The Issues facing our kids...

It is utterly amazing the lengths that some will go to in order to be loved. Undoubtedly by now you have heard about the pregnancy outbreak amongst the teenage girls at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts (article here). The outcries have taken the expected routes: "Media has glorified teenage motherhood via the Spears girl"; "Birth control needs to be more accessible"; "the sex ed classes weren't taught well enough"; "there needs to be a closer womens health facility(the nearest one is 20 miles away)."

The school authorities want to take a biological solution, offering contraceptives to students without parental consent. The parents want to hand out more knowledge. The girls want attention; and former students/now mothers want programs.

What do they need?

One girl named Ireland who is now 18 offered this explanation to explain the pregnancies: "They're excited to finally have someone love them unconditionally." Meaning their babies will love them, trust them, and depend on them. The unconditional love and acceptance of another human is what they crave...and they like much of society, have considered love to be a drastic measure that only surrounds dire circumstances. When love is not found, it is sought elsewhere, in this case through babies.

The lengths that some will go to in order to find love.

Sometimes we hear the problems our kids are facing and quietly relive the simplistic days of our own youth. The next time you sit and listen to your kids, quietly imagine the pressure and problems that they currently face.

Listen more, talk less.

Isolation and Ice Cream

Ian left youth group tonight 75 cents richer, and all of us left with a little less appreciation of the intelligence that he claims to posses. We had ice cream for snack. Mrs. Keen provided ice cream and cones for all the students. Whitney dripped some onto the front patio of the Church. Jason posed a quarter to anyone who would take a lick of it. Ian was the only taker (as he usually is with most of our dares). How did he get 75 cents you ask; the camera wasn't ready on the first two licks. The third lick provided the photo opportunity that we so desired. Three licks, at a quarter apiece, you do the math.

Since it would be negligent and irresponsible of me to allow the kids to eat ice cream all youth group, we had a short lesson on Isolation. Jesus saves us from isolation by placing us in this community of faith where we are all useful and all cared for. Looking at Acts 4 it says that there was no needy people among them. The church cares for each other, emotionally, relationally, and economically.

The lesson went all right...the games too. we played chicken ball. The girls scored a 6 point goal to win it. The boys were mad. The fact there was no 6 point goal prior to that point is irrelevant. Oh well.

Highlights of the night:

Ian's escapade.

I got to play in the youth band...good times.

Ice cream was good.

Jayme's Goodbye

"When you look at a plate of ham and eggs, you think sure the chicken was involved, but the pig was committed." -- unknown

Jayme is didn't want to be an egg, so he became the ham. Alright, the metaphor breaks down there (I assure that the choosing of animals in this metaphor was purely coincidental and was not a shot at Jayme's profession). Jayme took off today. After the impromptu press conference (story here http://www.ktka.com/news/2008/jun/16/officer_rides_nephew/) and a shaky embrace with his wife, he rode into the sunset. He left the Police Station this morning at 11.15 a.m. He was followed by Toby (his brother) in his Ride Support Truck. Here are some of the pictures I took. He does a good job of updating his blog (www.rideforgranton.blogspot.com) so be sure to check that out. You can order this shirt on there and send donations as well.

If you don't know Jayme, he is a bike patrolman with the Topeka Police Department. His nephew has some health issues. So Jayme is riding his bike to Bolivar, Missouri in order to raise money to help with medical expenses.

Just in case you think he is just a soft heart, I assure that his soft heart is surrounded by a lot of big muscles...I saw him tackle a guy once.

Pedal fast Jayme.

Rodeo and Religion...

It has been a long and busy day.

I found myself with a predicament this morning. When I was in college, I was an active attender of Risen Ranch Cowboy Church in Carthage, Missouri. I started goin' cause Lucas Littles told me too, but once I got there it was a good time. While I was there I was able to meet a lot of good guys, that really shaped who I am now. One guy, Johnny Clem, really took time out to talk to me and discuss stuff. The guy trains horses for a living, but has one of the clearest outlooks on ministry that I have ever heard. This morning, as part of the State High School Finals Rodeo, they brought in a singer from Dallas. She was awesome. She sang and spoke from horseback. As she sang her last song, "I pledge of Allegiance to the Lamb", the great Ray Boltz song, she stood up on top of her saddle. It was great to see all the competitors there and their families. There were probably 200 cowboys there...then our 8 kids. I (and Tricia) took our Sunday school classes to Cowboy Church for Sunday school. I think that was the closest many of them had ever been to a horse.

After returning to Central Park, I headed back to the State Finals. This time I had a tag-along. Trey went with me. He had never been to a rodeo. He had three high points: 1) the bull riding 2) getting to talk to the state Runner up Team Roper: Ryan Domer...he was pretty impressed to be standing that close to a guy who was actually competing, 3) his rainbow snow cone that he got in the middle of the goat tying. Good stuff. I think he had a good time.

As for youth group...I led worship. Three songs, half heartedly sung well off key. Nuff said. Afterward we talked about how Jesus saves us from Isolation. We looked a David's isolation in Psalm 8 and 142. They took notes on the feelings that David expressed in these Psalms as I read them out loud. Now they have homework. Psalms has some really cool names for God. "Rescuer" "Provider" "Refuge" They are to find a verse that describes God that goes along with all the feelings they wrote down. We'll see.

We headed to Sonic to play some volleyball...the court was rained out. So we went to Target. Each pair of students was challenged to buy the weirdest thing they could find under 3 dollars. I stood at the front with my Church credit card as teams came up with their weird gifts: ties; medicines; band aides; microphones; baby food. It was interesting.

