Teen 2.0 Book Review

My parents had 5 teenagers/ preteens at home at the same time. My father decided that this was going to be a fun time in life for himself, so he bought himself some cool clothes, trendy rock music, and went to work getting to know teenagers. In fact, he not only worked full time as an attorney and father attending 97% of our sports games/dance recitals, but he also found 20 extra hours a week to run the youth program at our church for my brothers, sisters, friends, and I. When asked why he did it my father would say, “look, I just refuse to believe that teenagers are these evil, immature beings that most of their parents claim the are.”

Now a youth worker myself, last fall I went to the National Youth Workers Convention in Atlanta, GA. There I head Dr. Robert Epstein speak on his book, Teen 2.0. Fascinated by the research he presented, I immediately went online and purchased Teen 2.0. Low and behold, Dr. Epstein wrote a 300 page persuasive argument supporting my dad’s thesis. Teenagers are not all inherently irresponsible children who need to be shielded from adult challenges.

Teens in America today have less freedom than prisoners and members of the armed forces. Teen 2.0 calls for a paradigm shift in the way we think about teenagers. He argues that the turbulence we see in modern adolescence doesn’t even exist in every cultural around the world. Teenagers want and need meaningful responsibility, as well as positive adult interactions and mentors. The book explains the tension teens live in today, and why teens act the way they do. He argues for recognition of competence in teens in several key areas like love, creativity, and art. The book also includes the young person’s bill of rights, and practical tips to finding the adult in your teen.

Teen 2.0 is a must read for youth workers, parents, and anyone who wants to learn about youth today.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Teen+2.0&x=0&y=0

The Simple Solution that I Like to Avoid

Something I hear in passing a lot is I feel like we are just holding it together by a thread… or we just have to get through this and then… or some variation of the above. When I hear that, I’m the first to relate. It’s something that I have thought one too many times myself. I struggle with living under the allusion that I have control. I think, If I can just get this one thing to fall into place, I’m set. I just need too…. But then, I hit circumstances that I can’t make fall into place no matter how hard I try. This last week, my dad has had several eye surgeries after loosing sight in his left eye. Truth, I can’t make my dad see. When my dad looses his sight, when a student hurts themself, when any number of things happen, my bubble breaks and I have to face the fact that I don’t have control. Even if this sounds like a cliché to us, theTruth is only God has control. Honestly, sometimes this fact frustrates me, but it is also the comforting core of our faith. The God of the universe has control, and he loves us and takes a personal interest in our lives.
I was looking at Matthew 11 and came across this…
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

When the burden is heavy, he wants us to go to him. When we are tired and barely holding it together, he wants us to go to him. When we are just trying to make it through ________, he just want us to go to him. He is gentle, He is humble, He will give us rest, and He will teach us.

When I look at this verse, it relates to my personal life, I think ok Jesus I will go to you, you can have control over my family, my job, and _______(any number of things). All too often, it also relates to ministry. We worry that we don’t know what we are doing. We worry that we aren’t reaching people. We serve and give, and burn out. We jugle a thousand balls in the air and wonder why we are tired. The answer isn’t try harder. The answer isn’t be more organized. The answer isn’t be more outgoing. The answer isn’t make more phone calls. The answer isn’t do better. The answer is Jesus.

The answe is stop, and go to Jesus. His yoke is easy, his burden is light.

He has control.

It’s the simple solution that I like to avoid: Go to Jesus.

The Inner Monologue of Perfectionism

“I’m tired of people expecting perfection out of me. I’m tired of excepting perfection out of me. Even though I know this is complete falsehood, I’m tired of feeling like I have to be perfect to be loved. When others fail, I still love them. Why do I feel this grace is above me? Why does it reach everyone but me? Why can they fail, receive grace and love, but when I fail I get hostility? I get disappointment. “We didn’t expect this out of YOU?” they say.
Or what about when I don’t fail? What about when I am doing my best, but my best still falls short? When I try and try and try and still finish behind? Why isn’t that good enough? Why can’t you be proud of me for trying?
Why can’t you just love me for who I am? Why is my devotion not enough?”

