Searching for Meaning and Purpose...

It's amazing what happens when something dies and is reborn. I stopped writing and have been insanely busy for the past year-ish. Has that changed? No. Should it mean I shouldn't pick back up my keyboard and type what I am thinking? No way! This is a kind of therapy for me, a bit voyeuristic I suppose, but needed. Does it mean I should air all my dirty laundry? Not by a long shot. Does it mean I need to be exposed as a bit of a fake and someone who goes through the same ups and downs as anyone else? Yes. It's one of those very needed things: "Hi, I'm Matt and I'm a youth/worship pastor and I'm a screwed up, sinful bum. I'm quite often cranky, critical, and downright mean. In fact, much of the time I don't think I have much of a basis to really teach students out of, much less lead in worship." Whew, got that much off my chest, like any good anonymous meeting. But, isn't there more? Yes, last night at our prayer vigil (we kick ...

So, how easy is it to drop a habit? Relatively simple! I had been regularly posting and writing up a daily devo for our student ministry, but have since dropped both. Why? I can blame time, with the master's classes causing me to have way too many late nights and not enough sleep. Or I could go with my family and work, both demanding time and effort that I cannot spend elsewhere. The idea of either excuse being written down seems to me to be rather distasteful! But, even with those being true in part, the real answer is priorities. I spend my time fighting for things that are "more urgent" and allow other things to slide into the background... Should this have slid into the background? Probably not! It gives me a place to vent, to put thoughts into cohesive form, and tell people about what matters most to me. So, I realized it was time to get things rolling again and put my thoughts out there for the world to see... With that in mind, I've been jamming the ...

I've been thinking about the beauty of creation. Whether it's the mountains like out in Glenwood Springs this past weekend or the rolling plains that are slowly becoming green here in KS, God made a really awesome world for us. That's the key though: for us. We may see the beauty, but each grain of sand and blade of grass was made for our pleasure. The flip side is this: we were made as the apple of God's eye. In Genesis, we see God saying that His creation is good until He made mankind, at which point He said it was "very good." If everything until that point it was simply "good" what does that say about us? Many people are stuck in a twisted game trying to measure up to someone else's standards. The truth is that we were made beautiful and looking like God. If we were made to be "very good" why do we let others tell us we're not good enough? The truth is you were made very good and completely perfected like God. What are...

Do you ever feel like you're stuck in an odd B-movie remake of the body snatchers? It happens to me occasionally, as I'll see myself do something stupid and not stop myself from doing it winding up looking at myself like, "What the heck was that all about?" Better yet, I find myself acting the part when I should really just be me. A pastor used to say it was "Shifting into 'Rev'" and was just part of the job for us as ministers because we couldn't always be the man for the job and sometimes needed to be that man when we couldn't otherwise. However, Casting Crowns hits the nail on the head in their song about churches: we're all too often just perfect plastic people with our perfect plastic steeples when people are hurting and dying without Jesus outside the doors. How can we justify our hypocrisy when we try to hide our brokenness? Why can't we be who Jesus called us to be? Can we effectively minister without our broken, sinful...

Here's my thought: why do we try to do so much alone when we can do so much more together? I look at all the synergy (yes, I stole the corporate buzz word) created through the ministerial alliance and youth ministerial alliance here in El Dorado, and I am floored. There is more potential and, most importantly, willingness here to be the Church than to be a church. Just looking at what there is between the churches is incredible: we're looking at adding other churches into our after school program to make it a larger endeavor and help more kids have a safe place to go to and get help with school work. At the same time we're planning other events that none of us could pull off alone (like a kicking New Years party) and it rocks! Why then do so many churches behave instead as if they were the only ones in the world that mattered? Is it a deep seeded denominational fight? Or is it the theological differences (like infant or immersion baptism, predestination or free choice,...

After this morning's See You At The Pole prayer time, I was really moved by how awesome God is. 40 some odd middle school students and 8 youth pastors, teachers, and parents prayed for each other, their school, their parents, their friends, their nation, and their world. That by itself was great, but this evening seeing the 100+ students gathered outside at the park, was incredible. Yeah, things didn't work exactly as planned (the lack of lights meant we had to pull some cars up and kick on their headlights, it kinda felt like a Diehard battery ad) but God was there and God did what He wanted to do. I am so convinced that this is a special time and group of ministers, parents/volunteers, and students who are really working towards making things better in our community. It is really pretty incredible to see an event with the Baptist youth guy leading worship, the AG guy running the game, the Xian church guy giving stuff away and cooking up the grub, and a crazed Presbyterian ...

As we attempt to navigate the worldview waters out there, I am struck by how many people who go to church have a non-biblical worldview. Now, some might say, "So what?" and others are appalled but then there are some who look and go, "Huh?" The vast majority of students fall into the last category. They could care less about what undergirds their lives because that isn't important. I hear it all the time: "Well, they believe it so it's true for them." or to put it another way: "Dude, it was okay for me to lie to him cause he didn't need to know." At issue here is the idea of absolutes and morality. In the post-modern world the idea is that it all comes down to our story, there is no bigger story we're a part of. However, in the Christian world, we must acknowledge the bigger story we are merely a small part of. These two fundamental differences shape everything else that is believed, thought, or done by most people. Those...