I’ve been following the story of the girls in a Massachusetts town who are believed to have formed a pact to get pregnant together.  The stories are all over the Internet; including many chat rooms and rumor pages calling the girls “retarded” and making other derogatory statements about them.  Apparently the girls would go to the school nurse to have pregnancy tests and were more excited when they were pregnant than when they found out they weren’t.  One girl even admits that a 24 year old homeless man is the father of her baby.  The school’s pregnancy rate among students this year is over four times what it was last year. 

We can stand in awe of this story, but I think it’s a very sad commentary on our society and ultimately on those of us who call ourselves the church. Some of the quotes I read about the girls:

The school superintendent said: “Many of our young people are growing up directionless.”

A fellow student said, “They’re so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally,”

Another adult in the system said these were, “girls who lack self-esteem and have a lack of love in their life.”

Finally, one student may have said it best when she said, “No one’s offered them a better option.”

While I am thankful on one hand that these girls value life enough to have carry their babies, I couldn’t help but think about the teenage girls in my own community, the one where I’m involved in planting a church.  Are they just as confused about how to find true love?  Are they just as desperate?  We claim to be offering a better “Way”.  We certainly believe we have a “better option”, but do these girls know it?  Have we shared with them the unconditional love of Christ?  Do they sense that kind of love in us? 

I am thankful in my community for some great Christian youth leaders and para-church ministries, as well as teachers and administrators, who attempt to reach our young people each day, but I still wonder if we need to be doing more at the church level, specifically to help train parents, change a culture that’s dying for love and looking for it in all the wrong places, and reach those who feel left behind and unloved in our society.   I see these girls pact as a wake-up call to the church to be the church God has called us to be; to be light into darkness. 

I have the Nashville Business Journal on my Google Reader.  I love their concise stories and wide coverage. I get a good overview of the business world.  This morning, glancing over which stories I wanted to open and read, I saw two headlines which seemed to contradict each other.  I opened and read them and saw that they do indeed seem to be opposing views. 

The two stories:

http://tinyurl.com/6g2unv

Headline: CFO study: Recession could be worst in 30 years

and

http://tinyurl.com/5radqr

Headline: Survey: Most CEOs expect sales to increase or stay flat this year

So, the CFO’s of the business world think the economy is still tanking.  The CEO’s think sales will increase or at least stay flat this year.   So on one end of the corporate hall the glass is half full and down the hall we find the other half of the glass…the empty part. 

The CEO’s who are charged with leading the vision and setting the pace of the organization are feeling positive, while the chief number crunchers aren’t quite so sure.  It’s all a matter of perspective.  Being the CEO type myself, I enjoyed their article more.  Being married to the CFO type (she’s an accountant), I understand (and greatly appreciate sweety) the balance of two opinions. 

I just hope the CEO’s are right! 

Today at Starbucks I encountered someone having a very bad day.  As I sat outside with my friend Rog for our every Thursday morning meeting, listening to the birds chirp as we talked about life, the struggles of ministry and God; there was a very angry and disappointed person working around us.  Apparently someone failed to put a trash liner in the trash can.  People had been throwing coffee cups, most of them with some remaining coffee in them, into this unlined container.  She had to clean up someone else’s mess.  It was obvious to us that she was having a very stressful day. 

My first thought was to criticize her.  How dare she ruin our time of leisure; our time we have reserved to talk about ”God things”!  Why get so upset about spilled coffee?  We were sharing stories of ministry; important stuff!  If she wanted to see stress; I could show her stress. 

Then something seemed to whisper in my ear.  This lady was having a stressful day.  From her perspective, with what she had planned to do today, this was an interuption.  It was unnecessary and stress-producing.  From her perspective this was huge.  I decided rather than think bad thoughts of her that I would pray for God to comfort her and turn her day for good. 

As I pulled away from Starbucks this morning that whisper appeared again.  Maybe my staff feels that way at times. Perhaps the volunteers sometimes get stressed with their responsibilities.  I may look at them and think, “What’s the big deal?”  To me it may seem like trivial stress, but to them it may be major stress.  It’s all a matter of perspective.

Maybe I need to take a lesson in leadership from Jesus.  He could recognize the seemingly little stress times; like running out of wine at a wedding ceremony; and the big stress times, like when a dear friend was facing execution.  He even handled his own stress with confidence; like when an entire ministry held in the balance of His very next move.  Regardless of the size of the stress moment Jesus brought comfort not chaos and handled the situation with a calm assurance; understanding that stress in all of our lives is always a matter of perspective. 

