Halloween Dance

It is safe to say that, around the age of 12 or 13, there is a huge difference in the way that your child will look at life. Your sweet baby no longer goes over to a friend's house after school to 'play'. If you even use the word 'play,' they will shrink down in the chair or shush you. Why? The reason is very simple. Kids in middle school do not 'play'. They 'hang out'.

It is also around this time that kids fully embrace the idea of relationships. They usually have the first case of 'puppy love' (and to think, you bought all of those Valentine's cards during elementary in vain.)They begin to wear cologne or perfume. They worry about their hair a little more. They even communicate with their girlfriends and boyfriends on the phone.

When I was in middle school, I dealt with a little of this myself. I had a young girl that I talked to on the phone. (It is so weird to think that we used to actually talk into the phone. On top of that, they were plugged into the wall.) We decided very quickly that we were going to 'go' together. As middle schoolers, this consisted of walking to classes together and occasionally carrying tray at lunch. We were 'going' together, but we really did not have anywhere to 'go.'

Then the flyers were placed around school for our Halloween dance! We finally had a destination-a place to 'go.'

It did not start off too great. I showed up wearing a hockey mask in an attempt to be Jason from the 'Friday the 13th' series. The attempt was half-hearted at best because, while Jason wore cover alls, carried a machete, and was covered in fake blood, I simply wore a button down shirt, carried a coke, and was bathed in Polo cologne.

I had my mom drop me off a good distance from the dance to keep from being embarrassed by the mere thought that I, a 12 year old boy, could not find my own way to the school cafeteria. I ended up being embarrassed because the distance of the walk caused me to break a sweat. Luckily, the strong aroma of the cologne completely overwhelmed the nostrils of anyone who stood within five yards of me.

The second problem proved a little more difficult. In all of our conversations, the two of us had never discussed costumes. I aimlessly walked around asking everyone if they had seen any resemblance of my girl. Eventually, I found her. She was dressed as a football player. Her costume was complete with eye black, shoulder pads, a helmet, and cleats. She was taller than me anyway. The cleats made dancing with her as difficult as sitting on the front row of a movie theater. Combining her uniform with my hockey mask made it seem like we should be on the Sports Center's Top 10 plays.

Mid-dance, I was a little disappointed with the whole evening. So, as we stood in the middle of the dance floor, I did what middle schoolers do-I broke up with her. Upon completing this task, I took off my hockey mask and went and did what chubby kids do. I went and sat beside the Booster Club table that was selling popcorn and cokes.

Moments later, a friend of hers came over to me and told me that my now ex-girlfriend was crying on the the other side of the room. I was more into the Little Debbie in my clutches than the conversation. I asked a question that made logical sense to me as a 7^th grade boy, “Why?” The friend replied, “Because you broke up with her, dummy!”

In a moment of nothing besides sheer brilliance, I uttered said to her, “Go tell her that I was just kidding.”

So she did. And the girlfriend bought it! We ended up dancing for the rest of the evening. She was happy because she had her dance partner back. I was happy because I realized that, if I did not want to deal with the strains of middle school love, I could break up because she would take me back. My commitment to her was really a commitment to my own happiness. I could walk away if I wanted and come back with 'I did not mean it. It was just a joke.' It was just a luke-warm, half hearted commitment.

Many of us are living out our journey with Jesus in very much the same way. We are committed when it is good for us and then stuck in the monotony of self absorbed living three weeks later. We stand on a spiritual peak singing promises that, too often, end up just being words. Our commitment to God is half-hearted at best.

The problem with this line of thinking is the Bible. Nowhere in scripture to we find God viewing this approach to Christ and His kingdom as something that we have the right to treat so flippantly. Christ says for us to love him whole heartedly (Mark 12: 28-31) and that His glory belongs to no one else (Isaiah 48:9-11). Too often, for the sake of our own desires and pleasure, our commitment to God translates as a vain, half hearted treatment of His love and a cheap view of His grace. When God is taken for granted and treated like this, our commitment translates as 'half-hearted'.

It does not take a hockey mask to realize that half-hearted commitment is not commitment at all.

The Gospel and Chicken Nuggets

I have a friend who is a devout meat eater-a steak and potatoes kind of guy. A few months ago, he decided that he was going to only eat a vegetarian cuisine for forty days. However, vegetarian in 2009 is not what it was in 1987. To my surprise, he was able to pick up vegetarian hot dogs, hamburgers, barbecue, etc. At any moment I half expected him to extract a T-Bone steak made solely of ground squash and zucchini.

Hope and I were at the store the other night and, for whatever reason, decided to buy Shepherd (our little boy) some vegetarian Chicken nuggets. Thinking they would be healthier and lead him into healthier, herbivore bliss, we gave them a shot.

He would not touch them. We tried everything. We tried cheering for him. We tried acting like the nugget was an airplane coming in for a landing. We tried me eating a nugget to make him jealous. We even tried ketchup. Nothing.

