a few years ago, ys picked up this large triennial youth event called dcla (it had been a youth for christ event since the mid-80s). we hosted dcla in 2006, using a modified version of the approach that had been developed for the 2003 event. that approach was to use the big room meetings to do a narrative walk through the story of jesus as seen in the gospel of john. drama, film, music, animation, mini talks — all combined to weave the story (or stories).

(the labs, a seperate aspect of the event, allows a very interesting space — in peer circles of 8 teenagers — to process and interact. in 2003, that was around the 3-story concept: understanding the relationship between god’s story, my story, and my friend’s story.)

when we were considering whether or not we were even going to DO dcla 2009, one of the things we decided was that we only wanted to plan the event if we thought we had something new and fresh that we were excited about as a framing for the content. in some dreaming meetings earlier in the year, we landed on the “be. love. serve. repeat.” idea, as well as the hope of expanding the big room concept to telling the entire story of god — the whole bible narrative.

so, these last two days (tuesday and wednesday), i sat with four others to lay down some rails for that idea of the big room. obviously, we knew we couldn’t somehow tell every story in the bible over 3 big room sessions. so we had to come up with a thread. we talked about various aspects of god’s story, various threads that could be pulled or followed to create a pathway. and we landed on a story thread, or framing device, that was to tell the stories of god’s interactions with humans to redirect the story. for a while, we were referring to these scences as times when god “broke the plane” and interacted with humans. but we reminded ourselves that that isn’t accurate, really, since there isn’t a plane to break.

based on that “god’s interactions with humans to redirect the story”, we created a long list of bible stories that hang on that thread, or are implicated by that theme. that list is below. lots of stories didn’t make the list, after discussion about whether or not they really connected with that theme.

all of that work was done in about a half day. then came the real challenge. we knew that list was still way too long. so we went back through the list and culled it down to those stories that seemed essential to both the thematic thread, and to telling a reasonably complete version of god’s story or the grand narrative arc of scripture. we wrestled, argued, theorized, philosophized, prayed, considered, proposed, and laughed our heads off. but we really sensed that god was in this thing, and that we were crafting something that could be really helpful to the tens of thousands of kids who attend dcla.

anyhow, here’s the list. the struckthrough words — like this — are the stories we cut from the list.

Creation
Garden
Babel
Noah
Abraham/sarah/hagar/lot/Isaac
Jacob
Joseph
Moses call/exodus/pillar & cloud
Rahab/josh/
Judges
Boy Samuel/Samuel/saul/david/Nathan/Solomon
[writings] (psalms, etc)
kings & prophets
Elijah/Elisha
Hosea
Nehemiah
Jeremiah (29 – “know the plans I have for you… in 70 years”)
Jonah
Daniel/shadrach, meshach, Abednego
Anna/simeon/42 generations
Mary
Birth/angel choir
Baptism/Trinitarian moment/temptation/reading the scroll (luke 4)

Jesus:
(this part of the storyline was a toughie. based on our thread of “god interactions with humans to redirect the story”, every single story from the life of jesus qualifies! so we had to find a secondary framing for the life of christ. we considered a framing from Isaiah, and a few other prophetic fulfillments. but in the end, we decided to go with a contextual theme of jesus’ counter-cultural, revolutionary actions and message. so we listed some of the counter cultural kingdom of god, god-in-christ moments that we thought fit the arc, then winnowed from there.)
- woman at the well
- anointing feet
- healing on the Sabbath (including matt and friends)
- eating with sinners
- lepers/unclean woman/jairus’ daughter
- jesus speaking truth to those in power
- foot washing
- 7 woes
- centurian/cannanite woman
- zacc
- laz

(back to the regular storyline)
Execution
Resurrection
Ascension
Pentecost (focus on the shift in relationship from pre- to post-pentecost,
that we’re invited into the relationality of the trinity)
Peter/james/john/temple/prayer
Church
Deacons
Stephen
Paul/barnabas
Antioch/journies
Peter/Cornelius

at the end of our work, we sat around and talked about what an amazing gift it was to spend two whole days reflecting on the stories of god and the story of god. it’s rare that any of us would take two whole days for this. but to sit in a room with a group of 5 and talk about these stories, reflecting on god’s story-crafting, god’s love, god’s interaction with humans — wow, what a gift.

now i’m really pumped about dcla.