I got phished today on Myspace. I don’t know what that means yet, but it doesn’t sound good.  The problem is that I opened my account with a false email address.  At the time I thought it was a smart idea.  It would cut down Spam while still allowing me access to my account.  The plan has worked great until now. 

I’ve had the account for years, had almost 4,000 “friends” and was able to do a lot of ministry through Myspace. Just today I connected with someone on the site.  The problem is I can’t change my password, make changes, or further protect my account because to do so they need to send a verification email to me….at an address that doesn’t exist.  I had to personally delete all my friends, 40 at a time, until I had no more. 

It’s kind of sad. I have never lost that many friends in one day.  I’m not even sure I’ve ever had that many friends in one day.  Anyway, it’s been a drag having Myspace, Facebook, and now Twitter, Blog, etc.  It was time for a change.  Still, I didn’t really even get to say goodbye to all my friends. 

If you don’t know, both my boys have expressed their feelings of a call to ministry. God has done some pretty neat things in their life and I’m a proud dad.

Nathaniel, now officially known as Nate, recently returned from middle school camp. He blogged about his experiences. Pretty good thoughts and pretty funny. Typical for the Nate Dog.

Check it out at www.nateedmondson.com

You can follow his Twitter updates also at www.twitter.com/natedmondson

A week from Sunday I’m speaking on Esther. It’s a great book and has always been one of my favorites. Over the last few days of reading the book again I’ve been in a quandary. There’s 10 chapters of good stuff so how will I fit it all into a 30 minute message? I decided it was impossible; yet people need to know the principles taught in this book.

So we decided to do an experiment. Everyday next week on the Grace website (http://www.gcomchurch.com/) there will be a blog with a reading assignment of two chapters in the book of Esther followed by some questions that will hopefully help us discover the important Biblical principles in this book.

If 20 people accept the challenge I’ll consider it a win, but imagine what could happen if 100′s of our people decided to discipline themselves for one week to read an entire book of the Bible. Will it change the world? Probably not. Could it change a few people’s hearts? Quite possibly.

If it works, who knows, we might try it or something similar again. Let me know how you feel about this and if it adds value to your life.

In the meantime, you can always find my daily devotions at http://www.mustardseedministry.com/.

Esther was willing to risk her life to save a group of people….after a word of encouragement from her cousin Mordecai. Moses was willing to continue to lead the Israelites……after his father-in-law encouraged him to delegate. Paul was willing to proceed in ministry…….after Barnabas encouraged Paul by welcoming him. There are numerous examples in the Bible and in life where the encouragement of another was the motivation to endure and succeed.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of encouragement; centering my thoughts on two questions. First, who am I encouraging; and, second, who is encouraging me?

Who am I encouraging?
Who is God placing in my path who needs that one word of encouragement to take the next steps of obedience to God? Who in my life needs to know they have what it takes, with God’s power, to live out the call God has on their life? Who do I need to remind that their current struggles can and will be mightily used by God to achieve a greater purpose? Am I openly seeking opportunities to invest in other people to encourage them in their life path?

Who is encouraging me?
It’s easy to become overwhelmed in ministry. Always pouring my life into other people sometimes leaves me feeling empty. From experience I know that I must be positioning myself in a way that allows others to encourage me. That sometimes means I have to bear my burdens to those outside the church, but I cannot escape this vital part of my life. I need encouragement too. We all do. (You do too!)

Ask yourself the questions I’ve been wrestling with lately? Who are you encouraging? Who is encouraging you?

I have been to Wal Mart twice in the last few days and both times the customer service was less than one would hope to receive from America’s number one retailer. It almost seems to be a trend these days. Could it be the king of discount has forgotten that what got them to where they are today is more than just low prices? Apparently I’m not alone in thinking that Wal Mart is slipping in the customer service area. This MSNBC story from last year explores the problem: http://tinyurl.com/5fpu9x. In my opinion, if Wal Mart doesn’t figure out how to bring customer service back “with a smile”, they may not always be this nation’s number one retailer.

