So it’s true, i wrote and self-published a little book. The book is a little devotional piece on Lent, which if your not familiar is the 40 days leading up to Easter. So essentially it’s a devotional book that leads and prepares the reader for Easter Sunday, the resurrection of Jesus.

Here’s what the back of the book says;

This isn’t just another devotional book. This is a guide to a 40-day journey to resurrection.

Maybe you don’t even know what Lent is. Maybe you’re thinking it’s that stuff you pick out of the depths of your pants pockets. Maybe when you hear Lent, you think it’s something only Catholics do.

Even if you’re not familiar with Lent or have a negative association with it, I think we would all agree that Easter is essential to the life of the Church. It’s the time of year when we are intentional about retelling and rehearing the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

And because Christ invites His followers to not just hear about resurrection but to participate in it, we have historically taken the 40 days leading up to Easter to prepare our hearts and minds to enter into the story of Christ.

This little book is a guide, a help, a companion on that 40-day journey of prayer and Christian practice known as Lent. On this journey, we will practice the disciplines of addition, subtraction and introspection so that we may more fully participate in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We call this journey Lent.

And we take this journey because we all need a resurrection.

==========================================

I would love to offer this little devotional book to you as you as you make your way to Easter Sunday.

If you order the book by this Friday at noon i can guarantee it’s arrival by Wednesday the 22nd, which is when this Lenten journey will start for most of us.

At my church we are using this book to guide our middle school and senior high students on a Lenten journey. There are a handful of other churches that are using this resource to help their students as well.

There are themes for every week of the journey which we will all be using as preaching topics during this next 7 weeks. And if you interested, some of us are going to join a conversation to help each other as we craft messages and services for our students during this time. That conversation will mostly happen via email and i would love to include in that as well.

You can get the book here and checkout the Web Guide (an online resource to supplement the book) here.

My prayer is that this resource would help you and your ministry as you make your way through the desert of Lent to the brilliance of resurrection!

Would love to have you on this journey with us!

Grace and peace
erik

And here is the book cover if you want to see / read it all!
(thanks to Aaron VanStrien for his skills, which he donated to this project!)

It’s true I pastor students, middle school students to be specific. It’s a new gig for me and one i enter into with excitement and some biblical fear and trembling.

I read student ministry blogs here and there. I want to do that more; there are so many great ideas and encouraging people out there.
What student ministry blogs should I be reading?

And i’m looking forward to sharing some of the things we are doing here in the student ministry at Christ Church Plano.

Christ Church is a really great place! It’s also a really interesting mix of a liturgical church, rooted in tradition, history and beauty, and an evangelical bible church kinda feel with a high value on scripture and a personal relationship with Jesus. Most of the things you typically think of from a liturgical church and a bible church both find themselves being gracefully lived out right here in one place. Geographically we are in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, a place called Plano that has its own kind of charm and plenty of suburban challenges.

I’m pretty new around here, just into my 3rd month, but I think this mix of things is going to make for some great but unique ministry in the student ministry world. I still know a lot of folks who are doing event-based attractional ministry, i know folks who are doing strong small group ministry, and i know folks who are trying to do missional youth ministry. I even know some folks who are doing a mix of all the above. The journey i’m on is to figure out how to do youth ministry in a liturgically sensible, biblically formative, socially conscious, and above all disciple-making kind of way.
Maybe there are some folks out there trying to do similar kinds of things. WHO ARE YOU? We need to talk!

Basically i’m excited to talk about student ministry, middle school ministry, failures, successes, and all the crazy stories in between. Student ministry is a wild ride but i’m excited to be a part of this community of people in a new kind of way. I’m excited to dive deeper into the conversation.

Grace and peace
erik

I tweeted the other day about the Advent Experience i was doing with my students. I ended the tweet & facebook post with “… just wait!” A clever pun on the idea of experiencing advent. I had one person say something but other than that i’m not sure anybody really caught the start to my Advent Experience but then again i don’t think many people really catch Advent in general. Which is why we had an Advent Experience!

And if your wondering what i’m talking about… you’re not catching it either! Just wait

Advent is all about waiting, anticipating, it’s all about getting ready for the One who was, and is, and is to come! I decided that i could just preach a message about this, there are TONS of scriptures about Advent, about waiting and anticipating but i wanted my students to experience it!

