I'm going to smash your pinata!

Do it the way I normally do it...: When a sentence begins with those words and I am being asked to do something I kind of just chuckle. If you want me to do something but want to tell me how to do it and want me to do it like you do it...then why don't you just do it yourself. That's the beauty of other people doing stuff they're going to do it their way and it's going to be different.

Messy: Yesterday I had the opportunity to view and interact in a meeting as an outsider. It was a group of youth pastors for a nearby county. I had no investment nor would I gain anything from the planning to I listened and I observed. The intent of the meeting was to plan a session 2 hours a month where paid and unpaid youth staff could come and interact with other youth leaders and hear from a trained professional in some field about a topic that should benefit the youth leader. As the planning and brain sparking was going on I thought the ideas were flowing and the team was working well together. The structure of the event was being set in place but was not exceedingly rigid and seemed quite interactive and free flowing. This this dude says...but we're messy people. He didn't want any structure to the event. He just wanted...chaos? I'm all about messy and I know spiritually I'm not all put together nor do I think my end goal is to be all put together. I am a man on a quest, the quest has no end but is merely about the people on it with me...and my relationship with HIM. The way this fella was talking was as if structure was bad, organization was bad, and planning was even worse. I don't think that's what messy means but I can see some youth pastors in the future saying...I don't have to play ahead, have permission slips or do paperwork be cause I'm MESSY. How about LAZY!

Post-Modern: At the above mentioned meeting their started talk of doing a session on Post-modern thinking and the church. One of the guys spoke up and said some stuff he was doing with his group and instantly there was a buzz about how pomo this cat was. Now I'm no pomo specialist. I've been studying the emerging church and my emerging students. I have had to reconcile in my mind many things theologically and I have been on a major journey these past 7 months about the whole emergent church and I believe I am better for it. I see a strong need for the church to adapt to the culture because if we do not then the church will DIE. What I was hearing from these guys is that we can change the aesthetics of what is being done. We can generate some hands-on stuff twice a month or even every week; We light a few candles, throw some sand on the floor, draw a picture and we're post modern...hooray we have arrived! Post modernism and being emergent is doing interactive worship...bull! It's more than aesthetics and experiential worship it's a mindset that we must adopt, that our spiritual walk is not a destination but a journey that is often ugly, marred and not dictated by stages.