Joel Young Blog.com

Tonight a group of us from Horizon hung out a local Subway right down the sidewalk from where we meet for worship every Sunday. Our simple goal was to show kindness to everyone who walked through the door by buying them a drink in hopes that they might reward this kindness with a small conversation, but only if they wanted it. The response we got from most people was very cool. It amazed them that if they didn’t want to talk to us we were still going to buy them a drink, and not push a conversation on them. In fact, we ended up having a conversation with almost everyone that we met tonight.

I think that something the church has failed to realize over the years is that we have to earn the right to have a conversation with someone we don’t know. Just because we have an incredible message doesn’t mean that we automatically have credibility with every person that we meet. We need to earn that right through kindness, love, and sometimes lots of time and attention. If we want to share the Gospel message with people we have to be willing to show them the same kind of love Christ did by giving to them without the guarantee of a positive response.

Too many Christians have lived a life of lazy evangelism. They “spread” the Gospel by shoving it down people’s throats without ever earning the right to present it to that person. Until they accept that message and become a fellow heir in God’s kingdom we cannot judge them by standards the standards set in the Bible. We must meet them where they are and earn the right to share the message of Jesus Christ with them.

I think we all realize that our kids watch our every move we make and emulate us at every chance, but when I saw this video it really hit home for me as a preacher. Hilarious and frightening all at the same time.

As I sat in the corner of a local Panera Bread working this afternoon I heard a man impart this simple bit of wisdom.

“If you don’t know who you are, you’ll never be yourself.”

There are so many people who wrestle with this in their lives and simply need affirmation that they are valuable, they do have a purpose, and that someone loves them. What can you do today to help someone be themselves?

Mondays are normally crazy days for me. I like to get started on the week’s duties early and enjoy the fruits of my labor xat the end of the week. So, today I got to working early. I stopped for lunch and went right back to it only to look up ten minutes before I had to leave for a six o’clock meeting and say, “What time is it?”. To get lost in your work is a cool thing. When was the last time you got lost in something?

I want to preface this post with this. Tomorrow is going to be a hot and spicy Sunday of teaching direct from God’s Word and you won’t want to miss it, but I’m not going to be the one teaching in the morning.

I have preached every Sunday from August 2008 until tomorrow. Tomorrow marks my first Sunday not preaching in over 7 months. Don’t get me wrong, I love to preach and teach God’s word, I believe it’s what he put me on this earth to do, but I can’t put into words the burden that I carry every week as I prepare to preach from God’s inspired Word. Every Saturday evening my mind is occupied. I am thinking about the message that I have prepared to inspire, challenge, and prepare people for action. I’m thinking about what God will do through the message, and how important my delivery of it is. I’m also trying to recall everything I have researched, studied, and read over the last week as it will be crucial to my ability to deliver the message. It’s like writing a 10 page research paper each week and then reciting it from a few note cards. My mind and heart are heavy with responsibility, and sleep is hard to come by.

So, you would think on the evening before a Sunday when I’m not preaching that my mind would be clear and all that usually overwhelms and excites me would be far form my mind, but you’d be wrong. I’m so excited about what God will do through the teaching tomorrow that I probably won’t be able to sleep tonight either. It might sound like I’m a constant basket case, but I believe that the more care and attention I give the teaching of God’s word each week, the more possibility it has to impact someone. IT SHOULD BE IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO OCCUPY MY MIND EVERY WEEK!

I pray that God will never allow this zeal to fade from my heart or mind, and if it does that he will raise up a man to replace me; because the teaching of God’s word deserves it.

If you want to feel insignificant watch this video. Ok, even if you don’t, watch it anyway.

Pretty staggering to know that all of that information is true, and yet so is this: Luke 12: 6-7. Even in the face of staggering population numbers and statistics on the insignificance of our knowledge it should comfort us that God knows our most intimate details AND STILL LOVES US! Good stuff.

I don’t want to do a lot of self promoting on this blog, because that’s not what it exists for, but I recently removed my design portfolio from this site because I have created a new home for it. www.y2designandweb.com is the new home for my web and graphic design portfolio. If you or someone you knows would like to a website build or some design work done, then this would be the place for them to go.

Leaders get a lot of feedback on what they do, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned through the years it’s this. There are two people that every leader needs to ignore.

#1: People who ALWAYS agree with you and do nothing but sing your praises. It’s nice to have people who will give you the confidence you need, but these aren’t the people who you should be looking to for that confidence. Their unbiased approval can be your undoing if they lead you to believe that you are never wrong.

#2: People who are NEVER happy and only complain. If the squeaky wheel always gets the oil, it’ll just keep on squeaking. It’s good to have people that are going to give you criticism to help make you better, but these aren’t the people you should be taking that criticism from.

Even though it’s impossible to remove these people and their influence from your life completely, leaders need to distance themselves from these people. The people that leaders need to keep tight are the people who are going to always love and respect them, their hard work, and their leadership, but aren’t afraid to properly offer advice and criticism to them when it’s warranted. Balanced support builds great leaders.

Today my mobile office was the food court in the Northern Kentucky University Student Center. I was meeting some friends there and as I have several times I decided to make a day out of working at the school. They blast free wifi all over campus, newly added this year, which is cool and the atmosphere is unbelievable. There are tons of little niches and corners to settle into, but more than that I enjoy the hustle and bustle of the college campus.

The college atmosphere is unlike any other. It is always exciting and never seems to lose its appeal. People are always off to do something cool or try something new, and it really is a collaborative common community that I find fascinating; even on a campus of 15,000 students.

As I often do, I wondered how the church could re-create this exciting and contagious atmosphere where people are mystically connected by a common thread. A place where people just seem to want to congregate and where it’s okay to just be, even when you don’t have anything specific to do.

We need to make the church this kind of place in order to reach the generation that is slipping away. Any ideas?