Mike King, President and CEO wrote a prayer for the new relationship between YouthFront and SonLife. This is pretty fitting I remember 3 or so years ago as SonLife was undergoing massive change and re-culturing we invited others to pray a prayer of blessing with us as we labored on a new day in our history.

So again, as YouthFront and SonLife join together to be one - will you pray with us?

Lord God, we believe that you have initiated a new path for us to take—one that fills us with not only expectation and wonder but also uncertainty and questions. Lead us by your sure hand and steadfast love. May all that we do in this endeavor bring glory to our Lord Jesus Christ, who reigns with you and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I am so glad to be seeing this day (two organizations with a great history and that I am very fond of) - as Sonlife and YouthFront announce a merger!! Celebrate - and read the press release below.

Press Release Thursday, September 20, 2007—For Immediate Release

Sonlife Ministries Merging with YouthFront

Sonlife Ministries, Inc. has merged with YouthFront, Inc. effective September 1, 2007 in order to “maximize ministry effectiveness” of the two organizations. Formerly a Chicago-based ministry, Sonlife will relocate to Kansas City. For more than six decades, YouthFront has brought young people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ through camps, campus ministries, mission trips, creative programming, and leadership development. For nearly three decades, Sonlife has provided Christ-centered training for students and adult leaders through training seminars, conferences, and creative resources.

YouthFront President Mike King and Sonlife President Chris Folmsbee share a conviction that “the youth ministry community is pregnant with expectation and desire for fresh and innovative approaches to youth ministry that are both creative and also theologically and ecclesiologically sound,” says King. Folmsbee adds, “We see youth ministry paradigms shifting away from an overemphasis on programmatic/event-oriented and information-focused styles toward a more robust and holistic understanding of Christian formation. The need is greater than ever to guide young people in discovering how to live as Christ in all areas of their lives.”

YouthFront will continue its tradition of developing innovative youth ministry around the world through its commitment to the development of youth ministry philosophy, theology, and practice. Sonlife will continue to move forward as a church-assisting organization serving youth workers by facilitating networks; developing and providing training; offering coaching, consultation, and spiritual direction; and creating resources and programs for youth workers and students. Through the new YouthFront organization, all present Sonlife training and development programs for youth workers will continue, including Enroute, Shaping a Missional Community, Shepherding in a Culture of Change, Refresh, and Leadership of the Heart. All training experiences for students will continue, as well, including Merge, Awake and Reveal.

“This merger seems natural because of the alignment we have, not just between Chris Folmsbee and me, but also between the organizations that we have led,” says Mike King. YouthFront sees Sonlife’s innovation of a new wave of youth worker participation in training and formational experiences. Sonlife sees YouthFront as innovating new ways to do youth ministry and spiritual formation of adolescents. Consequently, merging together will allow each organization to realize greater ministry impact. Folmsbee states, “I am expectant that God is going to do amazing things through our coming together. I believe we will look back a few years from now to identify many things God has done to strengthen the church through the development of youth workers and students.”

For questions regarding this merger or to seek more information about the ministry of YouthFront and Sonlife, please contact Andy Garlich at 800-770-4769 or AGarlich@YouthFront.com

A touch of fall this morning in Western PA - waking up to temperatures in the high 40’s. Most youth ministries have ramped up a new season - the fall kickoff has taken place (even though the Autumnal Equinox is still more than a week away). Yet this is that time for new school years, new fiscal years and new seasonal calendars bringing increased activity, more rigorous schedules and new hopes, goals and expectations.

We need to guard against being carried away by the flurry of activity. We need to be wary of becoming focused on all that we are doing. Just as an engine needs a periodic check-up and rest from being run at full RPM’s, and words only make sense with end marks and punctuation - our lives become absurd when they unravel to become merely a flurry of activity. As we “ramp up” the fall season it is important for us to also put time in our calendars for rest, reflection and unhurried time with family, friends and God. It is interesting that Jesus seemed to follow this pattern - a pattern of intense ministry/activity followed by time withdrawn in solitude or pulled away from the crowds with the twelve.

In my own life, I need to take this advice. It is so easy for the calendar to fill up with an abundance of activity and appointments. In the midst of this I need to allow some days to have no ink, and other dates need to be in red saying things like - rest, retreat, and accountability.

Gordon MacDonald suggested in his book Rebuilding Your Broken World that we need to submit ourselves to a spiritual friend and periodically “check the gauges” of our lives by answering some or all of the following questions. It is crucial that we have a spiritual check up and when better than at the beginning or in the midst of the fall season. Let these questions provide a fresh perspective to the activity, priorities and relationships you invest in during this season.

