I Know I’m a Tool…

My apologies to Jason Raitz, my friend who is very careful not to be a tool, because this is definitely going to set off his “tool alert”. A few weeks ago I asked my friend and ace photographer Courtney Wilkerson if she’d take a couple of pictures of me. I really had no desire to get my picture taken, but a few of the places I’ve been invited to speak at have requested “head shots” for their promotional material. I don’t really have a head shot, so I’ve been using the cropped picture of Jill and I that appears on this blog. Anyway, thanks to Courtney I now have a few pictures to choose from and I’m stuck. I’m not sure which one to use. Jill likes the smiling one in color, I tend to prefer the black and white one (although personally I’d prefer one that didn’t have me in it at all!). So, I know I’m going to regret this, but I thought I would ask if anyone had an opinion.

Fire away!

This is really cool!

A DRIVE video done by one of the groups that attended the event! Too cool!!!

Jr. High Worship

Today I wrote a little bit about Jr. High worship in my weekly Stuck newsletter (which you can sign up to receive in the menu to the right). I’m working to get all my thoughts put together on this and will make a more complete blog post in the near future. In the meantime, here’s a bit from the newsletter.

As we’ve been working on this, one of the things that I have been wrestling with is our approach to musical worship. Over the past couple of years we’ve been blessed to have Starfield and Jackson Waters leading worship at our events, and they’ve both done an amazing job. Despite their being amazing musicians and leaders, there have been times that I felt that the students just weren’t “connecting” in worship. At our DRIVE event, I spoke with my friend and general session speaker April Diaz about this. We talked about the differences between leading adults in worship and leading junior high students. After our talk, I decided to email some junior high ministry friends to get their thoughts. As we traded emails back and forth, a lot of similar themes came up.

–It’s less about song selection and more about leading the students in a way that’s appropriate. For middle school students, this may mean that we make more suggestions in worship. We may have to tell them it’s ok to raise their hands or to just sit and pray while others sing. They will respond in worship, but they need a leader who can walk them through it without being condescending.

–Whenever possible, use songs that pull their lyrics from Scripture.

–Give students room to grow into worship. Allow them a place to expand their horizons and to go beyond the surface if they choose to. Remember, modeling in worship is important. Students will not often go where they are not led.

–Don’t assume too much. While we don’t want to be condescending to our students, we also don’t want to make the mistake of assuming too much either.

A lot of the ideas above reinforce the notion that worship with junior high students is less about song selection and more about leadership and appropriate modeling of worship by adults. That is something that we are acutely aware of and are working to understand on a deeper level as we prepare for Stuck’s 2008 events.

My friend Kurt Johnston has posted some on this topic, and there are excellent thoughts back and forth in the comments section too. Check it out.

UPDATE: It looks like Marko has posted a great breakdown of our emails on his blog too.

Easy Post…

It’s been a busy couple of weeks! We had an awesome DRIVE event down in OKC with the Nazarene denomination, and I loved every second of it. The downside is that there’s been a ton of catching up to do, which hasn’t allowed for much time on my blog. So instead of an actual post with actual content, I will leave you with these three videos. One is from Marko, one from Mark Riddle, and one from Zach Lind. Check em out!

DRIVE recap

The following is from our weekly Stuck in the Middle newsleter…

DRIVE recap…

In my life, I’ve witnessed few sights more beautiful than what I saw this weekend. To behold hundreds of middle school students lifting their hearts and voices in worship is an amazing thing. My friend April Diaz and I spoke about Moses, and about how he took a stand for God. In my last talk I told the story of Moses holding his hands in the air during the Israelites battle with the Amalekites. I talked to the students about Aaron and Hur coming to help Moses keep his arms lifted so that the Israelites could win the battle. I had the students and leaders lift their arms up in the air and hold them there for awhile. As their arms started to become tired, I asked them to think about how hard it would have been to try and hold them up on their own. I said “what if that’s what you had to do for God to win, how long could you hold out for God?” My point was that sometimes we need the help of our friends when we take a stand. When I told the kids that they could lower their hands and sit back down, I didn’t notice the small group of students who remained standing with their arms lifted. I continued on with the rest of my talk, and then prayed and invited Jackson Waters to the stage to close in worship. As the students were singing, a friend pointed out to me that a small group of students had been standing, hands raised, during my entire message and all through worship. They continued until the service was over and the event had concluded. Not once did their arms dip. Not once did they sit down.

I looked out at the students, and listened as they sang “I’m gonna be a history maker in this land, I’m gonna be a speaker of truth to all mankind. I’m gonna stand, I’m gonna run, Into your arms.” Watching them I thought to myself “I believe them. I believe that they’re going to take a stand; that they can change the world.” It was a profound moment for me. If these students are willing to stand and lift their hands, without prompting, through an entire service just to show that they are willing to hold out for God, then what else are they going to do for him?” I shared Zach Hunter’s story, and challenged the students seize every moment for God. It seemed like they really connected with Zach’s story, and I talked with many students who had ideas and plans in their hearts to take a stand for God in their homes, churches, schools and communities. What an amazing thing for a middle school student to aspire to!

