Category Archives: ministry

last hurrah (or hurl) of gross youth ministry games

after the post about the greatest camp picture ever, i’ve gotten several hundred hits on that one story. it’s spurred numerous conversations about games designed to make kids puke at youth group and most discussions include note-taking on good ideas for future gross games.

but i’ll never forget the last time i played a gross food game during youth group.

travis and i had been out earlier that week having lunch together when we realized we’d never been to the huge asian supermarket over by sharonville. after a tasty meal, we hit the store and were blown away by gross possibilities presented in the form of snacks and prepared foods comprised of creatures we thought to be inedible.

the most intriguing of these items?

prepared, shredded jellyfish with a spice packet. it looked exactly like cooked ramen noodles and the spice packet looked like capsicum pepper oil.

highly pleased with my find, that week at youth group i set out to find someone willing to give this sea-creature nastiness a try.

teenagers are easy and most can be bought for a very low price. in this case, cherry cordial offered to eat the jellyfish in exchange for a CD of some sort.

80 high schoolers gathered around to watch me tear the package open, take a whiff (whew! NASTY!), dump it into a bowl and offer him the spice packet (he declined, and wisely so, i think).

and we all held our collective breath as he took the first bite and chewed. and chewed. and chewed.

now, one rule of youth ministry “games” is that they must be quick. 80 kids who DON’T get to play MUST be entertained SOMEHOW. either all the jellyfish needed to be eaten, he needed to puke, or he needed to spit it out, and refuse to eat another bite. if one of these things doesn’t happen early, the chewing chewing chewing gets… old. boring. unentertaining.

and he chewed. and his face was scrunched and it was obviously nasty tasting. but he kept trying, and interest started to wane.

i began to pick on him and made my first mistake of the night: “c’mon, cordial! how bad could that stuff actually be? get going, fool!”

and he chewed, still on the first bite.

and i went over, teased him a bit more and then made my second mistake: i took one strand of the jellyfish and made a production out of putting it into my mouth.

and i chewed. and chewed. and wanted to puke. and quickly spit the salty, rubbery, foul-tasting treat out to much laughter and gagging noises from the crowd.

i handed cherry the CD, apologized to him for the jellyfish, and never played another gross food game during youth group again.

greatest. camp. picture. ever.

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doing camp as a youth minister was almost always a hugely fun thing. a week of craziness, fun, fellowship, music, teaching, games, sloppy olympics, teams, competitions, points, one-upping, late nights, and fun relationships.

and vomit.

lise and i did senior high camp at west river in maryland every summer for 5 or 6 years. as camps go, this place was awesome. our fellow leaders were great. the camp leadership was great. the kids who showed up every summer were great. and we always had competitions. kids were broken into teams and points were given in an archaic manner for all sorts of things: winning games, singing songs, random acts of kindness, answering questions, being creative, bringing blow pops for the camp director, asking nicely, etc. the amount of points given were generally arbitrary making the system of awarding them all the more difficult to comprehend.

but at the end of the week, a trophy was given to the team with the most points, so to say there was fierce competition for them is an understatement.

but vomit – no, the first vomit – that was like, the holy grail of points.

we always said that if someone didn’t puke at camp, we weren’t doing our jobs very well.

the year was 2002. it was the third day of camp and we had yet to have any confirmed reports of hurling. tensions were running high as we put our heads together to come up with some gross sort of game that would surely produce the puke we so desired.

but it all proved unnecessary.

as the camp pastor and photographer, i was a popular guy. kids always want their pics taken, right? this particular morning, one young man, whose name is long forgotten, came up to me and said, “scott – you need to stay close by! i’m going to puke for you and i want you to get it on film!” “how are you planning on doing this?” i asked. “i’m drinking a dozen pints of white milk in about 15 minutes. that’s SURE to make me hurl good!” and who was i to argue? every camp-goer knows the rule about humans being unable to drink a gallon of milk in such a short amount of time without the body going into upheaval.

15 minutes later, this kid is looking green. the milk is having its effect and he’s about ready to blow. literally.

he jumps out of his seat, runs out of the dining hall in the middle of games and announcements, positions himself outside at a ninety degree angle, hands on knees, and checks to make sure i’m ready.

and as he puked his guts out, i snapped what must be the greatest camp picture of all time.

it was picture perfect: the solid stream, the intertwining tendrils, the light splatter and eventual pooling of regurgitated milk – of the hundreds of photos i’ve shot in the many years of senior high camp, i kid you not: this is the transcendent picture. pulitzer-worthy? you decide.

he got TONS of points for this, as well he should’ve. that level of dedication to pukedom and senior high camp is rarely found in today’s youth.

going greens

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when you’re the youth pastor at a predominantly african-american church, you come to appreciate the after-church lunches and potlucks more than you do in your traditional white churches.