The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow.

this is a great book, but it made my brain hurt.

basically, the drunkard’s walk is a history of the mathematical study of randomness, including physics, probability, normal distribution, and other concepts. but, really, it’s a look at the role that randomness plays in our lives, and how most things are quantifiably less random than they may seem.

there were dozens of times, while reading, that i thought, that makes complete sense, but i can’t imagine that i’m going to remember it. this was often because the proof of the theory made sense at an objective level when explained, but was counter-intuitive to real life and regular ol’ human thinking. a great example of this is the author’s extended explanation of the marilyn vos savant “let’s make a deal” problem. marilyn vos savant writes a column in parade magazine where she answers questions from readers, using her “world’s record highest iq”. she famously responded to a question, years ago, that posed this problem:
if a contestant on “let’s make a deal” (the 70s game show) were given three doors to choose from, and told that a new car was behind one of them, and lousy prizes behind the other two; then, after choosing a door, and having monty hall reveal one of the remaining doors as a loser prize and given the opportunity to shift choice on the remaining two, should the contestant make the change? her response was that, statistically — yes, the odds are better if the contestant changes her answer.

people freaked at her response, including lots of professional mathematicians, who (wrongly) argued that, with two remaining choices, the chances are still 50/50 that the car is behind the door of the contestant’s original choosing.

the proof of this fallacy is all based on probability computations. the contestant’s original choice had a 33% chance of being correct — or 1 in 3. but monty hall removed one of those three (knowing which doors had the good and loser prizes). so, sticking with the original choice still leaves the original probability of 1 in 3. but changing choices raises the probability to 1 in 2 — better odds.

the author acknowledges that while this kind of proof is true, and mathematically observable, it’s contrary to how our brains are wired to consider options.

that said, it was this kind of story - the book has hundreds of them — and the author’s wittiness, that kept me reading through the brain strain.

oh, btw, the title refers to the term scientists use to describe the path of atoms and sub-atomic particles — seemingly random as they carom off each other in a willy-nilly path. ultimately, this path is not actually random, but is merely beyond our ability to compute, based on the absurd quantity of possibilities rising from interactions with other moving particles.

sorry for the silence these last couple days. we moved my blog from one server to another, which went reasonably well (a few hitches, but no lost data). but for a couple days, i’ve been in some weird kind of in-between place between the servers. as best we can figure it at this moment, our network at ys is still looking at the old servers; but everyone else in the world is looking at the new servers. we have no idea why, and are hoping it will resolve itself in a day or two (yeah, resolve itself).

so i posted twice yesterday, and they looked fine — on my computer on the ys network. but those posts didn’t show up for anyone else to see. it’s like a turned my blog private for a couple days there.

i’m posting this at home, on my wife’s computer, until we get this sorted out (or, until it “resolves itself”).

jeannie has been stressed about our finances for a couple years, it seems. and i’ve been, to be honest, kind of ignoring it. this weekend, we sat down and went through our credit card statements for the past 5 months, as well as our check use, automatic payments, and other stuff. we put things into a spreadsheet with a fixed cost column and a soft cost column it seems my salary, which is good (and i have no room for complaint), is about $1000 per month short of covering our fixed costs (and things like clothes and eating out were put into the soft cost column). this was a bit of a shock to me (and less of a shock to jeannie, who handles our finances). we’ve known for some time that we rely on my outside income (book royalties, speaking honorariums) to cover bills and stuff, when we would love to have that income be truly extra, and for vacations and stuff like that. but i hadn’t realized the severity of the issue.

so… we decided we need to move (locally, that is). we’ve been flirting with the idea of moving for well over a year. we’d put it on the back burner 6 months ago, but have looked casually in the past month again. now, we’re going to kick it into gear; and what we’re looking for has changed in this new reality. we need to significantly lower our mortgage, as that’s the single biggest item on our fixed costs. i mean, our kids private school tuition is a big fixed cost also; but we’re really committed to that, and will need to give up house size to keep things balanced.

i like change, and the idea of moving actually has some “fun” elements for me. but finding a home i’ll be excited about, in the price range we’ll be looking, will not be all fun. there are lots of variables and desires for us: we really want to move closer to the city, but we still want a family neighborhood; we’d love to be in a community where we can walk to a coffee shop, but those kind of communities in san diego tend to be more expensive; i’m not a fixer-upper kind of guy, but new stuff is, of course, substantially more expensive. any anything west (toward san diego, toward the water) is more expensive than where we are.

so, tough reality; but could be a really good thing for our family in the long run. and, i have to face reality, right?

finally wrote the dedication and acknowledgments for my youth ministry 3.0 book (due out this fall). thought i’d post it here, so that some of you can have a heads-up that your name will appear in my book!

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the fantastic youth workers who allow Youth Specialties to serve them every year. I’m so humbled and honored to come alongside you, dream with you, cry with you, laugh with you, complain with you, strategize with you, hope with you, and forge ahead with you.

Acknowledgements

I’ve written or contributed to a small shelf of books over the years. But in many ways, I feel like this is my first “real” book. Not to demean the others, but this is the first one with real sentences and paragraphs of ideas, written for adults. And, of course, it wasn’t written in a vacuum – many added to it.

