Category: ministry

i’ve had several requests for the rules video from the JESUS project to be placed on the web page and since i always like to accommodate requests if it is possible i have decided to place the video here. you’ll need real player to view it. we used this video as a funny way to convey a few simple rules for the retreat. it was a fun way of doing something that we had to do.

on a side note – my dad has recently started telling me that i cheat at blogging because i will post small entries. i didn’t really know that there were rules about the length of blog entries but even if there are i don’t really think my entries are that small. yes, sometimes i post small entries, but usually my ramblings go on for a while. this may be the first time in my life that i have ever been accused of being to brief in my comments.

on a second side note – spiderman 2 is the best superhero movie that has been made thus far. i bought it yesterday and just finished watching it with my oldest son. it’s fast enough and action packeted enough for him to like it yet it still deals with the inner struggles of doing what is right. it’s an action flick that actually has depth.

on a third side note – i wish all of the blogs i read and look at would install an rss feed. i’ve recently gone from not knowing how to use the stupid things to being in love with them. i presently use bloglines to check almost all the blogs that i really care about. yet there are still a few blogs that i have to check out directly each day because of the fact that the owner doesn’t have an rss feed of the site. life would be so much easier if they did.

three of our church members are hurting right now. yesterday morning two of our church members (justin & brandy) were in a serious car accident on the way back from visiting justin’s parents (ric & teri who are church members who recently moved up to the oklahoma). brandy was killed instantly within the accident. justin suffered a broken jaw, severe lacerations around his right ear, and a fractured pelvis. thankfully barry their almost two year old son suffered only a view scratches.

i found this out right when my family and i were starting to leave mobile, alabama. ric, teri, justin, brandy, and barry are all friends of mine. i baptized brandy almost four years ago, i did justin and brandy’s premarital counseling and was then able to officiate at their wedding. about a year and a half ago justin, brandy, and i developed a dedication service for barry and then with their family and friends we celebrated barry becoming a new member of their family. they mean alot to me.

of course, i’m not the only one who thinks the world of them. ric, teri, justin, and brandy have been actively involved within the life of the church and the lives of the members who compose it. they have served in many different ministries (the youth ministry being just one of the ministries that they have actively worked and served within). they have been people that you could count on to help others who were hurting and in need.

now they are the ones who are hurting and in need.

parkview has responded beautifully. people have been within them every step of the way during their pain. the thing i’ve been most proud of has been that nobody been offering stupid, cheesy, meaningless answers like “everything will be okay” and “the pain will only last for a little while.” scripture doesn’t offer stupid answers like that. scripture never makes light of the fact that evil things are just that … evil things. JESUS doesn’t offer platitudes and HE never just says “it’ll be alright.” instead, scripture continually shows a JESUS WHO goes through the pain with you. HE doesn’t always answer “why” things happens rather HE stands with us, shouts out at how bad it hurts, and gives just enough strength and comfort to make it through the pain. humans can go through anything if they have someone to go through it with them. JESUS does that. one day HE will remove the evil. until then HE stands with those who call on HIS name and screams against the darkness.

right now HE is standing with the woodlings and many of HIS followers are standing with them also.

i just found this photo on my philips keyring digital camera. the picture is from choir tour of this year. it makes me laugh.

i’m sure lauren will love that i have placed it on the net. of course, that doesn’t matter because as i said it makes me laugh.

i don’t really ever use this blog as a promotional tool for the youth ministry but i figure that there is nothing to stop from doing it and no rule against it so i’m going to promote something right now. november 19-21 is our annual fall retreat – the JESUS project. this year’s theme is “plain white t shirt” and we are going to focus on living simpler lives. randy riggins from clearpoint church in pasadena, texas will be speaking and coby rosson from our henderson, kentucky world changers project will be leading us in singing. it is always a great weekend.

last night, september 29th, was our “pounding” for our two newlywed couples – jessica & matt and alan & rebecca. a pounding is an early american tradition of getting newlyweds started with their houses. everybody who comes to the “pounding” brings a pound of household necessities – flour, sugar, toliet paper, etc. the idea behind this is that you help them out with the necessities and then they can spend their actual money on other things.

the most difficult part of the whole thing was keeping people from mistakenly telling alan, rebeccea, jessica, or matt. we’ve been setting this thing up for about three weeks – announcing it when neither alan nor jessica or their spouses were around. this means that around 150 people knew about this thing (not including parents which would have made it even more). ever time i announced the “pounding” i tried to stress that we had to keep this on the “down low.” afterall, “lose lips sink ships.” i was sure that someone was going to make a mistake and mentioned to the wrong person. last night finally came and i truly believe that they were surprised. i could not believe that we were able to convince that many people to keep their mouths shut for 2 1/2 weeks.

