triple 8.20.08
Triple went very well this past week. We had a large crowd, I always appreciate how much energy the new 6th grade bring when they come up. We did a lot of games, talked about meat and milk and continued to challenge our students to choose to follow Christ. One of our students made the decision to follow Christ and will be baptized soon. God used a really fun service to move in a pretty amazing way.

I'm really excited about tonight. This will be the first time for a normal triple, with Gerald leading worship, message, game, etc. The added element of worship will be exciting for all the students.

sunday school 8.24.08
I was blown away sunday with the amount of people in stage one.... and they were all there for middle school sunday school. Our leaders are amazing, I can't say that enough... this is amounting to be a great year. The test of our leadership will be how well we get to know these students that God has entrusted us with. With 175 this is no easy task, but taking the pictures and learning names will be the first step towards an intentional relational year.

If a leader is to lead they must be influential. We tell our students all the time that you are either influencing things in the wrong way or the right way... meaning, we all, by our actions, reactions and lack of action are influencing others to follow us, never be like us, to speak up, to stay quiet, to live right, etc. As a Christian leader the area of influence will lead others toward holiness.

Understanding how we lead (through a leadership profile) will help us to become more intentional about our influence.

"Leaders are born and made."

Their are things that God wires us for. Some of us to lead large congregations, like our Pastor. Some of us run behind the scenes and get things set up, torn down and all the technical details taken care of. How are you wired. In whatever leadership capacity you hold, maybe God has made you for that or given you the gifts and skills to be great or good at what you do. Throughout history you see the example of people who God has made "for such a time as this." However, just being born with special abilities (gifts or talents), doesn't make you excel as a leader.

Aubrey Malphurs looks at some things that all of us can focus on as God grows our influence, things that can help us sharpen our skills as Christian Leaders.

1. Character - This is the foundation of Christian Leadership. We should always be evaluating the innermost details of our lives to be sure that we can lead with "integrity of heart." (Psalm 78:72)

2. Knowledge - At a conference last year, I remember being challenged to always stay current with what you are doing. We should stay on the cutting edge of our trade, this is only going to sharpen our knowledge and allow us to push beyond the self made barrier of status quo.

3. Skills - Even the best players on the team show up for practice (unless you are some over-paid pro athlete). The best thing that we can do is practice what we are good at and also the things that we aren't good at so that we can always be improving.

4. Emotions - I struggle with this one. Emotion is the first thing that happens all the time, we can't help getting our feelings hurt, we hear sad news, we hear great news, emotions are first. Acting upon emotion is what we can control.

Sharpening these made capabilities coupled with the way that God has wired us will help us be more capable leaders.

I have to spend 3 days away from home for staff planning, and I miss her greatly. She recently went to yearbookyourself.com and she has had so much fun with it. Now the whole staff is doing it, quite fun... thank you baby!! I miss you.

I finally got this to upload!! Camp was such an awesome week. We are still seeing the fruits of what God did in the lives of our students! Thank you to everyone who played a role into pulling it off.

Just a little update. While the cause could be laziness or forgetfulness as one of my leaders pointed out. I did a little experiment and have started to wear my sunglasses a bit more. To my surprise, i have gained a little weight, just a couple pounds??? Strange I know, but the mystery deepens. Also my shoes got washed.

Maybe it was just a crazy week at camp spasm. My eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, my shoes were dirty from a mudhole incident that monday and I don't remember eating too much that whole time. That would be too logical though. There has to be some mysticism in it. :)

This chapter really goes hand in hand with trust. People will not trust you if you have no credibility. Since every year is a fresh start with our middle school ministry, I'm going to look at the section marked developing credibility and see how we can apply this to our middle school ministry and more importantly, small groups.

Character - Some things go without saying. When leading middle school students, we must be above reproach, of course we have mess ups, but inside and out we need to have Godly Character... if we expect it from students, we should hold ourselves to it.

Competence - The application for this one is come prepared. Things will present themselves that we aren't ready for sometimes. I'm more thinking about the things that we can control. Come prayed up with your own copy of God's word, etc. This is also where I come in, It's my role to equip you.

Clarity of Direction - It might be good for you this year to define with you small group where you would like them to be at the end of the year. Take some initiative and decide what it will take to get the students there and always keep that in front of them. We will do this as a ministry, but your small group would benefit tremendously with you from this.

Communication - call your students, talk to them about your expectations, e-mail them, etc.

Conviction - Do the things that you are passionate about. Be sure to let me know. If the direction you want to go is opposing where the group is going, don't do it, and really pray about where you are supposed to be. This is more pertaining to being passionate about your small group, show the students your passion and commitment.

Courage - It takes a lot of courage to lead middle school students to do something amazing. There are a lot of people against it. But, as we found out this friday night, Courage is what will drive you to handle the tough situations.

Care - this goes without saying

Composure - never let them see you sweat. In middle school ministry, once they do, they'll never let you live it down... you could build a lot of respect and credibility over many months and years, but loose your cool once and you loose everything in that second.

