Branden Campbell » Blog

{Ninja Cat}

Monday, May 14, 2012

I haven’t posted in a while. I’m not sure why, I guess I just haven’t been in the writing mood or something. Anyway, I wanted to write something today and I thought what a better way to come back to the blog world than a cat story. So, here you go.

I consider myself to be quite the softy when it comes to killing things. I used to have no problem killing mice or other pests, but I have found over the years a growing soft spot for creatures.

Spring has sprung and all the little critters are out and about in our jungle of a backyard. I have already saved several innocent creatures from the clutches of Diego the Ninja Cat, who is more like Chris Farley in Beverly Hills Ninja than a real ninja. Nonetheless he is a pretty darn good hunter.

Normally female cats do most of the hunting but Diego seems to be the one to always bring us a special little treat. Several times a year I am forced either save or end the suffering of a mouse, snake, or frog.

Last night was a beautiful night. It was the perfect night for a hunt. Somewhere around 9:00pm Katie and I were watching the Survivor finale (which by the way was one of my favorite seasons yet) and our motion light turned on in the back yard. Sure enough, here comes Diego with something flopping around in his mouth. It was white and motionless.

Even though he is pretty good and hunting and killing, there is something distasteful about letting my cat eat a mouse and then come inside…nasty. So I put my shoes on and head out.

What happened next is one of those moments when, even aided by the modern technology of cell phone cameras, I could not capture the epic scene about to unfold.

As soon as I opened the door Diego dropped the brown blob and it turned out to be a mouse. The mouse hits the ground and sits paralyzed in fear. All of the sudden the mouse looks at Diego Stands up on his hind legs and looked as though he pumped his shoulders forward as to say, “Come on kid give me your best shot.” It was almost as if Diego knew that this mouse was all up in his grill (for my older crowd, “In his face”) and he stared back-for a few minutes. Then in one swipe Diego took the mouse and threw him in the air with his paw. After Katie freaked out and told me to not let Diego eat the mouse I took the cat inside.

Diego, wasn’t going to take that trash talk from that mouse that’s for sure. Even though he has gotten high on Ambien CR (that’s a story for another day), and eaten everything in sight, he is still one heck of a mouse hunter!

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{Resurrection Power}

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Easter is over and I’m sure by now your pastors are just recovering from the Easter hangover that occurs from preaching so much in a such a short time span, which by the way is really exhausting.

Easter is over, forgotten, and lost in the abyss of another good service, another good ham, and another slick outfit.

There are two times per year most everyone who has any sort of church background will go to Church. Christmas and Easter boast massive attendance and huge production values. The mindset is completely authentic and the motive is pure- we have them in the building so we might as well do the best we can and really hit a home run for Jesus.

The service starts the same as it has for almost two thousand years, ‘He is risen’ you respond, “he is risen indeed.” The last few years I have noticed that the response is a bit monotone. It sounds like a fifteen year old has just been asked to do the dishes and respond, “OHHHHKAAYYYY FINE” in their most ho-hum voice, “He is risen indeed.”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?! HE-meaning JESUS died-gone, lifeless, wiped out, killed, breathing no more, buried in a tomb-dead, is now ALIVE. He conquered death. Death has no more power. Brokenness has no more victory. Addictions are empty of their chains.

VICTORIOUS

There is no Ho-Humming that! He is risen. God looked down into our mess-your mess, and decided to step into it and get messy himself. He put himself in our shoes and took the penalty due us for our sin and he paid for it. AND THEN HE RESURRECTED!!!

We should be celebrating the resurrection last weekend, next weekend, the following weekend, the weekend after that…, are you seeing a trend? Resurrection should celebrated all the time.

Resurrection IS what will heal your addiction, abuse, shame, guilt, pain, brokenness, confusion. It is the answer every day and yet, we only celebrate it once per year.

When we are in Christ we are new creatures. We have been given new life. You have been given resurrection power. The same power that conquered the grave lives in you.

Yesterday I witnessed one of the most powerful things I have in a long time. I saw 5 children adopted by a family in our church. The story is miraculous, beautiful, and powerful. To be honest I cried at the adoption because I saw the power of the resurrection at work. Redemption was so sweet that day. Looking into the eyes of children that may not quite see it yet but they are in a story of resurrection.

Easter is today because the last time I checked, the tomb is empty. My friends, are we living in resurrection or are we living in death? I submit today and everyday that we live in the power of resurrection!