So here’s what we did…

We started our service off with with a countdown, all the student with one robust voice counted down the last 10 seconds and then… another countdown started. They WAITED 3 more minutes, counted down once again and we continued.

Then we played a game, kinda. I picked students, had them come up on the platform, picked some random pieces that they thought were going to be apart of the game and then i told them i had forget some of the pieces to the game and they were going to have to WAIT.

I also had one student come on the platform, I had found out his absolute favorite snack, honey BBQ wings from Pizza Hut. I told him we were going play a little game, he had to sit with the wings in front of him but we weren’t ready yet… he would have to WAIT!

I let all the students sit down, they would have to be PATIENT. I let the student stay on the platform with his wings though. Our worship leader came forward to lead us. He tuned… and tuned… and tuned some more. He continued to say, “Sorry guys, just be PATIENT, HOLD ON, we’ll be ready SOON.”

I then came up and said i would just give the message and we’ll worship later. By this time, those that were really paying attention (and most of them actually were) began to realize the theme.

I opened my bible and began to flip through, trying to find the passage i was looking for, “my bookmark must have fallen out, just HOLD ON, i’ll find it.” “I think i actually left my notes in my office, just be PATIENT.” I walked of the platform and this little video i make began to play.

When the video was done i walked up and began to share. My middle school students were engaged, they got it, they knew what we were talking about. Matthew, the student on the stage with his favorite wings quickly became my goto illustration. Because sometimes it’s really hard to wait, isn’t it! I preached, we worship together, it was a really great night!

The one nugget i wanted to communicate through my message and through the experience was that we know as Christians we need to learn to pray, to read our bible, even to live in community… but how often do we teach students the art of waiting, being patient, holding on for the Lord. We don’t’ typically see this as a Christian practice worth giving any attention to but the more i studied and looked around bible the art of waiting is central to the Christian life. And what better time then Advent to usher our students and our churches in the Christian practice of patience.

We talked a bit about the double Advent we embrace. First we WAIT for the birth of Christ but we also WAIT for the return of Christ, knowing that He will return and make all things new, redeem our suffering, and quench our thirst once and for all.

We talked about trust and faith. It’s easy to think that God must not know what he’s doing because things aren’t happening on our timeframe or the way we think they should go. But learning to WAIT is essential for the Christian life, it teaches us to trust that God actually knows what he’s doing, he has a plan, that God is actually good and is with us! It’s not always easy to wait but often times that which we wait for is far better then what we could have had sooner. Our culture teaches immediate gratification but our Lord teaches us to WAIT! To Trust! To have faith that God has a plan!

There are a lot of culture implication that we talked about. Faith implication and a general challenge to WAIT ON THE LORD because he promises to hear our cries!

Here some some scriptures that i used…

Isaiah 64:1     //    Luke 1:78-79     //     Psalm 40:1     // Proverbs 16:32

Romans 8:25     //     James 5:8     //      Revelations 1:7-8

You can also check out some of my Advent posts from last year…

Advent :: I Can’t Wait!  #1

Advent :: I Can’t Wait!  #2

Advent :: I Can’t Wait!  #3

Advent :: I Can’t Wait!  #4

And finally if you looking from some great Advent ideas & videos check out Advent Conspiracy – they do some great stuff!

And look at their old stuff on YouTube — really good!

Hold On!

w/Grace and peace

erik

It’s the end of my third week at Christ Church. I haven’t really even given the low down as to what i’m up to. The short story… i’m the middle school minister at a great church in Plano TX, a north suburb of Dallas. I’m still traveling, although minimally but don’t worry Erik Willits Ministries is still going strong, just morphing a bit. We’ll see what exactly it turns into. The long story i may share later.

But i’m beginning a new chapter, my family is beginning a new chapter and we’re pretty excited about it.

In the midst of my  new beginning i’ve been thinking a lot about beginnings. Have you ever thought about this? Where do experts and aficionados get their start? I hadn’t given it much thought until recently.

