chialphacurt's Xanga

10 Big Problems

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:32:51 GMT

Our problems are more complex than just planting more churches or improving our leadership skills but attending the next edge cutting edge conference. Unless we are willing to tackle some of the fundamental issues we will see at least a generation of stagnation or most likely decline.

Here are the biggies as I see ‘em.

10. Christian TV

Most non-believers will only get a brief view of the whacky preacher channels as they surf but even the micronic exposure is enough to prove to millions that all believers are money obsessed and emotionally weird. How can we be taken seriously with this religious circus on TV 24/7?

9. Church Skits as Art High Art

From sappy, poorly acted films to a tsunami of bad paintings, skits and soloists, we are, to put it politely, under-performing in the area of creativity. How can the church have credibility in a visully driven age without rediscovering its place of leadership in the arts?

8. Amish-ism

“Run! The atheist are coming!” is the response of any evangelicals to the advance of materialism. Hiding in small irrelevant enclaves makes for good furniture and jam but does it work that well for reaching the world?

7. Urban Flight.

We have abandoned the cities. Is there any wonder why, for the most part, they disdain us?

6. Sexual Compromise

Twenty years of big name leaders involved in big time sex scandals has rendered us impotent on all ethics issues, especially sexual ethics. Can we tell people true love waits while we indulge?

5. The Celebrity Model of Leadership.

Related to our sexual ethics problem is the list of evangelists, pastors and preachers who have been ruined by a top down view of authority. What is the further cost of not renewing our theology of the Body-of- Christ-oriented servant leadership?

4. Exodus at age 16.

Youth leave the church in droves once they reach age 16. All of our smoke machine worship and pierced youth pastors is doing little to keep ‘em. Can we survive while losing 60%-80% of the next generation?

3. Out Classed Apologetics.

The few Christian academics and campus ministers who struggle to love and engage secularist intellectuals do a noble work but they are under-funded, undermanned and largely unappreciated. Average Joe believer is apologetically under-equipped and uninterested. Some Christian “scientists” find T-Rex saddles while emerging pastors blur the line between materialism and faith. Meanwhile, Christianity continues to be characterized by secular deans and doctors as having the same credibility as those who believe in a flat earth. Where is the next C.S. Lewis?

2. Reaching College Students.

Likewise, we complain that the media, government and marketplace misrepresent Christianity yet we refuse to invest in building relationship with these same leaders while they are on campus and still open to hear our message. What would happen if we saw a student awakening on a majority of major universities?

1. Twenty-somethings Rising.

This may be our biggest problem or our perhaps our biggest hope. If we do not experience renewal, for all the reasons above and a few more, twenty-somethings are either going to leave the church entirely or, more likely, use their significant generational power to dismantle the evangelical church. When they take control, and it will be sooner than we think, will the church become an impotent relic or credible force for the historic cause of Jesus?

Did I miss any?

Attack of the Akita

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:14:41 GMT

We had quite the weekend. Emma was attacked by an Akita while we attended our Chi Alpha state leaders Conference. She now has 23 staples in the back of her head. Kelly put this on her facebook today and I thought instead of rewriting I'd just pass on her account here. She writes...

ok, we're home from san diego. emma is doing great. for everyone who doesn't know...thursday night about 10 pm emma was walking back to our hotel with maddy, ana and victoria treuil when they came upon a man walking his dog. they asked him what kind of dog is that? Akita, he said. and before they could do any thing else the dog lunged for emma. thankfully she ducked her head down and covered her face and the dog's jaws landed on the back of her head. the man could not pull the dog off and ana tried with all her might to pull emma away.

soon we heard screaming down the beach, "emma's been bitten!" over and over. everyone began to run... many campus pastors. thankfully a couple of campus pastors wouldn't let the man go... he was trying to leave the scene.

when i got there curt was "talking" to the dog owner. emma was huddled in a stairwell with victoria treuil. her neck and shoulders and hair were drenched in blood.

it was far beyond what i expected... i held her and people were offering rides to the hospital and 911 was called and and emt came out from the hotel and someone shoved a phone in my ear and it was animal control. they wanted me to know the dog was registered and had it's rabies shots. then the next thing i know... an ambulance appears...

they come out and talk to emma.... she is shivering ...and we get inside. they radio children's hospital that they have a dog bite coming in. at this point everyone is thinking it is probably a puncture wound of some kind. no one lifts up emma's blood soaked hair.

emma was being so brave... just holding on to my hand the whole way there.

