I love youth ministry! Here is a hilarious video I found from the creative guys over at Saddleback church… I almost started crying at the end.
the week that was:
I’m in the middle of our March Madness outreach on Thursday nights and that pretty much has consumed my weeks. We’ve had a great turnout so far and hope to see God do more in the lives of every teenager that comes. Friday is my day off and it has been an almost recovery day just to get back to normal family stuff. I’ll be looking forward to some time off in April to recharge and get some vision for the remainder of the year. I’m also spending this Lent season fasting on Wednesdays… which has been good, until this last week. I’ve been recovering from sinus surgery and the meds they have me on made me really sick with no food on my stomach, so I couldn’t fast this last week, but am looking forward to this wednesdays fast.
where i am at the moment:
The busyness of the weeks have really been catching up with me, but I’ve found a real closeness to God during these times. It seems that God is within arms length during seasons like this. Maybe it’s because of a recent growing desire to digest the scriptures. Maybe it’s just the season I’m in. Or maybe it’s just me awakening to God, who’s been there all along. Whatever, it is I feel so thankful to be here… in this part of the journey.
on my to-do list this week:
Lot’s of ministry work to do again this week. I need to get someone out to repair my treadmill which has apparently died on me. Looking for some warm weather to maybe get a good bike ride in outside. I also have a garage that needs some major cleaning as well as a car that needs to be resurrected from the dead…. lot’s to do, should be a good week.
procrastinating about:
Eating healthy… it’s been a bad couple weeks of eating carelessly and not working out as much. It hasn’t shown much on the scale, but if it continues… IT WILL.
book i’m in the midst of:
“Eat This Book” by Eugene Peterson, “The Starfish and the Spider” by Ori Brafman and “Vintage Jesus” by Mark Driscoll.
music that seemed to catch my attention this past week:
Molly Jenson Maybe Tomorrow: Great album released this month. Kind of a folky Nora Jones sound
Weekly Teaching Series:
RE Part II
RE is a 3 part series we have been doing the covers three topics all centered around discussing revival. This series topic was something God put on my heart to teach and so we broke the series down into 3 parts. REform, REspond, and REvive. This week we talked about “responding”. Our theme verse for the series has been from 2 Chronicles 7:14… “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” Tonight we discussed the story of Josiah and how he discovered the “Book of the Law” and all that God required of His people. He had a choice to respond to God and he did. We finished the night with an opportunity for students to respond to God.
Sermon In a Sentence:
When God shows up and holds a mirror up to our lives, and exposes sin, we always have the choice to respond.
This Week’s Scale of Difficulty:
6 out of 10. Jordan, our new youth staff volunteer who is heading up our new video ministry couldn’t film our videos this week, so I spent most of Tuesday with Blake, Tom, a camcorder and my computer. The videos came out great and the students seemed to really enjoy them.
Attendance:
The attendance was up 4.7% from last week. With 4 new faces!
Service length:
95 minutes
Music Playlist:
Everyone (Praises)
Heaven is Here Now
Everything (themed worship song for the series)
The More I Seek You
Wednesday Night Videos:
Overview of the Night:
God has been showing up in an incredible way during this series. Each night seems to build on the previous week. We packed the house out and will have to address seating issues this next week. We simply have no more room in the current arrangement. Service went really well and Megan did a great job in her first week leading worship. Her keyboard kept going out, so hopefully Chad can look at it and fix it for next week. We also took up a special offering for one our youth staff, Sarah Maher who is taking a missions trip to China. Next week, we’ll close up the series by talking about revival and what it is. After that we will do a one time teaching message on the paranormal. Should be fun! Looking forward to the next couple weeks… God is really doing something with the teens of this generation!
I found this over at a friends blog and thought it was really clever.
Weekend Teaching Series:
MARCH MADNESS WEEK ONE: Red Carpet Drive In Movie Night
What an amazing night! This March we launched our month long youth outreach that we’re calling “March Madness”. Each week is different, from theme to events. Each student has one job and one job only… BRING FRIENDS. This last Thursday was our 1st March Madness event and it was AWESOME! We themed the whole night around movies and brought in actual cars for an indoor drive in theater. We kicked the night off with our Pepsi half court basketball shots. Whoever made a basket from half court instantly won a case of Pepsi! We also had a contest for youtube movies that students could enter into and win $50. We gave away a ton of prizes, movie awards and even had our very own “King and Queen” for the night. The King and Queen were students whose name we drew out of a King and Queen box and “ruled” the night. They ordered from a local pizza place and we picked it up and delivered it to them on their throne!
The whole night went by fast. After a couple of summer movie previews we watched an 18 minute feature film about a teen who gets a fake driver’s license and then gets caught( “Zero to Sixty”). I then closed the evening with a 10 minute talk about how God gave us rules and commandments in the same way I give my daughter commandments to not touch a stove. He loves us and knows what’s best for us! We gave an invitation and saw 3 students reach out and make a commitment to following Christ.
Sermon In a Sentence:
God loves you so much that He’s been willing to be misunderstood for thousands of years, so that you could hear the loving kindness of a “Do not” and respond back.
This Week’s Scale of Difficulty:
10 out of 10. The scale of production for this event was huge! We remodeled the whole gym and opened it up more for all of our visitors. EVERYTHING was different on purpose and it took every last minute we had to bring it all together. Our event staff of adult leaders were HUGE tonight! I can’t stress enough how grateful I am to each one. Each leader, some who have only volunteered for the month brought so much and gave so much. It was crazy busy and each leader made it their MISSION to make this the best event we’ve ever had… AND THIS IS ONLY THE FIRST WEEK!
Attendance:
The attendance for our first event was up 106% from last week. With 16 new faces… AWESOME!
Service length:
110 minutes (we went WAY over the time we wanted, but I think it all went well)
Music Playlist:
What the World Will Never Take
Love Enough
Hosanna
Youtube Video Announcements:
Movie Event Awards:
Here is a link if you want to watch the 5 movie awards we gave out including “best movie”
www.youtube.com/gotwentyfourseven
Funniest Quote(s) from a Teenager:
“When are we going to watch the other movies?”
-referring to the 3 movie previews we watched of movies that will not even be in theaters until LATE SUMMER
“If I were to be King I would be the best Queen ever… I mean King. Did I say Queen?!”
Overview of the Night:
We had several glitches with sound and car alarms going off, but overall I think we had a great first march madness night. From the aroma of freshly made popcorn, free food, tons of free prizes, live music and some great videos…. it was a GREAT EVENT! We will work on the sound this week and the things we all noticed and will need to fix, but just seeing those 3 hands go up in the end made it worth all the hard work everyone put in worth it. Thanks to the AMAZING leadership team of Freedom Life’s youth ministry… now let’s do it even better next week for our BLACK LIGHT LUAU (way cool!)
As Anne Murray once sang… “We’ve only just begun”.
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