Jesus First, Everything Else Second

Occasionally, I'll be contacted by a parent or someone else in our church who is concerned that we are "losing our teenagers" because of the prevalence of evolution being taught in public schools, the passage of some same-sex marriage act in another state, or some other "hot button" secondary issue they are worried about. Usually, I'm asked about what our youth group is doing to keep students on track. In the past, I didn't have a really good answer, probably because I was more intimidated about the issue (and the person talking to me) than anything else. Now, my response is usually simple: We'll continue to make much of Jesus, because Jesus is in the business of transforming lives, not to mention changing hearts and minds.

There are some secondary issues that youth workers should include in their teaching rotation. However, it's easy to feel like we have to address so many of those issues that Jesus gets pushed to the margin in our teaching times and in small groups. The unintentional (or perhaps intentional, in some cases) result is that we communicate to teenagers it's more important to know what the Bible says about homosexuality, popular music, and other "hot button" issues than it is to know Jesus.

Understand me clearly: Helping teenagers embrace a Christ-centered, biblical worldview is important. Part of maturing in our relationship with Jesus is learning to take God's lead as we navigate through some of the "hot-button" issues of our day.

But when you talk about those secondary issues more than you talk about Jesus, you're missing the point.

Here's why you shouldn't make a bigger deal about secondary issues than you do about Jesus:

Students who don't know Jesus don't care about your secondary issues. Really. And if you do decide to harp on those issues, you'll either just 1) Tell them something they already agree with or 2) Anger them to the point they never want to come back. Stick with Jesus, and you'll tell them something that might actually transform their life.

What's in Your Youth Ministry? Part 2: Grace

Last week, I posted the first post in a three-part series on three things that need to be a big part of our youth ministries. Today, we'll cover grace.

Grace is one of those words that is so familiar to us—at least those of us in church circles—that we read right over it when we see it. Oh, yeah, grace. Of COURSE that's a part of our youth ministry, because we believe in that whole saved-by-grace thing. But grace is not a part of your youth ministry or church just because it's in your statement of faith. If we don't insist on grace being a part of our youth ministries, then our youth ministries will simply become grace-less. It's not that we don't believe grace is important; we just assume it's there, and we forget to constantly be a community where grace infiltrates everything we do. Here's how to make sure grace is a big part of your youth ministry:

Give and receive grace as a person. Do you really believe that God's love for you and Jesus' work on the cross is a gift? Or is there a part of you that believes you're just a little better than other people because you stay away from certain headline-grabbing sins? If your youth ministry is going to be characterized by the seems-too-good-to-be-true grace of Jesus, you have to really believe that without that grace, you are lost, dead, and hopeless. And once you believe that, you need to be a daily giver of grace to others. I'm not talking about a little trickle; I'm talking about your life being so characterized by grace that people think you're nuts. Really. It's tough for your youth ministry to be a place where teenagers learn about what grace really is if it's leader is not the kind of person who knows much about it.

Teaching Teenagers that Sex is a Gift

Someone pointed me to this article titled "How Do You Feel About Sex and Teenage Sleepovers?" by Soraya Chemaly on Huffingtonpost.com this week. The entire article is an interesting read as an example of a worldview that encourages "healthy" sexual activity for teenagers. What really hit me, however, was this paragraph:

If you aren't comfortable with your own sexuality or challenging deeply-embedded ideas about sex being "bad," can you teach your kids anything different? In defiance of socially conservative mythology, approaches that are positive about sex do not lead to licentiousness, STDs, abortions and despair. On the contrary, the more you teach children about healthy, responsible sex, the more likely they are to treat sex in healthy, responsible ways. In general, they are more knowledgeable, more emotionally mature about it and "safer" in the scary-sex way. It goes a long way to understanding why the rate of teen pregnancy is the U.S. is four times that in the Netherlands, for example. (Emphasis added)

Here's the thing that bugged me most about that paragraph in Chemaly's article: She's right.

Well, not completely right. You don't have to be in youth ministry very long to understand that teenagers who experience sexual relationships are rarely--if ever--unaffected by severe and painful emotional and physical consequences that are conveniently omitted from sitcoms where everyone seems to be hooking up with almost zero consequences at all. So for the most part, I disagree with the article, especially her main point that encouraging teenagers to have sex with their significant others is a good and healthy thing to do. The statement that she's partly right about is the one I emphasized above:

If you aren't comfortable with your own sexuality or challenging deeply-embedded ideas about sex being "bad," can you teach your kids anything different?

