A few weeks back, I was coaching a freshman football game. It was late in the third quarter of what had been a good competitive game (by freshman football standards). The opposing team had the lead and the ball. We called a timeout to regroup. When I came into the defensive huddle, this is what I heard:
“They’re holding me, coach.”
“These refs ain’t callin nothin!!”

Then they started in on each other.

“You missed that tackle. ”
“Why aren’t you covering that receiver?”
“Where were you on that last play?”

I had enough, so after getting their attention and getting them focused, I said:

“Guys, all I am hearing about is what the other team, or the refs, or your teammates are doing. Let me tell you something. You have absolutely no control over what the refs call, what the other team does, or what anybody else does. But you have complete control on how YOU play the next play. As long as you continue to make excuses and blame others you will always be a victim. As long as you remain a victim, you will never become a victor.”

I would like to say that after my great motivational speech, they pulled together as a team and came from behind to win the game, but they didnt.

I have noticed in dealing with this younger generation, both as a teacher and as a coach, that the victim mentality is prevalent. Everything, from why they lost a game to their familys socioeconomic status, is someone elses fault. There is no sense of personal responsibility.

I have seen this attitude creeping in with my own children, who are 8 and 4 years old. So here lately, if I find them making excuses or casting blame I try to instill this lesson into them: YOU are responsible for how YOU act!!

From time to time I even find myself falling into the trap of a victim mentality. But when I do, I have to remind myself that while I may not have control of what happens to me, I can control how I react to it.

I choose to be a victor rather than a victim.
What will you be?

When it comes to technology, I am a do-it-yourselfer. I’ve have always been one that was willing to roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty. Some may attribute this to my cheapness, but I hate to pay some else to fix something that I think I can handle myself.

Here are a few examples of what I am talking about. When I broke the glass on my iPhone I didn’t even think about paying someone else to fix it. I ordered the part and replaced it myself. When the computer I inherited at work was so infested with adware, spyware, and viruses that it was almost unusable, I didn’t call the geek squad. I became my own geek squad and cleaned it up. When I wanted to develop a website using php and mysql, I didn’t hire a programmer. I just dove right in.

(I realize with that last example I may have just lost all the non-nerds reading this, but bear with me. I am going somewhere with this.)

Now I have never taken any classes in iPhone repair, malware removal, or database driven web development. So how do I know how to do all of this stuff? Here is my secret – google and YouTube.

Whenever I have some type of technology problem, I am sure that I am not the first person who has ever faced that particular issue. So I search it in google. I learn from the problems that others encountered and solved.

While I am grateful that God blessed me with “above average” intelligence and a great memory, the real secret to my “immense knowledge about everything” is that I have learned to use the resources I have to learn things I don’t know.

I know this sounds simple and obvious, but I am always astounded by people who never learn to use their resources.

In Ecclesiastes 1:9, Solomon wrote the following “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

There is nothing new. As someone once said “life is too short to make all of the mistakes yourself”. We need to be able to learn from the mistakes and successes of others.

Regardless of the field you are working in or the problem you are facing, chances are someone, somewhere has been there and done that. That issue that you are facing in your family or personal life may seem unique, but I would bet that with a little research, you would see that someone has been there before.

Learn to use resources. Read. I always tell my students at school that the most important thing that they can do while in school is to learn how to learn.

Don’t waste your time and energy solving a problem that has already been solved. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Learn from others.

First of all, let me say that this post is going to be a lame excuse for why I haven’t posted in a couple if weeks. Here lately it seems like I am often feeling like Joshua. I want to say “God, can you just pause the sun because I need a few more hours in the day to get these things done.”

Between spring football practice, working at the new church building, preparing for my responsibilities in church services, scrambling to finish some website work, planning for camp yadah, and getting the occasional workout in; I wonder when I can find the time to sleep, much less write blog posts!!

Hopefully, I can soon get some of these things off my plate. Spring football ends this week. School dismisses in May, just in time for camp season. So maybe things will settle down soon. Or just maybe the sun will stand still and let me catch up.

Over the past few years I have gotten a lot of experience developing media for church services. I have worked in my home church doing everything from sermon graphic slides to posters to video production to website development. I have also designed web sites for more than a dozen churches and developed media for conferences and youth camps. I never had any “formal” training in all this stuff. I just had a curious mind and a lot of help from google. I have come a long way in the past few years. I am by no means an expert, but I feel like I have a decent grasp of what I am doing.

With my responsibilities in other areas of the church increasing I am having to release some of the media work for Sunday services to others. While I am thankful for the help, I notice some of these volunteers struggling with some of the same issues that I did when I first began learning to do media for church. That is the principle that just because you CAN do something with the media does not mean you SHOULD .

There are many awesome programs that allow you to do amazing things with church media. When you first learn how to use all the bells and whistles the temptation is to use your newly found toy every chance you get. However, just because you discovered how to make the intelligent lights dance and change colors in time with the drummer does not mean that you need to do that with every song. Going over the top with the media can become a distraction to the worship or preaching instead of an enhancement. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth concerning this same principle. Not relating to media, as I am pretty sure there were no projectors, lights, or cameras in 1st century Greece, but as it applies spiritually.

In 1 Corinthians, when discussing the lifestyle that the Christians of Corinth should be living, Paul makes the statement “all things are lawful unto me , but all things are not expedient.”

To understand exactly what Paul was saying here you have to understand the culture of the day. Before his conversion Paul was raised in a strict Jewish tradition. Nearly every aspect of their conduct was governed by “The Law”. Paul taught, however, that thru the redemptive power of the blood of Jesus Christ he, along with other believers, was no longer bound by this restrictive “rulebook”.