The above is a monologue of complete ridiculousness. If I filter my thoughts through the lens of the gospel, I am reminded that in fact I am not perfect. It’s ok that I’m not perfect because that’s how I was born. I am just like everyone else. Jesus knows that I sin and fall short that’s why He died. I am loved. I am loved by him and others. Everything is ok, and there is no reason to freak out. Yet, even knowing this truth, It’s surprising how often I let the above monologue have center stage in my mind.

It’s important for me not to neglect filling my head with showers of truth.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.- Romans 12:2

Move Over Cinderella!

Blah Blah Blah all little girls minus the extreme feminist (or especially the extreme feminist) want to grow up and be like Cinderella. Handsome prince, sees you in your suffering, searches the whole country for you, rescues you, makes you his bride, and punishes the evil that persecuted you. It’s beautiful, it’s nauseating, you love it, you hate it, you love to hate it, or maybe you just relate to another princess better and don’t understand why cinderella gets to be the MOST famous one. Yep, that’s me! I like Cinderella, but I LOVE another princess. It’s not Snow White, she’s a little pale for my half hispanic skin. It’s not Sleeping Beauty, I’m just not that sexy when I sleep. It’s not Ariel, I don’t have the body type for a shell bikini and I’m not really the comb my long locks with a fork kind of girl. Nope, the princess I really relate to is the weird one, the book-worm, the one who falls in love with a hideous monstrous beast! That’s right, Bell. Bell, Bella, Beauty. What I wouldn’t give to be her.

I’m gonna base Bell off the Disney movie even though there are several versions, Disney is going to serve as a point of reference.

Opening scene, Bell is walking through town with her head in a book. Pause the movie! That’s all it took for me to fall in love with her. My sister picked up my purse which is large enough to carry a small child and weighs enough to send me into back surgery when I turn 30 and said, “O’ would you like me to hand you your library.” I said, “Ha Ha, give me my bag, fool.” Then I looked down, and saw 4 books and a newspaper in my purse. Yes, I admit it, I read. I don’t just read, I read ALL the time. If I have 5 spare minutes, I pick up a book. If I am at a long stop light, I pick up a book. If I..Ok, back to Bell.. she floats through town reading. If only I could float…

The towns folk talk about Bell behind her back. Is Bell the kind of girl to get into the drama? No she stays out of it. Bell takes care of her imaginative, inventive father. She honors him for who he is, even when everyone else makes fun. Bell doesn’t care what everyone else thinks, and this becomes painfully clear when she turns down a marriage proposal from the most handsome man in town.

Gaston is everything any girl in town could want. He’s large, ruggedly handsome if a triangular body shape and bulging biceps are your thing. He’s respected, the town does what he says. Every man wants to be him, ever girl wants to have him. Every girl except, Bell. Why? Because he is conceded, arrogant, wants the only thing he can’t have. If Bell had chosen Gaston, She would have chosen what he represented, wealth, prestige, power, recognition. But no, “What’s wrong with her? She’s crazy. He’s gorgeous.” She happily turns down a dream offer because she knows who she is. She’s deep. She would be miserable with woodsy Fabio.

Bell’s dad gets into trouble, she goes after him, chooses to pay the punishment for him. She sacrifices for those she loves. She gets put in a room all alone, and is told to be at dinner. But no, She needs to grieve so she refuses dinner. It doesn’t matter that the Beast gets angry at her, she doesn’t care. Later, after she tries to run away but the beast saves her. She treats his wounds. He gets angry at her, she stands her ground. She’s strong, she stops giving into her fear.

There is a turning point when she stops giving into her fear. Then, the beast gives her a dream library with books to the high ceiling and a ball room in the middle. She sees something inside of him. She stops looking at his exterior and starts looking at his heart. “There is something sweet and almost kind… there is something there that wasn’t there before.”

I love it! Bell sees people for whom they really are. She saw the handsome purser for the jerk that he was, and she saw the monstrous beast for the prince that he was. Because she loved his heart, he became the Prince that he always had been. When he transformed into the prince, everything around him transformed formed from dark to light.

She didn’t settle. She didn’t give into peer pressure. She stood up for what she thought was right. She saw people for who they were inside. She choose to love and that choice transformed the darkness around her into life.

Who’s your favorite princess or super hero? What makes them so relatable to you?

