Category: personal

it’s been a very weird day of ministry that i can’t type about right now. maybe one day i will be able to discuss it. who knows. what i do know is that i have finally learned that it is best to simply shut up when you don’t know what else to say. i couldn’t comprehend what in the world to say today and i merely kept my mouth shut. turns out that the person who was talking to me took my quietness for good counseling technique and continued to spill their guts to me. after it was all through i still didn’t know what to say and the person who had been talking to me told me that they really appreciated that i had given them my complete attention and had really listened.

of course, i didn’t really listen. i was too busy trying to figure out what in the world to say.

article – mind, body, & spirit by ben edson

i love it when CHRISTians are truly creative in reaching out to the world – i only wish that i was more creative in doing it. the above article describes a church, sanctus1, in england that decided to be a part of the manchester mind, body, and soul conference, a new age spirituality conference. sanctus1 joined in the conference and offered a wall of prayer, plasma ball (which i’m not sure i understand), bread and wine, and foot messages. unlike all the other new age groups who were there sanctus1 did all of this for free. everyone else had consumeristic minds sets behind their spirituality. the free foot messages really amaze me because they strike me as modern day foot washing. true servant-hood in a environment that is hostile to CHRIST.

what an amazing idea. sanctus1 conveyed real CHRISTianity in an environment that many followers of CHRIST would completely avoid. what a great idea.

i pray that all of us followers of CHRIST could be inspired by our creative GOD to reach out in amazing acts of love and service.

on november 24th i posted about fred crossing over past the 100,000 mile mark. when the moment happened i had a VERY cheap digital camera on me that i used to record the moment. the picture above is the best of what i took.

i think i am about to have to do some work on fred. it sounds to me like the water pump is going out – it’s making a high pitched whine. i’m going to take him in to barry’s automotive tomorrow and get him looked at.

yesterday was the perfect youth ministry day. by this i don’t mean that everything about it was good. in fact, allot of what happened during the day wasn’t good at all. it was the perect youth ministy day because the events that happened during it display why youth ministry is the greatest of all ministries. here’s what happened.

8:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.

i spoke at one of our school’s chapels – the elementary chapel. during this time i got the chance to try and help kids understand that even though JESUS may ask us to do things that sound odd to us, if we act in faith amazing things happen – i spoke about JESUS healing the man blind from birth by spitting on the groun and placing mud in his eyes. doing chapel for k through 5th grade is always allot of fun and this was no exception.

9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

i officiated at the funeral of a former youth whose husband and his family are also very important to me. the husband and wife were in a major car accident saturday morning. the wife was killed, the husband badly injured, and their child and a friend left the car uninjured. in the past i had been able to baptize her, then i was able to officiate their wedding, and finally i was the minister who dedicated their son. this family means allot to me and thus the funeral was not something that was easy for me. yet, i was also honored that the husband would ask me to do the funeral. i don’t like seeing people i love in pain, but i am very thankful to get to be one of the people who GOD uses to bring them comfort. i was able to see their pain first hand at the hospital waiting for the husband’s surgery to be finished and then later when i went with him to pick up the personal effects that were still in the badly damaged vehicle. i was so thankful that i got to be one of the people who comforted this family that i love.

2:00 p.m. till 5:45 p.m.

during this time i was focused on setting up and preparing for the view, our youth worship service. this included everything from setting up chairs, to decorating the student center for CHRISTmas, to practicing with the band, those who shall remain nameless, for the worship in music during the service. all of this involved working with youth to accomplish a common goal – of worship during the night.

6:00 p.m. till 7:15 p.m.

this is when the view went on. two things happened during this 1) we had a great worship service that even though i wasn’t speaking during this night, alan my assistant was, i did get to lead kids in helping to lead the service, and 2) i got to clean up puke. that’s right we had a kid “spew chunks” in the outside hall. we played a game at the beginning of worship tonight (something we do very rarely but this time it fit in with the message we were trying to convey and therefore we did it). we had a teen drink 52 ounces of egg nog. he tried to make it to the toilet after he had won the game but he didn’t quite make it. i decided to clean it up instead of asking one of the volunteer adults to do it.

7:30 p.m. till 8:30 p.m.

i hung out with teens just talking about things

8:45 p.m.

i made it home – wednesdays are usually a late night but i make up for this by staying home in the afternoon.

here’s why it was the perfect youth ministry day. there is no other ministry in which you could go from the very serious nature of a painful funeral to cleaning up puke. in fact, there is only one ministry in which it would be normal to consider going from such serious matters to such disgusting janitorial work. the only ministry in which this would be normal is youth ministry. youth ministry is the only ministry that would consider such extremes normal. this is why youth ministry is the greatest ministry in the world.

article – big things for GOD – by charles woodward – the ooze article

a very powerful article in my opinon. it’s nice to hear someone asking why it is that we feel that we need to do “big things for GOD.” aren’t small, and unnoticed things the most important? do our egos just push us to think that big things are the things that actually matter.