It was a good night. I was pretty happy with how it went, even though I spent the whole day/weekend at the Rodeo.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

CSI: Miami might be the worst TV show of all time. Does that guy ever say anything like it isn't earth shattering news.

Jayme Green starts his bike ride tomorrow: Pedal fast Jayme.

I really wished I was able to fight this weekend...

High School Rodeo

To the untrained eye, I took the day off. But to those who understand the intricacies of youth ministry, I worked my tail off. Honestly, my work output for the day fell somewhere between these two extremes.

I went to the State High School Finals Rodeo today. They had a show at 12.30 and one at 7.00. The first one was highlighted by Colin and Ryan Domer (two Seaman guys) finishing first in the team roping. I don't know either guy very well, but they seem like quality people. Ramsey, Ireland, and CJ went with me.

FUNNY IRELAND COMMENTS OF THE DAY:
-"I guess I really don't need a horse, I'll just take a cowboy instead." She planned out her life during the slow parts of the rodeo, bringing me more comic material than I will ever really know what to do with.
-"How do I become a Rodeo Queen...do I have to be able to ride a horse?"

The 7.00 p.m. show was a good one too. I took Gage. It was his first rodeo. I don't really know if he liked it, but I had a good time.

I was kind of disappointed I didn't get to fight. I really would like to fight at some of these high school events. I learned in Joplin how big of an out reach that is. I took my stuff hoping someone wouldn't show...my stuff slept in the car all day though. O Well.

I'm taking my Sunday School class to Cowboy Church on Sunday though. That should be awesome.

Boredom with ADD

"It is amazing how God uses our mistakes and our decisions to bring us to where we are now."

Jayme Green told me this during our lunch today at Jersey Mikes. We had a pretty good lunch. He told me the story of how he and Meagan met, we talked about his upcoming bike ride to raise funds for his nephew Granton, and we discussed church relations prior to the Franco-Prussian War. We didn't discuss the third one, but the other two are completely legit. If I had lunch with Matt Bevens the third one would have made an appearance. 2 things became evident about Jayme from this meeting: 1) He is a popular guy, one of Jersey Mikes favorite customer 2) the guy has some wisdom.

Tonight's lesson was on boredom again. Once again we started by discussing our most boring experience and the things we do to discontinue the monotony. Then we played my favorite boredom stopping game: the dot game. Boys vs. Girls. Once again the guys were outdone, by a smarter, more gifted, group of girls. It was an inevitable outcome. The game was really decided well before it began.

My lesson was a lot of open ended questions, which were misidentified by the students as rhetorical. Needless to say, the main point was that Jesus doesn't want us to be bored in our faith. Something felt amiss. Call it lack of logical thinking, call it misapplied time: what ever it was our lesson gave the kids a new boring experience. That is probably melodramatic.

Highlights from the lesson:

Girls won the game.

Ian Keen made up a new word.

Aaron Jones, Jason Hildebrandt, Stacy Rexer, and Tricia Martens make this youth group a worthwhile experience even for me.

No one was hurt in our after party in the parking lot. The Trashcan game, football, and dodge ball were unhindered by injury.

Cool thing: Gage Casey is almost done with Pilgrims Progress, a book that I had trouble getting through as a college freshman.

Last Cool thing: High School State Finals Rodeo is here this week...a possible trip to Cowboy Church for Sunday school is in the future

"Our failures are known, our successes are not"

Al Pacino said it best when he was addressing a new class of CIA recruits: "Our failures are known, our successes are not." He may as well be addressing the Church. For every psychopath out there holding a sign proclaiming God's hatred for people; there is ten more who are leading a crafts table at a small VBS. Which one will get their picture in the paper? For every pastor that is caught in scandal; there are ten more that are little league coaches or volunteering at a community center. Which will get the news paper write up?

I guess you could chalk it up to a society that is looking for dirt. We want the negative. We would much rather hear stories about the inevitability of a gas price hike, a scandal in a public office, or just another homicide. Society grasps hold with white knuckle grip to the reality that our hopeless conditions are only worsening. So society is not really to blame, because we look for the negative in all conditions. The purpose of this writing is not to place blame; but to give you a glimpse of the depth to which our failures go.

I saw how deep it goes tonight. I have seen it for a number of years now.

Growing up I attended a church here in North Topeka. I had been attending for about 6 years when I left for college. During my freshman year at Ozark, I received a letter describing a situation concerning my home church. Seems that there had been some misunderstandings amongst some of the leadership and some of the congregation. Without going into details, some were asked to leave the Church. It was pretty rough on me. Suddenly, my graduating class was split in half. Some left, some stayed. From then on, my relationship with a lot of the church was lost. Some of my best friends and I were divided along the lines that none of us were involved in making. Luckily, since then I have been able to reconstruct many of those relationships, some are still very distant.

I spent many hours discussing the whole situation with a couple men that I really admire: Mark Moore; Phil Maddux; and Jon Kehrer. In C.S. Lewis' classic book, the Screwtape Letters, Wormwood advises his nephew that the Church can be a very good hindrance to accepting of the faith. I would not go that far in this situation, but the Church could be taken to that extreme.

Recently there has been a death of a family friend. I was over talking to the family tonight. The conversation turned to this situation. The family in the midst of grieving, spoke of this situation. Friends still mention it. My family still attends the church, but there has been a questioning in their minds still 5 1/2 years later. Our CPCC basketball camp brought back a couple guys from the church and reunited them, which lead the conversation back to it.

The greatest problem comes in the reputation amongst the community. Some in the community have expressed concern to me. "Are you from that church that kicks people out?" People who have never graced the presence of a pew, have heard more about this church than anything that goes on inside one. Some have heard more about the outfall of this situation, than have heard about gospel.

Our failures are known, our successes are not.