministry.
• I figure if you can find time to exercise and stay in shape, then there’s no excuse why I can’t either.
• Through your example I’ve learned to be wise with the financial resources God’s provided, as small or large as they might be.
• While growing up I was greatly influenced by watching you trust God with little details.
• You’ve shown me that gifts from the Lord are always meant to be shared with others.

Dana and I just got back from a great weekend in Minnesota visiting my brother, his wife and daughter and my former pastor’s new church. As a born and raised Texan, my wife has never seen more than 2 inches of snow nor has she ever seen a frozen lake, let alone ride a snowmobile on one. It was great to see everyone again and do our premarital counseling 6-month follow-up (one month early) with Pastor Rol.

My dad started blogging this month if anyone wants to check him out. He already journals and generates so much content that this is almost a natural step for him. I mean, he writes so much material that he has seriously filled up his laptop’s hard drive and a 80 GB external hard drive with nothing but Word documents! I’m not even kidding — there’s no large collection of digital music for video sucking up space, it’s all Word documents. (I wonder how long it’ll take before he runs out of web space.)

He’s been the [tag]pastor[/tag] at Main Street [tag]Baptist Church[/tag] in Doylestown, Pennsylvania for 25 years now and mostly blogs about [tag]pastoral ministry[/tag], [tag]spiritual growth[/tag], [tag]prayer[/tag], and other related topics. His heart is for training and discipling young church leaders and pastors, so if that’s of interest to you, check him out: http://www.mainstreetbaptist.org/blog/

There’s a lot of blogging going on about the New York Times’ recent article concerning the mass exodus of teenagers from evangelical churches. I’ve heard all this for a while now, so it’s not really a ground-breaking story or anything. I wouldn’t even bother to mention it here except for this quote given in the context of disputing the statistic that “4% of teens will be bible-believing in the next generation.” Quote:

Mr. Luce responded: “If the 4 percent is true, or even the 5 percent, it’s an indictment of youth ministry. So certainly they’re going to want different data.”

Why do youth ministries take so much blame for this statistic? C’mon, [tag]Run Luce[/tag]! Yes, some youth ministries can stand to be re-evaluated and changed, but it can’t be entirely our fault. There is a lot more to this than just ineffective youth groups.

I think it involves the following:

1. If students aren’t returning to [tag]church[/tag], then maybe the church needs to rethink what they’re doing and how they “do church.” What is it about the church that students don’t want to be a part of?

2. Students need to see genuine godliness lived out by parents at home and in the lives of their youth workers. The truth is, many parents in our churches wouldn’t even meet the standard of spiritual maturity that I require for volunteers who are in this role model position.

3. Students need to have a solid understanding of bibliology and why then can trust [tag]scripture[/tag]. The Bible needs to be a reliable source as the foundation of everything they do and how they live their lives, not just a book of stories. Churches are filled with biblically illiterate people and it shows.

[tags]parenting[/tags]

MORNING GENERAL SESSION, BY ROLLIE MARTINSON
I wasn’t quite sure what this guy’s point was and, judging by the number of people that left during his talk, I’m not sure too many other people did either. What I took from it, though, is that homes are always creating values and beliefs in the lives of our students. We may spend a lot of time telling kids something at church, like God loves them, but when they go home all they hear is, “You’re worthless!” Our messages are often overshadowed by what they hear at home because the home is spending more time instilling a different set of values and beliefs, whether intentionally or not.

LEADING CHANGE IN YOUR YOUTH MINISTRY, BY MARK OESTREICHER
I really enjoyed Marko’s seminar because most of it came from personal stories of failure and mistakes. He wasn’t afraid to say, “Here’s how I messed up big-time and here’s what I learned from it.” It was kinda refreshing in a way to know that I’m not the only youth pastor that makes mistakes and learns the hard way. I just hope I can avoid some mistakes in the future by learning from people like him.

Last week I thought to myself, “If I could back up two and a half years and start everything over again at my youth ministry, what would I do differently?” Two things come to mind that I would change if I could start over. First, I’d make outreach a priority rather than letting students become comfortable with their own little group. Second, I’d be more intentional about making sure communication was clear and complete between students, parents, volunteers and church leadership. I can’t go back and change them, but following Marko’s example I can learn for the future and start to make the necessary changes now.

One thing Marko’s learning about leadership right now is that people are more comfortable with change when they know and see that we’re around and available to their lives. This doesn’t mean scheduling time to meet with someone — this means normal, unscheduled time spent together.

There are plenty of things in my youth group that need to change. Marko mentioned that change works best when it’s a continual cycle that people are used to. When people start to feel comfortable and settle into a routine, change becomes more difficult and needs to be approached differently. This is true because there is a major weakness of our youth ministry that I’m trying hard to change, but it feels like little ground is being made because I let it go too long. Everyone feels too “stable” and I know now that I need to address these things before they become the norm.

