Create Redemptive Moments

Summer camp is a transformational time for the youth I know.  That is why I am working so hard to get them there.   Here are just a few of the most powerful ways it can change a student forever.

1.  It’s puts student-leader relationships on Miracle Grow.
   
2. Being outside the city, helps students imagine their lives can look different.
   
3.  Students get to experience uninhibited moments of celebration and joy, like this.
   
4. That moment when you finally get the ‘cool guys’ to sing along.<CLICK PICTURE>
   
5.  Love connections- You know you had that 'camp crush' back in the day.
   
6. Students feel a blend of ownership and gratitude as they experience a $300 + camp for $50 and sweat equity.   Every Saturday, from now until June 27, students will be working to pay their way to camp.
   

Consider partnering with us, by scholarship-ing students at the $50, $100, $200, or $300 levels HERE NOW (just designate camp scholarship).   You can help create redemptive moments.  You can also come be IN THEM.  I can get you in a cabin, serving as a counselor.  Just say the words.

Face-broke dot com

We didn't get this idea from a "Youth Group Activities!" book.  We didn't swallow the air from helium balloons, and hold an activity brainstorming session.

This one came from the professional art world.  It came from commercial photographer Wes Naman.

For him, wrapping Christmas with Scotch tape became a 5th-grade exercise of distorting his own face.   Looking into a mirror, he realized that he'd be able to capture some startling 'mugs.'  So he involved his friends.   And they went 'bizerk' with it.  Pretty quickly, his Scotch Tape Series became ultra famous.

Then we decided to adapt the idea for a Monday night activity with students.
We figured this could be a home run:

5th grade humor + breaking a typical rule (wasting tape) + pictures of themselves = WINNER

We were right.  Fun in the taping.  Fun in the photographing.  Fun reviewing the best shots of the night.

We even gave the winner $20 towards summer camp.

Even our volunteer leaders got in on the fun:

Super ridiculous.

Props to Wes.

Caught Up

In the last month or so, four young men that I have come to love have found themselves incarcerated.   They didn’t actually wake up and just “find themselves” there.  As we say in the neighborhood, they got ‘caught up.’  They gave up on the delayed gratification thing.  It is clear that my friends are delayed in their mastery of impulse control. That is a nice way of saying it. 

In the moment, these boys forgot who God made them to be.  Or maybe they just haven’t ever known the dreams God has for them.   It’s my job to help them see this.

Ever since I learned of these situations, I haven’t been able to shake it.   I can’t stop thinking about it.   Part of it is, I am coming to love these guys like sons.   And any parent, even if they are disappointed in their kids, worries about them.  I wonder how they are standing up to life on the inside.  I wonder if they will have to fight to get “cred” in there.   I wonder what they’ll eat and if they’ll sleep well.  I wonder when they will get out and if their hearts will be harder as a result of their stay.

Another reason I can’t shake it, is the volume.  Too many of our boys are being incarcerated.   It’s markedly disproportional. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world (1.6 million in 2010).  African Americans are incarcerated about 4 times as much as their White and Latino peers.   And men are locked up nearly 7 times as much as women.   The anecdotal evidence of my four boys bolsters this 2010 US Department of Justice Report.

These guys do not set out to end up here.  Melissa can tell you.  One of the particular boys I am writing about, was an eager learner in her 5^th grade elementary classroom about six years ago.  She worried about him then.  But she was also hopeful.  She worked with both mom and dad (who lived separately) to keep him on track.  “He is not a bad kid,” she reminds me even today.  Perhaps he just isn’t hearing that enough, from people that really matter to him.

In light of the disturbing news in my neighborhood, I am moved by Jesus’ exhortation to peruse and love boys like this.   He uses the example of shepherd, responsible for a flock of 100 sheep.   “If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off?” (Matthew 18:12).  

I am also reminded that finding a way to love these boys matters.   One day coming, many will ask, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

The reply will come, Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Mathew 25).

You see, we can’t get out of it.   If we call ourselves by His name, we must go to these lengths and to these far out places.   In my context, and with these particular boys on my heart, I intend to venture into the San Diego Juvenile Detention Center.   I don’t want to go.   But I must.

My appointment with the head chaplain is about a week away.

Pray with me for our boys.  Pray that they might grow to see themselves as God does.  Pray that they then live into that.

Along the Jericho Road of San Diego

Martin Luther King Jr. asked a piercing question the day before he was assassinated.  It should stir us all, to the core.

His question came on the heels of illustrating the parable of the Good Samaritan.  As Jesus shared it, a man was beaten badly along the Jericho Road.  But people just passed him by.  The individuals that should have stopped didn't.   Even the religious folks passed the beaten man by.  They left him in the ditch.  

There were reasons not to stop.  There was danger.  It could have been a setup.  But MLK and Jesus do not let us off the hook with calculated rationale. Martin Luther pushes back this way:

"The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?" The question is, "If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question.

It's simple, yet radical.  Real love moves towards pain.  It thinks about others first. Transformative love risks a lot.  And crazy love might cost us everything.

For the people in our neighborhood, and in light of the brokenness they face, we can't keep walking by.

At our recent banquet, we were able to highlight a few stories of our neighbors and their journeys along the Jericho Road of San Diego.  