As my family and i decided it was time for some changes —  for a slew of reasons that i won’t bore you with —  we decided we would each start shopping our resumes and see where God might open doors? I was up for being daddy daycare, youth speaker extraordinaire, or youth pastor in residence, we were just searching for a new beginning. But some interesting hurdles arose.

I’ve considered myself a youth worker for the past 10+ years but during that time i’ve served very little in your typical youth worker / youth pastor role. Stints of traditional student ministry here and there but primarily i’ve been anything but traditional in my pursuit of God and His call on my life. The hurdle that appeared as i began to talk with churches about youth positions, young adults positions, teaching pastor positions was that i hadn’t actually ever done any of those ministries.

Imagine my frustration, 10 years of doing exactly what i thought God was calling me to only to have church after church tell me i was’t qualified for the ministry position they were hiring for. A few churches after seeing my resume wanted to talk. So i interviewed at a few places, i interviewed at one of the largest churches in America, i interviewed at small churches, evangelical churches, mainline churches, all kinds of churches and every church i talked to and especially the couple churches i actually went and interviewed with, an aura of skepticism permeated the atmosphere. Everybody was skeptical of me because i hadn’t spent much time in traditional ministry roles. I guess i should be used to this, over the years not many people have been very understanding of the ministry i’ve done. So yea,  it was frustrating, humbling, and discouraging to say the least.

But it all got me thinking, where do people get their start? The experts and aficionados, who took a chance on them? This is especially relevant as people left and right are losing jobs and looking for new beginnings. How many overly qualified people are working at Starbucks looking for another shot, a new beginning?

Beginnings are hard, chaotic, frustrating, and all too often they are elusive. Survey the Bible, this trend holds up, trust me.

I pray for those who are looking for new beginnings. I pray that the God of second chances would open doors and give a spirit of encouragement and persistence to those in need. And may the rest of us have hearts to perceive those that the spirit puts in our paths. And i pray that whether we deserve it or not, the God of grace would open the right doors and that we would have hearts to perceive and open eyes to see His provision.

Bottom line, I’m extraordinarily grateful and excited beyond measure for the opportunity i have, for the beginning that God has granted me. To work along side of some amazing people, share life with and minister to an amazing group of middle school students (at least the ones i’ve met so far are rad) and just in general i’m grateful and excited for getting a shot to do ministry and impact students and families for the kingdom of God in a new but also similar and exciting way.

[ Ramblings from a Starbucks... ]

Grace and peace

Erik

To my faithful blog followers, all 2 of you (my wife and… CRAP, there’s only one)

Anyway, to my faithful follower(s), you know i tend to be a blog slacker most times but times are a changen (maybe).

I’m anticipating A LOT of changes these days, here are a few of them…

#1. I’ve got an office, and no i didn’t just find a new coffee shop on the other side of town, i’ve actually have an office that i go to and can sit at my desk and do work. I anticipate this rhythm helping my blogging life.

#2. I live in TX! It still blows my mind when i think about it. But i’m excited to share some  of my new found Texas spirit with ya’ll. I mean EVERYBODY i know who is from Texas thinks it’s the greatest country in the world. Not sure i will get there but so far the Texans are winning me over.

#3. I’m a youth pastor / student minister / how ever you want to say it… i get to hang out with amazing students, share life, follow Jesus, have fun, and learn about ministry in an entirely new context. For the past 10 years i’ve shared here and there about my traveling ministry, speaking to thousands of students every year and the wild journey that has been but now i get to share about the 100 or so students i see every week and what we are doing to help these students know and love Jesus. I hope this journey will be helpful as i share with friends and ministry partners that i’ve met along the way. And hopefully we can interact and bounce ideas around right here on this blog.

#4. I’ve got a new blog / website coming! Hopefully it will be done in the next couple weeks. It’s always a bit of motivation to write when you’ve got new new real estate to write on!

#5. Life in general is changing. I’ve haven’t kept up with sharing that very well over the past year but hopefully that will change. From being a dad, to being a youth pastor, to being a traveling speaker (part-time now), to being a Texan, to being a simple man trying to follwo Jesus well… life is changing and sharing our journey with each other is to journey together. I don’t think there is a better way to do it!

Life’s a chanen… and i’m excited to share.

