Miracle Trip

After all the retreats and trips I’ve experienced, I continue to be amazed by God. Just when I think I’ve seen it all – He shows me I haven’t.

Last Saturday we left Pinecrest as 14 individuals who knew very little about each other and cared even less. Thoughts about God and Jesus were afterthoughts at best. Adult leaders were nice people who were necessary to get out of town without parents but for the most part were to be kept at arm’s length away.

What a difference a week in the mountains while the rest of your team and church is praying makes. God just showed up.

I can’t put in a post what happened these past few days. It would be impossible and cheapen the whole experience. You honestly had to be there to watch the transformation take place.

Instead let me just tell you what happened on the last night.

14 people sat in a room laughing, teasing, talking to each other for 2 hours without the TV, without goofy games, and without being forced to. For the first time – it wasn’t awkward. They went to the pool together. They shared deep secrets and thoughts in the devo time. They prayed for each other. People got real about where they were really at with Jesus. Students from 6 different schools, 3 different cities and countless different baggage became a community, a safe place to be real. Adults were treated as older friends who could be trusted. I watch our adults quit being sponsors and become coaches, disciplers.

Comments were made like – “I wish so-so had come this week.” “When are doing another one of these kinds of trips?” “I can’t believe I almost didn’t come because I thought this was going to suck and I didn’t know anybody.” (Gotta love the honesty of teenagers.)

And I got to see not just a glimmer of hope, but a great big beacon of potential. For most youth ministries – it would have been another great trip to post up pics about. For us, it’s spiritual marker 1 on becoming a community that reproduces spiritual leaders.

Thank you, Jesus for doing exactly what we asked in a way we would have never imagined.

Some pics of the weekend – to download the larger sizes, click on them. It will send you to my Flickr page where you can do that.

View From Our Balcony:

At the top of the mountain…

Eating in and eating out…

The Crew…

Aftermath – Volunteer Side

I didn’t intend to go this far down the rabbit hole but here we are. I’ve decided to walk through the aftermath of my first meeting at Grace for a couple of reasons. First, as we form a brand new team here it’ll serve as some teaching points. Second, it’s healing. Third, the purpose of my life my be as a warning to others.

You don’t do something like this and not have some fallout…or in this case – nuclear winter. There were two more sides of the fallout to be played out and with it a cruel lesson in Southern Church Culture that everybody seem to forgot to mention in seminary.

The first side to fallout was the volunteer side. You know, it’s okay to be clueless as to how do something. That’s why we have Google. It’s okay to not be good at something – that’s why we practice. It’s even okay to be clueless, not good at something and not know it. But it’s never okay to be clueless, not good at something, not know it, AND refuse to listen to anybody else. That was exactly about to happen with our volunteer team.

As luck would have it, we had 2 meetings already planned for the next week – a student “leader” meeting and an adult volunteer meeting. The student meeting started with introductions and immediately one of the “leader” kids who got up and left on the previous Wednesday night asked “So are you now going to blow this leadership team up?” It was a fair question even if he didn’t ask it very nicely.

“Depends. Can you tell me why you exist? Who are you leading and where are you taking them? And what exactly were the criteria used to determine that the people in this room were leaders?”

And the crickets came out. I never thought a room full of teenagers could get that quiet. Finally, one adult said – “These were the only students to show up to our meetings when we asked for student leaders.”

“Let me guess, free pizza was served, right?” (Was I funny? Yes. Accurate? Yes. Was it necessary? No. Neither was it helpful.) I continued.

“Tell you what – write out your answers to those questions and I’ll see you here next Sunday to discuss your answers. Now, let’s go eat.”

“But we are here to plan stuff.”

“This week plan on answering those questions then we’ll see what we’ll plan next.”

The adult volunteer meeting in my house later that week would not be nearly as quick or as civil. Looking back – the conflict was inevitable. I had a vision for adults equipping students to lead small groups. My idea of a youth volunteer was someone who disciples teens. Wasting adult insight and experience on cooks, chaperons, and chauffeurs is exactly that – a waste. I want students to rub shoulders with someone who is crazy in love with Jesus. Sure, we will cook, chaperon, and chauffeur but that is NOT what student ministry is.

In front of me sat a room full of adults that believed student ministry was being the behavior police and staying as busy as we could. I show up and ask – tell me what students you are discipling. I not only was demanding MORE from them, I was demanding something that they (even if they wanted to) could not give. The truth of the matter was that most of them had never been discipled. I was completely turning their world upside down and we were both shocked at each other as to how clueless the other one was.

Everyone involved made mistakes. I assumed that everyone was on board for this change. After all the questionnaires, the meetings, the interviews, and them taking over a year to find a youth pastor – I assumed the elders had been walking through with parents and volunteers what they were looking for and why they were changing philosophies and direction. I assumed that they all recognized how sick their student ministry was and were eager to change that. I assumed that they all WANTED to be there and that they were called to student ministry. I assumed that the student ministry wasn’t as bad as the elders had made it out to be. They had close to a hundred kids showing up. How bad could it be? MAJOR MISTAKES on my part.

On the other hand, the volunteers refused to see their legacy for what it really was. Disrespectful students, no missions emphasis, no new believers, and no servant-leader students investing in the Kingdom into college and beyond. There were no life change stories of how God was changing and impacting their student’s lives. On top of that – MOST of the volunteers never engaged with a student – they would stand in the back of the room and visit. Most of them were the “last hold-outs” of the church split that had just happened before I got there. I would later find out that there were other holdouts in more influential places – but that’s a little later in the story.