The culture of the day in the city of Corinth was considered to be very liberal. Paul felt that there were those in the church at Corinth who were taking advantage of the newfound freedom that they had in Christ.
Paul felt that there were some actions and behaviors that, while in and of themselves may not have been sinful, were not profitable to be engaged in by mature Christians.

In chapter 8 of 1st Corinthians Paul uses the specific example of eating meat that has been offered to idols. Paul said that a mature Christian knows that an idol has no power and meat offered to it means nothing. Here is what he says in verses 8-9:

“But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse.
But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock to them that are weak.”

He was saying that while a particular action may not be sin to you, It could cause a less mature Christian with less knowledge to stumble or fall. Paul even goes on to say in verse 13:

“Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.”

So basically Paul was saying that just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

So what does all of this mean for us today? A few years back when I was a youth pastor, I observed that the prevailing attitude with many of the students seemed to be that there was a massive rule book for being a Christian. There was a long list of things that you MUST do and an equally long list of things that you COULD NOT do.

To become a good Christian, all you had to do was follow the rulebook explicitly. If I was going to tell them that they shouldn’t be doing something, then they would want me to give them chapter and verse where the “rulebook” said they couldn’t do it.

The sad fact is that many people who consider themselves to be mature Christians operate using this same philosophy. This mindset is a form of legalism. It is no different that the Jews still struggling to keep their laws after the New Covenant was in effect.

I think that one of the best things that could happen in our apostolic churches today is to throw out the “rulebook”. Now, before many of you begin to hurl stones in my general direction, let me explain my last statement.

If you base your walk with God on rules then it is inevitable that you are going to come across a situation that is not specifically covered by a rule. So then a new rule must be made up. As time passes and culture changes more situations come up and more rules are made until you end up with a list if rules that is impossible to keep up with and possibly even filled with inconsistencies.

A better and more scripturally based approach is to live by principles. Times and culture may change but principles are timeless.
Instead of keeping up with a long list of what you can and cannot do, it is better to live by the principles of modesty, temperance, and separation as laid out in the Bible. Also, principled living cannot be faked. It is possible to keep all the rules and never have your heart where it needs to be. This is because with rule based living the focus is on the rules. With principled living the focus is on the relationship. With rules the implication is that there is a minimum requirement that you must meet. Our focus should not be on the least but rather we should strive to become more like Jesus.
This post has become rather lengthy, lengthy and I feel like I have gotten up on a soapbox, so I will quit. So I said all that to say this: just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Being a teacher, I am often forced to be subjected to boring and useless professional development sessions. I will admit that during many of these sessions my attention gets diverted rather quickly from the speaker to something more pressing on my smartphone (i.e. Angry Birds). However, I recently sat through a session, the topic of which was a controversial issue among educators in my state, the Tennessee Value Added Assessment System (TVAAS). I will not bore you with all of the details, but in a nutshell this is a system where a teacher’s effectiveness is measured based on student test scores.

Let me quickly explain what the controversy with this method is.
Those not working in the field of education may be quick to say “that’s good, if the kids can’t pass the test then the teacher didn’t do their job.” Teachers, however, will be quick to point out that there are many factors that go into how well any given student will perform on a test, many of which are out of the teacher’s control. So to answer many of the questions and to dispel many of the myths concerning TVAAS, our school brought in an expert to explain the process to us.

After his presentation it was obvious to me, if not to the others in the room, that the fear, concern, and even anger about the TVAAS system was based on a complete misunderstanding of how it actually works to evaluate teacher effectiveness. Teachers were concerned that it was not fair to expect them to have every student make a proficient score on a test when the ability levels of students are all over the spectrum. But in actuality that was not the expectation. The TVAAS system actually compares the students test score to their previous test scores to see how much they have improved. For the teacher to be seen as effective, the student does not have to pass the test, he only has to demonstrate improvement. It is not about achievement, it is about growth. And that is a huge difference.

I think that it is this same misunderstanding that frustrates many Christians in their walk with God. Many times people have the idea that there are certain benchmarks, or tests that they must pass to be a “good” Christian. They compare themselves to others and use this “score” to rate their walk with God This type of thinking is based on the achievement model. This will always lead to frustration because God evaluates us based on the growth model.

Just as students all come into a teacher’s classroom at different ability levels, we are all at various levels of spiritual maturity. Just as it isn’t reasonable to expect the student who is a weak reader to keep pace with the gifted student, it is unfair to assume all people will progress at the same pace spiritually. And God does not expect this of us. He does, however, expect growth. With TVAAS, growth is expected in students of all ability levels, including the high achievers. If a student scored in the 90th percentile last year and only scores in the 88th percentile this year, then he “passed” the test but he didn’t improve. There was no growth. The teacher was not effective with that student. Many of us may think that because we are at a higher level of spiritual maturity that there is no longer the expectation of growth. We feel that somehow we have “arrived”. The truth however, is that as long as we are on this earth we have not “arrived” and the expectation is that we are growing.

Looking at various passages of scripture, this principle is evident. In the parable of the talents, Jesus spoke of servants who were entrusted with various amounts if their master’s estate. Regardless of how much or how little they were given, the expectation was that they would return with more than they started. The expectation was growth. Jesus cursed the fig tree because it had leaves but no fruit. It was at a point in it’s development when the natural process of growth should have produced fruit. The tree, however, only looked mature. Once it had developed leaves, it’s growth had stopped. The writer of Hebrews chastises those who should be teachers but still needed instruction themselves. They were still using milk when they should have moved on to meat. The expected growth had not taken place.

Just as the state of Tennessee’s educators have had to change their perception of how their effectiveness is evaluated, many of our churches need a shift in their thinking about what effective discipleship is. It is not about achievement. It is about growth.