During the summer we have events with our students every Monday (download our summer pocket calendar). Because school’s out and most teens are looking for something to do, the summer is an ideal time for hanging out and building relationships.
Last week, we held a “Make a Movie” day. The guys and girls separated and created their own videos. I took the guys and Rick took the girls. The following videos are the result.
First, the ladies made a music video to the song “I Don’t Care”.
And then the guys just made a bunch of random stuff (commercials, shows, 300 trailers, etc.)
I should add that the guys video was shot using my Flip MinoHD camera. I worked out pretty well, except that our old G5 had a hard time processing the HD footage. I had to change the Final Cut sequence to SD and then exported it out with the HD settings.
Today marks 9 years of marriage to Bethany. I’m sure she has an amazingly well-worded blog about it today. I haven’t check yet because I wanted to write this first.
Bethany, you are amazing. I know I wrote that in my card to you, but honestly, every day you captivate me with your beauty, character and passion. I’m so grateful that you are my closest friend and strongest supporter. You’re an amazing mother to Parker and Kent. I’m constantly impressed with your ability to love and nurture them. When you’re not around and I’m with the boys, I often think “How would Bethany handle this situation” (usually when I’m having to discipline them, which is often!).
I love you and those vows I said to you 9 nine years ago are just as meaningful and true as they are today.
We’re changing things up during our Wednesday evening service for the next few weeks. Instead of our regular service, we’re cutting out some of the “extras” (like games and goofy videos) in order to spend more time reading the Word and in prayer. My hope is that during this time, our students will be intentional about connecting with Christ and deepening their relationship with him.
This past week I had the students read the book of James. I wanted them to read the whole book through in order to get a feel for some of the themes and ideas in it. We spread chairs all throughout the room and placed a Bible, handout and pen on each. The handout served as a sort of reading guide with questions for the students to contemplate and a schedule for the evening. You can download a copy of the handout here.
Here’s the basic order of the evening:
Bible Reading :: 20 minutes
Individual Prayer :: 5 minutes
Confession :: 10 minutes
Worship :: 15 minutes
Devotional Thoughts :: 5 minutes
Response :: 5 minutes
Leader Prayer :: 5 minutes
All in all, I think things went well. I heard a few comments from students indicating that they enjoyed the changes and made the most of the time. During the Confession time, I sat with a group of high school guys and had some great interaction. My hope and prayer is that students would learn to take these practices and make them a regular part of their lives. Hopefully, modeling this will encourage and teach them healthy spiritual disciplines.
I recorded these a couple of weeks ago and thought I’d share them here. They’re some clips of the boys saying their bedtime prayers a couple different nights. The opening text is something I made in Kinemac (a program I got in the last MacHeist bundle), just to play around with it and try to figure it out.
Anyway, the second set of prayers is pretty funny.
Yesterday we finished up our series on Proverbs 30 by highlighting the wisdom of the lizard.
Verse 28: Lizards—they are easy to catch, but they are found even in kings’ palaces.
The wisdom of the lizard is found in the fact that it goes into places where it isn’t expected and/or wanted. The irony of this image is that this weak creature is able to easily infiltrate the security and protection of the guards, gates and locks of the palace.
I got pretty honest in my message last night. As I’ve observed our group I’ve noticed that we’re pretty self-centered. I’m concerned that we’re too wrapped up in pleasing the world that we’ve completely forgotten about the fact that we are supposed to be lizards. We’re supposed to go into the world, not conform to it.
This isn’t easy. There’s sacrifice involved, but that’s what this whole Christian thing is about. Our leader, Jesus, was killed. Um, I hate to say it, but if they did that to him, why do we think it’ll be the opposite for us?
So we’re doing things different the next 4 weeks in order to try to change this. No more games and crazy music before service. No goofy videos. Instead we’re going to have some directed Bible reading time (corporate and individual), a little worship, some devotional thoughts and a lot of prayer.
I don’t care if numbers go down. I’m not concerned if students don’t like it. If fact I’m fine with that. I’d rather the students who really want to be there woud show up. I feel like our students need to meet Jesus and not be around him. This can’t be forced or created, but I need to do something different to help foster a real relationship with him. The kind of relationship that forsakes the temporary benefits of the world and instead sees the beauty of his grace and implications of his sacrifice.
I came across this video today and wish I had played it last night. It’s a great illustration of how one person can be a “lizard” and start a movement in the process (Oh, and close your eyes from about 2:17-2:20 unless you really want to see the guy in the red underwear or whatever that is he’s wearing! Just watch. It really is good!)
