Tuesday, September 14, 2010

One of the People Who Inspires Me Most


I am not motivated by finances, at least not very much. Don't get me wrong, I want to be able to pay my bills, have good doctors and eat at restaurants that don't have drive-thrus. But, if you want me to pay attention, don't speak about financial compensation. Inspire me.

One of the most inspiring people I have known just moved out of our house. When I first met Ashley Reynolds she asked if she could volunteer with our youth ministry at the Pacific Union College Church. This happened all the time. College students who weren't sure how college was going to work out and who were longing for a whif of their high school days would eagerly ask to be a "leader" in our ministry. As soon as they realized they were going to make friends and have a great time at college they would lose interest in our little ministry. Ashley is the only one who ever showed up. And she kept showing up. And she continued to be present in the lives of our students. She was simply inspiring with her commitment and consistency.

Ash began to join our family during the winter of 2008, when I had to leave my wife, who at the time was pregnant with Elle, and drag 14 high school kids around Egypt. We needed someone to stay with Deb. Ash needed a place to crash. It worked perfectly. But it turned into more than crashing. She became a part of our family. She loved on our dog, on us and especially on Eleanor. She became "auntie". She inspires me to love people less cautiously, more selflessly, more openly.

Ashley has a deep sense that she has been placed on this earth to help people. Her face lights up when she talks about working with autistic children - the fuel behind switching majors to social work. Where others would be concentrating on careers with significant financial rewards, Ash is pursuing a richness of life that might not result in the nicest car, but will be see - experienced - in the faces of those she is going to help.

Ashley is going to build a lot of wells. This spring, Ashley fell in passionately in love with Charity:Water. Instead of donating a few dollars and then moving on, Ash dove into learning about the need for clean water around the world, how charity:water is meeting this incredible need and pledging all her considerable talent, energy and goodness to the cause. Instead of looking forward to her birthday as an opportunity to collect gifts and the money every college students need, she decided to give her birthday away to charity:water - asking her friends and family to donate $23 instead of buying her anything. As a college student who works all the time, doesn't benefit from the family financial support I did in college, I find this breathtakingly inspirational.

Ashley has gone back to school. It is quieter. A little sadder. But our family is bigger and better because Ashley has chosen to join us, to love us and to inspire us.

She hasn't given us a dime. But she has made us better by inspiring us with her incredible life.

Go get em, Ash.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

What It Will Take To Date My Daughters

First of all: this is not a joke. I am dead serious.

Eleanor is now beginning to run and babble and ask questions and it has come with the crushing realization that I will not be able to stop her or her little sister from growing up. And with that growing up comes the disturbing fact that one day they are both going to want to date. Some boy is going to come to my door and ask to take my daughter out to dinner and a movie. I am not amused. I have determined to hold it off as long as I can, but I suspect their mother is going to be on their side and it will be one more argument the women in my house win.

So, I am going to create a book list that any boy wanting to date one of my daughters must begin to tackle. Yes. You read that right. Anyone dating my daughters will be well read or they won't be dating my daughters. I won't have some inarticulate ruffian escorting my little ones anywhere unless they are willing to engage their mind and not just their hormones.

Not only do they have to read the books, but they must sit down with me once a month to discuss what they are reading and how it is shaping their views on life - especially how it is shaping their respect for fatherhood.

This is what the list would look like today. There would be a history section with the following books included:
- "Parting The Waters" by Taylor Branch (yes, all 900 pages of this civil right movement biography)
- "The End of Poverty" by Jeffery Sachs
- "Ending Slavery" by Kevin Bales
- "Not For Sale" by David Batstone
- "A Problem From Hell" by Samantha Power
- "Not On Our Watch" by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast
- "A Call To Conscience" by Martin Luther King, Jr.
- "Stones Into Schools" by Gregg Mortensen
- "The Post-American World" by Fareed Zakaria

And there would be a religion section:
- "A Generous Orthodoxy" by Brian D. McLaren
- "A New Kind of Christianity" by Brian D. McLaren
- "The Poor Will Be Glad" By Peter Greer and Phil Smith
- "Its All About God" by Samir Selmanovic

The point is to scare the little suckers away. But if that doesn't work, I at least will know they have the ability to process ideas and concepts more diverse and complicated than which Axe body spray to wear to the mall.

