I was pondering some of the feedback I got from my sermon yesterday. All in all I felt good about what I tried to convey from the text I preached from, but I wasn’t feeling like I hit the target. What I was amazed about the feedback from both services was that it wasn’t so much about my exegetical work on the Romans 5 passage. It was about how I used my story about my father Bob in trying to make Romans 5 come alive. I still don’t know if it worked but here’s an edited glimpse. One of my points was a reference to Romans 1:16 about not being ashamed of the Gospel. I remember one Sunday afternoon leaving for Indian village with my church and seeing my father help load the luggage onto the luggage trucks with all of the other parents before we headed off to camp. My father didn’t look like the other dads. His pants were dirty. He was often loud and he smelled of cigarette smoke and alcohol and most of all he often was an embarrassment. What I have grown to appreciate after all these years since his death was that he was there doing the best he could. He was the one who responded to the invite by Mr. Young to bring us boys to Sunday school in third grade. He was the one who walked us that long mile to church. He was the one who told my mom not to put me up for adoption when she was pregnant with me. If it were not for my dad and the Holy Spirit working in my dad I would not be where I am at today as a husband, father, and young pastor. I have no reason to be ashamed of my dad. It is God’s proof that God uses even guys like my dad. The worst of the worst. Even in his stinky smelly self he still felt that the church would be the place where I would get the love, care, and spiritual nurture he knew he couldn’t give. What I hope I conveyed in my story yesterday is that we have no reason to be ashamed of what God can and has done for us in Jesus Christ. This is good news that needs to be shouted from the mountain tops that in God’s loving grace we have been JUSTIFIED! The slate has been cleaned! Or in the Latin, “Tabula Rasa!”

(This John Nash sighting has nothing to do with preaching…it’s one of my favorite Princeton Pics my princeton buddy Jenny took while we were driving in princeton)
As a “new-bee” associate pastor I am grateful that I have gotten to preach in our morning services about every 6-8 weeks. I have known and heard that there are AP’s who only preach on youth Sunday or when the Senior is out on the Sunday after Christmas. I have a way cool pastor who feels that all three of us pastors need to be in the pulpit on a regular basis. Now I’m not complaining and I am thrilled when I get to break out my Bibleworks (my apologies to my cool Greek Prof. at PTS) and my used set of Interpreters Bible Commentaries. My question is how do you seasoned pastor types do it almost every week? And how do you recover from at least two sermons? (Also knowing some of you preach three, even four a weekend)

Forest Home was one of the many places I was introduced to when we were invited to Hollywood Presbyterian by Mr. Young. My first experience at Forest Home was through one of their kids camps called Indian Village. For several years I would go to “camp” and would eventually work a few summers after graduating high school. I think I counted 12 consecutive years that I attended FH as a camper or through one of their many programs for youth. One camp I still remember was “Youth Corps.” Hell week for high school boys basically in a Christian camp setting. FH was my home away from home. When you don’t have much as a kid and the parental units are mentally unaware of their kids, a place like FH is heaven. I remember one time coming back from Indian Village and telling my dad, “Dad, the bus almost got lost and went to Bakersfield.” How I wished it did at the time but after a while the Lord worked on my heart and it was in 1983 at a Jr. High Winter camp that I gave my life to the Lord through one of Dave Hopkins messages. Dave was this way cool loving staff person at FH who ran the Jr. High ministry at the time. What I remember most about that year was one of the many songs Dave had put to music. Dave had this gift of taking the memory verses the jr. high kids had to memorize during summer camps and turned them into songs kids could sing and remember. The verse I memorized that summer and sung at winter camp that year I accepted Christ was from Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you plans to give you hope and a future.” What a word to hear that God had a plan for this little kid from Hollywood. That God in the midst of my “stuff” at home was always with me and watched over me. I have to honestly say that FH was that place of solitude for me as a kid. It was home! I still sing that song today. More to come!

