My Experience as Youth Pastor

I got this from one of my students. It is a really neat idea and I thought I'd put it up on my blog. (My comments are in parenthesis like this)

ok this is something my professor did today and it really made me think.. lets say that there are 16 main values a person can have.. they are: freedom, fun, faith, positive attitude, leadership, knowledge, integrity, respect, accomplishment, family, money, friendship, service, empathy, influence, and love..

which one value would you give up to keep the other 15? pretty easy stuff....

(ok so try it out. Of those 16 values which do you think it least important. Write it down and mark one off)

which 5 values would you give up to keep the other 10?...

(now mark 5 more values off. Play along don't just skip to the end)

next what 4 values would you give up to keep the other 6?...now its getting quite hard to decide..it almost hurts to get rid of a few because they are so close...

(are you doing this? did you get town to less than half the original values?)

but its not over yet..what 3 of the 6 remaining values would you give up to keep the other 3?....wow at that point it was so hard to decide.....

(How long did it take to do this? Did you do it?)

and finally which 1 of the three remaining values would you give up to keep the final 2?....once you figured out what 2 you have left, these are your core values in life.....

(so that's what the prof had them do and my student went on to talk about her's but I'm not posting it. Instead I'm gonna show you what I did so the rest of this is me)

freedom, fun, faith, positive attitude, leadership, knowledge, integrity, respect, accomplishment, family, money, friendship, service, empathy, influence, and love

That's easy I get rid of money

freedom, fun, faith, positive attitude, leadership, knowledge, integrity, respect, accomplishment, family, friendship, service, empathy, influence, and love

Influence is easy to say I don't need, but the rest are important to me. Still I'd give up freedom to keep faith and leadership to keep service. I'll pass on fun so I can keep integrity and I guess accomplishment even though that is really important to who I am but not as important as the rest.

faith, positive attitude, knowledge, integrity, respect, family, friendship, service, empathy, and love

Now I have to get rid of 4 of these? Honestly what is left is who I am, or try to be, but I guess I could sacrifice a positive attitude, knowledge, respect, and friendship. I have done that in the past and lived.

faith, integrity, family, service, empathy, and love

Now to cut this in half. I don't know how to eliminate any of these things, but I do know that in my life when I'm pushed to it empathy falls away next then maybe service. I don't know how to press out one more value. I guess if push came to shove I would break the law to keep my faith, family, and love so in some ways that is saying I would give up integrity, but if I came to that point I would think that it is because my integrity was more important than the law. Still I guess I'll oust it in a technicality.

faith, family, and love

What is left is pretty much an impossible choice because they are very much intertwined, still when I think back I know that I have sacrificed family for faith and love. I left my parents to pursue God's call on my life and again to pursue my wife. Sure that was one family for another but ... yeah you get the point right?

faith, and love

According to this little experiment the core value to my life are "faith and love." I would prefer to keep family in the mix though because I make a point of keeping them before the church, still God is first so ...

What did you find? Did you learn something? Does that seem right?