There were some definite concerns about building a basketball court on the second floor of our student center. Namely, that the glass might shatter from the inside or that a 7th grader might fall out of the glass to a near certain death. So, we decided to test the glass. Our senior pastor and a former minor league pitcher (a small groups pastor at Mariners) did their best to shatter it with a basketball. Check this out.
more about “testing the glass in our student cent…“, posted with vodpod
Kenton Beshore, Senior Pastor: Mariners Church
Each year our senior pastor, Kenton Beshore, takes the whole month of August for rest and vacation. He and his family visit the place of his wife’s childhood in Texas for a few weeks and then…
He visits around a dozen churches. He’ll attend the weekend services of tiny churches in Gonzalez, Texas and he’ll make his way into some of the more well known mega-churches both in Texas and in California. Each September, as he makes his return to our staff he elaborates on all of what he learned from each of those churches (big, famous, complex, simple, tiny, etc.). There is, within him, a huge sense of humility. He approaches each of the churches as though he could be taught, challenged, made a better leader.
Here’s a learning from 2 summers ago that has impacted our church:
Kenton visited a church that had a healing service. Mariners Church, up to that point, had nothing like that. We had always welcomed people to come for prayer with the elders. But, we’d never held a service for people in need of healing. Kenton saw it in a church during one August and thought we could do it at Mariners. I had never seen it. I had never expected being a part of that kind of service. But, people came. Our church staff prayed with people who needed healing: marriages falling apart, physical ailments, emotional distress. It wasn’t a circus. It wasn’t really all that dramatic. It wasn’t televised. God met people in a unique way because our pastor had the guts to learn something from another church and implement it here.
So, I’m teaching on Cain and Abel this weekend. I feel like this SNL instant-classic has another side of jealousy that we might find a little more familiar than the notorious first fratricide of Genesis 4. But, even if I don’t use the clip this weekend, I feel like I must know 10 people like her. Fun to watch. Enjoy.
This past weekend, I got the nod. It was up to me to kick off our summer series in “big church” called “Blockbuster Summer” (dealing with the questions raised in movies and attempting to deal with them biblically).
I’m certain we’re all supposed to treat that big audience (the one with all the critical parents and naysayers, the one with our biggest fans, our harshest critics, and family members) the same as any other audience. We’re supposed to think of them no differently than the students and volunteers who know us and love us.
But, I don’t.
I wish I did. When I get on the stage, I look out into the crowd and feel lonely. I feel like I have to do great — not just as a sub for the “real pastor” in our church — but because I want the church to love our youth ministry, because I want my critics to be silenced for an afternoon (though I’d settle for 5 minutes), because I want the people who were bold enough to bring a friend to church to feel like it was worth it, and because (if I’m really honest with myself) I want them to like me.
I know it’s not that spiritual or Jesus-y, but it’s the truth. I think deep down, I feel the weight of all those people because I want them to think I’m great - Jesus too… but me. So, I wear myself out before, during, and after the “big church” weekend. I wear myself out for Jesus and me. And in the end, with all prayer that is somehow supposed to mitigate the pride and the panic with which I live during that week, I wake up Monday morning in a coma of complete exhaustion.
But then, somehow, with my family on my day off, I get a little grace, a little rest, that feeling that comes after completing something difficult…
…and then I secretly wonder if people liked it (read “me”).
But, I really don’t want to know what they thought, do I?
While I was away at camp a 2 weeks ago, my wife, pregnant with our third, went into pre-term labor. Fortunately, Amanda did not deliver the next Maguire while I was away. But now we’re in a nervous holding pattern. They say each one comes a bit more quickly than the last. Molly, my 2 year old, conducted a lightning fast delivery: four hours from initial contractions to “it’s a girl”.
My wife’s OB has told us, “as soon as the contractions start, get to the hospital, or you could have a minivan delivery”. Which, suffice it say, the Honday Odyssey is quite comfortable, has a 5-star safety rating, and there are plenty of cup holders and cubby holes.
But now, as my team is getting ready for our final and biggest camp of the summer season, I have to watch them go. There’s just a bit too much risk to leaving after our scare while I was away. Oh, I’m sure camp will be great. In many ways, the camp will be better without me — none of that hovering, pestering, over-eager excitability that I unfortunately bring to the team.
I’ll miss camp: all the inside jokes, memories, and the God-in-students’ lives-stuff that comes from it. But, in the end, it’s really not that tough of a choice.
Roy Schenkenberger’s (yes, there are four “e’s” in his name) latest release, THE BROKENDOWN SOUL OF ALL MANKIND, may have rewritten what it means to be a Christian musician. It is a collection of the honest songs of a person who walks with Jesus. Yet, it somehow manages to avoid the fake Christian-ness that plagues the genre. Roy has the uncanny ability to be unique, fresh, and nostalgic in the same moment.
Beware, listening may take an afternoon — I found myself listening and re-listening to songs as I happily made my way through each track. Drawing from Van Morrison on You are Still and hinting at old-time country on Orphans Anymore, the album paints a picture of Jesus and one who would follow him. The fifth track, Just a Trace, sums up the whole album’s scope — a life humbly favoring faithfulness over certainty. BROKENDOWN SOUL is a great work. Do yourself a favor, check it out.
We just got back from our annual student ministries retreat day at the beach-side home of one of the families in our church. In a year of budget crunching, ministry cut-backs, and reduction, my team managed to carve out one of the best days of our ministry year.
