It seems fitting...

I have been slacking a lot lately when it comes to blogging... Life has just been so busy, and so many other things have been happening that blogging took a quick trip to the very bottom of the priority list.

Things haven't necessarily slowed down any today, but I've had this post in the drafts folder for a while and today (St. Patrick's Day) seemed like a fitting day to post it for reasons which will soon become obvious...

All of that intro out of the way here we go...

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On December 18 I got a tattoo.

Much thought, prayer, and discussion went into it before I had it done with a very close circle of friends and confidants including Jenn.

I sent an email out to those close friends and family the day I had the work done, and since then have sent it out and shared it with over 100 other people who've expressed interest in the ink or wondered what the heck I was thinking.

The rest of this post is word-for-word the contents of that email I sent out on December 18, 2009.

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December 18, 2008 - 11:50 AM

Samuel took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Jeshanah. He named it Ebenezer — "the stone of help" — for he said, "Up to this point the Lord has helped us!" — 1 Samuel 7:12, NLT

After a long period of sadness and trouble, a consequence of Israel's disobedience, Israel repented under the leadership of a new priest and judge, Samuel. God restored their political security, and the people, for their part, re-committed their hearts and minds to their Lord.

Samuel placed a large stone at the place where this restoration began. He publicly dedicated it as a monument to God's help, God's faithfulness, God's eternal covenant. And as the people got on with their lives, the stone stood there, visible to all who passed that way, a reminder of judgment and repentance, mercy and restoration.

The Ebenezer stone represented a fresh beginning, a reversal of course for God's people. It also said something important about God: his mercies are everlasting; his covenant is forever.

Members of AA can tell you how long they have been sober. They keep alive the memory of the last drink they took, and with each new day, one day at a time, they move farther down the road of sobriety. AA is on to something important. Do they ask their members to count the number of years spent in drunken waste? No. They count the days spent walking in a new direction. All that went before is water over the dam.

Samuel was a wise man with a good idea. He recognized something that's true about human nature — we're forgetful.

At Ebenezer, Israel could stand next to that big old rock and remind themselves, "Yes, we serve a living and faithful God, whose mercies are everlasting."

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Today, I am raising an ebenezer...

It will be a constant, visible, physical reminder to me of God's work in my life, especially relating to...

• the changes in my personal theology and understanding of what it means to be a "Christ Follower" over the course of this past year
• the spiritual awakening I am experiencing and how that is leading me to spiritual formation stuff
• the community of RVCC and the ministries there I am able to take part in
• the friendships I have cherished this year
• Jenn, Ellie, and Silas who love me unconditionally, even though I make it difficult
• being the lay director of boy's chrysalis #24 (the process, the weekend, the team, the flight, the memories)
• turning 30, which was a much bigger/harder deal for me than I expected
• that God's mercy is everlasting and forever
• that regardless of how insignificant I feel that He will use me, if I will just get out of His way and let Him

My appointment is today from 4pm to 7pm at Wicked Sensations in Chillicothe...

I have a small suspicion that this is going to hurt... so, if you think to say a prayer during that time I'd appreciate it.

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A Prayer of St. Patrick

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

NYWC Nashville - Kick Off

Well... The NYWC Nashville is officially underway. It is nice to be at the conference this time around as a participant and not an exhibitor. I've felt very lazy today, just loafing around Nashville, connecting with old and new friends, and being generally lazy.

This morning Jenn and I wandered down to the convention center after a great breakfast at our hotel. We discovered that we were much to early to officially check in, so we found the LiveWorship booth, and then just went wandering aimlessly down broad street to second street.

There are a scad of great looking restaurants and bars down that way that we would love to pop into for lunch, dinner, or just because while we're here in town. We picked a local place that Jenn's been wanting to visit and had lunch there. It was pretty good. We packed up the left overs and Jenn found someone on the street to give them to on her way back to the convention center. She has a big heart for the homeless, and really wants to find other ways to make connections and do some local outreach while we are here. I admire her compassion, and although I don't see the opportunities as often as she does I'm going to help her do her thing as much as I can while we're here.

The rest of the day Jenn has been in the HERStory pre-conference, and I've been wandering around the area, drinking coffee, reading, writing in my moleskine, and meeting up with old and new friends.

I helped the LiveWorship crew setup the booth while Jenn was in HERStory. We grabbed some dinner at Panera and then some coffee at Starbuck's and now Jenn is back in HERStory and I'm chillin down at the YS Store waiting for the RVCC contingent to arrive.

Tonight we're going to take the exhibit hall by storm, and then catch the late night concert action.

slow lazy day today for me. I'm sure tomorrow will be much more exciting.

For tonight, roogles out.

Bite Back!

On April 25, 2008 students from the Jr. High and Sr. High youth groups from River Valley Community Church came together for a one evening event to Bite Back, and help stop malaria from killing thousands in Africa.

We met out at the Milestone Lodge for an evening of fellowship, games, discussion, worship, and of course food.

