Adoption Matters: International Adoptions

In the last few months, I’ve had a number of conversations with people who ask me why should we still allow international adoptions when so many children live here domestically in need of parents?  In addition to those living in the foster care system in need of good homes, there still occasionally are those parents (typically single teenagers) who get pregnant and decide not to abort and not to parent; so placing their child for adoption is their choice.  So what then with these options still available is the reason why people choose to find a child internationally?

The primary reason I believe is choice selection.  Many people (not all) when they are looking to adopt are looking for a child (preferably infant age) who have looks as close to themselves (the adopting) parents as possible.  This isn’t all people who adopt, many choose to adopt as a means to help the child have a better life; but many are looking to grow their family, so finding a child that looks as close to their looks as possible becomes primary.  As I mentioned above, finding an infant is also primary.  Many parents looking to adopt want to raise a child applying all they have learned in their own lives to the life of this child; many adopting parents don’t want to raise a child where they have to spend many years correcting someone else’s bad parenting choices and decisions.

Secondly, I believe that many families choose to adopt internationally because of privacy concerns.  With Open adoption laws being what they are here in the U.S., many birth parents can negotiate adoption plans that will allow them to remain involved in the child’s life and even co-parent the child with the adopting parents if the birth parent makes those requests.  Many adopting parents aren’t looking to add an additional parenting figure to the equation, so they instead choose to connect with a child outside of the U.S. in order to greatly minimize the chance a birth parent will look to make themselves involved, both in the present and in the future.  And although the adoption process may take longer and the cost may be up to 10X greater, some parents will make those sacrifices in order to have a family situation that best suits their comfortability.

Ministry Matters: Big Picture Planning

One of the toughest things I found out about ministry was that it was difficult to constantly keep fresh, creative ideas at the forefront of what we were attempting to accomplish.  As we moved from one topic to the next, always trying to keep momentum going, it was tough not to gravitate back toward the ideas that we know would always work and would always please the skeptical audience of students (and their parents) that we were looking to reach. After a couple years in ministry, I realized that in order to stay in front of the path of least resistance, big picture planning needed to be part of my ongoing strategic approach to ministry.

Now for those of us who have engaged in all-day (or all-weekend) planning sessions, there is nothing tougher then to create a plan to cover all of next year’s ministry goals.  When you have your team and everyone is jockeying to get their ideas heard or acted upon, these meetings can sometimes be labor-intensive, brutal and tiring.  But they also can be very rewarding.  When approached correctly, annual planning meetings can open your eyes to the vision that the Holy Spirit has for your group and take away from you the idea that myopic single-subject planning is all you have time for.

Big-picture planning has at it’s roots, the idea that God is at work laying down a set of plans, much like a builder.  If you think about it, what type of builder would plan out a house or project only to the point of one completed step?  Not many.  So why would we approach our respective ministries that way?  One of the greatest lessons I learned in ministry was to try and plan out as much as possible in order to get an understanding of where the group was headed.  Before I learned this lesson, I would get done with a series and then start planning where we were headed next; it was maddening and I believe I wasted a few years of ministry.  Planning out as much in advance as possible, gives the Holy Spirit time to work on you and show you what He wants you to teach the students (or any other group for that matter) concerning that topic.

So where do you start?  You start with your team.  Get their input on what they feel needs to be taught.  Then talk to the parents and the students, ask them what they want taught.  Ask others in ministry to show you their 1-year and their 4-year and 6-year plans.  Start planning out your next year, then plan out your second year, what needs to be repeated, what needs to be added?  Go hard with your team and try to knock out at least 2-years.

What you will find this does is give you an excitement for what’s coming up.  It will also free you up to spend more time with students.  With parents, it will make you more respectable, because it will show them you are approaching the position like the professional that you are.  And it will allow your team of leaders to know they are important enough to be part of something that values their input.  Lastly, it will give you the ability to market your program better because you can now paint an accurate picture of what is coming up in the future: students will appreciate that, parents will appreciate that and your church leadership will appreciate that.  So pull your team together and put that big picture plan together for incredible ministry results.