Let us celebrate resurrection by allowing Jesus to transform us, use us, and make us more like Him.

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{Dark Day}

Friday, April 6, 2012

Hopelessness, loss, hurt, loneliness, fear, brokenness, and confusion. That’s what this day brought 2,000 + years ago. It was not a good day. It was a very bad day. People who had been following Jesus for a few years watched him be arrested, beaten, and ultimately murdered on a Roman Cross.

Sometimes I feel like they did on that day. I’m supposed to believe that somehow “today” is supposed to be good. I’m supposed to see the light, but you know what? I don’t. I see dark. I feel hopeless and I’m confused. I’m confused because it doesn’t seem like much good exists.

How can good exist on a day when they crucified your friend, your master, your king, your GOD?

How can good exist when you get that phone call, hear that news, make that bad decision, lose your job, pray for that miracle that doesn’t happen? Why should we believe that there is somehow going to be good out of all this?

Friday was a dark and miserable day. We all have that day. We all have dark, miserable, and hopeless days. Sometimes that “day” lasts years.

Friday means death.

But we celebrate. We celebrate because though Friday brought death, we know Sunday is coming.

Sunday means resurrection.

Good can exist in the midst of the darkness because we know that Sunday means that death no longer has power, darkness no longer overshadows, and pain no longer rules.

Resurrection means life can exsist in the midst of death. Miracles happen out of the dust.

In the darkness we cling to the hope of a future resurrection.

Don’t stop praying for that person, job, place, career, hope, dream, broken relationship, and miracle because although it’s Friday in your life…hold on because in three days there’s Resurrection!

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{How to Get Your Small Group to Talk-Part Deux-A Solution}

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

As promised here is a continuation of Monday’s post. If you haven’t read that, you might want to jump over and read it before continuing because a lot of what was discussed is important for today.

As I asserted, students are really good at playing “the game” and just answering questions that skim the surface never diving below to the vortex of the tattered hearts. They are afraid. Afraid of judgment, rejection, and ultimately afraid that you will abandon them just like everyone else. So, they keep silent.

I don’t think they want to. I believe they truly desire to go deep, they are just scared. So, as I said last week the first step in that is building a relationship with them. If they KNOW you love them, then you can go deeper than you’d ever imagined with them.

So, you might be asking, what is this “solution” you talk about?

So, How do you get your small group to talk?

1. Begin with the end in mind. Always know WHERE you want to take your students before you ever come together to meet. You should know the punch line if you will. This means that you have prepared in advance to know where you will steer the conversation.

2. Learn the art of asking good questions! Seriously. If you know where you are taking them in advance you can think about the questions you will ask in advance. This gives you a clear path to take them where you believe God wants them to go.

3. Don’t just breeze over the questions. When someone answers, don’t let them off with just one word answers. Camp out on that particular person for a while asking follow up questions. The word “why” is a powerfully potent follow up question.

4. Use Bible Storying.

Ok, before you go crucifying me as a heretic hear me out. When I first heard about Bible storying I just about had a heart attack. I consider myself to have a good grip on the culture and to me, telling high schoolers a bunch of stories sounded like it would go over like a lead balloon.

But I was stuck in a place where I had to experience this “Bible Story” thing first hand. This is what our instructor said to use, “Did you know that 1/5 of the people on this planet are illiterate Chinese farmers? How would you teach them the Bible?”

“…Oh…by telling stories.” It got awkward for me because I realized what I fool I had been. So this is the basic outline of what we did:

1. The instruction told us the story of the Prodigal son in his own words. However, he almost nailed the story word for word what the scriptures taught.

3. Then he had us open our Bibles to Luke 15 and retell the story using the scripture being careful to highlight any parts that were missed.

4. Then he asked us a question. He said, “Who were the main characters represented here?” We said, “the older son, the younger son, the dad, and the servants.” Then we started answering. I was with a group of older pastors from my church so I was just sure it was going to be as deep as a kiddie pool, but again I was shocked. One by one we answered. One by one the instructor would drill into our hearts deeper and deeper as we started answering honestly and vulnerably about the state of our souls. In 15 minutes the entire group of men is crying.

I have never been to a Bible study where the hearts of men were touched by the Holy Spirit through scriptures. This was different. All of the sudden the scriptures were alive, real, and active in our hearts.

It all boiled down to the fact that as humans, we learn best by hearing stories. We emotionally connect with stories rather than somebody reading to us. We are compelled by stories. We need stories. This Bible story was so true to the Biblical text and actually was only concerned about what the text actually said to us rather than all the “deep” theological undertones of the text. While those are important, they don’t bring about life change.