Book Review: Learning to Love When You Don’t Feel Like It

When Kenny Lewis realized that his wife felt unloved in their marriage he was shocked, and he resolved not only to work on his marriage but to learn how to love well. He research hundreds of verses in the Old and New Testaments and learned about what the bible says about love. He learned that the bible refers to love as a verb, and as a result he wrote Learning to Love When You Don’t Feel Like It.

The book uses scripture and experience to challenge the idea that love is a feeling. When love is defined as an action it is something that people can easily choose to do long-term despite their emotions.
The book is not filled with idealistic concepts that don’t translate into everyday life. Every other page is filled with a story or a practical example. The book does an incredible job of using these stories to show both the positive or negative consequences of choosing to follow or not follow God’s principles for love. While this shouldn’t be the case, rooted in scripture and practical sometimes sound like oxymoron. In Lewis’s book, rooted in scripture and practical work hand in hand to make a lovely marriage of truth and application. The book doesn’t have a magical formula, but among other things it does give steps on how to let go and let God help us forgive when we don’t feel like it. It gives steps on how to practically show kindness. It defines what “bearing all things” actually means.

Lewis writes this book as a husband learning to love his wife and family, and while this is a “Love & Marriage” book, the book’s focus is much broader than just marital love. It’s about how to love anybody, anytime, and under any circumstance. I wouldn’t just recommend this book to married couples, I would recommend it to anyone wanting to be challenged in how they love and live.

On a personal note:
Lewis is a Pastor in Brownsville, TX. While anyone in the country could relate to the stories in his book, he uses stories from the community he works in. For those of who are familiar with Lewis’ community, I would especially recommend this book. The practical examples come from your neighbors, people in your community. You might even recognize a story or two from reading it in the newspaper. The book shows a beautiful picture of God working his love in the community of Brownsville.

Worshiping with Happy Feet

Here is a quote I saw on twitter the other day, “If you don’t like really long worship services, you probably won’t like heaven.”

I immediately pictured a church service with the lights dimmed in the crowd, bright lights on stage, a couple guitars and constant singing. I thought “Well I was looking forward to heaven till I read that.”
Confession: Unless something really special is happening, I don’t usually love really long worship services.

Happy Feet

This may be because I sing like Mumble in Happy Feet. For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend that you do. In the movie all penguins have a “song.” When mating season comes along they sing their song, and they find their mate when the song harmonizes with someone else’s. The solo becomes a duet! It’s beautiful, it makes you want to shake your grove thing, but then there is Mumble. When Mumble opens his mouth to sing, a horrible awful screech comes out and all the other penguins laugh at him.

I relate to Mumble, I sing like a dying tone-deaf bird, but the movie is called Happy Feet for a reason. Mumble can tap and dance with his little thumping feet like no one else. I took tap for ten years, I can make music with my feet. If you just let me do my thing in a worship service, I wouldn’t sing I would dance. My life long, alter boyish dream is to be a sway leader of a choir but not really have to sing.

I have always ended up in churches where lifting your hands is really radical, so my sway leader dreams actually look like a slight rock not a dance. Usually, I’m perfectly okay when sing time is over. (Right here you could insert the high school peer pressure lecture about stepping out and not worrying about others, or you can just hang on for my overall point and trust that I’m working though this issue.)

My point is. It is right to sing to the Lord regardless of our talent. “Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth” Psalm 91:6 But the way we do “worship” services limits worship to music, and to someone who isn’t naturally gifted or who doesn’t enjoy singing, the idea of a never ending worship service doesn’t sound like a very pretty picture of heaven.

Even if in heaven we worship for eternity, that doesn’t mean that worship is only limited to singing. Yes, music is a part of worship, but it is only a piece of the pie not the whole thing. Worship is much broader than what we see in worship services.

Worship leader Josh Via recently wrote a blog about worship http://joshviamusic.com/. He looks at Mary anointing Jesus’ feet. I love how he difines worship through the act of anointing Jesus’ feet and not through music or art.

So Yes! let’s keep singing! Let’s keep the music! But I want you to share some other ways that we can worship corporately outside of singing. Let’s be creative! Think outside of just reciting liturgy, what are other ways that we can praise and worship God together?

