RECENT BLOG POSTS

The “C” in YMCA

Posted on: 04/17/10 8:41 AM | by Jonathan McKee

Do you know what the “C” stands for in YMCA?

I don’t recall the Village People mentioning it in their song.

This weekend I’m getting a glimpse of the “C” in action at the YMCA of the Ozarks here in MO. The YMCA networked with a group of churches for the weekend to host an event called Faithfest. They have brought me in to share the Gospel. I speak twice Saturday and once Sunday.

The weekend has been great so far, despite my battle with sickness and lack of sleep. But that’s my fault. I’ve been full throttle for a few weeks now without taking a day off. Unfortunately, my body is already rebelling (soar throat… feeling sick).

Friday morning when the alarm went off at 3:45AM… it was hard to get up. I jumped on a plane to Denver. Two hours later I hustled to my St. Louis connection… another 2 hours, and I landed in St. Louis. I actually dozed off a few times in the plane– uncommon for me. I usually can’t sleep on a plane.

I hopped in a rental car (not a SmartCar this time!) and grabbed a quick bite before heading to the YMCA of the Ozarks. By the time I arrived… I was beat. Luckily, the workers at the Y were warm and hospitable. They gave me a nice room overlooking the lake. Pretty country.

I literally went to bed at 8PM (which was 6PM my time), and I was out for the count!!! Next thing I know, the alarm went off at 8AM. Wow. 12 hrs in bed. I used every minute of it!

Do you think this is why God told us to take a day of rest. (Stop sinning Jonathan… take a freaking day off!)

The good news… I feel 100% better this morning.

Enough about Jonathan. Back to the YMCA. The acronym stands for Young Men’s Christian Association.

The people here at the “Y” are very cool. It seems that they want to bring the “Why” back into the “Y.” I can tell it’s a struggle in a world that wants to be politically correct. Let’s face it. For decades now, a lot of the people at the “Y” haven’t focused much on the C. So I credit these guys for being intentional about focusing on the C.

In a country where the word “Christian” is often a repellant, I hope that His believers can really bring a focus back on Christ. Jesus was amazing. His love, compassion and grace attracted crowds of thousands. The worse the sinner, the more they wanted to see Jesus. Even Samaritans– the ones who had seemed to sway so far from the truth– were amazed by his message of love and grace.

Balance that with the fact that Jesus never budged on his theology. The same Jesus that dined with sinners, and showed mercy to pagans and adulterers… that same Jesus wasn’t afraid to say, “I’m the only way.” (John 14:6) Or, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13, 14)

Far from politically correct.

The very Jesus that “didn’t come into the world to condemn the world,” (John 3:17) wasn’t afraid to tell people the truth.

He loved them that much.

Props (hat tip) to YMCA of the Ozarks.

If you’re reading this blog Saturday. Pray for me at 7PM Missouri time as I share the Gospel. If you’re reading this Sunday morning, pray for me at around 10 AM when I’ll be talking about living a life of faith in Jesus “day to day.” If you’re reading this after then… pray anyway. God is timeless. 🙂

Posted in Faith, Travel | | Leave A Comment

The Pre-airbrushed Britney Spears

Posted on: 04/14/10 9:54 PM | by Jonathan McKee

In a few weeks my wife is having all the middle school girls from our church over to our house for a fun night called “Girl Talk,” engaging in conversation with them about self esteem, modesty, and purity. Today we were looking at some of the content we’ll be using… and I came across a great resource to talk to girls about their body image.

We’re going to show the girls these BEFORE and AFTER pictures of Britney Spears, showing the pre-airbrushed images from a fashion shoot alongside the digitally-altered ones, so the girls can see the difference.

I know that Britney isn’t much of a role model, but I’ve gotta give her points for releasing these photos. Pretty cool. She actually released them to show young girls her imperfections and show them the difference that digital alterations make.

Click here for the entire article.

(ht to Anastasia)

Posted in Entertainment Media, Sexuality, Youth Culture | | Leave A Comment

OverSexualized

Posted on: 04/12/10 4:27 PM | by Jonathan McKee

This past weekend I had the opportunity to preach about youth culture, then do a parenting workshop in a church in South Bend, IN. On the drive to the workshop, I decided to tune into a popular radio station to hear a sampling of what our kids were hearing, wondering if I’d hear many of the “Hot 100” songs I’d been researching. After all, I know the top 10 songs kids were downloading. iTune shows us that at a glance. But I was curious what the radio was playing.

This particular radio station seemed like it was playing right from the “Top 10” charts, because in the hour that I had the radio on, I heard almost every song that I had been studying.

