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Click to Listen: Beyond the Vault

// September 2nd, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Life, Youth Ministry

Listen to Beyond the Vault Final Edition (Click Here)

In a matter of days many of you will be receiving a letter describing the last chapter in our journey at our current location.  Since writing the letter, we have some very encouraging news.  We hear God’s voice calling us and there is clarity in the direction we may be heading.  We are still coveting any prayers that you could spare regarding the sale of our home.  We have about 2 more months of hard work ahead of us, but we anticipate the light we can feel warming our spirits at the end of the tunnel.  Thank you for being such wonderful friends and faithful givers.

I am writing this post so that you can take the next few minutes to listen:  Listen to me read to you our recent newsletter.  For those of you that get the paper version, thank you.  For those that don’t have a clue what I’m writing about, I’m sorry, feel free to listen as well.

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Follow Me!

// February 25th, 2009 // No Comments » // Christianity, Life, Parenting, Youth Ministry

We sure live in a different world.  Not really. Let me explain.

Do you know what the most popular mobile social networking tool is?  If you don’t, then get ready for something that will shake your world the likes you haven’t seen since you could carry your phone in your pocket.  The, now mature application, of Twitter.  Find it at twitter.com.  For those of you already in the know, what are you tweeting these days? Watch this video for the best explanation.  

In 2007 I was scouring the web for ways to connect my online calendar and my to do list to my phone from the confines of my computer and the WWW, when I discovered Twitter.  I signed up, and began using apps that accomplished that task, so I could send little text messages to my google calendar with appointments I made throughout my day.  I could also send text message reminders to my online to do list.  All the while being out and about away from my computer, meeting, eating, and playing with the "real world."  So that when I got back to my computer, all my tasks would be there at my computer for me to sort, all my appointments waiting neatly in the days I gave them.  So that is how I got started Tweeting.  Then something happened, mySpace became, my so boring space and facebook drew me in, then twitter connected to facebook and voila, I can now tweet my status updates and never need to access the web!!!!!!  (until I want to)   Then I had this thought…..

Is twitter really that new.  Everywhere I see people saying "Follow Me" on twitter @______ is my name and you can follow me….. everyone wants to have some followers but I’m here to proclaim, that I think Jesus was the ultimate first ever Tweeter!!!!  Check it out…

Speaking to Simon and Andrew in  Matthew 4:19 (NIV) Jesus says "Come Follow Me!  If Jesus had a twitter account what would that look like? 

Until then, you can follow me @jhcuatro!!!!!!!!!

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Make it stop!

// February 4th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Children, Fathering, Life, Parenting, Uncategorized, Youth Ministry

I am a bit overwhelmed as of late.  I have been doing lots of research, reading, watching and writing on media, ministry, and teens.  I have also found a love of the documentary.  I just finished watching a trailer for a documentary that disturbs me.  Although, SuperSize me, focused on the obesity of America through McDonalds.  This documentary focuses on how our society is creating “SuperConsumers.”

We feel this pressure as parents, I surely understand it from my childhood experiences, but when I watch what is being promoted and fed to American children through the “Tube.”  My knees get weak and my eyes swell up.  I want to throw the TV out the window.  I want to move to Alaska or Iceland and live at the foot of some mountain.  It breaks my heart to see kids forget how to play, how to show grace and mercy to one another.  I want to scream, STOP!

My heart aches for the millions of children who will grow to be adults and not know how to say “NO” to stuff, to things!  The rise in weight related illness amongst children is staggering.  Kids are sedating themselves to death, and the collective ‘we’ as parents are allowing it to happen.  But The cycle has started, how can we break it?

(Here is the trailer to Consuming Kids)

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Sign of the times

// October 5th, 2008 // No Comments » // Children, Christianity, Life, Music, Uncategorized, Youth Ministry

Listening to the radio here on the local pop/rock station I hear a song that is popular come on.  Rockstar by Nickelback.   In the song there are references to drugs and other things a “rockstar” of superstardom would be tempted with.  I sometimes find myself listening to this song but this one day I had an epiphany.  This is the sign of our times.   When this popular radio station and pop music and culture in general are telling of the society we live in.  Why? You may ask is this a ‘sign of our times.’

