The men's ministry of LifeStream Christian Church will be going over the book, What God Does When Men Lead. So being one of the leaders of the ministry I had to read the book ahead of time AND I had to have it read by this morning... so I did some power reading and I am done.

A very good book, some of it really  hit home to me.  I'll share more about it as we go through it in detail as a group, but the overall concept of the book is that the lack of male leadership has hurt our world significantly. 

A few excerpts from the book that I liked:
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
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Unlike gifts, which God permanently bestows but which need development, passions arise at what might seem like arbitrary times in our lives.
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If a brother has a legitimate immediate need and I have the means to meet that need, then I have an obligation to help him on a short-term basis.  I don't need to pray about it or seek God's will about it; I just need to obey and do it.
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Notice that it is not just the father's presence in the home but the quality of the father's involvement and leadership that makes the difference.
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Statistics regarding the father's spiritual influence on children are compelling.  When a mother trusts Christ apart from her husband, her family follows 17 percent of the time.  When Dad becomes a Christian, the rest of the family follows 93 percent of the time.
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For many guys, church falls into the same category as attending a chick flick with your wife.
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That last comment is HARSH... but soooo true.

Well I am done with this book.  A good book, well worth the time to read.  It makes me want to read the Purpose Driven Church book.  I found the practical applications in this book very worth while.  You can read my previous comments, here, here, and here.

I'm almost finished with the Purpose Driven Youth Ministry book.  So I'll give a few more comments about things said in the book, then my last post will be a wrap up of what I've read. 

1. Have Fun!!!
When I was a non-Christian, one of the things that stuck out to me was one man's ability to have fun.  He had a huge smile all the time, but he was also very firm in his faith and what it meant to be a Christian.  The author in this book went over a situation where he hung out with a teen and the teen said this to his mom: "Doug is a normal person.  I can tell he has fun being a Christian."

If you're not able to have fun being a Christian then you're doing something wrong!

2. Earn the Right
A principal I try to live out in my walk is earning the right to say something to somebody. If you don't have that right, then shut up and wait until you earn it.  This book also went into this dynamic:

Jim Rayburn, founder of Young Life, realized that "a life speaks louder than words" and that discovery, as well as growth, happens best in the context of relationships." Today many churches and youth ministries are relational by design because they realize that they earn the right to be heard by first caring about people.

3. They will act their age
Now this was a new teaching for me.  Talked about how we can't have adult expectations for youth (not the new part), that we can't expect them to act our spiritual age when they are just babies. 

Its easy to expect a Christian to behave like a Christian, regardless of how recent their conversion.  If we are talking with a teen Christian of two years, we can't expect them to act like a convert of 10 years.  Now I see this as applicable well up the age ladder.  Whether you are talking about a 12 year old or a 30 year old, we can't expect a spiritual baby to have it figured out as much as a 10 year old Christian.

Overall my review of this book remains highly positive.  Certainly worth the read.

Am about half way finished with this book and so far am enjoying it.  May encourage me to read the Purpose Driven Church.

A couple things worth noting:

1. In talking about the role of volunteers in the youth ministry I loved this comment:
"Volunteers won't stay involved with a youth ministry for an extended amount of time if they don't have significant responsibilities."

While this is targeted to the youth ministry I think it is correct about ANY ministry.  If the worker can't/doesn't get a sense of ownership, then they won't hang around.  This is the difference between poor delegation and great delegation.  If a leaders idea of delegation is that the 'lower' worker has to seek permission about 80% of what they do, then they won't feel ownership.  A leader should really trust their 'workers' to make the right decision 95% of the time, and understand that the 5% of the time they don't is usually small enough to be overcome.

2. In a section talking about discipleship, the author talks about how his initial structure was about relationships and teaching.  But he noticed that wasn't working.  So he added a part to discipleship that involves personal spiritual habits.  Basically teach them to live the life when nobody is watching.  Teach them to have the habits of a Christian, from their own decision and not the decision of their parents or church leadership.

This book is soooo related to every church ministry and not just the youth ministry.  Glad I am reading it!

I'm 54 pages into this book and so far have been enjoying it more than I would have thought.

I have gone through the Purpose Driven Life, series and didn't think much of it, but I guess that could have had more to do with my spiritual funk than the content of the book.

It is driving away from becoming a program oriented youth ministry and one that actually shoots for effects from your programs.  A couple of comments that I've liked so far:

1. When sharing about some frustrations with an early part of his youth ministry, the author makes the following comment: 'I had left God out of the equation and had been doing youth ministry, using my own power.  My heart had become hard, and I was spending all my time doing the work of God without being a man of God.'

Man that speaks to me so much.  Really where I had been over the last 4 years.  I was busy trying to do God's work, without relying on him for my joy.

2. When diving into what the five purposes of a youth ministry and church are, the author states the following; 'A church may be driven by tradition, personality, finances, people, or programs, but none of these will build health in your church.'

Yeah... I've seen that in action over the years :-/

So just about 11:30PM on New Years Eve I finished another book, as I wanted to start the new year with a clean slate.  Finished up the second book, How to Really Love Your Teenager, in the two-in-one book, How To Really Love Your Children.

This book overall got better to me the more I read it.  I started off not caring about certain parts, but after some reflection I came to like it.

Really puts some things into perspective for me in my interaction with my own children, and the boundaries we have to put on them as parents.

Now a comment a bit bigger than this book, but it was part of the book.  In the 11th chapter, "Helping Your Teenager Spiritually" it talked about Cellar voices and balcony people.  Cellar voices are the things inside us that keep telling us the negative and don't let you focus on any of the positive.  This is something I struggle with.  I have a lot of loud cellar voices.  But there is an answer, Balcony People.  Balcony people are those living and dead who walked the walk and talked the talk.  They are examples of great faith and life.  They are the folks around us that we can look to for help when the cellar voices get us down.  Hebrew's 11 is a great example of Balcony people in the Bible.  Loved this point.  The book tied this all together about relating just how important it is for us to make sure our teenagers have this dynamic in their life's.

Up next for me to read is "Purpose Drive Youth Ministry."  I am considering getting more involved with the youth ministry at my church, so the youth minister gave me this book to read.  Its a long book, but appears to be big font and an easy read.  I'll post some pictures of a youth outing we had on 12/30/07 soon.  Nearly 60 people (most youth) in attendance!!!