Tag Archives: seth barnes

books, church, faith

2 sentence book reviews, part 4

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it’s a crazy week for me — a few days in colorado for an event at group publishing, and a few days in the san bernardino mountains with my family and another family. so, i think it’s time to post a week of 2 sentence book reviews!

i’ve got 44 lines for 22 books. the first sentence of each review is a summary, and the second sentence is my opinion. hope you appreciate the brevity!

part 1: five general fiction books
part 2: three general non-fiction and two young adult fiction books
part 3: four illustrated books or graphic novels and one humor book
part 4: four christian living books and three theology and ministry books

Christian Living

Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into your Comfortable Life, by Jeff Goins
5 stars
Acknowledging and unpacking the painful, necessary, and re-orienting process of having your life up-ended for a greater cause. The next book you should read.

My official endorsement: Wrecked fulfills two rare deliverables: it messes with you (in a good way), and introduces you to the fantastic writing of a new author you’ll certainly be hearing more from.

Kingdom Journeys: Rediscovering the Lost Spiritual Discipline, by Seth Barnes
5 stars
Filled with well-told, powerful stories, Barnes convincingly proposes the process of having a Kingdom of God vision sparked in your heart and mind. Required reading for anyone who wants to change the world, or who works with people who might.

My official endorsement: Two things really set this book apart: first, Seth has something new to say, something important and insightful about faith development (and, particularly, about the faith development of young adults); second, Seth makes reading the book a wonderful adventure with the inclusion of dozens of captivating true stories. Youth workers, pastors, parents, and young adults themselves need to read this book.

Note: Barnes is presenting on this topic at The Summit.

Shrewd: Daring to Live the Startling Command of Jesus, by Rick Lawrence
5 stars
an unpacking of jesus’ instructions to be as shrewd as a serpent and as gentle as a dove. amazing and insightful book — SO worth the read (i’ll be recommending this in my coaching programs).

Living With Less: An Unexpected Key to Happiness, by Joshua Becker
5 stars
A practical book for teenagers who want to live simply. Accessible and compelling, Becker’s clearly knows what he writes about.

My official endorsement: What I really love about Joshua’s book (and why I will be recommending it to teenagers, parents, and youth workers) is that he so clearly describes a compelling way of living. Today’s teenagers are pitched this and that all day long; but rarely are they exposed to a truly compelling and contemporary way of living that is somehow both counter-intuitive and so obviously biblical.

Theology and Ministry

Junia Is Not Alone, by Scot McKnight
5 stars
A brief but powerful unmasking of both the significant female leaders of the Bible, as well as the mistranslation that has obscured them for centuries. Anyone who has ever wondered (or maybe even more importantly, anyone who hasn’t wondered) what the Bible says about women in leadership must read this quick book.

The Zambia Project: The Story of Two Worlds Flipped Upside Down, by Chip Huber
5 stars
The autobiographical story of a school chaplain and his teenagers whose passion for impacting the world was sparked, resulting in significantly altered lives in two communities – one in suburban Chicago, and one in a tiny Zambian village. So much better than most self-published books, this is a great read for youth workers, mission leaders, and anyone with a Kingdom dream of changing the world.

My official endorsement: Narratives have within them a powerful ability to stir our thinking, shape our outlook, and awaken our imaginations. The Zambia Project is a fantastic example of that reality, with gorgeous implications for youth workers, educators, parents, and development workers. When you read Chip’s book, you can’t help but think, “Well, clearly, God moved in that situation.” But the thing is: God wants to move in and through you also.

With Open Hands, by Henri J. M. Nouwen
5 stars
Nouwen’s classic book is a simple insight into prayer. Understandably dated at points, it still provides a deep cleansing breath, and a metaphor that will shape my own prayer life for years to come.

youth ministry, youth work

the future of youth ministry, episode 2

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i led a late night discussion at the national youth workers convention this past fall on “the future of youth ministry”. in preparation for that discussion, i emailed a few dozen friends with better youth ministry minds than my own, and asked them to complete the sentence, “the future of youth ministry….” about 15 of them responded (often with more than a sentence!). i’m going to post them here as a series, sometimes with a bit of commentary from myself, and sometimes merely as a reflection-prod. would love to hear your responses.

Seth Barnes (seth is the founder and executive director of adventures in missions. a brilliant thinker and entrepreneur with a heart for the broken of the world, seth is passionate about discipleship. he blogs here; but you shouldn’t read his blog unless you want to be challenged out of any speck of complacency you might hold onto.)

