iNFUSE

The last few months we have been trying to come up with a new name for our Children's Ministry. I mean, not that Lafayette First Church of the Nazarene Children's Ministry isn't catchy, it just sounds more like a dental procedure than a fun place to come and hang out and learn about Jesus.

I wish I could say that coming up with a new name was easy. It was anything but. There are lots of implications that come with naming something. Think about when you named your kids. We went through every possible scenario when choosing our boy's names. What does the name mean, what are the possible nicknames, will they ever be able to find a pencil at Cracker Barrel with their name on it, how does it sound with our last name, how does it sound when the teacher calls it out, is it easy to spell, will other kids beat them up for their name, does it rhyme with a bad word?

The process was the same with a Children's Ministry name. I knew early on what I was not ok with. Nothing where the letters "c" or "s" were replaced with "k" or "z". That automatically eliminated the Kool Kidz Klub. I figure, if we are teaching kids, we probably should at least teach them how to spell correctly.

We have also been going through the process of figuring out exactly what our goals as a ministry are. We believe 200% in the church mission statement of encouraging all to be passionate followers of Christ, but what does that mean to a 7 year old?

After lots of thought and discussion and prayer, here is what we came up with:

Our mission is that every kid that comes through our doors would experience the WONDER of God, DISCOVER what is means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and that they would begin to see themselves in light of who God created them to be and live that out with a PASSION for loving God and loving others.

Wonder. Discovery. Passion.

These three words are at the core of our Children’s Ministry and the driving force behind everything we do. From infants to preteens, our mission is to infuse the elements of wonder, discovery and passion to help them see God for who He is and to see themselves in the way God sees them so they can love others the way God does.

And so.....wait for it......wait for it.........(drum roll)............

iNFUSE

That is gonna be our new name. I know, the lower case i is a little cheesy, but hey, kids like cheesy and it worked for Apple. What do you think? Would you wanna hang out with us?

Indifferent

Lately church for me has been a struggle. I have spent lots of Sunday's faking it, not being fully committed. Just feeling indifferent. Times where I have stood in front of a group of kids and not been sure that anything that I was saying or doing really mattered. No sure that I was in the right place, that God had surely screwed up when He told me this was His plan for me. Today, if even just for a minute, that changed.

It has been something that was coming. Something that God has been stirring in me for quite awhile. Something that I was no longer able to avoid.

Some people hear God in a whisper..in the wind..in a quiet voice. None of those are really God's style with me. It's like he knows he has to scream if I am going to hear Him over the chaos I've created.

Today, He screamed at me through the hand of a 12 year old boy that I have gotten to know since his family moved to the church. A 12 year old boy that got out of his seat and walked to the front of the church, breaking every rule that 12 year old boys have about being noticed or showing emotion.

I was at the alter dealing with so many of the things that have convinced me that being indifferent with God is better than not being with God at all. As I was there praying, I felt a small hand on my back. A small, 12 year old boys hand that had come to pray with me.

I am not sure I have ever felt so humbled...so loved...so sure...so anything but indifferent.

The truth that I have been trying so hard to resist is that I have a passion for the kids of our church. A passion that sometimes doesn't have words, doesn't make sense and most definitely is far beyond anything that I would ever be capable of carrying out without God leading me.

A passion for loving God by loving these kids that has no room for indifference.

Orange Thoughts

A week from today(6 days, 5 hours and 45 minutes to be exact)I will be in Georgia for the opening session of Orange Conference 2010. To say that I am excited is an understatement. I still don't think it has set in yet that I am actually going. I got so excited earlier today when I got the link for the live broadcast of Orange 2010 and then I had to remind myself that I would actually be there.

As excited as I am, I am also terrified. I will let you in on a little secret, one that probably really isn't that much of a secret to those of you that really know me. For all the swagger and ego and self confidence that I seem to have, I am so very easily intimidated. I still have fears that at the opening session they are gonna sing the song I sing with the preschoolers that goes "One of these things is not like the other...." and then the spotlight will land on me.