Book Review: Plan B

Pete Wilson’s Plan B tries to answer the question What do you do when God doesn’t show up the way you thought He would? The book goes though common struggles that people face when they go through circumstances they would never choose for themselves i.e. Plan B’s. Wilson draws from examples from members of his churches and characters from the bible. The nice thing about the bible examples is they point out struggles in Abraham, Joseph, David, and Jesus’ lives that are sometimes overlooked in Sunday school settings. Some of the real life examples like that of a young mother giving birth to a still born baby or his own families struggle through a miscarriage have potential to pull on the reader’s heart strings.

The writing is easy to read, clear, and straight forward. It doesn’t take very many pages to become engaged in the book. Wilson does well outlining human struggle when life doesn’t go according to plan. He makes it easy for the readers to feel the depth of struggle, but the book fails to offer a tangible hope. That’s not to say that the book doesn’t mention hope, but while the struggle is described on an emotional level the hope is described in intellectual terms. It’s easy to get the feeling that as soon as life looks optimistic the ball is going to drop again. You get the idea that life will be good one day when you die o bye and bye, but you will only be disappointed if you hope for more in this world. The only thing Wilson does a great job of is reminding the reader that God is with you even when you don’t feel like He is. Maybe that in of itself is the hope.

Since the book is easy to get into, I’m trying to think of a occastion in which I would recommend picking up this book. I honestly can’t think of one. If you are struggling, I would fear that you might walk away thinking life will never get better. If you are well, you might be tempted to fear life falling apart. Maybe if you are miserable and want company this book will serve some value since it at least tries to offer hope. Personally, I would just skip this book and pick up the Bible.

If My Heart Could Rant…

If my heart could rant this is what it would say…

Here is the bottom line truth. I know what I want to do. When I have said I don’t know, it is only because at times there have been no words to express what is in me. Or even if I could express it, I’m not convinced you wouldn’t judge me.

I am not lazy. I want to work, I love when my days are occupied. Maybe I am a disgrace to those who paid for my college education, but in some ways I love my dead-end job. My work doesn’t go home with me. My mind, evening, weekends are free to focus on things that really matter to me. I have no dreams of a fancy career. I just want to serve and meet the heart and felt needs of people. As I look at choices I have made over and over again, I have turned down jobs that pay more to work for almost nothing or for free in roles that minister to people. I want to cook, clean, organize, plan, teach, minister, serve, learn, read, write, talk to people, empower people, see people become free.

I know who I am. I might be traditional, I might be a feminist worst nightmare. I just know that I am tired of listening to the voices that tell me that I’m not living up to my potential, that I am a failure, that my ideas are fine in an ideal culture, but they don’t work in ours.

I want simplicity. All the rules, regulations, and educational theories are starting to feel like chains. Vision statements are focused on work to be accomplished, worship segments are timed, and I want to know when the church itself stops just to breathe and enjoy Jesus.

I want to be a part of a church that has order and leadership authority but looks more like a community than an organization. I want to find a way to empower the everyday believer. They shouldn’t have to bend their passion and gifts to fit in the mold of cookie cutter-programs. People are hurting, they need friends and hope and truth. Who’s says that for the body of Christ to be growing and healthy, it has to be a bureaucracy.

While I am not an animist, the world we live in has a spiritual component to it. I’m tired of taking spirituality out of christianity. I am for making the gospel culturally relevant, but in a culture that prefers the scientific to supernatural you cannot take the supernatural out of gospel. I mean seriously people, we had a dead man become alive again and then this resurrected man runs around and tells people that they will have power to “drive out demons…speak in new tongues..pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all…place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” This came out of the mouth of Jesus. how can we make it N/A?

I love missions and cross Cultural work. But right now, I want to know, “How do we in America follow Christ in normal, difficult everyday life in the radical life-giving way it is supposed to be?” Maybe there is something wrong with me, but I want more than Sunday Morning and Small group.

I have looked for jobs with churches. I am even considering some as we speak. I want to learn, but I don’t want to learn how to be a program director to shuffle the masses through a religious system that makes them feel like they are never quite good enough.

Even though I don’t know what this looks like, I want to represent the love for Jesus without people throwing out term like weak and codependant and boundaries. Choosing to lay your life down for others to see them succeed is not the same as being an enabler or letting people run all over you so that you will be liked.

