The first Sunday of every month the youth pastors in our town (collectively called “Allies”) put on an event called Burning Bush. It’s a time for all our youth groups to come together for worship, teaching, equipping and building relationships. Tonight was my night to be the speaker. As the evening started and I was getting ready to take the stage, I realized that not once had I prayed over my lesson. It’s like God struck me upside the head and said, “Dude, who’s message is this? Is this your message or my message?!” After all the time of studying and preparation I had put into the talk, not once did I approach God about it. I couldn’t believe my stupidity. I went off and prayed by myself, begging God to forgive me, and then grabbed one of the other youth pastors and prayed with him, too. The difference between teaching in my own strength and teaching is God’s strength is incredible. When I got up on stage, the whole lesson felt different. It felt like it flowed from me from me rather than being recited from memorized notes. It’s a good thing God works in spite of me, not because of me.

The moral of the story: Communicate God’s Word with God, not your own word without God.

1. Thou shalt pray daily. Pray for personal issues, the ministry, your pastor, students, humility and wisdom. It’s absurd to think that we can effectively serve the Lord in ministry without discussing it with Him on a regular basis. That’s like working for a boss and never listening for direction, only it’s not a business project at stake — it’s teenager’s eternal destiny! We also need to be sure to spend time worshiping in prayer and listening to Him in solitude. Some of my best prayer and worship moments are the times I finally stop talking to God and just listen for Him in silence, waiting for whatever He lays on my heart and mind.

What We’re Doing
For several years now I’ve taken a week every summer to fly up to New Jersey and direct a camp for inner-city Angel Tree children. It’s always a stretching experience because most of the kids have discipline and authority issues, but it’s also very rewarding because many of them have never seen stars before or a horse in real life. Even more importantly, many of them have never heard of Christ or experienced any kind of appropriate love and attention. It’s really a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get these children off the streets and offer them a different perspective on life right before they make choices that lead to drugs, gangs and prostitution.

Who’s Going
Dana and I are taking nine students from my youth group to help serve as counselors for the week. They’ll be sharing their testimonies, teaching Bible studies, leading songs and games, performing skits and mostly loving on kids. Please pray for us this week and next as we exemplify Christ’s love and give these kids the time of their lives.

Trip Updates
I’ll be text messaging updates to the front page of my youth group’s website throughout each day, so if you want the play-by-play of what’s happening on the trip, just keep your eye on www.AlexandriaYouth.com or add me as a friend on Twitter. I’m also going to do my best to upload pictures to our online photo album every night.

Vacation
Immediately following camp, Dana and I are going back to Texas and Oklahoma for her family reunion and to take some vacation time visiting old friends. So, this blog may be quieter than usual for a couple weeks except for a couple posts I have queued up to go, but, Lord willing, I’ll be back. Pray for us!

Here’s the camp team from my church, minus one girl.

[tags]Angel Tree, camp, youth group[/tags]

Three students who graduated from PBU the year before me are serving at New Life Campus Fellowship, a campus church at Virginia Tech of about 1,000 people.

• Terri Dewey (worship arts)
• Chris Backert (pastor, teacher)
• Dom Saia (equipping ministry)

Please remember to pray for them as they minister to students on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Here’s how they’ve responded so far:

Tonight (Monday), we had a prayer vigil at 8pm. Student leaders throughout [nlcf] opened their apartments to those on campus who didn’t want to sleep in the dorm tonight.

This week, our staff will be on call & available to anyone who needs us. We are letting everyone know set places they can find us on campus, and intentionally going into the dorms as much as possible. We will be attending the convocation on campus Tuesday at 12noon, and we are working to plan a prayer vigil on Wednesday mid-day. We will also have this Sunday’s weekly gathering devoted entirely to responding to this week’s events.

Terri, Chris and Dom need our prayers. I can’t imagine the intense pressure, stress and grief they must be addressing on their church’s campus and even experiencing themselves. I guess I feel higher level of responsibility to pray for them because, although they probably don’t remember me, I had several classes with all three of them in Bible college and remember their service on the PBU campus for the three years that we shared there.

[tags]Virginia Tech[/tags]

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.

