another video & another rant

we did another announcement video last night for the view. click here to see it.

now here's the rant.

i'm fed up with youth ministers thinking it is cool to trash on the church. it seems like right now it is hip to be disenfranchised with the church. i hear people talk more and more about how they are fed up with the institutional church but not with CHRIST. this then leads to youth ministers complaining about how the church is so broken. i end up finding this in the blogs of allot of younger youth ministers (not that i'm very old - i'm only 36 and have only been doing this since 1989). it seems to me that their posts are basically saying "if only all the church members were as well rounded as i am then it would work right." their vast experience of two churchs and four years of youth ministry has taught them how screwed up the church is and now they have decided to try and write about it like mike yaconelli. they write in their blogs as the "old sage" about how messed up working in and with the church is and how they have to go accomplish "real ministry" in other ways. they constantly grip about how much they have lost by working in and with the church (and never reflect on how much they have gained). every time i read a 24 year old writing this crap i laugh myself silly.

so i have only one thing to say ... "GET OVER IT!"

the church is screwed up! everybody knows that. it's full of bitter, mean, vengeful, backstabbing, adulterous, stupid, sinning, gossiping, fallen people (of which i am definitely one). these people will hurt and lash out at the very ministers who are trying to help and shepherd them. every CHRISTian should know that the church is full of screwed up people merely by the fact that they are allowed into the community. we are a community of the screwed up.

yet, the church is also the bride of CHRIST and HE is passionately in love with HIS bride. JESUS has chosen to work in and through really screwed up people like we have in the church and sometimes that sucks. but that's who JESUS has chosen to love and use and therefore because of my love for HIM and my sense of call from HIM i choose to work with and in HIS bride. being a minister means working with and loving difficult people (rob bell refers to them as "human sandpaper"). that's simply apart of the job. it's fine and dandy (i like that phrase) to vent every now and then but goodness don't set your personality around doing that all the time. you're talking about the bride of CHRIST after all. amazing things happen within the bride of CHRIST and ministers get paid (sometimes at least :)) to have a front row seat for much of it. what could be better than that. we get to see CHRIST forgive and renew the bitter, mean, vengeful, backstabbing, adulterous, stupid, sinning, gossiping, fallen people within HIS. sometimes HE has to forgive and renew us allot of times before we understand how new HE has made us and before we see how much HE loves us.

kind of ironic that i just vented about people venting. :)

btw, don't get me wrong about yaconelli, i loved him. he was a much needed voice within the body of CHRIST. it's just that it bugs me when "young en's" try to sound like yac. he had earned the right to speak like that. he had been through years of ministry and hardship and he was definitely still very much in love with the bride of CHRIST. it merely seems stupid to me for 20-somethings to try and talk like that. wait until you've "earned (your) spurs" through more than 4 years of ministry before you try to talk like a 30 year veteran. i'm not there yet and thus i'm still learning how this whole thing works.