1. How is your relationship with God right now?
2. What have you read in the Bible this past week or month?
3. Where do you find yourself resisting God these days?
4. What specific things are you praying for and who are you praying for?
5. What tasks/projects are you facing right now that you consider incomplete?
6. What habits intimidate you?
7. What are you reading?
8. How are you engaging in play?
9. How are your immediate relationships with family (nuclear and extended)?
10. If a person were to ask the person closest to you about the state of your mind, spirit and energy level, how would they respond?
11. Are you sensing any spiritual attacks from the enemy right now?
12. What is the state of your sexual perspective? Tempted? Fantasies? Entertainment?
13. Where are you financially right now?
14. Are there any unresolved conflicts in your circle of relationships?
15. When was the last time you spent unhurried time with a good friend of your own gender?
16. What kind of time have you spent with someone who is a non-Christian?
17. What challenges do you think you’re going to face in the coming weeks?
18. What would you say are your fears at this time?
19. Are you sleeping well?
20. What are you most thankful for?
21. Do you like yourself at this point in your pilgrimage?
22. What are your greatest confusions about your relationship with God?

Well, there is a lot there. I hope that some of these questions might help us as we check in with ourselves amidst a busy time of year. I hope you will schedule a time with a good friend to be honest about what is happening in and through us. I hope you will follow a pattern of advance and retreat, doing and being, activity and rest.

“…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us…” (John 17:21)

When I was growing up it was popular among the “born again bunch” to hear a question like, “When did you invite Jesus into your heart?” or “When did Christ come into your life.” A dominant metaphor of many Christians that I talk to is this metaphor of Christ coming into our lives. I have been thinking about this and I wonder if it is the most helpful picture. I know Paul uses it on one occasion that I can recall, “Christ in you, the hope of Glory” (Colossians 1:27), but is it enough to think in these terms. Is it enough for us; is God satisfied for us to go through our lives thinking in this manner - God in me.

If this is accurate then I am the host. In essence, I am still in charge. God is a guest. I have “invited Him in.” He is merely a part of my life. God is another aspect of my life which I must consider.

There is a greater metaphor at work in Scripture that we must understand (and help others to understand - especially those youth workers among us). It is the picture of us “in Christ.” That we don’t merely allow God into us - where we would like (where we can stay in charge and if we would like stay on the periphery) - but we are absorbed into Christ. The image of being in Christ moves us out of control. The image of being in Christ moves us from periphery or being the host of God to the place of surrendering to the Divine Center. It radically changes our relationship by changing the position of in from after Christ to before Christ. Being in Christ I think is the goal. For when we find ourselves resting or residing in Christ we become more fully integrated into the mind, will, mission and way of the God of the Universe.

How do you think of your relationship with God - is Christ in you; or are you in Christ? I think we need to think about both being true and both being integral to our understanding of the relationship between God and humans. Do you think it matters? Or am I making something out of nothing?

I had heard, not too long after Mother Teresa died, that if she was a saint it would be a saint to the doubting. I wondered about that - and did some research and learned that Mother Teresa had not felt or sensed God’s presence since the late 40’s. This boggled my mind. Was it since she was surrounded by Christ’s presence in the poor, sick, and homeless? Was it to quell her pride? Was it a “sharing in the sufferings of Christ?”

Time Magazine has written a fairly extensive article on this “little known reality” in Mother Teresa. It is well worth the reading. The “dark night” and the purgation of senses is often a topic we avoid. Yet, this is a necessary and requisite journey all of us take (and some take for their whole lives).

Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith

Upside down that is how I envision the values of God’s Kingdom as Jesus explained it. It is so counter to what we see valued and practiced in our world. I was encouraged this weekend as I was reminded of an incident from the life of St. Paul. It was so cool to hear afresh the story of Paul and Silas in prison. To see Paul live out the upside down values of God’s Kingdom under dire circumstances.

Here was Paul and Silas praising God in the midst of being beaten, flogged and put in chains in a dungeon - that is amazing enough, but the story continues. Following the earthquake the chains are loosened (an apparent miracle?) - yet they don’t escape - for the good of the jailer (who certainly would have been killed) they stay put and serve their sentence.

Talk about an amazing picture of, “Love your enemies.”

Just beautiful. I guess I often am guilty of seeing Paul through His letters (which are more “doctrinaire”) and miss these glimpses of his embodiment of Jesus’ teaching found throughout the Acts of the Apostles. It was a great reminder - and incredibly challenging. What a model for us to follow. May I be found in my everyday loving my enemies, praising God in all my circumstances and being satisfied even if my lot is to suffer for Christ’s sake.

