Defending My Absence

Well, it is quite apparent that I have fallen down on my blogging responsibilities.  Over the past month, there have been numerous things that normally generated a post.  But I have failed you, o faithful half dozen readers.  I didn't post my annual bemoaning of the Oscar nominations, ceremony, and demonstration of how Oscar voters hate the American moviegoing public.  Not a peep was heard when Star Wars: Episode I - George Lucas is a Menace came out in 3D.  And I have let several Hunger Games and Avengers trailers come out without my highly insightful comments.  What is wrong with me?  Have I given up writing?  Am I living in a cave?  Have "they" finally dragged me away and placed me in my much-deserved padded room.  Nope.  I could toss up the standard excuse of "I was busy" and leave it at that.  But, instead, I am going to make my excuse into an entire post.  Doesn't that sound exciting?  I bet the tingling of anticipation is nearly too much for you to handle.

In March of 2005, I was fortunate enough to be presented the opportunity to help launch a ministry with my friend, Charles Wise, and a couple of our other friends.  That ministry became Defender Ministries.  I had little idea what exactly that would entail.  But it was exciting and I knew it was the right place for me.  Over the last seven years, we have been on what could be called a roller coaster with Defender.  There have been moments of great victory.  And there have been moments of intense pain and betrayal.  Through it all, we just keep plugging along and try to do the right thing.  There are times we have made mistakes and overstretched our abilities or calling.  But, for the most part, we have done our best to help people.  And it has been amazing to see how our little ministry has been a part in changing hundreds of lives.

Originally, our ministry was founded to address the topic of internet pornography.  But it has expanded over time.  Building awareness wasn't enough.  Parents wanted to know how to fight the encroachment of this entity on their families.  So we started teaching on technology.  And then it expanded to cover issues of media, entertainment, purity, dating, brain chemistry.  It has been very strange to see the path we've taken.  Years ago, I remember sitting with Heather in our dingy little apartment and talking with some friends of ours.  They asked what I would be doing if I could do anything in the world without worry about money.  I said that I would develop curriculum and resources for families and churches.  (That was years before Defender ever started.)  So what do I do for Defender?  Well, I develop curriculum and resources for families, churches, and schools.

Along this path, I have been able to create a full curriculum for teenagers.  I built the complete structure for a line of curriculum for elementary students on tech safety.  And I've written about two dozen booklets on different topics in our arsenal.  It is always humbling and strange to see something that you've created in the hands of other people - or to know that a church in Nebraska or Missouri is running its youth weekend using your materials.  I love what I do.  It is challenging and trying.  There are times when we haven wondered if it was time to shutter the whole thing and move on.  But we never feel free to do that.  So we keep plugging along.

In May of 2009, my family moved up to Tallahassee so Heather could attend medical school at FSU.  I became a full-time stay at home dad.  And things for Defender went into what I call "stasis mode."  We hardly did anything for those two years.  There were a couple of school experiences, a few internet orders.  But the ministry didn't advance much.  It was difficult to see that.  I could see others of our sister ministries moving forward.  At times I got jealous and other times I got angry.  And there were many times I feared everything was done - that we had run our course.  Not to minimize what a person goes through, but it felt like watching someone I love in a coma.  It was still there, but it wasn't doing anything.  And I really didn't know if it was going to come back.

There were moments of hope in those two years.  One of the tough things about running a ministry is that you are dependent on other people.  You need people to spread the word of what you are doing, you need people to help you organize things, you need people to book you, you need people to support you financially.  Over the years, we have had people promise us the moon.  They believed in what we were doing.  They got on board.  They got excited.  We got excited and started planning based on that person's promises.  And then they disappeared.  This hasn't happened once or twice.  Honestly, we are probably up near twenty times this has occurred.  Each time, it is like getting your heart broken.  And each time you have to pick up the pieces and figure out how to get back on track.  Sometimes we have incurred expenses we would never have undertaken without assurances of support.  And then we are left with the bills and no help.  You start to get a little jaded.  And it is hard to trust people.