Following hot dogs around the fire, the youth jumped in a played some crazy mosquioto and African themed games before we settled down to hear Wayne Beam share about his trip to Africa with Wes in 2006, and about the effect malaria has there on so many people.

At the end of the evening we were blessed by worship with The [All New] Marty Ford Experience, and even more blessed to have Sarah, one of our seniors, express her worship by painting during the worship set.

The event was a great success, and I'm pleased to say that thanks to the amazing support of our church we are sending $2380 dollars to Compassion International for the purchase of 238 mosquito nets to help Bite Back and put an end to malaria in Africa!

BiteBack.net is the official website of Compassion's Bite Back campaign.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

NYWC Atlanta - Day 4 - wrap up

Well... the rest of the day was a crazy blur, pretty much like I predicted...

At 3 (ish) Jenn took off from the convention center to find us some milk and take more bags of our "stuff" back to the hotel. I feel like we could start a Youth Ministry library with all the books we've carted back from the convention. To make that funnier, I procrastinated in buying some books today until there were none left, so I was able to order them at the show price and have them shipped to me... At least we won't have to find room for them in the car.

I helped Alan & Ed pack up the LW booth, and get it loaded up into Ed's van. By the time we were done with that we were all thinking dinner, so Jenn met us over at Ted's again for a sit down meal ( probably the last one in Atlanta ).

We shared the shrimp appetizer again, and I had a cup of the bison chilli. I also had a bison burger, and onion rings. All tasted good, sweet tea got an A+ again.

Because of the crazy downtown crowd this afternoon ( Falcons at the Georgia Dome, 5000 Youth Workers in town, and a Police concert at the Tabernacle ) we had to wait about 45 minutes for a table at Ted's. So by the time we ate, it was time to book it back down to the convention center for the 8PM General Session.

On the way in to find seats we bumped into Carol again, and got the great opportunity to hang out with her the rest of the evening.

Lost & Found, Bob Stromberg, and Skit Guys all got to play a "warm up" act in the general session. A teaser for the Late Night, if you will.

Worship with Leland was good. I think they might be growing on me.

The speaker at the general session was Marquis Laughlin.

Marquis recites the Bible, from memory, as performance art. Tonight he shared with us Genesis chapter 12 through chapter 22. The story of Abraham. It was awesome!

As Marquis was getting ready to go on, Jenn and Alan slipped up to the Thomas Merton theatre to get some seats for the Late Night. The Skit Guys are some of Jenn's favorite people, and she is being totally honest when she says that the Skit Guys and Lost & Found tonight at the Late night were the highlight of her weekend.

The show was fantastic! Afterward we got to hang out with Tommy & Eddie for a little bit. I absolutely love these guys! Not only are they hilarious, but they are genuinely great guys who really love God and love what they do.



It's now 10 till 2. Jenn really wants to attend an 8 AM Seminar, and among the other things happening in the morning we need to pack up and move out of the hotel, buy our CD's and DVD's from the conference, buy the last couple materials we wanted from the YS Store, attend the closing general session, and prep for the 10 1/2 hour drive home.

Going to be a short night I'm afraid.

I suspect no more blogging until we get back home to Ohio... I will post a Monday wrap up and an overall take on the weekend once we are settled safely back at home.

NYWC Atlanta - Day 4

Got up early again this morning so that we could be up front and personal with the David Crowder Band in the morning general session. We stopped in the CNN center on the way over here for Arby's and Starbucks. Weird breakfast combo, huh?

Jenn's mad dashing skillz were in full effect this morning, and we sat in "the cheap seats" just to the left of the stage. The morning general session was really good overall. Taylor Mason is great. David Crowder Band rocked, as expected.

I really appreciated Doug Field's talk more than I expected that I would. Not that I had low expectations for Doug, I just have heard him speak before and was worried I wouldn't connect...

His message was fantastic, and something I really needed to hear.

After the general session, David Crowder Band was kind enough to be signing autographs and getting photos with people. Jenn got her picture taken with Bwack, Hogan, and Crowder. She's very excited. I will let her post them though.

We wandered around the exhibit hall for a while after the session, and now I'm doing a quick blog update before the day gets all crazy again.

Our plan from this point out is that at 3, I need to help Alan and Ed tear down the LW booth...

Then we're going to run some things back to the hotel, and get some lunch. I'm craving Chinese, so maybe we'll try to find something of that sort...

We're hitting the general session again then at 8 PM, and definitly seeing the Skit Guys and Lost & Found at the late night tonight...

It's sure to be after midnight when we get back to the hotel. I will update again later if we have downtime, but I suspect we will be on the run the rest of the day.

NYWC Atlanta - Day 3 - In Review

Well... After two hours of constant typing to get the blogs up to speed, the battery finally died...
I headed over to the LW booth to check the score and plug up for some power. With the Buck's ahead 14-3 I decided it was safe to leave my laptop on the charger in the booth and look for some lunch.

