being jake wood

THE WEEK THAT WAS:
Some weeks are busy and other weeks are CRAZY busy. This was one of them. Tons of meetings, phone calls and lot’s of planning. I couldn’t tell you how badly I wanted to break my 21 day fast and just eat and relax. Rest assured, I’m still going strong and glad I still am. Nothing will push you farther and stretch you more than a food fast. I somehow skipped any day off this week but plan on trying to catch up a little this week. And I turned 32 last Thursday… that just looks weird.

FAVORITE VIDEO OF THE WEEK:

ON MY TO-DO LIST THIS WEEK:
Graphic design, graphic design, graphic design. I’m sooo behind on design work that I plan on blocking out 20 or so hours this week to just concentrate on that. I also, have a mountain of items that are awaiting sale on Ebay at my house… to name a few.

BOOK I’M IN THE MIDDLE OF:

The Total Money Makeover
by Dave Ramsey

My goal is to read 1 book a month on the issue of money this year and Dave Ramsey gets the honor of kicking it off right!

MUSIC THAT SEEMED TO CATCH MY ATTENTION THIS LAST WEEK:

The David Crowder BandChurch Music
Creative, fun and catchy… you gotta get this!

Matt MaherEmpty and Beautiful
Inspiring, honest and real worship

Norah JonesThe Fall
One of my favorite modern jazz artist of today!

The United Pursuit Band
EP
Great worship for personal prayer time!

MY UPDATED SUPERBOWL PREDICTION:
Still the Cowboys and newly added Colts with the Colts winning it all. GO JETS!
Ok… so I’m betting everything on the Colts for the Superbowl win in 2 weeks. Why? Because the AFC is that much better than the NFC

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT THIS WEEK:
Watching the movie “Avatar”… I’m sorry I meant to say “Pocahontas”

JW

Wisdom has always seemed so illusive to me. Like some mysterious woman that I’ll never understand it was always reserved in my mind for old men with gray hair or robed chinese guys with long wispy goatees, but not some middle aged dad who has little gray hair and who’s goatee screams “youth pastor” not “wisdom”. Yet over the last couple years, I’ve learned a lot about wisdom (and still learning)… so here’s some thoughts.

Wisdom is not just for old people.

Wisdom is given to those who ask.

Wisdom is more of a choice than some mystical spirit that comes over you.

Wisdom requires looking further than the NOW.

Wisdom is listening to a pastor who has a full head of hair. OK, so I made that one up:)

JW

Weekly Teaching Series:

Finished up our series on “The Dip” and it was awesome! We talked about questions that we ask when we’re in the dip and that can help us in the dip. We had a response time at the end where one student decided to follow Christ and over a dozen spent time at the alter connecting with God as Youth Staff prayed over them. Overall it was a big win for the night and God did some amazing things!

Element of Fun:

We finished tonight with our game series called “Helmut of Shame”. Once again tribe leaders were at the mercy of their tribe answering questions correctly. If they missed they got a head full of ice cold milk. It was so cold it caused one of our leaders to lock up! They couldn’t move! Students were giving some funny answers as their leader got soaked. We’ll definitely bring this back sometime.

This Week’s Scale of Difficulty:

8 out of 10. This week was a busy one, with even more still to do. But the night was awesome overall!

Service length:

95 minutes

Attendance:

Up 128% from the same week last year

Music Playlist:

Love Enough
The Great I Am
All for Love

Highlight of the Night:

Watching students pray for others students is always incredible! Video’s were hilarious… video ministry will have them up soon at youtube.com/gotwentyfourseven.

Series Graphics and Video:
If you are interested, here are most of the graphics that we used and adapted from another church design team.

The Dip Series

JW

Here is an assortment of links to some good articles from this week…

101 Uses to Everyday Things – Interesting uses for household items you probably never knew

Shots From the Farm – Some good photography by a great blogger (sorry, I’m artsy fartsy like that!)

5 Things I’ve Loved from the Emerging Church – In light of all the

Books by Spurgeon A great resource of books for one of my favorites

Great recipes for 2009 A great resource for my former chubby-ness. I promise it’ll make you drool at least once.

Santa Claus a Terrorist? A funny video

There’s an App for That! If you’re an app addict this apps for you! An app that helps find iPhone apps.

4 “Instant” Small group lessons in a Pinch Need a quick idea for a small group lesson?

Favorite Tech apps for 2009 Short list of some GREAT 2009 tech stuff for anyone. I use at least 3 of them

Top 100 kids’ Online Search Words Interesting facts…

I’ll try and throw some more out there each week… send me anything you find interesting or worth singling out.

JW

I found this video to be pretty funny… especially the last part!