Something… Odd

I stumbled across something odd the other day. Apparently one of my posts has become a reference on Wikipedia Commons… for an image of the Bill of Rights. Seriously. It’s no wonder that there are so many people who stay far away from Wikipedia. Just in case the error is corrected in the future, check out the image below. Click on it to enlarge for easier viewing.

A Prayer Request

Earlier today I asked for your prayers for myself. This afternoon I got a text message that has prompted me to again request your prayers.

Please remember the family of one of our students this weekend. One of our guys lost his grandfather this afternoon to cardiac failure. Please lift he and his family up as they work through the grief that this will bring.

Your Prayers Would Be A Blessing

Kelly is heading out of town most of this weekend for the Women of Faith conference in Cleveland, leaving Dad and Abigail to hang out together for a couple of days. I am also supervising three days of fund raising starting Thursday for our upcoming Pittsburgh Project trip. Easy stuff - we’re selling hot dogs and pop in cooperation with a local grocery store - but still it can be a bit of a strain on top of being by myself. I don’t expect anything horrible, but I could definitely use your prayers.

Ministry Happens… Anywhere

Last night I had the opportunity to join in our Middle School guys small group. Normally I am watching Abigail while Kelly leads the Middle School girls (I meet with the graduating seniors on Monday nights), so tonight was a treat.

The group’s leader has been deaning a camp down the road this week for 4th-6th graders, so instead of a home meeting I drove three of our guys out to the camp and we joined in the festivities. The soccer game was fun, the chapel service enjoyable, and the swimming a blast (though I had forgotten how… firmly 4th graders can grip a shoulder. I have the marks to prove it!). But the best part was the trip there and the trip home. We took about twenty minutes more than we should have getting there (my fault, I couldn’t remember where a connecting road was and had to backtrack) but it provided us with some great bonding time and excellent conversations. The ride home was shorter, but the conversation was even better. These three are nearly experts in medieval torture! It started out as a discussion on crucifixion, wandered all around other medieval methods, pondered what is on the other side of black holes, and closed out on the topic of suicide and whether or not sacrificing yourself so that others may live would be suicide. It opened up a great opportunity to talk about the sacrifice that Christ made on our behalf.

I love these guys.

A Helpful Bible Study Tool

I first heard about YouVersion through another blogger several weeks ago. (I think it was Josh). If you have not heard of it, YouVersion is an online Bible Study tool. More than just a site where you can read Scripture in several translations, it seeks to build a community around your personal Bible study. We just wrapped up our first leg of our Journey With Jesus challenge (click this link to find out more) and I thought that now would be a great time to explore it more in-depth. Here is what I found.

• There are currently 13 English and 3 Spanish translations available to be read. You can search for whole chapters of specific verses.
• You can journal your thoughts on the passage, and even tag specific words or segments to function like a bookmark, or a concordance listing.
• You can highlight passages that you desire to come back to and read later.
• You can see tags, stars, highlights and more from other YouVersion users.
• You can upload video and images.
• You can get links to passages to embed elsewhere on the web.

There is still work to be done before it is streamlined, but it is off to a very strong start. I recommend checking it out, and passing it on to your teens to use. I am a big fan of Biblegateway, but am seriously considering switching to YouVersion as my primary online study resource, and encouraging our tens to get involved as well. (Though nothing beats a physical Bible, a journal and a pen and a solid commentary in my opinion, this is a great help to strengthen your study).

Click on the images to enlarge and check out the screen shots from YouVersion:

Halo Clarification

Last October I blogged about Halo and its use in Youth Ministry contexts. It has become my single highest read post with (as of this writing) nearly 5,200 individual views (probably because I posted a picture that people like to download). Things have been relatively quiet on that post until last week when people suddenly started leaving comments without apparently reading the post (or at least without understanding it). My words were misinterpreted at best and things I never truly said were quoted by those leaving comments. (There so far have only been three, but for my blog, that is a fair amount).