We have had people donate money for months and then quit.  There have been board members who got us to run an event and then stood there and watched it blow up in our face.  We have had supporters who left and basically stole what we were doing to start their own efforts.  During that two year time of stasis, we had a very painful experience with a person who funded us for months and promised us the world.  And then he just left.  It damaged the ministry deeply.  With each one of those, there is a time of examination where you wonder what you did wrong or what should have been different.  This time, it could have killed the ministry.  I had just moved back to Orlando and was able to give more time to working on things.  But the ministry was very weak at the time.  It was a dangerous time and the damage done really hurt.  I almost came to a place where I was sure the ministry was over.

In the last seven years, it has been very strange watching how the ministry grew.  It made no sense.  You would think that going to conferences and having displays or placing ads would be the greatest impetus for growth.  But it hasn't been that way.  Almost every time we saw the ministry have a jolt of opportunities or a growth of vision it has been because one person opened one tiny door.  On the other side there was a huge field of blessings waiting.  Connie Ricks was one of those people.  She opened the door for us to do college events - which became the majority of our events in the early years.   Then there was Eulie Brookins, who said, "Hey, you guys should develop a youth curriculum."  I still remember sitting with Charles at the (now defunct) O'Boys BBQ in Winter Park and creating the entire structure for what would be Operation Isaiah in an hour and a half.  Terri Alderman was another person who opened the door to working with schools, specifically International Community School.  That led us to design a ton of school based materials.

All of that was said to set the stage for this past fall.  The ministry was struggling to get back on its feet.  I was working on how to get things revved up, while helping with some other aspects of our parent ministry.  I got an email from Stuart Goudy from Little Rock, Arkansas.  He was the men's minister at Geyer Springs First Baptist Church.  The senior pastor there and I had worked together in Tampa about fifteen years ago.  Stuart wanted to know if we could do a men's conference for them that dealt with some of our pet issues - pornography, technology - and other aspects of being a man.  I went to our default answer when talking to people, "Never say no."  So I told him that we could.  Little did I know what exactly was going to come from that.

Over the next six month, we created a new event - Rewriting the Man Code.  It was a men's conference that was unlike anything we had done.  We've done conference type events before, but not one like this.  We incorporated videos and humorous stories and a more structured format.  And we took some of the ancient Knight Codes and brought them into the modern vernacular.  It was a good looking event - from the development perspective.  We thought it would be good for men.  But we had never even been able to test it at all.  Normally when we have taught conferences, we took lessons we have already taught and combined them into a full event.  This was the first time we started from the ground floor and intentionally created a conference - writing the lessons as the conference was built.  Yes, it included elements from what we had taught previously.  But it was all being rebuilt.

I was terrified.  A lot of the success of the events rested on my ability to be funny on demand.  I can be funny.  But a lot of it is accidental.  I've always been nervous about choreographed humor.  It is a hard thing to pull off.  You want it to sound organic.  Humor can be too rehearsed.  I have a reputation for being a funny speaker.  Being completely honest, some of the biggest laughs were from things I never even planned to say.  They just flowed from the lesson.  So I was very nervous about the execution of the whole thing.  And just to amp the stakes up, we had other churches hear about what we were crafting.  So they went ahead and booked us.  We were scheduled to do three of these weekends in a row.  We had Arkansas booked for February 17-19.  Then one Orlando church had us come to their men's retreat February 25-26 at a local camp setting.  Lastly we had another Orlando church schedule us for March 2-3.  If we failed, it would be in triplicate.

I felt crushed by the weight of what was being expected.  A lot of it I put on myself.  We had a very positive board meeting with our new board a few weeks before the conferences.  They seemed to be ready to help in any way possible.  But some of the hope was based on the men's conference.  In my own mind, the fate of the ministry hung on this.  We didn't have any other events booked.  If this succeeded, it could open the doors to a lot of things.  If it didn't, all the momentum would be gone.  I had trouble sleeping.  I was short tempered with everyone.  And I was constantly stressed.  I had to write the booklet, design the presentation, edit videos, organize the whole shebang.  Charles and I would create the lessons together, but I was the one who had to put it together.  Things fell into place and everything looked good.  But there still was the event itself.

