Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord.
Repeat them in our day, in our lifetime make them known;

This is actually part of a larger prayer from the book of Habakkuk, but I just can’t help but be drawn into these few lines.  In many ways, this has been the cry of my heart for our church and our young people for years, I just hadn’t remembered Habakkuk expressing it so clearly.  I feel as though I could speak for much of mainstream, western Evangelicalism, but I’ll just stick with churches I’ve been intimately familiar with throughout my life.  We talk about believing the right things.  We talk a LOT about not doing the wrong things.  But, do we really expect that God will do amazing things among us?  Do we really believe that anything is possible when we take seriously the power of God among us?   In my experience, churches would largely be shocked and probably a little offended if God had the audacity to come into our midst and do the kinds of things he became “famous” for in Scripture.  

I hate this.  I don’t want this for my children, for the students I work with, for the church (universal) that I love so very much.  What’s more, I don’t know how to invite people into a version of church that doesn’t expect more out of God than a list of sin-management rules and a ticket to heaven when I die.  

So, today I am adopting this prayer as my own.  I want God to show himself present in the church as powerfully as he did in Scripture, which means I also have to want the church to expect, prepare for, and be equipped to respond to that kind of movement.  It means I have to prepare myself as well – to set my own expectations higher; to open myself up to God using me in ways I’ve never imagined; to jump onboard when I see God working, even in ways that are unfamiliar, radical, or dangerous to me.  

This is my prayer today.

1. Stand up on the bus guy.  This seems to be a pretty strongly male characteristic.  On every bus trip ever, there is one kid that just seems to find standing up while the bus is moving irresistible.  He’ll tell you he’s trying find his gum/ipod/water bottle/socks but in reality he has one of two agendas in mind: 1) “accidentally” fall into the lap of the girl he’s too afraid to actually talk to. 2)  he envisions himself as some kind of super hero, defying laws of gravity and semi-flying down the road.

2. Get truckers to honk their horns kid. This role is open to both sexes and holds a certain amount of appeal to everyone at times. But, there’s always the kid that can’t let it go.  They can’t be satisfied with one honk, or even ten.  They believe there’s always a better honk out there and they refuse to rest (despite pleas from their now-former friends) until the hear them all.

3. Start repetitive songs kid. This is most common on the bus, but hotel lobbys and other public venues will suffice as well. There’s always one kid that wants to sing “The Song that Never Ends”, “The Wheels on the Bus”, or “99 Bottles of beer/___ on the Wall” (fill in the blank with non-alcoholic beverage of choice for the Christian kids’ version).  Like his/her trucker-horn-loving counterpart, this kid easily rallies temporary support, but insists on singing about 9 verses more than anyone else in the crowd.

4. Impress you at the convention kid.  This kid comes in both gender varieties,  but is more obvious in guys.  Take today for example. It’s 85 degrees and humid. Most guys as this convention are sporting jeans and golf shirts or t-shirts, some are even wearing kakhy shorts.  ”Impress you” guy is wearing dress pants, dress shirt, tie, and sweater.  Sure, he’s sweating a little bit, but he looks good…just needs the right girl to notice…still waiting…

5. Impress you by not impressing you at the convention guy.  This is the guy who clearly wants all attendees to understand that he is not concerned with being here.  He’s underdressed.  He’s unkempt.  He’s unimpressed.  His only concern is that everyone notice how unconcerned he truly is.

6. Super Convention Kid. Name tag – check. Dress code compliant, yet comfortable- check. Pen, pencil, highlighter, journal (not just the free conference notebook), schedule committed to memory, map of venue, background information on all speakers, and game plan for claiming optimal seating – check, check, check, check…

What are some of your favorites?

“Hi. Adam’s in the hospital and I need to get your insurance information.  Call me here at…”

By the time he arrived home from his workday, my dad had been listening to radio coverage of the bombing all afternoon.  He’d seen glimpses of the TV news coverage – enough to know how devastating the bombing was.

Then he checked his answering machine.

As you can imagine, he was immediately panic-stricken.  To make matters worse, it was becoming nearly impossible to get a call into Oklahoma City as the lines were tied up (back when we relied on “lines”).  Meanwhile I was sitting in a hospital room, having had an IV and some ibuprofen…feeling much better.

Perspective is everything.  If my dad had been able to see the world through my eyes, it would have spared him much pain and worry.

For parents, this is a vital principle.  We naturally assume that we know best.  We think we surely have all the pertinent information.

