i recently heard some staggering sbc stat on the declining number of student baptisms over the last several years. i'd be lying if i tried to quote it. trust me, it's staggering. baptisms are down across the board, but students (ages 12-17) are WAY down. of course, much is being discussed as to "why?"

not coincidentally, i'm sure, is the fact that about 40% of sbc churches have plateaued in membership while roughly 30% are increasing and the remaining 30% are decreasing. that's a lot of stagnation and decrease.

i have a few theories on this. please consider the following my very humble opinions and perceptions from my limited experience. i hope they make sense.

i've daringly broached the subject before of parents worshiping their kids and may come close to that territory again here. i am not a parent, so i tread lightly.

i think there have been trends in familial life and trends in churches that have compounded the woes of evangelical student ministry but i can't point to which is the chicken and which is the egg.

parents and students now, more than ever it seems, are so focused on academia, extracurriculars, resumé building and "giving their kids what they never had" that the church and, more importantly, the Church are being neglected.

if soccer or band conflict with Bible study, guess what's getting nixed. now, hear me... i don't think merely attending Bible study is of greater value than soccer or band. BUT i think negligent attitudes towards spiritual matters can quickly be inferred if Christian parents aren't diligent to battle them. parents are right to stress the importance of grades, scholarships, etc. but Christian parents should somehow also show/teach their kids that spiritual matters are far more important. i believe, on the whole, this is not happening. more and more parents are relying on the church to be the main disciplers of their kids, but kids whose parents don't really value discipleship are not likely to see value in discipleship.

a similarly dangerous attitude that i think has evolved in student ministry over the years is the idea that student ministry simply equals good, clean fun. on this front, parents AND churches are to blame. this is where i won't venture to guess which is the chicken and which is the egg. over the last 50-60 years, youth groups have become a place where students can have fun, be accepted and stay out of trouble. parents like this. students, generally, like this. but this is not all there is to being the Church. this is moralistic day care.

i'd be interested to see the stat of how many "sweet" youth buildings were built over the last 50 years... how many pool tables, coffee bars and video game stations were installed? (and i serve at a church with a great youth building, so "hello kettle. it's me, the pot. you're black.") line that stat up next to the declining number of baptisms. where has our focus been?

it's been on entertaining. it's been on wowing. it's been on competing with culture and it's been on attracting. many parents and churches like that and still think that's what a good student ministry is supposed to do. i've seen some fruit from that era, no doubt. but most of the students that were reached from that type of ministry stayed connected to church and ministry because someone invested into them on a deeper, more personal level. (and, of course, the holy spirit caused the growth.)

the oft used adage is, "what you win them with is what you win them to." until parents and churches get on the same page about what student ministry should really be, i don't think we'll see much change in plateaued and declining student ministries. (again, i'm hoping and praying for change in my own ministry, not just pointing fingers.)

this is why students don't know what real life in Christ is and parents are confused when their "good" kids get in to trouble or completely walk away from church. teaching Biblical values to the lost is only producing well behaved (and often resentful) unbelievers. which i understand is unavoidable as nearly EVERY crowd has unregenerate people in it. BUT if we skip the cross altogether and jump to discipleship, we've erred, not the crowd. you want kids to have manners, firm handshakes and impressive credentials, send them to boy/girl scouts. you want to teach them that apart from Christ, they are nothing, preach the cross to them in your homes AND in your youth buildings. i realize that many students don't have believing parents to set that example. but that's another reason we can't "afford" to have Christian parents who don't value the cross acting as surrogates for these students.

as i've said before, we need to stop trying to reach/look past the cross for greater fulfillment. and we certainly don't need to stop short of it (as is often the case). we need to cling to it, kneel at it and proclaim it.

i hope to be a parent some day, even though the thought of it scares the mess out of me. so, parents, please don't take offense. i can't pretend to know what that role is like. i hope i haven't spoken out of place. i'm just offering my observations and theories... in an adamant manner ; )

(as a current student minister (and former youth), though, i think i can speak somewhat credibly concerning what i've seen in student ministry over the past 20 years!)

this video is brought to you by the band that did the "treadmill video." if you haven't seen it, check it out here. it's genius. they also have an alternate video for this too shall pass which is pretty impressive. but i prefer this one:

ok, readers with opinions. it's time, again, for you to share.

i'm contemplating upgrading my phone to a blackberry or similar pda type device. i read a rumor that iphones MIGHT be coming to other carriers, but also heard that it would never happen.

