Today is Friday, which is humour blog day (humor for our American readers).  I'm sitting here on Facebook listening to Bon Iver drinking my morning coffee thinking of what to write about, realizing that I was killing time on Facebook instead of blogging I thought, let's blog about procrastinating.
    Before I get to that though, yes, the picture on this post is my actual workspace.  The filter on my iPhone (Hipstamatic) makes it look much cooler than it actually is.  
    You may have noticed that youth pastors are all quite similar.  They all own many plaid shirts, both long and short sleeve.  They have some kind of facial hair, often a goatee but more current youth pastors simply go with a good week's worth of stubble.  They play guitar.  They are charismatic and have really, really good looking wives.  Sure this isn't true of all youth pastors, but many.  In the same way, children's pastors are all quite similar, senior pastors, worship pastors.  There's something in our DNA that draws us to that area of ministry, our volunteers are extremely varied, but the pastors are quite similar.  (I'm not the only one who has noticed this, have you seen the youth pastors on The Middle or King of the Hill?)  One of the things a youth pastor needs is the ability to adapt quickly to sudden changes.  Often that ability comes with a certain laid-back-ness, which is often accompanied by a natural ability for procrastination.  So here's a youth pastors top ten ways to procrastinate list.  Enjoy, don't use it too often!

10. Go on 1001 Free Fonts and find cool new fonts because you know how important a good font is!  It's not procrastinating, it's ministry research!

9. Clean off your desk.  I tried to make a habit of cleaning my desk at least once a week.  I don't know that I accomplished that because every time I finished at least 7 staffers would comment on how clean my desk was.

8. Go on the NYWC, CYWC or SYM websites to see who's speaking this year and decide which you will go to

7. Look for new iPhone apps.  (If you have a smart phone chances are you will pay through the nose if you use it out of country.  I went to SYM in Chicago last year and had to take my wife's stupid phone because it doesn't use data.  How embarrassed I was when I was at a table of youth pastors.  They all placed their iPhones on the table and silenced them and I've got my wife's LG Rumor 2 Slide phone.  I wanted to tell them I was one of them but I sat silently in shame)

6. Leaf through the latest addition of Neu Magazine for some short articles to read.  Once again, not procrastination, ministry research.

5. Go on Facebook.  Very few people can not relate to the black whole of time that is Facebook.  Also, one of the most important youth ministry resources you can have

4. Download all your free Starbucks music.  If you don't know, Starbucks gives away a free song every week.  I only pull these out when I'm desperate to not do something.  The last time I downloaded my music I had about 20 cards, 8 of which had already expired. 

3. Write encouragement cards and emails to your students and leaders.  In a brilliant stroke of procrastinating genious I once photocopied my face about 60 times (with as many different facial expressions as possible) and wrote every student and leader an encouragement card.  Sure, some of them said it was kind of creepy, but many of them have it to this day!  (I think I did this in 2004 or 2005)  I heard one of them even hung it on their wall... talk about creepy

2. Rearrange your bookshelves.  It's so hard to find the book you're looking for so spend some time rearranging them into categories.  You have your Bibles on one shelf, your commentaries, your devotionals, your apologetics, your comic books, your Rob Bell, your Mike and Mark Yaconelli sections.  Keep it organized, it's not really procrastinating because you're saving time in the long run.

1. And the number one way for a youth pastor to procrastinate?  Go to explicittruth.com and read Josh's youth ministry blog!  (I have heard that at least one of you have used my blog to procrastinate.  If I can help just one person this has all been worth it!)

    I hope you find this helpful in your own times of need.  So tell me, what are your favorite ways to procrastinate?  I love to get your comments!  We also have our first blog subscriber but we are down to 19 Twitter followers.  God Bless Y'all, see you Tuesday!