This last Sunday I spoke on the Prodigal son, the well known story about an arrogant son, who demands his money from his dad, goes and blows it, hits rock bottom and then he gets the idea, maybe he could go back and work for his dad, as a servant.

But, the dad is waiting and watching for his son, AMAZING to me! How often do prodigals mistreat me or I have friends who are struggling with their kids and my first thought is to say..."Fine, be a jerk, get out of my life". But as I read this story over and over, I just can't get past the part where the father was waiting for his son, ran to him, and threw him a party to welcome him home. It is amazing to me that my God waits for me, because the moral of the story is, I am just like the prodigal...self-centered, a know it all, wanting immediate gratification and God still loves me for who I am, amazing.

My whole gist of the talk was, Now What? How do you deal with a prodigal? We looked at a couple of biblical principles:
1. Unwavering Prayer. Not the sunday school kind of prayer, but on your face, crying out to God. Side note: I have to say it is refreshing being at a church that prays that way. It's been a long time since I have been at a church that actually believes our prayers will be answered.
2. Unending Patience. How do we that? It is so hard, but God is patient with us, we need to be patient with our prodigals and our kids. This is where I mess up the most, losing my patience with my kids. Something everyday I pray about.
3. Unconditional Love. 1 John 3:11 kind of love, Romans 12:9-14 kind of love.

It just amazes me that a holy, loving God would wait and watch for me and welcome me with open arms.

Tired

I am tired all the time! It is weird, I just always feel exhausted. Especially like last night, I went to bed at 8:30, slept right through my alarm at 5:00am and finally got up at 7:15am. Man, that stinks. Yesterday was a rough day, just emotionally and mentally exhausting.

The morning was fun, I was the guest speaker at PCA's spiritual emphasis week, that was fun. It was fun because I totatally threw the kids for a loop. They were expecting the funny, what's coming next kind of talk, and I sat on a stool the entire time and taught out of Luke 5. There were actually a couple of kids sleeping, yes!

Then the afternoon, that was the tough part. Let's just say this, be very careful before you plan events, especially if your the guy in charge, because everything will come back to bite you. Thankfully, two of our board members were available to help me out.

Then the evening, it was fun. We got to have dinner with my mom and brother. My dad was on call, so he was driving hosptial equipment all over the state. But the family got to have a good KFC dinner with my mom and brother. And I guess, their might be a lady friend in my brother's life, but I think that's a secret. But you know what, there are always like 3 or 4 in his life. Went home, did jammies, watched a little 7th heaven, ya...you read that right and then crashed at 8:30pm.

Jay Laffoon in Brighton

My family is having lunch today at Red Robin in Brighton and stinkin Jay Laffoon walks up and says hi. I love Jay Laffoon! I have loved him since I first met him in 1998 and he has been an incredible help/advisor/teacher/supporter of mine over the years. He is an awesome communicator and he has a great conference called Celebrate your Marriage and, oh yes, he is the chaplain for the stinkin PGA! How about that, the chaplain of the PGA.

Anyways, it was really cool seeing him today out of the blue. Tracie and I have always wanted to attend one of the Celebrate conferences and hopefully we will soon. We actually dream of hosting a conference someday for just youth worker's and their spouses and I would love to pull in

Jay & Laura

and

Rand & Marli

, another good set of friends who do some great teaching on marriage and family stuff.

This dream actually started with Tracie, the dream of hosting a conference for youth worker's and spouses. We, like most couples have had our rough moments in marriage, especially years 2-4 when ministry became my life. I totally forgot to communicate with her and she had a hard time vocalizes her worries and she just let it build up. That's not the case now, I try to over to over communicate, which I still end up failing pretty good at, and she rides my case if she doesn't know about something. Especially in ministry, communication is vital for a youth workers marriage.

Project311 hosts our first Metro Detroit Youth Workers Lunch

"What a great lunch"..."Enjoyed every moment"..."I left encouraged"..."It was great being a room filled with youth workers"..."Thank you for caring"..."Can't wait till the next one".

