not your average bear...

I've been learning a lot about myself lately. I am learning that I'm "not your average bear," when it comes to many things; inparticularly, being a husband and a youth pastor. Katie and I always joke about the fact that we don't have gender roles in our marriage. I cook and clean, she paints and builds things, it works. It is not that those things aren't interchangeable with both of us, but I like short projects with visible results and she has much more determination to paint an entire room. It is just how we operate.

As a youth pastor, I'm learning that I'm not stereotypical of the profession that many attribute to my colleagues and me. I am not a "games" person, I love competitive competition but games are not my things. Adjustment. I am not an extremely animated speaker, I'm passionate, but would not call myself animated. I'm not a night owl, though I can stay up late when I need too (like next week at teen camp when I'll be bunking with 8 junior highers!). It is little things like this that have somewhat eaten at me as I am submerging myself into youth culture, but it has also been a highlight in my ministry thus far that teens are not looking for the stereotypical. Teens are not looking for the "should be" and "shouldn't be's," but for something genuine and for someone who cares.

This is where as a church we should excel, caring for others in a way that is genuine. People should not think "christian" and think "hypocrite." People should not think "church" and think "fake, mean, judgmental." Am I a person who cares for others first? Are we a church that cares more about communicating Christ then about communicating everything we have done? As a church, we should be striving for so much more than average, we should be striving for the already/not yet Kingdom that Christ inaugurated and that we are pointing to and participating in. Who are we?