We got out to Arkansas and spent a whole day rehearsing the stuff.  And as we worked on everything my voice started to give out.  I hadn't taught much in the last couple years.  The change in weather, the flight, the hours of talking all wore me out.  In getting ready to speak, I tore my throat up.  When Friday rolled around, I was rasping and my throat was killing me.  I tried to keep quiet in the interim and drink tons of water.  I was scared.  When it finally came time to start things, I stepped up on stage and started.  The guys didn't respond right away.  They were a little hesitant.  Then we kicked it to the worship band and they played.  It was supposed to be a fifteen minute set and it became a 45 minute one.  It was great, but it cut into the schedule we had established - one that we already felt was very constrictive.  When I stepped back up on stage, I was a wreck.

But the guys started to defrost. The singing had helped.  And when I started in with my intro to the conference, I saw the first cracks appear.  The thawing continued until the guys were completely invested by the beginning of the second session.  The rest of the weekend was great.  My voice was horrible at best.  But everything worked out well.  The feedback was incredible.  The guys were so encouraging and we saw some great stuff happen with these men.  We got home and tried to recuperate before the next weekend.  My voice still was pretty bad rolling into the second event.  Charles lost his voice completely during that one, partly due to the fact he had been carrying some of my load when my voice was out.  The event was marred by technical issues, but it ended up just as positive as the first weekend.  Then the third weekend happened.  By then, both of our voices were back and strong.  The church was a very conservative one - different from the first two in tone and approach.  The guys there, though, were the most invested from the outset.  And it ended up being the best overall of them all.

So that is what I've been up to in the last month.  Now we are sitting here, figuring out the next steps.  We have some very high quality things to offer - things for the whole family.  The men's conference was a raging success at all three places with three different types of settings and churches.  We already have other churches wanting to book us for them.  We have also booked a youth weekend for later this Spring. The throat issues have been resolved, but they also were a reminder of the fact we need some sort of backup system of speakers.  That means training some people and expanding the ministry - which we have never done in seven years.  It is all a little hard to grasp.  A few months ago I felt things were about to shut down and now we are talking about hiring other staff.  A lot of it is due to an event that we hadn't even conceived that was brought up by a guy we had never met seven months ago.  And it doesn't stop there.  Every one of those churches wanted to know if we could come up with a follow up conference - one that was for both spouses.  They have asked if we could develop a Bible study that will follow the conference - one that would take place over the next year.  There is so much work to do.

The thing that I can't even begin to wrap my mind around is that I'm even involved in this.  I know myself.  To steal from Isaac Hunter, our pastor at Summit Church, "I know myself.  I know my mind and my heart.  I know what I'm thinking when no one can see me.  I have NO business being involved in this in any way."  I shouldn't be teaching anyone about being a dad or a husband.  If you've read this blog at all, you should be vigorously nodding your head right now.  In fact, most of the sessions in the conference begin with me telling a humorous story about how I've failed as a father and a husband.  The Apostle Paul says that we should follow his example.  I say to see what I'm doing and do the opposite.  Again stealing, this time from demotivators.com, my life exists to serve as a warning sign to others.  But this ministry works.  Most of my contribution is showing all the dumb stuff I do, all my failures.  Why in the world should anyone listen to that?  For some reason, God thinks I should be involved in this.  And it is just so surreal to see things happening other places because of that.  Over the last three weeks, I watched around 300 men examine how they were measuring up as dads and husbands and friends.  I saw some guys take extreme steps in repairing those relationships.  It is just so cool to see that.

So I hope to get back on track with my leisure writing.  I've missed it.  And I think it is important for me to be able to share the cool things (and the stupid things) going on.  We all need reminders from other people about important stuff.  God is still moving.  Sometimes things have to get really dark before the good stuff happens.  No matter how dimensions Episode I is released in, it is still going to stink.  God can use you, even if you are the dullest and most idiotic tool in the box.  I know I've needed those reminders and appreciate it when others share their struggles and victories.  So I hope this can be that kind of inspiration for you.  See?  I told you.  Longest. Excuse. Ever.