Alan joined Jenn and I for a walk over to HSUS chinese restaurant, which came highly recommended... A short snafu on the way over ( wild goose chase, by someone we wouldn't give cash to ) caused us to get a little lost, but we did end up finding it only about a block away from the HRC where we ate last night...

Unfortunately, despite our intel to the contrary, Hsus wasn't open for lunch... Bearing that in mind we decided to do Mexican at Mama Ninfa's, across the street from Hsus, in the Peachtree Center. It was good. Great tortilla chips and salsa, and Jenn and I split a monster nachos for lunch.

After lunch Alan had to head back to the booth, so Jenn and I took a couple of hours to wander around the city. We checked out the PeachTree Center, the MARTA, and the Atlanta Underground. Interesting sights... I've never seen anything quite like the Underground.

Check out Jenn's take on the MARTA and the Underground here.

Going down the escalator at the MARTA station at PeachTree Center reminded us both of descending to the subway's in Budapest and brought back happy memories... Except, of course, these escalators weren't moving at 20 miles-per-hour... Still, happy memories...

We headed back over to the Conference around six and set up camp in the "line" waiting to get seats for the evening general session.

Thanks to Jenn's mad running skillz, we got some excellent seats right near the center square stage. A prime location to see the talent, and Loui Giglio. Brent Longnecker is a really talented guy.

Family Force 5 was... well... wow... they weren't quite describable...



One amazing thing though... The lady who signing during the Family Force 5 concert was absolutely amazing. We hadn't been sitting where we could see the ASL interpreters up until this session, so I'm not sure if this particular lady had been there all weekend or not, but she was incredible! (side note: watching her, was also the only way I could understand the words to the songs...)



Then we had some stand up comedy. I think that Bill Arnold is hilarious. Subtle, but very funny. A new comedian I've never seen by the name of Jeff Allen was really funny as well... Jenn laughed very hard as his sketch, which was a little edgy I thought, but indeed very funny.

There was a really excellent presentation next about Compassion International, which included a (now grown up) Compassion girl sharing the story of how Compassion impacted her life. Marko got all choked up as she was sharing. We ( as a family ) have two Compassion kids... We decided right after Ellie was born that we would sponsor a child who's birthday was the same day as Ellie's, and then did the same thing again when Silas was born... Currently we send our money and Jenn sends them letters, but our hope is that when they are old enough Ellie & Silas will want to contribute to the communication for our "other kids" who share their birthdays...

I gotta say this about Louie Giglio... I have really really liked Louie when I've seem him in the past. I still remember, have notes, and use some of the teaching he shared at Icthus clear back in 1998 or 99 when I was there with a crowd from Rio...

[edit] I had a really long thing typed up about why I didn't like Louie's message, and why it really didn't connect with me, but before I posted this blog I actually got to talk to someone this morning who thought my issues were just me, being grouchy and argumentative...

So... I'll leave it to say that I really didn't like Louie's message. If you want to talk about why, or know any more than that email me or let's get together... From where I was sitting it was obviously very powerful for some people, and that it what's really important...

Anyhoo... Enough of that sort of thing... If you would like to share what you thought of Louie's session, I'd love to hear your thoughts.



The Comedy Late night with Jeff Allen, Bill Arnold, and Dave & Brian was hilarious!

We picked up a couple of Dave & Brian Cd's before heading back over to the hotel...



By the time we headed back we decided it was too late to find something to eat... so I worked on this and then crashed about 2 AM.

Sunday updates coming today as I get time...

NYWC Atlanta - Day 2 - In Review (Continued)

When Jenn was done taking the show floor by storm, we were able to grab some relatively close seats for the opening General Session.

Marquis Laughlin and Joe Castillo are both amazing, and I have decided that from a distance I like the music of Flatfoot 56. Because we needed to gain some distance to enjoy them, we sort of lost of our seats to listen to Andy Stanley and Jenn and I ended up sitting together at the tables near the exhibit hall to just relax until the general session ended and our afternoon seminars began.

Unbeknownst to us, Gavin busted us skipping the speaker. I found this in his Flikr set this morning.



I went to a session called 'The Expectations that Killed the Youth Worker' by Marko & Mark Riddle.

There was a large segment of the session on conflict resolution, and developing realistic expectations for the Youth workers role in the church. Along with some great stories by both Marks... The most striking moment of the seminar though, was probably this...

Marko had everyone in the room who was a PAID Youth worker stand up. Due to the nature of the seminar ( let's face it, if you're a volunteer and you don't like the expectations the church is putting on you, you go somewhere else ) most of the people in the room stood up... 80 percent or so I would guess...

THEN he asked everyone who as standing this... "If your church stopped paying you to do youth ministry and you would CONTINUE to go to that church, stay standing"

Marko seemed optimistic about the number of people who didn't sit down... but WOW, a lot of people sat down...

I really feel for all of the people who sat down because I have SO been where they are... Going to a church only because you get paid to do youth ministry there is a hard place to be in... Honestly, it just sucks both for the Youth worker and for the church, and the kids in the youth ministry. It ends up with people getting hurt. I so wish I had been able to hear this seminar three years ago.