Those were some of the comments we received after our first Youth Workers lunch. When we first started planning the event, I was really expecting around 20 youth workers to attend. But, I started going to town researching all of the youth workers in our area. They all received email after email, phone calls and the best part was that some veteran youth workers gave us the thumbs up to their networks, that was awesome. So in all, we had 95 youth workers attend!!! Wow, it was wild considering the room we rented comfortably holds around 50. Our board was great, and half of them were able to attend, which was very cool. Dave Kurt and Rod Dunlap did a great job talking from the front and we couldn't of done it without Jason Shinn and his hard work with the video and slides. And we had a huge set up team and they rocked!

We were able to provide a great, free lunch for them, provided by SpringHill Camp. A time for them to share ideas and we will email them everybody's results, so more people will get lots of great ideas. And the fun part for us was the surprise! Yeah, we gave away stuff and they didn't know it was coming. The Project311 board really did a great job coming up with sweet give aways, we gave away:

...Books from Group Publishing and Baker Publishing
...Cups, T-shirts and hats from Springhill camp
...Gifts cards to Costco, Best Buy and a few resturants
...Gift card from our friends at www.ymexchange.com
...2 tickets to the Core (Thanks to Youth Specialties)
...Detroit Piston Tickets and Detroit Piston Playoff tickets
...NCAA first round tickets
...2 tickets to the National Youth Workers Conference

So all in all, our goals for the lunch were not to waste anybody's time, to provide them with some great resources, to give them opportunity to share ideas and we wanted to encourage them. I think we did pretty good. Can't wait till the next one!

My kids are workers

So, we have traveled a lot as a family. We have been on retreats together, they have sat through countless chapels and youth group nights and last Friday they helped out at our Youth Workers lunch.

Huh, how about that

I was driving the other day and I passed a middle school. Nothing special about that. But as I drove by, I read the school sign. It read...March is Reading Month. Huh, I thought every month was a reading month.

I am such a Hypocrite!

I am not sure if I spelled that right, but I am crazy hypocrite. This is extremely weird to write, but today I spoke, yeah, like I was the main teacher in our weekend services at 2|42. Why is that weird? Considering that's what I do a lot of...Because it's been a long time since I felt like I was a part of the church leadership at a church and it has been a weird transition to get back into that mode. It's really an honor.

So, today I finished our series on Parenting and my topic was a tough one. We called it...Now What? What to do when you get to the Now What place of life, when your son/daughter or friend or family member is living outside of God's parameters and is living the life of a prodigal. It was an absolute honor! My pastor, Dave Dummit is a great teacher. Now, I am not saying that because I have to or to kiss up, actually I don't even know if he reads this, oh well. But, we have visited a lot of area churches the last 8 months and I have been at church's with descent teachers, but I haven't heard anybody as good as Dave. I felt like my last pastor just spoke at people and Dave really connects with a great style, great fun and great depth. So, it was honor to take his place for a weekend.

So, why am I hypocrite? Because today I spoke about some biblical principles with dealing with prodigals and some parenting basics and tonight I already didn't do what I spoke about. I have been really tired this last week, a lot of late nights, 4 nights this week I got 4 hours of sleep and I had a crazy day on Friday with our Youth Workers Lunch, I studied all day Saturday and Sunday, I spoke twice, had two parents meetings, so I am beat! So, this afternoon, our kids were run down, I was run down, Tracie was run down, I had no energy, and I lost my patience. That's one of the principles I spoke about, having unending patience. Man, I dream of having undending patience with my kids.

I Love Extreme Make Over

I can't help it, I am in love with Extreme Make Over Home Edition. It is the best show on TV! I like it because it is so real and it is so genuine. I have friends around the country who were able to help out with projects on the show and they said that the main folks are the real deal.

It could be because I love give aways. Giving stuff away is really fun and I love how incredibly huge the give aways are one Extreme Make Over.

