A Day in the Life…

March 29, 2004

Click photo to enlarge
A day in the life of Wendell United Presbyterian Church (thanks to some of my students and their work with my CLIE).

Posted in Design, Ministry | 1 Comment »

King of the Go-Karts

March 23, 2004

[photo taken just moments before I pushed the Pepsi car out of my way, and zoomed past him...]
There are some people in youth ministry who are way, way overly competitive when it comes to games, etc. with their youth groups. I’m not like that at all…well, not unless the kid deserves to be beaten, and [...]

Posted in Ministry, Random | 5 Comments »

**Warning!! Politically-INcorrect Youth Group

March 15, 2004

I picked the lesson topic for tonight at 6.30pm (for a youth group that starts at 7pm). Talking about the Bible, why it’s important, what it is, does it matter how we view it (literal, inerrant, metaphors…), etc. The discussion was going pretty lame until I mentioned something about the two creation narratives and someone [...]

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Dancing Through Life

March 14, 2004

I spent 5 hours today at a dance competition in Burley, ID. I had 4 girls from my youth group who were participating in a few dances, and I wanted to watch them. They got way behind schedule because of a 2hr power outage, so I was there much longer than I had expected. But [...]

Posted in General, Ministry | 2 Comments »

Hyperthermia

February 18, 2004

Fun with an ’80s dance. The kids totally got into it, and loved dancing to the music of the ’80s. I love “Dying In Your Arms Tonight.” Wow. What a song…

A little broom hockey on an ice rink. The kids loved it when I would totally miss the ball and then proceed to land on [...]

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Pharisees Happen.

January 25, 2004

I love 6th graders. Tonight at sunago (our 6th-7th grade group) one of our volunteers was trying to tell the story from Luke 7.36-50 of the prostitute who anointed Jesus’ feet in the presence of Pharisees. One of our 6th grade guys was trying to get all of the characters straight. He couldn’t figure out [...]

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I liked God tonight.

December 9, 2003

GOD, brilliant Lord, yours is a household name.
Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you;
toddlers shout the songs
That drown out enemy talk,
and silence atheist babble.
I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,
your handmade sky-jewelry,
Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
Why do you bother with us?
Why take a second look [...]

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“You’d be the first…”

December 2, 2003

Junior high kids are funny. Sometimes they can be serious, but most of the time, they are just super-squirrely. We have a hilarious group of 6th graders, especially a small group of girls who are all going through the “I-want-to-be-punk” stage so they all have the plastic bracelets, black clothes, spike-bracelets and stuff like that. [...]

Posted in Ministry, Rants | 3 Comments »

Small Town Church Politics

November 6, 2003

I work in a town of about 3000 people. In Wendell, there is a Mormon church, a Reformed Church (New Life) and the Presbyterian church I work at. There are a few others (Methodist, Catholic, Baptist) - but they are very small. Most of the youth in Wendell either go to New Life, our church [...]

Posted in Ministry, Rants | 7 Comments »

Yaconelli: Dangerous & Dancing in Heaven…

October 31, 2003

Early this morning, Thursday, October 30, we lost a friend, a father, an inspiration. Co-founder and owner of Youth Specialties (YS), Mike Yaconelli, was in a fatal car accident in northern California late Wednesday evening.

The number of lives touched by Mike is beyond what we could even estimate. He is the father of modern [...]

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