So we unpack all of these issues in my living room. We rewind and tell our stories, our perspectives to try to get back in step. I then walk through what it means to disciple a student. I talk expectations and promises we need to make to each other. The importance of reproducing spiritual leaders and releasing teens to impact their world and how we do that together, in community.

Then the light bulb went on in one of the volunteer’s mind. “You sound just like Mark Schatzman. That’s why they hired you.”

My first thought was – “Well, duh.” Mark Schatzman was the Directional Leader. And just the year before the church went through a split because they had a staff divided. So it makes complete sense to hire people that want to go in the same direction as you. Obviously, this was a new concept to some of these people.

I did a lot of listening. I listened to their concerns and frustrations – how they didn’t WANT to change or didn’t even know if they could change. I listened (again) to all the reasons why student-led life groups wouldn’t work and how many students would walk out the door if we do this. I listened for a long time. When it was all over, the facts were this:

1. The Elders thought this was the call of God on Grace Church.
2. I thought this was the call of God of how student ministry should be done.
3. I was in the position of leadership, placed there by both calling and hiring.

The bigger question for all of us – me included – was this: did we trust God enough to at the very least give this an honest, God-honoring try AND choose to love each other and trust each other in the middle of it?

For all but about 5 of them, the answer was no.

At the time I thought – well, the good news is I don’t have to worry about a slow and steady pace of change and it can’t really get any worse.

I was wrong.

The First Night

Since Derek and Clay have brought it up…I’ll tell the full meal deal.

It was my first Wednesday night at Grace Church. Grace was already a church divided – something at the time I didn’t fully know or understand. The shift towards a life group/student leader/relational driven ministry from a calendar/event driven one would be more costly than any of us imagined. On hindsight, it could be argued that we (I particularly in the student ministry) were trying to but “new wine” in an “old wineskin.” Church was 15 years old and had a pattern how it did (and liked) ministry.

At least until this Wednesday night.

The current volunteer team (around 23 adults) planned the night, my job was to show up, get introduced, play some games, and observe. That was the plan.

We get there, the game was not the greatest but hey – we’ve all had one of those nights. Half the students didn’t participate, sitting off to the side in their cliques. Then one of the volunteers stood up and started telling his story of how he met Jesus. The problem was half the students were all over the place and the ones that were there weren’t listening and goofing around. On top of that, none of the volunteers were helping. They were in the back talking to themselves, not engaging students.

I stopped the volunteer. “Can you wait a minute? Not everyone is here yet and this is too important. Let’s go get everyone here.”

You’d thought I just asked him for a car loan. I went to the volunteers and said “Go get the students, tell them we are starting now.”

No one moved. I repeated myself. Again, they just stood there.

I said – ‘Follow me.’

I walked up to the most popular, lead dog, senior group that was sitting off to the side not engaging, ignoring everybody. All the volunteers were behind me.

“Guys – I’m amped you’re here. XX is about to tell his story so come join us.”

They didn’t move.

“C’mon, we’re about to start and you’re not going to want to miss this.”

One of the seniors said this…”We come here to catch up, we’re not going down there to listen to him.”

“Okay. Let me rephrase. Either get up off your butt and participate or go home. Need a ride? Then walk over to that phone and call your mommy and daddy to come get you. These are your options, none of which is staying here so why aren’t you moving to one of these places?”

Half went downstairs to listen, the other half walked out the door. Yes, there was an elder’s son in the group – but that’s a whole other story. I turned to the volunteers and said “Go and do likewise. You have 3 minutes.”

I have no idea how many students were there – enough to fill the atrium of our church. That night those students had an air of arrogance, they were disrespectful, and not one adult stepped up to confront it. There was no way anyone new was ever going to fit in that culture. No one was going to get real about their junk with Jesus, or pray for a lost friend, or remotely get a taste of God in that culture. It was beyond anything I had ever seen or experienced. I felt like I was in “Lord of the Flies.”

As the students filed in, I leaned over to one of the volunteers and asked – “Is this normal?”

He told me this is how a typical Wednesday night goes. Game, students fracture off in their cliques, someone speaks, half listen, all go home happy.

Derek and Clay can fill in the blanks but basically my speech was as follows:

“Welcome to Grace Church. We exist to encounter and love God and love others. We are going to push you into areas of leadership and vulnerability that you don’t think you can reach. We are going to take a journey of seeing God do miracles, we are going know Jesus better than we’ve ever known Him and we’ll get to see Him change our lives right in front of us. We are going to take His love internationally and we are going to have a ton of fun doing it. So if you’re game for that or at the least want to try – you’re in the right place.”

“On the other hand, if you are here because you’re mom and dad make you…If you are here because it’s a cool place to hang and you’re catching up with your friends… AND you have no intentions of engaging…stay home. If you need me to call your parents for you and plead your case as to why you shouldn’t have to go to youth group, I’ll do it. If you don’t want to be here and you’re convinced to make it miserable for everyone else – let me be an advocate for you with your parents. I’ll do whatever I need to keep you at home. I’m on your side in that deal.”

“But showing up and being disrespectful and not engaging is not an option here. Are there any misunderstandings or questions about this?”

The fallout was steep. We grew from 95 students and 20 something volunteers to 20 and 4 in one week. (I’ll tell about the leader meeting afterwards one day.) I figured I’d get fired, go back to Kansas and beg for my old job back. But as rough as a start as it was – it was the catalyst in creating a place where leaders could grow and people could encounter God.

Mistake? I don’t think so. Mistake in us – pastors and elders – trying to lead an established church through a DNA change when we weren’t completely unified? Yeah. That was the big one.