Infographic: Notes on Suicide

Saw this great infographic on suicide last week, and I wanted to share it with you. Check it out:

Source: www.bestmastersincounseling.com

A Theology of Tragedy in Youth Ministry

There is something about a high-profile tragedy that brings to light the fact that our world is very, very broken. Yes, on some level, we understand that the victims of violence at the Boston Marathon yesterday represented but a fraction of number of victims of the violent crimes that occurred yesterday in our country and our world. But when the violence occurs on such a large stage, we cannot avoid the news and we are forced to grapple with the questions that inevitably enter our minds when we see such brokenness. At our church office, we paid special attention to the news, as Roy Gruber, our lead pastor was running in the marathon. After about twenty minutes of tension, we finally heard he was safe, having finished the race almost an hour before the explosions turned a scene of joy into a cloud of chaos.

When such events force us to pick up the rock of our humanity and see the dark underside, as youth workers we need to be prepared to help teenagers--and their families--navigate through their emotions and questions. This week, your regularly-scheduled-plan will likely be interrupted with questions about yesterday's tragedy or others like it, such as the Newtown shooting that occurred only months ago. Any youth worker worth his or her salt needs to have worked through a theology of tragedy. Otherwise, the words we offer may be empty, irrelevant, and not based in Truth. Here are some ways to help frame the conversations you may have with teenagers this week:


This world is broken because of sin. Yes, this one seems obvious, but it's an important piece of groundwork to lay in any conversation about tragedy. There is good, there is evil, and it's healthy to distinguish between the two. Even in the case of natural disasters, we can conclude that sin is what broke our world.

Video of the Week: Shoot Christians Say

I saw this video last week from Tripp and Tyler, and I had to share it. Enjoy!

List of Helpful Web Resources in Wake of Newtown, Connecticut Shootings

More than a few preachers, bloggers, and thinkers have weighed in with thoughts on the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT last Friday. As happens with the onslaught of coverage that follows such a high profile tragedy, some of the responses are better than others. Here are a handful of responses that have helped me in the past week as a pastor and as a dad:

Jim Burns - Violence on Campus: Helping Your Kids Cope with Tragedy

“In this information age - and with all of the media coverage, it's likely that only the youngest of children are sheltered from seeing or hearing information following tragic events like this one. Parents can play a vital role in helping their kids cope with the overwhelming tragedy associated with crises like this. To help you help your kids, I've put together some ideas that you might find useful.” (Read it all here.)

Video of the Week: Advent Conspiracy

I'm pretty sure I shared this video last Advent, too. It's just too good not to share again:



By the way, if you've never checked out Epipheo Studio's YouTube channel, they've got a lot of fun and thoughtful videos.

Making Much of Jesus in Our Family at Christmas

In our tiny brick house, there are a few signs that Christmas is around the corner. Some stockings are hung by the window (the fireplace in our 1929 house was closed into the wall an unknown number of decades ago for some unknown reason). A small artificial tree is decorated in the corner of our front room and is sporting multi-colored hand-me-down lights. On our kitchen table sets a gaudy train-shaped music box that opens to reveal Santa watching a toy train run in circles, curiously to the tune of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Let's just say we aren't going to be entering any Christmas decoration contests anytime soon.

Like many of you, my wife and I desire that this season of "giving" be more about Jesus' incarnation than about presents. This is a difficult task when strangers take it upon themselves to make small talk with my daughters while in line at the grocery store by asking them what presents Santa will be bringing them for Christmas. We are far from having all of this figured out, but there are a few things that we do as a family to make much of Jesus during the month of December:

We don't "do" Santa. Without going too deep into the issue here, the biggest reason we don't "do" Santa is because we don't want to set our kids up for what essentially amounts to an elaborate hoax. Now, we do "pretend" in some respects, such as pretending the stockings are from Santa (this is new this year at the encouragement of my lovely wife). As the kids get older, we'll also teach them the legend of Saint Nicholas. (For a great view on how to "redeem" Santa, check out Mark Driscoll's 2010 Washington Post article on "What We Tell Our Kids About Santa" here).

Why You Shouldn't Go Into Debt to Pay For Seminary

Credit: Creative Commons (Tax Credits)

Yesterday, I posted a few pros and cons about going to seminary. On of the cons was a fairly obvious one to anyone who has attended seminary or just looked into it: seminary is expensive. Very expensive. The average three-year M.Div. degree now costs about $40,000 (source: Association of Theological Schools 2011-2012 Annual Data Table). Add to that books and living expenses, and the total price increases very quickly.