i'm also considering joining the twitter revolution.

please tell me why or why not to do these things. and i'm not looking for compliments here like, "you would be a great tweeter." i'm already aware of that ; ) ha! but seriously, lay some logic and reason on me. pros/cons, etc. i'm interested in your arguments. feel free to use personal experiences/reasons to support your case.

and if you like this survey, maybe i'll write a big long one for you to fill out!

i listened to some keith green on the way home from work today and thought about posting some to share with "everyone." then i saw that my bro posted a keith green video on facebook and knew i had to up the dosage ... especially because his is real video and the ones below are audio and still images.

these are a few of my absolute faves.

be blessed.

and a sunday school medley sing-along to round it out:

i read this the other day:

...the metaphysical realm is beyond our abilities to ever perceive. For example, when we see a tree, we see its outward appearance--e.g., the bark, leaves, branches--not its "treeness." We cannot perceive such things as that.

and it reminded me of this (scroll down past the rashy hands) and the conversation in the comments.

some people (andrew) really take to philosophical thought and some (molly) just don't. (for the record: molly's really smart, so i don't doubt that she understands it.)

it's just really cool (and often entertaining) to me how differently God wires us!

i'm wondering how closely knit the activity of nehemiah 3 and the attitudes of nehemiah 4 are.

chapter 3 is the rundown of who worked where. it reads like a genealogy from numbers or something. so and so worked at such and such ... next to them, whatshisname worked... etc. etc.

i think there are some crucial elements at play in chapter 3, the most significant being community. and i think the contagious community and efforts of chapter 3 allow for the confidence and hope in chapter 4 (where the israelites arm themselves and prepare for attack WHILE still working... some with a tool in one hand and a weapon in the other!).

a problem i see with believers today is the desire to live nehemiah 4 without living nehemiah 3. let me try to explain...

recently, our high school students had a spring weekend. (most people would recognize it as a disciple now.) the reason we call it spring weekend as opposed to d-now is that it was purposed for outreach. ideally, the homes are full of unbelieving students that our churched students have invited. you can't disciple unbelievers, ya know. (which leads to an entirely different set of blog posts!)

over the years, however, we've seen less and less unchurched students attending. (i realize this does not fall squarely on our church students, it falls pretty shapily on me, as well.) for all intents and purposes, the weekend HAS become a d-now. this year we did service projects rather than recreation and our students did a great job of diving in and working hard.

experiencing that weekend, reading nehemiah and feeling the conviction upon my own life made me wonder how many believers (again, including myself) are willing to hop on a plane, cross a border or cross a town to do ministry but aren't willing to go next door, or down the hall or across the room. i feel we want to stare down adversaries and let God champion our battles like in nehemiah 4 without knowing our neighbors and working in our own back yards like in nehemiah 3.

i'm pretty sure the chapter 3 lifestyle allows for the chapter 4 victory. in chapter 3 you work side by side in community, you work where you live and you work on whatever needs to be done. in chapter 4 the community and unity from chapter 3 come to mind, i imagine, helping to drive out fear and lead to trust and increased faith in God.

when nehemiah exhorts the people to remember their great and awesome God and assures them that He will fight for them, i can't help but think of the faith we should live with. today, we believers press on and "fight" with assurance in Christ's completed work and unity like that in chapter 3 is promised through the Holy Spirit!

praying for more selflessness and neighborly willingness to fuel some hope-filled, faithful ministry!

thinklings moot-ichlorian counts:

rod: 35,000

bird: 28,000 with tolkeinian pipe (20,000 without)

bill: 21,500

shrode: 19,000

blo: approx. 18,500 (never around long enough to calculate)

And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth,

2 Timothy 2:24-25

so, even when i'm right, i can still be wrong? dangit.

i wanna give a shout out to the year 1985. it was, pop culturally, a really transformative year for me. not the actual year, per se, but what came forth from it. such as...

ronald reagan is sworn in for his second term





we are the world
i love the description on this particular youtube upload: "its by michael jackson and a couple of people. and its super touching :]"

compact discs

the dairy queen blizzard

the tv show growing pains

a ton of great movies, including a few of my absolute all-time faves:

spies like us






fletch




back to the future




the goonies

some killer cartoons:

m.a.s.k.




thundercats




wuzzles






and one of the biggest, eternally insignificant, influences of my entire life: the nintendo entertainment system

1985... my hat's off to you. (readers, if you're not standing and applauding by now, i worry about you and am sad for you.)