just for the fun of it i would like to list what some of our teens thought “necessities” were (remember you are supposed to bring things to the “pounding” that are necessary for daily living):

• a pint of charcoal lighter fluid
• 18 rolls of toliet paper
• a 1 gallon can of van camp’s beans
• exactly one pound of tabasco sauce
• 8 boxes of macaroni & cheese
• more romin noodles than you can shake a stick at

i received a ginger plant on behalf of the youth ministry today. let me tell you why.

hurricane ivan scared a bunch of people around here and started a MASS evacuation from new orleans, which is below sea level. tuesday afternoon, september 14th, i received a phone call from covenant house, a run-away teen shelter in new orleans, asking if they could stay with us. i told them that would be great but i would have to check with our pastor of administration first. turns out he had already told the red cross that we would gladly be a shelter for any needs that the red cross had – they put us as a secondary shelter asking that we stay open, ready, and available for them – most likely to be a meals location. this meant we had to be open for the red cross and i had to call the shelter back and tell them we couldn’t. turns out this wasn’t a problem because within the 10 minutes it took me to find out we couldn’t host them and then call them back they had already received a call from a camp in texas saying they could stay there. i was pretty disappointed. i really wanted to be a part of helping them.

wednesday morning, september 15th, i went to substitute teach in our church school. during the day jessica, my administrative assistant, came running into class with a smile on her face and said “they’re here!”

“who?”

“the teens from the shelter … and the have babies!” she was extremely excited about the chance to help the teens and the chance to hold the babies.

it turns out that they had left new orleans soon after our conversation the previous day and it had taken them 13 hours to make the usual 1 hour trip from new orleans to baton rouge. they needed a break, saw the church, and thought “they’ll help”.

this was great. what was even better was that my leadership team, teens, and parents had already stepped into action. some of them had driven by at the right time, noticed the vans, and stopped to ask what was up. before i could ever get over to see out visitors (it took me about 30 minutes) our parents, kids, and leadership had already taken care of them. food was found. toiletries were brought. diapers were purchased. it was all done before i could even get over there. everyone encouraged them to stay and rest as long as they wanted to and every need was met. i was actually a little disappointed because all i actually got to do was go buy some water – every other need was met before i ever got there. these teens and their leader were refreshed and it wasn’t because we had set up a program or trip for the adults and teens. nope they saw the need and decided for the glory of CHRIST they needed to do something about it. 7 hours later they left to finish their trip.

this would have been good enough but there was more. after our youth service last night i received a call from stephen, one of our youth. he said he had just heard from a former boss at jason’s deli that help was needed in making meals for emergency workers in the area east of us that don’t have power. he had already called some of our youth and wanted to know if i wanted to come. “sure” i said and i told him i could get some more.

“nope. i’ll take care of that. you just come if you want to.” is what he told me. today i took my wife and kids with me to the warehouse to find that 15 youth were already there making 3,500 meals. they had set the whole thing up. they called. they organized. they reacted.

i thought that was the end of both of those stories but i was wrong.

friday i drove to mountain home, arkansas with stephen and several other people to watch alan lusk’s wedding to rebbecca cooper. on the way up to mountain home i noticed that stephen looked pretty tired and said as much. he sheepishly said “my brother and went back up to jason’s deli this morning at 4:00 a.m. to prepare some more meals. WOW!

yesterday morning i received a call from renee the director of the covenant house. she said that she and her director wanted to come up from new orleans and thank us personally for the assistance we had given them. i told her i would love to meet here but she really didn’t have to come an hour to meet me because it wasn’t really that big of a deal. i told her that i had only wished that we could have let them stay at our church, rather than merely giving them a place to rest for 7 hours or so.

