Chase the Setting Sun...

OK, I love this song by Leonard Cohen. I've posted a different video of the Myles Kennedy version before but Corey Willoughby turned me on to the Phil Wickham version yesterday and it's pretty amazing too! They both take a different approach and I enjoy both. Hope you do too!

Phil Wickham - Hallelujah


Myles Kennedy (Alter Bridge) - Hallelujah

Every Wednesday I have a group of students that come over to the church after school to hang out and play video games. Most of the time they play Madden 2010 or Halo.

I am not your typical youth pastor. I almost never play video games. Seems that most youth ministries have a huge focus on video games; having multiple game consoles and TVs to play them on. I'm just not that interested.

I've been thinking about different Holiday traditions as Christmas quickly approaches. I decided to put up a list of my top 10 favorite holiday traditions (in no particular order)

1. Peanut Butter Balls

• Those of you from Ohio might call these "Buckeyes". We were always forbidden to call them that because most of my family attended Indiana University for college. They are basically a mix of peanut butter, butter, and powdered sugar rolled into a ball and covered in chocolate. Pretty phenomenal!

2. Christmas Vacation

• This is by far the greatest Christmas Movie of all time! No matter how many times I watch it I think I pull a muscle laughing every time. Just watched it last night with my parents and Grandmother for the second time this season (their first time ever!) and it was amazing. After the movie my 89 yr old grandmother said "Well Joe, I think that is the first movie I've seen since Hoosiers. (in the theater)". At that rate, unless she lives to be 120 it might be the last movie she sees. What a great last movie! (I'm not sure she'd agree with that statement).
  

3. Edward Scissorhands on Thanksgiving Day with Courtney

• This tradition started our first Thanksgiving together when we were dating. The movie was on TV and I was (still am) a huge Johnny Depp fan so we watched it. We've seen it most Thanksgivings since (although we missed the last couple years until this year).

4. Christmas Morning Cinnamon Rolls

• Every year since I can remember we have had Pillsbury cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. We would awake to the smell of garlic and onions sauteing (Mom preparing her famous stuffing for Christmas dinner), open presents, then stuff our faces with cinnamon rolls. Courtney and I continue this tradition.

5. Putting up the Christmas Tree (Mexican Style)

• Every year growing up it was always fun to put up the Christmas Tree. When I was growing up that usually occurred either the 1st of December or sometime after Thanksgiving and before Dec 1st. Now, although Courtney likes to try and get me to put up the tree sometime closer to HALLOWEEN, it is still a lot of fun. We make queso dip with mexican seasoned ground turkey (a tradition her family started...I think without the meat though) and play Christmas music while decorating. Definitely more fun this year now that we have a house and don't have to move half of our furniture into another room to fit the tree.

6. Dinner Rolls

• See previous post "On a Roll...a Holiday Tradition"

7. Starbucks Peppermint Mochas

• Most of the year I can restrain from too many Starbucks runs...Christmas season kills me though with the Peppermint Mochas. I'm addicted (and drinking one as I write this).
  

8. Christmas Eve Service

• Last year I participated in the 6pm Contemporary service on Christmas Eve at Castleton United Methodist Church. This year, now that I work at the church, I was responsible for picking music and organizing the service. As much work as it is to organize a Christmas Eve service, it really is a lot of fun and I am looking forward to the actual service. I'm also looking forward to next year, hopefully I'll be able to take the service to the next level. This year I stuck closer to what is expected from the past as my first Christmas Eve.

9. Phao Student Ministries Family Christmas Dinner

• This year was our first annual Phao Student Ministries Family Christmas Dinner. Last Sunday we had about 100 people show up to Fellowship Hall in a snow storm to join us to celebrate the Christmas season and our ministry. We gave out thank you gifts to some of our great volunteer leaders, had a white elephant gift exchange with the students and gave out information for summer mission trips. Props to Steph for the idea and everyone that helped decorate and pull it together!

10. Snow!

• I've been loving the snow this year. I think having a house really adds to the enjoyment of the snow. I don't really even mind shoveling the snow. It's been a lot of fun watching it snow while in my living room drinking coffee and enjoying the warmth of our fireplace (even if I have already burnt through most of the wood we have).

Anyway, I am enjoying this time of year more and more as I get older I think. What are your favorite foods, movies or traditions during this Holiday Season?

**Our Contemporary Christmas Eve service this year will be at 6pm in the Castleton United Methodist Church Sanctuary of of 71st Street and Shadeland Avenue, Indianapolis. Join us!

Right now my Young Adult Discussion Group is reading through "Messy Spirituality" by Mike Yaconelli. This week we are on chapter 5, "Odd Discipleship."

Mike is talking in a part of this chapter about the church he pastors and how it is an odd group of people and how their service is "growing".

"I pastor the slowest growing church in America. We started twelve years ago with ninety members and have ungrown to thirty. We are about as far as you can get from a user-friendly church--not because our congregation is unfriendly but because our services are unpredictable, unpolished, and inconsistent. We are an "odd friendly" church, attracting unique and different followers of Christ who make every service a surprise."

We often try to justify what makes a good service by the quality of the "product" we produce, the quality of the music/sermon, the number of people in attendance, the amount (or lack) of awkward moments, blunders and other oddities.