I am just going to lay this out, I would love to have money. Being a youth pastor for the last 11 years, and Tracie not working, our gross income isn't all that incredible, but we have always tried to be giving. I actually really screwed us up early in our marriage, because I love to buy dinner for folks. I love to be that guy who sneaks the bill and pay for everybody and I did that way too much the first 5 years of marriage and because of it I got us into some money problems. But, I would love to have money. It's amazing how money can change people's lives. I know it's not as important as faith, love, family and all that, but it sure can make a huge difference. My dream job would be traveling around the country visiting youth pastors and sr. pastors and just blessing them. I would love to give someone a mini-van, or cool stuff like that. That's why I love this show so much.

At our Youth Workers Lunch on Friday, we were able to give away some cool stuff. And the best part was, the youth workers who attended didn't know we were giving stuff away. To see some of their faces as we gave away gift cards, tickets to piston games and stuff like that, well, it was just plain fun to bless youth workers.

The Tea Party

Well, our princess had the Tea party of all Tea parties last weekend. I took the boys swimming at the Family Fitness Factory and Tracie and Bekah welcomed 10 little girls over for a tea party. I have to say, I am so proud of Tracie. She made this party so cute. She made little fans, and little invitations, it was so cute. All the girls dressed up and they looked so sweet.

Bekah, of course was Beautiful! Her friends really blessed her with gifts and she had a great time. My mom came over to help Tracie and Rachel our new Pastor's wife was over to help. It was awesome!

I wonder if life would be possible without her

I wonder, and at this point of my life, I don't think it would. Tracie is so incredible. She has an amazing array of wisdom and actually I think that's one of her strongest qualities. She has incredible discernment and her gut feeling is normally right. She is incredible.

It's already begun

Bekah and I are driving to school last week and I look into the rear view mirror and Bekah looks like she is about to cry. I ask, "Bekah what's wrong"? Bekah says..."Daddy, all the kids in my class are losing their teeth and I'm not. What's wrong with me? Why aren't I like all the other kids"?

What the heck, I thought to myself. Peer Pressure at 6, that's just crazy!

I Suck, not Mac!

So, I know I am not the smartest person out there, I mean, not many of us can do our undergrad in 9 years, it's tough, yeah. You read that right, 9 long years. That's a whole other story. But, I just always have the craziest problems with my stuff. Like, why would my ibook need a new logic board? Considering I bought it less than a year ago. Is it because I was suppose to get a power book? I don't know. I am praying my new church in time, will get me a powerbook, but that's going to be awhile.

So, the lesson I want to learn today...slow down and listen. I got a lot of great emails about backing up my stuff, buying an external hard drive and now I just have to do it and listen to them.

Because I love my Mac, I do.

Two days left!

I can't even believe the response to our youth worker's lunch, it's been great! I was orginally hoping for 20, that was going to be successful to me, but it's going to be way more than that. Can you tell I have worked for the "church" for 11 years? Gauging success on how many seats are occupied, man, crazy.

I hope this will be extremely encouraging for the youth workers attending. I am a different kind of person, I know, but you can't keep me away from stuff like this.

my friend the incomperable Jason Shinn just arrived. the man is a genuis! he helps me write my talks, he's handsome, and dadgummit people like him. well, not many people like but i do and thats all that matters...

Only in Jackson, MI

So, I am walking into a grocery store near my in-laws, and right next to the pop machines is the Bait machine. Now, don't get me wrong, it seems helpful. But what the heck, how wild is that. I have seen them before, but this time it did something different for me. I don't fish, I don't hunt, but if I did, I would know where to go to get bait.

Mac doesn't Suck, I Do

Thank you to all of you who have given me the low down, the 411 on my mac. Very helpful, and good to know. What I love most about my Mac is how sexy everything is, I know that sounds weird, but it's just sweet looking.

I have an ibook and I dream of a power book or the new one, a Mac pro?, I don't know what it's called, but I want it.

Now I am on Firefox and I can do a little bit more on my blog than Safari, Sweet like butter.

Mac Sucks or does it?

So, Love Mac. I really do. I love how easy everything is, but I have had my ibook less than a year and I have monster trouble with it. This last time, they had to replace the logic board and I lost all of my stuff that was on my computer. Mostly because I am an idiot! They need a dummies manual for the dummies, I thought I had backed everything up, but I guess not. All my music, photos, word documents....UHHHHHHHHHH.