When I was a kid we got prizes on the Joy Bus for memorizing Scripture.  A favorite was Ephesians 6:1 – “Children, obey your parents…”.  For obvious reasons (the fifth commandment being a very valid one), it’s a verse that adults like to make kids memorize.  Over the course of my years in ministry, I’ve grown to deeply appreciate not only that verse, but it’s less popular companion, Ephesians 6:4 – “Fathers (parents), do not exasperate your children…”

This is where I see many parent/teen relationships running into brick walls.  Parents demand 6:1, but forget 6:4.  When I end up talking with crying teens or their fuming parents, this is usually the heart of the issue.  The other specifics don’t matter that much.  It’s usually not really about who is right or wrong.  It’s about parents claiming 6:1, while steamrolling past 6:4.  Teens, like other humans, want to be heard.  They want parents to really understand them.  When parents assume that they know what their teens are thinking, feeling, or experiencing without truly hearing them, it is exasperating.  It makes things worse.  It shuts down tongues, closes ears, and hardens hearts.

Take time to understand your child’s perspective – it will take time.  It may be frustrating – maybe even a little scary.  Validating their perspective will pave the way for better relationships and smoother communication.

Note: Understanding your teen’s perspective is NOT the same thing as giving it equal weight.  This is about relational integrity, not relational equality.  Teens of the current generation have placed parents back on top of the list of influences in their lives – they want you to guide them, they just don’t want to feel like you’ve ignored their perspective in the process. 

This wasn’t a case of writer’s block – I have a running list of topics that I want to write about.  Particularly during the season of Lent, as I did my best to empty myself before God and come face-to-face with my own brokenness, I had a constant feeling that I just didn’t need to be saying anything right then.

I won’t attempt to explain it more than that because I don’t want to end up sounding like I’m trying to convince you of a great spiritual awakening or of my personal spiritual depth and maturity…it wasn’t like that.  It was just prompting to be quiet for a while.  As far as I can tell, that time has passed.  So, I’ll be putting some thoughts out here again on a regular basis.  I look forward to interacting with you all again.

In anticipation of the recent release of Star Wars, Episode 1 in 3D, my father-in-law threw down a challenge for our family – he would pay for the tickets and snacks if we would all dress up as Star Wars characters for the event.  This created a frenzy of excitement among the small Mearses – somewhat less among the grown-ups.

I immediately started a mental list of all the reasons I did not want to get on board:

a) I am much more of an old-school Star Wars guy.

b) Taking our three year-old to a movie is like wrestling a wolverine for two hours.

c) I hate Jar-Jar.

d) I don’t love looking stupid in public.

e) 3D movies tend to make me nauseous.

f) I hate Jar-Jar even more now than a moment ago.

After a couple weeks of trying to glean costume props from friends, we landed on a scheme. Jackson was Darth Vader (he already had the full costume and wears it frequently in public, so that was easy).  Lizzy was Yoda (she gets the Cutest Yoda Ever award).  Zachary found a mask and an old Storm Shadow get up and made a respectable General Grievous out of it.  Christina went as Princess Leia (episode 4 version, just so we’re clear).  I grabbed some VBS robes from the church and went as a very iffy Obi Wan Kenobi.  You can see a photo HERE if you’re interested.  The kids looked great.  They had that “cute kid dressed up in a costume” thing going on.  Christina and I had more of a “we decided to come to the costume party at the last minute and after we were already half-inebriated” vibe.

Since our kids are still fairly young we did not get to the midnight opening with those who take pride in dressing in costume for such events.  We hit the 4:30pm matinée.  The place was pretty quiet on the way in, but it was absolutely packed when we finished.  The layout of the theater mandated that we parade past the hundreds of movie-goers waiting for their 7pm shows.  As a hard-wired introvert, this brought on all the things I hate most in the world – universal staring, semi-whispering, pointing, etc.  Worst of all, it seems that wearing a costume in public is understood as an invitation for total strangers to engage you awkward conversations about their opinion of you and their own favorite costume-wearing experiences.

When our little outing came to a close, I was completely exhausted – partly from wrestling the wolverine, but equally from the mental energy required to deal with all the attention.  I was also completely elated.  The night became what I am certain will be one of our favorite family experiences ever.  It is memorialized in an 8×10 photo that will hang in our hallway for years to come.  Jackson prays every night for the next time we get to go to the movies dressed like Star Wars guys.

There are unlimited ways that this kind of experience could be applied to faith and life, of course.  Right now though, I am basking in one simple truth – relationships are about presence.  They’re about taking the time and energy required to show people you are in the moment with them.  This might be doing something completely ridiculous with your kids.  Or, being the one person who listens to the problems of a co-worker.  Maybe it’s unplugging for a night of actual conversation with your spouse.  Perhaps it’s actually going into a closet, closing the door, and spending a few real minutes with God.  For those couple hours, as uncomfortable as I was, I was locked in on the joy of being with my kids and slowly that overcame all my personal agendas and discomforts.  What had all the earmarks of being a torturous evening for me turned into a memory that I’ll treasure for the rest of my life because I allowed myself to get lost in a moment with people I love.  I was no longer a guy with debts, work stress, and futures to plan for…I was Obi Wan Kenobi.  It was beautiful.