We were invited to spend the day at a private community in North Laguna Beach — a place called Irvine Cove. With spouses and kids in tow, we started our day down on the sandy shore hunting for crabs, digging giant holes with our kids, taunting each other in competitive bocce ball, and surfing together. Then, as hunger got the best of us, we headed up the windy beach trail to a beautiful house for sandwiches on the pool deck.
There was no real agenda. We didn’t spend 45 minutes talking about the upcoming ministry year. We weren’t there to spend time confronting issues. We didn’t rewrite the future of the church in America. We ate too much, got too much sun, and were together.
For my team, for myself, and for our spouses we may have accomplished far more in that day together than any planning or strategy session ever could have.
I spent my weekend at Saddleback Church during the unveiling of their student center dubbed “the Refinery”. It was truly remarkable to stand amidst the culmination of a dream of my friends, my youth pastor, a church, and a community.
There are so few places in suburbia where students are greeted with excitement and enthusiasm. There are even fewer designed with them in mind. Unless teenagers are buying something, they’re barely tolerated. Generally, they’re despised. So, to walk into a structure speaking the words “YOU’RE WELCOME HERE” was far more emotional than I had anticipated. It truly was a youth pastor’s dream.
I know no one needs a student center-type-building to tell a junior high/high schooler that they’re valued. No building ever told someone about the compelling love of Christ. But then, giving students the left overs and the unwanted does carry a message too.
The building, at 85% complete, was rife with energy, excited students, and curious and enlivened church members. I learned a lot. Mariners Church will open its student center in the Fall (cleverly named “STUDENT CENTER”) and I am equal parts excited and nervous about God’s future for the youth ministry at Mariners.
These were the words uttered by my senior pastor regarding our new Saturday night service. I have taken them quite literally (well, almost). We’re cancelling our most populated, highest attended, greatest energy service for high school students for the month of June. As such, the high school ministry at Mariners Church will not be meeting at 11 on Sundays this month.
At present, the church meets at 5 on Saturday, 9 and 11 on Sunday. On this Saturday, we add a second Saturday service — we’ll have one at 430 and another at 630. As you might expect, Sundays at 11 are packed. There’s no room for someone looking for a church to find a seat in the worship center (let alone a parking spot). So, we’re making that oft-heard request of our people, to consider another service, to make room for the people who aren’t yet in our midst.
I actually believe there is more and better ministry to be had on a late Saturday evening than on Sundays. On Sundays, the amount of students that can spend time with leaders or each other decreases as the day goes on. On Saturdays (up to curfew) students can spend more time with leaders and other students. We’ll feed them. They’ll connect with each other. We’ll start a grassroots “what everyone is doing after the service” campaign so people connect outside the service. The students will sleep in on Sunday. Or (in youth pastor dream world), they’ll serve during one of the Sunday morning services. But, either way, the church and our ministry ought to do well…
So, in deference to our pastor lighting himself and the worship team on fire this Saturday night, the high school ministry will do the same. However, what separates our pastor from me… the likelihood that parents will actually be the ones burning me at the stake for messing with their schedules on Sunday mornings for 4 weeks.
We’ll see. Bring your s’mores. Come warm yourself by a youth pastor who is on-fire.
In going to Mexico to build houses, lives were changed, American high school students wrestled with blistered hands, got up close to poverty, community was galvanized, people got sick, and it was my favorite Mexico trip in 5 years.
I loved watching our leaders take their next steps. I loved seeing our trip organizer (a volunteer) work out of strengths and abilities I never could’ve fathomed in my self. I loved observing our students working together, laughing harder than they ever have, and becoming a community — a community who looks at the world and says, with a hammer in their hands, some things are unacceptable. They worked hard and, for the most part, God opened up a little piece of their hearts to something that wasn’t there before this past weekend.
HIGHLIGHTS:
We put 100+ guys in a single tent… Magic.
The reality: every night consisted of about 30 minutes of the loudest, crudest, most inappropriate humor in the world and then… silence. Truthfully, it was crazy for about a half an hour and then it was over. The group self-policed. Seniors kept everyone in check. It wasn’t the students keeping me awake. It was the livestock (chickens, cows, dogs, etc.), the late-night outdoor discorama from next door, and 100 guys snoring.
Buying a really nice SLR camera.
I’m no photographer, but this camera made me look like a genius. I spent some of our ministry budget (about $900) on a Nikon camera and a 4GB card (from Costco). I can’t believe I’ve done ministry as long as I have without making that investment. If that camera isn’t a reality for you, find someone who has one, borrow it or invite them to be the volunteer photojournalist on your trip. Better pictures tell better stories. Check out the gallery below.
Utilizing the ministry teams to facilitate community.
Our high school ministry is divided into roughly 4 sections, based on the areas in which students live. So, our Shady Canyon team was responsible for building 4 houses. The Irvine team built 3. The Newport team built 6 and so on. Following dinner, each of the area campus leaders conducted their own debrief with the students and gave a short message based on the same content as the other campus leaders. I emcee’d the all-group late night wrap up, daily video, music, and announcements. The idea: keep all of the students connected to the leader with whom they’d mostly likely be paired back here in the states.
I’ll load the video shortly. It was a great time. The rain, the tent, the port-o-potties, and the total exhaustion, 100% worth it.