It seems as I look around this world we call home… that often what motivates action is fear, guilt, or vengeance - or some combination thereof. I know that is pretty cynical. But it seems that from congress to the school house too often (how about that) we hear underlying building programs and new initiatives this motivation mix of fear (someone is going to out do us), guilt (it has been a long time coming), or vengeance (never again!).

I know that few things happen from pure motives (meaning only one motive) - it is most often a mix of motivations - but it has me thinking, what motivates youth ministry in my church?

Is it guilt? Are we attempting to make up for some past failures by providing “the best” for the next generation?
Is it fear? Are we trying to provide an alternative to the world in order to protect our children?
Is it vengeance? Are we trying to prove something to someone?

What are the motivations that move us or our church into ministry with teens? I am sure it is a mixture of all kinds of inner forces. Though, I am coming to learn and be convinced of this - if love is not a growing factor amidst those other competing factors, it’s not worth much.

God, may a holy love infuse our desires and motivations as we minister to others. May the love which moved Jesus from heaven to earth be the mark of your bride. May love rain on your church and be the fragrance she is known for. On earth as it is in heaven.

Amen.

early morning hours

stillness lingers on
not a drop spills over top
Mystery filling

awakened to find
each moment flashes your touch
new eyes moving slow

confined to God speed
brings a fresh way to be now
stillness lingers on

greeting a new day

Yesterday I had an internal meltdown. It came out of nowhere. The next thing I knew I was brooding, obsessing, reliving, rehashing, stewing, fuming, angry, frustrated, and thinking about what I could have said. I lived and relived in the past and was blinded to anything that was going on right here, right now. It didn’t last too long and then it subsided (I take heart that such episodes are less frequent and more short-lived).

It was interesting that in the midst of all these regurgitated bad feelings about bygone eras - I was able to “observe myself.” I was able to think, “hmm, where is this coming from? Why am I reliving and fuming about this? It really isn’t that big of deal. Why am I so angry?”

A low simmering anger and frustration that occasionally erupts and taking trips down memory lane are two of my not so pretty sides. It is a side I show to those I love most dearly - but seem to hide fairly competently from others. So yesterday, as I relived one of these petty incidents of the past I realized, I have a long way to go on the road of transformation. Yet I was also strangely encouraged, because although I am not transformed, I am on the right road.

For years (I have called myself a Christian or Christ follower for over 25 years) I thought transformation would result from my belief - correct assumptions and rightly understood certainties grounded in an orthodox theology. I thought it was my mastery of God and His revelation that would somehow enter my synapses and begin to change my behavior. You know for a while this did work - I began to think differently and some of my behaviors changed. But if I am honest transformation along that “right thinking” road slowed not long after I started trudging down it.

The road to transformation is a winding road that certainly includes our minds but it also must engage our emotions, our will, our relationships and our behavior. The road to transformation I have now found and am stumbling down winds through doubts, conversations and a realization that my attempt to “master God” is a climb up an infinite mountain (and one can be awed or despair in the frustration). Ahh, mystery - embrace it for at least on the road I am on - it is ’round every corner!! (Certainty is way over-rated, anyway).

The mysterious road to transformation is a road where we encounter doubts, set-backs, and frustrations, but also it is a road that slowly changes us as we engage in conversations (with soul friends), journey for a time with fellow pilgrims (enjoy community and hitchhike on the notes left behind by others who have been this way), encounter new ways of traveling (discover and try new spiritual practices), study the map (bad metaphor - don’t sue me!), and take new steps in the direction of the cloud by day and pillar of fire by night.

I am a person in need of transformation - but I am encouraged by the road God has helped me to stumble onto. I don’t have it all figured out - this soul stuff is weird. I trust God, He is good - so sometimes even though I feel like I am in the fog - I figure the cloud of mystery has merely enveloped me for a time! I take courage in the following quotes from Chesterton’s, Orthodoxy:

“Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.” He elaborates on this observation by saying, “Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea and so make it finite.” Later, he adds, “Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as there is mystery, there is health.”

So, have you found yourself on either of these roads (road of “right thinking” or the road with mystery round every corner), or have you discovered some other roads that have led you into the ever evolving relationship with God?

I want to strongly recommend that if you are in youth ministry in any fashion, that you read Dino’s post over at Z Life. I have been guilty of the tactics he mentions in the past - and he called me to task and I would encourage us all to listen to his challenge.

Check it out - Motivational Advice.