As a ministry dude there are a number of guys that I follow regularly on blogs, podcasts and books… kind of mentored from afar. Ed Young of Fellowship Church down in Texas is one of those guys for me and God has used him to shape my ministry over the years. I thought he had some great things to say in this video about dealing with criticism specifically in a church setting.
Monthly Archives: April 2010
Wildfire Wrap
Attendance
Average. Had a nice group last night.
Talk
Number four in the TEN series (which ironically only has five talks in it) we looked at the fourth commandment which is about taking a Sabbath Day. A little bit of an abstract idea to try and translate a Sabbath Day to middle schoolers who dont even have a job or most of which couldnt even define what the word “Sabbath” meant. I did my best to give tangible ideas for them to take the principle behind the sabbath and challenged them to try it for a month. Had a couple “blunders” in this one. For one my nose started running in the middle of the talk and well…I didn’t have anything to wipe it with. To make matters worse I called attention to the fact that I was “dropping some snot” which no doubt drew more attention to it than before. Secondly I asked the students in the talk to answer a question via our text-in number only to find out at the end of the talk that I forgot to bring my laptop to be able to retrieve their texts! Keeping my humble…
Volunteer Involvement
Our volunteers shined. A great night of all the teams working together and working with excellence to create a program that serves 100′s of middle schoolers well. I want to especially highlight our snackbar team…last night when I went to grab a piece of pizza there wasn’t any room behind the counter due to so many volunteers present! If you are ever hungry on a Wednesday night and are around the church feel free to stop by from 630-7pm and grab some tasty grub from our snackbar.
Music/Program
Trout Toss + a great worship set = an awesome program. Like seriously we could have ended the program before my talk and it would have already been a great program. There’s just something about tossing a trout out into the audience that gets everybody excited. The worship set was a great one…especially liked Glory to God and The Stand. Always laugh alittle with The Stand though as its an “automatic hand-raising” song…no matter how it’s played, where it’s played everyone seems to raise their hands by the end of it. For the WiFi we showed this crazy video of a guy being interviewed about a dog attacked;
Final Thought
During the worship set I was backstage putting away some of our board games as I typically do each week but this time I stopped for a minute and just listened to the students singing from behind the platform. It was a meaningful moment…actually hearing the students voices singing out over the voices of those on the stage. It was a good reminder that Wildfire really is the students ministry. Might seem like a “duh” statement…but alot of times the program, what we do on the stage can become more of a focus than the actual students who we are doing the program for.
Floating Thoughts
- Got my bike cleaned up and out for the first time today…still need to figure out how to adjust a sticky brake though.
- Bought Just Cause 2 after trading in some games I wasnt playing anymore. It’s pretty fun, not the best graphics but you can do alot of stuff! It was the first game I bought at GameStop since Game Crazy closed.
- Down to half the dose on my steroid treatment. While this helps I am still needing to take sleep aid to make it through the night.
- Started reading Doug Fields little book; “ReFuel.” Crazy how excited I get to read non-class books when my seminary class is done! I am about 4 chapters in…so far so good. Has a simple and yet a much needed message for me right now.
- Found Matt’s POST on privacy settings on Facebook to be an important one. If you are into protecting your privacy and have a Facebook you may want to check it out.
- I am shopping for new car insurance…any recommendations out there?
- Feeling like Papa is beginning to answer my prayers for a freshness in my faith.
The Facebook Generation
Do you have a Facebook page? If you do you are like the estimated 410 million who do…especially more likely of those who read blogs like mine 
Recently I read the below article and thought they had some interesting thoughts about this emerging generation that has never known a world without Facebook.
Is Facebook creating a temptation generation?
Facebook is the digital marshmallow we can’t resist.
By Mel Layos
Back in the late 1960s, researcher Walter Mischel conducted an experiment that has come to be known as the “Marshmallow Test.”
This test consisted of giving marshmallows to 4-year-olds, with the promise of more marshmallows to come if they could delay eating the first for 15 minutes. Those who resisted the sugary treat were shown to do well later in life, while those who failed to resist were more likely to suffer from lower test scores, even issues of drug dependency.
More than 40 years later, Facebook has proved to be an even sweeter marshmallow to its millions of users than any puffed confection Mr. Mischel handed out.
While beginning to write this piece, I couldn’t resist the temptation to check my own Facebook profile.
Has anybody commented on my latest status update? Has Jenna from high school accepted my late-night friend request? I can just click right over and find out, but I know once I do I’ll end up spending the rest of the afternoon playing Scrabble and commenting on tagged photos.
I’m not alone with this struggle. Comb through any random Facebook page and you’ll find people around the world updating statuses from their offices, from classrooms, even from behind the wheel. The deferred rewards of keeping one’s job, learning arithmetic, or even staying alive are no match for the compound-worded monster.
The temptation to let others know how happy or sad we feel, and more important, the numerous supportive messages we’ll receive from our “friends,” is an exercise in deferred gratification that we all lose on a daily basis. And who’s to blame us? With its complicated algorithms and formulas, Facebook takes the legwork out of friendship. Do you know Bob? Why not send a friend request to his girlfriend Jane? You haven’t talked to Lee in a while. Maybe you should send him a message.