When I was incubating these ideas for a general session talk at the National Youth Workers Convention in the fall of 2007, I posted some questions on my blog. A handful of youth workers were especially helpful in helping me with words to describe what I was thinking about Youth Ministry 3.0. Particular thanks go to D. Scott Miller, Chad Swanzy, Joe Troyer, Adam Lehman, Len Evans, Gordon Weir, Tammy Klassen, Jay Phillippi, Natalie Stadnick, Grahame Knox, Dustin Perkins, Sue Van Stelle, Bob Carlton, Tash McGill, Liz Graves, Tammy Harris, Mark Riddle, Robin Dugall, Daniel So, and Jodi Shay.

At the first convention that year, I sat on my hotel balcony for hours with my friend (and YS’s publisher) Jay Howver, and he helped me flesh out many of my ideas for the application section, which, later, become the seeds for Chapter 6 in this book.

Four very, very smart friends of mine read the first draft of this book and provided extremely helpful and shaping input. After their responses, I re-wrote entire sections, added new stuff, clarified and cut. They deserve co-author credit in many ways. So, big, massive thanks to Dr. Chap Clark, Dr. Kara Powell, almost-Dr. Tony Jones, and Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean.

Michelle Fockler let me use her house for three days as a writing haven. Those three days made all the difference, and I’m in Michelle’s debt. Later, i spent two days on revisions in the quiet apartment of my friend, Andy Padgen. Dude, perfect writing spot.

Finally, my wife (Jeannie) and kids (Liesl and Max) are the best family this guy could have. I’m so in love with you all, and love my life with you. Thanks for supporting me in this little book.

we’ve been working to move my blog over the weekend. well, to be fair, adam mclane has been working to move my blog over the weekend. it was the only ys thing still remaining on the gospelcom servers. he’d backed it up and done the upgrades and started to migrate the content, and the everything worked perfectly - except moving the last 6 month of posts and comments. he tried again: same thing. eventually it worked, apparently. but i wasn’t able to post, and kept seeing (you may have noticed, if you actually visit this blog, not just read it through a reader) that the newest post was about 6 months old).

anyhow. all is good now. and ysmarko happily rests in its new server-home. sure glad adam did this work — i would have been clueless man.

this “church on the move” video of a 100 year-old church being moved, complete with choir processional and all, is screaming metaphor. but i can’t quite decide if it’s a positive metaphor or a negative metaphor! ooh, i’m having conflicting metaphorical responses! to your corners, boys.

(ht to zach)

you know the rules…

toad baked some cookies.
“these cookies smell very good,” said toad.
he ate one.
“and they taste even better,” he said.
toad ran to frog’s house.
“frog, frog,” cried toad.
“taste these cookies that i have made.”

frog ate one of the cookies.
“these are the best cookies i have ever eaten!” said frog.

frog and toad ate many cookies, one after another.
“you know, toad,” said frog, with his mouth full,
“i think we should stop eating.
we will soon be sick.”

“you are right,” said toad.
“let us eat one last cookie, and then we will stop.”
frog and toad ate one last cookie.
there were many cookies left in the bowl.
“frog,” said toad,
“let us eat one very last cookie, and then we will stop.”
frog and toad ate one very last cookie.

“we must stop eating!” cried toad as he ate another.
“yes,” said frog, reaching for a cookie,
“we need will power.”
“what is will power?” asked toad.

“will power is trying hard not to do something that you really want to do,” said frog
“you mean like trying not to eat all of these cookies?” asked toad.
“right,” said frog.

frog put the cookies in a box.
“there,” he said.
“now we will not eat any more cookies.”
“but we can open the box,” said toad.
“that is true,” said frog.

frog tied some string around the box.
“there,” he said.
“now we will not eat any more cookies.”
“but we can cut the string and open the box,” said toad.
“that is true,” said frog.

frog got a ladder.
he put the box up on a high shelf.
“there,” said frog.
“now we will not eat any more cookies.”

“but we can climb the ladder and take the box down from the shelf and cut the string and open the box,” said toad.
“that is true,” said frog.
frog climbed the ladder and took the box down from the shelf.
he cut the string and opened the box.

frog took the box outside.
he shouted in a loud voice,
“HEY BIRDS, HERE ARE COOKIES!”
birds came from everywhere.
they picked up all the cookies in their beaks and flew away.
“now we have no more cookies to eat,” said toad sadly.
“not even one.”

“yes,” said frog,
“but we have lots and lots of will power.”
“you may keep it all, frog,” said toad.
“i’m going home now to bake a cake.”

(from frog and toad together, by arnold lobel)

i’ve been trying to decide, for the last 24 hours since this news story started getting so much front page press, if i should post about dobson’s comments about obama. but this morning, i saw scot mcknight’s helpful post, and thought he said everything better than i would have. so i’ll just link to his post and highly suggest you read it.