The Apple event was today, and it was every bit the spectacle of consumerism the world has come to expect. As soon as I could I fired up YouTube to watch Dieter Bohn’s Hands On video with the new iPhone(s). Then I watched Tech Insider’s 12 minute recap of the whole event.

I’m not an Apple fanboy. I use an iPhone you can’t even buy anymore, and the only other Apple product I use was a gift. But I’m drawn to the spectacle of what Apple makes and how it talks about those things. As a culture, we have a badly disordered relationship with technology, I’m certain, and we don’t think nearly enough or carefully enough about how our phones and computers are made and at whose expense. Neither are we mindful enough about the economic model undergirding the industry. We need to listen well to writers like Franklin Foer and Shoshana Zuboff, who are pointing out clearly and compellingly what Apple and co. are doing to the marketplace, to the planet, and to us.

And yet, I wonder if there isn’t a corollary risk of failing to be impressed enough at the artifacts Apple parades on stage once a year. The aesthetics these products embody and their functionality were simply unimaginable even a decade ago. If you showed them to the most technologically sophisticated person from an earlier generation, she would have no idea what they were or were meant to do. If we’re not gobsmacked by the iPhone and Apple Watch, then maybe our senses are too dulled.

These tools are not primarily for us, of course. They are for Apple and Apple’s shareholders, and if they don’t make Cupertino money they will be gone (note the obsolete 4-inch iPhone SE in my pocket). But awareness need not prohibit delight. Maybe being so suspicious of technology and the corporations making it as to be incapable of marveling at something like a retina display is just the opposite error of the uncritical fawn.

One of the great gifts of youth ministry is years-long relationships with young people during a time of great maturation. I saw several students yesterday whom I’d not seen since May, and the gains in height alone were a marvel.

We are witnesses to growth, both the kind that parents measure with a pencil on a wall and the less obvious kind. It occurs to me that an important task of youth ministry is to scout for growth, and then to point it out: to the church, to young people themselves, to their parents.

I spent a week in Amsterdam this summer and, like I suppose every American who visits that city, was bowled over (nearly literally) by the bike traffic. Everybody is on a bike all the time everywhere. Pedestrians must watch out more for two wheels than four. It’s an old city built on a series of canals and so not super friendly to cars, yet super friendly to bikes.

The bike riders in Amsterdam are merely commuters. They’re riding upright on these Dutch style cycles with the handlebars curved back toward the rider, and nobody seems to be doing anything but going from point A to point B as they’re pedaling. Nobody save for a few small children wears a helmet.

This is a dramatic contrast from the bike commuters in my city, most of whom are helmeted and hunched over racing style or mountain style (or a hybrid thereof) bikes and probably outfitted with racing gear. They’re focused and breathing hard. They’re using fitness trackers.

It’s the difference between cycling as a practicality and cycling as a tool of physical fitness. I’d like to use mine for the former, but that feels impossible when everyone doing the latter is whizzing past me in brightly colored tops, legs a pumping. Yesterday somebody on one of those bike share units showed me up on Lawrence Avenue.

It’s not a race, I keep telling myself. I don’t have a personal best to beat. It’s just a commute.

I’m not very convincing.

I hit snooze once. Just once. Then I weighed myself, put the kettle on, took the dog out to the back yard, climbed back up the stairs and made myself a cup of the Guatemalan coffee Meredith picked up at Bru Coffeeworks yesterday.

I sipped my coffee while listening to a daily liturgy podcast I found on Spotify this week, produced by a church in Omaha.

Daughter was up, so I stirred myself from my corner chair to prepare Meredith’s and my breakfast, as well as to assemble our lunch salads.

It was a calm, routine, pleasant morning, in which I completely forgot to write a blog post.

Have a nice day!

I’m conflict averse, so when I found myself stuck in a sales call a few weeks ago I allowed the agent to schedule another call, with a different agent from her company, Right Now Media. I was thoroughly annoyed, but, you know, nice.

I’d picked up the phone even though I didn’t recognize the number (an increasingly fraught commitment). Now here I was consenting to be called again, fully intending to not pick up.

Right on time came the second call. And the third. And the fourth.