Family Matters: Holidays

To be honest with you, I get a weird feeling when I start to think about holidays and what it really means to me.  Growing up, holidays were a good time, mixed with a lot of dysfunctional living.  My mom would always do a great job of cooking ham or turkey, but we never sat down and ate it; it was always put out buffet style and we served ourselves and picked at the food all day long.  Mixed in with that was the fact that both of my parents would drink through the day and be arguing or passed out by the time most families would be sitting down to a family meal.  Every holiday for me is a collage of memories from Thanksgiving and Christmas past that reminds me of why I made the decision to change the direction of my family.

When my wife and I married 20 years ago, we were both committed to raising our family in a way that would leave a lasting legacy and would create a positive Christian value base versus a worldly-“eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you shall surely die” family.  We both have learned over the last 20 years that we brought a lot of baggage into the marriage and we need to work hard at identifying the dysfunction and praying that God would help us change it; that hasn’t been easy, but we still work at it.  Which brings us back to the holidays.

Holidays dump on us (and many others) guilty reminders of what we are not. We’re not rich, so we can’t buy a lot of presents, we aren’t close with much of our family, so we eat by ourselves, we are not honest so we spend hours scrubbing the floors before the in-laws arrive in order to gloss up the perception; the list goes on.  Holidays are not what Hallmark and the commercials make them out to be; they’re rough.  But at the same time, I’m glad they are still around.

I’m glad because holidays are truthful.  When you don’t have money, you can’t buy everything (or even think you can).  Holidays make us acknowledge that we have limits to what we could or should acquire (unless you have a credit card issue, which is another discussion for a different day).  Especially right now, money is tight and many of us are having to reevaluate what is worth spending money on and what is not; that’s not really a bad thing.  Another area that holidays bring truth out in is our relationships with others, especially family.  Holidays cause us to acknowledge whether our relationships with others are healthy or not.  We may not choose to fix it, but we still need to acknowledge it; and that’s not a bad thing (At Alcoholics Anonymous, admitting you have a problem is the first step toward getting better).  Lastly, holidays make us admit that we aren’t perfect and that’s okay.  We don’t have a perfectly cleaned house all the time, we can’t keep our yards manicured perfectly every day of the week, sometimes our carpets need cleaning, sometimes our cars need washing; you know what: so what?  Those things don’t make us perfect, they make us human.  A few years back, my wife and I decided that we don’t always have to have the perfect groomed home when people are coming over; even during the holidays.  What’s important is that we show others that we love each other and that we enjoy each others’ company without all the pretense.

I’m glad we still celebrate holidays; it’s sometimes a tough struggle to get through them, but when all is said and done, we’ll be glad we chose to enjoy them rather then lament them and keep the negative legacy going another generation.

Ministry Matters: Pastors and Salaries

Yesterday I was sitting down with a ministry friend of mine who stated that the average American makes $50,000 a year, while a Sr. Pastor’s average salary is $87,000.  While I’m not sure I agree with the numbers without seeing the statistics (probably from Barna), I did go away from there wondering where I stand on the issue and what I believe is fair and equitable when it comes to church work.

My first thought when it comes to this issue is that a pastor (associate or lead) is paid based on education, church size and local demographic.  Most pastors have at least a Master’s degree and many have doctorates.  So based on education, many are paid less than their counterparts in the community who have the same equivalent.  Given the cost of education in a private bible college where most pastors are trained, education (especially if there are loans) need to be considered when a pastor’s salary is being scrutinized and justified.  And although a good education could be had at many lower-cost state schools, many churches won’t even consider a pastor unless he has the right academic pedigree and has been trained to teach a certain doctrinal perspective; so education from the private bible college does matter.  Many church search teams also look at the more education a pastor has, the better suited they are for that congregation.

