This week my cohort is looking at economics and social justice issues and we will do some processing together about ways the church can speak to these issues. This is one of the first quotes I came across in my assigned readings.

Mother Teresa said, “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, and deserted by everybody. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love.”
Arloa Sutter (2010-09-01). The Invisible: What the Church Can Do to Find and Serve the Least of These (Kindle Locations 448-450). Wesleyan Publishing House. Kindle Edition.

What is a convert?

This semester I'm taking two classes. One of which is with one of my youth ministry heroes, Dr. Chap Clark, Author of Hurt: Inside the World of Today's Teenagers (Youth, Family, and Culture). 

In our first few weeks we have been reflecting on something called Incarnational Witness. The basic idea is that our methods of evangelism should reflect the life and model of ministry Jesus practiced. This model dictates that evangelism should be motivated by the same things that motivated Jesus, like being sent by the Father. We should model our evangelism after Christ's example, leaving our place of comfort to go to the broken, the hurting, and the forgotten.

• These lectures are invigorating my love for youth ministry!
• The course material is also solidifying my belief in relational youth ministry as opposed to creating a class or a program for every kind of problem teens will face. When I look back at my adolescence, it was people who journeyed with me that made the difference and not classes or even sermons! I remember the way my youth pastor and youth leaders listened to me, came to my games, and took my questions. I pray that I can be that for our youth and train others in the same model. 

When you think back to your teenage years or even a recent crisis, what made the difference for you?

I want to be missional.

I've been a way a while because of work and school, but I have been reading a lot and I'm ready to start posting again. This one is longer than usual, but it encapsulates what I've been chewing on and wrestling with in my life and calling. I hope you enjoy!


The missional church is incarnational, not attractional, in its ecclesiology. By incarnational we mean it does not create sanctified spaces into which unbelievers must come to encounter the gospel. Rather, the missional church disassembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society in order to be Christ to those who don’t yet know him.

The missional church is messianic, not dualistic, in its spirituality. That is, it adopts the worldview of Jesus the Messiah, rather than that of the Greco-Roman empire. Instead of seeing the world as divided between the sacred (religious) and profane (nonreligious), like Christ it sees the world and God’s place in it as more holistic and integrated.

The missional church adopts an apostolic, rather than a hierarchical, mode of leadership. By apostolic we mean a mode of leadership that recognizes the fivefold model detailed by Paul in Ephesians 4. It abandons the triangular hierarchies of the traditional church and embraces a biblical, flat-leadership community that unleashes the gifts of evangelism, apostleship, and prophecy, as well as the currently popular pastoral and teaching gifts.

Frost, Michael; Hirsch, Alan (2001-01-01). Shaping of Things to Come, The (Kindle Locations 346-356). Baker Book Group. Kindle Edition.

Elevate 2011 Summer Camp: Last Morning Service

Video Updates

I apologize for the complications with the videos I've been posting lately. I'm learning to blog from my phone for better youth ministry updates. The issue should be resolved by next week!

Today I'll be putting the finishing touches on a presentation I'll be giving tonight at Shoreline Leadership College based on Gordon Fee's book, Reading the Bible For All It's Worth.  We're trying to equip people for significant ministry in our community. So many are hungry to get into the "meaty" stuff of the Bible. I could never go into all of this book in one session. Tonight's class will be an introduction to Hermeneutics and then an example of how to do it with the book of Ephesians.

Shoreline Leadership College Expands: Learn how you can be apart. Enrolling now for Fall 2010!!

Now more than ever we as a church and community need quality leaders to be entrusted with fresh vision, renewed purpose and Godly diligence to be leaned upon for significant ministry both here at Shoreline, and all over the community/world at large.  

On September 13^th classes will begin which are specifically designed for emerging, up and coming leaders of Shoreline, entitled Shoreline Leadership College’s Part Time Program.   Please forward this information to any emerging or prospective leader and your leadership team, who feels called to impact our world, and their world, for the loving and life changing gospel message of Jesus Christ!!!

SLC Provides

• Essential training necessary for impacting and engaging ministry of all calibers
• Curriculum designed to sharpen and enhance leaders right where they are already ministering/serving
• Guest speakers ministering on riveting and essential topics essential to fulfill their calling
• Networking and relationship building with other leaders from other Shoreline Leadership Teams
• Structure, Guidance, and Design to the leadership path of anyone wanting to grow deeper in their overall leadership development.