once inside. we do the emergency waiting game. the triage nurse brings us in and takes a little look.surprise! there is a 3 to 5 inch gash to her skull in the back of her head.

a flood of anger rushes over me and curt worse than we were already swimming in... i can't believe it. the triage nurse gauses the wound and sends us back out to the waiting room. to wait for the next doctor.

at about 1 am we go in to see the doctor. emma is falling asleep. the doctor lifts the hair and can't believe it.she says she has to wash it off and that it will need staples. as she is doing that she finds another 3 inch gash to the skull. we are in such an utter state of disbelief and anger and shock.

the dr. leaves to go and talk to someone about what to do...

we wait.

emma is in blood soaked clothes and now soaked from the saline washing.

dr. comes back with extra stapling stuff. and begins to numb emma's head... omg. finally she begins the stapling. 8 staples on one wound and 15 on the other.

we get home about 3:30 am... and put emma to bed. the next morning i bath her with out getting her head wet. the water is red.

what does emma say? "that stupid dog, why did it have to bite me?"

thank you for your prayers. emma kept saying over and over... "God is with me." (thank you, victoria for telling her that.)
emma is doing well. not much pain and on antiboitics. we were all interviewed by "animal cops" and she was much photographed.

we have pics that we wont post but if you want to see tell me and i will email them to you.

oh yeah...the man said his dog just scratched her with her paw...yeah right.

Of The Church, The End of Hippies and The Next Generation

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:16:34 GMT

I wrote on the evening of the Obama victory in the Iowa Democratic primary. I thought it was relevant to post here today on the eve of this historic election. CH

In 2004 many predicted that the 25 and under crowd would sweep Kerry into office. Post election tabulations showed that college age people wanted to head bang with John at Bruce Springstein rallies but that they did not want to chad punch for his cause. After the votes where counted, twenty something came out to vote at the same level they always do. This did not surprise the tabulators. Twenty something have a long history of not following through at the voting booth.

Amazingly, in this election cycle something different has already happened. Almost 100,000 under 30 voters shattered turn out records in Iowa. In New Hampshire Hilary’s come from behind victory suppressed the story of record turnout but they to saw a wave of twenty somethings actually voting. In South Carolina a record one in five voters where under 30. The AP is reporting that the number of young voters registered in California for this primary is already greater than the total for the 2004 presidential election.

At this writing, even though Obama fever has taken a few team Clinton body blows it is still evoking messianic devotion at rallies and record breaking numbers at fund raisers.

In short, Obama my have be able to do what Springsteen and Kerry could not. He may ignite a generation to produce real change.

No one can say just yet if the early signs of young voter turn out will hold through the fall but the church should not be shocked if it does. What if this generation does more than rock? Like their boomer elders who found their voice in one historic summer of love, we might be in store for another 1967 revolution.

If it happens it will not be another hippie movement. Instead of LSD trips expanding minds we will see RSS trips mobilizing people. Instead of “turn on and tune out” as a message we’ll hear “iTune in and YouTube on” to get the message. What this revolution lacks in flowers and beads it will make up for in blazing technological. It will make the hippy movement appear like a blip on the green monochrome screen of history.

Let me be clear. I am not commenting on a candidate or a political cause or an issue. Whatever your personally feelings about Obama, this is about more than liberal vs. conservative. It is about the what, why and how of capturing the hearts of a generation.

And this is not just any generation. This is a group that may be the most talented and confident cohort to come along in 100 years. Whether it is the predictions of noted generational experts like Neil Howe and William Strauss, the trends reported in the UCLA freshmen study, the hard data of rising SAT scores or a simple observation of their internet savvy, make not mistake, this group has game.

Here’s the problem. According to Barna, this super skilled set of twenty-somethings are the least likely age group to go to church.

Some will argue that at this time of life young adults always leave the church. “When they become parents they will return.” I am not sure our attendance records would support this notion but even so, why wait. Would you let Charles Wesley, Amy Carmichael, Hudson Taylor, Jim Elliot, Lillian Thrasher, or Charles Spurgeon get away at age 20? These leaders set the course for their globally impacting lives in their early twenties. We can’t give up on this time of life. It is the season that forms greatness.

Right now, however the church is not succeeding. Whatever we are doing, whatever we are preaching, it is just not capturing the hearts of this group. Maybe we are not living the message we preach? Could it be that somehow the rhetoric of political change looks more attractive than the message of Christian change?