Libya

I've totally fallen down on the job.  I haven't posted on either of my blogs in a month.  Many apologies to my legion of followers.  I know that you must have been heartbroken, left to hopelessly surf the web for some kind of inferior replacement for my amazing blog.  I have just sat by and allowed important things to occur without my witty analysis - the Super Bowl's newest champion, the Oscars' newest mistakes, Charlie Sheen's newest implosion, Rob Bell's newest heretical comments.  Books have been read and not critiqued.  Movies have been seen and not reviewed.  What in the world is going on?

It can really be summed up in one word: Libya.

I don't know if other writers struggle with this, but I know I do.  If I have a strong idea of something I want to write about and then DON'T write about it, I find it hard to move on to something else.  Call it mental constipation.  There is a blockage and other ideas can't escape until that item is dislodged.  (See, those are the insightful deep comments you've been missing so badly.)  For me, the culprit was Libya.  For anyone who has not been under a rock for the last few weeks, there has been must unrest over in North Africa and the Middle East recently.  Regimes were toppled in Tunisia and Egypt.  Protests were held in numerous other countries.  And the movement spread to Libya.  Protest began there, spurred on the by the success in the neighboring lands.  But, that was when things began to go poorly.

Libya isn't run by a person who wants to keep the peace.  Some would argue Libya is not run by a person at all, but rather by a terrifying creature.  Many younger people forget (or have never learned) about Muammar Gaddafi.  [We are going with that spelling, since that is what wikipedia used.  And we all know that is always right.  I remember his name had a Q in it when I was a kid.]  Gaddafi has ruled Libya for over 40 years now.  So he is kind of just a fixture over there.  And in recent years, the country has seemed pretty mild.  But, as a child of the 1980s, I remember a far different story.

I remember the days when President Reagan would rail against this "mad dog of the Middle East."  He was one of the biggest villains in the world.  He funded terrorist groups all over the world.  These groups hijacked a TWA flight.  They conducted attacks at airpots in Vienna and Rome, killing 19 people and wounding 140.  They bombed a dance club in Berlin.  His people shot at US fighter jets enforcing the "no fly zone" over Libya.  There were numerous skirmishes with the US and Libyan forces.  The US conducted an air strike on Libyan ground weapons.  And then, even after that, Libyans were responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.  

But, as time has passed, Gaddafi seemed to mellow and we needed their oil.  So the horrific history kind of was forgotten and we worried about other terrorists and threats.  The US began trading with Libya and we just forgot about them.  Now, though, no one is forgetting about them.  The would-be revolution in Libya was not a peaceful process like in Egypt.  Instead, it has been bloody and horrific.  Thousands of people have died.  Tens of thousands have fled their homes, trying to find some kind of safety somewhere - even if it means the desert.  It has been horrible to read about these things.  Soldiers randomly firing into crowds, robbing people fleeing the country.  Helicopters and planes bombing protests.  And then we begin to hear Gaddafi's speeches again - with his hatred of America and his paranoid rants about who is behind the unrest.  Flashbacks to 1985.

I am not one to spend a lot of time watching the news.  I keep up with things.  But I am not a newshound.  Part of the reason is that I just can only take so much negativity - which is what modern news is all about.  To get viewers, readers, and subscribers our modern news outlets play up the sensational and gruesome.  It isn't so much analysis they offer as hysterical overanalysis.  To become a well-known journalist of any sort, you must take a wild position.  You must be shocking.  We see this on the sports outlets so much - where people make zany statements because they know that it will get picked up by the national media.  Local news outlets do the same thing, playing up weird stories to get national web traffic.  So I avoid the news.  It isn't like me to get into stories like this.  (And it has been very frustrating trying to find "real coverage" - I have had to resort to the BBC.)

The reason for my interest is also the reason that I haven't been able to write about it.  I'm going to do my best to express myself while being careful to not say too much.  A few months back, a gentleman came to us at Defender Ministries.  He really believes in what we are doing and wants to help us to get to the next level with everything.  And that doesn't mean he is going to give us $100 and pray.  He is personally going to underwrite some very big projects.  We are in the process of looking at opening a pastor/missionary retreat center in the NC/TN area.  We are finishing up a new line of curriculum for grades 1-5 on technology safety.  We need to update our current student and adult lines of lessons.  And this person is going to make this happen - and more than that.  It has been an answer to prayer.  But we haven't been able to talk a lot about all of it because he wants to remain anonymous and because things are still in negotiations.