UPDATE: Please read the comments below. This is not a serious post. It’s satirical sarcasm and does not contain a hint of truth. It’s a joke written by the founder of Youth Specialties describing in exact opposite terms what NOT to do. Do NOT run your youth ministry this way! This is written to such an extreme in order to point out the absurdity of running a youth ministry this way. It’s only a joke. Please don’t take this seriously or think that this is my personal philosophy of ministry. It definitely is NOT.

Ten Easy Steps to Guarantee a Successful Youth Ministry!
by [tag]Mike Yaconelli[/tag]

1. Dumb Down the Gospel. Employ attractive phrases such as, “Since I’ve known Jesus I’m happier, getting better grades, and captain of the football team!” Even better, reduce the complexity of the gospel into group cheers (i.e., “Give me a J!”) or simple worship choruses like, “God is so good…blah blah blah.” (Try singing those words in Ethiopia.) Or even better, try out some hip slang (i.e., God is “phat”; Jesus is a “hottie”).

2. Count. Constantly make everyone aware of your group’s attendance figures and the increases in attendance. Make numbers an issue by setting attendance goals for each activity and reward the group for reaching those goals. Spend lots of time throwing pies at the leaders if goals are reached.

3. Put Your Students on Display. As soon as kids become Christians or rededicate their lives or show real growth, put them in front of the group and have them share their testimonies—especially if they’re physically attractive. Let young people talk about their faith as much as possible and don’t worry about the fact that most young people have no clue how complicated and rough the real world is with or without Jesus.

4. Don’t Allow Down Time. Hey, kids today are [tag]MTV[/tag] kids! They can’t sit still for any length of time. Silence, solitude, prayer, meditation, fasting? All totally lame in the eyes of this generation! Nope, keep ‘em busy, active, noisy, and shuttling from one Christian rock concert to another. Fill every moment of your program with something to do—otherwise you’ll lose their attention (which would be disastrous because then they’d have to pay attention to God and their souls).

5. Stay on the Technological Cutting Edge. What would Jesus do? Are you kidding? Jesus would have the best sound system you ever heard, along with a DVD player, the Internet, instant messaging, the coolest Web site, and of course a digital TV. Show your kids that when it comes to the latest technology, Christians are right there! I mean, who needs to read when you can watch?

6. Create Celebrities. Make sure your young people get an earful and eyeful of the latest Christian music stars, video stars, and NFL players who profess their faith in Jesus on national television. Encourage your young people to worship, idolize, and live under the illusion that these people are somehow better, deeper, more Christian, more together, and more dedicated than them. Let them believe that the marketed images of these celebrities are completely representative of them—even though you know it isn’t true.

7. Let Youth Group Take the Place of [tag]Church[/tag]. Oh sure, encourage your kids to attend the contemporary service—even though you know most of them never will because church is “boring,” filled with “dull, old people,” and the music “sucks.” Whatever you do, though, don’t suggest that worshiping with people they don’t like and connecting with people who are older and wiser just might save them when their adolescent view of the world is shattered. Just keep convincing your students that youth group is a good substitute for church.

8. Tow the Parental Line. Whatever you do, don’t cause friction with parents by suggesting to their kids that grades, SAT scores, financial security, college degrees, and athletic scholarships really don’t matter. Just accept the fact that most parents want their children to attend youth group as long as it doesn’t interfere with hockey, football, ice skating, tennis, ballet, or baseball practice. And don’t encourage young people to resist their parents’ attempts to smother the call of God on their lives, either. After all, you could get fired!

9. Ignore the Arts. Never encourage painting, dance, sculpture, writing, poetry, ballet, or trips to the museum, symphony, and opera. Stick with activities that rock! The WWF rules!

10. Live in the Now! Verify the success of your ministry by visible, measurable, observable results you see now. Don’t waste your time worrying about lasting results. Who can wait?! Go for the instant return. Hey, once your kids leave youth group, you aren’t responsible for what happens to them anyway, right?