DRIVE was an incredible weekend. It was a challenge for me, with a lot of work to be done and a lot of sleep missed, but in the end it was worth every ounce of energy and time invested. The students who gathered from all over the United States were amazing, and the leaders were engaged and passionate about junior high students. The students seemed to really engage in the general sessions, and my “guys only” workshops were a blast! Working with the Nazarenes has been an incredible privilege too. I’ve not seen another denomination as dedicated to middle school/junior high students. Working with Dave Curtiss and his NYI staff was a great learning experience for me, and partnering with them for this historic “first ever national junior high event in the Nazarene denomination” was incredible. I hope we get the chance to do it again, because it was certainly the highlight of my summer.

In His Grip,

Sean

Super Post

It’s funny… I haven’t posted anything of substance in about a month, and yet my sitemeter hits have almost doubled in that time. Maybe the best way for me to get more traffic to my blog is to quit posting altogether! That might actually be easier, as I’ve no idea where to pick up with this.

This past month has been a whirlwind, but has been a lot of fun too. My family and I left Wichita on June 21. We drove up to Kansas City to celebrate an important birthday with my mother in-law Suzanne (see how nice I am, calling it an important birthday instead of saying how old she is!). From there we drove up to Minneapolis and visited the Mall of America. The mall was a blast, and the aquarium there was a lot of fun. We’ve been to a lot of aquariums, and we saw stuff there that we had never seen before. On the way out of town the next day, we stopped at the IKEA store and fell in love. Neither of us had been there before, but Jill and I have decided that we will someday rent a large U-Haul and buy out the store to decorate our home and office.

After Minneapolis we hit the road to Silver Birch Camp, located in Wisconsin (about 2 ½ hours northwest of Green Bay). My good friend Andy Jack invited me up to speak for this middle school camp week, which included his students and a few others from the Chicago area. It was great! Jill and the kids got to play all over the camp while I did the speaking thing, and we made some great friends as well. One of the highlights for me was watching Andy interact with his students. It’s always fun for me to see my youth ministry friends in their element with their students. Throughout the week I sat and talked with several of his students, and I asked them “What’s the best thing about having Andy as your youth pastor?” The responses were awesome, ranging from “he really cares about me” to “he’s real…he doesn’t try to act like somebody he’s not”. Pretty cool stuff for a middle school student to say about you!

We also had a blast with the band that was playing that week. Josh and Rachel Weaver, along with their band mates Andy and Mike, were incredible to work with. Josh and Rachel were also our cabin mates for the week, and they showed incredible patience while sharing a cabin with our 3 children. At one point, the hot water had quit working, and I had to give Aiden a shower (and he HATES showers anyway). I ended up more wet than he did, but the whole time he was screaming like someone was torturing him. I felt horrible for him, and I felt terrible that we were being so loud at night.

My main role for the week was to speak at the evening chapel sessions. I tried some different things with the students that week, some of them worked and some didn’t. Hopefully I was able to connect with them in a way that was meaningful. I’m still hoping to get some feedback from some of the leaders, to help me continue to grow as a speaker. The camp directors were pretty laid back about everything, and were cool to work with, but they did want to make sure that I was going to give an invitation at some point during the week. I knew that was coming though, and had planned to do one. Instead of doing it on the last night of camp though, Andy suggested we move it to the middle of camp. We gave kids a chance to respond to Christ, and then we spent the rest of the week talking about how we live out that commitment and how we journey together with God and in community with one another. It was a really great way to do the decision time, and the kids and adults responded to it very well. There’s one part of our decision night that will stick with me for a long time. After I spoke we had the band come up and sing a song. Then I had the band sit down, and we stopped all the music and background noises. I gave the students a chance to respond, and instead of raising a hand or coming to the front, we had them make eye contact with their cabin leader. After the session was over, we then dismissed them to their cabins, where they had campfires waiting for them and they could sit outside and talk about their decisions with the people who know them the best. There was an overwhelming response from the students. Many students made first-time decisions, which was incredible to witness. But what happened next is what made the biggest impact on me. After I had given the students a chance to respond, I felt like I should give the adults a chance. I had an overwhelming sense that God was doing some work in the lives of many of the counselors and leaders, and I felt like we needed to address that. I offered the same invitation to the adults, and I invited them to make eye contact with me if God was working on something major inside of them that week at camp. To my amazement, I looked around to see a room of leaders looking up at me. Some had tears in their eyes. As I made eye contact with each of them, I felt tears welling up in my eyes too. It was a profound moment for me that I will remember for a long time to come.

