6. Distractions during service

Today my Pastor told me a humorous story about one time when he was preaching a revival service. Just as he got to the altar call he saw a frog hopping down the aisle. The head Pastor of that church nodded to deacon, Mafia style,  to take care of that frog. But instead of just picking it up and throwing it out the back door, the deacon walked all the way down to the front to get a bulletin to shoo the frog away so he wouldn't have to touch it. At this point everyone saw what happened and the moment was ruined.

This got me to thinking about some of my favorite distraction moments that I have experienced or heard about. Let's do this David Letterman top-ten style.

10. I was frustrated when someone walked it the room and started whispering. Turned out they were getting my wife because my son peed his pants. Pastor's kids.

9. My friend had a homosexual girl who would come to his service and sit in the front row just to mess with him, with a shirt on that said "I love [a certain part of the female anatomy]"

8. A guy in South Carolina brought noise canceling headphones to put on when the "contemporary music" was being played.

7. An elderly lady in Tampa would bring a newspaper and open it up in the front row if the Pastor ever started to bore her.

6. Three words:  Silent but Deadly

5. While running Easy Worship in the main service I accidentally minimized it and the desktop picture of a guy getting hit in the head with a dodgeball was on display for all to see.

4. At a mega church in Florida a guy came down the aisle to talk to the preacher but he had a knife tucked away in his Bible. His deacons handled the knife guy better than the guy who had to deal with the frog, I promise you that.

3. While using a curriculum purchased from www.youth-sermons.com a youth pastor didn't read the memo about editing out portions of the Karate Kid movie due to some bad language. His Pastor walked in the room as Daniel unloaded on Mr. Miagi... Now that's distracting.

2. While teaching preschool children during chapel, an elderly teacher's aid would always shout out answers to questions obviously intended for children. "Who is God's son." "Jesus... I've know that for 70 years. Ask a tough one!"

1. And my number one distracting moment came during a youth camp I put on. As the speaker was giving his morning lesson a kid turned around and threw up his scrambled eggs. What could I do? I got down on my hands and knees and picked it all up before the smell got too bad. I didn't eat eggs for a year.

What was your most distracting moment?

Check out my book at www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com

5. Dress Code Debates

With the Summer Olympics upon us we are filled with a sense of patriotism and excitement for our country to do well. One team that we have high hopes for is our women's beach volleyball team of Misty May and Kerri Walsh. They have won the last two gold medals and have never even lost a set in Olympic play. It is truly amazing. But as a youth pastor and a normal guy I find it a bit easier to root for them this year, because they are playing at night in London and tend to wear more clothes than usual.

This bring up an interesting topic in youth ministry circles that is a big two piece wearing elephant in the room every summer: how do you determine what kind of bathing suit your girls should wear at church functions?

I was asked yesterday why it is that in 2012 our church hasn't changed it's policies to allow bikinis to be worn at church functions. My answer was a very practical answer, while we are making a lot of changes to keep up with a changining culture, these changes are mostly being implemented by men. And I do not plan on being the creepy guy who stands up at a church business meeting to address my concern for the fact that we don't allow teenage girls to wear bikinis at a pool or at the beach.

Here are a couple of issues with this. Every girl in our youth group has a church bathing suit and a regular bathing suit. So are we teaching our students to live a double life?

Is this something we will look back on as one of the silly things we used to "in the olden days"? After all it wasn't long ago when girls and boys weren't even allowed to swim it the same pool together at church functions.

Are we "causing our boys to stumble?" This is often quoted as a reason to not allow girls to wear bikinis. We are talking about teenage boys here... the girls could wear a parka to the beach and it would cause the boys to stumble. Such is the life of a teenage boy. I don't think one or two piece makes a difference on this point.

And finally someone suggested that it is just easier to keep things the way they are because then when we have to get specific about what kind of bikini is permissible. But, what if we just made our own church bikinis that were within regulations, thus creating no further confusion?

What would this look like?

1. While the first inclination would be to make it out of fig leaves, I would vote against that.

2. Maybe it could made of flannel graph to appease the home school moms.

3. We could build in speakers that plays nothing but the pastors message from the previous Sunday.

4. Maybe to clear this idea past the deacons it should have a website address on it to advertise online tithing to the church.

5. But I think my favorite idea would be to have Biblical passages on every bikini bottom, my suggestion: Matthew 5:39 "Turn the other cheek."



Where do you stand on the bikini debate?

Check out sermons at www.youth-sermons.com and buy a book at www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com.

4. Super Hero Volunteers

Summer time for me is super hero time. I look forward to watching all of the super hero movies, and besides and awful verion of the Incredible Hulk made in 2003 I tend to like all super hero movies. But now I have a 3-year old who is just as obssessed with super heroes as I am. But as we all know, it doesn't take a cape or getting bit by a spider to be a super hero.

We are surrounded by super heroes in our ministry, we just may not have realized it. Here are a few that I have in my ministry: 

1. The Green Driver. This is a man who can drive a bus anywhere I plan a trip. He also has an unbelievable ability to stay awake when everyone is sleeping and also can stay focused when the minions are being evil.

2. The Organizer. Most youth pastors are visionaries and we can come up with some great ideas. But the Robin to our Batman is the person we can tell the idea to and watch as the superhuman wheels in their brain starts spinning. Somehow there always seems to be enough napkins and extra snacks in the back, just in case.