After about an hour of listening… I felt like I needed to take a shower and wash off the filth.

Seriously. I study this stuff all the time, and yet I still am amazed how potent today’s music is with oversexualized lyrics. (Is oversexualized even a word? Nope. I just pasted it into WORD and it gave me a little red wiggly line.)

Let me give you a glimpse at some of these top songs I heard.

TELEPHONE
The first song I heard was the joint venture from Beyonce and Lady Gaga, Telephone. The song itself isn’t necessarily profane. It just comes from the perspective of a girl in a club who is getting a call from a recent boyfriend. Gotta love the mentality– the lyrics give you a glimpse:

Just a second; it’s my favorite song they’re gonna play and I cannot text you with a drink in my hand, eh?

The crazy thing about this song is the video, which is still number one on iTunes today. The 30-second preview on iTunes says it all. You’ll be amazed. I won’t go into too much more detail, I’ve already devoted an entire blog article to this video.

I actually talked about this video and showed some screenshots when I preached on Sunday. A teenager attending who liked Lady Gaga commented, “You shouldn’t pick on Lady Gaga. She’s Catholic.”

lol

In my parent seminar I couldn’t pass that comment up. After all, if I found out that the corner drug dealer was Baptist… does that make what he’s doing okay? Call him what you want. He’s selling our kids garbage.

The music industry is doing the same thing. And medical professionals are becoming very concerned with this kind of content. I devoted an entire Youth Culture Window article to this subject.

RUDE BOY
The second song I heard is the number one song on Billboard’s Hot 100, Rude Boy, by Rihanna, a song with the first line, “Come here rude boy, boy; can you get it up?”

It doesn’t get any better. Here’s a snippet:

Tonight I’ma let you be the captain
Tonight I’ma let you do your thing, yeah
Tonight I’ma let you be a rider
Giddy-up, giddy-up, giddy-up babe
Tonight I’ma let it be fire
Tonight I’ma let you take me higher
Tonight, baby, we could get it on, yeah, we could get it on, yeah

Do you like it?
Boy, I want, want, want whatchu want, want, want
Give it to me, baby like boom, boom, boom
What I want, want, want is what you want, want, want
Nah nah-ah

Yes, that’s the number one song on Billboard’s Hot 100 right now, #4 on iTunes.

You gotta love what many of these songs are doing today. They are slippin under the radar and being deemed “clean” by the world’s standards (I addressed that fact in more detail in this blog about the Black Eyed Peas), when the lyrics are anything but clean. Yes, Rude Boy doesn’t have cuss words. So it’s clean, right? Let’s be honest. The whole song is about hooking up. But, hey… as long as they don’t cuss, right?

BEDROCK
The next song I heard was Bed Rock by a whole mess of young rappers including Lil Wayne, Drake, and a bunch of other thugs. I don’t need to say much about a song with the chorus, “Baby, my room is the G spot, call me Mr. Flintstone, I can make your bed rock.” Then they repeat that four more times, “I can make your bed rock.”

The song also features young female rapper, Nicki Minaj, with this opening line:

Okay, I get it, let me think, I guess it’s my turn
Maybe it’s time to put this p***y on your sideburns

In the “clean” version (as they call it) and the edited video, the crass word for her genitalia is edited, you just see her grab her crotch as she mouths it.

Nice to have yet another good role model for our young women, don’t you agree?

OMG
The next song I heard was Usher’s new song OMG, the same one he performed on American Idol two weeks ago. Is it just me, or is American Idol allowing racier stuff recently? It used to be a little bit safer for family viewing, but the last couple years have seemed to digress in terms of the ‘role models’ that perform and coach on the show. Yes, these “artists” are talented. But are they role models? Does America even know the difference?

Usher’s song OMG is a joke. Let me be clear. Usher is incredibly talented and some of his songs are really good artistically (although very often bankrupt morally- more on that here). But this song is really weak. The lyrics sound like a teenager verbalizing his first visit to a night club. A snippet:

i fell in love with shawty when i seen her on the dance floor
she was dancing sexy, pop, pop, popping, dropping, dropping low
never ever has a lady hit me on the first sight
this was something special ; this was just like dynamite
honey got a booty like pow, pow, pow
honey got some boobies like wow, oh wow

Need I say more?

FINAL THOUGHTS
Let’s just say that my drive was pretty depressing. As other songs played (Kesha talking about guys wanting to “touch her junk”), I realized how hard it must be for our young people who listen to this stuff all the time.

It doesn’t require studies like these (students listening to a lot of music with sexual messages were almost twice as likely to start having intercourse within the following two years…) to tell you what effect listening to this content regularly would have on teenagers.