It’s 10 weeks long. It costs$199. We do have scholarships available. The requirements: attend 2 classes on Monday night (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM & 8:00-9:00 PM), lead or assist with a small group, serve at a service, and go to one outreach per month. Sign up at http://shoreline.net/leadershipcollege.

We’re so excited to play a part in our church community’s mission to raise up leaders that will impact the world for the overwhelming love of Jesus Christ.

Some Announcement Silliness

Shoreline Announcements 8/29/2010 from Shoreline Church on Vimeo.

Some "Improv"

Homecoming Invite Improv - Pastor Ben and Mike from Shoreline Church on Vimeo.

We booked a screening!

In November, we booked a screening of Invisible Children's newest work. Here's a little preview.

Sneak Preview

I'm speaking in "big church" tomorrow night. I'm showing this video and tying it to Philippians 2.

Instant Competition from 50YearPlan on Vimeo.

Busted Stereotypes: Pastor Rob & Stuart Smalley.

Like most guys growing up in the mid 1990's I loved Saturday Night Live and the sketch, Daily Affirmations with Stuart Smally. As a "host" Stuart brilliantly belittled his famous guests. 

This famous sketch also made me balk at the idea of reciting daily affirmations to myself because I was too tough or too together for that sort of practice.

I've come full circle on this practice though thanks to My Pastor, Rob Koke. He shared some things that he writes in his journal every day. I never would have guessed that I'd work for a pastor of a mega-church in Texas! He's a fantastic leader, authentic, and poised. He's the best decision maker I've ever been around in ministry.  Marie and I have already been here for 5 years now and we are constantly aware that we're right where God wants us. The importance of his leadership in our lives cannot be overstated. Of all the things that he's shared to help us, these statements are a daily reminder of what's really important. Here they are.

I am loved by God.

I am a child of God.

I cannot earn God's love.

My value is not effected by my performance.

What God says about me is more important than what people say about me.

I perform for an audience of one. 

He equips.

He supplies.

I think these have morphed into the Shoreline Creed, but I still continue to draw strength from these truths.

What resources or truths do you draw strength from?

I

Weekend Wrap-Up: August 15th Services

Lesson: Pep Rally – Anthony Caccamisi taught the lesson. He knocked it out of the park. He will teach in jhi again for sure!

Lesson Length: 15 minutes. And HUDDLES at the end! As a response, we thought of people to invite to church. Then we wrote the names on a huge piece of paper while the band played, "Tear Down The Walls." it was a great moment.

Music: We had a full band. Robby Moss gets better every time he leads! I appreciate when guys step up like he has these past 8 months. It's been a pleasure to have him at my side!    

Tech:  We’ve trained many people back there and have all the spots filled. Consistency is difficult with high school leaders. 

Attendance: Average. There was more people than usual, but that’s normal for this time of year. .

Volunteer Involvement: Average. I’ve put a lot of effort into reorganizing our team. It’s working. Brandi 1^st service and Donna 2^nd service are blowing it up for me! I’m loosing Matthew Paul to his new job, but he’s going to get even more involved in LYA as a result, so that’s great! Met with Sean and Crystal Rose again between services and they are a huge support as well! Also, Daniel Johnson was sick...feel better dude!

Fun Factor: Average. Pastor Rob's rap video helped a lot.  I’ve added a lot more structure to what an MC does. We're also trying out a service order similar to the way Group does their services at work-camps.  The MC's also received a packet today. This packet contained all the games we are playing until Jan 2011!

Games Played: Saftey Dance. From Chad Swanzy's Youth Leader Stash. Super Fun!!!

Homecoming 2010: Shoreline Invite Sunday

Our church is trying to tap into the creativity of our congregation. We've got a contest going to see who can come up with the most creative homemade video that will get others to come to church. Here's an example that our creative people came up with:

"Who R U Bringin'?" from Shoreline Church on Vimeo.

Shoreline Leadership College Expands: Learn how you can be apart. Enrolling soon for Fall 2010!!

In the fall of 2009 we began to dream of a new discipleship program for Shoreline. Shoreline Leadership College empowers a new generation of leaders to unveil God’s love to a broken world. Young people to devote a year of their lives to learning how to hear God’s voice, serving in the local church and community, and receive valuable training and direction for their lives. As we got the word out about our full time program, there was also a demand for a part time option. So we also created a part time option for Shoreline Leadership College beginning this September.

We’ve been busy! Our students provided disaster relief in Nashville, participated with several programs in the Round Rock School district, helped feed 100,000 orphans at the Heartwork packing event and additionally provided support to Shoreline services and pastoral care team. Shoreline Leadership college also received training from the pastoral team, Shoreline leaders, personalized growth plans, and visiting professors. Students from the first year are set to graduate July 28^th!

