Dean Inserra

Today is the last full day of camp and I am whipped. I was out with the camp staff at Waffle House last night till about 1:00am. It is funny because the camp staff is always surprised when I spend time with them. Apparently the camp speaker usually is too big of a deal to spend time with anyone while he is here. Pa-lease. Who do these dudes think they are? Seriously. Along that line…another thing that drives me nuts is a reserved parking spot marked “Pastor” right in front of the door to the Church. Walk across the freakin parking lot with everyone else dude. Doug Dortch always parked about 3 blocks away from the Church on Sundays and that made an impression on me. These entitled dudes that think they are some sort of celebrity or big deal need to realize that outside of the Christian sub-culture…nobody knows or cares who you are.

I enjoy hearing the camp staff’s stories and dreams. They come from all different colleges across the southeast. It was crazy how many of the ladies want to be stay-at-home moms. I thought that was great.

Last night was huge. The camp staff asks that I do some sort of invitation at the nightly worship service. We had several kids respond to Christ last night!

I also did a different kind of invitation where I asked if anyone in the room was being called into the ministry. It was a really powerful moment as a large amount of students and college camp staff stood up. We had the different Youth Pastors pray over those who stood up and it was probably my favorite moment of this camp (besides the kids making decisions for Christ). I was 16 years old at FCA camp when I stood up to a similar invitation for full-time ministry. If you would have told me that 11 years later I would be the Pastor of a Church in my hometown….unreal. To God be the Glory!

We close out tonight and then I will head home, spend time with Krissie and Tommy, and get ready for Sunday night at the Well. The college kids will be back in town soon! I can’t wait.

It is time to impact a city and a campus.

Camp has been awesome. I am really enjoying this experience.

Last night I talked about clothing ourselves in Christ and getting rid of the dirty laundry that Christ has already cleaned. The kids are truly responding and I believe they are getting what the Gospel is all about.

I take speaking at youth camps very seriously because I cannot deny the statistics when it comes to students heading out the front door of the Church and saying a big old “peace out” as soon as they graduate. The only solutions many Churches have is just to move the graduate into a college aged Sunday School class and expect him to attend simply because he has been at the Church his whole life.

What is the problem?

1. The false assurance of “asking Jesus into your heart.” I am still not sure what that whole heart thing really means…but there are many teens today that think they are fine because they repeated the words after their vacation bible school leader when they were 7 years old. I am not saying there are many people across the world that sincerely prayed those words and still follow Christ to this day….but we must clearly communicate the Gospel and not a repeat after me prayer.

2. The local Church is always 25 years (in some places 200 years) behind the rest of the world. Many teens see Church as the place they have to go to make mom and grandma happy and count down the minutes till the guy with the 1960 tie on finishes the song at the end where everyone has to hold hands and pretend to have everything peachy in their lives. Teens aren’t buying it…they don’t want to be there. Every Church is one generation away from dying. People need to get a clue on that.

Parents: Be more concerned with life change than you are mere attendance. Your kid doesn’t like your Church? Help him find one where he can be challenged and connected.

I have been praying for all of the Youth Pastors at this camp. In a world where the main concern of many Pastors and leaders is how many teens are in Sunday School…these folks have a lot of pressure on them. I encourage them by giving them this advice:

1. Develop a strong relationship with your Senior Pastor. When I was a Youth Pastor I had a strong relationship with mine. It is crucial. We spent a lot of time together and it kept me going. Share your passion, struggles, headaches, pain in the butt parents who don’t get it,…keep him in the loop. He can be your strongest support, or biggest trouble. You are under his authority…so if your visions do not line up it is time for you to hit the road.

2. You are the Youth Pastor: Do not budge when it comes to what God has called you to do. It doesn’t matter how long so and so has been there, how much money they give, or that the building is named after their 3rd cousin…your job is to reach teens. Do not be intimidated by the gossip society that thinks their kid is the 4th member of the trinity and live their lives around Church drama. Surround yourself with people that you trust and get awesome interns who would go to war for you if you asked them. Selling out to the power circles will make you an ineffective puppet. Every Youth Pastor will get chewed up and spit out when they don’t bow down to the power…expect it and keep going strong.

3. Love the kids: That is the greatest part of what you do. Living life with the teens as they develop their own personal beliefs. They want to be challenged and they want you to know them. Have them over to your house, spend your budget on taking them to lunch, and let them know that they are the greatest thing about what you do.

4. Find some parents who get what you are about and embrace the vision. These are folks who see the big picture and get that ministry is not about activities and keeping churched kids busy.

One of my greatest joys is being around college students who I once had in youth ministry. They are living for Christ and attempting to live the Gospel in our city. Youth ministry is great and Youth Pastors must be prayed for and encouraged.

Okay…well, I am not actually camping. I have a personal life principle: why sleep outside when you can sleep inside? I hold very strongly to that conviction.

We are in day 2 at Student Ministry Essentials Summer Camp in Forsyth, Georiga and this is the slowest Internet connection I have ever had in my life. We started off with a bang last night looking at Galatians Chapter 1 and defining the true Gospel…that Christ came to die in the place of sinners. Poker and the gang do an awesome job of putting on a camp. The theme is High Def  which has been cool.

I am convinced that more than pool parties and pizza that students ministries need to focus on the Gospel. It is amazing how many Churched kids have no freakin clue.

