mike park's ramblings

The last few weeks have been challenging and inspiring, and the word that has been on the tip of my tongue and resounding in my heart is “risk.”  It’s a word filled with possibility, anxiety, and opportunity.  I’ve always been risk-adverse, choosing to mitigate the possibility of danger by controlling the situation as much as possible.  That, my friends, is living out of fear.  But this word has kept coming back to me – “risk.”  It came to me through Pastor Pete’s sermon on “Stepping Over Your Fears.”  You know that feeling where the sermon must somehow be directly pointing at you and your life.  I happened to be taking a minimal risk at the time, and the truth of the matter was, I thought was going to die.  But I didn’t die and the lesson became clear that risk-taking is a spiritual discipline that I need to incorporate into my life.

So this is my state of mind and heart when I attended Bizarro World, a student ministry leadership conference co-sponsored by Upside Down, Inc. and the Wilow Creek Association, last weekend Jan. 29-30.  It was held at Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, which I am convinced has the cleanest bathrooms in all of NYC.  The 2-day event was an incredible gift to me and the leaders that went with me.  First, to be in worship and community with hundreds of youth workers from the area was incredibly energizing.  There was a passion and vitality that filled the church right from the start.  Friday night Kari Jobe led worship and Pastor Harvey Carey brought the word.  Harvey Carey does not play around and he went after it that night.  The challenge was to (surprise, surprise) take the risk of actually living out what we believe and encouraging our youth to do the ministry as participants and not just as spectators.  In his altar call, he asked us to put aside fear, self-doubts, and a lack of confidence and do what God had called us to do and be who God had called us to be.  Now, knowing the crowd that he was speaking to, he called us out on being “altar professionals,” or “altar junkies” if you want to get a little more ghetto with it.  If we were just coming up out of habit or a quick fix, Harvey Carey said he hoped that we would instead just drop dead.  That is one way to get people to take an altar call seriously.

The next morning Bishop Hezekiah Walker got it going with the Youth Explosion Choir, and Greg Stier spoke about taking risks to share the gospel, showing the example to youth of really living out our faith, and putting ministry into their hands.  His organization Dare 2 Share Ministries offers some great free resources on their website here.  Canton Jones and Pastor Adam Durso closed out the conference with a passionate time of worship and preaching.  I went to a couple breakout seminars which were informative and encouraging.  But the biggest takeaway for me was this: I don’t want to just have a bunch of church meetings for youth.  I want to meet with God alongside youth.  It sounds simple, maybe even cliche.  But it’s a risk to want this.  It means that the neat, tidy church youth ministry that I’ve learned how to do may not be enough.  I’m going to have to learn and grow and pray and trust and be patient and ask for help.  It means that I’m going to need to step over some fears so that the biggest obstacle in the movement of God among youth in our church isn’t the youth pastor.

So where am I right now?  Fired up.  Passionate and excited about the future.  I’ve had a couple chances to speak to our youth since, including just a few hours ago.  And the funny thing is that it’s not all that hard – I’m trying to be honest and share what God is putting on my heart.  At the same time, I know it’s a risk.  The fears are certainly there: what if it doesn’t happen, what if this is only a temporary excitement, what if our youth don’t respond.  But I need to step over those fears.  Because I don’t want to have youth meetings where 90% of the time there is no expectation to really experience and meet with God.

The funny thing is this: I’m still trying to understand the gospel myself.  I’ve spent the last few weeks becoming so convinced that the gospel has the power to save and to heal and transform young people in NYC in a powerful way.  But I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that the gospel is true for me.  I’m not on a performance-based program; my sufficiency is in Christ.  Even if I fail, God still approves of me and loves me because of Jesus.  If everyone should reject me and my sneakers are nasty and I look like a fool, Jesus is still the greatest treasure I could ever hope for.  I know it, but in the craziness of everyday life, I’m still trying to embrace it.  But in those moments that I’m able to, it’s off-the-charts electric.