white church potlucks are predictable affairs – lasagna, waldorf salad, baked beans, some kind of spaghetti cassarole, sandwich rollups bought at sam’s club, desserts bought at the local grocery store. it’s always good, but it’s rarely about the food and more about the company.

but when you hear that your local black baptist church is having a meal after morning service? oh, honey, you better be there! home-made fried chicken, hog maws, butter beans, cornbread, homemade macaroni and cheese, some kind of barbeque, home-cooked pies, cookies – oh, well, this is what i remember.

but my personal favorite dish at these meals was collard greens. the mouth waters at the thought.

my pastor, chris, thought he was The Man when it came to greens. and his greens were good, no doubt, but they just… well, they didn’t hit it. he’d make a bushel of greens each time, but i always hoped that one of the ladies would make theirs and bring it, too – there was something… missing from chris’ greens. he and i argued about this mystery ingredient, but having never made greens myself, i couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

about a year after being at New Creation, chris and i went to our semi-regular lunch at Millie’s over in madisonville. now look: if you want to have soul food done right, and you can’t make it to the church lunch? Millie’s is THE place.

so there we are, sitting in millie’s and i’m begging millie’s sister for a double helping of her greens (my FAVORITE greens of all time), when The Discussion about what’s lacking in chris’ greens comes up.

“my greens are better than this!”
“no, they ain’t – this is The Greens, man! you need to ask her how she does this so you can finally make a GOOD mess of greens some sunday morning!”
“psh, i soak those things 24 hours and add all these spices and cook them to a loving perfection…”
“dude, your greens are good but…”
“you need to stop talkin’ trash about my greens!”
“if you knew how to make ‘em right, i’d have less to talk about and more to eat!”

millie’s sister comes back out and i drag her into the argument. chris relents and they begin to share recipes. chris lists his ingredients and his methods for cleaning and soaking and preparing. she nods with approval every step of the way, until…

“how much lard do you put in them?”
“LARD? i don’t put ANY lard in my greens!” he replied.
“oh, honey, i see what the problem is now. i put two pounds of lard in for each bushel of greens.”

chris and i share a “look” – his look is one of astonishment. my look is one of epiphany.

chris never did make a great mess of greens even after hearing this. but i know now that the trick to good collard greens?

rendered hog fat. lots of it. and save some room for the collards!

tongues twister

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“… i have a prayer language,” he said, almost hesitatingly, as though i might suddenly storm out of the restaurant.

“oh, cool,” i said.

“i’ve had it since i was younger. i’ve never had any kind of public pronouncement or anything, it’s something done in private, during my personal prayer time.”

“Oh, well that’s Scriptural.” and it’s true.

despite my background in non-charismatic churches, i have no problem with tongues and prayer languages that are exhibited in a Scriptural manner and context. why? um. well, it’s Scriptural, duh! now, having said all that, i have never been so moved by the Spirit to speak in tongues or prophecy, or any other type of Spirit-motivated manifestation of messages from God.

but the conversation i had with my new friend greg the other day brought back a rather amusing conversation had several years ago during bible college.

several of us were sitting around talking about the fruits of the spirit – my college was not a big tongues kind of place – if i remember correctly they believe that speaking in tongues ceased a couple generations after the apostles. i must’ve been sleeping during that class.

but there we were, talking away, and one of the guys was from the church of god movement – a charismatic / pentecostal / full gospel denomination that, if this dude represented all we knew about them, then the representation would be rather frightening – he began telling us how, when he was a young boy in the CoG church, they would “help the Spirit along” with certain phrases.

and we genuinely didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.

“certain ‘phrases’ – what does that mean?”

“well, if we were at a revival or something and we weren’t speaking in tongues, we were taught that after a while we should start saying the phrase ‘my knee, my toe’ over and over, slowly at first, then faster, ‘mykneemytoemykneemytoemykneemytoe’ until the Spirit finally kicked in.”

“kicked in,” i said, “like a lawn mower or something?” i had begun to visualize the Spirit waiting for the gas to meet the spark and then saying, “ok! here i come! you got the right combination at last!”

“well, kind of. it seemed to produce the right atmosphere for the Spirit to come.”

and the rest of us didn’t know what to say. so we said nothing, sitting in awkward silence until class started.

later, two of us were recounting this conversation with one of our professors. he said the phrases varied and the one he heard the most was “see my tie, tie my tie” – again, starting off slowly, increasing in speed until miraculously you were “filled with the Holy Spirit” and suddenly you’re speaking in genuine tongue-like fashion.

that kind of “priming the pump” completely takes away from everything the bible says about this type of spiritual gift – there’s no magic incantation or phrase or hokus pocus that will suddenly motivate the Spirit like this.

but when greg talked about tongues as a private prayer language, there is evidence of this in Scripture. to be certain, we could argue (and many have) until we’re blue in the face on the question of whether speaking in tongues genuinely exists in the present or not, but the bottom line is that the focus needs to be on the giver of the gift, not the recipient – working yourself into a babbling lather with ‘conducive’ phrases gives no glory to God.

gosh. i have no pithy one-liner with which to end this post.

summer camp retrospective, pt. I

courtesy drop

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“i overheard two ladies in my congregation talking about courtesy drops one day.”

thus began an interesting conversation with my pastor several years ago.