Maybe what makes a good worship service are those oddities, blunders, awkward moments. Maybe it's as few as ten or fifteen weirdos coming together as the Body of Christ and worshiping together and enjoying fellowship with each other.

As we continue Renovate, our Saturday evening contemporary service, my thought on what makes a good worship service is changed and molded weekly. It is so easy for me to worry about the quality of the band, the sermon, the numbers in attendance...when really all that matters is that a few people that might not attend a church anywhere else are coming together and interacting with Jesus in some way, even if just for a few minutes.

It's that time of the year again. The holidays are here. The Christmas tree is up (and has been for a couple weeks...haha). There is an eternal flame in the fire place these days. Thanksgiving is a few days away and you know what that means...time to bake some dinner rolls.

Since my Grandpa Garrison died a few years ago I have taken over the task of making the traditional holiday dinner rolls for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Grandpa made rolls for decades up until the last couple of years of his life. They were always a tie for my favorite holiday food tradition, right along with Mom's stuffing. For a lot of years I think I barely ate anything else at Thanksgiving dinner. I bite of turkey, a plate of stuffing, and about ten dinner rolls.

I always get a few messages each year from family asking how many rolls I'm making, usually with a hint of "If you don't make enough you're dead" in their voices. It really is a honor to make them. I think at this point making the rolls is my strongest connection with my Grandpa. They are always good for bringing a couple of my cousins to tears with that first roll of the season. It seems that biting into them brings back all the memories of "helping" Grandpa bake bread when we were little.

Along with the honor of making them is a little bit of fear. I'm kind of a perfectionist when it comes to these rolls. I'm always worried they are going to be bad, or even just not quite as good as Grandpa's were. What if no one likes them this year?

So far so good. I've only tanked them a couple times. The first two times I made them and only Courtney and I had those.

Hopefully this year goes as well as other years and I can keep those memories flowing with Grandpa's dinner rolls. Tomorrow, once again I will try and channel some of Grandpa's bread baking expertise and whip up two or three batches of rolls, about one hundred rolls in total.

I'll have a long day of work ahead of me, but I always enjoy the house smelling like fresh baked rolls, the Christmas tree lit, and the eternal flame burning in the fireplace.

What are your family holiday traditions?

I have now been doing full time ministry for about three and a half months. November 1st marked the end of my third month here at Castleton UMC. There have been a lot of fun and exciting things going on here in Phao Student Ministries along with the Contemporary worship ministries here at Castleton.

Along with some amazing things that have been going on in ministry it has been a time of figuring out how to balance full time ministry with marriage.

As probably anyone in ministry will tell you, it takes up an incredible amount of your time and energy. The passion God has given those of us in ministry, for those we minister to, often occupies our minds long after we leave the doors of the church. Ministry is not a 9-5, 40 hour per week kind of job. It tends to be a "whatever it takes to do it well" kind of job.

I have run into the struggle of not only dealing with full time ministry's time commitment, but being involved in two (or three) totally different types of ministries presents maybe a greater struggle to balance ministry with being home with my wife. I am supposed to spend half (or maybe a little less than half) of my time working on contemporary worship for our two worship services, and the rest of my time ministering to teenagers.

As perfect of a job as that may sound, it is difficult because handling music, musicians, and organization of two separate services and bands tends to be more than a 15-20 hour a week job. Student ministry, even though I work alongside a great full time Director of Student Ministries, tends to also take more than 20 hours a week. Add on leading a Tuesday night discussion group for young adults every week and the weeks tend to get pretty long.

As much as I absolutely love my job, the struggle has been finding time to be home. Not just finding time to be home though; finding time to be home when my wife, Courtney, is home. My schedule tends to make it so it is easier to be home in the mornings while she is at work because ministry often extends into the evenings, when she is home.

I am constantly trying to find ways to be home more but I'll admit, it's pretty hard. I'm thankful that everyone I work for, and with, are supportive of helping me find ways to get more time at home with Courtney.

I'm sure this is a struggle that I'll be working on forever, or at least as long as God is using me in full time ministry. Every pastor, youth worker, church staffer, deals with this kind of thing. It's nothing new. It's not specific to me.

I'd be curious to hear from those of you that are doing this, or have done this before and are (or were) married. How do you, or have you, balanced ministry with home life and family? What are the secrets I haven't come up with yet? Thanks.

P.S. Courtney has been a rock star throughout these last few months, as hard as it's been, she has been more than supportive and willing to adapt her life to meet the demands of being a "youth pastor's wife." Thank you.

Well, I've only been at work since like 3pm today. It's 5:40pm. I officially can't concentrate and I still have two hours left. It's not like it's a long day of work or anything.

I got to work at 3pm, put together worship books and slides for worship for the Sunday morning contemporary band and then came over to the sanctuary to set up the stage for rehearsal. All the while having The Ride with JMV playing on the PA system so I could hear up to the minute Colts coverage.

Three hours to go then the Colts rock Monday Night Football against the Houston Texans for the lead in the AFC South division. Having a few friends over for Chili and football. Doesn't get much better than that!

So for the next two hours I will try to gain my composure and think about something other than the Colts...maybe.

As much as I love Monday night football, it would be better for me if the Colts didn't play on a workday ever. So here's lookin forward to Thursday Night Football in December and a productive day that day as well!!

Go Colts!