I am so blessed to be part of an awesome church where I can honestly say I would continue to attend and get plugged in even if they asked me to step away from the Youth there. It would be hard, don't get me wrong... but I honestly believe that Jenn and I have found our home at RVCC... I've told Steve a couple of times that the only way to get rid of us at this point is to straight up tell us to not come back, because outside of that RVCC is stuck with us.

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We felt like we really didn't have time to go to dinner because Jenn really wanted good seats to see Third Day at the general session. So after our afternoon seminars Jenn and I scoped out two more rows of the exhibit hall floor and then went to get near the front of the line for the gates to open and and the seat claiming to begin.

Joe Castillo is just amazing. I'm hoping that Jenn and I can stop by his booth today to get a caricature drawn and buy a couple of his DVD's.

Third Day is great. Jenn loves Mac Powell so while I kept and eye on the seats ( which were a safe distance from the stage ) she went and took up a spot near the front from whence she got some amazing photos. Here's one... We'll have to upload a flickr set of all of our photos from the show later...



The speaker at the general session was Shane Claiborne. He game up on stage, made very brief small talk, breathed fire, did a back flip, put out his torch with his mouth and then prepped the crowd by saying "I'm not going to share the greatest sermon ever given".

He then read the Sermon on the Mount. The whole thing.

I wasn't sitting where I could see Shane right on, but getting to watch his face on the screens while he read was an awesome experience in and of itself... He wasn't just reading. He loved it! He was excited, enthusiastic, he grinned at Jesus' sarcasm, spat out Jesus warnings, preached Jesus' sermon with passion.

When he finished reading ( it took 10 or 15 minutes ) he took a deep breath... paused for a minute, and said "I've just shared the greatest sermon ever given, may God grant us the courage to put it into practice"

And he stepped down off the stage!

Just getting to watch his face and listen to the excitement in his voice while he read gave me chills, but add to that the obvious discomfort in the room while everyone sat in shocked silence, not really sure what to say, or how to react was freaking amazing! I was SO pumped!

Tic came up afterwards to pray and close the session and it was such a relief to hear him say out loud what it was obvious the majority of the room was thinking... "As I sat there listening to him read, I caught myself thinking... Is this all he's going to do?"

The other awesome thing about Shane's choice of message is how uncomfortable it seemed to make the crowd... There is deep truth there! Truth that every single one of us fail to live up to, and choose to ignore ( or only believe selectively ) as we live out our faith in the day to day...

I know we've all heard the sermon on the mount before, and we've all heard bits and pieces of it picked apart and analyzed... but that's the first time in my life I've ever just heard it "preached".

It was awesome!



After the general session Marty, Alan, Jenn and I had a later dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe.

By the time we were done eating the lack of sleep, and all the day's acitivity just caught up with me and I mentally shut down...

Fell into bed exhausted at 12:30 this morning.

NYWC Atlanta - Day 2 - In Review

By the time we made it back to the hotel last night we had been going for nineteen hours on six hours of sleep... I was beyond the point of coherence...

Thankfully I took notes to myself on and off throughout the day yesterday because it was too good of a day to not cover in detail.

Jenn's HerStory session went until noonish yesterday, and I was able to spend most of that time just relaxing and lying low at the convention... I walked around the show floor for a little bit, read more in detail about some of the sessions I was planning to attend, and did email and read blogs until about 11:30.

Around 11:45 I had an awesome opportunity to sit down and have lunch with Marko. I've said many times, here on the blog, and in person how much I appreciate Youth Specialties and the work they do to encourage, empower, and equip youth pastors to be more effective in their ministries. And even though I'm a volunteer youth leader in a small church in a small town and may never be a "heavy hitter" in the world of Youth Ministry... it is really cool to be able to come to the conventions and make connections with folks who do wield the big guns in our field...

I really tried to not have an agenda when Marko and we got together because I really just wanted to chat and hang out with him. I know he's been checking blogs on and off throughout the weekend, so if he pops over here hopefully he can confirm that I wasn't a blithering idiot... ( or if I was a blithering idiot, maybe he'll cut me a break since he's famous and probably has to deal with blithering idiots all the time ).

Anyhoo... Had a great lunch just talking and sharing and hanging out. Thanks dude!

Oh... Also as we were wrapping up, I snapped this shot of Marko across the table. I didn't put him up to this, I promise.



Also as we were breaking up Gavin wandered by with his camera handy and snapped a photo of Marko and I with Carol, another youth worker blogging from the convention.



To make this whole situation funnier, when I did meet back up with Jenn on the show floor later she had stopped at some booth where they were custom carving those rubber bracelet things. I have a couple on my keychain for GeoCaching and other things, and she had thoughtfully had one made for me to add to my collection.



I feel like this post is getting long, so I'm going to break it up... More next coming soon...