“courtesy drops?” i asked.

“yeah. you know how in some churches there’s all that faintin’ going on up at the altar during service?”

well, of course i had. i was the youth pastor at an inner-city african-american church. it didn’t happen there much, but it did when other churches would come and visit ours. we had seen it at other churches more frequently. all those fine-looking ladies in their sunday best, large ornate hats on their heads and handkerchiefs in hand, walking up to the altar for prayer. and then it would begin.

sometimes it was subtle. a little moaning, a little movement, then the drop.

other times it was an all-out production. crying. yelling. waving the hanky. hopping up and down. then the big drop.

and there are folks whose job at church is to act as a “catcher” to the droppers. they stand behind the congregant waiting for the moment, then, arms extended, they catch the person who has been “slain in the Spirit” and gently lay them down on the floor until they come around. sometimes a cloth is placed over them, other times they’re left alone completely.

“so, what’s a courtesy drop?”

“well, apparently these two had visited a sister church somewhere in town and the pastor, he called people up for prayer, right? so folk are going up and getting prayed over, but there was no fainting going on. well, the one woman says to the other, ‘well, i felt bad for him [the pastor] that no one was receiving the Spirit, so i went up, done got prayed over, then did a courtesy drop so he felt like God was moving even if no one else was dropping. i didn’t want him to feel bad about hisself.’”

i stared at chris, waiting to hear him laugh and tell me i was gullible and easy.

“dude…,” i said.

“straight up!” he replied.

it was a funny story that we talked about many times afterwards, but i came to only one real conclusion: like we need to give people another reason to not believe or not trust, we have folks who fake things like this just to pump up the minister’s ego on a “slow night” at church?

wonder what the percentage of courtesy drops to real drops is?

uhh… well… dang it!

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it was one of my first nights as a youth leader on my own. i had taken over the ministry from a couple of older folks (read: 40′s / 50′s) and was excited to finally infuse the youth with some youthfulness. being all of 24 years old with a dash of arrogance and a pinch of obnoxious, i’m talking with the group while we’re standing around eating pizza. there might have been 15 of us as my head swelled at the thought of Being In Charge while Being Young And Cool. i wanted to show off a bit and the conversation came to this:

me: well, i’m just excited about working with you guys.
student: why? what’s going to be different now?
me: well, we’re going to have a lot more fun now. i know the folks before me were kinda old and stuff and now it’ll be cool! i mean, i’m 24 years old!
student: um… i’m twelve.

my head popped. my ego deflated. my high-mindedness crashed. i had been served. by someone who was half my age and had no concept of being 24. yea, verily, this conversation HAD to happen (and thank goodness it came early).

and now i teach 5th graders who think 39 is the epitome of ancient. serves me right.

“we need to confirm that you are, in fact, looking to be screwed over again.”

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the email surprised me, i’ll admit. my reaction surprised me, too.

i thought the anger had passed. i really hadn’t thought about it in a while.

but last saturday it reared its ugly head again and i was left angry and speechless.

i received the following email that day:

it was one of the two pastors who screwed me over two years ago from impact church. and after that anger and bitterness passed, i laughed out loud at what the email was asking me to do.

“confirm that you are, in fact, friends with _____.”

and i thought about how “friends” don’t do what he did. how “christians” aren’t supposed to do what he did. especially in light of our extreme need of being ministered to during one of our most difficult times. and how no ministering was offered, only an offer of hush money to cover up their gross mishandling of the situation. and how i was allowed to come up with whatever lie i wanted to tell the church about why i “decided to leave” and they would parrot that to cover their asses, offering no chance of any reconciliation, only more lies and fabrication.

and after i laughed a bit, i thought about how surprised i am at the disappointment that still resides in me because of that situation. i lost a church family because of this guy’s mismanagement. i lost a trust that has always been fragile for me. my integrity was trashed in order to save his (and with the church’s money to keep it quiet).

dunno. the guy certainly has a pair, though.

rob bell in time magazine

if jesus had lived in pensacola…

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he’d have been baptist.

as near as i can tell, every church down here is a baptist church.

this has to be an implication of something but of what, i’m not sure.

the proliferation of baptist churches makes me want to visit the only other denomination with multiple congregations, the seventh day adventists, just out of spite.

ehh… no.

rustypants speaks

teacher. husband. idiot. why should you care? it's beyond me.