Grace and peace

erik

Youth Pastor // Speaker // Blogger

Well if you get my ministry emails you’ll know that my summer had been CRAZY busy! It has been pretty amazing, i’m not gonna lie (i’m working on a summer update email / blog post – stay tuned). But because of my busy summer covering 8 states and thousand and thousand of miles i’ve taken a little blog vacation.

HOWEVER… while on this blog vacation i have dreamed up a few sweet posts and have been working on em’ here and there, i’m looking forward to sharing these nuggets soon. The sharing will commence in a couple weeks. I’ve got a few more things going on and 1 camp left to get ready for.

In the mean the time…

#1. I’m working on a summer update eNewsletter. Should go out next week.

#2. We are still, slowly but surely working on a new ministry website and blog. Hoping it will be up sometime in August. I have my fingers crossed.

#3. Oh just you wait!

For now, grace and peace my friends!
erik

Here is a little teaser… a few of my favorite summer instagram pics… ENJOY!

Some dude once said “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Kinda famous right, i think it’s famous because so many of us feel that in our bones. It’s something that resonates on a really deep level!

I just posted a little diddy about my last months and the excitement of my coming month. I have some really great ministry stuff going down these days and i am really excited about it! It’s probably the 2 best months of ministry i’ve had in the last 2 or 3 years.

So it really seems like the best of times. GOOD

But this past month has also been extremely difficult. = HARD

Maybe not the worst of times literally but pretty hard. Doubt, struggle, temptation, contention, selfishness… the list can go on and on but it just seems like there is a spirit of tension in my house and in my life. I do think that when the best of times come there is an enemy who wants to give us an earthly reality check. But i also know there is a Jesus who want to give us an eschatological reality check. Meaning, Jesus want us to experience heaven now, he wants us to have the abundant life of eternity here and now. Maybe only a little taste, an already but not quite yet kind of deal but i’m afraid i’m letting a reality of sin and selfishness steal my taste of God’s abundant future and the gift he has for me now!

I hate that!

And as i write i feel like God is speaking, telling me that the thoughts of failure and dead ends are lies and maybe i need to be remembering verses like this one…

“We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul—not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us. God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. He’s set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so much, the Son who got us out of the pit we were in, got rid of the sins we were doomed to keep repeating.”

Colossians 1:11:14 (the message)

So yea, life is good and life is hard, all at the same time but God is good and i pray that all of us in our times of struggle, temptation, and despair would remember that we’ve been set up in God’s Kingdom because he loves us regardless of our performance or success and regardless of our mood or emotions. And we have to be honest, with ourselves, with our communities, and with God because life isn’t easy even when lots of things seems to be great because even then some things can be really hard and maybe, just maybe, that is when we need to lean into the reliability of the scripture, the companionship of our community, and the compassion of the Holy Spirit.

I write all this at the risk of being an internet over-sharer… and i’m not a huge fan of “that guy” but i think honesty is important and i think we need to hear the struggles just as much as we hear the hoorays. We need to remind each other of God’s goodness and his unswerving (look up synonyms – awesome) love for us! And in writing, i needed to remind myself! Cause we need to do that as well sometimes as well.

Grace and peace

(because you’ve been set up in the kingdom that has come in the person of Jesus!)

erik

and PS :: for some reason i’m aware of my abundant run-on sentences in this post. Which is weird considering how bad at English grammar i am (you’d think i was born to write in a different language). So, sorry about if you are the kind that cares about those kinds of things. And a warning, if you are, this blog might not be the place for you. But i invite you to stick around either way!

Shalom

Well February is almost over and March is around the corner. I have to be honest, i’m really looking forward to spring! Warmth and Sun and outdoor activities! Ahhh, that sounds so good right now!

I received a little taste of spring last weekend while i was in Alabama with Aldersgate UMC. This is a retreat i do every year and every year it seems to get better.

A conviction i had when i started to travel and do the itinerant teaching / preaching ministry was that relationships were going to be of the utmost importance! So i have prayed, since the beginning, that i would develop partnership with churches and youth group so that we could build on what God was doing at these retreat. I have prayed that the ministry i do wouldn’t just be a flash in the pan but would be a kinda of Pauline ministry of partnership in the Gospel, much in the same way Paul partnered with the church in Philippi. Over the years i have had this sort of partnership with a few churches, i’m excited that this is happening with Aldersgate and the great group of students and leader they have over there!