Why is it that on a PC, my blogger account has so much more to offer. I can change fonts, sizes, everything, but on my mac I just have spell check. I have to figure that out as well.

The First Night

Tonight was my first night with the student ministry from 2|42 Community Church. We call the Sunday night gathering of Jr. and Sr. high students Elevate, and we meet from 7:07-8:30pm.

It was a BLAST! We get to meet in this Fitness factory, so we have 2 basketball courts we can use and so much other space. We had a lot more kids than I thought we would, I think we had somewhere in the 30's, it was crazy fun.

Some of you know this about me, but I have really worked hard the last couple of years at remembering kids names. My first 5-6 years in ministry, I was horrible with names and never could remember kids names. Then I started working at a church where we had hundreds of kids in our ministry and it drove me crazy that I didn't even know half of their names. So, I started reading everything I could on memory tips and memory games. 3-4 years of hard work, I can now memorize a kids name, what school they go to and their grade all in one night. So tonight in about 25 minutes of hang out time, I learned every kids name and started our program off by going around the room and introducing everybody to each other, it was fun and it only took a few minutes. It used to take forever, now it's pretty quick. It's almost like it's become a digital camera for me.

So, tonight went well. I talked about 1 John 3:11, one of my favorite verses. We did some worship, some games and then we hung out, lot's of fun. It was sweet and I really enjoyed it. It was really fun sitting around before it started talking with a bunch of the guys, too much fun.

I am tired of dropping the ball

As a parent, I am so tired of dropping the ball. I get so mad at myself sometimes when I think of my parenting. My kids deserve so much more and so many times I find myself too tired to play, or losing my patience to or quick to yell. My kids are stinkin terrific and I need to slow down and give them so much more of me. My parents are my role models when it comes to parenting, they were great, and I admire them greatly. My mom made everything special, even when they had no money, she made everything an event. My dad has the patience of the wind, I don't know what that means, but the man will just sit with my kids forever and play, they love it. I need to learn from them.

I want to give these boys and my princess a childhood that they will remember for their lifetime. I need to give them my whole attention, I need to make play time the best part of the day and I need learn to discipline better. I need to spend more time praying with them and reading the bible together. These kids deserve it.

I take things way too personally

So, it's true! I don't know why I am wired the way I am, but I just take everything way too personally. I have always struggled with people pleasing, but my latest struggle even surprises myself. So, Project311 is hosting a youth workers lunch next week, March 10th to be exact. Our goal is to simply encourage youth workers and provide an environment where they can get great ideas, resources, spend some time with other folks who love students and stuff we pray that will bless their lives.

I know everybody isn't going to come, but I am surprised how many youth workers just won't return my emails or calls. I know they are crazy busy, and emails from students, parents and church leaders take presendence over mine, but I surprised how many just don't return them. I don't know if it's just me, maybe I am marked. I don't want to be like some of the folks from Teen Mania who call and call and call. [Please note, I admire Teen Mania and did not mean to speak bad about them, but I just think they drive people crazy sometimes] Hopefully that's not me.

I just dream of a community for youth workers where all of the Metro Detroit youth workers (volunteer, part, full, jr, sr, college) can come together quarterly or twice a year for idea sharing or training or encouragement. We haven't had that in our area for years and I am praying that we can get it going.

I am going to work on not taking every thing so personally.

Huh, how about that

I got a couple of emails and a few calls from friends about being mentioned on Marko's blog, check it

out here

. So, that was cool. Marko is someone I very much respect and admire and he has been an incredible friend, mentor and advisor. Now after saying those things, don't think we talk everyday or anything like this..."Hey Marko...Hey Jason, I miss you, I miss you too". No, not that way at all. A couple of times he year he makes time to have lunch or dinner with me and he always answers my emails. And he has a super sweet pool, yeah, it's nice. It's cool, I know he's super busy and it's cool that he takes time to invest in young leaders. That's actually one of my biggest pet peeves about some leaders, they never seem to have time for young leaders, not Marko, he's great in continually investing in leaders. So, there you have it, my thoughts on Marko.

