In other ways, this day was special. In particular, I was overwhelmed by the number of birthday well-wishes on my Facebook wall. It’s probably not all that big of a deal to those who spend way more time in cyberspace than I do, but since I limit myself to about 10-15 minutes a day usually, to find more than 100 notes, mostly from people I know very well, was incredibly humbling.

Add to that my wife posting: “Thank you for being such an amazing husband and father.” She’s great about complimenting me one-on-one, but it’s pretty sweet that she would do that publicly, as well. I was already feeling a little watery-eye syndrome, but that started the tears flowing.

Then the climax. My oldest son, Devin, posted this on his Facebook status:

Today is my dad’s 40th Birthday. Mr. Will Penner is one of my best friends and one of the greatest men I’ve met in my life. I wouldn’t be anywhere close to where I am today without him. I love you papi, and happy Birthday!

There are absolutely no words to describe how grateful I am to have a 19-year-old son who would say something like that—and in public, too. Because of the kind of kid Devin is, I don’t have to accept that the “normal” relational state between teenagers and parents is supposed to be marked by strain and conflict. What an incredible gift our father-son relationship is!

In fact, all of this catapults me to be overwhelmingly grateful to God for all of the blessings I’ve been given. I am a little ashamed of how I often focus on the negative—still being way in debt financially, struggling to find balance in how I spend my time, frustrations with my poor stewardship of my body, etc.—but right this moment, I’m probably more full of gratitude than any time in the past couple of decades.

God has gifted me with an incredible wife, five amazing kids, and a slew of friends and extended family members who love and care about me. I just may be the richest man in the word in the things that really count. Thank you, God!

A little less than half of the time, I devoted my time to working on my job at The Center for Youth Ministry Training, where I am leading some teams through translating the Lilly Foundation‘s research in youth ministry into practical tools for youth leaders. Some of that material will be released soon, which is exciting to me.

Another pretty good chunk of time was spent helping Christine at Cedar Crest Camp. I helped a little with some of the organizational and marketing things, assisted with staff training (which is always fun for me), led worship and keynoted the two weeks of youth camp (most of the weeks are predominantly younger children–not my sweet spot–but I love adolescents), and–perhaps best of all, attended “Mustard Seed Camp” as a co-camper with my youngest son, Daniel. Great stuff all the way around. I love the fact that the national press arm of the denomination, United Methodist Communications, did a nice story featuring Christine’s camp, too: “United Methodist camps offer s’more love.”

Additionally, I read a little, watched some Netflix–mostly episodes of The Tudors, Heroes, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and Dexter–and played with my children. We swam, played some games, and rode around in the golf cart a little. And because my wife did such a good job developing her staff this year, I even got to spend a reasonable amount of time with her…and she even got some sleep most nights. (Yay!)

I’m teaching a couple of new courses at East Hickman High School this year, along with revamping some of the ones I’ve taught for several years; and I’m actually pretty jazzed about the school year. And I’m also pretty stoked about continuing my work with CYMT now that Mindi Godfrey is on board as our YMtoday.com marketing director–which allows me to work in my sweet spot on our projects, as well.

I’m a little bummed that summer’s over so quickly, but it was a really full one; so I have little to complain about. Onward and upward.

I’ve been thinking a lot about starting over recently—mostly about money, but also about mistakes. On one hand, we live in a society that allows people to declare bankruptcy, to start over with a clean slate. This is not altogether dissimilar to the Old Testament tradition of Jubilee, which gives people an opportunity to lay aside the debt that clings so tight. This can be a good thing; in fact, it’s kind of the heart of Jesus’ scandalous cleansing of sin—giving people a chance to start over with a clean slate.

On the other hand, taking advantage of some of those opportunities (like financial bankruptcy) hurts others, too—it means that obligations are left unfulfilled. It reminds me of a passage from Alcoholics Anonymous:

The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others. Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead. Affections have been uprooted. Selfish and inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil. We feel a man is unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough. He is like the farmer who came up out of his cyclone cellar to find his home ruined. To his wife, he remarked, “Don’t see anything the matter here, Ma. Ain’t it grand the wind stopped blowin’?’’