“I would definitely recommend going to Shoreline Leadership College! Through every experience, and Opportunity, it has taught me to truly/fully rely on a God who so passionately loves me. It taught me how to study, teach, and live the way God intended me to do so. It is defiantly something I wont forget.”

Moving forward we launch our part time Monday night classes on September 6^th. Our Part time classes will serve Shoreline by deepening the leadership cores of our various ministries. Students will get to participate in classes with Shoreline staff and leaders as well as gain access to Pastor Rob’s leadership Classes on Tuesday mornings and monthly Staff Chapels.

If this sounds like something you would be interested in please visit click here, click the registration link, and you can sign up there! That’s it!  Now is the time to take that step of faith and prepare to gain some essential tools to become the leader that God has destined for you to be!

Communion

I really enjoy our Shoreline tradition of communion on the first Wednesday of every month. We bring all of our children's and youth ministries together the the adults for a night of worship songs, a few brief thoughts about communion, and then we take the elements together. The band is represented by ministry to every age at shoreline and we also take a moment to highlight people who serve in various areas of our church. Tonight I'm the one offering up a few thoughts about communion. It's not a full fledged 30 minute lesson or anything, but such an important moment deserves some thought.

As I began to reflect on this ancient sacrament of the Christian Church I thought back to how it was first explained to me.  The first time I remember taking communion was at our wonderful Wesleyan church in Park, Florida. My mom took a moment out of service to explain to m Pinellas y why we take it and what to do before, during, and after taking the elements. Any awkwardness was further alleviated by the method our church took it. Once everyone had the elements, the pastor would give instructions on when to eat and when to drink . We literally ate it at the same time. It was such a holy and sacred moment, even recognizable by a nine year old. I knew communion was something people should treat with reverence and awe.

In college, I wondered for the first time, "why bread? Why wine?"I knew that the world was broken. Humanity needed a savior and a way to approach God. I knew that God loved his creation so much, but "eat my flesh, drink my blood?" Really?  Was Jesus merely in need of a quick object lesson at dinner? Did he decide to create the holy sacraments out of thin air?  Of course not, but as a westerner I had no understanding of the deep subtext going on at the last supper and of all the meaningful layers of God's plan communicated through this ceremony.

Tonight I'll talk briefly about ancient near eastern contracts and the bloodpath God instructed Abraham to make In Genesis 15. In this passage we see God using a form of contract that would have been very familiar to Abraham since the narrative is set in the ancient near east. Slaughtered animals from the herd,  flock, and birds were placed on either side of a trough. The parties entering into a contract or covenant would walk through the path as a way of saying, "if I break my word, you can walk through my blood like this." Imagine if we had this sort of thing as a part of our wedding ceremonies at Shoreline! Abraham sees this and gets scared to death because he knows that there is no way he can keep up his end of the bargain with God. Abraham knows that he will fail God. So God in the form of a pot on fire, walks through the trough a second time.

What an incredible setup for the eucharist! Humanity did break the covenant, many times the last time I checked. Thankfully God walked through a second time. He did more than just walk through, God spilled His own blood to renew the covenant between Him and his creation. Our sins are more than covered, we have been more than merely forgiven. Through Christ's sacrifice, God has made and is making us whole!

That is why, "While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples saying, "Take and eat; this is my body."

Back From Challenge Camp

I just got back from a great youth ministry experience. Several seasons of my life converged in one evening and it was quite overwhelming. This was caused by the realization that I already knew many of the young people transitioning into jhi. I knew them as YOUNG kids though. I know their parents and older siblings that have already graduated from jhi and high school. It's fun to see entire families move through the ministry here.  In the previous post I talked about how our Children's pastor ivited me to a special event for the outgoing 6th graders. I drove out to Giddings Texas about an hour away with one of the leaders from our middle school team, Matthew. It's so fun talking about ministry and catching up with our leaders. He's been on vacation, working hard, and going to school full time so we haven't caught up in quite a while. Matthew is a fantastic relational leader in middle school and high school groups and is a tremendous support to me administratively. It was nice just to chat on the way there and on the way back.

Camp Tejas is amazing. Our youth ministry at church has been on the waiting list for this camp for quite some time, but it's always too full to find a week for us to enjoy it. The camp will be well worth the wait. I was so impressed. Speaking of impressed, I was blown away by how smoothly the teams moved in and out of the services with so many kids to take care of. Pastor Ken and his team do a tremendous job with organizing summer camps!

