The New Year is upon us and with will come the numerous, often dreaded, and sometimes silly New Year’s’ Resolutions. If I had to guess, matters regarding weight loss/working out will head the list. (Let’s see…how many of those have I broken?) Next will probably come pledges related to finances, followed by improving relationships with family or other significant people in our lives. After that will follow a hodgepodge of different resolutions.
One of the greatest things about being in Teen Challenge is that we do not have to wait for the New Year to experience the “new view”! Every time another woman, man, boy, girl, or family walks through our doors we get the chance to experience the “new view”. Oh, it is not new for us, but it is new for them! II Cor. 5:17 takes effect anytime a student prays to accept the Lord and we get to see them experience a totally “new view” on life.
Through Teen Challenge in 2011 we have probably seen between 11,000 and 12,000 people experience the “new view” in their lives. Many receive it through their participation in the program and many through the thousands of outreaches that we conduct. But the “new view” is everywhere in this dynamic ministry!
But the reality is that when the New Year rolls around it is a good time to think about what “new views” we can or should have. Here are just a few suggestions of some areas where you might want to work on developing a “new view” in this 366 day opportunity called 2012 the Lord has given us.
A “new view” toward your fellow staff. How do you view your fellow staff? Do you sometimes get frustrated or angry with them because they do not do things the same way you do? Do you ever find yourself feeling like you are carrying more than your share of the load? Or maybe the most dangerous one of all, do you simply take your fellow laborers for granted, just expecting them to do what they do, never giving thought to what it takes for them to minister as they do?
Maybe our “new view” should try to take on the attitude that Paul had toward Tychicus. As to all my affairs, Tychicus, our beloved brother and faithful servant and fellow bondslave in the Lord… (Col. 4:7, NASB)
First, Paul viewed him as a brother. In this ministry we are family because we are part of the Body of Christ and we should think of each other first and foremost as brothers and sisters.
Next Paul saw Tychicus as a faithful servant and fellow bondslave in the Lord. Notice Paul did not call Tychicus his faithful servant/bondslave because he knew he was the Lord’s, not his. For those who are in executive leadership we especially need to remember that the staff we serve with are the Lord’s servants, not ours. I have been and continue to be one who can take faithful people for granted. Bad idea. Remind yourself regularly what a blessing they are to the kingdom and to you!
When my children were little they listened to Jungle Jam and Friends, The Radio Show. In one episode Marvy Snuffelson, a young boy who was the main character, was not grateful for the socks his grandmother gave him for birthday. When he took his usual trip to an imaginary place called Razzleflabbin Island he maintained his ungrateful attitude. But on Razzleflabbin Island anything you were not grateful for disappeared! Marvy soon learned to be grateful for his socks when they and many other things he held dear began to disappear. We should learn to be appropriately grateful for the faithful staff who serve in our midst lest they too fade away due to our lack of gratitude.
A “new view” toward students. The longer we serve in Teen Challenge the more we can develop a jaded view toward students. Even though they are why we serve, the challenges they often present in attitude and behavior can cause us to become hardened in how we interact with them. We can even come to the place that we do not care if a student leaves or is dismissed because “there will always be another one to take his or her place.”
If you have ever sensed yourself feeling like this then perhaps you ought to take on a “new view” towards the students, one that reflects the attitude of Paul. But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having thus a fond affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our lives, because you had become very dear to us. (I Thess. 2:7-8, NASB)
I can hear some now, “Okay, Jack, you have gone off the deep end now. There is no way to treat the students we have in our program like that—not the way they act!” We are talking about a “new view” remember, not an easy one.
When I was involved with daily ministry for ten years as a staff member and for twenty years as an executive director at times the toughest thing I had to face was that the problem was not always in those I was ministering to, but that the problem sometimes was in me. I had to deal with the fact that others’ attitudes or behaviors, though they may not have been the best, upset me because they made me uncomfortable or did not allow me to have things the way I wanted them to be.
If I/we take on the attitude of Paul listed above, it will be our desire to minister to our students no matter how messy or smelly their attitudes or behaviors are because, just like infants, we can expect them to always want their way. Our love (which must come from Christ) has to transcend their immaturity or we can be in danger of doing what Jesus accused the “tax collectors and Gentiles” of doing, loving only those who love them (Mt. 5:46-47).
Please do not misunderstand me. There comes a time when the loving thing to do is to issue discipline (Heb. 12:11). However, I can only speak for myself when I say that sometimes I disciplined for my sake and not the students’. If that has also happened to you, you may want to ask the Lord to help you gain a “new view” toward the students. Easy? No. Right? Yes!