Maybe we are relying on techniques over substance? Maybe they are looking for more than a cool new slogan, smoke machines during worship, or a strong coffee in the foyer?

At the risk of sounding over dramatic, I wonder if it is too late. Maybe the lesson of this primary season is that a cause has already captured their hearts. Will they serve a political uprising only and never discover the higher calling of the kingdom? Is it too late to see a wave of college age believers break over the church flooding us with renewed faith and effectiveness?

The Question Behind All Questions

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:52:39 GMT

“Who has the time to do this?” This gravity well question echoes in my brain at every moment of every planning meeting I attend and in my role, I attend quite a few strategy smack downs. In the last three years I have consumed about 10,000 gallons of coffee meeting with churches to discuss how to start Chi Alpha outreaches on the colleges and universities near their congregations. In every one the “time” query haunts the air around us.

Almost every church is initially motivated to improve their twenty something outreach, but once the brain storming dust settles, very few actually end up getting students mobilized on campus. Their biggest problem is not talent or heart but time.

It is usually the very busy youth pastor or even busier young adult pastor (after all he/she is also the media pastor, small group pastor and landscaper) who must find time to develop these efforts on campus. Herding this scattered age group with their multiple low-end jobs and community college schedules, can quickly become a time warping schedule killer. Getting them in one room anywhere, let alone on campus, can seem as impossible as stopping time itself.

I spent last Thursday, Friday and Saturday (9/25-27/08) in Minneapolis meeting with five other veteran leaders who have proven results facilitating church-based campus ministry. We came together to see if we could come with a plan to help churches. We asked a lot of question but behind them all lurked the issue of time.

To start, we decided to pool our experience and make a list of all of the examples of great church based campus ministries to see what we could learn about how they do it. We quickly discovered that there are some great examples of churches that have figured out how to make this work.

From these success stories we formed a question to guide our plan. How can I invest 10 hours a week and get a return of at least 100 engaged students?

Ok - hold on. I hear all of you campus missionaries and young adult leaders laughing at me right now but give me a minute to explain.

First of all we figure that unless we empower students to do the ministry it will not work even if we have all the time and money in the world. The point is that limiting our time may actually help if we do it right. The focus of having only ten hours a week forces us to invest in student ownership almost exclusively. Furthermore, the reality on the ground for most churches is that finding a leader who can give 10 hours is already a stretch. In most settings, if that youth pastor, church planter or young adult leader can’t do it in 10, it probably can’t be done at all.

Finally, as everyone who has visited youtube knows, viral growth always out performs artificially orchestrated growth. It is not unnatural laborious plans that produce great campus ministry. Lasting results come from cultivating environments (especially in the genesis of the ministry) that seed reproducing viral growth.

Here’s what we came up with in terms how to pull of this 10 hour viral based investment:

1 Diagnostic Survey. The leader with limited time must learn his/her missionfield backwards and forwards first. This alone will save an enormous amount of time by learning about hidden pitfalls and avoiding specific strategies that waste time because they will not work in your mission field.

2. Nucleus Selection: Jesus took an entire night to pray about who should be a disciple and who should become an apostle. Before any on campus presence is established praying through and recruiting a small core group (3-5) of highly committed leaders should become the exclusive focus of our time. Getting this step right may take more than a few weeks but if we do get it right we will save tons of time down the road.

3. DNA Strengthening: Once we have recruited a core, that group does the same for their friends. This DNA strand of 20 or so sets the genetic direction for the future of the group. A weekend retreat, road trip or missions adventure is essential here, not only to bond the group relationally but for strengthening core values from the start. I confess this will probably take you more than 10 hours if you do it correctly but you can always make up the time invested here during later (like during finals week).

4. Culture Self-Perpetuation: Now comes the fun part. Notice we have not talked about models or strategy or launch dates at all yet. That is because your job is to make them come up with the strategy. This is essential both for saving time and for increasing their ownership. An ok idea that is owned by students will always work better than a great idea that you came up with. If you spend your 10 hours a week as an idea mediator and plan encourager not only will you free up you calendar but you will see greater fruit on campus.

5. Provide Holistic Supervision: This is the “repeat as needed” stage. Once you have the patten of selecting and enabling students to do the ministry then, your job becomes providing oversight. Helping student balance worship and fellowship, or discipleship and witness, while they perform the actually ministry is the goal.

