Dad's

Last summer I learned once again the power in certain words.

It was on Wednesday which is traditionally when we address our core value of community. But as we looked at 1 Peter it became apparent that community was kind a tired word and not exactly what the text was saying. So we landed on the word family.

It took me only a week or two to realize that there are certain words in the English language that when you hear them, immediately evoke some sort of response. Family is one of those words.

Dad is another.

In the few milliseconds it took you to move from that sentence to this one, I'm sure your brain fired of a few immediate reactions, most of them completely subjective based on your own father.

This morning I finished reading a pretty incredible book. It's called Fatherless Generation by John Sowers who leads a pretty incredible mentoring ministry in my old hometown. In my opinion, if you work with students you should read this book. I think if you are a parent its a pretty valuable resource as well.

The thing is, though we all know this on some level, dads make a pretty profound impact on their children. This is not to denigrate what mom's do by any means. However the stats play out that kids growing up without dads don't exactly have the world at their fingertips. Fathers are a big deal. I knew this, but I realized once again that its one of the places where I make an assumption often. Whenever I stand on stage at Know Sweat I don't intentionally think about those kids that might not have an active father. I talk about God as father and might even share a story about my kids without a second thought. The fact is, I'm not respecting my audience like I should.

Just think about the stories of people like President Obama, President Bush, Michael Jordan, Tony Dungy or yourself. It doesn't take too long in any of those stories for the impact or legacy of their fathers, good or bad, to come out.

I even think of the great folks I get to work with each day. For those that I know well, I've heard at least a few stories about their dads and the things they either caught or were taught by them.

I think of my street where a chunk of the kids running around my yard playing with my kids come from homes without a dad. Or I think of those that do have a dad who's abusive in some way or in and out. The truth is my street isn't much different than yours.

I think of Carter's basketball practices and the handful of boys each night who show up with grandpa because daddy is not around. Or perhaps the dads who do show up at practice and spend the entire time threatening their kids about their performance.

So what about you? What's your story with your dad? If you are a dad, what do you think your kids think of you? For the past month it seems, Mark Driscoll has been tweeting about dad and Christmas and I'm grateful for his reminders. These quick thoughts have reminded us that Christmas is a special time of year because of the amount of time we have the opportunity to be around each other. That can be good or bad. If we are banking on that one present under the tree being the way we communicate love, we might be missing the point. I'm sure Carter and Brynn will remember something they get for Christmas, then again they might not. But I'm certain we could spend some time together creating a lasting memory worth keeping.

Its not really my place to say much except for the fact that you are reading my blog. So here's to thanking our dads if we still have the chance for the impact they've had. Here's to finding a way to redeem our thoughts if they didn't offer us all that much. Here's to being the best dad's we can this year. And here's to reading a powerful book and then doing something with the information. Thanks John for an insightful and moving book and thanks for what you guys are doing with The Mentoring Project.

Now I'm going to go hang out with my kids.....

For more information I'd recommend:
www.thementoringproject.org
www.allprodad.com

Love Your Neighbor

Currently Listening to: Colored People by DC Talk

I live on a pretty amazing street in Oronogo, Missouri. Go ahead, try and pronounce it. Though the town might have a funny name, its a great place to live.

I'm pretty certain 98% of our community looks and talks exactly the same. Well, maybe not on my street. We've only got about a dozen homes but in that mix is a Filipino family, a Mexican family, two African-American families, a grandparently couple, a single dude who built most of the homes and a couple other families. Oh and then there is that one house that always has 15 cars out front and nobody has ever met anybody that lives there. Its like they are having a perpetual house party but they never make any noise

Last Sunday we had our street Christmas party. Our family wasn't able to stay long but while there a pretty sad conversation happened. It's the type of thing that happens a lot but thanks to my friends at CIY Engage, they have exposed my mind to some better thinking and I'm trying to be more aware in these situations.