Back in 1977 my father was a printer by trade and happened to work for a man by the name of Mr. Young who owned a small print shop on Highland Ave in Hollywood. Mr. Young being the good elder he was (from the church I would call home and still in many ways call home today) took it upon himself to invite my father to church. Dad was by his very nature a printer. It was in his blood. I can still smell the smell of print ink that seemed to linger everywhere in our little house on McCadden Pl. in Hollywood. Just right around the corner from Mr. Young’s print shop. My father wasn’t your average church goer but for some reason responded to the invitation given to him by Mr. Young. The Holy Spirit was indeed at work that day. Well, dad never did make it to church but felt the need to get us three boys out of bed one Sunday morning when I was in the third grade. This however was a bummer as an 8 year old because that meant the regular preaching of speedracer, mightymouse, and popeye cartoons had to wait on this particular Sunday. I remember it like it was yesterday. We made the mile walk to church and there we met Mr. Young. He met my father and gave us clear instructions. You see the church had different colored lines that led to different places around the church campus. His instructions were, “follow the yellow line, that line leads to the Christian Education building, you can sign up your kids there for Sunday school.” Following that yellow line would change my life. To be continued.

When I was a junior high kid in my church’s youth group I can’t help laugh at my attempts at trying to fit in with the other kids when it came to what an 80’s adolescent boy should and shouldn’t wear. My mom often shopped at the near by Zody’s department store where her “layaway plan” was the reason I had clothes on my back. One day I was able to find a “tiger shirt, a pair of tough skin jeans that almost looked like Levis and a pair of plastic “wannabe” sperry topsider deck shoes.” I was convinced that I would be accepted by this mostly affluent church culture filled with preppies and wannabe’s that worked hard at trying to be a light to the city. Today I know now my story only adds to helping those I work with in youth ministry in caring for those who come from the have’s and have not’s. As I finish reading Miller’s book I can’t help but think that there are stories to be told. Stories that need to come alive. In later posts I will continue to tell some of my story. My testimony on how God’s grace through his people helped my story become what it is today as his child.

After 19 months months of being out of seminary I’m finally catching up on books that I’m finding useful to me and my ministry as a pastor to students and families. This past weekend I got a book called “Experiential Story Telling” by Mark Miller from a youth specialties seminar I went to with some youth leaders from our church. What a great book so far and most of all a great reminder about my role as pastor and teacher in the way we as leaders tell the gospel story. In many ways we are the ones who make the stories of the gospel message come alive for those we minister to and serve with. Miller writes, “my belief is that when a story becomes personal and people begin to become unsettled and challenged by it, then they have been touched in a place where facts fear to tread. It is a place so personal it can spark an inner transformation.” I will keep you posted.

Where did the name revkasedoggy come from? Back when AOL came out with its instant message feature to its internet service there were a few kids in my youth group who called me kasedog! Yo kasedoggy! It fit. I kept it. When I finally passed by the grace of God all of my ordination exams and jumped through the hoops for ordination as a minister of word and sacrament in the PCUSA I added the “REV.”

After all these years, again, Youth Specialties did a great job with its annual youth workers seminar. Myself and 9 others made the track down to Fresno at 5:30am and spent the day hearing again the importance of a relational youth ministry and its benefit to loving kids into the kingdom. The highlight though was this reminder that as youth workers we have to laugh. This was shown during one of the breaks. It was the first time I had seen or heard about it. Can’t help but laugh. “Baby Got Book.”

Fascinated! I’m blown away by this blog thing. I had no idea on how its changing the way information is being pumped out. I was just a Barnes and Noble and reading a book by Hugh Hewitt. Over 4 million blogs and this could double this year? It indeed is a reformation in the way information is being sent out. The fact that news print will be on the decline baffles me. Now I just need to think of a way to use my experience in ministry as a way of bringing glory to God as people like Mark Roberts and many others have in using their gifts in writing to help the church. The question is what do I write about? Better finish reading Hewitt’s book.

Tonight I spent some time with a few students who were struggling with some real valid questions about who God is? How do you explain God to a bunch of students smarter then you or at least more witty than you? These students are quick on their feet. They can challenge even the best of the best pastor or theologian with all of the answers. I still though after all these years of youth ministry can’t help but think that its more important for me as a pastor to walk with that student who asks that tough question. My role is to guide and direct. Or is my role to have the answer? To have all the answers? So how do you answer the “so what” when that question comes up?