Tradition

Why do we hang on to traditional forms of ministry when they don't even work. It doesn't make any sense. Love this post at Church Relevance about "Scary Clown Ministry" citing research talking about how children don't like clowns. Here's a good quote:

Very few children like clowns. They are unfamiliar and come from a different era. They don’t look funny, they just look odd. Children are much more happy with things stuck on the wall that have some sort of personal relevance for them, not some images that are foisted upon them by adults.

But it's not just clowns in children's ministry. We hang onto all sorts of bad ministry ideas just because they are easy for us to do, or we're comfortable with them, or they worked for us in the past. It just doesn't make sense. JM

Acts 16:1-3

How far would you go to further your ministry? There are certainly limits that I have, especially if we're just talking about making other Christians feel comfortable with me. I wouldn't take out my earrings. I wouldn't shave everyday. I wouldn't do a lot of things. Timothy got circumcised. That's pretty humbling. Although, I wonder if he just said he had it done. JM

Acts 9:3-9

A lot of times following God will not make a lot of sense to the people around us. We can be convinced that it's what God wants us to do, but sometimes people will look at us like we're crazy. When I told people that I took a ministry job back where my family and my wife's family is, they all thought it was solely because of family. I guess that's part of it. It will be nice. But really, the youth ministry that I will be a part of is awesome and that's the reason I'm going. God has opened the door for an amazing opportunity for me, and I seized it. It's just tough for other people to see it that way. It's important to remember that God hasn't spoken to them about it, so they're just seeing it on face value. JM

Acts 9:1-2

Being passionate about something doesn't mean your right. A lot of times, especially in Christian circles, if someone speaks passionately or emotionally about something, the we feel we must support them and to not do so would be not Christ-like or sinful. I don't think that's true. You still have to evaluate the actual content of what someone is saying even if they're crying when they say it, or they speak emotively on the subject.
About a year ago someone suggested a new ministry for our church. I didn't feel like it was the right move for our church because of our cultural context. But the person presenting the idea spoke to the staff emotionally and passionately. They got choked up at a particularly sensitive and personal part. At the end of the presentation, there was no discussion whatsoever as to whether or not we should pursue this ministry. There was no discussion at all about researching it to find out more about it. The ministry was officially part of our church from that moment on. Since then, the ministry has kind of floundered along, not doing much, wasting energy and effort, and with few others who share this person's passion.
Just because you cry, you're not right. Just because you yell, you're not right. JM

Acts 8:26-31

I love how when most people are speaking to students about quiet times, they just say read the Bible. As if a student is supposed to go home, crack open the Bible, and something magical happens. I hate that. I mean, the Bible is a tool that should be used to discover God, and it should be my job and the job of the church in general to help people learn how to use it. I'm so thankful that people took the time to explain how to study it to me. Otherwise it would just sit there unread like most other Christian's Bibles. I guess part of discipleship should be to "be Philip" to people. JM

Acts 8:25

Sometimes it seems like Christians live in two separate modes. We are either in ministry mode or in selfish mode. We have trouble translating our Christianity into our everyday lives. When we're on a mission trip or doing a service project, then we're all about talking to people about Jesus. But the second that we leave, we're back to our normal selves. We're rude, obnoxious and selfish. I wish there was an easy way to get this to become a normal part of my life as opposed to some mode I get into or am out of, but it seems really difficult to do. I just hope that I'm getting better at it and that someday I can truly be a disciple of Christ who evidences it at all times. JM

Acts 8:7-8

I wonder what sound a demon makes when it comes out of somebody. It mentions that it was a loud noise, but no real description. Maybe it sounded like a gunshot, or a car crash. Wouldn't it be cool though if it was like a fart sound, or like the super mario brothers theme?
I love that Philip is meeting felt needs, though. He's not just up there preaching and yelling and condemning. He's helping people with real needs they have. The problem with the church today is that we're willing to help people, but usually only after they have already changed to be like us. We don't like to care for people when they don't act like Christians. Sad. JM