That’s how I feel when I hear some excitement about the cap finally getting on the BP oil rig. On one hand, it’s terrific that the problem isn’t still getting worse; on the other hand, it’s hard to get super excited when the devastation is still so vast. It’s how I’ll feel when the federal government finally quits deficit spending (if that ever happens)–but all that will do is keep it from getting worse; it won’t do anything about actually reducing the debt.

On a personal front, I am getting weary with working so hard to reduce my debt—because it’s still so daunting. But at least I’m whittling away at it—trying not to take advantage of a system that would allow me to simply step away from my obligations, because, after all, the debt was my fault to begin with.

Good luck, BP; I feel your pain just a little.

Part of the reason I asked Devin to apply to so many colleges (31: apparently a Fairview High School record) was so that he’d have lots of options. After visiting a bunch of them, we finally settled on Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. A number of factors entered into the decision, but we basically gave Devin a choice of about five that were all within about $3,000 bottom-line price after all of the scholarships and financial aid packages were awarded.

Millsaps was the highest of those schools in that ball park, but we also had one more potential scholarship–a theater scholarship–still left to get; and we were all but guaranteed to get at least something. After going through a lot of work to put together a video audition in the midst of the terrible Tennessee flooding, he was awarded the full amount ($3,000)—at which time the financial aid office reduced his need-based aid by the exact same amount.

We were told the last time he had multiple merit scholarships that “the merit-based and need-based scholarships are different pools of money,” which was the rationale for why the merit-based awards he received couldn’t stack–he had to choose one or the other–but that the need-based were separate from those. Lie #1. When we let them know we were within a few thousand dollars of being able to afford Millsaps, we were told that the theater scholarship money would be on top of the other awards. Lie #1.

And here’s the real kicker as a part of his new theater “scholarship”: Devin now has to be involved in every production whether he’s enrolled in theater classes or not (even during football season), and his GPA minimum requirement is higher, too–yet he doesn’t have any more money from the school.

Also, Devin had already declined the other schools’ awards and put down a deposit to attend Millsaps. But I don’t trust them anymore, so I think I’m going to open it up again; we’ll see how it goes.

First, I like the description of intrinsic motivation:

We have a biological drive. We eat when we’re hungry, drink when we’re thirsty, have sex to satisfy our carnal urges. We also have a second drive—we respond to rewards and punishments in our environment. But what we’ve forgotten—and what the science shows—is that we also have a third drive. We do things because they’re interesting, because they’re engaging, because they’re the right things to do, because they contribute to the world. The problem is that, especially in our organizations, we stop at that second drive. We think the only reason people do productive things is to snag a carrot or avoid a stick. But that’s just not true. Our third drive—our intrinsic motivation—can be even more powerful.

Second, I like how these guys articulate what teachers often call the “self-fulfilling prophecy”:

Pink: Often these outside motivators can give us less of what we want and more of what we don’t want. Think about that study of Israeli day care centers, which we both write about. When day care centers fined parents for being late to pick up their kids, the result was that more parents ended up coming late. People no longer felt a social obligation to behave well.

Shirky: If you assume bad faith from the average participant, you’ll probably get it. In social media, the design principle that has worked remarkably well is to treat good faith as the normal case and to regard defections from that as essentially a special case to be solved.

Pink: Same goes with organizations. We don’t realize how much our unexamined assumptions take us to radically different places. If I’m running an organization and my starting premise about human beings is that people are fundamentally passive and inert, that they won’t do a damn thing unless I threaten them with a stick or entice them with a carrot, that takes me down one road. But I think that’s the wrong premise, the wrong theory of human nature.

I agree wholeheartedly.

I always get sad when I hear about these kinds of things–mostly for the victims. I’ve worked with young people as a teacher and youth minister my entire adult life, and I see the devastating effects of sexual abuse on some of the kids I’ve known. When I’m pretty sure about the guilt of a perpetrator, it pushes my ability to extend grace to the breaking point. I have a very difficult time feeling any level of forgiveness to one who sexually abuses another–especially a child.

Sometimes I feel sadness for the accused, too, though. Again, since my whole professional life deals with kids, I have known people whose careers, families, even entire lives were completely devastated by what I believe to be false accusations. And all it takes is an accusation in some cases to completely destroy a person’s credibility for the rest of his life.

