Pastor Ryan Gaffney

Today Is the Day I hit 50 Subscribers on YouTube.

If you want to make it 51, you can subscribe at www.ryangaffney.com/video

Ironically, the other channel I have, which I actually started developing in earnest first, has been growing less quickly and still hasn’t hit 50. It’s at www.ryangaffney.com/movies

There are a couple of reasons I can see for this. MOVIEPASStor is inherently limited in scope. You kinda have to like movies to want to sub to that. And you also have to like Jesus and being kinda thinky about Jesus. And what’s more, in order to watch any particular video, you really want to have seen the movie first. So it doesn’t get that many views even among fans. And on top of all that, it was all about me liking going to movie theaters, and those are all closed right now and have been for half the life of the channel. Soooo not a good mix

My own personal general YouTube channel (www.ryangaffney.com/video) makes it so you really only have to like Jesus, but you have to be willing to put up with some content (like sermon videos) you might not want to get to content you do (like Ask the Pastor) buuut, because of that, it has one other major advantage… more videos per week. And frankly I think that makes all the difference.

 
Enough Serious Stuff. Let’s talk about unicorns!

Of all the questions I get asked as a pastor, this one is maybe the most common, and perhaps it is so common because it is so important. Here is my final answer to “How do we get those young people to come to our churches”

Basically, stop making them “your” churches and asking young people to meet you where you are as you want or hope.

I get asked this question a lot as I meet Christians from various groups and programs I interact with. The answer is that I’m a member at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Austin… But the reality I sometimes leave out is that I haven’t been there for service since Easter last year.

I work Pulpit Supply (which is where I preach those sermons you see on YouTube) and that means that I go to a different church every Sunday to preach a sermon as a sort of “substitute pastor”. I made it to church on Easter because it was a sunrise service at 6am and it gave me time to be at a tiny chapel in Cheapside at 11 to preside over Easter for the ten people there. But there is more to my inattendance than that…

Even when I’m not on pulpit supply, like this summer when I was doing Hospital Chaplaincy, I just don’t make a very good church member. I’m too critical, I don’t follow instructions well, I know too much about what goes on behind the curtain. My girlfriend and I tried to stick to a Church this summer near her place down south (since I was in San Antonio). By the tenth week I was pulling my hair out over how much differently I would have done things.

We actually addressed this in seminary (I’ll paraphrase it as best I can). “There comes a time” said my professor “When you realize that you know too much you have crossed the point of no return, and you can no longer abide to sit quietly in a pew. Every Reference to the Old Testament is now cross referenced in your brain against your education in Biblical Hebrew and the pastors theology includes a telltale sign of that heresy you learned about in Christian History. You can try at this point to not be a pastor, but you can never again be just a congregant” he concluded for the semester with “You might as well face it you are addicted to church”

And it is an addiction. It’s a compulsion. Something I can’t not do even if I want to or bad stuff will happen. It’s often frustrating, and overwhelming, and all-consuming, but I have no choice. I have to preach, I have to write, I have to engage big ideas with little people. It’s who I am, it’s what I’m about. I feel sorry for those of you who just have to sit there and watch me have all the fun.