Marko left us with a practical process for future-dreaming and evaluating ministry that they use for Youth Specialties. It has 5 steps and should be done thoroughly with a team of people.

1. Dream up a long list of “Imagine if…” statements. Dream way bigger than what you actually want to do.

2. What are the things we clearly value in this ministry? Which old values do we want to hold on to and what new ones do we want to adopt?

3. What characteristics define who your ministry is? Give your ministry a name and think of it as a living human. What characteristics does your ministry posses? What is the ministry like? Where do we want this ministry to move?

4. Identify the “sacred cows.” What are some road-blocks to changing these things? Most sacred cows are unspoken in our ministries. There are three levels to the sacred cows: red light = this will never change, it’s non-negotiable; yellow light = this might be changeable, but changing it will be costly; green light = this cow is easy to slaughter.

Marko gave us some time to start discussing these things with our church group, so Dana, Jessica and myself did so. Here’s a couple items from our “Imagine if…” list:
– Imagine if every student brought a friend to church on the same day.
– Imagine if students were more concerned for others than themselves.
– Imagine if students had a passion to worship God genuinely and publicly.
– Imagine if students had a burden for unsaved people and were missional-minded.
– Imagine if all the youth group students were unified together.

After attending Marko’s session I think I feel a little more confident to tackle some of these issues and do my best to make change take place.

EVENING GENERAL SESSION, DONALD MILLER
Donald Miller, the author of Blue Like Jazz, wasn’t a very dynamic kinda guy as I anticipated he would be, but after I got over the fact that he’s pretty introverted and soft-spoken, man, that guy is loaded with insights!

Donald Miller really challenged me to be more intentional about building relationships with unsaved people and leading them to Christ. Unfortunately, I am pretty wrapped up in a Christian bubble. The most contact I have with unbelievers is when I get online to play Guild Wars with about 10 other guys. It’s a double-standard for me to encourage students to get to know unbelievers at their school and invite them to Christ if I’m not doing the same.

Donald said two things clearly. First, the church needs to change. How we “do church” must be taken back to scripture and evaluated. Unfortunately, the only thing scripture tells us about how to “do church” is how to pick elders for it, that’s it. We have a blank slate on pretty much everything else concerning “doing church.” The example we have is bunch of people sitting around a table as a family breaking bread and drinking wine together. If the church should be like a family, then it’s going to be pretty small, messy, hard and it’s going to take time.

Second, Christians are taught to stay inside the Christian culture in order to stay safe and avoid people who disagree with us. In Acts, though, the apostles went so far out into culture that they were killed for it! Donald used the traditional passage of Paul in Athens in Acts 17 to point out that Paul discussed the gospel to the people of Athens in their meeting place. Then he went to the streets and talked with anyone who came along and the people loved him!

Darwin’s influence on the church is the survival of the fittest — if they don’t agree with you, starve them out. But Paul does the opposite. He seeks them out and intentionally builds relationships with them. Because of this, he’s invited to speak more and, in this meeting, he opens with a complement, “I see that you are deeply spiritual.” He looks at them and thinks, “What do we have in common?” People have 99% of everything on common, so build relationships on these things.

Paul was also involved in their culture by memorizing poetry. Some say that this was Paul’s strategy, but Donald Miller thinks it was because Paul actually liked these people. He enjoyed them and invested time into what they were all about.

The personal application is clear.

[tags]National Youth Workers Convention, NYWC, Youth Specialties, Rollie Martinson, Donald Miller, Mark Oestreicher, church[/tags]

Looks like a recent study from [tag]George Barna[/tag] confirms my thoughts about why 85% of high school graduates never return to church. I think parents need to take their own [tag]spiritual growth[/tag] seriously and then intentionally model that at home. With a higher value placed on spirituality in the home, hopefully that will lead to a higher value of church. The home is where it needs to start, but the church could still stand to re-evaluate its strategies, too.

Barna says this:

One of the more significant outcomes of the study was the challenge to churches. While most kids in the 8-to-12 age range are involved in a church, relatively few of them consider church experiences to be valuable. That is confirmed by the fact that so few kids consider prayer to be a critical part of their life. Parents must take the lead in establishing the centrality of faith experiences and practices for their children. That begins with parents modeling the significance of faith in their lives. It also highlights the importance of families taking the lead in the spiritual development process, rather than expecting or waiting for a church to produce spiritual growth in adolescents.

[tags]parenting[/tags]

Tonight Dana and I splurged by going out to On The Border and splitting a meal. The occasion? Today is our one month wedding anniversary and our three year dating anniversary. I know it sounds corny, but hey, it’s fun. Supposedly this kinda stuff wears off after a while, so we might as well enjoy it while we can. Besides, Dana took a job today through her cousin’s temp agency, so we felt like the $9 meal was affordable for the celebration.