Hallelujah Night

Our church runs a festival in the fall as an outreach. It's targeted at kids 3 - 10. The kids are encouraged to dress up in costume. The kids are given candy. We host it on October 31st. So naturally, we call it Halleljuah Night. I hate the name. What's so bad about saying Halloween. Other people agree with me. JM

Acts 6:1-7

I love my job. One of the cool things about it is that it's a fairly creative job. I'm basically paid to think, create, and relate. That's it. I don't have to like lift stuff, or fix stuff, or anything like that on a regular basis, although I do on occasion. What's tough though is trying to figure out which things to delegate out. Obviously, there are a lot of things that you should keep doing like vision, direction, and stuff like that. But there is all kinds of other stuff that I can pass off to someone else which will give them ownership over something and help me develop my abilities as a leader. I delegated out some of the tasks that I typically do this year for Mission Impossible. Mainly, I used my secretary. I never use her. For anything. Ever. So this year she basically did all of my recruiting. It was scary to release something like that, but it worked out fairly well. There are a couple of things that I'll fix for next year, but it was good for me to delegate stuff out and see it still happen efficiently. JM

Acts 4:23-31

Talk about fervent prayer. I guess we don't pray with passion anymore because we don't live lives that need it. Or at least we don't think we need it. We don't really see our lives as a battle. Now granted, I'm totally against battle/war imagery in student ministry. But I do think it is sad that we don't feel like we are doing anything for God, at least not anything that requires passionate prayer.
What if we prayed that we would be brave and that God would provide us with signs to show that God was real. I think our lives and our evangelism would be massively different.
We have neighbors down the street that we have become close friends with. They don't go to church anywhere and have no real relationship with God. But I don't pray for them with any sense of passion. And I definitely have never prayed that God would give me the ability to heal as a sign that he is real. Maybe that's not literally the answer (praying for the gift of healing), but prayer has to be more than just selfish requests and passionless intercession. JM

Acts 3:1-11

A lot of people like to bash felt-need ministry by saying that it takes away from the focus of the gospel. We can spend so long meeting people's felt needs that we never get around to meeting their real need of Jesus. But most of the time in the Bible I see the focus being on meeting felt-needs. Here Peter and John heal a guy without admonishing him to trust Jesus, or repent, or do anything else. They just said "by the power of Jesus Christ of Nazareth" and then heal the guy.
Even people that like felt-need ministry still like to make people jump through hoops in order to have their needs met. You have to show up at certain times and do certain things and meet certain requirements to get what you need. Or making it more personal "I am willing to meet your felt-need of being your friend so long as I've had a good day." If it's going to drain us, then we don't want to do it.
I think the point of living in community is that we sacrifice ourselves and any rights we have so that we get to struggle through things together. That's the beauty of it, and the difficulty of it. It's easier to go it alone, but it's not nearly as rewarding and definitely not as much fun. JM

Innovate Conference

I wanted to go to Innovate this year, but couldn't make it up to Granger. Lucky for me all of the main sessions are now online. If you're involved in ministry, and are looking for new ideas on how to operate, check them out. JM (ht:Church Relevance)

Matthew 28:2-10

If the Mary's hadn't been at the tomb, I wonder if Jesus would have gone to meet his disciples where they were. He tells the women to have his followers meet him in Galilee. He didn't even go to them, but went on. For some reason, I think he would have gone there even if he hadn't told the women to tell the disciples.
That's kind of the way that God works. He's always pressing forward. We like to trap God into a box and say that He can only do things a certain way. But that's not what we see in the Bible. Jesus constantly evolved his ministry and made it fit wherever he was. It's tough to be truly progressive, but Jesus is an amazing example. JM

Matthew 27:6-10

One of the most amazing things to me about the Bible is all of the fulfilled prophecies, especially the ones that weren't self-fulfilling. Here are Jesus enemies actually fulfilling prophecy. They have every reason not too, and they do it, probably because they were unaware. Sure Jesus claimed to be the Messiah and even had evidence to prove that he was, but they refused to believe. It's almost like they didn't want to believe.
We like to think that we can create the perfect program that will minister to everybody. But it can't be done. It's still up to the individual to determine how they will respond. Even people that are heavily committed to your program can still walk away unchanged. The point is to mitigate the percentage that do that by creating a relevant, inspiring ministry.