3. Registration Lady. When the world is in need of registering there is one lady who can save the day... registration lady! She can hold 16 conversations at one time, tell parents when to come back, collect money, put on wristbands, and she does it all with a great first-impression smile.

4. Crazy Middle School Guy. This is the guy who always has a game up his sleeve. He can wrestle 14 6th graders in his super hero clutch. He knows how to be stern enough to keep their respect, fun enough to keep their attention, and he lost all sense of smell in a chemical accident leaving him with the super human ability to sleep in the same room as those smelly, smelly villains.

5. Super Wife. And the greatest super hero of all is the youth pastor's wife. She can lead small groups, host sleepovers, organize luncheons all while juggling being a wife and a mother. She knows that being in ministry is a great privilege, "And with great privilege comes great resposibilty." She is the glue that holds the youth ministry (and the youth minister) together.

What other super heroes do you have in your ministry?

 Check out www.youth-sermons.com for some great youth sermons and www.baptizedinfritpunch.com for a great book.

3. Freaking out public schools.

We just got back from doing a Teacher Appreciation Luncheon at a local middle school. As a youth pastor I am always trying to find a way to build bridges with the public schools. However, when I walk into a school and let them know that our church wants to fix lunch for over 100 employees and we don't want anything back, and we don't to preach at them, we just want to serve them... well, every principal looks at me like I  have three heads.

So this got me thinking... if I really were trying to freak out people at the public schools what would I do?

1. I could charm a snake out of a pot of baked beans.

2. I could sneak a prayer handkerchief into every other napkin.

3. I could put a big sign over the water that says, "Living Water" and we could have "Living Sweet Tea" too.

4. I could have one of my volunteers fake an injury and heal them by slapping them in the forehead.

5. I could have everyone hum Amazing Grace under their breath and let it get louder and louder until revival breaks out at a faculty meeting.

6. I could walk over to certain people and ask them if they new they would go to Heaven if they died of complications of high cholesterol due to the four pieces of fried chicken they just annihilated.

7. Or I could obey the laws of the land, provide a hearty meal and a genuine thank you for all they do to educate our students. Then when I got back home I would log on to www.youth-sermons.com for a good sermon and www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com for a good book.




How else could you freak out public schools?

2. Staying engaged at staff meetings.

Staff meetings are a necessary part of every healthy church. But most youth pastors have a hard time staying engaged in them when they take too long. One reason is that we tend to have short attention spans and high energy levels. And second is because only a small part of the whole meeting has to do with our area of ministry, and let's be honest things are a lot more fun when they are about us.

 So how can you stay engaged in a staff meeting when it runs longer than you can handle.

 1. Have a running inner-monologue of jokes based on everything that is said. This will keep you smiling and your Head Pastor will think that you are such a positive person. Caution: Don't get your inner monolgue and outer monologue confused, youth pastors have been fired for that.

 2. Act like you are taking judicious notes, when in fact you are writing down ideas for a blog post entitled, "How to stay engaged during a staff meeting"

 3. Picture everyone in the meeting in their underwear. Wait a minute, that is bad advice.

 4. Take a 5 Hour Energy before it starts. Leave the empty bottle on the table as a hint to everyone that you only have so long before you crash.

 5. Do what my intern did today. Doodle pictures based on church campaigns that are being discussed. This one is based on a campaign we are running called #ANewTomorrow

 6. And finally, you could always search for awesome sermon ideas on www.youth-sermons.com or buy a new book at www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com



How else can you stay engaged during long staff meetings?

1. Blatant Christian Rip-Offs

I am starting this blog with high hopes and ambition, the same way I did when I started every other blog that was supposed to revolutionize the Christian industry. First I started one with just my name at jamesblewett.com in some hope that I will have purchased the domain name that everybody wanted and someone would offer me a million dollars to buy the domain. However, I already decided before this imaginary event would happen that I would not sell out to the man and my name is not for sale. Then I decided to start a blog about Christianity in the news. The Koran burning idiot from a few years ago gave me a couple easy posts but then I realized I would have to watch the 700 club to continue so I didn't do that.

So what makes this blog different from my previous blogging experiences? Well for starters, I am trying desperately to drive traffic to my website www.youth-sermons.com and subsequently to my book website www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com. But the main reason that this will be different is because I am blatantly and unapologetically ripping off a brilliant man by the name of Jon Acuff (www.jonacuff.com) who has a brilliant blog entitled Stuff Christians Like. But the beauty of this is that Acuff actually started his blog as a ripoff of a brilliant blog entitled Stuff White People Like (www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com)

This got me to thinking, how else can we rip these people off? Here are some of my favorite ideas:

1. Stuff Worship Leaders Like

A blog dedicated to who has the lowest v-neck and who can dress the most ironically.

2. Stuff Home School Moms Like

Most of it discusses the life lessons from Anne of Green Gables, but there is a great post about how to teach sex ed with a flannel graph

3. Stuff Elderly People Like

Doesn't matter what is on this because the only site elderly people get on is Facebook.

4. Stuff Middle School Boys Like

Sponsored by Axe body spray and a total state of confusion.

5. Stuff Deacon's Like

It's a blank page.



What other blatant Christian rip-offs can you think of?