I also feel a similar phenomenon is occurring with some mainline Christian denominations and churches today. Over the years they have grown in numbers, built larger buildings and added new programs, but they have neglected some fundamentals of the Christian faith. They have become almost country club-like atmospheres where real strugglers in life (which is really all of us) almost feel unwelcome in the church because they don’t “fit in” with the church’s strict guidelines and stands on certain issues. The concept of “love others” (where they are) has almost been replaced with “teach others” to be just like us. In my opinion, the future of these denominations and churches will be decided by their ability to get back to loving others as Christ has first loved us and allowing the “kindness of God to lead to repentance.”

I was speaking with a home/commercial builder from our church recently. He’s been very successful and is a smart businessman. He seems to be able to analyze and predict trends fairly well and had readjusted his business several years ago in preparation for the coming changes he saw in the market. He has been following the recent economy, mortgage crisis, and building trends and his assessment is that this period of time will change the landscape of the housing market for years to come; especially in terms of the size houses and design of houses people build and buy. For example, he doesn’t think the tall ceilings or roof lines will be as popular in homes in years to come and people will go back to more basic interior designs. People will be looking for practical over prestige. (I guess some of the same things are happening in the auto industry.)

None of this is “new”. The same morning I had breakfast with this builder I received my new copy of Business Week magazine and they had a similar article. It was interesting, however, to hear it from someone on the “ground floor” of this industry.

Anyway, as a church leader, I couldn’t help but wonder how all this will impact our “industry”. Will people want churches to be more “practical” in planning new facilities? Will less be more in terms of buildings or even programs? Do we need to rethink how we use our buildings and how we make them more available during the week, so they don’t sit empty as much? Some of this was already beginning to take shape prior to the recent economic news, but will this spur changes faster than we might have thought? And, finally, will the church today make changes in the way we operate quickly enough to react to the culture shifts?

Of course, one trend that may happen would be something we saw for hundreds of years around the world. People may change their mindset towards putting less money into their own houses and more money into church buildings. Ornamental and stain glass could be the “new” desire for churches. It will be interesting to watch all this unfold.

Ultimately I’m glad we serve a God who is never-changing. Our end goal will always remain the same. If, however, our goal is to help introduce people to the never-changing God then we must always be looking for the best methods to accomplish that goal.

I’ve had the privilege of speaking with numerous young people and couples who are possibly experiencing a call to full-time, vocational missions and ministry. Talking with people at this stage of life is one of my favorite things to do. It fuels me in ministry to help others process their call. Having wrestled through these with two teenage sons experiencing what they believe is the “call” makes this something very personal to me.  Obviously I have personal experience in this area of wrestling.

The counsel I gave my boys came to me rather suddenly one day. I’m not pretending it was inspired, but it certainly is a product of my experiences and time spent with God struggling through this issue for myself. I’ve used this teaching many times since then.

Basically I like to help people understand that the “call”, in my understanding, is not a call to a group of people or a geographic location as much as it is to a person; the person of Jesus Christ. That’s important, because a lot of times people begin to sense a calling after a mission trip to a certain area and feel as if that is the place they must go to serve God. That may be the place, but it could be that God just wants their availability and the place may be elsewhere. With that as a basis, it makes the decision of where to serve Him much easier to make. I’m not saying He doesn’t send people to specific places or groups of people, but I do believe He reserves the right to change that at any time, because ultimately a person is called into a relationship with God.

Then I share these principles, which help a person think through this calling. (Similar to my blog yesterday, these all begin with the same letter “I”.) The person who is sensing a call can usually immediately begin to discern that this IS the call based on the way they respond to these four words.

The call of God on a person’s life is:

Irresistible:

You can’t refuse this kind of call and still live at peace. Something will always eat at you until you surrender to this type of call.

Irreplaceable:

Nothing else will satisfy a person like this call, because it is God’s greatest desire for a person’s life on whom He places the “call”.

Irrevocable:

God doesn’t take this call away from a person once He has placed it on their life.

Immediate:

The call of God on a person’s life begins at the moment of the call. Often people want to get the right degree or start drawing a paycheck before they live out the call God has placed on their life. I don’t believe that’s the call. The call is to “Go” and the time is NOW.  That doesn’t mean the person shouldn’t gain education, experience, or even a paycheck, but if a person has received a call from God on their life the time to get started doing something towards that call is now!

For a Biblical example of this, read Jonah’s story again.

Have you wrestled or are you wrestling through a vocational call to ministry?

What was your experience?