It's called CQ. It stands for Cultural Intelligence and if I were to give my own summary, it would be a way of thinking and acting that allows us interact with all people, both here in the States and around the world in a way that is affirming, respectful and honoring. The author says it this way, "Root your view of the other in the imago dei."Now, I don't "get" this yet and I'm not killing it as an ambassador of CQ. I am becoming more aware of things and that's a start but I will confess on the little self test in the book, I didn't do so well. In fact it looked a lot like my grades in Kindergarten. The first time I took kindergarten. But stick with me on this.

What would happen if every person I came in contact with, I chose to treat as a brother or sister, as someone with God's image sewn into their very being? What if we were able to step back just far enough that we didn't expect everyone and every place to think, look and act like us and where we are from?

So back to my story...

I was sitting at the table with a few of my neighbors eating my body weight in the finest of meats and cheeses when the conversation turned to the country of Mexico. Our Mexican neighbors were there, me and two other people. One of them made the comment "I've been to Tijuana and that place is horrible. No offense, but the streets were narrow, it stunk and I felt like I was going to get robbed by every person I walked past."

As a sidebar here, anytime you have to preface a statement with "No offense, but..." you are probably showing little to no CQ. Apologizing beforehand does not excuse being rude. Anyway...

Imagine you are in a foreign country and somebody makes the statement to you, "Hey, I've been to the U.S. before!" Now imagine that the only place they had been would be a place here in the States you are ashamed of. They go on in front of a whole group of people to talk about that place and all the things they hated about it. Not cool. How unfair is it to assume all of the U.S. is like that place and every American is exactly like the people in that city they visited.


The conversation went on to how when this guy was in the Marines they headed down from San Diego for a weekend of fun in Mexico but only stayed for about 3 hours. At that point my Mexican neighbor said, "Yeah, Tijuana is not very pretty. Most people only see border towns and assume our whole country is like that but its not."

I agree. A few years ago I led a trip to Ensenada Mexico and we drove that same route down I-5 from San Diego into Tijuana and then down the Baja coast. I will say this, it was one of the most beautiful drives I've ever made. The Baja coast is amazing. Yes, TJ isn't my idea of metropolitan beauty either but nonetheless, its fascinating and its one small part of a diverse country full of amazing people and some beautiful landscape and culture.

A few days ago my wife was talking with our neighbor. She shared with Ang how hard it is to live here in the States at times. They have been victims to way too many stereotypes and condescending comments. Turns out they don't enjoy all the stereotypes we put on them, they feel uncomfortable with all the comments that are made and she even said they keep their house as clean as possible at all moments, almost obsessively just to try and debunk the myths that American's have about them. They wish they could relax just a bit more and be themselves and not worry so much about what everybody thinks.

Can you imagine that?

So here's to some CQ. Here's to trying to remember that everybody is unique and that's awesome. Here's to remembering that not everybody thinks and acts like we do and that's even better. Here's to seeing the divine in others and trying to do that first. Here's to suspending judgment when we meet people.

I know, its easy and we've been conditioned to do it since we were young. We see a situation and immediately decide tons of stuff about it. That might work on Wall Street but its horrible as a Christian.

And here's to not taking mission and service trips to remind ourselves of how lucky we are. Here's to not taking trips that make the others feel like crap.

At the risk of belaboring the point, Livermore shares a story of a church that wanted to give toys to "underresourced kids". It's a nice thought. They wanted to buy the gifts and then hand them out. The leader of the recipient ministry said, how about I take them and we sell them at a greatly reduced rate so the dads could buy them for their sons. The church said no. Actually they said, "Oh, I don't think we're interested in that. Every year the highlight of this program has been watching the look on our kids' faces as they had that gift to a kid who otherwise wouldn't receive one."

The leader went on to say this, "I really wasn't interested in exploiting the men in our community so the guys at that church could have a nice bonding experience with their kids. All I need is one more message to the kids in our community that says, "Guess what? This six-year old white kid got you a better gift than your schmuck of a father did."