So what can we do?

That’s what I spent two hours talking about on Sunday at my parenting workshop. It’s a balance of rules and a relationship. Yes, rules are necessary. It’s okay to say, “This doesn’t belong on your iPod.” But rules without a relationship lead to rebellion. For many parents, building a relationship with their kids is where this begins.

Have ongoing conversations about music and media with your teenagers. Don’t let the world set the standard for you!

Wow! What a weekend.

Posted in Entertainment Media, Jonathan's Rant, Music, Parenting, Sexuality, Youth Culture | | Leave A Comment

a Smart Car and a Parent Seminar

Posted on: 04/10/10 4:31 PM | by Jonathan McKee

Smart Car?

Yeah… right. By whose definition? What a piece of junk!

More on that in a minute.

This weekend I flew into Chicago, rented a Smart Car and drove to Indiana to do a parent seminar. I love teaching parent seminars– they are one of my favorite workshops I teach right now. I’ve been working for two days on the youth culture section of this particular seminar, gathering and summarizing some of my current research. Really fascinating stuff. I can’t wait to share it with this particular group of parents.

This church is one where I did my CONNECT seminar last year. At the end of that workshop, the youth pastor who brought me out was kicking himself. He said, “I should have booked you for another day to share this youth culture section with our parents.” Here it is a year later and we’re making it happen (better late than never). I preach tomorrow in the main services, giving them tidbits of youth culture as I preach out of Acts 17. Then we’re doing a lunch and parents seminar to follow. Fun stuff!

Back to the so-called “Smart Car.”

First… some of you might wonder why I rent a car in Chicago to teach in Indiana. I’ll provide you with the quick version. It’s because I can drive to South Bend, Indiana in the same amount of time that it takes to wait for a layover flight to Indiana (no directs from Sacramento), and I’d rather not chance another delayed or cancelled flight (as you all probably remember, CAN HAPPEN) . Plus… flying into Chicago gives me a chance to stop by Giordano’s Pizza! 🙂

So anyway… I was online choosing my rental car a while back, and a Smart Car was an option. I thought to myself, “I’m smart. I might as well get a car to match my superior wit!”

Wow! Was I wrong (about the car… not my intelligence!)

This thing is a piece of junk!

First, when you press on the gas, it doesn’t go… it thinks about going, then accelerates a couple seconds later. Then, when it switches gears (it’s an automatic) it dips and lunges as if a teenager is driving a stick for his/her first time.

It gets worse. The air conditioning works about as well as a match in a windstorm. This particular car either has an electrical short (the car is brand new, mind you) that causes it to start and stop at will, or the “not-so-smart-car” has a temperature gage that misreads the inside air temp and decides for itself whether it should turn on, even though I have it on MAX and set cold enough to make any Minnesota resident shiver.

Then I took this stupid car on the freeway. Huge mistake! I felt like I was in the go-cart I made with my dad when I was 12-years-old (although I think my go-cart had bigger wheels, come to think of it). The car shook and swerved with every imperfect surface. I swear, I felt every pebble… every subtle dip… I think I even felt it when I ran over an insect. A gust of wind came along and shot me over 4 lanes. I was terrified to pass any cars because I thought I’d be whipped into them at any given moment. This resulted in a very tiring two hour drive because I was gripping the wheel for dear life the entire time!

Were there any positives about this car at all, some of you might be wondering?

Hmmmmm. Let me think.

Hold on…. I’m still thinking.

Hmmmmm.

Oh… yes… one thing. It has an iPod jack in the glove box! That’s pretty cool, except that my iPod is bigger than the entire Smart Car. I can actually put the Smart Car in my iPod’s glove box.

Sigh.

That’s it. The rest of the car is worthless. That’s my two cents.

I better go. I gotta run through my message for tomorrow morning.

Posted in Jonathan's Rant, Personal, Travel | | Leave A Comment

How to Respond to the “Day of Silence”

Posted on: 04/8/10 8:56 AM | by Jonathan McKee

Friday, April 16th, is the Day of Silence, a day where hundreds of thousands of teenagers and young adults will take a vow of silence to encourage their friends to address the problem of anti-gay, anti-lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender behavior.

Christians always get wacky on how to handle this day. They’ve even come up with their own day in response… the Day of Truth.

Sigh.

If you want my two cents, check out my blog from last year. I state my opinion on the matter clearly.

As for this year? I’ve gotta link my buddy Walt Mueller’s resource on the subject. Walt does an incredible job informing us about the history and purpose of this day, then sharing some vulnerable insight to his own feelings on the subject, and finally providing us with a glimpse at his reaction- step by step- of how he responds to people on this day – a reaction that models Christlike compassion and truth.