This is still very much only an outline of an outline. Our group hopes to pull in more church based campus ministry leaders to leverage resources for each stage, develop effective start up model plans, and help with the recruiting of these core supervising leaders. In all of this the specific plans, models, small group and large group meetings will vary from situation to situation greatly but the need to develop students to own the ministry will not.

You might be thinking about now “Curt, this sounds like it would work even if I am full time on campus (or planting a church, youth ministry etc. etc.).” You got us. It’s true. This is not a new creative plan (in fact read Coleman’s Master Plan for the best discussion of this method) it is just the plan we must use if we are very busy.

The truth is that the time and challenges of ministering to twenty somethings on campus force us to focus on this ownership development pattern. Because time is the question behind all questions for church based campus ministry we are forces to select, train, release and supervise to maximize our time.

the curtcast returns

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 19:44:30 GMT

For all six of you who have been made at me for my failure to continue the curtcast, I offer this new episode.

For everyone else, let me explain, five years ago I started turning on my digital camera and just thinking into it. I wanted to get down my artists perspective on proof for God so I sort of just did short manic brain burps into my Sony. Before youtube, these video blogs were posted on my "funny clips" page. Later I did some photo driven podcasts (see my iWeb sight) with the same feel.

I have been in enough late night coffee fueled conversations with seeker college students to know that the church desperately needs a new apologetic style. More dialogue than debate would be nice. Something that is more Christian than comments about why Sam Harris' past lives and Friedrich Nietzsche foaming at the mouth.

The stream-of-thought video format with word pictures is my attempt to practice this new style. However, the time it took to edit the footage caused me to mothball the curtcast during our big move back to California. I intended to restart as soon as we got settled. That was three years ago.

Now with my iSight built in to my laptop and youtube having risen as the Gangis Khan of the digital age I am going to try to revive these video blogs. The one to the left will probably not turn out to be my best effort ever but it's a (new) start. Let me know what you think.

Neue Drops

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:39:18 GMT

Hey friends, Relevant has launched a new site that where I will be blogging weekly. I will keep writing on my site and xanga but I am going to but some original stuff on leadership, some "greatest hits" and a few funnies (my normal drain bramage insights) at neueministry.com too.

On the front page you will see an article by me entitled "The Den of Sin" about secular vs. Christian colleges. Also check out this one on being Barbie's personal assistant..

Curt

MORE LAWS NOW!!!

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:10:34 GMT

I am not a big government guy but since the Democratic National Convention is blowing up like a deluxe Wal-Mart pool floaty this week I thought I would add my voice to the ever growing list of new laws we need to make every American obey:

Law One: No Burger King commercials at 10:30 p.m. while I am dieting.

Law Two: Nametags for everyone, all the time. I just feel so much more peace when I am not working to remember names. And make them good ones. Not those cheapy lanyards that hang so low you have to stare at the belly button to read.

Law Three: The California state government and the Utah State government should be forced to switch places for a year - just for fun.

Law Four: Olympic handball is water polo without the water! End the crime of it!!!!

Law Five: No more wearing bluetooth headsets around all the time at the grocery store like you are a somebody cause they are not that expensive anymore and you look goofy.

Law Six: Lost has to actually give us some good answers in the first episode of the new season or the writers should be forced to star on every episodes of the final season of ER.

Law Seven: No more political conventions. Stop these propaganda piles of brain wasting-infomercials-of-deathness shows. We need to focus on the issues. Russia, Iraq and the bankrupt social security system could care less about how balloons fall from the ceiling. Please, stop the madness. George Orwell is getting seasick from spinning in his grave.

Others?

About Joe

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:26:18 GMT

We got the news at about 9:00 a.m. our time that Joe Zickafoose, our good friend and Campus Missionary to Scotland had passed away from cancer this morning.

During our time in Springfield, before they went to Scotland, Joe, Jayne, John and Andy were an almost daily part of our lives. Our boys, Jesse and John were elementary school best friends and had the same teachers from 2nd through 5th grades.

Having shared combined birthday parties for our boys and their friends, multiple rides from school and more than a few carafes of French press while our kids all worked the Game Cube in the other room, Kelly and I built a lasting friendship with Jayne and Joe.

You did not have to know him for long to learn that Joe was a man with a rare level of serious intellectual depth. What was surprising was that he was equally skilled at absurd comedy. He made me both think and laugh harder than almost anyone I know.

He was a very caring and careful father and husband. Where other fathers panicked he stayed calm. Where other men would have become distracted by job obligations or professional reputation he remained faithful to his family.