To become a disciple of Christ you have to follow Christ. I think far to many people follow people (in the church) with no thought of Christ, whether it be through book, attending, or other methods, the focus could be more on what one person has to say other than what Christ is saying through them. Not that these things are wrong, but they do point us to a huge responsibility as leaders: Consistently point people toward obedience (followship) of Christ. That being said we can look to His example to find out how to do that.

The second chapter of Being Leaders compares and contrasts what Christ did, how we should be as leader and how we shouldn't. The book has a really cool chart in it that shows the characteristics of servant leadership from Biblical directives.

We should lead humbly ("not lording over") contrast: humility, not ego
Everything we do is about service ("a servant and slave") contrast: giving, not receiving
We should lead others ("for many") contrast: others, not self
We should lead because we love them ("the full extent of his love") contrast: a towel, not a throne

We know that Christ was God already, and had humbled himself by coming to live with us in the flesh. He became a servant and slave to, not just us but "the world" and gave His life for those that would believe, repent and follow; "no greater love."

We can learn a lot of things by adopting these principles into our everyday decisions and actions.

Tonight was a great night. A picture of what I hope is more to come. Gerald and the band did an incredible job at engaging the students in worship. We have stepped up our game in the video world, which has created more opportunity to serve and ups the production quality (minus a few glitches tonight). The students moved, responded to, and were excited by the different elements of the night. It is really easy to engage them following our camp, so that really gave us a boost. We also had 132 people there tonight, making it one of the biggest Triple's since December.

Tonight also showed me the importance of a tech sheet and more communication between me and everyone involved in production. I need to let go and let other people do what they are good at, which after being in stage 2 for so long (where I sometimes ran words, sound and lights solo) is going to take me some time to do. Like I said, I'm excited about where we are going. I really can't wait to meet the new 6th grade and get them into the mix with all the excitement.

There is a series of books that I'm going to finally start going through. They are by a guy named Aubrey Malphurs who I think is a professor at DTS (Dallas Theological Seminary). I know that he is well respected by a few of my friends and I have already been through one of his book Values Driven Leadership. The series starts with a book called Being Leaders then Building Leaders and ends with Leading Leaders.

So, I got through the first chapter of the first book and it really was engaging. It starts with the fact that everyone who is a Christian Leader is that in the community, church and their own lives. Then it goes through the criteria as to what makes one a Christian leader.

One of the things that stood out to me was that Christian Leaders understand the importance of Motives. This is really important as any leader deals directly or indirectly with conflict or any number of situations. As we lead, we must remember that some of the biggest mistakes that are made may have the best motives behind them. Leaders don't get the opportunity to see straight to the heart (like God does) but sometimes we do need to slow down to take a different perspective.

This really makes sense in Middle school ministry. Sometimes people are quick to write off all the fun, non-stop energy and sometimes disrespect as rude middle school antics... A lot of times this is the furthest thing from the truth... it could be a cry for help, attention, a Godly mentor. As we lead, help us to remember that our motives need to be right and that the people we lead have motives of their own.

I'm not sure if these things go together, but they might.

I don't wear sunglasses all that often, but today I found myself really needing some after leaving a restaurant Shawn and I were at for lunch. It really caught me off guard, how bright the sun is. Like, is it getting closer? (blonde moment) But I've been in florida since 2002 and I never realized how much I really need sunglasses.

A pair of my shoes got dirty after a little muddy exploration monday a week ago. I took them off at my front door and that is where they still are....

This morning... I realized that my pants are fitting a lot looser on me than they normally do.

There has got to be some relation between these things.... Doesn't there?

WOW!! What an awesome week last week. I was blown away by everything and everyone involved in camp. I was reminded this week of several things. The first - McGregor Baptist Church has the best middle school students in the world. 86 students and not really any major problems and absolutely no damage to the building. I'm so blessed to be the middle school pastor here.

The second thing that I was reminded - Our leaders are committed. Everyone worked hard together to show students God love. After some rest I'm sure all of us are ready to do it again... the good thing is we have some time to plan and make next years camp the best ever.... again!!

The last thing of note that I was reminded (other than the fact that I don't make a good sick person) -- I love working with middle school students. Every night we had the most engaging worship (led by Gerald Malloy and band and our camp pastor Mac Cockrell). There is nothing more rewarding in my job than to see 70+ students on their face dealing with the Lord. The Holy spirit showed up and moved in a tremendous way. I don't know what God was talking to every student about, but two of them were giving their life to Him for the first time and 1 was talking to Him about following in obedience through baptism.

I stopped writing these because the pressure to write something prolific every time I sit down to blog. Prolific - something that produces fruit, something that will really move people. I guess this is self induced for me, and a little bit of a big head. I was looking back through old posts and really haven't written anything prolific since I started this whole blog thing.

So today I will ask for two things. One for myself... "self will you please stop putting so much pressure on me, you are really too high strung anyway?" And the other from you (my readers) the next time you see me will you say "steven, it isn't about prolificacy, it is just a blog." I really need to hear that. One reason, when I don't hear it from too many people, I'll realize that the pressure was way undo, I probably only have two readers.... anyway...