So please allow me to clarify once again what I blogged about:

I did not at any point condemn the Halo franchise and state that it should never be played. I made a side reference to those who might argue against its use because of the killing of aliens. I do believe that if we met aliens, their lives would be just as valuable as ours, as they would be a part of God’s creation as well.

And the big point:

As Christians, and as Youth Leaders (yes, the original post was written to Youth Leaders specifically) should we be encouraging teens who are not supposed to be playing the series (or any other games with the same ratings) when it has been determined by the ESRB that they should not be? We are under the obligation to observe the rules of governing bodies that we are subject to insofar that their decrees do not go against God’s commands. Though the ESRB is not a governmental body, they have been placed in charge of rating video game content, and are responsible for setting the rules. Should we willingly break rules we should be following in the name of “effective outreach” or being cool and accepted to our teens? If we decide that we are, what is the message that we are sending o the teens we are supposed to reach?

I merely wanted to stir the pot and raise questions for other Youth Leaders who might not have thought through them.

Helpful Links:

• The Original Halo Post
• The ESRB: They have a lot of useful stuff for you to use (check out the download section)
• Halo, Rock Band and Youth Ministry: A great offering from Justin about an alternative to Halo for YM. Especially check out his bullet point list of reasons for why he chooses Rock Band over Halo.
• Mario and Halo: Josh posted this video he found a while back. Tons of fun to watch.

Being Lifelong Students

Yesterday we welcomed 5 (of our 7 who wanted to) Middle Schoolers into membership within our church. I have spent the past 8 weeks (okay, seven of the last eight, I was gone for one week at Alive and our Senior Pastor filled in that week) with these teens, refreshing and teaching the basics of our faith. At the same time I was preparing to give the sermon in yesterday’s services. I settled upon (what I believe to be inspired by the Spirit) the topic of our call as Christians to be lifelong students, and I gave that message yesterday.

In truth, you will find little in Scripture that tells us outright that we are to read Scripture every day. But what you will find are tons of passages that exhort us to be immersed in Scripture.

Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night. ~ Psalm 1.1,2

How can a young man keep his way pure?
By living according to your word.
I seek you with all my heart;
do not let me stray from your commands.
I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you. ~ Psalm 119.9-11

These are just a couple of my favorites. This summer we have challenged our teens to immerse themselves in Scripture each day, as we journey through the Gospels of Mark Luke and John (we are almost done with Mark) and invite them to share their thoughts on a blog that I set up (which also keeps me accountable). There is so much in Scripture that can be such a benefit in our lives, yet we make excuses every day. Why can we not simply commit to reading even a chapter a day? Why do we not immerse ourselves in the words of our Father?

Because we are poor students. We look for the least amount of work that we can do to get by. And yesterday I encouraged our congregation to become better students. I encouraged myself to become a better student. The past 2 weeks of committed reading in Mark have already had a profound impact on my own Spiritual Journey. What could immersing yourself in Scripture each day do for yours?

Why I Have Been MIA This Week

Abigail Grace

Abigail will turn one year old next Thursday, so we have spent most of this week planning her birthday party today!

Also, Sunday morning is the day that we welcome new members into the church who have completed our Confirmation Class. We are welcoming 7 total (5 of whom will be present Sunday morning), and aside from setting up the service, I have been spending a lot of my blogging time writing the sermon for his week and meeting with each of my students who want to become members. If you are free Sunday morning you can stream the service at 8:15am and 11:00am at our church’s website.

Next week I hope to hop back onto the blogging horse, so stay tuned.

Why You Won’t Find My Videos On GodTube

I want to confess something. I don’t like GodTube. I really am not that big a fan of the site. Don’t get me wrong, there is some good stuff to be found there. But the site as a whole? I just don’t like it.