He gave students ownership. Of all the great gifts he had as a campus missionary, for me this was his greatest. He did not tell them how to think. He taught them how to think Biblically.

He never spoke down to those he taught but often challenged them up to a level they did not expect they could attain. He preached and taught the truth, even when the truth was hard.

He knew when to confront, when to pray for and when to laugh with those he mentored.

He loved good music, both listening to and making.

He did not waste his time worrying about reputation or reward but simply followed Christ wherever Christ led him.

He was that extraordinary leader who had incredible talent but very little ego. He was often the smartest, most experienced and most creative person in the room but he never needed to point this out to others.

Although I am very emotional, I am not giving into sentimentality in writing about Joe in these ways. It is not grief that makes me praise him now. The loss is only the occasion of my praise. The way he lived his life is the cause for these words and it is that life well lived will have all of us missing him for a very long time.

Suspending My Belief

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:03:02 GMT

Anyone can tell that Batman is Bruce Wayne just by looking at the half of his face the rubber mask does not hide. Also, no matter how genius the genius part of your evil-genius brain is, getting a couple hundred criminally insane henchmen to work together on such a multileveled master plan is less than realistic. Lastly, robbers could never get away form banks by merging their escape bus into a caravan of field trippers (didn't the other busses notice the explosions?).

None of that matters. For Dark Knight, I suspended my disbelief and consumed all of these cartoon impossibilities and more as if they were a plate of fresh sushi after a three-day fast.

I am not an easy suspender of disbelief. Usually I am that annoying guy who leans over and tells you, whether you want to know or not, exactly why a particular movie moment could never happen in real life. It is not that I enjoy being a film tattle tale (well maybe a little) it is just that most big films look like they spent $80 trillion on CGI and $4.56 on writing.

In the rare film that works I am happy to put logic on the shelf. In fact I just need two simple things from a movie to reach "works" level. Thing one: a plot that fits together (as oppose to the "we could double reverse the tachyon beam's negative particals Captain" super drivel that represents 90% of all story endings today). Thing two: great acting (instead of the humans as eye candy casting we almost always get in this post 90210 world). Dark Knight has both.

Christian Bale is ok. Even good. Wearing black rubber and talking with all base notes is not easy to pull off. However, next to Heath Ledger, Bale is cardboard. Ledger's performance is both micro perfect in a thousand little facial details and macro overwhelming because of the loose and free narcissism the flows from his Joker's every moment on screen.

What dark knight does for Ledgers is delete from our minds any thought that he was a movie star. He was, and will be now forever, an actor. A great actor. His young death made watching his complex performance an exercise in deep regret. As suspended as my disbelief was, in every scene a small part of my conscience was grieving the loss of his life and talent. He breathes, licks, philosophies, walks and talks in an acting clinic that should inspire every drama club member from San Francisco to Savannah. The fast that his performance comes to us post-life is as confusing and dark as the ethical questions raised by the movie itself.

One more thing. The acting is great in part because the dialogue is Swiss watch-esque. Super hero and epic sci-fi movies are an almost impossible challenge for dialogue writing. Their hero's declarations and villain's threats almost always slip into one dimensional Simon Lagree sounding mellow-drama.

Confronted with this challenge, some big budget movies just give up. They hope the CGI and the hunk factor of their leads will to distract us from the painfully unreal way they speak to each other on camera (hello George Lucas - are you getting this). Batman somehow pulls off the comic to real life dialogue conversation. Helped by inspired makeup, an important theme and mesmerizing performances I swallowed ever word, no matter how caped, masked and detonated.

For these reason and more, I will watch it again and I never watch them again.

Adventure in the iPhone Line

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:08:26 GMT

I have been a part of the "mock the people sleeping outside overnight for halo" class of social critics since the first Dreamcast lines formed. All that changed yesterday.

At first I decided to stand in the Apple store line only while I ate my lunch - to see how fast it moved, as it were. The end started at Stride Rite (for those who do not know the Arden Fair mall in Sacramento, that is literally 678,943 miles from the Apple store). There seemed no harm in hanging with it for a few moments but before I knew it those few moments turned into 6 hours, 7 new friends, one California roll (with bladder busting mega large diet coke as chaser), a piece of bad pizza, onion rings (queuing is hungry work) and one new 16 gig, black iPhone.

