Take 2.0 Ministry for the Next Generation

I am siting here in my home office updating Kidology’s Blog watch when in comes my daughter. She is showing me her new drawings from some shows she has been watching this morning as she had to stay home due to a fever. I took a look at the drawings and was very surprised to how much she has really improved improved in her drawing abilities.

This great improvement drew me into asking, “How did you draw these?” She goes on to explain how since we have TiVo she pauses the shows and then draws what she wants from the paused frame and then hits play to finish watching the show.

What a genius!! This made me begin to think so much that I had to take a break and come over to my blog here and post this reinforced lesson that my 9 year old daughter just taught me again with out her knowing.

We have to have tools or systems set up in our life (TiVo in this case for my daughter) that can be used to “pause” life for a while. During this paused time we need to use it to get a better picture of some of the details of our life in proportion. It really isnt until these “Paused” times can we really get a clear picture. Nor can we really spend the time we need to, to invest properly into things.

So what systems or processes do you have set up to help you Pause life for a while?
What tools do you use?

Wow, I have no idea how I never stumbled across these videos of Phil Vischer (The Veggie Tale guy for those of you who may have been living in the back of a cave over these last few years) they are great! So after you watch this one, let me know what lessons you take out of it?

For me one of the big ones is, when Phil talks about how he talks about how he made the work he was doing FOR GOD more important than his relations WITH GOD. How many times have you watched or been part of this very same thing?

Enjoy the video.

More Working Moms Would Prefer Part-Time.

It has been reported that 66% of U.S. women with children ages 17 or younger work either full-time or part-time. Most have full-time jobs outside of the home (74%), but just 37% of working mothers prefer this role. 62% would prefer to work part time—a job situation enjoyed by only 26% of working mothers. Over a decade ago, just 48% of working mothers said a part-time job would be ideal.

Pew Research Center 10/1/09

Warning: The following article comes from the USA Today and does discuss a heavy topic but a real one. So due to the readership of this blog I would have to rate this one with a PG rating. Proceed at will with the knowledge of this rating.

I know that for me and my family along with several others that I talk with who are in the ministry from children’s pastors to senior pastors, this season that many have been in personally and professionally has been particularly hard on those in the ministry. The demand of still performing, providing results and often times with less budgeted money and volunteers. This is in large part due to congregation members having to pick up more jobs to support their families in these lean times and layoffs happening quit often, that it is moving people to work during what use to be church times and being able to give less to their churches in forms of tithes and volunteer hours.

But again even with these kind of harder times, demands often for those in the ministry have not decreased but increased. Because they now need to help those in the congregation to make it through their hard times. But what about the hard times that those who are giving out and ministering 24/7 to everyone else? What about their families? Who can they go to and not cause a panic since so many look to them to have everything together? It was this kind of personal pain that caused a 42-year-old pastor to abandon his family, his calling and even life itself. Members of a Baptist church are asking those kinds of questions after their pastor committed suicide in his parked car in September. Those who counsel pastors say Christian culture, especially Southern evangelicalism, creates the perfect environment for depression. Pastors suffer in silence, unwilling or unable to seek help or even talk about it. Sometimes they leave the ministry. Occasionally the result is the unthinkable.

Experts say clergy suicide is a rare outcome to a common problem. But Baptists in the Carolinas are soul-searching after a spate of suicides and suicide attempts by pastors. In addition to the September suicide of David Treadway, two others in North Carolina attempted suicide, and three in South Carolina succeeded, all in the last four years.

Being a pastor—a high-profile, high-stress job with nearly impossible expectations for success—can send one down the road to depression, according to pastoral counselors. “We set the bar so high that most pastors can’t achieve that,” said H.B. London, vice president for pastoral ministries at Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs, Colo. “And because most pastors are people-pleasers, they get frustrated and feel they can’t live up to that.” When pastors fail to live up to demands imposed by themselves or others they often “turn their frustration back on themselves,” leading to self-doubt and to feelings of failure and hopelessness, said Fred Smoot, executive director of Emory Clergy Care in Duluth, Georgia.