the author suggestion is that instead of imagining bigs things for GOD we should focus on the change within. i would agree with much of this. of course, some of my change is a change of becoming a person who is concerned about GOD’s justice. this means that in order to focus on the change within myself i must be simultaneously focused on the world around me.

some would say:

“i have to find the vision for what GOD want’s me to do for changing the world”

i think that’s a great sentiment. we just have to remember that most likely what GOD wants us to do is to stay faithful in the small things. then maybe HE’ll use us in the big things.

article – do this in remberance of me by steve humphreys – the ooze

an interesting article that summarizes the nature of memory and then comes back to the LORD’s supper. do we “create consumers out of participants” in the LORD’s supper by focusing on receiving the LORD’s supper rather than focusing on remembering “HIS death until HE comes”? it’s a good question.

when we do the LORD’s supper as a youth ministry (which we only do when we are on mission trips or retreats and not able to receive it with the whole church family) we focus on the fact that it is a celebration. we are remembering until HE comes again. one day HE will come again and the feast will begin. we try to focus on LORD’s supper celebration toward the fact that the day of the wedding feast is fast approaching. one day we will be together forever.

to my knowledge i don’t have “sections” available on blogger for linking together thoughts and entries that are in common. therefore, so as to keep my thoughts and inner workings together on the “sabbath” retreat for youth that i am working on i will start posting things in this entry. of course, i’ll end up finding out how to do “sections” later and that will solve everything. until then i will simply re-edit this post each time.

here are the resources that i am presently working with:

• sabbath: restoring the sacred rhythm of rest by wayne muller – this book is recommended the website practicing our faith by the valparaiso project – this has been a very interesting book thus far.
• deepening youth spirituality by walt marcum – this book was recommended by the youth ministry and spirituality project. the ymsp developed the youth specialties sabbath retreat. deborah @ ymsp told me that they have not published any of their stuff from the sabbath retreat yet but that the outline and material within this book is an excellent resource for doing a youth version of the original youth minister retreat. i’ve looked it over and i like what i see.

i’ve talked with the seniors and juniors in our youth ministry and asked them if they wish to do a sabbath retreat. the response was great. i was worried that we might be doing too much and actually just making their lives busier than they already are. the teens responded by begging for us to do the sabbath. two teens who weren’t even going to be able to make it to sunday school (when they were going to voice their desire for the retreat or not) grabbed me before sunday school and said “yes! i want to do the retreat!” so it looks like we are going to do this whole thing in january.

this blog originally started as entries about me learning about how to make and use digital video within the youth ministry in which i am a part. i haven’t posted anything on this topic in a while so i decided to correct this problem. so here goes.

the dry video

during november during the view we talked about the temptations of CHRIST. as a part of that we talked about those spiritually dry times that we all seem to go through. as an introduction to this i interviewed several people about the times when they feel spiritually dry and then i peaced them together.

JESUS project rules video

ever year we have our fall/winter retreat at the judson retreat center. it is a great thing. the retreat center has two rules that we constantly have to remind the youth of 1) no gum whatsoever, and 2)don’t eat on the trays. we decided that it would be more fun to convey the rules in a video than just tell everyone. so we took a scene from the ten commadmets and then voiced over it. i recorded the voices digitally using audacity and then cropped them down the the small segments we needed. i then added the segments to the video cuts that i wanted. the kids thought it was incredibly funny. i stole the entire idea from vintage21. they this same thing with JESUS for a sermon series. we figured we couldn’t use JESUS for a rules video without offending people but using moses would be okay.

i’m not sure why but apparently the church tradition within baton rouge is to cancel church for thanksgiving. almost every church does it. almost all wednesday night services are canceled through out the city. it just doesn’t make any sense. you have this holiday that is specifically designed to be about thanking our CREATOR and what do we do? we cancel all the services that are specifically about thanking HIM.

this completely confuses me.

on november 1st i wrote about the fact that a couple of people who had agreed to help out with an event later told me that GOD had told them that they weren’t supposed to be a part of the retreat. at the time i actually knew that they wanted to be a part of our college ministry’s tailgate party at the l.s.u. v. ole miss football game. well, a small problem developed – i.e. rain – and the tailgate party was canceled.

interestingly enough these two individuals suddenly came to me asking if they could now be a part of the retreat again. interesting how GOD will changed after the other event was canceled.

i just wish that had be honest in the beginning and said “i really want to go to the tailgate party.” i would have been fine with that. we can always find more leaders. i learned a long time ago that no one, including myself, is indispensable. GOD always provides someone else who can and probably will do a better job. GOD provided the leaders we needed for the retreat. in fact, he forced me to use two people who i hadn’t planned on using. of course, these two people ended up being the two best leaders of the weekend. they were amazing.