NYWC St. Louis - Last Post Part 2

I just had to tack a post on here to say that the Late Night with Lost & Found, Skit Guys and Bob Stromberg was the funniest thing I have ever seen.

I laughed so hard I might be injured. Lost and Found are awesome... Bob Stromberg is a great storyteller, and the Skit Guys are two amazing and talented folks.

I stayed to talk to Tommy & Eddie briefly after the show just to tell them how much I appreciate their stuff, and say Thanks for their kind emails and comments back to me and Jenn after I blogged about the Skits that Teach thing this past year.

I know that all of these artists are bombarded with people wanting to be their friends, and share with them, and make connections with them and ( even as badly as I want to sit down with Marko and Tommy & Eddie even for a half an hour just to drink coffee and talk ) I always feel terribly guilty about being one of "those people"... because really, in the grand scheme of things, there is no reason that any of them should remember who I am, and it would be silly to expect them to take time out of their ( already ) crazy schedules just to make a connection with every Youth Worker who wanted their time/advice/etc.

Wow... This post is turning out way longer than I intended...

Anyhoo... I guess my point is that I don't want to be one of "those people" who are constantly hovering around the famous people and trying to pretend like we are friends, and that for me, it is really really cool when ( even after a year ) there is a hint of recognition when we make even a momentary connection...

I really need to shake this "marko stalker" label that the kids have on me too... haha

Wow again... I have no idea what any of this has to do with anything...

Just part of "My Story" I guess.

NYWC St. Louis - Sunday Morning Update

The comedy show last night was just plain fantastic! All four of the comedy acts were hilarious, but Bill Arnold was my favorite by far. His humor is a little dry, but he is one funny dude.

Before the comedy show Alan and I had dinner at an little Italian place down around the corner on Broadway. J.F. Sanfillipo's I think was the name. It was awesome! The hot fresh sesame rolls rocked, and there was no way I could finish the huge plate of fettucini alfredo they set in front of me.

I was up really late again last night, even after we got back to the room from the comedy show. I ended up talking on IM and doing email until almost 2 in the morning. Thankfully the time change gave us an extra hour of sleep to go on, so I don't feel all that bad this morning.

We opened the booth for a quick morning session from 8:45 till 11 AM. Had a couple of great conversations, but especially one with a guy who was a very happy MS3 user and not about to give us the time of day when I talked him into looking a demo... I think he was genuinely impressed by our ease of use.

The morning General Session this morning was started by Jeff Johnson who I really really needed at Cinci last year. The slowing down and resting and breathing in God is a pretty powerful experience. This morning I just couldn't get into it though, and ended up sitting in the lobby with Alan researching options for visiting the arch while we are here in town.

We caught the skit guys bit after Jeff and loved it. I stopped and talked to Eddie briefly before the session started ( just to see if he would remember who I was, and to say Hi ).

Now the speaker is on stage, but I've slipped out again. I'm munching on some nachos and getting in a blog update before the booth opens again from noon till 3:30.


Oh... The cheerleaders are back in force this morning. Seemed to be mostly older girls this morning and less 3-8 year olds... Makes the fact they they aren't wearing hardly anything and are made-up like hookers even worse. I told Alan on the way in that there are only a few groups I can think of who could have been more awkward sharing the convention center with 3500 youth pastors... A stripper convention maybe, or the adult film industry...

Ok Ok maybe it isn't really all that bad. BUT... cheerleading is quickly being ruled out of Ellie's future. No way I am letting her get into anything like this. She'll be a band geek, and she'll like it.

Band kids are more spiritual anyway ( see previous post ).

Ah well... back to work.

Edit - Nov 06 - A response

Wanted to take a few minutes to respond to this comment by Daisy, and was afraid my response might go longer than a comment permitted, so I decided to do an addendum instead.

daisy said on November 5, 2007 11:07 AM...

"I have read a bunch of blogs from the people in attendance of the NYWC in STL. Let me ask you this; if so many Christians are "disgusted" by the cheerleaders and find it sad and like you stated, won't let your kids take part in it, then where are all the cheerleaders going to find Christian influence? By just letting them be segregated from the Christians, are you showing Christ's love here?"

First... I have no idea who Daisy is or how to respond to her other than by posting again here... I hope that she comes back to see my response, and that if more dialogue is needed she will continue to comment.

I guess I want to start my response by saying that my feelings toward the cheerleading competition in St. Louis has NOTHING to with the girls here at the convention being cheerleaders... There are a several cheerleaders who attend my own church and youth group and at least one of them is a "core kid" in our youth ministry.

What saddened me about the cheerleading convention ( which I saw very very little of, by the way ) is that these girls are being put on display in a way that is totally inappropriate for girls of any age group no matter how old they are. If our high school cheerleaders dressed in some of the outfits I saw walking through the lobby, they wouldn't even be permitted on the school grounds, let alone into a football or basketball game.

I guess I have no idea what is actually taking place on the stage in the competition either, so I can only assume that the "dancing" that was taking place all over the lobby were girls practicing for their routines and not just imitating the latest Brittany Spears music video...