Walt also provides a link to a neat little free 10-page booklet (a PDF that you can print out and fold- tricky to read on the screen- it’s meant to be folded) from Harvest USA, “How Can Christians Respond to The National Day of Silence.”

I found all these resources enlightening and spot-on. I encourage you to take a peek at them.

Posted in Faith, Jonathan's Rant, News, Sexuality, Youth Culture | | Leave A Comment

Another of Our Brand New FREE Training Videos

Posted on: 04/6/10 12:25 AM | by Jonathan McKee

About 10 days ago I tested one of our brand new short training videos on a group of several hundred youth workers in my training workshop at a conference on the East Coast. The video lays out little cartoon drawings of my “Six Types of Kids” on a whiteboard, unveiling a little bit about each kid. Fun stuff! The response we received was amazing. They all asked me where they could get the video.

I was happy to tell that group of youth workers that we’d be offering that video soon as another one of the free resources on our website.

And I wasn’t lying. Now it’s up!

The video is a tool I use in my CONNECT training workshop, helping youth leaders set the stage for connecting with the wide spectrum of teenagers they’ll encounter in youth ministry today. The video really fleshes out the six types of kids I introduce in chapter four of my new book, CONNECT.

Take a peek… and then feel free to chime in with your comments below.

Posted in Books, Church, Evangelism, Faith, Youth Culture, Youth Ministry Planning | | Leave A Comment

Canned by ABC Because of His Principles

Posted on: 04/2/10 11:40 AM | by Jonathan McKee

I’ve always enjoyed Neal McDonough as an actor. I didn’t know much about him… still don’t. But I have to say that I’m impressed by his principles. Here’s a guy that has proved to be anything but a sellout.

Neal was just canned from a new ABC show three days into the filming because he refused to a do a sex scene. This move might have just cost him a million bucks. And this isn’t the first time he’s said no to big money because of his principles:

McDonough was sacked because of his refusal to do some heated love scenes with babelicious star (and Botox pitchwoman) Virginia Madsen. The reason? He’s a family man and a Catholic, and he’s always made it clear that he won’t do sex scenes. And ABC knew that. Because he also didn’t get into action with Nicolette Sheridan on the network’s Desperate Housewives when he played her psycho husband during Season 5. And he also didn’t do love scenes with his on-air girlfriend in his previous series, NBC’s Boomtown, or that network’s Medical Investigation. “It has cost him jobs, but the man is sticking to his principles…”

Click here for the entire article.

In a world of sellouts… thanks for standing tall Neal!

(ht to my friend Becca for forwarding me the article)

Posted in Entertainment Media, Faith, Sexuality, TV | | Leave A Comment

Justin Bieber on the Mind

Posted on: 03/31/10 10:00 AM | by Jonathan McKee

Justin who?

Ask your daughter; she knows, along with every other young girl across the media driven world. As I type this, his Never Let You Go video is the #1 downloaded video on iTunes, and his Baby videos (the bonus video and the video with Ludacris) are in the #4 spot and #9 spot on iTunes top 10 music videos (yeah, that’s three of the top 10 spots)

So who is this kid with the tinny voice?

That’s what my friend asked me last night as we were hanging out. He heard his daughter singing the songs… kind of catchy. I told him, “Funny you should ask,” and brought him right to our web page www.TheSource4YM.com where this week’s Youth Culture Window article was staring him in the face from the big magnifying glass on our front page. This week’s article provides the low down on Bieber, with samples of lyrics, and a little about the artists that he’s emulating.

For example, the article mentions Kati Couric asking him about Usher and Justin Timberlake as role models. Bieber responded, “I’d like to, you know, build my career around what they’ve done.”

Hmmmmm. Are these the best role models Bieber can find?

Bieber is already singing with Ludacris. I have touched on Ludacris’ content in this blog several times now in the last few weeks (here’s one). Not exactly a positive influence.

I encourage you to check out the whole article.

Posted in Entertainment Media, Music, Parenting, Youth Culture | | Leave A Comment

Exhausted

Posted on: 03/29/10 9:43 AM | by Jonathan McKee

The Skit Guys, sign language, 21 hours to fly coast to coast (yeah, it shouldn’t take that long), a whole lotta kids… these were the elements of this past weekend. Wow… I’m tired!

The weekend started at 6AM Friday morning with a mechanical failure that left me sitting on a plane on the Sacramento runway for 2 hours. Eventually, United Airlines gave up trying to fix it and returned us to the gate exactly two minutes after the door shut on another flight just two gates away that would have also brought me to the East Coast. By this time, I had had no chance of hitting my connecting flight in Chicago. The chances of getting to Maryland by the end of the day were looking pretty slim. And I was scheduled to speak to over 3,000 kids at 9AM the next morning.