I mean really, who am I kidding? I have no business in a room with people like Reggie Joiner, Donald Miller, Jim Wideman, Kendra Fleming...the list goes on and on. I am going to the official Orange Tweet Up Wednesday night where I will meet people who's blogs and tweets I have followed for the past year and who I feel like I already know. But seriously, what in the world would they have in common with me. I image that all conversations will start with small talk like..... "Where did you graduate from....how many campuses does your church have....how many thousand kids do you serve each week...which of your Ph.D's is your favorite" The thought of that numbs me.

I don't even have the words to express the passion I have for serving in Children's Ministry and how much I have fallen head over heels in love with our church and it's people. I have this crazy dream for kids and their families, one that I know has to have come from God, because I'm just not that brave or bold on my own. But still, there is so much fear in owning that and letting other's know about it. There is an accountability that comes with spending three days with the most brilliant minds in family ministry.... and it is overwhelming.

I really want this experience to be transformational for me. I don't want it to be about changing to be more like a book or buying into a "system", but truly and honestly changed. And not like Jr. High church camp changed. The real thing that lasts more than a weekend.

I know that in order for this experience at Orange 2010 to really impact me, I am gonna have to get over the fact that alone, I really don't belong there. There is nothing that I have or ever will do that will warrant be being in such incredible company. I get that. I need constantly reminded that it most definitely isn't about me.

My prayer is that even though I know I will say dumb stuff and look out of place and at least once or twice have the urge to retreat due to just being overwhelmed, that I will take in every second of it and not just be there, but really BE there. And I pray that God, who most defiantly has a crazy sense of humor, will use the things that I learn about ministry and the things that I learn about myself during this time to move in ways that right now I'm unable to even fathom.

I can't wait.

A Love Movement

About a year ago I became involved in an incredibly cool organization called To Write Love On Her Arms (TWLOHA). In their own words:

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.

More impressive than their mission is their vision.

A Love Movement.

That's what they call it. It sounds simplistic and yet it is transforming lives. Lives that have been broken, overcome by sadness, cut and consumed by substance. People that would be the last to be loved, the last to expect love, the last to ask to be loved. And yet A Love Movement is what is saving their lives. Every month I get to send handwritten letters and art work to people that have turned to TWLOHA for help and have entered residential treatment just to tell them that they are loved. Me, a stay at home Mom in Indiana, telling people that I will never know that they are valued and that they are loved. That blows my mind.

A Love Movement.

Tomorrow is To Write Love On Her Arms day. A day where we will write Love on our arms to raise awareness about the struggle that millions of people all around us are dealing with. I think that sometimes it is easy to look at someone who faces addiction, depression or self injury and think that could never be you.

But I know it could be me. I know just how close I am to it being me. To want to feel something so badly that even feeling pain is better than being numb. To deal with noises that are loudest in silence. To crave an escape from things real and imagined. I can look back at my life and I can rearrange circumstances and experiences like puzzle pieces and all of the sudden I am there. I am that person. The one that breaks to bleed. The one that gets high to forget. The one that hurts to feel.

And yet it's not me. It's them. It's those people that I feel so drawn to. I can't help but to think that if Jesus were giving the sermon on the mount today, these are the ones that he would point to when he spoke about the meek. These are the people for whom the blessing would be given, those that would inherit the earth. That is incredible to me.

Week 3 of the Kindgom Experiment

I sat in a room last night with people who were sharing openly about some of the hardest times in their lives. Times when they mourned. Their stories were honest and personal and raw....and all in the past tense. Mourning. Something they did. Something that they worked through. A time in the past when they were comforted. Their words and their faces and their tears were beautiful.

Those that shared last night lost something or someone that was important to them. It happened one day, one time, either expected or out of the blue. But it was still that one time. The day their parent died. The day they had to say goodbye. The end of a marriage. The day they got divorced. A single event. Something that can be marked on a calendar and grieved and remembered and honored. That one day.

