From Sampler to Sower

It started with a simple question from my brother-in-law.

“What do you think about the sex demonstration at Northwestern.”

At the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about.  The story of the controversial after-class demonstration from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL had been big news in northern Illinois where Mark lives.  It hadn’t yet garnered any attention here in rural Indiana. I had to look it up to find out more.

So in case you’re anything like me, here’s the gist of the story.  Dr. J. Michael Bailey teaches a course in human sexuality at Northwestern University.  As part of the class, he routinely schedules optional, after-class panel discussions to address issues raised in class from various perspectives.

On February 21 the class concluded with information about just one such discussion.  Students were warned that panel discussion on “Networking for Kinky People” would contain graphic information of an obviously sexual nature.  The only problem, Dr. Bailey himself at the time had no concept of just how graphic the demonstration would prove.

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OK, so maybe it wasn’t your mom, but chances are, at some point in your life someone tried to pass on this Bible “wisdom” to you.

There’s just one problem.  The verses they quoted aren’t really in the Bible.  Sometimes it’s something they thought came from the Bible but it came from somewhere else.  Other times it’s the result of taking a verse egregiously out of context.  Either way, these nuggets of Bible “truth” aren’t from the Bible at all.

Here’s my list of the worst offenders.

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We know that one of the formative influences on the thought and theology of John Wesley was Bishop Jeremy Taylor and his book Holy Living and Dying.

Here is a prayer for holy intentions designed by Taylor to be prayed at the outset of study and preaching.  It is both beautiful and profound, and I offer it here without further comment, in the hopes that it will challenge and inspire you as it has me.

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Yesterday I wrote about some of the best years of my life.  But reminiscing about the good years doesn’t quite make up for the fact that 2010-2011 has been one of the hardest years of my life so far.

Don’t get me wrong. My family is blessed in more ways than I can fully count. But for a number of reasons the past 12 months have been some of the most difficult I’ve faced.

I shared just a little over a year ago that due to the ongoing downturn in the economy and its effects on giving at our church, I and the rest of the paid associate staff at Middletown Church of the Nazarene would be facing a 50% reduction in salary. I said at the time that we were hoping it would be a short term adjustment. “Who knows,” I wrote last year “where our church will be financially a year from now?”

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I shared yesterday about our youth group’s favorite travel game, The Top Three.  On our ski trip this weekend, one of my favorite questions came as a surprise: What were your top three favorite years? Like most of the best questions in the top three game, it’s deceptively simple, but calls for some real thought and provides a unique insight into the lives of the players.  After some careful consideration, here are my top three as well as some reflections on what makes the good years so good.

1991

1991 was the best of my high school years, with 1990 a close second.  In October 1990 I finally got up the nerve to ask Michelle to go out with me.  By 1991 we were “going steady.”  The summer of 1991 was my turn to attend Nazarene Youth Congress in Orlando, FL. By the time my senior semester started (fall 1991) I’d found my social niche and loved school. I was on my high school speech team and made the all-conference team in foreign extemp.  In December of 1991 I graduated from high school a semester early and prepared to head off to Olivet Nazarene University in January 1992.

Update: And though I didn’t know it then, that was also the year @Bekkalynn was born.

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It’s almost time to start getting wet again…

Ever since I took a group of teens to a free I Tried SCUBA class at a local YMCA, I wanted to become a certified SCUBA diver.  Thanks to my brother and his SCUBA teaching cronies, last fall that goal was realized.  My oldest son Brenden and I were certified last November.

Now that the temperatures in Middletown have hit 60 degrees, at least for a day or two, I’m wondering when I can get in the water next.  (It’s warmer outside now that it was on our certification dives, though I’m sure the water has cooled off a bit.)

One of the primary risks in SCUBA is decompression sickness, commonly known as the bends.  As a chemistry teacher (or anyone who has ever opened a bottle of pop) can tell you, more gasses dissolve into a liquid when under pressure.  That’s true of carbon dioxide in your bottle of Coca Cola, and it’s true of nitrogen in your blood stream.  The increased pressure caused by breathing compressed air at depth causes excess nitrogen to dissolve into solution in your blood.