After camp was over, my family journeyed south to Chicago for a few days of vacation. We stayed at a great hotel out by the airport, and we all had a blast swimming in the pool. Then we went downtown to the Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium. Our kids loved the museum, though Aiden was sad that there weren’t any “real” dinosaurs. The aquarium had about 3 million people in it, and we ended up having a pretty miserable experience there. We left the aquarium around dinner time and took a water taxi over to the Navy Pier, which was a lot of fun. After dinner there and a little shopping, we realized that we had missed the last water taxi of the night. Exhausted and frustrated, we left the pier and started our long walk back to the Soldier Field parking lot. At mall-walker pace, it took us 1 hour and 20 minutes to get back to our car.

The next morning we went out to Willow Creek Community Church to visit my friend Jason at the Elevate Jr. High service. It was awesome to hear Jason speak to his students. No wonder everybody and their dog recommends him as a jr. high speaker…he’s a pro! After the service Jason gave me the grand tour. I got to see Jason’s office, Scott Rubin’s office, and the workspaces for Rubin’s assistant, masseuse, private chef, and personal driver. Man, those Willow guys live large.

After our visit to Willow we took off west, driving to Des Moines. We stopped at a campy little amusement park called Adventureland, where we stayed at the “world famous” Adventureland Inn. It had 3 tropical themed pools, which screamed health violation to me…but the kids loved. The next morning we hit the road back home to Wichita, with a brief stop in KC to have dinner with Jill’s mom at T-Rex. We got home in time for me to throw my bags in the house before my brother and father came by to grab me for a sneak-preview of Transformers. It’s a wonder I stayed awake, although sitting in the balcony was really cool. The movie was great too, but I’ll post more about that some other time.

After all that, we celebrated the 4th with my family, and then I took off to Oklahoma City for a Stuck in the Middle site visit with our producer, Kirk Longhoffer. Then it was back to Wichita, where I was best man in my buddy Mike’s wedding last Saturday. Somehow, my body managed to stay healthy until this past Sunday. After church I went home and crashed, and I’ve been miserable for the past 4 days. After spending last night coughing and getting a little sleep in my recliner, I’m hopeful that this thing is finally getting better…we’ll see though. And that’s my last few weeks in a nutshell. If you’ve actually read all this, please post a comment. I want to send you $20 for your amazing readership skills.

Jr. High Summit

Here’s a pic of the crew from the ‘07 Jr. High Summit. Marko and Eric Venable had to leave early and missed the pic, but everyone else is in there. Thanks to Andy for the shot!

Some highlights from the week:

• Spending time with friends. This was only my second year at the Summit, but these people all feel like family to me. I recently attended another gathering type event, and I had an ok time there. It wasn’t until I arrived at this gathering that I began to realize how drastically different the two gatherings are. The other one was more of a business gathering, a time for networking and conversation with a handful of friends. There were a lot of agendas at that gathering, and it was difficult to build new relationships with the people there. The Summit, on the other hand, felt like a family reunion. No agendas, no sales pitches, no posturing…just a safe, fun, passionate environment.
• Learning about the development of the teenage brain. We had some amazing guests with us who helped us process through our reading of “The Primal Teen”. We were specifically looking at adolescent brain development and the implications that modern findings might have on our approach to young teen ministry. It was a thought provoking conversation, and I am still processing a lot of it.
• Seeing a bear! For most people, this wouldn’t be a big deal…for me, it’s huge! I’m an animal fanatic. I’ve been backpacking all over Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and Colorado…always with an eye open for my first bear sighting. Even though it was only for a second, I finally did see a black bear walking up the trail behind the lodge where we ate our meals. Thanks Alan!
• Speaking of food… The food this past week was unreal! We had an incredible chef, D’arcy, who prepared for us some of the most unusual and tasty dishes I’ve ever had. Hopefully one of the other Summit crew will post a menu from the week…because it was unreal. The chocolate soup (made from $40 a pound chocolate) was very rich and tasty, and I greatly enjoyed the juevos rancheros on our last morning there.
• Laughing. What could be more fun than a group of people who work with jr. high students? Some highlights include a trip to the local movies to see a zombie movie. One person thought we were going to see the sequel to a Sandra Bullock chick-flick, another person took the opportunity to sneak back into the theatre after a bathroom break and scare the crap out of several people. After the movie, we were treated to the final part of a massive police hunt (helicopter and all) right outside the theatre. On our last night at the Summit, we gathered together to play a board game. Nate Rice tried to explain the rules to us, but it was an uphill battle at best. I can’t tell you why it was so funny, but it was one of those times where I found myself laughing so hard that I was crying. It was a great night.

It was a great week. As Andy Jack said on his blog, it’s one of the few times and places where I feel totally normal. I love this group of people, and I love this time of learning and sharing. This is a week that I will look forward to all year long.