Hi, my name is Roy and I am and always have been a fan of Country Music.

Over the years I’ve seen many an artist come and go, from one hit wonders to others whose music production is prolific. Every once in a while someone will come along and challenge traditional assumptions about what “Country” music is. When I was a teenager, that person was Garth Brooks. Today it is Taylor Swift. Her popularity with the masses–not all of them teen girls–has confounded the country music establishment and left them begrudgingly bestowing upon her in the last few years a veritable truck load of the industry’s highest honors.

And while many, and perhaps most of who may be reading this, may not be a fan of Taylor, you cannot ignore the phenomenon of what she has accomplished and the following she has amassed at such a young age. We who minister to others can learn a thing or two from her. Now mind you, I’m not suggesting we strive to be “popular.” But we can and should always be working to deliver Christ’s timeless message in a way that resonates with the culture we live.

• Be real—Be yourself.
• Meet people where they are, not where you want them to be.
• Observe life, people (including yourself) and human nature closely. Try to understand what they really feel, what they hope for, what they long for (this really helps with the previous).
• Speak from your heart. It reveals your humanity. People are tired of talking, singing, preaching and commenting heads. They yearn to connect with the humanity, of others.
• Lean into your gifts. People  “throw rocks at things that shine” but their negativity will fade. Be indifferent to the good opinion of others and do what God has put you here to do. 
• Real life is spiritual—in the words of Tiellard De Jardin “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” We need to help people access spirituality amidst their everyday lives.
• Share your passion and your joy with others.
• Youth can manifest incredible wisdom. Our patronizing paradigms and pride interfere with us seeing and hearing God’s wisdom “out of the mouths of babes”
• Love is still a universal language. In a world which is becoming increasingly virtually connected, the masses lead lives of quiet isolation.  People are starving for intimacy (to know and be known) and struggling to hope in lasting companionship.
• Don’t assume you know who your audience is. When you speak from your heart the people who are attracted to you and your message may surprise you.

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• Four Reasons We Avoid Prayer

Prayer time often feels like an unsuccessful sifting through my basket of unmatched socks, saying “screw it”, throwing all of my unmatched socks in the trash and heading to Wal Mart to buy a new batch.

Today was much the same. Of the 50 minutes I sat on the couch in my office to pray my time was spent roughly like this:

20 minutes thinking about the stuff I have to get done.

3 minutes looking for the perfect pen and paper to record these interruptions.

2 minutes doodling because I’d forgotten what I wanted to remember.

5 minutes beating myself up for things that won’t get done or done to my perfectionist standards.

1 minute feeling guilty that my wife has to work and I don’t provide enough for her to stay home with our youngest son.

1 minute thinking about emails I received about my last article telling me how wonderful I am.

1 minute thinking about a recent Facebook post which prompted one person to message me suggesting I’ve forsaken my faith and God and were pretty sure I was on the verge of inventing a new heresy.

1 minute on my iPhone looking for an app on prayer.

Laughed when I thought about my friend choking on a piece of pizza last night when his mother in law greeted me saying “I hear you’re a renowned speaker. And then seeing my wife’s face which indicated she could substitute a number of other words for ‘speaker’ and knowing she’d be more correct.

Felt a sudden pain in my side and worried for several minutes I was having appendicitis.

Realized it was a result of the bologna sandwich, cheese puffs and diet coke I had slammed down for lunch in honor of my late cousin Howard–whom when we were four I allegedly (according to HIS mother) slammed a real phone over his head for finishing his cheese puffs and reaching into my plate and taking two of mine. Belly laughed out loud because I’d nearly done it again three years ago when we were 34.

Concluded I wasn’t praying well and I should do something productive.

Stood up and threw darts—missed the board, hit my damn diploma and sat back down to give God another chance.

Felt sad. Sensed God put his arm around me and say nothing.

Started to cry.

Stopped crying.

Sensed God say, “I’m really sorry about Howard.”

Nodded, and said “Its good to know you noticed and care.”

Felt awkward, thought about changing the subject to darts, but couldn’t bear to hear God validate the fact that I suck at darts.

Heard God say, “I know how much you loved him. I can’t imagine how much you miss him.”

Started crying again.

Got up to start working and said “I may not be here tomorrow, or the next day. And Sunday, as you know I focus more on the boys than I do you, so… maybe Monday?”

God smiled.

“But I may be back tomorrow, it just depends how I feel.” I said.