Second is the church size.  Now, I have been fortunate to have served in a medium-sized church (150-250 attendance), a large church (2500 in attendance) and a mega church (10,000 in attendance plus a 10 million person television viewing audience per week); no matter what they say, size does matter.  Size matters on a couple of areas: salary and resources.  In the smaller congregation I served in for 11 years I made a basic salary and had a budget of $2500 per year, which was offset by many gracious people in the church so that all our needs were met.  When I left there and went to the mega church and became their Pastor of Student Ministries, I was making as much if not more than the Sr. Pastor at the smaller church and had a budget of $15,000 per year; although not that many people stepped up to help with any additional needs because they had their pet ministries they supported that did not have any budgets.  At the large church I worked in, my part-time salary was equivalent to what I was making (if you broke it down per hour) at the mega-church; plus I had a $25,000 annual budget.  You can see some of the differences and they don’t always make categorical sense.  What I will say though, is that the Sr. Pastor difference was huge between the three pastors at these three churches.  The pastor at the large church I worked at probably made over double what the smaller church pastor made and the pastor at the mega church probably made 5 times what the larger pastor made (if not much more).  So size does matter and many pastors will be attracted to larger ministries because it means more financial freedom and security for them and their families. It also means more influence and many pastors are attracted to the career of ministry because it is a position of influence, but that’s a talk for a different day.

Lastly, a pastor’s salary is tied directly to their local demographic.  With the exception of those notable churches that became large and the neighborhood around them changed from affluent to something different and the people still attend there even though they have moved to a new zip code; most pastors I know make about 80% of what their church’s average salary is.  Now if a pastor’s church is in south Orange County where Saddleback is located, the median family income is about $105,000; so the pastor of a medium size church would make about $83,000; if the church was smaller, probably less, but if it was bigger, probably more.  That could be a lot of money and when broken down to what they do, are they really worth it? I do believe they are.

From the outside (a lay person’s perspective) a pastor could be seen only teaching on Sundays; but to someone on the inside, a pastor has a much bigger role.  A pastor first of all leads leaders; if they aren’t leading leaders, there’s a good chance they are in the wrong position.  Now they can have the gift of evangelism or teaching, but a pastor is different; they teach and they lead.  Identifying and empowering leaders is a necessity when it comes to the long term success of a ministry.  Next, they strategize the direction of the church (at the Holy Spirit’s prompting); what will be the hills they will die on and what will be the dialogues they engage in but sometimes let’s others win?  This is important because it determines where the church is going.  Next they preach and it has to be effective and it has to be correct doctrine; if it is not engaging with the people or it is false teaching of God’s Holy Word, it will be damaging to the church in the long run.  Sometimes a pastor has to counsel, sometimes they have to prepare and defend budgets, sometimes they have to recruit volunteers for ministry, sometimes they have to raise monies for special projects; so the job is much bigger then preaching on Sundays.  These things need to be kept in mind when thinking about a pastor’s salary.

So to me, the issue is bigger than just how much they make.  Yes, there is a good chance they make more then some of their congregants, but they probably make less then some of their people as well.  Pastors work hard and their job is difficult much of the time.  With the expectations before they get the job and after they get it; it’s not an easy career choice, but I am glad for those who have chosen to follow that calling and have had a rich impact on my life.

 

Family Matters: Vacations

If I were to ask you “What is the purpose of a vacation?” what might be your response?  For most Americans, the typical response is that they desire to escape for a few days from their ordinary, everyday life.  Escape the house cleaning, escape the job, escape responsibility; enjoy ourselves; hedonism.  Vacations for many are a chance to not deal with the items that cause us to feel stressed and feel anxiety in our regular routines.  Not that I don’t wrestle with these same things when planning a getaway for our family, but for our family we hope the vacation is a little more intentional then just an escape.