honorable mentions: microsoft windows 1.0 is released (figured that might draw some jeers), teen wolf, disney's gummi bears, jem

any time i enter into a theological discussion on here, i am wary. regardless, i have some thoughts/questions about spiritual gifts for you.

i've noticed in myself and in others that, over time, spiritual gifts seem to "change" and not just via those surveys you can take to tally your giftedness. (i understand that most of those surveys are easy to "fix" or predict because you can answer towards the outcome you think is true about yourself.) but still, we usually believe those answers to be true about ourselves. i used to score more highly in exhortation but now high in prophecy. some other gifts remain as front-runners though. my questions are these:

-do our gifts really change? does the holy spirit really gift us differently at different times of our lives OR do our preferences simply change over time and we tend to do what we like to do?

-have any gifts we find "rising to the top" been with us since conversion but simply rise and fall at different stages of life/ministry?

-does the bible mention this rising and falling of spiritual gifts in our lives?
-if not, how do we justify it?

-can we lose gifts entirely?

-are the gifts we see consistently throughout our lives the true spiritual gifts and the ones we see rising and falling just our human preferences and abilities... (a lost person can take those surveys, too, and score highly in several categories)

-would it be more beneficial to survey OTHERS about our spiritual gifts?! ha

anyway, just some thoughts. we'll be addressing some of this, specifically, at our high school retreat next weekend but i'm wondering these things myself!

our student ministry's promo videos now have a home on youtube! check them out here. (copyright infringement probably abounds, but please don't call the popo... paul quoted other writers in the bible.)


here are a couple of my faves (and not just because i'm in them... promise):



*couple of insider jokes that aren't too hard to "get" here: adam really hasn't interned with us or lived in houston since 2005 but was home for some special occasion when we made the video and riley is 18 now (and not 3 feet tall).

and (after that) if you're tempted to think we're not original:

ok, so just a quick update... watch me for the changes and uh, try to keep up...

my home computer died, great christmas with the fam, good to see my bro, becky, and the girls, pleasant "surprise" visit from my cousin justin, got to moot (missed the last one) and even tried to participate in non-movie discussion this time, uncle danny brought the best tasting smoked turkey i've ever tasted and rambled entertainingly about texas history as usual, new year's in dallas (avatar, the village church, lame bowl game), da bomb's wedding in arkansas, back to work (not an easy adjustment), replaced dead computer, washer and dryer should be coming tomorrow, too, grades from the fall finally in (not too shabby), cracked some cases at the college partay last night after abs.com and, of course, national championship tonight!

i won't go so far as to call those all the highlights because there were great moments that i'm sure i'm forgetting/leaving out. i know you feel like you were right there with me! now go hunker down as God debunks global warming...

3 So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. 4 But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, 5 to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. 6 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ""Abba", Father." 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.
Galatians 4:3-7

yes, christmas is a reminder of the extreme humility with which the Lord engaged our world. subjecting Himself to humanness wasn't JUST a means to sympathize with us more fully, though. (but that is kinda ridiculously awesome icing on the cake)

christmas is a celebration of the incarnation. and the incarnation is the sunrise of God's great redemptive plan. the fall in the garden cursed mankind, so the redemptive plan couldn't simply consist of sacrificing the divine Son. a man had to pay the price to satisfy the penalty of sin. enter the incarnation. fully divine, fully man. fully divine in order to forgive, judge, and save. fully man in order to pay the price and be tempted in every way that we are.

incredible. ridiculous. i'm so grateful that God is God and i'm not! that He didn't change the penalty of sin or set aside any of His attributes to redeem us. rather, in His passionate pursuit of us, He engineered an amazing plan of reconciliation. and though He didn't cancel the penalty of sin, He did trump the snot out of it!

it's in understanding this great truth that we can echo the song of the angels and say, "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased."

