Sermon: “The Story of Your Life”

Below is the outline of the sermon I’m preaching at church tomorrow (People reading in a feed reader: you can find it here). The gospel text is Matthew 16:21-28. I’m going to try to get some audio tomorrow, and if I’m successful I’ll update this post with the sound file. Here’s the mp3 of the sermon if you’d like to download it, otherwise just click “play” below.

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I would love any feedback you have, so please, leave a comment!

FYI, the blog post of Tony Steward’s that I mention in the sermon is located here.

As a side note, I’m not thrilled with the title of the sermon, but that’s what I sent off to be printed on bulletins before I had finished writing. Oh well.

• The Race for Pastor-in-Chief. “But the grand promise of an American presidential campaign is fulfilled by the election not of a religious-leader-in-chief of the nation, but of the commander-in-chief who is the chief executive of our country. The leader we choose may have a faith of his own, but he must lead members of all faiths present in the nation – as well as those with no faith at all.” 08/28/2008
• A Peek Into the Mind of the Average College Freshman. “Each August, Beloit College publishes its Mind-Set List to help professors and administrators understand the average incoming freshman’s frame of reference by describing how things have ‘always been,’ or at least how they’ve been for the past 18 years… #44. Caller ID has always been available on phones.” Last year I made a reference to Hootie and the Blowfish during a youth group gathering and no one had ever heard of them. [HT: Exploring Our Matrix] 08/19/2008

A closer look at the declining membership of the ELCA

A friend of mine, youth pastor, and fellow blogger Erik Ullestad left an elucidating comment on the previous post that was so good I decided it merited its own post.

His words are below the break. Erik, thanks for taking the time to post such a thoughtful and thorough comment.

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My feeling is that there are three main categories the loss of membership falls into:

1. Folding Church: A church that closes its doors and ceases to exist. Most often, these churches are (A) in small dying towns, or (B) in a part of the city that used to thriving, but over time have become more economically depressed. (See – Central Lutheran on Des Moines’ east side.)

2. Cleaning the Roster: A church desires to have a true count of “active” members, so they send a letter to all inactive people and ask them to either start coming to church once a year (which is the membership requirement in most ELCA congregations) or indicate that they no longer desire to be a member of the congregation.

3. Leaving Mother Church: Churches that have left the ELCA for theological, political, and / or practical reasons. (See Lutheran Church of the Cross, Altoona) This reason is the one that, naturally, generates the majority of the discourse.

Like most Christians, ELCA Lutherans tend to find themselves fighting over homosexuality and abortion. The ELCA is taking its sweet time addressing the current Sexuality Statement, which does not permit the blessing of same-sex unions or the ordination of openly gay pastors. The fact that this is even being discussed has offended many people, who claim that the Bible is clear on this topic and there is no room for conversation about it. Others are frustrated that the ELCA has not changed its stance on this issue and have left the church.

The other big reason congregations are leaving has to do with the Call to Common Mission, an agreement that permits Lutheran pastors to preside over the sacraments (Baptism and Communion) in Episcopalian churches; and vise versa. The ELCA has similar agreements with other similar denominations, but what made the one with the Episcopalians so touchy is that the ELCA had to agree to installing bishops into the “historic episcopate”…something I don’t fully understand. The job description / authority / responsibility of being a bishop didn’t change, but they had to agree to the “historic episcopate”. (It also didn’t help that shortly after CCM was passed, the Episcopalians installed an openly gay bishop.)

Those three causes of membership decline don’t even take into account this PATHETIC number — 28% of ELCA members attend worship at least once a month. My belief is that the ELCA is seen as “my parent’s church”…and their parents are unable to articulate why they go to church…so the young people join a non-denominational church that appears more relevant and authentic.

• Rick Warren and Saddleback Church will be hosting the first joint appearance of John McCain and Barack Obama. “They say that ‘the two-hour format will be held in a non-debate form, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. PDT (Saturday, August 16th). There will be commercial breaks every ten minutes, enabling Dr. Warren to have a separate long-term conversation with each candidate for 50 minutes.’ Rick will ask them both the same questions in areas like – stewardship, leadership, worldview and America’s role in the world.” The post also has a roundup of MSM articles about the non-debate. 08/15/2008

A look at the declining membership of the ELCA

The ELCA released a news report this morning regarding the annual membership census. The data for 2007 shows “a decline in membership of 64,247 and a decrease of 22 congregations from 2006″. As this table shows, membership in the ELCA has been in steady decline since it was created in late 1980s.

Looking at tables is all well and good, but I’m a visual learner, so I decided to make a couple of graphs to put things into perspective. Using the data from the aforementioned table, the first graph shows the total “baptized membership” of the ELCA from 1987 to 2007.

You can clearly see a significant decline in membership over the last twenty years — but keep in mind that in the same time frame the ELCA also lost 685 congregations. If you lose churches, you’re going to be losing members. At the same time, I certainly don’t believe that the 685 fewer churches account for the entire loss of membership during these years.

The second graph shows the yearly change in membership as a bar graph.

The 1990s were up and down in terms of membership, but since 1999 — and even more so since 2002 — the ELCA has been losing lots and lots of members.

I can speculate as to why this is (and I certainly wouldn’t be the first), but I’d like to hear your opinions. Does the data surprise you? Why or why not? Leave a comment below!

How I use Evernote to organize my youth ministry

Since switching from PC to Mac, I’ve flirted with several desktop note-taking and organizing programs, including Yojimbo and Journler. In the end I settled on Evernote because, in my opinion, it is by far the most feature-rich of them all.

If you’re totally unfamiliar with Evernote, it might be a good idea to read their Getting Started guide or watch the Overview Video. You’ll be glad you did, because the advice below will save you time and make you better organized in your ministry.