When I was growing up my family didn’t take vacations; not that my parents wouldn’t have liked to get away, we just never had the resources to do that.  As I look at my family and I think about taking a trip, my desire is not necessarily to get away.  If that were the case, I could get in my car and go on my own; because that sounds like that’s my own issue.  When getting ready to go away with my family, I want it to be more about bringing my family together and enjoying and learning about one another as opposed to just going somewhere else.

Intentional conversations about faith, ambitions and relationships are all pretty normal when we go away.  Living with someone in the same room for a few days will give us lots of time to talk about these important areas unless all we want to do is stay busy, go swimming (which would be my son’s choice) or watch TV.  I found that I need to be careful though, because the stress of being away from home can cause me to be distracted and steer us away from making it a quality family getaway; I would caution you about the same thing.

So plan your next family vacation, but make it with a higher purpose then just getting away.  Plan it with the purpose of drawing your family closer together.

Why Care For The Orphans

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. James 1:27

In the last few years, I have had the privilege to hang out with some people that make it their business to care for orphans and also families looking to adopt a new member into their family.  As a board member for an adoption agency in California, I have witnessed first hand the unselfish nature of those who clear the path to help people in need; from the abandoned babies living in orphanages, to the teen mom with an unwanted pregnancy, to the family who can’t have children and are desperate to get their family started.  I’ve witnessed first hand people who step up to the plate everyday to help real people through these real life situations.  As I’ve spent time with these people, I’ve begun to realize that caring for orphans and those in the adoption community is something I’ve never considered (before I was asked to serve on the Board), but is something that all believers need to think about because it impacts us all.  Why?

First of all it’s biblical.  As a Christ-follower, my primary direction in life comes from God’s Word.  The Bible is filled with many verses directing the people of God to care for those who are without families; the orphans and the fatherless.  The strange thing is that I never thought of these verses very deeply until I got involved in the adoption community.  I never heard a sermon preached on them, they were never the topic of my small group discussions.  They were verses that I had read, but that hadn’t really seemed to apply to me, so I glossed over them.  What I came to find out through observation, through study and through being part of this community is that we all are affected by the plight of those without family.  When I see a family in our church, who try as they might can’t get pregnant; when I hear the stories of the abandoned children in third world countries who are without a family; when I hear the stories of how orphans are the easiest target for human traffickers, my heart is moved to listen to these verses and to do something that will bring some relief to those who are hurting.  I believe at the heart of God, He desires for those without family and who are hurting to be cared for by the part of creation that has been fortunate enough not to have experienced this type of difficult life.  It’s biblical, therefore, I must respond.

Second, I believe we need to care for orphans because they are the most vulnerable.  I don’t know every kid that walks down my street but you can bet I am looking out for them.  If they walk into the street or if there is a strange person walking around; I’m going to get involved.  I’m going to tell that kid to get out of the street, I’m going to let that stranger know that I am watching him and that he better not think he has the ability to try anything toward the innocents on my street.  I believe, that’s what responsible people do.  When it involves the orphans of the world, they have very few people looking out for their safety and looking out for their needs.  In the United States, we have a fairly myopic view of what life looks like or should be like.  We think kids go to daycare, play soccer, enjoy Christmas presents and get tucked into bed every night.  Now even though this isn’t true for all of the U.S., it’s definitely not true in many countries of the world.  Children are left to fend for themselves and to care for their younger siblings: I’ve been to many third world countries and I’ve witnessed it many times.  Unfortunately, where there are vulnerable children, there are also predators.  Predators who prey upon the innocents.  Whether they are rapists, human traffickers, or worse; these bottom-feeders look to take advantage of these children who they know have no one looking out for their well-being.  I believe it’s our duty to look out for these children because they need responsible adults who will take the initiative to care for them because they are not yet in a place to do it for themselves.