We have a good crew of workers here from the Well. They are holding down the fort.

I am going through Margaret Feinberg’s new book The Sacred Echo. I am really enjoying her honest approach to prayer. I would love to see some of our peeps at the Well go through this book.

Tonight I am talking about being clothed in Jesus Christ to the campers…please pray for us! Great things are already taking place.

Krissie, Tommy, and I went to the Atlanta aquarium today. It was awesome. Tommy was blown away. The most a.d.d. 2 year old of all-time can sit in front of a fish tank for hours.

Yesterday was as good as it gets at the Well. We had our baptism celebration at Maclay Gardens and it was a special day. The Lord truly uses baptism services to remind all of us exactly what we are called to do. I strongly encourage you to watch an awesome video that the Doc put together and that we played at our gathering last night at Godby High School. The video is powerful and gives a strong display of what we are all about.

We only have two more weeks of our Summer Vacation series. During this series we have tried to cover the primary areas of importance in the Christian life. Rachel Boeselt will be back with us this Sunday. The Boeselt’s where back in Texas this past weekend to be with their family after Jeremy’s grandfather passed away. Please pray for their family.

Natalie Fady did a great job leading for us last night. That was a pretty big responsibility for a 20-year old, college student to take on. She was studying for a biology test on Wednesday when we called her after hearing the news about the Boeselts going to Texas. Good job Fady.

The Well on the road! Krissie, Tommy and I are leaving today to head to Forsyth, Georgia….where I will be speaking at Student Ministry Essentials Camp all week. My good friend Poker Boyd runs the camp and always does a good job. Several of our college students are already up there getting ready to be small group and rec leaders for the week. Our sound team is also there in full force with the Well’s trailer. It really is the Well on the road.

Please pray for me. I don’t get the chance to speak to high school students very often anymore and the old cool factor of being a youth pastor has probably passed me by. Its all good and you can be sure that there will be some serious Gospel preached.

It used to drive me nuts as a youth pastor that the standard high school students measured a camp or guest speaker by was whether or not they were funny. It should be no shock that so many churched high school students say peace out as soon as they graduate. Churches are more concerned about if the teens were in Sunday School (is it really any less cheezy to call it Sunday Morning Bible Study…Lifeway people?) than they are real life change taking place. I refused to play that game as a youth pastor. More on that this week.

On the last night of camp I am going to preach a message called, Why you cry with your three best friends on the last night of camp, confess all your secrets, break up with your boyfriend and then go back to your same old life when you get home and it is so predictable and pathetic.

Please pray for our team! I will give daily updates. I love what I get to do!

We took Tommy down to Gainesville last month for what was his regular appointment at Shands Hospital.

It is a tradition that we will be waiting well over a hour past our scheduled appointment. That is forever when you are trying to entertain a 100mph two year old that inherited the a.d.d. of his daddy. Thankfully there was another little boy there waiting for his appointment. He and Tommy kept each other busy by playing together the whole time. They were instant buddies.

The boy was black.

I couldn’t help but think of the innocence of their play-time together. It was awesome.

 I leaned over to Krissie and said “little do they know that this is not normal in our society.”

Although sin is something the infects us from our birth, racism is a learned behavior. It is passed down from generation to generation…sometimes without the parents, grandparents, or whoever even knowing it.

Galatians 3:28 says,
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Race issues will linger as long as we continue to make a distinction. We do this without even knowing it:

Do you always cheer for the “white wide receiver” in football or the white boy who can shoot 3s in basketball?

Do you automatically cheer for a black person on American Idol?

These are racist things we do without even meaning too….it is in our hearts and we also have learned this attitude and behavior.

What would you do if your son or daughter, sister or brother… started dating someone from a different race? Your answer shows what is really in your heart.

Jesse Jackson, American-Hispanics for so and so organizations, the NAACP, etc…hurt this cause for unity more than they realize. A major issue is that most people are terrified to have discussions about race because it has become such a politically correct, sensitive issue that you yourself can be labeled racist just for asking difficult questions. I was scared to even address the issue. There is also some major double standards out there that make people lose all credibility in race discussions….the use of the “N-Word” is a perfect example of that.

What would a world look like where Tommy never knew that looking different than somebody else actually mattered? I see that world as one that truly understands the Gospel and the many things that Christ’s death and ressurection accomplished and the walls it tore down.

Past experience of improper treatment, discrimination, etc, due to race is not an excuse to remain bitter towards another race. Christians should think and act bigger than that due to the extent that we have been forgiven by Christ.

Some Suggestions:

-Admit that racism is a SIN! There is no other way around it. It is a Sin. 

-Don’t always look for race issues…give people the benefit of the doubt.

-Make friends with people from different races…ask them questions about race.

-Allow honest discussion without throwing the race card on the table. People are terrified of this. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Mark Lamont Hill have done so much damage here.

-Apologize! Admit to times when you have been wrong in this area.

-Do not let the realities of hate in our culture be an excuse. Christians should change the culture..not let it hinder us from moving forward.

-Those of us who are parents of young kids…we have the opportunity to raise children to think differently than any other generation in American history about race. Make no distinction between races in conversations with your children….because in terms of the Gospel….there is no such thing as Jew and Greek! What an awesome truth!