First off, most radio edits to modern music bleep out words or phrases that have been deemed inappropriate for public use.  However that standard has slowly been bent and pushed over the years to the point where 2 different radio stations have different radio ‘edit’ versions of the same song.  (mostly due to the stations producers interpretation of that word ‘inappropriate’) But this particular song, Rockstar, had one word cut out, (I know this because I have heard both the uncut version and another radio stations radio edited version)   That word was the word “PILLS.”

I thought, isn’t it ironic that they would let words and phrases like “girls come easy and the drugs come cheap”  and “playboy bunnies” make the radio edit while editing the word ‘pills’ from the phrase “pop my pills from a pez dispenser.”   But being a youth minister and working with teens helps me understand why. Teens today are struggling with addictions to prescription drugs and “pills” have quickly become the number one teen problem.

Although I don’t condone such behavior or even like such lyrics in music, this is the kind of songs that are played at high school football games, middle school and high school dances and on popular radio stations all throughout America.  In case you don’t listen to anything but Christian music, I would challenge you to know what is being fed to our Children’s minds through their ears.

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who are we, really?

// June 12th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Christianity, Life, Youth Ministry

In the book, Ascent of a Leader, the beginning of chapter 7 is a quote by William James which says this:

“Whenever two people meet there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.”

I found this to be profound and quite true. The real honest thing is to identify these people and acknowledge that they are sitting with you at that table or in that coffee shop. They greatly affect the resulting relationship and can influence the connection between the two people.

When I meet someone new for the first time I really see this play out in our conversation. Every week during the school year I spend about an hour at the local high school meeting new teens and connecting with old ones. I sometimes enjoy the scrumptious nutritional lunch as well.

I notice this right away, the teens are trying to figure out who’s dad I am. Then I usually break the ice by introducing myself and saying what I do. Right away I see their minds struggling with how they identify themselves to me. “He’s not a teacher?! He is short?! Does he really care about me?!”

They ask themselves these clarifying questions before they even proceed to introduce themselves. Usually the defenses go up and they try to push me away by acting like a jerk or establishing their social dominance over me by poking fun at me. That’s ok, I’m a grown man, I am not confined by their social order.

Every-time I walk into a lunch room, I am reminded that I am clearly a missionary..

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curse words

// April 18th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Children, Christianity, Fathering, Life, Uncategorized, Youth Ministry

WAIT

Patience

Creation

Virgin

Modest

God

Marriage

What have these words become in a culture innoculated by the virus of Anti-Judeo Christian values.  The rise of P.C. and the “Tolerance” gospel have festered these beliefs for many years in America.  These 7 words are my first attempts to identify what the world would identify as threatening language and/or a faulty or “naive” worldview.  What other words would you add to this list?

Why does this concern me?  Well, I am a Dad and I want my children to understand these words as positive parts of a Judeo-Christian worldview that I believe provides more answers and hope than a humanist or pantheist or even atheistic worldview could ever pose to provide.

Please challenge your children to “think” and challenge the world they live in, to challenge the ‘popular’ gospels of today.  If you have a teenager or older child, consider going to view the new groundbreaking movie in theatres now, “Expelled.”

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Postmodernism- Part 3

// April 9th, 2008 // No Comments » // Christianity, Life, Youth Ministry

Remember the umpires? From a couple posts ago. Find it here. I ended the post with a question that I left unresolved for you. In this case, the question was, “Are they all right?”

There is a part of me that says, yes they are all right because their perspective is theirs alone. But I believe they are all only partially right, because they all have to judge what the balls are. They are the umpire, they must interpret the rules or law set before them and pass judgement on a ball when it crosses the plate. If they didn’t do that, we might as well throw the scoreboard out and let everyone ‘win.’

But they are passing judgement on something based on a set of rules. So, how much does interpretation of said rules, play into their decision to call strikes and balls. So far as this discussion relates to baseball, I recall my playing days, and the days I sit and watch about 10 mins of any baseball game. The announcer proclaims this, “Man, that umpire has a pretty big strike zone today!” It should be pretty cut and dry. If this…then this. The theory of relativity should be relevant to those sets of rules set forth by the governing body of baseball. But they aren’t, even though the ‘strike zone’ is given a definition in the rules of baseball. The boundaries of what constitutes a ‘hitable’ ball in baseball are still left up to interpretation by the umpire.