Here's to sharing the joy of Christmas in a way that doesn't humiliate others. Here's to finding creative ways to show kindness with others rather than to them.

I say all this but I will be freaking out during the national championship game.

I happened to see the moment happen. It was at the end of Sunday nights Cowboys vs Eagles game. There at midfield one of the Cowboys players, Tashard Choice asked one of the Eagles players, Michael Vick for an autograph. I remember thinking it was a bit odd but quickly dismissed it.

Today ESPN ran an article letting people know that Choice got the autograph for his 2 year old nephew who idolizes Vick. Turns out all sorts of people are ticked off about. To them, it shows disrespect to the game and is a signal that Choice doesn't care enough about the game. I guess the unwritten NFL rule is you must show you are not happy about losing.

Now please hear me, I've been known to get pretty angry when my favorite teams lose. I'm not saying I've figured this one out by any means.

But why do we have to look like our dog died when we lost a stupid game? There are times when we are genuinely upset or frustrated but in a situation like this one, a professional athlete is swallowing his pride and asking another pro for an autograph in front of people. That takes guts. I hate asking for autographs because its demoralizing. I feel as though I must say "Hello person of great importance, I am a dope who would like you to scribble your name in an unintelligible way so that I can take it to my office and prove to my less than impressed coworkers that I saw you in the airport."

A couple weeks ago a couple of Arizona Cardinals players got in trouble because they were laughing at the end of a tail whipping. Now to be fair, they were having an unusually jovial time considering they had done nothing that should give them joy. However the one player followed that up with one of those classic tantrums that will either become a Coors Light commercial in a few weeks or at least make the Not Top 10 on SportsCenter.

I just think sports lose their beauty when we become cavemen about them.

The other night at Carter's basketball practice I sat and watched the father of one of Carter's teammate say "If you don't take this more serious I'm going to grab you by the neck and your practice will be over. This is your last warning." I kept hoping Dr. Naismith (he invented basketball btw) was going to come back from the dead and put a peach basket over the guys head. Seriously, your kid is 7 and plays in a league where they don't keep score. And besides your kid can't dribble. Okay, that last part wasn't necessary.

So here's to being passionate but not blowing things out of proportion. Here's to being competitive but not demanding some stupid response to prove we care. Here's to remember all sports at their most basic level are pretty dumb. Here, chase a piece of rubber around on ice. Here, dribble a ball all over and try to throw it through a hoop 10 feet up. Dumb. But fun . And great experiences when we don't get all bent out of shape because we had a crappy fantasy football draft. I'm just saying.

Remember When You Couldn't Wait To Get Older?

I wasn't in a hurry. In fact if I was, I'd have pulled out in front of them when I was leaving my street a few blocks earlier. They were a cute old couple obviously heading to town in their teal Chevy cavalier. She was driving and while I was following them, I couldn't see her head above the headrest. His barely showed so at moments it looked like the car was being propelled down the highway by no one.

I followed them for about as long as I could stand it. I can only drive 43 in a 55 for so long. When I finally pulled past them something clicked in my head and I wondered what they thought of me passing them. For some reason I had this idea that as they poked down the road they made some comment like "Remember when we used to be in a big rush like that?" Now, I'm totally reading into the situation. I wasn't a jerk as I passed them and for all I know she thought she was going the speed limit. From the looks of it, the ole Chevy wasn't exactly pristine.

But think about the last time somebody whipped past you on a two lane road. Usually we feel like we're going fast enough, otherwise we'd be driving faster. Almost always there is some sort of an instant judgment I make on those people. I may or may not even be guilty of hoping that up ahead I'll pass them pulled over by a cop. I know, real mature.

You've done the same thing.

I was having a conversation with my folks the other night about how it hit them that not so long ago they were taking me to events and grandparents were coming to cheer me on. Now I'm taking my kids and my parents are the grandparents showing up to ooh and aah.