I want less and less of religion, and more and more of Jesus. I want to work in ministry, but I want to look more like fishermen disciples and less like the religious leaders.

My main question: realistically, what does this look like?

*Mark 16:17-18

Not on Plan A

Back Home

I just finished a book called “Plan B-What do you do when God doesn’t show up the way he thought he would.” I’ll post a review on it soon, but it has really made me think about my “Plan B” life.
The life I walk through day to day is not the life I dreamed of as a child. No first grader is going to stand up and say, “When I grow up, I’m gonna go to college, get a degree, move back home and be a substitute teacher.” Students love to ask,

“Why are you a sub?”
“Is this what you always wanted to do?”

I want to look at them and say, “No, fools! It’s just a job. Sometimes when you grow up life isn’t as simple as “I’m gonna grow up to be a firefighter/ Dr. that way I save victims from the fire and I can treat them before they get to the hospital.” Now we know that life doesn’t work that way. Even though it’s a nice idea, unless you have blue blood no one who spent the money it takes to go to medical school, could afford to then take a job as a firefighter.

To me substitute taching is a Plan B, but others are in similar situations with differant jobs. No one grows up thinking “When I grow up, I want to file papers all day.” Or “I want to still be struggling though my undergrad degree at 30.” Or “I would just love spending my days asking people for finacial support.”

I have sat back and wondered countless times how did I get here? How has this become my life? I review every decision I have ever made to see if I should have chosen differantly. I think back to how I didn’t like my white picket fence, christian college. I wonder, if I had had a better attitude, maybe I could have made it work for me. Maybe I could have gotten a job there and gone to grad school like my brother did, he has his own house now. Or maybe if I had accepted the promotion at the retail store, I could be a manager now. Or maybe if I had processed better the year I traveled the world, I wouldn’t have crumbled and had to spend my first year back in counseling. But even as I think these things, I know my college just wasn’t a good fit, and I wouldn’t have been happy there. I hated my job in retail because I hated asking people to spend more than they proboally should, so I never found any satisfaction because I had a constant value struggle that I couldn’t disconnect. I feel like I process all I could when I was traveling, and really I have learned a whole lot more in my years of reflecting than I did when I was actually traveling.

Life is what it is. I am where I am. I can’t change the past.

So here I am, knowing that I rejected paths because I knew they weren’t what I wanted. Yet, somehow I’m still on Plan B.
I feel like my only option now, is to ask God to turn my Plan B into his Plan A.

Just Finished Reading…

I just finished reading the best book that I have read in a long time!

I never buy books at full price, ever. However, I was desperate for reading material, so I walked into the local bookstore at the mall. I looked around for a half hour before I decided on this book, and when I went to pay, the cashier rolled her eyes at my selection. Note to all sales personnel: don’t roll your eyes at your customers when they purchase products from you. If you sell it, you can’t judge them for buying it! With that said, I picked out Why I Stayed by Gayle Haggard and Angela Hunt.

http://www.gaylehaggard.org/

This book is more like sitting down with a friend for a cup of coffee than it is reading. It is so well written that Gayle’s voice comes to life like a Reading Rainbow adventure, dragons and all. Before you know it, you are in Gayle’s college dorm room right after she first meets her husband Ted. You grow up with her, you raise her special needs child with her, and then your heart breaks into a thousand pieces when you enter the private office where her pastor husband confesses his homosexual tendencies to her. You walk through her journey of personal betrayal, heart-break, and ultimately hope, love, and strength as you watch her choose to love her husband despite his very public struggle with an embarrassing sin.

This book not only serves a memoir, but it also serves as a critique of the churches ability forgive and restore in the light of public sin. It shows sin is everywhere. While one man struggled with homosexuality others struggle with judgement, pride, fear, slander, and unforgiveness. This book does not condone sin, but shows the role of grace despite of it.

As I finished the last page of the book, I felt free from the suffocation of religion. I was reminded that Jesus came to earth for the sinners, for the desperate, needy, broken, me. I was ok with the fact that I don’t have it “together” and hope felt very tangible.

This book is a must read! The pages fly by. It’s real, deep, emotional, thought provoking, loaded with scripture, and most of all it challenges your thinking and gives hope to your soul.

It was worth every full price penny!