“I thank my God every time i remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among us will bring it to completion.”
Philippians 1:3-6

We had a great weekend of partnering in the gospel! Which included playing football and wiffleball on a 70 degrees Saturday afternoon! AMAZING!
The theme of the retreat was “COLLIDE – Where Worship and Mission Meet.” We were able to challenge the students to think critically about participating in worship and in God’s mission, while laying a biblical foundation for the interconnectedness of these things. It was a great and challenging weekend for all us!

2 highlight of the weekend were playing in a vicious tournament of spoons with students and leaders. I might add that i emerged the champion! Many laughs and a few bruises were had but it was great fun! And to cap off the weekend we took communion together, challenging the students to remember what Christ has done, to worship Him fully, and participate in his mission in the world! It was a great weekend and i’m excited about next year!

Earlier in the month i spoke at a Jr. High retreat for Oak Point church in Detroit Michigan. A group of 200 Jr high and 50 leaders converged on Timber Wolf camp grounds, a young life camp in northern Michigan. It was a beautiful and CHILLY setting but we were able to hunker down and open the the bible together, leaning into the teachings of Jesus and the idea that he came to give us LIFE, to enable us to THRIVE!

It was great weekend with a bunch of crazy middle school students. On Saturday night at least 5 of these students gave their lives to Christ for the first time and probably another hundred students raised their hands to indicate that they wanted to recommit their lives to Christ and do more then survive but thrive in their Christian life. It was awesome to see students respond to God’s word and commit to grow in Christ.

We played octaball, basketball, and even had a snowball fight or two! It was a great weekend of fun and spiritual renewal! I hope to see these students again soon! But for now i am keeping up with a handful of them on facebook! As a response to a challenge i gave to plant themselves in community and begin to read the bible together, 3 different facebook bible studies have begun! It’s awesome to see students respond in practical ways that go beyond our weekend together! Praying that they stick with it and continue to thrive in their lives with Christ!

This has been one of the best months of ministry in the past couple years and I have 2 more retreat in March! Looking forward to seeing what God will do as we pray and anticipate!

Grace and peace
erik

Well Advent and Christmas has come and gone, well technically / liturgically we are still in the Christmas season but for all intensive purposes it has come and gone. So we now reflect.

Reflecting on a good old American Christmas you might think it was about gifts, or a certain feeling, maybe about gathering or torture (depending out how your family time was – a notoriously hard time for many – it happened to be really good for me this year!). Maybe upon reflection Christmas was about a baby other that Jesus (things seemed to really revolve around my 1yr old Jack this year) or maybe it was just about trying not to go broke.

One of my last posted was about the Advent Conspiracy, which helps us to remember what  it’s really about but for more of us this time of year is far from that.

Maybe it’s about war.

I went to a church service on Christmas Even that insinuated that this is the case, “this is about war.”  I usually refrain from calling people out or saying things that would offend (to much) so i will try to do that again but i can’t help but to reflect on my Christmas Eve church experience.

For the first 5 to 10 minutes of the message the teaching pastor at the church i attended stated facts and made his case that Christmas is about war. It’s a war between those who are trying to take Christ out of Christmas and those of us who are trying and praying to keep him in. The preacher even said, to make the point, that some of us are using X instead of Christ in Christmas. And a gasp fills the room. After 5 to 10 minutes of laying the ground work for this Christmas war the message was finish by giving some good reasons why “Jesus is the reason for the season.” (could be go anymore cliche… I DON’T THINK SO)

SO…

#1. I don’t actually disagree with anything this guy said. For the most part people don’t care about Jesus during Christmas and for the most part CHRIST is not really apart of what Christmas is about for the average American. All true.

#2. What is Christmas all about and why do we preach on Christmas?

To remind people that there is a war going on? To remind people that things are going horribly wrong in the world and they better take Christmas back for Christ? I DON’T THINK SO. And this is just my opinion but i think Christmas is a season of HOPE. We are reminded that our hopes and dreams and more importantly the hopes and dreams of God were birthed in the form of a helpless baby on this day (give or take a few days / months) a couple thousand years ago. In my opinion this isn’t the day to talk about some holy war it’s a day to remind people of the hope they have in Jesus, the baby that was born and the gift that was given to each of us on this “CHRISTmas day”.