Sensed God say, “I’ve got an iEverything now and have Hanging with Friends and Angry Birds, so I have plenty to keep me busy while I wait. Don’t worry about me. I’m good. I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

“Thanks.”

Prayer: Lord, help me to pray as I can, not as I cannot. Amen.

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• Four Reasons We Avoid Prayer
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I’m grateful to my colleague Melissa Lowery, L.P.C. for allowing me to post her excellent article on handling the inevitable disappointments we experience when “life” doesn’t go our way. 

I was inspired by a recent women’s event at Asbury United Methodist Church to think on my own spiritual journey, and if I had my own pearls of wisdom, or “pearls of faith” to pass on, what would they be? It simply comes down to one pride-swallowing admission: Thank you, Lord, for being so much smarter than I am.

I am a planner. I will not say that I am a control freak (who wants to admit that?), but I do like for things to go predictably according to my expectations. No one likes the feelings of disappointment and anxiety that go along with adjustment and, dare I say it, being wrong. But, I am infinitely grateful that my mistakes and well-intentioned plans are overseen by someone who knows so much more than I do about what is right for me.

So, how do we engage in a relationship with God that is not equivalent to that of a petulant child (“Here, Lord, I give this over to you… No, now I want it back… No, you can take it… No, it’s mine.”)? Is it humanly possible to trust God more than we trust ourselves? Larry Crabb suggests there are steps in the spiritual process that allow for pain, change, and healing, all in the journey of bringing us closer to God through self-awareness:

1)    “Shattered dreams are necessary for spiritual growth.” We often feel we know what is best, and we establish dreams and hopes in pursuit of that perception. So, we experience disappointment and even grief when they do not go according to plan. Some dreams need to be broken in order to proceed the way God intends.

2)    “Something wonderful survives everything terrible, and it surfaces most clearly when we hurt.” Looking back, some of my most challenging times in life brought on the strongest, most fervent efforts of soul-searching. I was open to new emotions, insights, and relationships, because I recognized whatever I was previously doing had not worked.

3)    “Some dreams important to us will shatter, and the realization that God could have fulfilled that dream pushes us into a terrible battle with Him.” When a most cherished dream is shattered, such as the death of a loved one, our nature is to question God – why did He allow it, or why did He not prevent it? At some point, we experience tension with God.

4)   “Only an experience of deep pain develops our capacity for recognizing and enjoying true life.” If I always give my daughter candy, she will never learn to like vegetables. Just as we experience lesser wants to our satisfaction, we never know to strive for something greater.

5)    “No matter what happens in life, a wonderful dream is available… That experience, strange at first, will eventually be recognized as joy.” The past is not to be recaptured but to be used as a launching pad for new, joyful dreams as God designs.

If we trust God’s dreams for us, not our own, we are open to experience joy. If a dream is shattered, we should feel as we need to feel – hurt, sad, confused – then, we open ourselves to what is next on our path. The more confidence we have in God, the more confidence we have in our own judgment to make sound and faithful decisions for our lives.

Melissa Lowery is a counselor at Pax Renwal Center where she specializes in working with adolescents, phase of life issues for women, and couples counseling. She lives with her daughter Claire and husband Rob in Lafayette, LA. Email her at melissa@paxrenewalcenter.com .

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Bud Welch’s 23-year-old daughter, Julie, was killed when the Murrah Federal Building was bombed in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. He wrote in 2001 about his journey and struggle in the process of forgiveness.

Statue outside the Murrah bldg in OK city. Below statue reads "And Jesus Wept"

“All my life I have opposed the death penalty. Friends used to tell me that if anyone ever killed one of my family members, I would change. But I always said I’d stick to my guns. Until April 19.

The first four or five weeks after the bombing I had so much anger, pain, hatred and revenge, that I realized why, when someone is charged with a violent crime, they transport him in a bullet-proof vest. It’s because people like me would try to kill him.

By the end of 1995 I was in such bad shape, I was drinking heavily and smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. I was stuck, emotionally, on April 19. I just couldn’t get over it. But I knew I had to do something about it. That’s when I went down to the bombing site.

It was a cold January afternoon, and I stood there watching hundreds of people walking along the chain link fence that surrounded the lot where the Murrah Building had stood. I was thinking about the death penalty, and how I wanted nothing more than to see Timothy McVeigh, and anyone else responsible for the bombing, fried.

But I was also beginning to wonder whether I would really feel any better once they were executed. Every time I asked myself that question, I got the same answer: No. Nothing positive would come from it. It wouldn’t bring Julie back. After all, it was hatred and revenge that made me want to see them dead, and those two things were the very reason that Julie and 167 others were dead….