After their evening service, we took the kids transitioning out of the 5th grade and into our middle school ministry on a hay ride. I thought it was interesting that most of them thought we were going to try to scare them or leave them in the woods. It was so cute that they were showing that they still wanted to be taken care of. The hay-ride was a great chance to get to know the kids and laugh a lot. for 6th graders, they were so fun, so bright, and FUNNY! One girl kept pulling hey out of the stack and saying, "HEY!" as if to say hello. Brilliant!

At the end of the hey-ride we came to a clearing with a huge campfire in it. Pastor Ken talked about how important this week is in their lives and how important the next few years will be in their lives and that they can nail down a commitment that night to serve God. Then he gave the youth ministry a huge endorsement and tried to settle their fears about the unknown youth ministry transition. We sang some praise songs and then I had a chance to encourage our kids to care more about what God says about them than way people say about them. I tried to unpack that idea in light of some embarrassing examples from my journey through middle school. I'm not sure how much of the talk they will remember because the fire was so stinkin' cool, but we did connect.

The thing that blew me a way was Pastor Ken asking them to commit to attending our middle school service for a year and really endorsing me and the jhi ministry. I was overcome by this show of trust because those kids LOVE him. Something really good is cookin' at our church. Departments are communicating. Parents are getting involved. Leaders are stepping forward from the congregation to help out the youth ministry. I can't wait to see what happens!

Rights of Passage: Challenge Camp

Today Shoreline's ministry to children is going to challenge camp! I'm going up tonight. We missed doing summer camp this year for middle school and high school, so this will be my summer camp fix for the year. In addition, I'm taking one of our all-star volunteers from middle school ministry with me in the car. Having Matthew with me will help redeem some of that driving time!


Tonight after the summer camp dinner and service we will do a hay-ride out to a bonfire for all of our kids going into the 6th grade. We'll have a worship leader with a guitar out there and have a moment with them to mark the transition in their lives. Pastor Ken, the children's pastor here at Shoreline has been so great to work with these past few years. For quite some time we've been trying to think about the best way to transition families from children's ministry into youth ministry. This is a great first step. 

A couple of years ago I went to a breakout session about rights of passage at the YS National Youth Workers Convention. The Author, Rick Bundschuh taught that many of our problems in western culture stem from a lack of rights of passage. Young people are forced to mark their own path to adult hood. I learned that it's important for a community of adults to mark out a path to adulthood, articulate it to their young people, and then affirm when adults emerge from adolescence. Tonight is a nice start. After all, we are only transitioning them out of elementary school, but hopefully it will be a night that these kids look back on as one of the road markers on their way to growing up.

5 Lessons from Starting Shoreline Leadership College

We began with 6 students in our full time discipleship program designed to train the church's future leaders. We're 1/2 way through our first 7 month run and here are 5 lessons I've taken away from this experience.

1.) Discipleship is messy.

2.) People respond well to clearly communicated boundaries/expectations.

2B.) People want accountability when they are trying to grow.

3.) Young adults keep you on your toes and will ask direct questions. If your not careful, those questions can catch you off guard.

4.) Most people want to help. Ask!

5.) When things go wrong, be honest, do what you can to make sure mistakes are not repeated, and treat others with generous portions of grace-because you are getting tons of it!

Receiving the Gift

Luke 2:8-14

Today Pastor Rob used this text in his sermon. He highlighted the words of the Angel, in particular. "...good news, great joy...for everybody" If the message of Jesus' birth is supposed to give life and peace, why are so many people stressed out?

This message struck a chord with me. I don't suffer from "Christmas Stress Syndrome," but I do feel the bustle of the season. There are expectations to meet, stuff to buy, and extra energy to put out (Christmas cards etc. . These symptoms happen most often when my focus gets shifted off of the reason we are really celebrating.

May you, this day get a glimpse of a G-d that is bent TOWARD His children. When you are decorating, filling our cards, and going from party to party, may you be reminded of a savior that, "put on flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood." (John 1)

Welcome Back Pastors Rob and Laura!

I just came across this video on our church's website. I could attend due to other responsibilities with the middle schoolers. So many friends and family have extended prayers and well wishes to our church since loosing Caleb. Thank you so much for that. This video contains highlights from our Pastors' first service back with us since loosing their son.

Welcome Back! - Aug 30, 2009 from Bryan Martin on Vimeo.

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