1.  Make it about giving stuff up.

For Lenten  practitioners, the 40 days leading up to Easter brings a commitment to give something up or fast from something.  This is most often related to food or drink although there are any number of other things (technology/social media is a popular choice right now as well).  The key to really hating your Lenten experience is for the thing you give up to become the focus of Lent.  Yes, some folks will treat it as season of repentance and introspection – a disciplined time of coming before God to face their own sins head-on and walk through the cleansing fires of repentance and confession – but who needs that?  It’s much easier to just say you’re not going to eat chocolate and be done with it.  Of course, you’re likely to grow really bitter about giving it up (and you’ll probably cheat here and there along the way), but at least you won’t have to deal with all the soul-searching.

2. Give up something you don’t really need.

While you’re considering what you’ll give up – try to find that balance of something that you like having in your life but that you really won’t miss all that badly six days a week.  Don’t get too radical.  Don’t make yourself too uncomfortable.  What you’re looking for is something that you can get a little put out about giving up, but can find other crutches to lean on its place – that’s the real key.  If you get too crazy giving things up you’re likely to have to adjust your lifestyle and may even feel compelled to pray for strength and discipline as you go along and who needs that headache?

3. Treat Sundays like any other day

For many, Sundays are celebration days during Lent – kind of mini versions of Easter.  If you really want to throw a wet blanket on your Lenten experience though, don’t get carried away with the Sunday thing.  Certainly you want to make sure you gorge yourself on whatever you’ve given up but otherwise, just do your normal thing.  What you don’t want to do is change your schedule, do any extra reflecting or praying (you’ll check those boxes in your normal Sunday worship service), or go out of your way to celebrate God’s presence and resurrection in your life.  The busier you can be and the less thought you can give to Sundays, the greater your potential to maximize your misery over giving up that thing you don’t really even care too much about the rest of the week.

Good luck!

Author note: I’ve learned these through experience.  I’ve also learned that a Lenten season can be salvaged by righting the ship mid-Lent if you find yourself losing your ferver and discipline.  “Lent for man, not man for Lent.”  If you find yourself having a bad Lenten experience, you have the freedom to change that immediately.  Re-evaluate your prayer time, your discipline, your priority, your fasting, your schedule – all of it.   May God sharpen all of us through this season as we move toward the celebration of the greatest moment of history.

The question that is nagging at me is this: What if the problem is not just about educational philosophy, program design, or church structure…what if it’s about a foundational misrepresentation of the Christian faith?

Christianity, at its core is a mystic religion. Simply put, this means it hinges on supernatural powers and realities.  We believe in a God who is entirely “other” than we are.  We believe that, by means we cannot fully understand, we are able to participate in the death, burial, and resurrection of God’s son Jesus.  I doing this, our sins are canceled, we partner in God’s redemptive work on earth, and we anticipate being with God forever in a place we cannot fully describe or understand.  We believe in the presence of evil, particularly as conducted by Satan (a spiritual being) and those forces working alongside him.  We believe that we are given power and direction for navigating this life by the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit.  This (although a very simplistic representation of the whole) is a mystical set of beliefs and it is the foundation that all of our rules, practices, and principles rest upon. 

Enter the Enlightenment, Scientific Method, Rationalism, and The Industrial Revolution.  Over the course of the last few centuries, western Christianity has tried to frame itself as a rational religion.  Very simply put, his means we focus on finding answers to supernatural phenomena and we value individual responsibility and work ethic.  

This collision of world-views has created what I believe is a faith-based case of cognitive dissonance – the painful psychological state we find ourselves in when our beliefs and realities to do not match.  Unfortunately, we’ve been trying so hard for so long to rationalize Christianity that we are blind to the problem.  We are so far removed from a mystical understanding of our faith that it doesn’t occur to us to think about this as a gap in what we’re passing on to the next generations. 

Now, enter generations Y and iY (labels for those born since 1980).  These folks show up at church with a postmodern, post-Christian worldview.  They don’t feel obligated to accept propositional truth just because the preacher tells them to.  They distrust anyone that claims to have the answer.  For these people, a rationalized depiction of a mystical religion just doesn’t feel right.  Perhaps they cannot put their finger on exactly why that is.  Perhaps they don’t have a robust enough theology to explain their discomfort, but it’s very real.  And for this generation, it’s enough to cause them to look outside the church for something that seems more real. 

What if Christian faith is exactly what they’re looking for, but the modern, Western church isn’t the place to find it?  

What if the problem isn’t that they don’t want Christianity, but that they don’t resonate a rationalized version of God’s mystical work in redeeming our world?

What if they SHOULD be leaving the church because the church has reduced the mystical power and nature of God to a set of principles and formulas, which frankly, aren’t that compelling?