Forgiveness is a struggle, but it’s one I need to wage. Forgiving is not something you just wake up one morning and decide to do. You have to work through your anger and your hatred as long as it’s there. You try to live each day a little better than the one before.”

Source: The Plough Reader Spring 2001

H/t to Inward/Outward

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One evening last week my wife, Mindi, was frantically searching for a “paper” that needed to be signed and returned to school with our 1st grade son Max. After

From Hugh MacLeod's Gapingvoid Blog

an exasperated, resigned sigh, she said “Why can’t we get it together? What’s wrong with us? It seems like everyone else has it all together except us.”

“I hear ya.” I said. “I feel that way too–alot. But I know for a fact that everybody doesn’t have it all together.”

Despite well maintained homes, vehicles, clothing, shiny credit cards, trendy Christmas cards, the latest in Halloween décor, and the smiles no one has it all together. The reality is that on any given day most people….

…feel stuck in the quicksand of grief watching life pass them by.
…put their lives on hold in order to take care of a sick relative.
…watch urgent items on their “to do” list fall through the cracks because life served them up something critical which demanded all their attention.
…worry they are not doing enough, saying the right things or doing too much for their kids.
…feel as though they should be doing something more meaningful, “purpose driven” with their lives.
…regret not spending enough time with or saying I love you enough to a loved one before they died
…live beyond their means
…get behind on their taxes.
…regret making poor decisions.
…sleep, eat, drink, spend, talk, surf, play too much.
…pray to little, not well enough.
…put off important things to play with their kids.
…put off their kids to get important things done.
…feel a mixture of guilt and anxiety about both of the previous two
…don’t exercise—or at least as often as they should.
…don’t follow their doctor’s, therapist’s advice.
…feel like they’re not getting anything out of Mass.
…believe everyone’s holier than them
…wish their kids would eat their vegetables.
…wish they ate their vegetables.
…see the connection between the previous two but don’t feel like doing anything about it.
…have messy houses which they scramble to clean (throw stuff in closets and under beds) or have cleaned before guests arrive.
…put off visiting our sick or aging relative.
…don’t go to the graveyard.
…don’t visit relatives or friends in the nursing home.
…forget to send thank you notes.
…have to borrow money from relatives, friends and institutions.
…have had days when they don’t want to get out of bed.
…wonder if God hears their prayers.
…wonder if God cares.

St. Paul said it best: we all fall somewhere short of God’s glory. This isn’t a pass to be a “slacker”, but does help to explain why no one has nor ever will have it all together. It invites us to trust a God who dwells within and among us who does hold it all together. It points to the counterintuitive love of a God who cares more about being together with us than us holding it together for him.

Prayer: God, give us the grace to allow you to be the Lord of the Messiness and Untogetherness of our Lives. Amen.

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I’m in the final stretch of completing my new book. (yaye!) One chapter is entitled “Teens don’t need us for answers. They need us to hold them in their questions.” Searching for a quote to begin the chapter, I stumbled across this gem by Mike Yaconelli in my worn out copy of his book Dangerous Wonder.

“In a healthy family children’s questions are not about answers—their questions are about relationship. Children intuitively know their questions are welcome, appreciated. Safe. And not only are children’s questions welcome, but they are welcome. In a welcoming environment where questions are safe, children are infected with curiosity—a fascination with truth, an unrelenting hunger to know and be known, to capture and be captured, to touch and to be touched. When these children finally fall asleep at night, they are secure in the knowledge that the one who loves them is bigger than all their questions. They can sleep deeply, knowing they are safe in the arms of the Keeper of their questions”[emphasis added] (p. 35).

The Power of a Good Question

I’m often asked by catechists, teachers and parents “How would you answer this question: _______ (insert any number of tough questions posed by adolescents)” and usually model for them my answer by asking, “How would you answer that question?” I’m not being pedantic. I’m trying to show them that with the right questions we can lead people to deeper answers that they won’t soon forget. Often, when teens (and adults) want when they ask us those difficult faith questions, they’re not seeking an intellectual answer. They can find those online. They want us to validate their asking of the question and lead them to truth–not give it to them.

In over 30 years of formal education, I have one regret. It is that I spent more time amassing answers than I did I collecting questions. Today, I have a growing collection in a three ring binder near my desk. Today my students, both young and old, my children and my clients don’t need my answers as much as they need me to keep them, to hold them in their questions.