To make it about ANYTHING other than this is to fail as a communicator of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In my opinion.

To be honest i got up and left about 7 minutes into the message because i couldn’t take it anymore and my son was a perfect excuse to get me out of there. Sorry Andrea (i left her to fend for herself.) I heard most of the message for the lobby but it didn’t get much better.

#3.  “Xmas / the birth of Jesus is such an epic story! TheChurch needs better story tellers! Until we have better story tellers no body is going to want to listen.”  This was my tweet after that service and i think it’s true. i mean come on, “Jesus is the reason for the season” can we not do better than that? Until we as the Church tell this epic story in a more compelling way no body is going to want to listen. God will do his thing and draw people to himself but imagine what could happen if we actually participated and use the material he gave to tell compelling stories, imagine the people that would listen and then follow.

I read one tweet by a well know Christian who said, “Maybe we need to take Christ out of Christmas because it’s not really his day anymore anyway.” Or something like that. I ditto that! This holiday isn’t about Jesus so why fight it. Maybe we just need to make our lives and all of our days about tell the story Jesus instead of fight a war that doesn’t matter. Jesus doesn’t care about a day (that he probably wasn’t really born on anyway). He cares about people embracing him and receiving the gift that was given, himself. That the important thing… let’s use this holiday we call Christmas or Xmas to tell that story, to tell it in such a compelling way that people receive the gift and live all year with this gift in mind.

Grace and peace & Merry Christmas and happy holidays

erik

PS :: sorry this as such a long post, i intended for a short reflection… #FAIL

Well i sent out my eNewsletter today! It’s just a little update / recap of my summer ministry happenings. It was a really good summer. If you didn’t get the newsletter you should sign up HERE! Or if you would like to read this months update on line you can check it out HERE.

Here are a few of my favorite parts of the letter…

What some people have said about the summer, students and youth pastors;

Katy, “yeah my life was changed by God at teen camp majorly! And i can’t help but wonder if it was the speaker that helped it happen??!! lol”

Jonah, “The Holy Spirit has definitely been moving in my life. Camp was a great spiritual “rebirth” because for a while i was just going through the motions. Since camp I’ve been reading a lot of a scripture,  and sharing with my friends and will continue to.”

Scot (youth pastor), “Erik, your passion for the students was evident at camp! Thanks so much for preaching the Word, it was an awesome week of camp. It was great to see you relating to student on the activity field just as much as you did in the chapel services. You have an awesome ministry, keep it up! I know God showed up at camp and challenged us all in many ways. Thanks for letting God use you!”

I’ve been able to hear some great stories of student deciding to follow Jesus and totally giving everything to do so! Again, i’m reminded of why i do what i do. I’m just thankful to be apart of God’s movement among this generation of young people!

I was also reminded of little something important;
In all honesty i wonder how effect this ministry is sometimes. How may of these students really make lasting decisions? I am pretty careful to not manipulate emotions and i refuse to evaluate the effectiveness of a camp by the number of students who come to the altar or fill out a decision cards. But when a student is walking out the sanctuary with tears in his eyes and says to me, “i think God changed my life tonight.” I am reminded why i speak at camps. And i am reminded that i once upon a time was that student. I didn’t have a clue, i wasn’t a church kid, i was a little punk Jr. higher but something happen at an altar at a camp that changed the trajectory of my entire life. I was reminded of that this summer and i feel humbled, unworthy, and honored to participate in God’s movement of grace in the camp setting. Once again i experienced that this summer, it was awesome, truly! Students responding to Jesus and He was lifted high… this is why i do what i do!

And as always i have some great pictures and videos to document the journey! You can check em’ out on flickr!

Well i hope you take the time to read the entire newsletter. I’m excited about what God’s doing and the opportunities he is giving me. Of course i wish things we’re happening faster and things like that but really, i can’t complain. I’m very thankful to be able to participate in God’s work! I look forward to continuing that and having you as a partner as i do it.

Grace and peace
erik