11. “Us” Versus “Them.” (Yeah, yeah, I know I said “Ten Steps”—sue me.) Convince your kids that the only way Christians can make a difference is through public, physical confrontation with the “world.” Explain that this “world” is “them,” and Christians—the good guys—are “us.” And since it’s us against them, we have to “stand up for our faith.” Encourage them to march in rallies, wear slogan-filled T-shirts, hang banners, and do whatever it takes to get in the world’s face. Convince them that the Devil and his demons are running around, wreaking havoc—and the only way to deal with the Devil is to confront and “bind him.” Don’t let them believe that evil is much more seductive, much more camouflaged and tricky than they could ever imagine. And whatever you do, don’t start getting into Jesus’ strategy of powerlessness.

Now go get ‘em!

(ht jacob)

Last weekend my father-in-law gave me an old laptop (PII 266 MHz, 128 MB memory, 6 GB HDD). I promptly removed Windows 98 in order to install the lightweight [tag]Linux[/tag] distribution, Xubuntu, only to find out that the CD-ROM drive barely works. To make a long story short, I spent about 15 or more hours this week (staying up to 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning!) trying to find a way to successfully load [tag]Xubuntu[/tag] on the system without spending money for any new working components.

Yesterday I was finally so frustrated with it that decided to sit down and pray. I told the Lord I wanted to install it the easy way from the CD and asked Him to make the CD-ROM to work long enough to last through the entire installation process. With that prayer, Xubuntu loaded perfectly fine. Here’s a screenshot of my desktop to prove it (click it to view full-size image):

I laughed at myself, “Ya know, I might’ve saved myself a lot of time if I had asked God to help me from the very beginning.” Sometimes it’s easy to go through my routine tasks and mindlessly leave God out. I wonder how much different life would be if I conversed with God over every little thing, if I really prayed “without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). God is interested in all the “little things” in my life, too, not just the big issues I can’t handle.

[tags]Ubuntu[/tags]

Ever since Greg Stier spoke at the National Youth Workers Convention, I’ve been thinking about something he said. He read the story of Elijah on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 19), about how the prophets of Baal prayed and begged their god for hours and hours for a single spark of fire on their alter. When none came, they prayed even more earnestly, even mutilating their own bodies in desperation, but still there was no answer from Baal. Finally at the end of the day it was Elijah’s turn. He calmly prepared the sacrifice, drenched everything with water and simply prayed,

“O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.” (1 Kings 18:36-37)

The idea in scripture is that God IMMEDIATELY answered his prayer by sending down fire from heaven that not only burned the sacrificed bull, but also consumed the entire alter, stones, water and everything! WOW!!

Man, I pray like a wuss!

• When I pray I like to remain somewhat reserved and not pray for things that are too radical so I don’t unnecessarily get my hopes up.

• I like to pray for things I feel like I can still keep some kind of control over in case I need to help God out.

• I like to pray with 50/50 faith: “Maybe God will answer, maybe He won’t. Who knows? Let’s see what happens.”

In comparison, I observe a couple things about Elijah.

• He risked his life to be in public. He was a wanted man for being a prophet of God (1 Kings 18:9-14). There was a death wish on his head, so for him to come out from hiding was a very bold and risky action.

• He obeyed God with such confidence that he was willing to put his neck and God’s reputation on the line.

• Because of his obedience, he could boldly pray according to the will of God.

• He had no control over the outcome of his prayer or his obedience to God. For all he knew, God would use this situation to prove something else or nothing at all. He had great faith to proceed.

Here’s the number one thing I learn from Elijah’s example: Maybe I don’t always experience the power of God in my life because I rarely give Him the opportunity to do so.

I go to James 5:16 in the New Testament, a verse I memorized for the community aspect of praying for each other. However, I often overlook the second half that says, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” If I want to have a prayer life that is “powerful and effective,” apparently the key ingredient to the recipe is righteousness. The obvious question I then ask myself is, “What is righteousness?” and “Do I have it?”

The Message puts it this way: “The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.”

That’s what I want, to be like Elijah and live right with God. I want my prayer life to be something that’s powerful to be reckoned with. I want to live a life for Him that’s bold, risky, confident, obedient and is right smack in the middle of His will.

Whew! Easier said than done.