On the way out of the convention center on Saturday afternoon, I actually walked by a group of six to ten girls ( who I would guess to have been age five or six ) all clustered around a mother who was kneeling in their midst... The girls were all wearing disturbingly short tops and short skirts with far more skin exposed than not. They all had heavy eye-makeup and bright red lipstick on. The mother (parent/coach) was saying as I walked by... "Now girls... the team from [some name I didn't catch] really put you guys to shame earlier so I want you to get back in there and kick their little asses this time!"

I'll paraphrase Marko and say, I wanted to smack the lady.

Let me try to wrap this up by saying that I totally agree with you, Daisy, that segregation from cheerleaders in general ( or any group for that matter ) is the wrong approach. And I agree that someone really needs to be "in there" sharing the love of Christ with the girls, their parents, their coaches, etc... I just have a sneaky suspicion that getting that sort of attention from me, or any one else wearing a "Youth Pastor Badge" wouldn't have gone over so well this weekend... I'm afraid it would have come across a lot like the bullhorn Jesus guy.

Also, I don't think I would honestly prevent my three year old daughter from being a high school cheerleader if she really wants to... I just hope she doesn't feel the kind of pressure to be put on display by anyone as she grows up and decides what she wants to be in life.

My biggest problem here is that I can't imagine that these (little) girls would really be doing this to themselves ( the skimpy dress, the "dancing", the kick-their-little-asses competitiveness ) unless they were pushed into it by parents, coaches, society, etc... and that they have that pressure put on them by anyone really does make me sad.

Thank you for making me clarify. I'm open to more comments and/or discussion.

-Eli

SYATP - Thoughts About a Rant.

After some great discussion at Bible study a couple weeks ago about the the upcoming See You At the Pole on Sept 26, I ran across a blog today that had two articles worth re-posting.

The general consensus at Bible Study that night was that SYATP was a pretty ridiculous excuse for a "Christian" activity ( quotes on purpose there )... And one of the students even made the comment that she had already made a commitment to "NOT see anyone at the pole."

Here's the initial blog post. Read it.

See You at the Pole ( A Rant ) on Z Life

In my experience (both as a youth and a youth pastor) I have 1) not been really really excited about or really "good" at prayer at any time in my life and 2) dont't think SYATP does anything to help out with that.

I will admit openly that prayer doesn't appear anywhere on the top ten list of my spiritual gifts, and I am in awe of those people I meet who can commit to prayer and be faithful to it.

Dino (the guy from Z Life) got enough comments about the above listed rant, that he posted a new blog this time with a challenge.

SYATP Counter-Cultural Challenge on Z Life

I think it's a great idea! I'm also curios to know what you think.

-Roogles

( Thanks to Dino from Z Life ).

Great Article

My intention is not to steal Jenn's thunder by posting about this also, but this is one that I can't just let slip by...

Jenn turned me onto this blog a couple of weeks back, and Josh has some great insight and some of his thoughts are just fantastic!

If you didn't take Jenn's advice already, go read this post now!

"Worship" vs Worship

My favorite quote is "Sometimes I like Christians more before they know how to act like Christians."

Yes! Amen! This is what I LOVE about Youth ministry. Teenagers are sometimes so bent on "doing their own thing" that they live out their faith in ways that go against the rut we are so often stuck in as Christians. Love it!

Great stuff!

Meltdown

so yesterday I had a meltdown...

First things first... I don't melt down. I do not stress, I work well under pressure, I am a control freak (to the extent that it is possible in any given situation)... and even when any of the above isn't true I pretty much don't let it get to me.

Second things second.... Obviously this is all hogwash (link provided for all of you not up on your redneck terminology). To the best of my knowledge everyone has stress. Most people worry about at least one thing, and some people worry about everything. The trick to not melting down, is that people find things to do with the stress... Some people run, some people fish, or take pictures, or punch things, or cry, or drink, or fly kites, or take walks, or go on a silent retreat, or something...

and then some people just bottle things up inside, they supress the urge to let it out, thinking that it will show weakness, or character flaws, or that someone might call them a pansy, or some other reason... and then, eventually there is no where left to store it all up, and they meltdown.

I'm one of those people.

Typically I can detect when a meltdown is approaching and take some action to hold it off, or find a way to release some of the pent-up stress so that the meltdown is less painful, and less draining. I do one of those things I mentioned above (walk,fish, getaway,etc) and things go back to bearable, and life goes on...

I won't bore you with the details of what's going on, or what got me to the general state of stress I was in on Sunday morning because it would... well... bore you.

But anyhoo.... Sunday morning, in the midst of amazing worship ( thanks Marty & gang ) and an equally amazing message from Steven, I melted. I hope that I melted quietly. I am allowing myself to believe that only one other person noticed, because then I'll be less worried about the fact that I melted in public.

The meltdown, thankfully, was short and was followed by an awesome afternoon ( see here and here and here ) with the RVCC Youth out at Chris & Tesa's place. What an amazing group of kids ( and adults ). What an awesome blessing to be part of this exciting ministry.