...but blessed are those who still mourn? Who still, day after day after day live in the same place they were originally broken. I don't know.

One of our experiments from FCU this week is this:

Going. Going. Gone

Worship pastor Mike Crawford sings these words:

"Blessed when plans
that you so carefully laid
end up in the junkyard with
all the trash you made"

Consider yourself and those you know who mourn the loss of a future that will never be realized. Spend a week considering how God redeems the dreams and futures of those he loves.

And so I will.

Kiva

Mukono, Uganda is a place that I will never probably visit. To be honest, it was a place that I didn't even know existed until early last week, and yet it is a place that I can't get off of my mind. Apolot Grace is her name and she has four kids and a husband who works a job as a civil servant. She works as a tailor, a farmer and runs a General Store. She lives in a country that has an average life expectancy of 45 years, a literacy rate of 60% and an average annual income of $1,700. By my standards, she would be poor in spirit. Not by hers. The first line of her profile reads.."Apolot Grace is a hard working lady with lots of vision.."
Vision.... I immediately fell in love with her in one sentence.

One of the challenges from week one of FCU was to pick an experiement, a sort of experiential learning opportunity, to put into practice the things that we have been talking about. One of the options was to participate in this incredibly cool micro-lending program that provides loans to people in underdeveloped places all over the globe through kiva.com.

In this upside down, backwards, counter intuitive Kingdom, the notion that Apolot Grace's and my paths would intertwine is nothing but ordinary. Nothing special, nothing to blog about or go on about. Just normal. That might be the coolest thing about it.

First Church University

One of the many really awesome things that has happened at our church over the last year of so is the introduction of First Church University, or FCU. It is this powerful, intimate, reciprocative time of not just studying the scripture, but dissecting and discussing and deliberating in order to make sense of it in a way that changes not just our thinking, but our lives. It has come to be the highlight of my week and we just began a new study of the Beatitudes called The Kingdom Experiment.

I have to admit that I kind of felt like I might be burnt out on the Beatitudes. I have been listening to Rob Bell and friends at Mars Hill while I am at the gym and they have been doing a lengthy study of the Sermon on the Mount. When Pastor Troy announced that the new FCU study was going to cover the Beatitudes, I might have ......yawned. However, I am finding out more and more that God knows how I think and more importantly how I don't, and this feeling like my iPod is stuck on replay with the Sermon on the Mount is no sort of accident.

We began our first FCU session last week and were challenged to really discover what Jesus meant when he referred to those that were poor in spirit. As happens every week, there are people that offer ideas that cause me to think in ways that I haven't before. One thing that last weeks discussion really reiterated for me was more of what the poor in spirit are not. It's not someone who has tried and failed and is open to God moving through their lives. It is not someone who is humble enough to raise up their hands and give their situation to God. It's not the sad or the scarred or those that feel life's uncertainty. I believe that Jesus was talking about those who struggle to merely exist in a consuming sense of depravity. Those who would lift their hands up and give in if they had the strength, but for them just the act of taking a breath is almost more than they can do. It's a state that is beyond broken, but decimated.

If this is true, if these are the people to which Jesus announces the inheritance of the Kingdom of God, then it changes everything. It flips upside down this idea I have of what living is all about. If the Kingdom of God is so extravagantly different than the world I exist in, I have no choice but to change the way that I live. It's like I have been given this incredible secret, I was given the first and last chapters of the story, to write the middle with no regard to the final scene would be insane.

And so that is where I am. In that place that is all too familiar, where thoughts, feelings, the need to do something, the need to do anything differently.... all collide. One of the really cool parts of the Kingdom Experiment study is to chose an experiment, or challenge, to live out each week. I have finished my challenge for the first week and will be posting a blog about it later. I am excited and overwhelmed and just a little bit scared about what the next several weeks will bring. But I'm open.