Why go through the trouble of going out and cultivating one new friendship when Facebook lets you meet and befriend hundreds in less time than it takes to watch an episode of “Jersey Shore”?
Every day many people do choose the hundreds of online friends over that one real friend. And what’s truly sad is what we’re teaching our nation’s younger, more impressionable generation. Those born after 1990 have never known a world without the Internet, and it’s clear they’re fully ingrained in the culture of “right now.”
In choosing the cozy, instant world of online socializing and gaming over human interaction and exercise, this generation has broken records (and scales) for childhood obesity. According to the latest findings of the Centers for Disease Control, childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years.
When I worked at a video-game retailer, I saw much of this behavior firsthand. Children would update their Facebook statuses or tweet from their iPhones while their parents shrugged in a “What can you do?” fashion as they handed me a stack of video games. More often than not, these children were obese.
There are positives to having access to the world at our fingertips. Last year’s violent protests in Iran were made real by the video of Neda Soltan’s death, distributed through sites such as YouTube and Facebook, and footage of the quakes in Haiti helped raise millions of dollars for the rescue efforts. But while many people were called to action by such tragedies, many never made it past the “share” button at the top of their Facebook pages.
When your country leads the way in obesity, it’s time to put down the BlackBerry and pick up a basketball. I’m not advocating a Facebook boycott or a video-game bonfire.
What I am calling for is a little participation in the analog world. Unplug for one day a week. Play flag football instead of Madden 10. Build houses for Habitat for Humanity instead of a barn in Farmville. Meet and befriend real people.
After all, it’s not as if Facebook could give you a ride to the airport.
(You can find the original article HERE)
Wildfire Wrap
Attendance
Below average. Spring sports have sprung.
Talk
Continued in the TEN series looking at one of the most misunderstood of the Ten Commandments…#3. We looked at what it really means to misuse Gods name, our relationship with Him to get what we want. Despite running on just three hours sleep (see previous post) it was awesome to see how God used the talk in a number of students lives. I was brought to tears by an email I received last night from a small group leader who said: ”I’ve never heard that take on the 3rd Commandment before. I thought that was one of your best messages I’ve heard you give in 3 1/2 years. Maybe you should try less sleep more often.” Wow…so humbled again how God shows up when we feel like crap.
Volunteer Involvement
Great night…full showing from our leadership team! Love once again how a number of our small group leaders who play sports actually come right from practice/games to serve our students! Talk about commitment!
Music/Program
It was our once a month game night and we went with a game I found on the internet that seems to be a youth ministry hit…oddly enough in 12 years of ministry I hadnt heard of it :/ Its called Torpedo…and is basically a varition on dodgeball…with students attempting to run from one end of the gym to the other without getting hit by a dodgeball from the sides. It went VERY well…I would even venture to say it was one of our best game nights when it comes to students enjoying and participating in the game. We showed the following video for our WiFi (thanks Jenna for sending it our way)
Final Thought
“Ministry is like a box of chocolates…you never know what you’re gonna get.” All kidding aside some nights become “surprise hits” in the sense that you go into them feeling defeated, tired….like everything is in chaos and yet those end up being the nights where people respond more than any other night. God is great and nights like last night remind me that He will bring His Kingdom regardless and sometimes even in spite of what I bring to the table.
Summer Camp
I will take this opportunity to say that Summer Camp Registration is NOW OPEN for our July 11-15th camp at Tadmor. For more info or to register online please visit our Camps & Events page HERE.
Steroids: The Joy & The Pain.
So I’ve been back on steroids for my Crohns treatment for the past couple of weeks and thought I would update you with how that is going.
Lets just start by saying writing this blog at 4am isn’t typical for me as I am about the farthest thing from a “morning guy” you will ever meet. One of the unfortunately side-effects of prednisone for me as been sleeplessness. Now I do have a prescribed sleep aid, but you only get so many of those and it kinda sets you up to depend on them…like I cant sleep without them now. Another interesting side effect for someone with my disease is a bigger appetite. Where usually I am the last one done at a meal and I rarely finished everything on the plate, now I notice I’m first done, every things gone and I am snacking like a preganent chick! Seriously though…its good to have some weight back on…but now the pants are getting a little tight. Lastly I have also had some random sweating issues…again not being a sweaty guy you notice even the slightest change here.
On the positive side it does seem to have kicked back my Crohns from being fully flared up. This is the beautiful thing about this steroid is that it has a long proven track record of quickly reducing inflammation in the gut. It is a short term solution however and I won’t be on them much longer, in fact we have already begun tapering me off them. Not sure what the future holds for my treatment as the Docs still want me to go on much stronger meds like Remicade for example which I have been reluctant to go on.
So for now…before the dawn of this new day…I sit here in my darkened living room…awake…clicking away….steroids…oh the joy and oh the pain.