I scanned flight itineraries and looked for any hopes for getting to the East Coast. After an hour of researching flights, sweet talking ticket agents (buying them Starbucks), I somehow secured a seat on an overbooked Friday afternoon flight that would land in Chicago around 8PM with high hopes for a late Baltimore connection. Over four hours later (yeah… sitting in the airport) I boarded a plane to Chicago, knowing that getting from Chicago to Maryland would be another feat.

Once I landed in Chicago, the Baltimore flight had been delayed and looked slim, so I began searching the terminal for any remaining flights that brought me within driving distance of Maryland. Next thing I know I was squeezed on a Washington Reagan flight where I landed at 11:30 PM, was picked up just before midnight, and driven 3 hours to my destination in Ocean City. I went to bed at 4AM and set my alarm for 8AM.

Saturday I spoke to the huge crowd at 9AM, then did my all day seminar in two chunks with a quick nap in between, ending at 11PM. I slept for 6 hours Saturday night, spoke again Sunday AM, finished training immediately after and then was driven 3 hours to the Baltimore airport. 13 hours later I was back home.

Whew! I’m tired just typing it all!

30+ hours of travel aside… the weekend was a blast! The event was put on by Metro-Maryland Youth for Christ in the huge convention center in Ocean City. 3700 chairs were set up and it looked pretty packed.

The programming on mainstage was smooth, with bands like Hawk Nelson and entertainment like the Skit Guys. If you aren’t familiar with Tom and Eddie, you should check out their website (SkitGuys.com). Hilarious! The kids loved them. They always do a great job. Side note: The two of them joined me for a quick training video as one of the new resources we’ll be launching on our Training Tools page in the next month. Fun stuff.

Funny, when I gave my keynote to the big audience, the lights were so bright I could only see the first two rows. But when the audience laughed, you quickly realized that there were thousands in the room! I gave a message on getting alone and getting real with God. I recorded it. We might make it available for an upcoming podcast on our free podcast page.

I also did my CONNECT training workshop for a few hundred of the youth workers and led them through the stickynote training. What a fun group. We premiered our brand new “six types of kids” training video that no one has seen before. They loved it. I’ll be sharing that with you guys soon too.

Another funny moment on stage both during my keynote and in my training workshop was when I noticed that there was a lady assigned to do sign language during my talks (there were a few deaf people in the audience). I started watching her when I would say certain words- fascinating stuff. I finally just walked over to her during my training and started having fun with her. You see… one of my training videos referred to someone as being a “turd.” So I asked her, “How did you sign turd?” The audience laughed… she said that she just spelled it. So every time I said something weird or off the wall, I kept looking at her to see how she would sign it… sometimes I even added adjectives to see what she would do. We had a great time! The audience gave her a big hand for putting up with me!

I’m home now, I’m exhausted… but what a rewarding weekend! God is so good!

Thanks to Metro Maryland Youth for Christ for putting on that fun event. They did a phenomenal job!

Posted in Personal, Travel | | Leave A Comment

Nicholas Sparks

Posted on: 03/25/10 6:11 PM | by Jonathan McKee

Yesterday I received a phone call from one of the media companies that sends me to screenings for movie reviews, and they asked me if I wanted to interview Nicholas Sparks today, author of A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, and most recently, The Last Song (which he also wrote the screenplay for the film, starring Miley Cyrus and releasing this weekend).

I didn’t know much about Nicholas, other than the fact that I had seen most of the films made from his books. When I think of him, I think of a big box of Kleenex… because that’s what everyone needs when you watch his films. His stories are heart wrenching!

My schedule was swamped, so I declined at first. But then I read a little about him from his own pen on his web page. Fascinating bio… one of the best I’ve ever read! And wow! Nicholas has lost a lot of his immediate family in the last two decades. I can see why so many of his films deal with death, grief, and pain.

The more I read, the more I was impressed with who he was. So I called back and scheduled the interview.

I didn’t know this, but Nicholas grew up about a mile from my house. We went to rival schools, both ran (although he was fast), and played in the same spots along the American River. I found his live story and his journey as an author intriguing.

We had a fun conversation this morning. Great guy. He’s a generous man and seems to be a man of faith. We didn’t have a lot of time to talk, but I think you’ll find the conversation fascinating. We’ll release it in two weeks on our podcast page.

Posted in Books, Entertainment Media, Faith, Movies | | Leave A Comment