242 Community Church

I am the new Student Ministries Director at 242 Community Church in Brighton, MI. Check out their website 242 Community.

It all kind of just happened, I don't know if there is any other way to describe it. Quick history: I have been a youth pastor for 11 years...some call me the "Larry Brown" of youth pastors, the fact is, I have been around... if you know what I mean. We started at our first church in 1995 at good old Covenant Community in Redford (I don't think they have a website), then we went to

Ward Presbyterian

(I was only their Sr.High Interim Director), then we headed north to

Shepherd Fellowship

in Waterford, then headed over to the

River Community Church

, then it was on to

NorthRidge

and now 242. I never wanted to become a youth pastor who stays 2 or 3 years then jets, but that's how it has worked out. It actually took me a long time to come to grips with that. For a long time I beat myself up, others did the same and I really felt like I let down God, the churches I worked for, the students, my family and the local woodland creatures. A mentor finally sat me down a couple of years ago and said, stop beating yourself up, there is nothing you can do about the past. He also said something that's stuck, God has created every one differently...some are creators, some are developers and some are managers. I am definately a creator/developer and that's what I do well. I love to dream big, get it going, build a team, and replace myself as a leader. So how did I come to 242?

We left NorthRidge Church in June of 2005 to start

Project311 Ministries

, a non profit, support the church ministry. Our dream for P311 is that it will be a "practical help" for youth workers. That's one my huge passion areas and one of the things I love to do...Help. What does it mean to offer Practical Help? Well, P311 wants to help by providing teachers/speakers/worship teams for youth ministries, by connecting with and connecting youth workers to each other through lunches, gatherings, forums, and training events...and our dream is host some events for youth workers to bring their students to. We hosted a music festival last summer called Blitzfest (we had skillet, grits, john rueben, stellar kart, starfield, kids in the way, tait, pillar and about 60 other bands) and our dream someday is host a conference for Jr. high students called...OH SNAP. So, I started raising support and started teaching at camps, mission trips, retreats, churches, etc. About 4 months in, finances were tight and because we already started out in the hole (Blitzfest fell about 1000 people short of what we needed), the financial pressure was intense! I have never had headaches like that before, stomach problems, you name it, it was intense. God always provided for our needs but we started falling way behind and the financial pressure was crazy. On top of that, I have always taken for granted that the churches that I have worked for have provided my family medical insurance, I just took it for granted. I will never do that again. It is so expensive and we have a child with PKU and we can't be without insurance and making that payment every month has been incredibly difficult.

So we started praying, and we really felt like we needed to find other employment. A position that would give us some financial stability, some flexiblity to love the local church and would allow us to do what we loved, work with students. But, we had a little struggle, because Project311 is just now started to build some momentum and we didn't want to call it quits on 311. So we prayed about finding a church that would be flexible with Project311. I also did some praying at that time about working in the "real world" and even applied to be the Detroit Tigers mascott, yeah, funny story. But I believe God called us to 2|42 and opened the door for us to be here. From the beginning it felt like a perfect fit, a great fit. When we first visited, Tracie and I just felt at home, our kids loved it, the worship was awesome, the teaching was out of this world and they just did everything so well. All for a church that just turned 1, yeah, how sweet is that! So, we did the interview process and they offered and now I have started. My prayer is that we can build a healthy Student Ministry and it will give Project311 some credibility because we are in the trenches of day to day youth ministry. I pray that I will give everything I have to 242 and build a healthy ministry. So, there it is. My next post I want to talk about my some ways I would like to start this ministry and some commitments I have made to make sure that is a healthy ministy and that Project311 would never be a hinderance to 242.

My ibook is Back!

Yeah, I will shout from the roof tops, I will run down the street barely clothed, I will run with the dogs in Tijuana, why you ask?

My laptop is back!! I feel like my life came to a screeching halt the last couple of weeks without it. Well, now I just have to figure out how to get everything back on it, my database, and all that jazz.

Yeah