“you don’t know then do you?” she said.

i asked her what she was talking about and that’s when she told me that a few of our youth parents had found them a place to stay in baton rouge. the place said they could stay there but they wouldn’t be able to provide any food or anything. that was fine because my unknown youth parents hooked them up with dinner that night and breakfast the next morning. this had all been done without me ever knowing about it. the parents involved within the youth ministry saw the need, knew it was something we would want to do, and they jumped into action taking care of things. this is the way it’s supposed to happen. the minister gives the ministry over to the church and the church responds.

the people i’ve talked about here didn’t do these things so that i would brag about them. they don’t even know that i have posted this but i wanted to put it up for the world to know what kind of church parkview is. parkview is a church that sacrifices, serves, and loves because of the fact that we were first loved by CHRIST. that’s why i received a ginger plant. renee & stacey (her director) came from covenant house to give us the ginger plant and and two “thank you” notes (one from the staff and one from the teens). i’m going to plant the ginger plant by the student center as a reminder. i think i’ll post the thank you note here for all to read. it says:

dear minister terrell,
thank you and your youth so much for ministering to the needs of my staff and kids. they were tired and hungry and you took them in and gave them food and rest. i am so glad my kids got to see people who practice what they preach in the face of disaster. i am forever grateful to you and your church.
GOD bless,
stacey

he title says it all (except i would add their parents to the list of greatest also). yesterday one of my kids and her mom came by my study with a huge frame in their hands. the frame contained a matted collage of pictures from our recent nicaragua mission trip. it is absolutely amazing. i can’t come close to figuring out how much time they spent on making this 3′ x 4′ montage. there was a card with it telling me how much they appreciate me. of course, they don’t realize that it was attitudes like theirs that made the mission trip so tremendous.

i love my kids (and their parents)! thanks kim & sarah babin the montage will hang with pride for everyone to see.

i realized something yesterday – I AM A REALLY BAD SINGER!

wednesday night riley, who normally leads the singing, was stuck in traffic and unable to be at the view. the problem is that i really can’t stand the thought of postponing a worship service based on a person. therefore, i decided that if riley was still stuck in traffic by the time we started i would go ahead and lead the singing part of our worship. i figured i lead you guys in singing on sunday mornings, mission trips, and such so i couldn’t be that bad. at least, that’s what i thought. so armed with my six-string and praying that riley would show before we actually started singing i went up on stage and lead y’all in prayer. while y’all prayed over how great the summer had been i was praying “please LORD let riley walk in now.” i’m not sure i have ever prayed so desperately in my life. i prayed so hard sweat poured down my face.

of course, i forgot that my GOD likes to push us out of our comfort zones and HE has a great sense of humor. apparently GOD knew i needed to be pushed into something i wasn’t ready for and i guess HE needed a good laughed too because riley didn’t walk in at that moment.

nope! i was stuck on the stage with john and blaine and we all knew that i was the one stuck singing. so i started singing hoping that i wouldn’t be too bad.

i’ve never actually listened to a recording of myself singing. i listen to my messages all the time because it’s a great way to improve the way you speak. thursday morning i listened to myself sing for the very first time and now i have only one question … “why hasn’t anyone ever told me how bad i sound?

i never actually thought that i was a good signer but i did at least think i was normally decent. i’m not! i’m extremely bad. if we had a worst singer competition i would rate up there with william hung. i’m surpirsed that there weren’t dogs outside the student center howling while i was singing.

why hasn’t anybody ever told me this before. i mean really. i lead some of you in singing every sunday morning at sunday school and on tons of retreats and mission trips. i’ve been leading youth and adults in singing for around 9 years. yet, none of your had enough decency to tell me “robert, you’re pretty bad at singing.”

i’m okay with sounding bad around our normal people but we have lots of guests with us each sunday morning at sunday school. i don’t want all of our guests thinking that we consider my voice good. i blame you people for any guests we have that have left with permanent hearing damage because of my voice.

i feel like i am typically pretty secure in my masculinity. i’m okay with the fact that i sometimes actually watch “chick flicks” with my wife and actually like them. i’ve even read “people” magazine once or twice. yet tonight there was way too much feminine spirit within the view student ministry for me. tonight was our first ever “feminar” – an overnight event just for the girls. there is pink all over the student center even as i type, with 60 some females bouncing off all the walls talking about female things and probably painting their toe nails and washing their hair – i have no idea what girls do when they get together.

i went up to the student center for 10 minutes just to say “hi” to all the females and then run away. i took my kids with me figuring that they would help keep my testosterone level up. both of the boys were so scared by all the females together in one room that they refused to go into the auditorium and instead stayed in the hallway waiting for me to finish and leave. the little cowards left me by myself to face all those half-crazed females – i thought i had raised them better than that.

females are very scary creatures that make no sense to me. in fact, in my opinion one of the proofs that GOD is GOD is that HE understands females – even females don’t understand themselves. a female starts crying and you ask her why she’s crying and there will be a good chance that she will say “i don’t know!” females make no sense. i hope those girls are having a great time tonight and i love each of them very much. yet, i have to admit that i am very glad i have a houseful of boys.