I will try to work through these next ones a little quicker.
A “new view” toward supporters. Though this may apply primarily to executive directors it can really apply toward everyone.
How do you view your supporters/donors? I cannot answer that question for you but I can tell you that sometimes all I wanted was the daily financial report to find out if I could meet payroll or not. I really did not care who gave or what their circumstances were, I just wanted to know if we could pay the bills!
Typically in a Teen Challenge center it takes hundreds to thousands of people to support the program through donations for it to succeed. Of course it is impossible to get to know each one personally but we can work on our attitude toward them. Here are two things that I suggest.
- Make it a specific point to be grateful for each one who gives. It is easy to thank God for the one who gives $10,000 but it takes more grace to be thankful for the $10 gift. Many times I would see the uncertain handwriting or an accompanying note identifying our donor as a senior citizen and knew it was a sacrificial gift. At those moments I felt a greater responsibility of stewardship for that $10 gift than I did for the $10,000 gift. And I made an effort to be just as grateful. A “new view” says I am going to be grateful for the gift of every donor, no matter how large or small that donation is.
- Think of your donors as partners in the ministry. Of course we would all agree with this in theory but when it comes to reality do we see them as merely those who supply the dollars so we can do the ministry? A “new view” should cause us to recognize that our donors have just as big of a share in the ministry as we do; we just have the privilege of seeing God’s handiwork up close and personal.
A “new view” toward our family. This one can get a bit personal. Can a person work effectively in Teen Challenge and still maintain a healthy family life? The answer is yes (and pardon me for this) but you have to work like a dog to do it.
An old view is that God called me to this ministry and my family just has to learn to deal with it. A “new view” is that though God has called me to this ministry I will do everything in my power to make sure that my family has enough of me to meet their needs. You see, it is not an economic thing, it is a person thing. No one can replace you to your family so you must work with God’s help to make sure they have enough of you. You are the one whom God has called to make the sacrifice, not them.
Let me give a brief example. A staff member complained that he did not have enough time for his family. (Admittedly we did work a lot of hours.) I told him there was not much I could do about it. I noticed, however, that he loved to deer hunt. (He lived across the street.) I also noticed that for about three months before deer season it seemed that he spent every spare moment in the woods scouting out the deer trails. Call me a cynic but it seems to me that Teen Challenge was not the only thing that kept him from having adequate time with his family.
Do you need a “new view” toward your family life?
A “new view” toward our culture. I can easily get in trouble with this one, but here we go.
There are two extremes that represent views that may need to change. One is the view that our culture is inherently evil and there is nothing good in it so we should stay away from it as much as possible. On some levels that could be seen as true with scripture to back it up, Romans 12:2 for example.
The second says that we need to win people to the Lord so we need to adopt the culture and its trappings as much as possible. After all, did not Jesus come to save the lost sheep? Didn’t he eat with tax collectors and prostitutes?
Maybe a “new view” would be to seek to be a change agent in our culture. In this view we attempt to engage our culture on various levels without allowing it to dictate who we are and how we live. We do not hide from our culture but neither do we uncritically conform to the culture.
“I gotcha, Jack. You are talking about earrings for guys and tattoos, right?” Yes, and I am also talking about what kind of car you drive and how much of a giver you are. (Yes, even on that small TC salary!) It is easy to just dismiss the culture but that limits our opportunities to share Jesus with those who really need it. It is also easy to just jump in and be like everyone else, with no one really able to see any difference between us and the world. The “new view” says to not take an easy path but to swim upstream against the parts of culture that oppose the gospel and Christian faith. Yet in the “new view” we still need to get in the stream and swim!
A “new view” toward the Lord. No, I am not talking about new doctrine. I am talking about the many times in my serving the Lord when he tapped me on the shoulder and told me that I needed to grow in some area of my walk with him.
On this one I am not going to pretend to tell you what that “new view” will be for you. But I do think that you and I ought to ask the Lord if there are areas where our relationship with him needs to change. While we are always concerned about everyone else’s spiritual vitality, who we minister to, and who we minister with, we should always be more concerned about our own spiritual walk.
I challenge you to simply ask the Lord if there is a “new view” that he would like for you to begin in your relationship with him this New Year. It might make all the other “new views” a lot easier to adopt and a lot more effective!
New Year, new opportunities, “new view.” Let us not waste this change in the calendar (no matter how many of them some of us have seen!) but let us ask God to give us a “new view” about life and ministry for the new 365 opportunities that God has provided us.
After all Teen Challenge is all about becoming someone with a “new view” (II Cor. 5:17)!