But anyhoo... That was yesterday, and now I am back to real life where melting down is not permitted.

Ah well....

Hiding behind the wall.

In the spring of 1848 fourty-four trappist monks left the Abbey of Melleray in Western France and traveled on foot, by boat, and later by covered wagon to a small farm outside of Bardstown, Kentucky.

Seven times daily, eight counting mass, the brothers gather and pray the Psalms in unison.

This quote by Father Matthew Kelty (one of the monks at Gethsemani) still gives me chills.

"It's bad enough that we make cheese and fruitcake for the Kingdom of God, we do worse that that. We sing. We've been doing it since we got here. They got here late in the afternoon of December 21, 1848. Next day they began. December the 22, and it's never stopped. Day by day, week by week, year by year, until the end. In a wild, sordid, noisy, violent world we sing."

According to the Rule of St Benedict guest are to welcomed at the Abbey and are to be received "as Christ Himself".

On April 30, 2007 Steve and I made our way to Gethsemani to participate in a one week "Silent Retreat".

This coming Sunday (June 17) I will be sharing about our experience at the Abbey, and the impact that it had on me personally.

The following are some random observations, quotes, and things that I plan to bring up on Sunday...

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"We don't put up walls to keep the people out, we put up the wall to keep the noise out."

-Brother Christian (GuestMaster)

What would be different if I could make regular time for just me and God?

What am I doing to keep the noise level down in my own life?

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The monastic life is made up of three areas
- Prayer
- Work
- Spiritual Reading

If we are to live balanced Christian lives, out here in the real world, how can we expect to do so unless we also have this balance of prayer, "real life", and pursuit of spirituality?

The life of a monk is simply an exaggeration of these three principles, which we all need to keep balanced.

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In her book The Abbey of Gethsemani - Place of Peace and Paradox, Dianne Aprile writes...

"Monks are no better at this process, no better at praying and loving, than other other man or woman. But the monastic life gives them the structure, support, and encouragement to keep it up even when they fail. And they do".

And another quote by Brother Christian...

"We don't just pray when we FEEL like it. It is a constant. We put ourselves in God's presence no matter what we feel like."

A couple of my thoughts...

What would it be like if we, as a community of believers, provided for one another such a structure of support, prayer, encouragement, and love (even when fail, and we will) that we lived in God's presence all of the time whether we feel like being there or not?

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The last couple of things I'm hoping to do on Sunday are (1) dispell some of the myths about what "silent retreat" actually means... I was there with Steve after all... and (2) share some entries from my journal describing how I felt leading up to, during, and near the end of our time at Gethsemani.


I've rambled long enough this morning... If there are any specific questions, thoughts, anything that you would like to know about our time there, please leave comments below so that I add them to my notes for Sunday.

To Tersie. Yes, I'm a slacker.

First of all, despite rumors to the contrary my blog hasn't been broken. *grin*

I am simply the world's worst procrastinator.

Secondly, I would like to dedicate my next blog (and the message to follow on Sunday) to an amazing lady, who (I hope) hasn't given up on me posting about this one day.

Tersie, thank you for your patience and your prodding me to get this done.

Now... to the good stuff...

Silence

I realize I'm not the most faithful blogger in the blog-o-sphere. I am a procrastinator of the first order, and usually don't get around to blogging about things while they are on my mind...

This week however, my blog will be silent on purpose.

I'm leaving here in a few minutes for the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, KY for a Silent Retreat which begins today and will end on Friday afternoon.

More information about the Abbey and the tradition of silent retreats can be found on the Abbey's website at www.monks.org.

In order to really immerse myself into the silence, I will also be abstaining from my PCS phone, email, blog, and twitter all of this week as well.

Hopefully I will have quite a bit to post when I return...

Easter Weekend Update ( belated )

It has been too long since I've posted, and so much has happened that I thought I should post an "update" blog just so that everyone is caught up...

This past weekend was full of Easter activities for our family, and our larger family at RVCC.
Friday night ( 4/6 ) we had a Tenebrae Service. It is the first time river valley has tried something like the Tenebrae, and although the service is meant to be very emotionally impacting ( and possibly even depressing ) I felt like it went very well.

Kayla came to the tenebrae service and brought her friend Dan along. After the service a large number of River Vallians ( Thank you Paul Goshorn ) adjourned to Pizza Hut across the street for fellowship and food. I got to sit and talk with Kayla and Dan for about an hour, and enjoyed it very much.

Saturday morning ( 4/7 ) dawned bright and early. I wanted to be at Bristol Park in Waverly at 6:30 AM on Saturday so that I could see the sun rise, in preparation for Sunday's sunrise service which would also be held in the park. The dawn came cold and beautiful right on time at 7:10, so I went on over to the church to meet the "early crew" for setup of the RVCC Easter Egg hunt.