Current Life Image
Finally got to do some hiking on the Salmonberry River Trail yesterday. It was a great hike, although alittle more rain than I would have liked. I brought my camera along for the journey and snapped a few shots. The first thought when I saw the one below was that it sums up how my life feels right now. If that’s confusing don’t read too much into it…it was just what came to mind.
Wildfire Wrap
Attendance
Below average.
Talk
We continued this week with talk #2 in the “TEN” series. The series is all about taking a fresh look at the Ten Commandments, seeking to learn about the stuff God values…instead of a list of things required to be in relationship with God. We looked at the first two commandments and the big idea was that God wants to be our One and Only God.
Volunteer Involvement
It was definitely one of those nights where we were down a number of small group leaders, thankfully overall attendance was down as well and we didn’t face too many holes.
Music/Program
Tyler and I decided to switch the flow of the program for this week starting things off with worship. Though it worked we agreed that our normal flow works better. Before the talk the worship team performed “Be My Everything” which summed up the talk very well. For the game it was: “Take a Bite or Take a Seat.” As usual Luke had some pretty nasty combinations for students to eat…including grape juice with mustard in it! Gross. For the WiFi we showed this theme appropriate clip having to do with the Ten Commandments;
Final Thought
Have you seen the show Pawn Stars on the History channel? It’s one of the few shows I record on my DVR each week…I admit I’m hooked. Basically the idea of the show is that people bring in their items hoping to find out they are very valuable and worth alot of $$$$. The tension in most episodes is a couple of potentially big ticket items that might be worth alot and at the end of the show an expert comes in to determine the value. Sometimes people are ticked to find out what they thought was valuable was actually worthless and other times people are surprised to learn something is worth more than they thought it was. I shared with our team during the pre-Wildfire meeting that each student that walks in through our doors comes from a world that tells them they aren’t valuable and that one of the most important things we can do as a student ministry team is communicate value to them. We have a unique voice into these students lives and God is the “expert” who has already determined each of these students hold immense value to Him.
Lessons Learned Playing COD
If you haven’t heard of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 you have probably just returned from living on Mars. Modern Warfare 2 has sold 14 million copies worldwide since it was released in November of last year and has rivaled Hollywood blockbusters in total sales. The hype is definitely felt since I fall smack within their target demographic and work with adolescents for my day job. So after diving in and playing COD for months now I thought I would share with you some things I’ve learned.
- People are selfish.
There are numerous types of games to play within COD and all but one type that I can think of stress the importance of working as a team to some desired goal. It’s very frustrating working towards a goal in a particular game and realizing that your teammates are more interested in getting the most kills, completing a challenge, leveling up their gun or getting an infamous nuke that kills everyone in the game. In this latest edition of COD the makers added something called clan tags which encourage people to identify themselves with a group of other players, other players who it’s implied that you will be working together with when you play. My clan is the FIRE clan.
- People are mean and vulgar.
One of the fun parts of multiplayer games is being able to talk with other players through a headset or bluetooth device. When playing with friends you know this can be a lot of fun to chat about strategy and just make the game more enjoyable. Sadly the downside is there are a lot of vulgar, immoral people on there as well. I honestly don’t think I’ve played an hour of COD and not heard the F-word, people called “faggots, gay, niggers” or just about any derogatory name you can think of. I’ve heard grown men rip to shreds an annoying kid online who sounded no more than 9 years old. (thankfully you do have the option of muting players).
And don’t even get me started about people’s usernames in the game…let’s just say Xbox and Playstation seem to be doing little to edit what vulgar people “creatively” come up with for their name in the game. For example last night one of my enemies was “MomHumper.” Pretty much sums that one up.
- People lose their values held in real life.
“It’s just a game.” Oh if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone say that…heck I’ve even said it with other games. I know a number of guys in real life that play COD…guys that have strong convictions and values…good guys. Yet within a game there’s something that seems to erode our ability to keep the values/ethics we hold since it’s “ just a game.” Two examples. After getting 4 kills you get something called a “care package” delivered to you via helicopter. This is a random “gift” from the sky that gives you an incentive to get more kills. Well needless to say they can be stolen from the enemy and part of the fun of the game is trying to steal your enemies care package (you get points for doing so). However occasionally someone from your OWN TEAM will steal your care package.
Secondly there is also alot of cheating going on in the games. One of the points of COD is to rank up: to work toward higher and higher ranks which unlock new weapons, perks and emblems to show off your progress. While most guys are trying to earn their way to these higher ranks some take a shortcut by cheating. There’s even a term that cheaters use call “boosting” to justify their behavior and attempting to make their conscience allow it. Bottomline is there’s ways within the game to rank up quickly with the help of a couple buddies who know your desire to level up.
- Winning isn’t everything.
Thankfully through all the smut the game is also a lot of fun. Stunning graphics mixed with an opportunity to connect with friends to share an online experience keep millions coming back. For me though I am definitely trying to score well I dont really care if I “win” or not. For me a “win” is having a fun night with friends, sharing an experience that is unique and gives us something to talk about the next time I see them in real life. As I consistently share with parents who fear their children’s brains are rotting due to playing video games, when connected with real life friends and values video games can actually be a positive part of their development.