But before we get into the glorious details, here are a few tips to make Evernote work harder for you (and your ministry). First, install one of the Evernote Web Clippers. I use the official Firefox extension, and it’s great.

Second, add your personal Evernote email address as a contact in your phone. After you’ve signed up and logged into your account, your email address is located at the bottom of the page in “Settings”. This is where you can send pix and text messages which Evernote will convert to notes you can access later.¹

Third, set up a new Notebook in Evernote specifically for Youth Ministry. If you’re like me (or anyone else with a pulse), you’ll use Evernote for myriad things outside of your ministry as well (I even had this blog post outlined in Evernote).

Saving devotion ideas and teaching illustrations

If I come across a cool, inspirational, or spiritually edifying story on the internet, I simply use the Evernote clipper to save it for later. For example, a while back I came across a blog post called 18 of The Most Insane Journeys In Recent History, and I clipped it to my “Youth Ministry” notebook. If I’m writing a devotion or message about overcoming trials or something similar, I can refer to this post for some good material. Better yet, I tagged the note with “devo” “trial” and “journey” so I don’t have to remember it at all — I can just type one of those words in the search box or browse through my tags to find what I need. Here’s a screenshot of the entry.

Saving informative ebooks and PDFs

This is similar to the above implimentation, but I wanted to point out one of my favorite features: Evernote can search for text contained within pictures and PDFs. When I come across great ebooks or handouts, I clip them to Evernote for future reference. For example, I have 40 Icebreakers for Small Groups from Insight saved, and if I search “icebreaker”, Evernote quickly reads my mind finds what I was looking for. Here’s a screenshot of the search in action.

Keeping track of signups and payments

As a note-taking tool, Evernote is really handy for jotting things down that don’t legitimate their own Word document. I used it this summer to keep track of my junior high VBS sign-ups and payments. You can add “checkmark bullets” anywhere within a note, so whenever I received a payment, I simply checked off that student’s box. Simple as that. Here’s a screenshot of the checkmark box in use.

Collect those pesky receipts

I hate doing receipts — it’s one of my least favorite components of my job. I’m always losing them or forgetting them and getting ticked when the first of the month rolls around. When I’m at brick-and-mortar stores, I just put the receipts in my wallet, but when I buy things for my ministry online, it’s not that easy. Usually, a receipt is emailed to me, and I just save it to Evernote. If it’s a PDF, I drag and drop it into a new note, and if it’s text, I just highlight all and copy/paste.² Here’s an example of a note containing a receipt from my local Apple Store.

Prayer

Prayer isn’t one of my spiritual fortés, but I’ve managed to leverage Evernote to help me. I try to regularly ask students how I can be praying for them, and now I keep a list in Evernote with their names and what they want me to pray about. When I pray, I can focus on a specific student or go down the whole list — you get the point.

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Those are just a few of the ways that I’ve managed to take advantage of Evernote in my youth ministry. I’ve only been using the program for a few months, but I know that the longer I use it, the more indispensable it will become (especially if when I get an iPhone). What are some other creative ways to use Evernote in youth ministry? I’d love to hear your ideas — please leave a comment and let me know!

1. If you have an iPhone, you can just download the Evernote app and bypass this step. ↩
2. If you do this, you probably don’t want to make your “Youth Ministry” notebook a “Public” web notebook — don’t want people snooping around your receipts. ↩

• This is what happens when you mash together a Saturday night revival service and techno music. Hang in there until the 1:10 mark — it’s worth it. Here’s the original video for reference. 08/13/2008
• Another McSweeney’s gem: The Lost 28th Chapter of Leviticus Explains the Rules for Riding Shotgun. “9 If a man loses the contest yet refuses to relinquish his seat, he will surely suffer. 10 He who fails to follow the commands shall offer his youngest daughter as a slave and honey-gatherer to his companion, and if he hath no daughter, he then must scoopeth out his wife’s womb with a melon baller and present it on a platter.” 08/10/2008

Discipleship and the Kingdom

An interesting bit of synchronicity today in my reading.

The Rev. Dr. Michael Foss recently began his pastorship at my church, and we’re currently reading through one of the books he’s written as a staff. Power Surge: 6 Marks of Discipleship for a Changing Church is about how (protestant) churches need to switch from a member model of church to a discipleship model, and lays the groundwork for how to get from the former to the latter. In the first chapter, Foss says this:

“Perhaps the greatest weakness of the [member] model has been the loss, over time, of its vision for the mission of the church — a mission that can be characterized quite simply as participation in God’s love in Jesus Christ for the world… What we need to communicate to those outside the church is radical openness to all, an openness extended from a position of strong, vibrant self-identity as followers of Christ and participants in God’s love for the world. That’s what the discipleship model gives us.” (16, 20)

Today James K. A. Smith, the author of Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? (among many others), announced on his blog that’s he’s finished his new book, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation. In the post he gives an abstract of the book, in which he says:

“In particular, I’m pressing the limits, even distortions, that attend ‘worldview’-talk which tends to now dominate Christian higher education. Such worldviewism, I suggest, continues to reduce Christianity to an intellectual system that can be grapsed apart from the church and is then ‘taught’ as information to be merely transferred from one head to another. In contrast, I argue that Christian discipleship is a matter of formation, not mere information — and that ‘Christian’ education should be fundamentally a matter of shaping our love, our desire, to be oriented to the shape of the kingdom of God. And such formation happens not primarily via the heady, cognitive ‘lectures’ (whether in our Protestant sermon factories or our Christian college classrooms) but through embodied practices that seep into our imagination and get hold of our gut, our heart, our kardia.”

Although Foss’ message is directed to those in the church and Smith’s is more far-reaching, I think they’re both essentially asserting the same point. So what do you think? Do you agree with Foss and Smith? Disagree? Leave a comment below and let me know!

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