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Recently I ran across this quote, reportedly by Albert Einstein:

Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.

I say reportedly only because none of the many places online which attribute this to Einstein offer any source.  If anyone knows the source, I’d love to know.

Einstein or not, this is a vitally important perspective for youth ministry.  So often we judge our students based on adult standards of maturity  and wisdom.  If you’ve spent any time working with teens you know what I mean.  There’s that student who has been a part of your ministry for years.  She’s active, attentive, and the very picture of what Jesus meant when he said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”  Forget leadership potential; she manifests leadership qualities already, and you intentionally look for opportunities for her to put those qualities to work.  And then you get a call from her parent.  The school called; she was caught doing…

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Recently my friend and colleague, Matt Todd asked this question on Twitter:

If you had to pick just 6 Scriptures that every Christian should know by heart, which ones would you pick?

Here’s my take. Taking a cue from the awesome folks at YouVersion, in honor of the 400 anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible, all of the quotes in this post will be from the New International Version. (By the way, did you know that between February 12 and March 1 you can download the NIV to your iPhone, iPad or Android phone so that you can use it with the YouVersion app even when you’re offline or in a place you can’t connect to the internet? Check it out here.)

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This week has been one of those times when everything just seems to fall together and relentlessly point my mind in a single direction.  Among the things that have got me thinking:

The Upheaval in Egypt (and Tunisia, and Yemen, and Bahrain, and…):

I must admit, the happenings in Egypt have grabbed my attention.  I’m not fully sure what I think of the story I’m hearing, in part because I’m not sure how much of the story to believe.

On one hand, I’m fairly sure that if tens of thousands of protesters started gathering on the National Mall insisting President Obama (or Bush, or Clinton, or Bush, or…) resign immediately rather than wait for the next scheduled election to step down… Well, long story short, if they did, he wouldn’t.  So I wonder why our politicians are pressuring the Egyptian government to do what they themselves wouldn’t.

On the other hand, I’m also fairly sure he wouldn’t use strong-arm tactics to secure a 30 year term for himself, nor would he send plain-clothes thugs out to start flinging Molotov cocktails into the protesting throng. And just about the time I can’t stomach the thuggery of the pro-government protesters any longer, the anti-government crowd starts flinging the fire bombs back.

But what really captures my attention is how the upper class, middle age generation of Egypt has traded their freedom for security and economic stability.  They’ve voted for a tyrant because tyranny is good for business.  And also how the younger generation is refusing to follow in the footsteps of their forebears, even to the point of shedding their own blood and potentially laying down their lives.

And what stands behind their steadfast perseverance? In part it is a sense of stewardship — that the movement for freedom which was passed to them from Tunisia is too important for the Middle East for them to give up.  They owe it to those who protested before them and to those who will be inspired to protest because of them, to stay the course.

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Last Sunday was a great day for football, unless you’re a part of Steeler Nation.  And I’m definitely not.

It was also, from most reports, a mediocre day for commercials, which was a disappointment, since the Super Bowl is supposed to be, well, the Super Bowl of advertising.

There were a few high points.  Talking to my boys, the consensus was the winners were Audi (Release the hounds!), Coca Cola with its border crossing ad, and whatever it was that Ozzie and Bieber were selling (it had something to do with G’s).  Of course, can you call a commercial a winner when, after seeing, you can’t remember what it was advertising. (“Was it a Sprint phone or something?” was the best my boys could come up with.)

And there were lots of losers.  Take Dorito’s.  When asked, they said they liked them (especially Grandpa’s ashes). But they didn’t mention any of them at any point in our discussion until asked about them afterward.  Plus there were plenty of advertisers we won’t be patronizing.  There’s nothing like the Super Bowl to remind me why I always use iPower for all my DNS registry needs.

But one advertising rivalry really caught my attention. After a year’s hiatus in which they skipped the Super Bowl and focused on the Refresh project, Pepsi was back going head to head with their prime competitor Coca Cola.

After the jump we’ll break it down, and hopefully, while we’re at it, learn a thing or two about ministry in the process.

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