Light Bulb No. 2, originally uploaded by Caveman (Kickin’ 66 with Pete Zarria).

To give a little bit of a crash course in Milestones I’ll provide a little commentary on the situation.

For a lot of Milestones, we seek Parents when they are having an “Oh Crap!” moment. Whether it’s transition, pressure, behavior, etc. Parents are freaked out about something. We generally recognize common times that these moments are happening and try to turn the “Oh Crap!” into an “AHA!”.

Light bulbs generally don’t light themselves. An idea or concept needs to be caught and then put into practice. So every “AHA!” moment you want to achieve will need at least two things from Parents and in some cases kids:

1) Vision that compels peeps to move from “Oh Crap!” to “Aha!”
2) A plan that people can achieve and one that you can keep them accountable to.

So what “Oh Crap!” moments do families have in your ministry context?
How can you move them to “AHA!”?

Cute Kid, originally uploaded by Joe Lencioni.

So I was asked to do a little post on milestones and kids. Generally the Milestones that we associate with kidmin are:

• Dedication
• Salvation/Baptism
• Preparation for the teen years

I know the last one is fringe probably between kids and students. But we’ll just put it on our list

I’d really like to focus on a specific aspect of the milestone for this post. You see milestones are generally used to provide reference points along the journey. They are should be viewed in a way that allows families to say, “Ok we’re on the right track”. They provide focus and guidance for parents. But honestly, I also think they can be tough to understand. If we see them a reference points then they hold the correct place in the realm of a child’s life. However, when they are skewed as goals or items on a checklist then the results could be ineffective.

The purpose of milestones is to give people a picture of the long term, the overall life experience of a child rather than isolated singular events. Why is this small thought important?

From Dedication forward parents begin to put pressure on themselves to perform well as parental units. By casting the vision of a journey rather than getting to salvation/baptism or to the teen years without error, we hope to see parents take some pressure off themselves and their kids. Not only that but provide proper opportunities for kids to question and grow in their view of God and Christ.

Over the next few posts I’ll talk about how I feel about the milestones mentioned above and also a couple more thoughts.

Puppies are from heaven (5), originally uploaded by piotr m.

I tried to take a picture of my puppy dog face. Let’s just say it was a FAIL!

So my pic is trying to woo you because I/we need a favor. I need to know peeps who do 5th-6th grade ministry at a high level. We want to chat/talk/brainstorm with themWe are transitioning to family ministry and this is a direction we want to go because of the rough transition. We also see an opportunity to connect with parents in one of their awareness moments at this time in their child’s life.

If you know anyone no matter where they are located who this describes let me know by dropping a comment below or @ me @jcisonline on twitter.

We would love a place that is comparable in size and context to Brookwood but give us who you know who’s doing it GREAT and we’ll adapt.

If you need convincing just check out the pic at the top again.

Thanks for your help.

“Time is on your side”

This one is one of the toughest things to figure out. Time. It seems to be a simple, straightforward, linear, idea. However, if you are a type A driven personality, time is generally a tough thing to understand fully.

At 23, I am at a place where most people wish they could be at. I know I sound like a total jerk but stay with me please. I married a beautiful woman who loves me more than I can imagine, I’m debt free, I have an incredible job in ministry with people that are my biggest fans, and I’m still at the beginning of “real life”. But it’s an extremely difficult place to be at for me. Why? Because of unrealistic expectations that I hold for myself and the inescapable reality of time itself.

Why can’t I have the communication ability of someone who has done this for 30 years? I’ve been at it for 1.3 years.

Why can’t I have some of the deep relationships that other staffers have established? I haven’t been at it long enough.

Why do I struggle to make or feel like I have the support of making certain decisions? Think about the “length of time” and “number” of things on your resume.

The reality is that as much as our personality fights against the certainty of time, it’s still time. It takes time to develop a ton of things that exist in other’s leadership. In The Making of a Leader a book by Robert Clinton, they suggest that there are six phases of how God develops leaders:

• Sovereign Foundations
• Inner Life Growth
• Ministry Maturing
• Life Maturing
• Convergence
• Afterglow or Celebration

Where the Convergence phase is “people’s ministry experiences and their life experiences converge into a specific job or responsibility wherein they draw on all they have learned in order to enjoy maximum effectiveness. This will be the job or role for which leaders are best known and in which they experience their greatest success.”

See how far down the list that Convergence phase is located? Yeah… and yet I know a lot of other young leaders that become increasingly frustrated by the fact that they haven’t had their Convergence phase yet. It’s just takes time. Not to mention, it takes time to get through all those other phases that God desires to take you through.

So here’s a few suggestions when struggling with the issue of time and the fact that you aren’t 75 years old with 50 years of ministry experience under your belt:

1. Read someone’s biography-it allows you to understand the development of a leader and how God did things in His timing and how perfectly they culminated. Not to mention it always helps to gain a little perspective.
2. Pray-I always feel better when I voice my frustration to God. Granted, he might have a fun answer like He did for Job, but it’s always an encouragement that He’s in charge.
3. Reflect-When we look towards the future too much, it causes us to lose focus on some of the victories of the past. I wouldn’t be what I am today without my past. It’s helpful to see ways in which God shaped me through past experiences.

Time is inevitable. You aren’t just going to be a great leader in a year or even (*yikes*) 10 years. But the focusing on the present helps to make your future a lot brighter. So take what seems like an enemy in the clock and make it your friend. Allow your present to be the best time of your life and the future will take care of itself.