They should teach a class in seminary about the telemarketing and junk mail aimed at churches. There is an entire industry most churchgoers never see but that markets all manner of products, mostly media, to pastors, promising church growth through the form of books and videos. Most of them are as savvy as a timeshare sales pitch. But lots more than you would expect get through. They’re persistent, and they prey on a pastor’s fear that she’s letting her people down, that she’s letting God down.

Direct marketing to churches is a scourge.

There’s a better way to do it. Nobody from Illustrated Children’s Ministry has ever called me or sent me a form mailer. I get emails from The Youth Cartel about their resources, but I’ve opted into them. I’ve purchased things from both of them and will no doubt do so again.

You don’t have to be sleazy to sell things to churches.

Doing something once doesn’t make it a habit. This is something parenting teaches you over and over again. Just because she ate her vegetables for the first time doesn’t mean that she’s now a vegetable eater any more than you going for that first jog makes you a runner.

I took Daughter and her pal to the amusement park yesterday because Daughter had been asking to go all summer. It was a surprising request, given that she has never shown the slightest bit of nerve for thrill rides; we used to live a 45 minute drive from Disneyland, and in all of her trips there up to age 8, she wouldn’t go near anything more daring than Dumbo.

But she professed a new resolve–a new desire, even–and so we went. She started with the small one, which is still a roller coaster, so . . . win. From there we went directly to Superman Ultimate Flight, which is as coaster as coaster gets, and then to the newest one with the longest line, a 25 second pin-your-ears-back dare to the universe called Max Force. Done.

After lunch we conquered the old wooden classic, American Eagle. Okay, so now Daughter rides roller coasters. It’s a thing she does.

Nope.

Because just a few hours later she fell apart at the front of the line for a roller coaster far less challenging than the three she’d already completed. I had to step out of line with her and wait for her friend to ride alone.

After that she would only entertain rides she’d already conquered.

But conquer them she did.

Walking to the train early on Sunday morning I’m filled with dread about the work I’m supposed to do to lead worship. I don’t feel prepared, mentally or spiritually. Sunday morning breaks after a Saturday filled with family commitments that offered no time for quiet contemplation of my Lord’s Day responsibilities. They are prepared, waiting for me in my office. But my head’s not there, and the train is arriving.

I don’t start to feel prepared until the first words of the Call to Worship are out of my mouth. Then the occasion takes over and a force more reliable than my diligence moves through the space. I remember again, once the rhythm of worship is moving, how little of what happens here depends upon the leaders’ mental or emotional state.

Today is the deadline for the largest assignment yet in my Doctor of Ministry program, a 20 page paper. I haven’t turned in something like this in 15 years. I’m remembering now what student life taught me so well: done is better than perfect.

Two parenting strategies:

1. Live your life
2. Live your kid’s life

Live your life. Do your work, pursue your interests, hang out with your friends. This models adulthood for your kid and teaches them that they’re not the center of your life.

Live your kid’s life. Commit yourself to her schoolwork and activities, her friends, her general health and well-being. This lavishes her with love and attention and helps her grow in the confidence that she is worth it.

They’re both irresponsible on their own though. One leads to neglect and the other to co-dependence.

It feels like most of the work of parenting is discerning when to focus on the first and when the second. Then, having chosen, learning to do each well.

Marijuana usage among youth group students is a thing and has been for a long time, yet in my 11 years of full-time youth ministry I have addressed it directly with youth exactly one time. Cultural attitudes and laws are changing though, and the need for tools to address the subject at church feels urgent (I first wrote about this five years ago).

The pot talk I’m forming in my head has four foci: health, the law, social justice, and discipleship (and, yes, the first three all bear on the fourth).

Marijuana is not good for teenagers. Full stop. The CDC says so unambiguously. The cognitive and social risks are high, even when the quality of the product can be trusted (which it often can’t).

Though many states have legalized marijuana (including the one I live in), it is still illegal for minors.

And yet the legal consequences for teens breaking marijuana law can most certainly be assumed to be applied unequally. To put it bluntly: white teens are at less risk of serious criminal consequences. The Colorado Department of Public Safety said as much in 2016. Enforcement is unjust.

Finally, recreational use of substances that harm teen’s health, violate the law, and perpetuate injustice shouldn’t be winked at in youth ministry. Marijuana does not aid discipleship and faith formation in teenagers.

If you have tools for addressing this subject in a church context, please share them.