Working on Our Roar: Young Clergy, General Conference, and Leadership

I don’t want to pass over others to leadership. I want others to pass their leadership over to me. I don’t want to be entitled to anything. I want to be empowered and encouraged for everything God has for me by the church that first recognized my gifts for ministry.

General Conference 2012 is currently going on, and as a 28 year-old commissioned elder in the Oklahoma Conference, I have been following General Conference largely from twitter via #gc2012. This is, of course, not the best way to follow General Conference. I don’t see the delegates talking, I’m not in the conversations, and I don’t experience the worship services. I read updates, opinions, and immediate reactions to events that happen that I don’t fully understand. (i.e. anything to do with Roberts Rules of Order, I don’t fully understand.) My experience of General Conference has largely been through a medium that lends itself to snarkiness and sarcasm instead of constructive criticism. Also the folks that are on twitter are overwhelming Americans, overwhelming white, and mostly young: characteristics that also define me.

As I read these tweets from people like me, I couldn’t help but think about one of my son’s favorite movies The Lion King and the song, “I Just Can’t Wait to be King.”

Image Courtesy of http://fanart.lionking.org/Artists/CubbieSimba/Roar.jpg

Blueprint for Discipleship: A review by Aaron Tiger

I remember my first encounter with Wesley’s class meetings.  It was in a church history class in college, and I heard about this strange thing the early Methodists did.  They met together weekly with no agenda except to bear one another’s burdens.  I heard about the rapid growth of the Methodists and the scriptural holiness that spread across the land.  I thought it would be brilliant if someone could write a book that teaches us about the early method of discipleship of our Methodist fathers and mothers.  Kevin Watson has done just that.  His book Blueprint for Discipleship is an accessible, practical, and timely book for not just the United Methodist church, but the Church in general.

My Mocking Voice: Participating in the Crucifixion

Occasionally, God gives me a song. The song varies, but God gives me a verse or a chorus that continually fills my mind and soul. One time the song was “From Sunrise to Sunset.” It’s is a catchy tune, “From sunrise to sunset help me not forget all that you do for me. From sunset to sunrise help me keep my eyes upon your glory.” What a good song to have in your head! God has placed a different song in my head during these final days of Lent: “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us.” The title of the song sounds like a fun song to have in your head, but this is the verse that God has graciously given me, “Behold the man upon a cross, my sin upon his shoulders, ashamed I hear my mocking voice, call out among the scoffers.”

An Old Song: A New Word

“O let Him have the things that hold you.” After singing that line hundreds of time, it never hit me until today. I loved the “Spirit Song.” It was one of those songs that we sang at the traditional service that felt contemporary. There was something about singing out to God, “Come and fill your lambs,” that resonated with me. What a great prayer this is! I adopted a model of this as my breath prayer, “Come Holy Spirit.” During a good day, I will say that prayer many times. Other days, I don’t pray it at all. But yet, I still didn’t catch the line in the song that hit me over the head today.

My Definition of Preaching

I think about preaching a lot, and I preach a lot.  Now, normally it is to myself in the car, but occasionally I get to do it in front of people.  Preaching is one of the moments in which I feel most alive.  (Just so you know, if you are thinking about your identity, focus on those moments when you feel most alive.)  I enjoy listening to sermon podcasts.  Love going to church to hear preaching, and wish that I could take more preaching classes, just for the fun of it.  So, I thought I would share my running definition of preaching and then unpack it a litle bit.  “Preaching is essentially translating the revealed Word of God to God’s children.” 

My First Sermon in a While

So I preached a sermon for the first time in about 17 months this past Sunday.  Preaching is one of my greatest gifts and favorite activities, and so it was with much anticipation that I walked up to the pulpit.  Since the last time I preached, I have been through almost 47 hours worth of seminary with nary a particular preaching class, so I had gained a whole lot of head knowledge about God, the Bible, and such, but I hadn’t practically put that into preaching yet, and it showed.

Before I left for Asbury, I had a congregant who came up to me and said, “Don’t let seminary ruin your preaching.  I like it the way it is.”  Now, this has danger written all over, I know.  But let’s get to the truth of his statement, which was the strength of my pre-Asbury preaching: connecting.  Pre-Asbury, I could preach sermons that resonated and connected with others.  God has given me the ability to hook people into the sermon and guide them through the journey through Scripture.  At its best, the sermon connected with people where they were at and engaged their heart and mind in God’s Will.  At its worst, it was a witty, well-crafted speech where people remembered my personal stories, and not God’s grander narrative. 

Open Letter to One Considering Youth Ministry

Friend,
You asked me last spring at a wedding about entering into youth ministry. I gave you a short, but true answer about you need to feel that you are called to that ministry. While I agree with that answer, I think that that serious question deserves a deeper response.

I believe that every Christian is called. We are called by Jesus to follow him and be in relationship with him. Every Christian is also uniquely called to use their talents to serve God and God’s people through the power of the Holy Spirit. A subset of that unique call of every Christian is that for some are called to serve God vocationally. It is not a higher calling, but a peculiar calling. One more thing about call is that it is both long-term and short-term. I believe that there are some people who are called to be in vocational ministry for a season of their life, while others vocational ministry is throughout their entire life. So, you can have a long-term call to be in relational ministry throughout your life, while in the short-term that lives itself out in youth ministry, or you can be a youth minister your whole life.

Knowing Fully, Loving Anyway

George Strait has a song entitled “You Know Me Better Than That.”  It is a song written to an old girlfriend about his new girlfriend.  This new girlfriend “She thinks I’m perfect, I swear, She likes my body, my class and my charm.  She says I’ve got a confident aire… Oh, she tells her friends I’m perfect, And that I love her cat.”  This troubles our friend George as he shares, “But she’s in love with an image time is bound to see through.”  We’ve been there haven’t we?  We are in a new relationship whether it be with a new girlfriend or even at a new job, and we are wondering will they really love me when they really me know me.  That’s where George’s song to his old girlfriend really sinks in, “But you know me better than that, You know the me that gets lazy and fat.  How moody I can be, all my insecurities.  You’ve seen me lose all my charm, You know I was raised on a farm.”

That’s What Jesus Said

A few posts back, I blogged about the liturgy of our lives.  If you want to know what it is about, you should read it, but here is the main point of that blog: we need to be aware what the liturgy-those words and phrases that sublimely and intentional dictate our thought processes.  This liturgy is formed through a number of avenues: our conversations, our music, what we read, and the influence of the media to name a few.  Today, I want to talk about a special example that I have noticed in my own life.

Discipleship Lessons from the Gridiron: Part 1

I love football.  Apparently, I’m not alone in this country.  We are obsessed with our football.  We love our favorite teams, but we simply love the game.  I’ve been a football fan since I was at least 5 years old.  My parents tell the story of when I was about that age telling them that 49ers running back Roger Craig needed 67 yards to reach a 1000 for the season.  My love for football has just continued to grow over the years.  I played it through high school.  (Actually was pretty good my senior year.  I had 9 sacks my senior year, all 165 lbs of me in 6A football.)  I used to want to be a football coach, till God called me away from it.  I love football and have the ability to see many illustrations from it, and so I thought I would share some of them with you.  First up, what does the variety of offensive and defensive systems being run today, teach us about our own spiritual life.