No Respect

Probably the worst thing about working with middle school students is that nobody gives your ministry any respect. It's tough to convince your coworkers that your ministry is important. It's tough to convince parents that your ministry is something more than babysitting. It's tough to convince your church that your ministry can change students' lives. It's extremely frustrating. JM

Following God Through Frustration

Great post by Carlos Whittaker today about how sometimes it's not so fun to follow God. Go read it. He just moved to Atlanta from Riverside, CA and is working through that transition. Seriously go read it. Here's my favorite part from the end where he is discussing with his wife the frustrations they feel about their move:

Me - It sucks to follow God tonight huh?
She - Yea. It does.
Me - But you know we are right where He wants us right?
She - I was hoping you knew that. Because I do. And with that we shut the laptop and continued on the journey of Authenticity in the ATL. Knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are supposed to be here.

He had another interesting post a week ago about how God still moves people even when housing markets are not ideal. JM

Matthew 19:13-15

Jesus put his hands on some kids and prayed for them. Pretty simple story. My mind wanders two places with this.
1. I would love to see what happened to these kids. What do you think they ended up doing? I wonder if they were all successful. I wonder if they all went into ministry. I wonder if they were all Christians.
2. I wonder if any of them didn't make it. I mean, I ownder if some of them had hard lives filled with frustration and not seeking God's will for their lives. So many times I think I have the program or the ministry that will fix everything and that any student that experiences it will be changed forever and never screw up. I'd like to think that even these kids that Jesus prayed for didn't all turn out perfect. Maybe it's not true, but it helps me to think that way. JM

Responsibility

One of the big things we push on students during the crucible is responsibility. We define it as accountability for my actions. One of the things that we go over is the idea that if we disagree with something we are responsible for, the time to debate that is when it is assigned, not whne it is due or when we are in trouble by saying that rules are unfair. It always amazes me how many adults use the excuse that the rules aren't fair when something is due. It's extremely frustrating for me. I always picture the person as a little baby whining about something. Ugggh. JM

Matthew 14:13-14

I love being alone. If I can't be with my family, then I'd rather be alone. Especially when I have stuff that I'm thinking about. It just seems like people get in the way of me being able to process things and feel emotions.
What I think is so amazing about Jesus is that even when he was placed in extremely frustrating situations, he never let it show. Jesus had just learned that his cousin had died and he wanted to be alone. But people followed him because he's Jesus. He doesn't get mad and magically disappear. Instead he heals people and ministers to them.
I think that's incredible, how Jesus was constantly moved with compassion despite his personal desires to be alone. It must have been so frustrating for him to be in a cage of human flesh. JM

Rough Day

I had a rough day today. My wife hasn't been feeling well for the last couple of days, so this morning she woke up and said that she thought she needed to go to the doctor. In order to accomplish this, that meant I had to stay home from work. Normally, that's just a minor setback, and I can make up the missed work fairly quickly either from home or the next day or so.
The problem was that we had an all day staff meeting today. Most people dread these kinds of things, but I love them. We were supposed to talk about how our church can implement the concepts of simple church. Specifically we were going to discuss our ideas for a disciple making process and what programs fulfill those ideas. I had been looking forward to this meeting from the moment that I heard about it.
But I wasn't able to go. Now don't read me wrong, I wasn't mad at my wife or anything. I was just frustrated at the situation. I miss being able to debate and argue with the rest of the staff. I miss struggling through ideas together and trying to grasp what it is that God has for us. Hopefully my input was missed as well, but I didn't receive a call saying that they couldn't go on without me or anything like that. I guess I'm less important than I'll ever know. JM

Matthew 11:20-24

Pastors always like to talk about how their region is the toughest to do ministry. The northeast is "over" God. The midwest just isn't really into God. The northwest has moved past God. The west is too cool for God. The Southeast already thinks they know God.
I think everywhere is basically equally tough. Most people think that the South is easy to do ministry in. I think it's amazingly hard for several reasons.
First, everybody already thinks they are a Christian. When you present the gospel, you're telling people something they've heard since the day they were born.
Second, Church is just a part of life. To expect there to be spirituality and passion for God behind church attendance is ludicrous.
Third, the south does not like to brace new ideas, just look at all of the rebel flags still flying.
Added on to that, my ministry area is extremely affluent and transient. Most people in my city are not from this area, so they are always looking to go home on vacation or permanently. We also have tons of pilots in our church, so they can travel anywhere they want for free. A 3-day weekend is a chance to go to Italy.
I can imagine a piece of Jesus frustration when people didn't get what he was saying. It's kind of refreshing to know that even Jesus grew frustrated. JM