20 years from now, youth ministry in the US will look like youth ministry in Europe.
A few youth ministers will rediscover Jesus’ model of youth ministry and actually try it out (with 20-somethings).
The gap year experience will become an increasingly powerful tool in the youth minister’s toolbox.

my thoughts:
it’s difficult to know exactly what seth perceives youth ministry in europe to look like (maybe he’ll comment here and fill us in on his thinking); but i’m guessing that he’s referring more to youth ministry in a truly post-christian culture than he’s referring to any particular approaches to youth ministry found in europe. if that interpretation is correct, i fully agree with seth. our epoch of well-resourced churches is on the wane, and an assumed christian perspective is already gone in much of the u.s. (less so in the south, of course).

i’m very intrigued by seth’s 2nd sentence, and his inference that great youth ministry might look like a long series of praxis experiences born out in the context of small community (the 12 with jesus). of course, this implies a great deal of sacrifice on the part of both the youth worker and the disciples; and i’m skeptical (sorry) that many will be willing to go there.

as to the gap year experience (a common practice in the UK and other parts of europe where young adults take a year — often before or after college — to give themselves to a serving opportunity that often becomes a significant worldview shaper): i’m a huge fan. i wish we had more of this as a norm in the u.s.

Mark Riddle (mark is a very smart pot-stirrer who clearly has the ability to practice systemic thinking and knock people off balance into a perspective-altering space of disequilibration. mark leads ‘the riddle group‘, one of the premier youth ministry consultant organizations. and he blogs — occasionally — here.)

The greatest barriers to God’s dreams for the future of youth ministry are sitting in this room right now.

my thoughts:
like i said, mark is a pot-stirrer. my understanding of mark’s comment is that we have a natural tendency to limit what could be — particularly in the area of significant change — by our perspectives, biases and experiences. in a sense, we always ‘limit’ possible change; whereas an outsider, or someone thinking from a completely ‘other’ paradigm, can bring cross-current ideas and thinking that leap change forward, rather than tweaking and tinkering.

mark actually sat in on my late night discussion at the nashville convention, and had much more to say about this (that helped all of us in the room). i’m hoping he’ll comment here and help us all.

church, faith

headed back to haiti

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when i walked out of the port-au-prince tent villages of marassa 14 & 17 on a friday in late february, i told the village leaders i’d be back. i think this statement was probably more a reflection of me avoiding the emotions of saying goodbye. but i did feel a burden for these people. and i have a deep sense of anticipation about seeing them again.

same goes for many of the pastors and church leaders we met on that first trip.

next tuesday (may 25, the day after my birthday), i fly to miami, where i’ll overnight before heading to port-au-prince on wednesday the 26th. this time around, i’m taking a team of church leaders, church bloggers, and radio voices. we’re going to connect with pastors and work out more details in the adventures in missions church partnership program (called the “isaiah 58 project”), which will pair up haitian churches with american churches (or, really, churches from anywhere in the world) for prayer, encouragement, community development and rebuilding, and – possibly – trips to bring helping hands. i’ll blog more about this church partnership program separately.

it’s a wonderfully eclectic group going, and i’m pretty stoked to spend a handful of days with them:

– david hayward, more commonly known by his nakedpastor blog moniker. david’s blog is one of the top 100 church blogs, and he’s a guy who blogs with a level of honesty that is rare. a self-described “artist trapped in a pastor’s body”, david brings an artist’s perspective to everything he does. he has recently stepped down from his church in canada, where he served for a very long time. it will be cool to be with david in this time of life transition.

– doug pagitt. doug is the pastor of solomon’s porch, in minneapolis. author of a bunch of books, and a pot-stirrer in the american church. doug also hosts a sunday morning ‘religious talk show‘ on a local minneapolis talk radio station, and podcasts those shows to a wider audience. doug and i have been friends for many years, but haven’t spent much time together in the past few; so it will be wonderful to hang. and, as always, doug will cause all of us to think in different ways.

– ed noble is the teaching pastor of my church. i’ve known ed longer than i’ve known anyone else on the team — he hired me as his junior high pastor (he was the high school guy) at a church in omaha in 1989. ed is coming along to consider a church partnership for our church, with a haitian church.

– tash mcgill is coming all the way from new zealand (with a few days of stop-over here in san diego on the way)! tash is a youth ministry blogger, entrepreneur, programmer, and radio show host. tash lived with my family for 4 months last year, when she was doing some work for youth specialties, and she’s always a joy to have around. she’ll be broadcasting stuff about the trip back to listeners in new zealand.

– seth barnes is the founder and exec director of adventures in missions. we’ve been friends since about 1990, when i first connected with AIM for a junior high missions trip. seth was on my february trip to haiti also, and it will be interesting for the two of us to see how things have changed (or not) in the last 3 months).

– bruce dawson is on staff with AIM, and will be giving leadership to the new church partnership program. i’m looking forward to getting to know bruce, and dream together about how to get american churches engaged in this amazing approach to rebuilding haiti.

– there’s one more guy coming (paul young), but i really don’t know anything about him (AIM is bringing him).

– oh, and me!

in the days before i leave, i expect to blog at least a couple more times about the trip. we’ll be launching a giving project connected to this trip also, with a focus on raising funds for the salaries of a few haitian leaders who will run the haitian side of the church partnership program. more on that in the next day or two. and, we’ll all be blogging from haiti, as we did in february.

in the mean time, a handful of actions you can take:

– join the team facebook group. if you’re on facebook, go to this link and “like” it. that will bring updates from the team, as well as aggregated blog posts about the trip, to your facebook news feed. if you’re not on facebook, you can still bookmark that page and peek in as often as you’d like.