Here’s the verse that has been working on me:
“When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” – Acts 4:13

So I spent last week in Cincinnati, OH at the Christian Community Development Association Conference.  When I planned for my CCDA trip, I expected to attend some workshops, do some networking, and get a better handle on the urban youth ministry scene.  I expected another work-week, not a life-challenging experience.  As he often does, God blew up and exceeded my expectations.  It wasn’t the flashiest or best put-together conference in the world.   But it was real, and it was deep.  It was accessible for every person from every ministry of every age, especially to those committed to loving and sharing the gospel for the least of these.  There were no superheroes walking around, just ordinary people who worked with youth and the poor and the mentally ill and the hard-to-love.  One of the themes of the week was that programs don’t change people, people do.  So here are the people that made an impact on me at CCDA:

John Perkins

Starting the morning with a Bible study by Dr. Perkins on 1 John is a pretty great way to start the day.  There was such wisdom in the way that he taught, and you could tell it was coming out of his life and who he is.  Dr. Perkins biggest exhortation to us was to have the discipline to read and live out the word of God.  In his words, Christians today are way too sloppy.  Revolutions were never started and led by undisciplined people.  “Too busy to study the Bible?  Fool, do you want to be successful?  How you gonna be successful if you don’t know the Bible?”

Dan Hodge

Dan taught an intensive on developmental urban youth ministry before the conference.  Dan and I went to seminary together so it was great to spend time hanging out and learning from him.  He brings incredible knowledge of academics and ministry together with a real understanding of the streets.  Lot of good takeaways from Dan’s session: assess the hood levels, don’t use kids for the “story”, the sociology of the hip-hop generation.

Soong-Chan Rah

If you haven’t heard of this brother yet, go out and get The Next Evangelicalism. It is one of the most insightful and provocative books on the present and future of the evangelical church in America, especially regarding racial and cultural reconciliation.  He is an incredible speaker, author, and professor at North Park Seminary.  And I’m happy to say that he’s a really good guy, too.  Prof. Rah was gracious enough to spend some time with Phil and me to chat and have ice cream.  It was great to hear his wisdom for young leaders and share some laughs.  I think I have this tendency to put leaders on a pedestal, so it’s one of the favorite things to find out that they’re just normal people.  His sessions at CCDA were definitely highlights for me, and I think some of the videos will be up on www.profrah.com.  Check that out.

Bart Campolo

So this is how Bart starts his talk: “I don’t need your money, and I’m not trying to recruit you to anything, so I can tell you the truth.  Are we making a difference?  Probably not that much.”  That pretty much set the tone.  It was straight-shot the whole way.  So this was the deal, doing urban ministry you’re going to lose a lot more than you’re going to win.  They’re called miracle stories for a reason; they don’t happen that often.  Now this is a tough message in a room full of men and women who pour their lives out for people in rough situations.  I could feel the resistance from all over the place.  But this is a guy who’s been in a game for a while.  So this is what I got from Bart: you may not be able to save people, but you can love them.  You can sit with them, like Mother Theresa did for the poor, and hold their hand as they die and share Jesus’ love with them.  And don’t think you can do it alone.  You need a group of friends around you who are going to be there for you when it’s hard to love people.  Incredibly challenging, still trying to process it.

Andrew Marin

Great workshop with him on biblical reconciliation and dialogue with the gay and lesbian community.  I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to say that this is the most divisive issue between the church and culture today.  Andrew had some incredible depth of experience and insight into this area, which I think is lacking in most of talk I’ve heard on it.  A big takeaway for me was that most all of the questions that arise around “the issue” are largely yes-no (closed) questions.  Usually they are meant to identify whose side you’re on.  And it becomes a lose-lose situation both in the conversation and the witness.  So a lot to learn on this, I picked up his book, Love is an Orientation and hopefully will have more to say in the future.

The interns from Pink House

I got to meet and hang out some with a group of interns from Pink House, a community reaching out to and loving inner-city Fresno, CA.  Most of them were in their early twenties, either in college or recently graduated.  They shared about what God was doing in their lives, how God led them to urban ministry, and what the next step for them might look like.  You saw in their eyes that they were soaking in everything God was bringing their way through CCDA.  I wanted to encourage them to keep moving forward, but they encouraged me because they were passionate about where they were at right now.  I love that.

Phil Varghese

I can’t leave out my man, Phil.  He was my partner in crime on this trip, and I had a great time hanging out with him.  Phil is such an easy-going guy and we had a lot of fun talking and laughing and watching baseball.  This dude is always smiling and positive, so you can’t help but feel happy around him.  So I left on Saturday afternoon and Phil stayed to the end on Sunday, and I’m not going to lie, I was a little sad to leave early and not hang out at CCDA with him anymore.  But I got over it, haha.  By the way, Phil and I checked out the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cinn.  If you’re there, you need to go and visit.  It’s a very powerful place.