Going into seminary, I was blessed to have zero student loan debt from my undergraduate degree. I had a small amount of credit card debt after college, but was able to be debt-free before going to seminary by working for a year. However, I did not have any savings to pay for seminary. While I did receive a partial scholarship to attend Denver Seminary, it did not come close to covering the cost of tuition or living expenses. However, while during a workshop on how to pay for seminary (at Denver Seminary), I learned how to apply for student loans. In fact, I remember very well what the workshop leader said: "Where God guides, he provides." The message was clear: one way God would provide would be through student loans.

Before I go on, I want to make something very clear: I'm grateful for the education I received at Denver Seminary, and I feel like I was very well prepared to be a pastor upon graduation. I don't fault Denver Seminary for the choices my wife and I made (she attended Denver Seminary as well). They were our financial choices, and they are choices we own. The workshop I attended, however, reveals a very broken mindset we have, not just as Americans, but as Christians: if you don't have a pile of cash available to you to pay for school, you should borrow money to go to school.

Boys on the Side: An Article On Casual Sex, College Kids, and Young Professionals

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Are We Known By Our Love?

While working on a sermon I preached last week, I came across a study Lifeway did back in 2005 on "The Top 10 Issues Facing the Church Today" (As of right now, you can access a summary of the study here, but the study is no longer available on Lifeway's site). Lifeway polled 1,300 pastors from the West (Europe and North America)on what they believed were the most pressing issues facing the Church today. Here's the top ten list:

10) Abortion
9) Homosexuality
8) Relevance
7) Marriage
6) Apathy
5) Doctrine/World View
4) Evangelism
3) Leadership
2) Discipleship
1) Prayer

Let me first say that I believe all of the issues here are valid issues, and were I making my own list, at least a few of them might make my Top Ten as well. However, the results of the study and the issues that made the Top Ten really concerned me, and here's why: as followers of Jesus (and especially those of us who are church leaders), we have allowed ourselves to become known more by the issues we are for or against than by how we love.

(As an aside, loving others didn't make the Top Ten. Is it because we're already so great at loving each other and loving those in our communities? Or is it a gross oversight by the 1,300 CHURCH LEADERS who were polled?)

In the sermon I preached, we opened up John 13:35 and read Jesus' words in what was kind of his final address to his disciples:

“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Just imagine the scene: when Jesus says these words, it’s during the Last Supper, right before he is going to be arrested and crucified. And his disciples don’t quite understand everything that’s going on, but I think they do understand that this is a significant night, because Jesus is kind of giving a farewell address. And in the midst of this, he says, “By this, all people will know that you are my disciples..." I wasn’t there, and I may be reading into the text here, but I imagine that there must have been a significant pause after those words. You know, we read it like “By this all people will know that you are my disciples... (long pause) if you love one another.”

Video of the Week: Rainn Wilson on the Teen Brain

Caught this earlier this week on Tim Schmoyer's site, and it's definitely worth sharing here:

Mark Driscoll: What We Tell Our Kids About the Easter Bunny

I thought this article in the Washington Post by Mark Driscoll on what they tell their kids about the Easter Bunny was really interesting. No matter your conclusion on whether the Easter Bunny is a fun tradition or simply Satan dressed up in a bunny suit, I think it's an important read, especially parents. Driscoll's approach to the issue isn't just helpful with the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, but it's helpful in just about every cultural issue where Scripture isn't black and white on the issue and we need to use some discernment.

For the record, in our family, we don't really "do" the Easter Bunny, because we (honestly, mostly I) don't see much of a point in highlighting a creature that doesn't really exist. We do, however, have Easter baskets and lots of fun treats. Easter Sunday is, after all, a huge "feast day" that should be accompanied with laughter, celebration, and fine foods. Some of us enjoy lamb as a fine food, my girls enjoy chocolate.

Here's an excerpt of Driscoll's article, but please do head over to the Washington Post site to read it all.

Some Christians, rather than celebrate the fact that a day that was once devoted to the celebration of a pagan god and is now devoted to Jesus, wish to be the conscience police and go around telling everyone how they should stop having fun and celebrating because of the day’s origins. If someone has a conscience issue with celebrating the holiday, they should abstain, but to rail against kids eating candy and having fun sounds more like the religious types who murdered Jesus than the kids who hung out with him.

A YouTube Phenomenon: Teens ask, "Am I ugly or pretty?"

I had never heard of "Am I Ugly or Pretty" YouTube videos until I read a blog post about it on CNN:

Adolescents, possibly as young as 11, are taking to the web and asking the world to weigh in on their appearance. From supportive messages to the plain pervy, the responses run the gamut. Comments provoked by these videos offer an interesting cross-section of the American psyche–and it's all painfully punctuated by images of America’s youth searching for approval.