– if you’re a twitterhead, we’ve also set up a twitter feed for the group. someone here in the states will be watching all our blogs and tweets and retweeting them on this page.

– start to pray for us. pray that god will give us wonderful meetings with haitian pastors that will confirm some aspects of the church partnership program, and cause us to drop or modify other aspects. we want to create long-term, sustainable, non-dependent, restorative relationships with church, built on trust and a belief that both churches have something to offer to the other. what we learn on this trip will be key to launching this program.

– think and pray about giving to support the salaries of the haitian staff who will oversee the church partnership program (and watch for my blog post about that).

church, faith, personal

hope in haiti (youth ministry advance team: haiti – day 2)

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Romans 5:3-5 – not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character; and character hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Today, my 2nd day in Haiti (and first full day), I was relentlessly pursued by hope.

On a human level, this seems completely illogical. I witnessed so much pain, so much loss, so much destruction. I saw miles and miles of downtown Port-au-Prince streets with every other building smashed to pieces, the streets piled high with rubble (many of the rubble piles doubling as temporary graves). I saw trash overflowing in every stream.

And the squatter villages. I’ve seen squatter villages in other countries; but they’ve always had a sense of semi-permanence to them, having developed over years, with shacks poorly cobbled together with solid materials. But the squatter villages here are different. They’ve sprung up all over the city – hundreds of them – each with hundreds, if not thousands of temporary homes. All built in the last few weeks, they’re built on wobbly scrap-wood frames and wires, with sheets and blankets for walls, and tarps (at best) for roofs.

I listened to story after story, and they started to blend together. Everyone knows someone who died in the quake – most know many. And even if their home didn’t collapse, it’s broken enough that it’s not safe to re-enter. Little kids accepted power bars and bottles of water from me as if I’d just handed them the keys to the kingdom.
But this suffering is producing perseverance, which is producing character, and hope is overflowing in a way I’ve rarely seen.

Today was Haiti’s first-ever National Day of Prayer. We originally had other plans for the day; but when we learned of this beautiful expression of hope. As we drove into the city center, we passed dozens of churches overflowing (literally, out onto the streets) with people singing and praying (and fasting, I understand). The main gathering at the city center is reported to have about 60,000 people at it.

We stopped at one of the large gatherings (not the one at the city center), and I sat in the scorching sun near a few young adults. One of them – Johnny – noticed the tattoo on my leg (the cross of St. Patrick), and asked me about it in broken English. He and his friends were fascinated by it, and by each of my three other tattoos. Since each of my tattoos represent Christian themes of life and re-birth, we struggled gloriously through a conversation about spiritual things. Johnny, and another guy named Junior (pictured with me here), both spoke some English, and translated everything I said to their friends, as well as translating questions from their friends for me.

Later, after driving through the heart-wrenching city center, we visited a large prayer gathering at the church of Pastor Christian, one of the pastors we’re hoping Adventures in Missions groups will be working with. I’d guess there were about 3500 people at this site. As we made our way into the crowd, I realized I was in observation mode. I realized my post yesterday had been more of a travelogue than a reflection of what was going on inside of me. And I knew I had to move into co-participant mode. So I broke from our group and wiggled my way deep into the crowd. When I got to a place where I couldn’t proceed further without being rude, I stood and prayed in the midst of the crowd. When they suddenly all sat down, I realized I was the only person standing. I looked down, and the woman next to my feet was making a place for me to squeeze onto the blanket she and several other women and children were occupying. I sat, looked around, and realized I had somehow ended up in a section that was all women and children – but the welcome was palpable. Throughout the next hour of singing, dancing, prayer, preaching, leg cramps and back spasms, I participated with these Haitian women and children, calling out to God on behalf of Haiti. It was a profound, tangible experience of hope being birthed out of suffering.

Later in the day, after many stories I don’t have space to share here (including a beautiful conversation with a group of young men constructing a tent-home for someone, all of whom had decided to follow Christ on the day of the earthquake, as they heard others crying out to Jesus), we met with Pastor Christian. A 70-something man of deep wisdom and grace, he pastors a group of 11 churches totally about 10,000 people. We talked with him about bringing groups to help, about his vision for Haiti, and about how he saw his country responding. At one point, Pastor Christian was sharing something about all the work to be done, and he let out a very deep sign. We could all see, in that moment, the immense burden he was carrying, and how tired he was (he hadn’t been showing this). We gathered around him and prayed for him, while he sunk into the grace of Jesus. About 10 minutes later, he asked if he could pray for us. As we bowed our heads, he began singing. He was singing a prayer over us, and it was truly one of the most beautiful things ever to enter my ears and soul, even though I couldn’t understand the words. I instantly started crying – but they were tears of hope: hope born out of seeing a man, and a hundred thousand others, place their hope-born-of-suffering in a Savior who brings redemption. I couldn’t help but think of one of my favorite Bible verses: Zephaniah 3:17, which describes God “rejoicing over us with singing.”

I’m emotionally and physically spent, and a little bit sunburned. So I’ll leave you with this:

Zephaniah 3:17 – The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.