I held last place in the line of death for over 15 minutes until an 18-year-old girl in huge sunglasses operating on "three hours of sleep after half a bottle of Smirnoff" took the spot behind me. A middle aged lady stood behind us for about two minutes and then came to her senses. After her, three 18-year-old guys, freshly out of high school, lined up next. One a beat boxer, one a cello playing home schooler and the last a very outgoing young man who works at a waterslide. Just in front of us were a gal lifeguard (yeah two lifeguards - how strange) with her boyfriend, and a middle-aged businessman with a beat up treo 650 and a BMW key ring. Later, a brother of one of the HS grads joined us. Amazingly he already had a first generation iPhone (he hacked it to use with Tmobile) and stood for 5 plus hours just to support his friends.

Sure, our cult-like lust for iPhone joy was the core of our relationship but it was not just the iPhone at work over the 360 minutes of bonding. It was the experience of fighting together. Solving the hunger issue (we left in shifts to get food), finding the nearest restroom, (we were lucky, one guy in our group had the mall restroom schematic practically memorized,) and fighting off mockers all cemented our cadre.

Yes, mockers. Berating is not too strong of a word for these line haters. Apparently, for some, (and I included myself in that "some" before yesterday,) standing in line for an iPhone (halo, wii, etc. etc.) is the equivalent of stabbing yourself in the ear. Not only were they righteously sure of this position, they were not shy about preaching their convictions to our captive line ears.

Not all lectured. Most just communicated their scorn via a sassy look as they walked by. Some used passive aggressive questions - "so you guys are in this line because they won't have these phone things next week?" Others, all of them male by the way, felt compelled to approach the line and give detailed verbal slaps about why we were fools to wait in line for the iPhone.

As they pontificated, I wondered if this is what most preachers sounded like to the non-religious.

It was not just strangers that tried to discourage us. I literally saw three large groups of my friends, including people from other states, who openly tried to convince me to leave the line. I was actively and personally mocked by:
• Two pastors
• 10 or more twenty-something Christians
• Some small children
• My wife

We fought back. Three hours in, after being asked for the 1 millionth time why we were in line, Waterslide guy proclaimed loudly "WE ARE HERE FOR THE MOTO RAZOR FOUR - YEAH THAT'S RIGHT, HELLO MOTO BABY!!!"

The height of irony was that after telling us we were wasting our time most of them spent their precious life milling around Bath and Body Works.

It did not come out that I was a pastor until hour four. When it did the relationships were strong enough to avoid the usual awkward silence that follows this religious revelation. The brothers, I discovered, both had strong roots in the Disciples of Christ. Waterpark apologized for his language. When I told him it was ok, he continued to use the adjective of his choice without shame.

At hour five, tired, greasy and unashamed about owning the floor as our resting place we hit nirvana. The conversation bobbed like a well heated lava lamp. We moved inch by inch with the grizzly floor assurance deep in the soul that we were in the right. All doubt had left. We reached that place few humans experience. Sold-out-ness. The long journey from Stride Rite to Pac Sun was meant to be. We knew now the black Apple store was within our reach. There was not a single thought of turning back.

Just about then, the Apple employees emerged with free pizza. Even though it was only one piece of cardboard and cheese per line dweller, we held our slice high in victory. It was to us pirate treasure won by sweat and sword. All double dipped in the communal garlic and melted butter packet - no one even flinched. We were family - bonded beyond the fear of germs.

As the actual store loomed right before us, the line's own life force grew hulkishly strong. A long line, like a road trip, prison cell, camping tent, or foxhole can bond even the most diverse group. From age 18 to 50, partiers to pastor - we talked, laughed, debated and became something more then just iPhone customers.

We deeply discussed which cell phone we hated (sorry Treos, you did not fair well this day), why we were in line now (most of us had broken phones in our pockets), travel, classical music, marijuana, evolution, the benefits of parties on boats, fake I.D.s, pay rates for city lifeguards vs. waterpark lifeguards, the effect of little sleep and Smirnoff, youtube (of course), hacking iPhones, theology and getting around ATT's upgrade requirements (open the account on your dad's account and then switch it over to yours later was the word,) among many other topics.

I am not insolated from the average person in my community, church going or not. I have many non-believers in my house, almost every week. I have often lectured others in the church about being too insular. I thought I was doing ok on this issue. After 6 hours in the line, I am ashamed to admit how much I learned about my own Christian buble tendencies. The experience has exposed me.

I wonder what would happen if every pastor was required to spend six hours on a Saturday with a random group of mostly teens and twenties? These people who were strategy and theory to me are all now real. Their lives, wants and attitudes will impact how I think about doing ministry for a long time.