Ok, so I just realized that this list was all men, and I don’t want it to sound like there were only significant men at CCDA. There were incredible women as well, both speakers and participants.  Big ups to Amy Williams especially who gave an excellent workshop on reaching out to urban youth beyond the walls of the church and being a great salsa instructor.

All in all, what I loved about CCDA is that I saw so much of New Life Fellowship there.  Not literally, but the values and the ministries and the diversity were such a reflection of what New Life is about.  And again, it was pretty honest and authentic and wonderfully imperfect.  Thank you, Lord, for CCDA.

I know, I know.  The epic fail of not blogging after vowing to blog everyday is slapping me in the cyber face.  I hope there is some grace in this, so I’ll pick myself off the mat and try again.  So much has happened in the 2 1/2 months since my last blogeration.  Not the least of which is that I finally hit 30.  More on that to come.  Here is a short highlight reel:

-Youth Retreat at the end of July was amazing.  I felt like I got to know our youth so much deeper.  Preaching, playing, worshipping, and praying with the youth and the leaders was so much fun.  Just from a few days there are countless stories of God at work.  Felt really bad for pranking Daniel Perez who will spend the rest of his youth ministry life trying to get back at me.  Much love, Daniel…let’s call a truce, haha.

-So I think I can dance?  I’m trying, at least.  So August marked a couple of dancing firsts.  I took my first dance class (hip-hop), which was fun but got my butt kicked.  And I tried swing dancing for the first time.  Now swing dancing was actually pretty popular back when I was in college.  Church groups would organize swing dancing fellowships, which I think was an effort to offset the desire to go to a club and freak and grind.  As far as I could tell, it wasn’t too successful.  And as much as I like dancing, I was never too interested in the swing fad.  Until last month when I happened to go to Midsummer Night Swing at Lincoln Center.  And you know what, it’s pretty dang fun and challenging.  So one of my new challenges is to learn swing/lindy hop and be as good as the nerdy guys at Fram (insider swing lingo).  Some nice things about swing: 1) It’s very non-sleazy.  I like salsa too, but there’s a slight sleaziness factor at salsa places.  That, and I don’t really look good in gold chains.  2) You can be the dorkiest, most awkward, out-of-shape guy, but if you can swing dance well, you are the man.  In fact, the dorkier you look, the better you probably are.  I’m sure there’s some sort of logarithm for it.

-”Not For Sale” movie screening at Astoria Park.  Beautiful night, but it was much more beautiful to see hundreds of people coming out to care about victims of sex trafficking because God put something on the heart of a college student who wanted to make a difference with her summer.  And brothers and sisters rallied around her and now there’s greater awareness, at least in our little sphere of influence, about this great evil and suffering in the world.

And then, on Sept. 17th, I hit 30 years old.  I have actually been preparing myself for it, so it wasn’t all too much of a shock.  What was surprising though was the love I received from people around me.  That was an incredible blessing.  You see, I celebrated 29 out here last year, but I was new and didn’t know a lot of people.  So I had a very chill dinner with a small group which was great.  And I don’t like to make a big deal out of my birthday anyway.  So I was content to do roughly the same deal this year.  But some friends convinced me to dream big so a bunch of friends gathered for some bowling and good food and good times in Brooklyn.  And I took a swing dancing workshop on Sat.  And Cal won and moved up to #6.  So it was a great weekend already.

BUT I had no idea what was coming next.  On Sunday morning, I was getting ready for our Youth Service down in the Youth Room.  Rich was set to speak that Sunday so he was down there, and he tells me that Pastor Pete needs me to come upstairs because there’s a problem with some youth.  Exactly what I want to hear 5 min before youth service.  So I head upstairs with Rich to the Yellow Room, and right when I walk through the door, I hear “SURPRISE!” and see a bunch of youth and leaders upstairs with decorations and food.  So they threw me a surprise 30th birthday party (which was my first, btw) and to top it off, Raven baked me a cake with my name spelled out in M&M’s.  Wow.

Reflections on turning 30: When you’re surrounded by good people and can see God’s calling for you, it’s a blessing at any age.  And yeah, I’m just getting started.