This particular case, however, hits home in a way like never before. Passmore was Devin’s martial arts instructor for many years–and he was incredibly influential in a very positive way. Even though Devin’s been away from Texas for 8 years, Passmore made the “top 40″ list of people Devin sent graduation invitations to.

Christine has always raved on Passmore, particularly citing his desire to mold kids’ character more than just teaching them self-defense. So selfishly, I can’t help but hope that he’s been falsely accused. On the other hand, I know that we can never truly know people beyond a shadow of a doubt, so I find myself simply praying that the truth will win out–and for healing for everyone involved. It’s definitely a reminder to me of how broken a world this is–and how desperately we all need God’s healing and forgiveness to make it through to the other side.

My brother, Ted, and his wife came, and all of Devin’s grandparents, as well—so we just made a whole weekend of it. Christine’s job has its perks, and this was one of them: We were able to house several family members out at camp in one of the lodges, which also became a terrific meeting place for parties on Saturday.

We’d been trying to find just the right time for a dedication service for our youngest daughter, Bethany. Since we were having all of these folks coming in, it just made sense to do that this weekend. So we held a brief service in one of the outdoor chapels at Cedar Crest, during which a few of our closest friends—including Bethany’s godparents—joined us to celebrate Bethany.

We followed that with a catered lunch in the lodge celebrating both Bethany’s dedication and Devin’s graduation. We then wrapped those two things up around 2:00, and in came some of Nikki’s friends for an early birthday party. Nikki will be nine in a couple of weeks, but our summers are so busy now that having the party early seemed a good thing, especially since all of the family was there anyway.

All in all, I think this has been one of the best weekends of my life.

First, regarding athletic scholarships: 118 colleges play NCAA Division I football, and 238 play Division III. Certainly, we hear more about the NCAA teams, because so many more people attend those games. From a practical standpoint in the recruiting arena, though, the biggest difference is that Division III schools can’t offer athletic scholarships. They tend to pride themselves on the fact that their athletes really are scholars first—that they’re student-athletes, not just athletes. My bank account wishes that weren’t the case, because I know some of these Div III coaches would give Devin money if they could; but from a philosophical standpoint, I like that value system much better.

Second, regarding football longevity: Nationally, only 1 out of 4 guys who start out playing college football actually play all 4 years. 75% of them quit. That’s a staggering number to be, but it makes me that much more glad that we’re primarily focusing on schools that’ll provide need-based aid and merit-based scholarships rather than athletic scholarships. That way, if Devin becomes one of those statistics (even though I don’t think he will), the funding for college will still be there.

Third, regarding majors: 7 out of 8 freshmen change their majors at least once before they graduate. I figured it was pretty high, but I wouldn’t have guessed it’s that high. I still think it’s a good idea that we’re focusing on schools that have the program Devin is interested in–but it also means that the other academic areas need to be strong, too.

Fourth, regarding overall skills: It seems the three most important skills that lead to success in college are:

• Time management skills
• Study skills
• Test-taking skills

I would’ve probably guessed that the first two were in there, though the third makes sense, too. In fact, back in the day when I substitute taught (3 days a week while I attended classes 2 days a week), I developed a time management seminar I could use when classroom teachers didn’t leave lesson plans. That way, it would be appropriate for physics, algebra, history, English–you name it.

In fact, when I was asked to substitute for multiple days in the same classroom (and I still didn’t have lesson plans from the classroom teacher), I did some study skills stuff, though my seminar wasn’t quite as well thought out as the time management one.

I think I need to do a better job working with my kids (and my students) to help them develop all of those skills.

Come to find out, the coaching staff has changed. The new head coach just arrived a couple of months ago, so their recruiting is a little behind. They have a nice winning season streak, though, which is very appealing.

The theater department is nice, too, so we just need to wait to see how the financial aid packages turn out. There are just so many good schools who want him to come–enough to award quite a bit of money, too–though no 100% packages. We have to make a decision soon, though. Praying hard.

• Lycoming in Pennsylvania
• Ohio Wesleyan
• Cornell in Iowa
• Albion in Michigan
• Brevard in North Carolina

Merit-based scholarships are in, and some need-based ones have arrived. One athletic scholarship may be in the mix—but so far, we’re not at a full ride. Continuing to keep my fingers crossed, though!