The other night we all loaded up to make a Christmas memory. The kids were in the way back, grandpa and grandma were in the middle row and Ang and I took point. On the way home we were tired, cold and running on the 4 Krispy Kreme donuts we'd each had. About halfway home we stopped for gas and as I stood next the slowest pump ever trying to keep blood flowing in my body I looked through the back windows at my two kids. They were bundled under blankets and cashed out on pillows oblivious to the fact that we had stopped. Somewhere in their subconscious they'd decided dad had it under control and they were going to get some shut eye.

I remember doing the same thing, don't you? You'd find your spot in car, get comfy and wait for dads arms to carry you to bed once you'd arrived safely. You had no clue what happened on the drive. You might have made 3 Dukes of Hazzard jumps, dad may have dodged 4 deer or been pulled over 4 times but you didn't care because you slept like a rock.

Why do I say all this? Probably because it hit me the other day that the distance between cashed out while dad drives home and passed by the guy who thinks I drive too slow isn't really that far. On some level we all know that but I still don't think we live like it. Remember the last time you heard somebody say "It seemed like my kids grew up so slow. I mean, it was like each year took 10 and we were able to savor every moment."? Yeah, me neither.

This year my kids turn 8 and 4. Pretty young. I'm now squarely in my mid 30's which isn't so old but it ain't young either. Trust me, I tried to play basketball today. But I was still sitting at my neighbors house last night when two dads are telling me they remember when their kids were my kids age and now their grand kids are older than my children. They are left with some pictures they dug out of the drawer as proof. Other than that they see 'em once or twice a year and I get the idea they wished they had more time with them.

So here's to making memories. Here's to slowing down. Not all the way to 43, that's way too slow. But in the midst of something going on every stinking night, realize its these moments we never get back. Here's to making the best of the fact that you're going to be driving somewhere with a bunch of people sometime during the holidays. Here's to being fully present, even in the painful moments because soon they'll be gone. Here's to realizing we don't stay the age we are for very long so we'd best get all we can out of it. Here's to playing our part well whether that's sleeping, driving or being passed.

I'll Tell You What I'm Thankful For

Currently Listening to: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas by Sarah McLachlan

I've decided Christmas music makes me sentimental.

Right now Ang is making Christmas cookies and my kids are playing. For some reason, most of these words dropped in my lap and I feel compelled to share them. I'm blessed to have a great family and some incredible friends but I want you to meet somebody else you may not realize has had quite an impact on me.

He's an elder.
When I met him he was one as well. I was a young punk Bible College student and he was a respected leader in a healthy church. He seemed nice enough. He was quiet but you could tell he commanded respect. He was pretty soft spoken but you could tell he could make himself heard when it was necessary. That entire group of men was pretty impressive but he was one you could tell had a lot of great qualities. To this day people seek his opinion and he has a wisdom that you can't get from any university. He was a part of a group of men who were crazy enough to hire me for my first youth ministry and they stood by me through thick and thin, good and bad.

He's a coach.
Obviously sports is a love language for me. It's a language I speak pretty easily and its a natural place to connect with people. It's even an easy way to figure out who I might struggle connecting with. I remember the first time I was invited to spend some time at his house. Down in his basement was this great bar area filled with trophy's, awards and more legitimate hardware than I could earn in 4 lifetimes. Every once in a while he will share stories in such a way that you feel like you are on the sideline with him. Those stories don't come very often but just when the time is right, he'll dig into the bag of lore and bring out some new adventure I've never heard before. The thing is, the stories are so good that even when I'm hearing the same one for the fourth time I can't keep from listening.