Take a 3 minutes and reflect on MLK's question as applies to your context.   It should stir you.  It does me.

<<click image to view>>

A Backlog of Ridiculousness

While I was away, one of my emerging leaders lost a foot-race to a remote control car.  And his buddies couldn't stop laughing.  <<Click the picture to see the actual race>>.

I walked up on an 'Urban' (apparently) coyote, chilling on our property.

 Our biggest, baddest dude brought his stuffed animal to Mission Week.  Bird and Ernie were something to see.

 We made mustaches cool again, bringing people one step closer to THE image of Jesus.

 Walking outside our church building recently on a Sunday morning, we weren't met by a greeting team, or a refreshment table, or an info-booth.  Instead, we got stared down by the neighborhood creeper, in his "chonies."

Loving the Kleptomaniacs Among Us

Jesus’ words are hard to take seriously.  Seriously.

Try to think about today’s application of these:

“If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”

“And if anyone wants to sue you and takes your shirt, hand over your coat as well.”

“If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.”

As students would say, “That’s cray-cray!”

@ UrbanLife

None of these were my first thoughts when the pizza delivery guy told me his phone was stolen out of his car.  He was delivering 25 pizzas for the UrbanLife club meeting, when one of our students helped themselves to his Samsung Galaxy 3.

The timing was horrible.  Only 5 minutes before we were about to warmly welcome our high school friends into the building.  Adult volunteers were praying for the evening.  The pizza guy was standing at the door, arms crossed and brow sweating, just waiting for Sherlock Holmes to show up.  And nobody was talking. ‘ Snitching’ is not an option for students.

Stealing is commonplace, I am quickly learning.   We are down 3 smart phones in 3 months at UrbanLife.  Word on the street, is that a whole core of our students are taking items to the pawn shop, and splitting the proceeds.

Immediately, I feel anger and fear. 

 “Why would they do this? … Don’t they realize that we are providing them a meal?...What if they steal from me?...Don’t they realize that this is safe space?...A church?...What if they steal from the wrong person?...What if this behavior continues?...Doesn’t it lead to jail-time and more serious crimes?”

Interestingly, I am seeing stealing happen in my own nuclear family.  One day, a hundred-dollar bill made it out the door and to school.  More recently, the teacher’s supplies made it into my child’s backpack and back home.   When it is my own kid, it really gets me scared.

But I am learning

I am learning that stealing (and then lying about it after) are super common effects of children that experience trauma.   I am learning that the behavior is usually not premeditated, willful, or targeted to hurt a specific person.  Instead, the behavior begins from an unconscious place.   Children and youth who steal are seeking to be comforted.  According to Bryan Post PhD/LCSW, stealing is “an external attempt to soothe an internal state.”  It’s really not even about the item taken for the individual that steals.  It is more about the rush of chemicals (endorphins) in the brain that occurs for them.  Stealing creates a temporary state of ecstasy for that child or youth.

Just this basic understanding helps me greatly.

My revised understanding has me thanking God for the stealing. 

Here is why:  If we understand the stealing behavior to be an impersonal cry for help, we have been given some valuable information.  But more than that, we are served up a potentially transformative interaction with students, if we can act out of love, rather than fear.   In the short term, it looks like overlooking the stealing.  It looks like affirming the relationship and your love for the youth, even if it is obvious that the student is involved.  It may even mean offering the youth more of the thing they just stole. I know…that’s crazy.  But it really closely approximates a forgiveness-ethic that changes people.   It’s the Jesus way.

It also means, after time has passed and fear of punishment is not looming, discussing it directly.

“Hey I care about you.  But I really hurt when you tell a lie or take things.  I know the only time you do that is when you are really stressed out.  Would you come to me next time you feel that way?”

My attempt went like this…

I decided that I wanted to pay the pizza man for his lost phone.  It happened on our property and the phone was taken from inside his car.    But I also wanted students to know that it was me, indirectly, that they stole from.

With two students in my car, I traveled to the bank.  I asked them to wait while I got out $180 cash.   Then we drove to the pizza joint.   I didn’t believe that either of these two took the phone.  But I do know they know who did.  And they may have benefited from the resale.  I walked in alone and gave the cash to the victim.   Re-entering the car, I really wanted to go on and on about my disappointment and disbelief of the event.   Instead, I said, “Please spread the word on the street, that I love the person who took the phone, and that they stole the phone from me.”

That was it.

Are you Kidding?

Their disbelief was obvious.

“That’s why I’m not a Christian.  That is some crazy shit right there.”

I am praying that moments like these turn redemptive.

Ministry in a Climatic Wonderland

Monday school was out.

Because we live in a climatic wonderland, I was able to take students sledding in the snow and then surfing at the beach, all in one day.  An hour-long drive was the only thing separating the two extreme sporting activities. 

To keep with the theme of ridiculousness, I built a jump in the snow and then modeled what not to do when you are 35 years old.

I can't help but share the moment I walked up to my Congolese refugee friend that was sporting my surfing wetsuit, both inside-out and backwards!

Finally, be reminded that you can always throw a potato in some foil and then into the coals of a fire, on a night you don't feel like cooking.

The epic environment, time in the van, and shrieks of joy all made for valuable moments of relationship building and ministry of presence with students.