Lastly, I believe we need to care for orphans because it helps us more than we know.  In a day of increasing self-fulfillment, caring for the least allows us to realize the world is much bigger then just our own little place.  Caring for orphans helps us to see that when we move past our comfort zones to help the most vulnerable in the world, good things and great results can happen.  I believe these kinds of situations becoming defining moments for what the rest of our lives will look like and be like.  Our actions also define how our family looks at humanity and life as well.  It’s not just an action that has no additional possibilities; it’s an action that has unlimited possibilities.

A little help goes a long way and we may never see the full impact of what may happen in the life of one child, but I believe our assistance goes out exponentially and from that comes a life that could change the world.

Ministry: Working In The Church

Before I go anywhere with this idea, I want to preface it first by saying I love the church.  I love it’s history, I love it’s leaders, I love the people that collectively make up the most powerful organization in the history of the world; that being said, I also want to say that sometimes even though I am in love with the church, it’s not always the easiest thing to understand or to work in.

I had no desire to work in the church, but God called me out.  I was perfectly happy working in environmental engineering, volunteering my time working in the youth department at the local church.  But I couldn’t keep my mouth shut and God used somebody from the inside to lure me in and the rest is history.  Youth pastor job, Bible College, seminary, another youth pastor job, and then a couple of other odds and ends in the ministry world including a year as an interim Associate Pastor and here I am.

The church has been good to me.  It’s allowed me to be creative, to grow in my understanding of people, to learn more about Jesus, to grow in my understanding of other religions, to help people in need and to call others into ministry.  The church has been good to me because it has offered me so much that I would never have gotten somewhere else.

The tough thing about the church is that it rarely offers security.  In fact, if you are on a path for ministry and security is what you want, you probably want to get out now and go into environmental engineering. Even for the saints that have toughed it out and done well to grow a ministry, stayed above reproach and have laid down deep roots in that ministry community, the employment part of ministry is sometimes a touch and go dynamic.  Economic downturns, building campaigns, political arguments, theological disagreements, injury accidents, these are just a few of the items that I have seen with people I know in ministry (including myself) that caused a sudden shift in whether the church chooses to retain their services or not.  Unfortunately, it does happen and the older I get, the more I see or hear about it.  And even though I have found ways to stay in ministry, some of my friends have instead chosen to move on; which breaks my heart.  These are good people who knew ministry much better then I; but they needed to feed their families.

I do believe in the Sovereignty of God; things happen that we don’t understand and yet He remains in control.  I find I have to come back to that attribute of God often because some things are beyond me.  Maybe that’s why I’m such an optimist when it comes to what I still see in His Church.  As a leader, I must understand this idea, because if not, there’s a good chance I will be calling you up soon to see if you need any life insurance or if you would like to sell your house.

Family Matters: Encouragement

“But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” Hebrews 3:13

One thing I’ve learned in life is that no one dislikes encouragement.  Everyone is wired in such a way that when encouraged, life gets a little better and the desire to try is increased.  Now I might be jaded a bit because one of my Spiritual Gifts is exhortation, but I think it’s a benefit to everyone when someone chooses to encourage.

As a dad, I don’t always hit the mark.  Sometimes I get upset, sometimes I fail to deliver when my kids are counting on me, sometimes I’m late getting to something that involves them; I have shortcomings.  Some of this is a busy schedule, some of this is bad planning, sometimes it’s a home of origin issue that gets in the way of me seeing the difference between stupid, okay and really good.  I’m just a work in progress, but I try to make it up with encouragement.  I don’t want to band-aid my bad stuff, but I realize I’m just a guy made of flesh and bones that are prone to make bad choices sometimes; so I look to encouragement to help me right some of what is wrong with me.

And isn’t that what encouragement is, a way to counterbalance a fallen world.  We see something we don’t like, we instantly move to criticize it.  We hear something that attempts to make us think differently and we choose instead to make a sarcastic remark about it.  Encouragement though, acts as a neutralizer to a caustic and toxic environment and mindset.