Here is the difference. My friend had conditioned himself to accept the shortcomings of the vegetarian cuisine for his experience. Shepherd, who loves real chicken, wanted nothing to do with our sloppy substitute made of cauliflower.

Too often in the life of a follower of Jesus, we accept substitutes for the gospel. Today, when we can have our Christianity in every size, flavor, and with cream on top, we deal with a multitude of false doctrine. There is the prosperity gospel which states that if we ‘blessed’ by God, then our financial endeavors and our joys in earthly life will be exponential. This theology being made popular by certain television networks and toothy grins.

There is also what is called the Social Gospel, which is consistently being reinvented. The long and short of this theology is that the main focus of the believer is to have an impact on society ONLY in the here and now and make up for the sins of humanity. The kingdom of God is merely an earthly Kingdom. The person of Jesus simply sets the standard for this goodness. His death on the cross was not in the place of our sin, Christians are to be morality driven do-gooders who try to put a band aid on the deep, infected cut that has been left on our world by sin.

The problem with these two ‘gospels’ is the Bible. If the prosperity gospel is true, then the stories of Job, John the Baptist, the disciples, and Stephen as well as numerous missionaries throughout history and around the world (not to mention Jesus) are pointless. To ascribe to a purely social gospel and simply focus on the here and now is to dismiss Paul’s longing for heaven and consistent Biblical theme that only in the presence of God will our view of Him cease to be distorted. Both of these focus on the actions of man outside of the work of Jesus. To paraphrase a pastor in Dallas, any time we put an adjective in front of the ‘gospel (social, prosperity, etc.), then that ceases to be the gospel.

Even personally, we distort the true gospel found in the Bible and orthodox Christianity. When we stand satisfied in our own good deed with no connection to Christ, then that is not the gospel. If, in our weaknesses, we blame God instead of depending Him, that is not the gospel. To act like God exists for us rather us existing for Him is to dilute the overwhelming Biblical message that all things exist in order for God to be made much of (Psalm 24). The problem with misunderstanding does not end with misguided theologians. It is propagated by the fact that the message of the Bible is, at best, considered for only an hour a week.

The gospel is this. We were created to be in perfect harmony with God. As a result of the fall, we no longer have that harmony; rather there is enmity between God and man. God sent Christ as result of His rich love and mercy to reunite us with himself and has therefore given us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:16-21). If that Gospel has penetrated us, it will overflow and impact those we come in contact with regardless of their lot in life because, in Christ, we are a New Creation through Jesus (Eph. 2:8-10). Christ will shape the way that we view our place at work. He will define our role as we take our kids to practices. He will impact our marriage and give us a Biblical view of parenting. In retirement, the Gospel is the our desperate need for Jesus and satisfaction found in Him will spill out into the way that we live rather than what we define as our ‘beliefs’.

How have you been affected by Jesus? How has Christ shaped the way you treat others? Is your life defined by gospel rooted in the truths of Scripture? Or have we conditioned ourselves to accept the shortcomings of these heretical treatments of Christ and his message?

Are you settling for chicken nuggets made of cauliflower?

Let the Battle Begin...

I am not much in the kitchen. One of my greater feats was telling a friend to grind up Reese's Cups and put them on top of a chocolate cake with peanut butter icing. While the actual work was going on, I was throwing the excess Reese's Cups at her boyfriend to see if he could catch them in his mouth.

With all of this said, I watch just enough food network to be dangerous. I made a vain attempt to cook Cornish hens one time because of the Neelys' show. However, the competition shows are the only network productions that I can really watch. And the granddaddy of all food network competitions is Iron Chef-more specifically for us, Iron Chef America.

However, i was a little concerned when asked to judge an Iron Chef competition as part of a Disciple Now. While I enjoy both the show and food, I also realize that cooking is not the easiest thing in the world and to expect 7-12 graders to create culinary masterpieces is a bit much. Furthermore, when you judge a contest, you have to at least taste all of the items, otherwise your judgment is a bit skewed. And even if the students were providing their very best efforts, I was a little nervous about the secret ingredient. Secret ingredients are a little scary when you have accomplished chefs. When you have an eighth grader who can jack up a Hot Pocket, a secret ingredient may put you in the hospital.

The youth pastor had prepared the students ahead of time and they had showed up with everything save the secret ingredient. Some of them brought raw chicken. Others brought eggs. I was a little nervous, half-expecting some kid to roll around in contaminated peanut butter. They were shaking and baking up ideas when the youth pastor announced the ingredient. I was about to be part of Battle Ham!

Ham is not easy to work into anything that is not a sandwich. I have to make an overt effort to eat ham; I never say, "I think that I will eat ham today." This ham was not even sandwich ham; it was 'fresh off the hock' kind of ham. And this ham was presented to me in every way that you can imagine.

I ate a ham pot pie. I ate a hamburger, complete with ground ham. I ate some twisted macaroni and cheese with ham. Lots of breakfast type ham presentations crossed my path; some of the ham wrapped around chicken and fried. This really posed an enormous threat to all things safe and edible, in my humble opinion. There were 'hambrellas' placed on cookie nuggets. One group even ground up ham in a red velvet cake batter.