Matthew 26:57-68

Mobs can be really scary because they lack the ability to think. It's all driven by energy. I think it's interesting to see not only Jesus reaction to his accusers, but how his accusers reacted. Caiaphas tries to freak out and act like none of this is a setup. I wonder how good of a job he did. At least he committed to the role by tearing his clothes.
Once people get all emotional and get a group all excited, it can be incredibly difficult to stop. If people start being negative, and then become vocal in their negativity, it can do the same thing to your ministry. I've seen it. I actually just went through a year of that with my middle school ministry. Now I've got lots of excitement on the bottom end and it already shows. JM

Matthew 23:13-22

What ways do I hold people back from coming to Jesus? I know I do. I know I don't take advantage of every opportunity in my ministry to do that, but I'm thinking of more on a personal level. One of the big things that I struggle with is my introversion. It takes effort for me to be outgoing. Because of the nature of my job, most people presume that I'm outgoing. I'm not, though. Well, I guess I am.
Really, I'm just confident. I know who I am and what I'm good at. The problem is not that I'm not outgoing, the problem is that I'm introverted. I enjoy reading and running and doing introspective things. They're not really group activities. So a lot of times I'll struggle at parties and stuff like that (my wife gets annoyed by this).
But people take my introversion for snootiness or holier than thouness or something like that. I know it's how I'm made, but I think it can hold people back from the kingdom of God, so I need to work through it. JM

Matthew 22:41-46

I love that the Pharisees finally give up on trying to trick Jesus with questions. Isn't it amazing how long they tried to do it, though. Consistently they looked stupid and Jesus provided them with amazing answers. This bolstered everybody else's belief that Jesus was more than a common teacher or pharisee. So while the pharisee's popularity was at an all time low, Jesus was steadily climbing.
It's amazing to me how long we can hold onto ideas that don't work. We think we have a brilliant plan, but it's just not working out. So we tweak it a little bit and run it into the ground until finally we give up and come up with a completely new plan.
That's basically how my ministry has been. Great ideas meet with little or no response. I revise the idea a couple of times only to receive the same response until finally I abandon the idea.
I guess instead I should seek out God-ordained ideas. There are tons of great ideas out there, but I'm not sure if God is willing to bless all of them. I think the key is to find what God is willing to bless and run with that. JM

Matthew 21:28-32

Words are powerless. Well, at least in a sense. God doesn't want us to just talk about things, He wants us to do them. God doesn't want us to talk about love, or to care about injustice, or to judge the culture. He wants us to show true love, to fix injustice, and to redeem the culture. We spend way too much time learning the right things to do, and way too little time actually doing the right things. What if instead of just instructing people what to do, we physically gave them opportunities to do those things, and expected them to do it. I wonder what ministry would look like then. JM

Relationships

The longer I do ministry, the more I am convinced that nothing truly impactful and life-changing happens outside of the context of relationships. The bond that I have with the guys with whom I've done ministry and the ability I have gained to ask probing questions and receive honest answers is solely based on my relationship with those students.
Today after church I was talking with a student. He just wanted to see how things were because I hadn't seen him in a while. He just finished his sophomore year, so he's two years removed from being in my ministry.
Kind of randomly toward the end of our conversation he mentioned the fall retreat that I did in 2004. We took 3 vehicles on the trip, and I was in charge of driving the van filled with the luggage. There was only one other seat in the van, and for a large part of the trip, this student occupied that seat. I can't remember what we talked about, he probably can't either, but he mentioned that car ride.
Creating that memory with him and whatever we talked about at during those few hours I'm sure had more of an impact on his life than all of the messages that he listened to me give. There was no structure, just conversations about his life, my life, and any advice I could give him.
I don't think we should ditch all programming, but I do feel that the vast majority of ministry needs to be focused on free-form small groups where students and adults can interact in a casual atmosphere, can ask probing questions, and receive honest responses, input, and advice. The more I think about it, that's exactly how Jesus ran his ministry. Sure he had his big programs that impacted people, but I bet he relished the times he spent with his disciples around the fire at night. I wish I could have been there. 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