*note the peace of christmas is the peace among men with whom God is pleased, and without faith it is impossible to please God. you do the math. it's no surprise that "christmas cheer" doesn't bring lasting peace.

this post is categorized under "fyi" because:

i'm not a "music guy," i don't think. i can't really carry a conversation about bands or music other than pop culture trivia or what i may have seen on behind the music. like van halen (i think) demanding only certain colored M&Ms backstage or lynyrd skynyrd's infamous bus crash and the fateful flight of buddy holly, the big bopper and ritchie valens. i can usually sing a song about any situation in life because my brain is an unexplainable steel trap for useless information, but that doesn't make me a music guy. i can't play music (other than what i remember from my JH trombone days!) so i can't critique music. i know what i like (most of the time), what i don't and what i'm just ok with.

that being said, i like the following:

Pomplamoose. the girl might freak you out (as she did my brother) but you can always just listen and not watch. i consider her/their sound very "Westburian," as in having musical qualities like my friend, jenny westbury (you can check out some of her music here, but don't scroll down as her "friends" have posted foul language on her page). still waiting for her to really unleash similar music genius on the world.

i would have embedded their O Come All Ye Faithful video (it's awesome), but my brother and the thinklings have done so already. check out their youtube page and get free mp3s from their myspace page.




DOXA. this is the latest project from my previously posted about friend, matt tipton, and other friends who are ministering in the greater seattle area. they are a really talented bunch with great hearts and the desire to exalt the name of Jesus Christ with the talents they've been given. check out their album here.

yesterday marked the end of my second semester of seminary and i've now accumulated one semester's worth of hours! ha

it's a little weird being a student again, i must say. and as i think i've mentioned before, i used to say "i never have to ______ again" with reference to studying for exams/quizzes/etc. , doing homework, papers and the like. famous last words, of course.

in a couple of my classes there were guys graduating this semester. kudos to them. i can't even imagine being that close to finishing.

"one [semester] at a time, sweet Jesus"

if a ministry/bible study/church/etc. is "not deep enough," how would you define that? what = deep, in other words?

i have my thoughts, of course, but i'd like to hear yours!

ken ober died over the weekend.

even though my brother (the only person, i'd guess, who reads this AND knows who ken was) probably already knew of ken's passing, i decided to mention it.

he hosted remote control on mtv back in the day. great pop culture game show that helped launch guys like adam sandler and colin quinn.

(oh, bird probably knew of ken, too.)

-watched sneakers this past weekend and realized it's pretty similar to oceans' 11. not sure why i never made the association before.

-i read this post on the thinklings and just wanted say that, like andrew (though for different reasons), i've had to fight the urge to hate it. it's the "monty python and the holy grail syndrome", i think. it's a great movie. it's WAY over quoted. and it can sour people's opinions when the tidal wave of quoting comes after the initial release and surge of the movie, when the "true fans" saw it. i remember watching the trailers/clips online before the movie opened. genius stuff, i thought. i have to remind myself that just because it became the proverbial beaten dead horse to like/quote it, doesn't mean the movie itself is not still great.

-i find the polar express/3D christmas carol animation really creepy. i don't want to watch any movies that utilize it. really hope it's not the future of animation.

-it's not as fun to remember a funny movie quote in everyday context when the people around you don't know what you're talking about, as it is when there is someone who knows what you're talking about. (i know this goes without saying, but a lot of things that "go without saying" get said anyway)

yesterday it was:
"coming through! got a package people!"

and today it was:
"ventura."
"yes, satan? oh, i'm sorry, sir. you sounded like someone else."

strangely both from ace ventura, which is not something i quote every day, honest, BUT still something you'd think people would recognize.

-i'm not excited about avatar. i haven't really watched any previews, just a few seconds here and there. i keep picturing jar jar binks when i think about it...

so, i have finally "completely" moved into my new house. this isn't my first night to stay here, but it is my first night with ALL my stuff. it's been a LONG process from day one of finding this house for sale. lots of frustration, lots of surprises, but i really can't complain. i'm blessed to even have the opportunity. it has come a long way and still has a ways to go but i'll leave you with a couple of cosmetically different "before" and "after" shots for dramatic effect. i may detail more of the innards later...

BEFORE




AFTER




THE MONEY SHOT



i'm also telling myself that now that i'm "settled" in, i'll be blogging more frequently...

i may be getting old(er) but i'm still young in SOME senses. this was confirmed to me the other day when my mom had me set her DVR for tuesday night to record all her faves. she later commented that it's her favorite night of tv.

i thought to myself, "self, tuesday is the void of the tv week*. it's the one night i could go without and not think 'i missed such and such.' funny that it's her favorite." i ASSUME it's a generational thing. could be wrong i guess.

mom, you read this blog. wanna set me straight in the comments section? ; )


on the other hand, i do like to watch monk and psych with my parents on fridays. next thing you know i'll be wearing black socks with tennis shoes and shorts (like my brother...)




*tuesday used to have house, right? but now it's on monday? i guess tuesday has AI when it's in season. still, thursday is the king of the tv week... not tuesday.