The funniest part to me was that one group decided to do a medley of Mexican. They did ham and steak fajitas, complete with ham salsa and a sopapilla with ice cream chocolate sauce and a ham garnish. I realized that their food would have been the same with or without the ham. They made fajitas and said, "Throw some ham in that!"
They conjured up salsa and someone slapped some pig in and said, "Boom! Ham!" And ham on ice cream-that had to be an accident.

When it was all said and done, the contest was an 'other white meat' filled success. But I did leave with a few prevailing questions about myself. Are my faith and the actions that my faith generates something that deeply rooted in me, or just something that accentuates me? It seems like it easy for all of us to 'do what we're supposed to do.' Yet when we look at the life of Jesus (not to mention the Old Testament prophets), we see that doing the right thing for the wrong reason is a reprehensible act.

If nothing else, this weekend gave me something to chew on...

Rainy December

It has been raining in Chattanooga for a month. And not just here and there. Big rain. Rain coat rain. 'It looks like the Amazon in my backyard' kind of rain. 'Be careful not to get depressed' kind of rain.
It's raining a lot.

We are sitting in our living room about a week ago with Shepherd. Hope noticed a girl, probably fourteen or fifteen, walking down the street with nothing covering her from the rain but a fleece hoodie. It does not take a very an REI employee to know that fleece is not what you would call 'rain gear.' Hope told me that she had just bought an umbrella and wanted me to take it to her.

I walked through the house looking for shoes. Hope told me to hurry. So I threw on a pair of flip flops and ran outside with jeans, flip flops, and a white t-shirt that had shrunk a little too much to be wearing in public. I was halfway to the street when I realized how far down the road the girl was. I took off running and yelling at the girl. As I ran, I accidentally pushed the umbrella extend button.

I had not really thought about how to get her attention. So I just started yelling whatever came to my mind. "Hey you!" I blurted out first. I saw her look over her shoulder with concern. "Hey, come back here!" I yelled, waving the umbrella above my head. She picked up the pace. "Stop!!!" She started to jog briskly. Because I don't jog, I walked faster.

It hit me. This kid had an overweight, seemingly angry man running after her with what probably looked like a club of some sort.

I finally yelled, " I'm not going to hurt you! I want to give you an umbrella!" She was almost out of sight. I turned around to walk back to my house. In that instant, I heard a voice from up the road asking loudly, "What kind is it?"

It took a whole lot for me not to reply, 'The kind that keeps you dry!'

Bad Ideas Really Sting

Youth ministers are some of the most entertaining people on planet earth. They design interesting T-shirts. They order mass quantities of pizza and frozen lasagna. They can tune out all the noise on a fifteen passenger bus for hours at a time. If you look up 'multi-task' in the dictionary, there should be a picture of a youth minister. I have the incredible opportunity to spend time with at least one youth pastor each week. And, if nothing else, my sermon illustrations are better for it.
Last October, I was with a group of students from Chattanooga. We were somewhere in the middle of Tennessee. We were doing an event based on 'The Amazing Race' where the students were in cars with adults racing from place to place, trying to find clues so they could move to the next location. One of my youth minister friends (we will call him Joe, because that is his name) had forgotten to place a clue in the woods. This was the area where I was the moderator.
When Joe realized this, he came screaming in his Toyota Corolla to our location. Joe took off sprinting into the woods. He then moved to his next location, because, as most youth ministers, his schedule was a little off kilter.
The hunt was competitive, as most youth scavenger hunts are. The event was more intense because on the line was a free ski trip. This intensity culminated before my very eyes as every group showed up within seconds of one another (except for my buddy Mike's group, which was lost.) I quickly gave them their clue. All four groups, within seconds of one another, took off sprinting into the woods. Moments later, all of the groups were sprinting back. This made no sense, because they could only read the clue one team at a time. Then I noticed there was a cloud above their heads. A flying, buzzing cloud. Due to his frantic hurry, Joe had not realized he had placed the clue below a hornets' nest. Due to me not wanting to walk into the woods, I did not notice either.
One boy had his shirt off, swinging it above his head like a helicopter. Another boy was yelling, in a voice many would consider too deep for his size, "We have to go back in there! My brother did not come out!" I reassured him that it was a trip into the woods, not World War II, and that Hitler and the Axis Powers were not going to hold his brother hostage. I also comforted him by reminding him that his brother wouldn't even be stung that much, because he had on a long-sleeved paint ball shirt with a spider on it. I reminded him that hornets were afraid of spiders, especially spiders that play paintball, and he calmed down a lot.
The retreat was a lot of fun. There were a few stings, but nothing that some Benadryl could not handle. And some kids did get to go to Colorado for free. However, they hid some clues by some grizzly bear/polar bear hybrids. And Bears are not afraid of spiders. Or paint balls.