For anyone who doesn't know, or isn't from around Waverly or River Valley, our church has a HUGE free Easter egg hunt for the community on the Saturday before Easter every year. The egg hunt usually involves something like 20-25,000 easter eggs, 2000+ free hot dogs, free drinks, prize drawings, photos with the easter bunny, our bouncy house ( yes, our church has a moon castle ), and music.

This year the egg hunt had a slightly smaller crowd than normal on account of it happening in the midst of a mini-blizzard! When Jenn came down with the kids at about 10:30, I had her bring my heavy coat and my insulated boots, and I was still semi-frozen when we wrapped up and tore down about 2-o-clock. There is a fantastic video of the egg-hunt festivities on our church website. It can be found HERE.

After the egg hunt, we had a late lunch at Bob's with Jenn's parents and then crashed at the house all afternoon, and called it an early night so that we could be up and moving for sunrise service.

[EDIT]

Sorry Anna... Late Saturday afternoon after we got back to the house Anna and Jordan came out and we had an excellent time just hanging out and enjoying their company. We ended up talking, watching Mean Girls on TV, and eating chicken dip. It was a great evening.

[/EDIT]

Sunday morning ( 4/8 ) Jenn and I arrived at Bristol Park a little after 6:30 to find Marty already parked and waiting on us. We had a brief pow-wow about where to setup, when the cars started rolling in. I had braced myself that since Sunrise Service was a new things for River Valley that an attendance of 8 or 10 people would be great. Needless to say God smacked me when 21 people rolled in, including two of the youth!

The service was short and we were all cold, but it was awesome! Marty led some great Easter worship and then he and I shared about what sunrise service experiences we had from our pasts, and how awesome it is to be able to celebrate Easter and that Jesus is ALIVE! After the sunrise, a group of us had breakfast at Bob's before heading down to the church for the two "normal" morning services.

The all new MFE completely rocked the morning worship, and Steve had a fantastic message about what it actually means to God that Christ was fully human.

Sunday afternoon we spent at the house having Easter dinner and playing Wii with my parents and my brother... My dad kicked all of our butts at Wii Tenis.

This week has been long and slow, but pretty ordinary... I'm looking forward to the upcoming weekend even though it is going to be a busy one.

Enough rambling for now. Roogles out.

Long day

We are on our way home from a huge day of shopping in Columbus... We picked up a new stroller and several other things we have needed aroud the house. The attached photo was something we spotted in our shopping that made us think... ''wow''.

Thank you guys

As someone who screws up a lot this post on Marko's blog has really been heavy on my mind the past few days...

I have an enormous amount of respect for Marko and for the skit guys. This past November I had the opportunity to meet all three of them at the NYWC in Cincinnati, and getting to talk with them in person increased my respect for them so much more...

I for one honestly believe that there was no harm intended by Tommy & Eddie in the original skit, but that "no intended harm" does not equate to "no harm done". I am humbled by the apologies and the willingness to take responsibility by both Marko & The Skit Guys, and pray that I can exhibit the same level of humility when I make big screw ups in life.

I am positive that neither Marko, nor Tommy and Eddie will ever see this little blog, but I would like to say to them that they have been (and continue to be) big influences on my personal spiritual development, and that I appreciate their openness, honesty, and humility in this situation more than I can express.

"Who do YOU say that I am"

As referenced in a post by Marty we try to have a Youth Service on the fourth Sunday of every month at RVCC. Sometimes this ends up being just a time of worship, sometimes simple devotions, and sometimes we are so busy with all the craziness in our lives that we don't get anything planned and end up just sitting around and talking.

Recently I received the book Imaginative Prayer for Youth Ministry as a gift from an amazing friend and cohort in ministry. Last night at our fourth Sunday Youth Service I had the opportunity to try one of the prayer experiences out on our youth, and I must say it was amazing!

Marty started out with this awesome contemplative worship, and then I shared the "Who do You say that I am (us)" prayer experience with the Youth... The experience revolves around Matthew 16:13-20, where Jesus asks the disciples "Who do YOU say that I am", and then responds to Peter with "who He says that WE are"... As part of the experience I repeated a long list of names and phrases about how God sees us, His children, and invited the Youth to dwell on the names and phrases, those they were OK with, and the ones they didn't see in themselves or couldn't get a personal grip on...

We ended the time of reflection by allowing the youth to serve communion to one another, which was also extremely powerful. ( I know that all of the Youth have taken communion before, but I suspect that last night was the first time many of them had to SHARE communion with another person ).

After communion, we invited the Youth to stay as long as they wanted in silence and prayer just to bask in the knowledge that they are wonderfully and fearfully made unique creations of our Father in heaven... I was amazed by the response! For almost 30 minutes, a dozen teenagers sat in silent prayer! When people started to get up and leave, I had several youth comment on how "awesome" the experience was, and it was so encouraging to see them go with huge smiles and the knowledge (at least in that moment) that God KNEW them, and still loved them without exception.

What an awesome God we serve... that though He doesn't need us (Acts 17:25) He has made us His friends and desires a personal relationship with us.