I am sure I missed some good ones. This list will always be a work in progress.

I am also toying with the idea of creating a movie list they must watch with me and then discuss with me (Gandhi and Schindler's LIst come to mind). And possibly a few field trips.

I can't stop them from dating, but the boys they date will have to meet my standards for reading. This is a bare minimum.

Friday, August 27, 2010

What My Dad And I Have Been Arguing About

I have a special relationship with my dad. He is one of my favorite conversation partners and we both have become masters at throwing zingers at each other. Conversations is the polite term for what my mom would call arguments.

Lately we have been having a recurring conversation.

My dad serves as the district manager for the American Red Cross’s efforts in Placer County. Placer county is home to some of the biggest and wealthiest churches in the Sacramento area. We are talking big ones. Ones with more parking spaces that strip malls. Ones who can drop $400,000 redecorating their youth ministry center. And that is the source of our conversation.

I come from the perspective that if a church has succeeded in attracting huge crowds of teenagers to youth programs it is time, not for celebration, but for asking some hard questions.

Questions like: Yes, they had 400 kids at their day camp, but did they come for positive mentoring with caring adults, or for the highly advertised chocolate water slide (no, I am not making that up). Or questions like: Is it good for kids to be ushered into their own room, far from their families for “church”, when all research indicated their parents play the largest role in their faith development?

My dad tends to acknowledge the merit of the questions. Then he hits me with this one: Are you sure you aren’t just jealous.
Ouch.

The truth is, I think I am jealous. Who doesn’t want to be the center of all that attention from teenagers? Who doesn’t understand feeling so passionate about something – say, building faith in teenagers – that you are willing to try anything to realize it, even using a chocolate water slide? I think if I had the budget for a chocolate water slide, I might find myself finding a way to argue myself into renting it.

And this is why I need these conversations with my dad. He allows me to make my arguments, and even acknowledges their merits. But he then he forces me to deal with my own reality, the thin space of life where my idealism and neediness connect to from the substance of my life. By helping me see my own failure to live up to my ideals, he helps me see with more compassion and respond with more respect to those whose ideals are different than my own. I think they end up making me easier to live with.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Time for Steps

"One must not only preach a sermon with his voice. He must preach it with his life." Youth ministries are really familiar with these famous words of Martin Luther King, Jr. We like to use them to motivate our kids to live a big life of faith, one that includes risk, sacrifice and, ultimately, growth. I think as youth pastors, the daily tasks and expectations of professional youth ministry often leave us with very little time to preach sermons with something other than words. It makes us feel a little guilty. So, naturally, we hope our students will live louder than we do. Thus the King quotation.

Until recently, however, I have been ignorant of the context King's admonition. Taylor Branch points out in "Pillar of Fire" that King delivered this message to a collection of ministers, rabbis and priests at a conference on Race and Religion. Immediately after this conference, King would launch the Birmingham campaign, a campaign that would lead to days of solitary confinement for King, and the stunning visual of children being hauled to jail and swept down the street by water hoses. This was a dangerous moment.

King had spent a great deal of time calling on clergy to summon their moral courage to face down segregation. He had become world famous for his oratory, for his words. And less than 8 years after the successes of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the movement was stymied, lunch counters were still segregated and the religious institutions of the nation were, by and large, still very fond of talking, but only talking.

King's famous words were less a directive to the assembled listeners, as it was an attempt to convict himself of the need to take the next, painful, uncertain steps. He was reminding himself, the great preacher of words, that the time had come to become a preacher of steps. He was reminding himself that if he was going to survive the inner turmoil that racked his inner life, he would have to go to Birmingham, whether anyone followed or not.

I like using the quote the other way. I like using the quote to remind kids they need to sacrifice and live more deeply than the expectations of my job seem to allow.

But I know I need to absorb the quote as King did: As a calling to transform the great words and ideas that inform my faith and my understanding of what it means to truly live into steps - halting, uncertain, doubt-filled steps.

Will I? That is the question that drives this blog and informs my anxiety and my dreams.

Welcome.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

A Decent Melody

I'm Just Trying To Find A Decent Melody
A Song That I Can Sing
In My Company