Maybe a better question for the pre-modern, modern and post-modern to ask is, “How do you determine what is just?”

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Postmodernism- Part 2

// March 11th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Children, Christianity, Fathering, Life, Parenting, Uncategorized, Youth Ministry

Postmodernism infiltrates our culture everywhere.  From the virtual reality of the SIMS to the streets of GTA(Grand theft Auto.)

    This kind of thinking is dangerous because it says that nothing is real until I “FEEL” it.  That’s one of the reasons 17 teens in one U.K town have taken their lives within a couple of months. (see story HERE) What you feel is not and should not be THE determining factor in understanding truth.   Two movies that come to mind related to this subject are Pinnochio and The Truman Show.  In the Truman show, we see Truman struggle with finding out that truth was bigger than his present reality.   In Pinnochio we see Jiminy Cricket giving advice to a toy.  What’s his advice?  “Let your conscience be your guide!”

    Why is that a dangerous notion?  Because your conscience is part of your sinful nature and it is easily corrupted.  The Apostle Paul addresses this in the book of Romans, chapter 7, when he says, “For I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out…. I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.”

    I am not saying that feeling will not be an influential factor in understanding your world but when we use our feelings to solely define truth, there is cause for concern.  Just because I am sad that my dog died, doesn’t mean all dogs that die make me sad.  There must be other factors that hold truth firmly stable when my emotions are constantly shifting.

What do you think?

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Postmodernism-Part 1

// March 6th, 2008 // No Comments » // Children, Christianity, Life, Youth Ministry

I read this in a recent edition of a newsletter I get related to ministry.  Feel free to visit the source if you would like to read the entire article at this website, Men Passing the Batton. Post modernism is not something new to anyone who has studied history or philosophical thought.  Post modernism is not in itself evil or bad but the thought process and beliefs assimilated through post modernism can be dangerous.

Whether you want to admit it or not, we live in a world filled with this kind of thought.   You, your friends, and your friends children all process this world different than our fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers.

“Whether you do or do not believe post-modern thinking today is the social and academic ocean you are swimming in, is beside the point. The chickens are coming home to roost! What we have been sowing in our classrooms and academic elites for decades is blossoming today. Kids think as post-modern umpires, instinctively. They have to be lead into objective truth, if we believe in truth outside ourselves. Truth is up for grabs!” -Jim Mearadith (MEN Newsletter)

Who is going to teach our kids about truth?  The media, grandparents, babysitters, the T.V, movies, the Wii?  In the case of the umpires, they are all right.  Or are they?  Why or why not?

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what do they become?

// December 4th, 2007 // No Comments » // Youth Ministry

    Is that a boy over there or do I see a man?  My work as a youth minister has been greatly interrupted by the expansion of our family.  Not in a bad way, mind you. But interruption has happened none the less.  I don’t know if you could relate or if you could imagine a life of "certainty" and "stability."  For example here are  a few things I’ve had to re-learn as a youth minister because of my fatherhood.

1. I don’t have the "right" answer anymore to respond to the concerned junior high parent that says,"he is just so disrespectful, I want to "kill" him!" (cause sometimes I feel the same way)

2. Parents need all the help and support and love they can get.

3. Just when I think I have it all figured out, God shows up and shows me something totally different.

4. Stable and well adjusted parents would never dislike their child, "children are too precious and sweet and innocent"

5. Oh yeah, that innocent thing, it ain’t true.

6.  Even though, maybe because I am, a youth minister, I want my kids to skip over those years.  I have a beautiful Latino daughter, and 2 handsome boys who all have the potential to call into question my ability to know anything at all about teenagers.

7.  I don’t have the greatest influence on teenagers that participate in my ministry.

8.  I don’t know everything I once thought I knew.

9.  God is God and he still loves me, even though I sometimes don’t know what I’m doing.

    One day I will look at my children and despite the obvious genetic difference in appearance, they will have adopted and personalized some of my beliefs and I will see me or at least a reflection of me.  Then I will know what fatherhood really is about.  So I write this, certain that I know 2 things about being a father.  One, God will always love me and secondly, I don’t know what I’m doing!

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