I coach Little League baseball, in fact I’m coming up on 7 years with my son being out on the field with him.  But besides my son, I also coach 11 other boys who want to learn this game.  Some of these boys come from tough home situations; I hardly ever see their parents.  They get dropped off and the parents take off until they show up 15 minutes after practice is over; it’s just the way it is.  I see their facial expressions when I’m coaching them in practice and games.  I see how their bodies move (or don’t) when I’m trying to verbally move them into position for both offense and defense.  When they make a great play, and I acknowledge it; they respond.  When they make a good attempt but don’t make the play and I acknowledge the effort, they respond.  When in the heat of a tough game, they strike out and their parents yell at them from the stands, they respond and then I pick up the pieces in the dugout; it’s just the way it is.  But I know that the little encouragement I give them is what will allow them to move forward and keep trying to do better next time.

Someday when it’s my turn to leave this Earth, my hope is that people will have felt encouraged by my words and by my actions.  Even if I was the richest man in the world and I left millions to my kids, millions to the church and millions to worthy charitable organizations, all of this would be of little value if I had failed to encourage my kids, encourage my church and encourage those involved with the charities.

Take some time today and be an encouragement to someone in your world that needs it.

Here We Go Again

It’s been over a year since I decided to stop blogging. I hadn’t really even started blogging, just a few posts and an attempt to get the site up and running.  But I’m back now and determined to give it a little more effort.  I’m going to revolve and around three areas for the next year; areas that matter most to me: Family Matters, Ministry and Orphan Care and Adoption.  I’ve created a blogging route and I now have a plan for where I’m going in the next twelve months; so we’ll see if I can do this.

A Missional Family

This is an article I wrote for International Youth Initiative’s Newsletter

I’ve never been called to the mission field.  I’ve never thought about uprooting my family and taking them somewhere poor or exotic.  I’ve never felt my witness to others or to God was tied to how much sacrificially I would give up and make myself or my family uncomfortable in a foreign land in order to advance the Kingdom.  That being said, I believe missions are extremely important in advancing the Kingdom and I feel families are very important in moving that objective forward as well.

As a youth pastor for many years, mission trips were just part of my DNA.  Every year, we would take 2 or 3 weeks taking teams to various locations with the thought of developing deeper relationships with local pastors; helping them on projects or helping them with outreaches.  These trips were important to our church and important to the students and adults going, but it was also important for my family.

When I talk about family, I mean my immediate and my extended family.  Neither my wife nor I grew up in missionally-minded, Christian homes.  My wife’s family was Catholic and my family was as pagan as it can get.  After we were married and I began a career in youth ministry, missions were part of the package and my family began to see in the way we lived and the values we had toward other people groups as something of an anomaly from the way most people in North America lived (including most of our own family members).

As my own children began to get older, my wife and I began to see something different in the attitude of our kids toward other people groups and their worldview concerning the pain and suffering that occurred in the world.  Our kids had a natural response of curiosity, of compassion and of concern for others.  We felt this was normal until we began to see and hear from others that many of their kids didn’t see things this way.  We realized then that having a missional mindedness in our family made a difference in how our kids understood the world and how our kids responded to the needs of others.

As my kids have gotten older (currently they are 13 and 10), we have begun taking them on short-term mission trips; both local and across the border into Mexico.  Not only do they get excited about going on new adventures, but they are excited to go on more extreme trips in the future.  For my wife and I, we see this as a blessing in their development; these short adventures in helping others are shaping their Christian worldview.

I believe families that include their children in mission opportunities will only reap benefits in the immediate future as well as the long-term growth that we want to see in all of our kids: caring, compassion and expanded world-view understandings.  These things don’t occur by chance in our families, they must be fostered.  As I think about this upcoming Summer and what the next few years hold until my kids go off to college; I want to be intentional about the message I’m sending my kids and what is really important in this world and what is not.  Missions do more then just helping others, it helps us as well.  It’s helps us teach our kids (and other family members) lessons that words alone cannot accurately describe.  Our willingness to sacrifice our time, our treasures and our comfort as a family go many miles in building the Kingdom.