One element of this person's business involves contracts with . . . Libya.  He is - or should I say was - in the middle of some new work over there when the trouble in Egypt started.  That put them into a "wait and see" mode.  They wanted to make sure that nothing spread into Libya.  And then it did.  Some of the company's negotiators were in Tripoli when things started to go crazy.  They got out okay, but it was scary for everyone involved.  So, now, everything is on hold until things get worked out.  And, as the news is showing, it doesn't look like things are going to get worked out any time soon.

I've never been shy to paint myself in a bad light on this blog.  I try to be transparent and that means that I voice my weaknesses too.  Well, I have been wrestling for a while now on how to handle this whole situation.  At first, I found myself actually hoping Gaddafi was able to fix the problem quickly and move on - so the contracts could be signed.  Then I started thinking about what I was doing.  I was rooting for a mad man?  The more I read, the more I realized that the whole time we thought Libya had calmed down, it hadn't.  He was always oppressing his people.  He was always a maniac.  We just didn't care because it didn't hurt us.  He stopped blowing up European airports, stopped shooting at our planes, didn't cut off the oil supply.  So we turned our back.  Like so many things in Africa, we didn't care.  It isn't until someone shined a spotlight on the situation that we realized how bad it was. 

This isn't the first time this has happened.  There were the famines in Ethiopia and Somalia in the 80s, which we then forgot about until the military incursions into Somalia in the 1990s.  There were the atrocities in the Darfur region that we didn't even know about until George Clooney made us look.  And we still don't think about the fact that there are millions there without drinkable water, unless Matt Damon has a new movie coming out and is able to work that into an interview.  I know I'm guilty of this.  I'm more worried about arguing if Firefly was cancelled too early (it was) or if Hallie Stanfield should be cast as Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games (she should) or who is right and wrong in the NFL labor dispute (both sides).  I don't think about starving and thirsty people in Africa.  I don't think about mistreated citizens in Libya.

And when I first was confronted with it, my first thought was, "I hope this gets fixed so the contracts get signed and we get our money."  I know that makes me sound horrible - and it made me feel worse.  Over the subsequent weeks, I have really had to think about my heart and pray about how I should even pray. I feel I have gotten to the point where I have mostly put my own desires on hold so I can focus on the people there.  I force myself to read news stories so that I can remember what they are dealing with.  If too many days go by without reading something, I start to drift back to my own stuff again.  But it is hard.

On one hand, I think about the people over there.  I think about this maniac in charge, who seems hell bent on staying in power until, as his son said, "the last bullet it fired."  And that breaks my heart.  But then on the other hand, I think about the number of people here who we could help.  I think about the kids that are getting caught up into the trap of pornography.  I think about the marriages that are falling apart, the ministers who are getting fired, the missionaries who are losing their funding.  And, yes, I think about my own bills and needs and how our move to Orlando in June gets closer and closer.  And there is this constant wrestling.  We are told in the Bible numerous times to put others before ourselves, to love others.  I want to do that.  But I am here, and they are far away.

I don't know the answer.  I know that sometimes writing things down helps me to get a handle on them.  I have also found over the years that if I am wrestling with something, there is a good chance a lot of other people are as well.  So I finally felt I had to write this.  It is my biggest struggle right now - warring over my heart and my emotions, fighting in prayer for the people of Libya, desperately longing to develop the right mindset that sees people the way God sees them, and hoping that financial and personal and ministry and expansion issues work out as well.  I truly don't want to just see myself and my needs.  I don't want to have a view of the world that only sees people out of our borders when they interfere with my life or make my gas prices go up.  It is uncomfortable, taking on the weight of problems of people you don't know.  We have enough to worry about with people we DO know.  I have friends and family who don't have jobs and who have severe health issues.  And it is easy to just hide my head in the sand, watch the Food Network, and ignore all the cries around me.  But I know that isn't right.  I'm still trying to figure it all out.