He's a teacher.
He always has been. That's what coaches do while they wait for game time. He, like many, found himself in the ever necessary role of driver's ed. These days, he's not teaching anybody how to drive though he does just fine doing it himself. These days I catch him teaching my kids things. Over Thanksgiving it was teaching Carter to play pool. I sat in his recliner just out of eyesight and listened as he taught him how to hold the stick, how to position his hands, where to look as he aimed and how to have a smooth follow through. Patiently he would say the same thing as Carter failed to put it all together. Quietly he would offer new instruction and a "Okay bud, let's try and get that 7 now." He didn't celebrate the good shots near as much as you would think. Somehow I don't think it was the achieving that meant the most to him. Nonetheless, teaching seems like a natural thing to him. Always an insight, always a timely piece of wisdom you can apply.

He's a listener.
I'm sure this is not always the case! But most of the time if you can pull back in any situation you realize he listens way more than he speaks. It might be part of his secret for why his words mean so much. It might be because its hard to get a word in around some of the people in his life. It might be because he waits to speak until he has something to say.

He's a hero.
Twice I've had the chance to see his impact on others. On two separate occasions I've sat near the top of the gym and watched him be inducted into the Hall of Fame for the high school he did so much for. Those moments say a lot. They are a big deal for sure and even though he's been inducted 3 times, each of those is special in different ways. What gets me though is the impact he's had on other people I respect. When people you look up to say he is one of their hero's, you have to realize that's pretty special.

He's family.
A long time ago he and his wife had a daughter. A while :) ago, she had twins. Today, one of those twins is my wife. Over time, this man has moved from an elder who hired me to one of the men who ordained me to the grandpa of my wife to the great-grandpa of my children. He has his own son and he's got some solid grandsons. And somewhere in there I get to be a part of all that too.

And these days, he's the only grandpa I've really got. But what brings me the greatest joy is to see what he means to my wife and my kids. There are a lot of goals I have in life but one of them is most certainly to be a man who leaves an impact on my family. If I can look back on my years and know that generations of my family and others' families have been profoundly impacted for the good by my life and witness, I'll think pretty well of myself.

So Grandpa Bill, thanks for building a heritage I was blessed enough to marry into. Thanks for being great. Not perfect, but great. And thanks for giving me my first job.

Production

Currently Listening to: Not Sure by Fiction Family

"In a variety of ways we are made to believe that we are what we produce." -Nouwen

"What we need are ministers who know the true heart of God and are driven not by a hungry need to be significant in the world but by a desperate love for Jesus." -Nouwen

"We act as if visibility and notoriety were the main criteria of the value of what we are doing." -Nouwen

Last week I turned in my final paper. As I wrapped up a 2 year journey through the world of education, I found a class on Nouwen to be a wonderful way to wrap up my time attempting to get more smarter.

I realized that Nouwen was a man before his time more than I had ever realized. There is so much guiding leaders today that he was tapped into a long time ago. There is also a great deal of thought guiding service and missiology today that can find solid roots in Nouwen's thinking. Since I've not blogged for a bit I thought I would share some of my favorite thoughts from his writings.

The three at the beginning of this post bring up that ongoing battle I think most of us wrestle with as we seek to find the balance between taking pride in what we do and not finding our self-worth and value solely in our occupation whether it be ministry or not. Either way, we are not valuable simply because of that. In fact, I wrestle with just how much value that gives me even in God's eyes. The more I think about it, even if I am advancing the kingdom, for my value in His eyes to be on a sliding scale depending on my performance seems wrong. My obedience and submission are big issues no doubt but I think the externals get overrated too often.

As for a few more quotes, this one brings to mind people I have known. Try it on for size:

"Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love." -Nouwen

I think to wrap all of this rambling up, I will share a quote from my prof. In it I found profound truth and a warning for all of us. Hopefully something shared from these men "wrecks" your day.

"In summary, even though many would consider relevance, popularity and power as key ingredients of an effective ministry, they are, in reality, "not vocations but temptations" in the ministry." -Hernandez

So here's to a day remembering why we are loved, what about us is actually "valuable" and to caring more about our obedience than our production.