Most counselors and psychologists interviewed for this article agreed depression among clergy is at least as prevalent as in the general population. As many as 12% of men and 26% of women will experience major depression during their lifetime, according to the American Medical Association. “The likelihood is that one out of every four pastors is depressed,” said Matthew Stanford, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. But anxiety and depression in the pulpit are “markedly higher” in the last five years, said Smoot. “The current economic crisis has caused many of our pastors to go into depression.” Besides the recession’s strain on church budgets, depressed pastors increasingly report frustration over their congregations’ resistance to cultural change.

Nearly two out of three depressed people don’t seek treatment, according to studies by the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. Counselors say even fewer depressed ministers get treated because of career fears, social stigma and spiritual taboo. “Clergy do not talk about it because it violates their understanding of their faith,” said Scoggin. “They believe they are not supposed to have those kinds of thoughts.” Stanford, who studies how the Christian community deals with mental illness, said depression in Christian culture carries “a double stigmatization.” Society still places a stigma on mental illness, but Christians make it worse, he said, by “over-spiritualizing” depression and other disorders—dismissing them as a lack of faith or a sign of weakness. Polite Southern culture adds its own taboo against “talking about something as personal as your mental health,” noted Scoggin. The result is a culture of avoidance. “You can’t talk about it before it happens and you can’t talk about it after it happens,” said Monty Hale, director of pastoral ministries for the South Carolina Baptist Convention.

For pastors, treatment can come at a high price. In some settings, however, it is becoming more acceptable for clergy to get treatment. “Depression is part of the human condition,” added Scoggin. “Some people simply find ways to gracefully live with it. Like other chronic illnesses, you may not get over it.”

Other ideas that may help as well:
Experts at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary suggest that pastors can help prevent depression by:

1. Engaging in intentional replenishment weekly or monthly, confiding in their spouse and seeking spiritual direction with another pastor who ministers to them.
2. They should also establish boundaries and set realistic expectations. “Jesus did not heal everyone, even though it was within His power to do so. No one is capable of successfully ministering to every person in need,” said Drs. Sidney Bradley and Kelly Boyce with GCTS. “Pastors can also normalize the problem of depression by teaching about it. This can help people understand it, and dispel the idea that Christians are immune from depression. Research has shown that when therapy is combined with medication, there is a 90 percent successful treatment rate. Depression is very, very treatable.”

Source - USA Today 10/29/09

We just had KidzTurn here at McArthur for 4 days and while they were here I hung out at Starbucks with Sam Lussier a couple days. Same and I got to talking about the great technology stuff out there which lead us to talking about iPhones. Here is a piece of technology along with many other types of Smart Phones where the technology has grown super fast but it tends to be handicapped.

Why? Because of battery technology.

Yes, see while people have developed the smart phones by making them more powerful, smaller, more tricks, fancier designs and the list goes on and on, the batteries that power these wonderful tools, gadgets, toys, life lines, electronic leashes whatever you may call them have not kept up with the same pace. Actually in many ways battery technology has not developed a lot in comparison to the smart phones they power since they hit the market powering the first cell phone.

This made me start thinking, how many of us in ministry, in our careers etc. have added some great external tools, skills, schooling, paychecks, homes, cars and so forth but our “Battery” (our inner life, our walk with God) has not kept up. We are walking iPhones with the looks and abilities of a 1000 people but we are only able to truly last for a few hours a day or a year or two where we are in our job because our battery keeps given out. Families falling apart, divorces taking place, infidelity, unfaithfulness, confusion, sicknesses, and I am sure you can fill the blank with even more ways than what i have mentioned here.

So then we move to what I did with my iPhone, I bought a car charger. So now as I travel in the car I plug in my iPhone for a quick charge, or as I sit at my desk I charge my phone. Yes this is great and a good idea if I say so myself. But what is the core problem that I am only disguising by running these quick little many charges?

The BATTERY. How is your battery? Your personal life with Jesus? If we don’t continue to develop our life with Jesus we may have all the fancy stuff, leisure’s of life, but we will have to acknowledge that even with the quick little stops into church, quick listen to a sermon podcast etc, that ultimately it will not keep. My phone stills gets uncharged, runs out on me during busy days where I could not charge it as much.

Bottom line I have an incredible phone, the battery is just not equipped to run it to it’s full potential. How is your battery? Has your life with God privately kept up with your life that you live on the outside? Stop now and determine you will change that before you only end up with a ton of un-powered potential.