What if GOD is leading them out of the church, not to kill the church, but to reform and reshape her – to call her back to faithfully witnessing to the mystical, unfathomable, holy nature of the tri-une God?

Note:  These are questions that are ruminating in my mind.  They are speculations.  I do not claim to be the one person that has solved the riddle of young people leaving the church.  I am confident that the issue defies any one explanation and certainly any one blog post.  I do see some connection here though.  Please feel free to add your thoughts to the conversation. 

Right now, I’m taken with the incarnational undertones of the beautiful prayer.

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 

Don’t say it too quickly.  Don’t absent-mindedly breeze through it.  This is a game-changer, my friends.  A world-changer, actually.

In proclaiming a desire for the kingdom of God to come to earth as it is in heaven, we do not simply acknowledge God’s supremacy over all creation or even request his intervention into it.  In this one little line, if prayed honestly, we are laying down our lives and taking on the very work of Jesus.  We are dying to ourselves and coming to life again not simply as supporters or advocates of God, but agents of God.  This is a prayer that draws us into the redemptive work initiated on the cross, culminating in Christ’s return, but going on all around us right now by the power of the Spirit through anyone adventurous enough to look up to God and say, “Let’s do this!”

1. Know what makes your faith unique. One question she asked me was, “How is Christianity different from other world religions?”  There were about a thousand things I wanted to say about this, but since she clearly was not looking for that many, I gave her a couple of them that I thought might stand in contrast to her own beliefs.  The question got me to thinking – if you’re unable to speak of what makes your faith uniquely important, you’re not likely to hold onto it.

This is crucial for parents!

We’re raising successive generations of kids who are walking away from their faith, largely because they do not fully understand what their faith is because we (parents) either do not really know ourselves, or have not invested adequately in passing that knowledge on to them.

2. Lose the Christianese - Throughout our conversation I had to remind myself to do this.  Explaining tenets of Christian faith without using distinctly Christiany words is a challenge, but it’s a very healthy practice.  We must speak a language that people can understand.  Again, parents, this is a MUST.  To pass on a lasting faith to your children, they have to understand.  If you find words like “salvation”, “eternity”, “righteousness”, etc. coming out of your mouth while talking to your children, stop!  Try explaining whatever you’re talking about using simpler words.  If you can’t fully define them yourself, go find the answer, then come back and explain it later.  This will take time.  It is somewhat humbling.  Remember, this is the faith of your child on the line – don’t let pride stop you.

3. Be Open To Talking (not debating) – I showed up to our interview a little tense – wondering if she might be hostile toward my faith.  She and her mother were incredibly warm and thankful for my time.  We had a very enjoyable conversation.

Recently, God has been reminding me that faith is inherently an act of questioning.

Truth is truth and if someone is seeking it, God is where it will be found regardless of the questions they have to ask on the journey.  Do not lose patience or slip into judgement mode when someone is coming at things from a very different direction.  The conversation itself, the act of processing ideas, your explaining the vital parts of your faith, these are the spaces where God can do great work.  Remember, you are not equipped to convert anyone.  Conversion happens in a person’s heart – only God can do that.  Our job is to lovingly share what we know, to invite others into conversation about it, and exude the very love that drew us to Christ in the first place.

Even though he was before my time, I’ve always kinda liked Johnny Carson. One of the first things I ever remember seeing on television was Carson doing his Carnac the Magnificent bit.  I remember one time hearing Carson discussing the difference between television and movie stars.  He said that television stars are the kinds of people we’d walk up to on the street and engage in a conversation.  They seem like ordinary people to us – the kind of folks we’d like to get to know.  Carson said that this is because they exist in a little box that sits in our living room – they are “among us” (it was more humorous when he said it).  Movie stars tend to intimidate people more, Carson said.  When we go to movies, we look up to huge screens with enormous, larger-than-life images of celebrities and it creates a sense awe and other-ness.  If we see them in public we’re inclined to give them space and respect their privacy.

I think a similar thing happens to us in our understanding of Jesus.  We think of him as Savior, Messiah, and Lord.  We remember him as the Son of God who came to earth, turned religious practices upside down, and heroically died for all of us.  To be sure, these are all deeply and importantly true, but they can tend to create a Carson-esque movie-star understanding of Jesus making him seem almost unrelatable.  This is not the Jesus of the Christmas story.

Jesus was a baby – born in the same painful, very human way that you and I were.  He cried.  He spit up.  He did all the things babies do…all of them.  Sometimes I think it makes us uncomfortable to think of Jesus this way, but this is how he wanted us to think of him.  He wanted us to know him as someone real.  Someone we can relate to.  Someone we’d walk up to in a coffee shop and have a conversation with.  The incarnation of Jesus was not just a theological necessity for achieving the salvation of humankind; it was an act of love committed by a Savior who yearned to connect with us and for us to connect with him.