We came back and implemented Bible storying into our Wednesday night High School House groups. The groups that are actively doing it, have seen radical transformation in their students lives as well as their own. Do you know what the most beautiful thing about telling a Bible story is? ANYONE CAN DO IT!

There are several rules that govern our groups to make sure we maximize the time They are:

1. No Cross talk: this means when someone is talking nobody else is.

2. No rescuing: I like to call this the skillet. We are so uncomfortable in someone else’s conviction that we will do anything we can to rescue them out of it. If you get a student to a place where they are realizing sin or they are “frying in the skillet” it’s ok to leave them there. Just let them sit in it and allow the Holy Spirit to heal them. Not you.

3. Only Use I/Me statements. This one is really interesting. You would be surprised how hard it is for people to actually articulate a truth about themselves. Even if it is, “Jesus unconditionally loves me” they will say, “Jesus loves US.”

4. The leader will press hard. This one is articulated at the beginning by saying something like, “I am going to ask hard questions and press into your life. You need to tell me when to stop.” This gives you the freedom to ask and them the freedom to stop you. You are then allowed to ask questions that might touch a sensitive place in their soul.

This has been profound for our groups and our leaders as far as getting students below the surface and actually talking about real life issues. I encourage you to give this a whirl. I really believe that it is a key way to begin drilling into the hearts of our students!

Please feel free to comment below with any questions or comments you might have about it =)

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{How to Get Your Small Group to Talk part 1-The problem}

Monday, April 2, 2012

This post is designed to help you lead your small group or one- on -one time with students more effectively. This post is going to focus on the problem and Wednesday’s post will focus more on the solution, however, knowing the problem is half the battle.

Caveat: While this post will specifically focus on high school students I do not believe this is an issue specific to that age group. This is an issue with all age groups.

There are two major problems leaders face when they are leading a small group. Either your group will not talk at all OR they will talk but will gives surface level “Jesus answers.” A Jesus answer is an answer that sounds really good and is actually correct but has absolutely zero personal connection.

People, and students in general have learned how to play the game really well. What game? Well, you see Church is actually a really easy club to be a part of. If you can learn the right phrases and the right set of words, maybe raise your hand at the appropriate chorus, and answer questions with the right answers then nobody will ever challenge you or your beliefs.

I say it’s a game because students have learned how to be REALLY good at it. They know exactly what to say to you when you want them to say it. You may ask something like, “How do you take what you’ve learned and put it into practice?” They might answer with something like, “I pray about it after I hear it and really let it sink into my heart and then I realize I need to read my Bible more.”

On the surface that actually sounds like a pretty good answer…the problem is however that it is completely void of personal conviction. They have learned to regurgitate information that sounds good without any personal touch.

Honestly, I can’t fault them for it. We have allowed it, maybe even created it. I think out of fear of the students reaction we are afraid to say the hard things. We don’t want to press in to their souls because we want to make sure they still like us at the end of it.

That’s a noble endeavor for sure. It takes a long time for a student to trust/like you. Why would you do anything to sabotage that?

I would argue that there are two goals we should strive for when dealing with students.

Goal 1: Build a relationship with them. The kind of relationship I am talking about is one where you invest your life into them. This is not a once a week 2 hour small group session type investment. They need to KNOW that you love them, and care for them, and most important that you are not going to abandon them like everyone else has. Like I said in my previous post, “They don’t care how much you know unless they know how much you care.”

Goal 2: If you develop this kind of relationship with your student(s) then your goal should be to see them grow in Christ from whatever stage they are currently to the next. If we love them unconditionally like Goal 1 says, then we should be willing to go to whatever lengths to see this occur.

Guess what? If goal 1 is your priority then goal 2 is no problem. Seriously, if a student KNOWS you love them and have their best in mind then they will not care if you say really hard things to them. Even if those hard things sting a little bit. When they know that you unconditionally love them then they are more than willing to hear what you have to say. The problem occurs when Goal 1 is skipped. When that happens, then they could care less what you have to say!

Takeaway:

1. For the next couple of days in your interaction with students listen for the “Jesus answers.” Try and pick out when the answer given is just a scratch below the surface but no more.

2. Process your relationship with your student(s). Have you invested in them enough personally for them to care what you have to say?

3. Evaluate whether or not YOU love them like they need you to. Adjust where necessary.