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Boys will be boys–but what does that mean for boys today? Psychologist Philip Zimbardo argues that young men growing up in this digital age are “digitally rewiring” their brains. Some of the effects include inability to be intimate both physically and emotionally and a greater social awkwardness in face to face interactions. He suggests that an alarming number of men experience arousal addiction which, he argues, is worse than being addicted to substances. With substance addiction you simply want more, unlike arousal where one wants different.

What implications will this have for those of us ministering to younger generations of men?

H/t to Scott Miller at the Catholic Youth Ministry Blog for posting this video and his thoughts.

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I’ve recently taken to the “sport” of darts. For a long time I focused on hitting the Bull’s Eye. I always assumed (as do most non-dart throwers) that hitting the bullseye was the most important, valuable shot.

Not so. Its slightly above that—the triple 20. The bull’s eye scores 50, while triple 20 is…you get the math

It can be easy to focus on the wrong goal. In no area is this more true than in Spirituality and Religion.

In Old Testament times we focused on a poor goat sending it off into the desert with our wrongs on its back. In the New Testament we did the same to non-Jews, hookers, tax collectors… and Jesus.

Religion is a Latin word which mean “To put back together.” Its purpose is to help put us “back together” with God. To that end, it is a great tool. For me, Christian Catholicism is the best tool I can find—and I’ve shopped a lot!

Yet even today the pattern of losing focus repeats itself.  For many religion has become an end in and of itself. Going to Church, praying, and following a certain ways of living are the goal—instead of a means to an end.

Intimacy with God is, always has been and always will be the goal.

An increasing number of people today are disenchanted with the Church and formal religion because they have experienced them portrayed and treated as idols. They’ve been told critiquing the tool or its craftsmen are tantamount to blasphemy. So they quietly slip into a passionless resignation, stop showing up, or stop caring while going through the motions. Their legacy? Bitter, cynical, cafeteria catholics who “can’t handle the truth”, and “have lost their way.”

This is not my experience of these people who comprise 85-90% of our Church. They are resistant not because they are bad, relativistic or lackluster, but because they don’t feel heard and understood. They’ve grown weary of being “fussed at” and talked down to because they don’t dress appropriately, contracept, cohabitate, listen to the wrong music, don’t spend enough time with their kids, work too much, spend too much, don’t give enough, don’t take the faith life of their children seriously enough and don’t make enough time to read Theology of the Body.

If the New Evangelization is going to be New, we must do something new. We must spend more energy and time understanding our target demographic and speaking to their perceived needs, hurts and fears offering them hope by holding up the goal, not the method. If not, our evangelization isn’t going to be new, it’ll be an ineffective, albeit refurbished model of scapegoating which drives shame laden sinners into the desert instead leading burdened sons and daughters home to their Father.

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As you read this brief list, don’t think “I do this.” or “I don’t do this” but rather “How well do I meet this need in the young people in my life?” “What is one thing I can do, one shift I can make to do better in this area?”

1. Attention

Such a basic human emotional need that we often take it for granted when life gets busy and other things become more urgent. Young people especially need our attention. Contrary to what some suggest, our greatest fear is not rejection (per se) but being ignored. When we attend to young people we, in a very real way, they experience us “seeing them” and thus validate their presence as worthwhile.

2. To Feel Heard

We all need to feel heard, but this is especially important for children and adolescents. Hearing a young person involves more than simply listening to them. It involves a committment on our part to listen to them until they feel heard. And very often until they (while talking) become clear on what they’re trying to say.

3. Intimacy

We are created to live in union with God. We participate in that union sacramentally and in relationships in this life. More than anything else young people desire a meaningful relationship with their parents (or other significant adults) but when they cannot get that, they will settle for other people, things and experiences.

4. Access to the Sacred

Youth don’t need religious data as much as they need us to provide and create for them spaces where they can “connect” with the Sacred. In addition to Mass, these include retreats, mission trips, prayer experiences, times of silence and focused meditation. As young people learn to access the sacred in a focused way the foundation is laid to access the sacred in the events of everyday life.

5. A Safe Place

This isn’t always a geographical place. For many youth, home and school are not safe places which drives them to seek relational safey. Teens often say “When I’m with _______ I feel like everything’s going to be OK.” Many adolescents find this in their friends and in a special way in their boyfriends and girlfriends. Even when these relationships are short and/or transient, teens still experience them as vital because they meet such an important need in their lives.

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H/t to Hugh Mcleod

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