In a video titled “Am I ugly or pretty? Please Let me know!” one young YouTube user says: “Hey guys, this is my first video…but before I post any more videos making a fool of myself, and I know there’s hundreds of videos like this…I just wanna know, am I pretty or ugly? Cuz at school I get called ugly all the time.”

I watched one of the videos, and it broke my heart. I believe it was the one that sparked this phenomenon, posted in September 2010, and I've embedded it at the end of this post. It wasn't just because the young woman wanted to know whether she was beautiful or not. That's unfortunately fairly commonplace among teens and pre-teens. It was that there are two possible reasons a girl would take this question to YouTube: either she so desires affirmation that she was willing to go to anyone who will give it, or she really believes she isn't beautiful, and she's bought into that belief so much she's willing to subject herself to ridicule to reaffirm what she believes about herself.

Video of the Week: What is a Trader from RightNow.org

This is a great video with an amazing description of what a missionary is:



Hat Tip: Brian Kirk

Rick Reilly: I Believe in Tim Tebow

Given that today is game day in Bronco Country (am I allowed to make Utah a part of Bronco Country?), I thought this was a fun article to share about Tebow on ESPN.com:

Remember last week, when the world was pulling its hair out in the hour after Tebow had stunned the Pittsburgh Steelers with an 80-yard OT touchdown pass to Demaryius Thomas in the playoffs? And Twitter was exploding with 9,420 tweets about Tebow per second? When an ESPN poll was naming him the most popular athlete in America?

Tebow was spending that hour talking to 16-year-old Bailey Knaub about her 73 surgeries so far and what TV shows she likes.

"Here he'd just played the game of his life," recalls Bailey's mother, Kathy, of Loveland, Colo., "and the first thing he does after his press conference is come find Bailey and ask, 'Did you get anything to eat?' He acted like what he'd just done wasn't anything, like it was all about Bailey."

More than that, Tebow kept corralling people into the room for Bailey to meet. Hey, Demaryius, come in here a minute. Hey, Mr. Elway. Hey, Coach Fox.

Even though sometimes-fatal Wegener's granulomatosis has left Bailey with only one lung, the attention took her breath away.

"It was the best day of my life," she emailed. "It was a bright star among very gloomy and difficult days. Tim Tebow gave me the greatest gift I could ever imagine. He gave me the strength for the future. I know now that I can face any obstacle placed in front of me. Tim taught me to never give up because at the end of the day, today might seem bleak but it can't rain forever and tomorrow is a new day, with new promises."

Great Post By a Missionary Friend: "The One Percent and Me"

Please head over to Aspen Leaves to Acacia Trees to read a great, thought-provoking post from my friend Jim, a missionary in Kenya. He's got a great perspective on the "Occupy" movement here in the U.S. and wealth distribution. While you're there, I recommend you poke around their blog for a few minutes, and perhaps even consider supporting them financially; they're looking to make up about $250 a month in support.

Here's an excerpt:

My parents visited last month and we celebrated an early Christmas with them - ham, cranberry sauce and all. After eating, I took some of the traditional meal to our yard-worker, Edward. He had a great time trying all the foods. He really liked cranberry sauce, enjoyed the ham. His favorite part was the stuffing; he didn't care for the olives. NONE of it was familiar to him. After he'd eaten it and had seconds of the stuffing and that precious cranberry sauce he asked, "You eat like this every Christmas?"

"Yep." I couldn't admit to him that I would have normally eaten twice the amount he'd just had OR that we'd had a meal like that only a month ago when we celebrated Thanksgiving or that we'd probably do it all over again when Easter came around.

Isn't There Anyone Who Can Tell Me What Christmas Is All About?

A great reminder from Linus of how to celebrate this weekend what Christmas is all about from A Charlie Brown Christmas:



Merry Christmas from the McVeigh family!

Handling Santa

Credit: Creative Commons (Kathleen Conklin)

Last week at my girls' dance class, my wife Jennifer got some very unkind looks from several parents. The reason: Our three-year-old Bethany had responded to her teacher's question to the class about what all the girls had asked Santa to bring them with a matter of fact reply: "Santa isn't real."

Jennifer and I have made the choice not to "do Santa" at our house. Now, this doesn't mean we're on some crusade or anything, or that we take delight in ruining other kids' fun. We understand that Santa adds a lot of fun for some families, but our main concern is that participating in this particular tradition would involve telling our kids a lie--that Santa is a real person.