I understand the reasoning behind creating GodTube. There is a lot of junk and garbage on YouTube (and the myriad of other video-hosting sites on the web). Our Student Ministry program produces a lot of video media and I was forced to withdraw from using at least one video hosting site due to issues over content that was hosted at that site. I can sympathize and agree with the motivations of the creators to set up a place on the web where families can go to knowing that they won’t be bombarded with violence, swearing and overly-sexualized videos and advertising. I stand behind the desire to create such a safe place on the web. But I decided not to utilize GodTube for our video hosting because I think that the execution has been fumbled greatly.

GodTube offers almost exclusively media that can be classified as “Christian.” Much of this media comes across as cheesy, contrived, preachy (not in a good way either) or just downright theologically dangerous (I have discovered a LOT of scare-tactic videos based upon interpretations of Scripture that are flimsy at best and pathetically wrong at worst). And don’t get me started on the apparent copyright infringement of posting music videos from bands and artist that you are not a part of, and technically do not have the rights to distribute. Or full-length videos of bands performing songs on stage when many of the venues these videos are being recorded at stress not to film the entire song. (Yes, I am aware that not every venue has that rule, but I have found several videos that do subvert that rule, specifically some videos from the Alive Festival this year).

Then there is the bickering and backbiting that shows up in the comments below some of the more controversial videos. There is some pretty mean-spirited stuff there, that seems to exist merely to show the world that Christians are the only people who shoot their own wounded. Sure, there is no swearing, but the language is harsh, making judgment calls of someone’s relationship with Christ based upon one comment or one video post, and then arguing with others over something that usually is not an essential. It would actually put a really bad taste in someone’s mouth that was genuinely searching, I feel. Add to that the insane amount of copycats (seriously, 2,370 copies of the Lifehouse Everything skit? It is a creative skit which I really enjoy, and it translates well into many different settings, but have any of the people who have posted their own copy thought through some of the parts of the song that really don’t fit into the song being about God?) and you have a ton of un-originality.

I think that all of these problems add up to one big problem. GodTube (intentionally or not) perpetuates Christian sub-culture, a genre of entertainment that is not something of which I am a fan. Such as in the CCM market, a lot of Christian “entertainment” is a reaction to mainstream culture, coming into existence to give a “Godly alternative” (which is sometimes, but not always, needed), showcasing someone’s talents (that God did not really bless them with anyway) and pointing toward the artist and not toward God (which is the mission of many of these artists), or shoehorning Scripture into interpretations and contexts that it was not written for. It has created a place for Christians to retreat from the rest of the world, where we are demanding that the world come to us in order to be changed and impacted positively, instead of going to the people where they are at to reach them. Sure anyone can come find GodTube, but that is not the point. Not that I am calling for us to dive headlong into the smut that this world has to offer, but it has created one more instance of Christianity withdrawing from the world instead of interacting with it.

Please do not misunderstand. I firmly believe that there is a time and a place for everything. There are videos that GodTube offers that are good for the soul. But as an agent to truly impact the world for Christ, I have a hard time seeing it. I do not desire to discredit GodTube with this post, but there are serious reservations that I have about it. This is not an attack on the creator or the users of GodTube, merely my critique of th product. I welcome your comments, especially if you are a GodTube user and see something that I may have overlooked or seem to have been to harsh on.

Bonus: Check out this article on GodTube from Collide Magazine that is fairly even-handed and does interview the CEO of GodTube.

Transitional Ministry

This summer we are experimenting with small groups for our Student Ministry program. It is a completely new concept to our teens, and has met with varying success. But I wanted something different for our graduating seniors. Many of our seniors are going off to campuses where they will meet new and different worldviews that they have never encountered before. Perspectives that will challenge their thinking and their beliefs. And I am not convinced that many of those same students have a solid foundation to stand on. So instead of wrapping them into the rest of the groups, I have set up meeting times at Perkins in the evening on Mondays.

These times are very laid-back. I am not using curriculum, in fact, it is very conversationally based. It really functions as an exchange. Our teens who come share their plans, I share my experiences, and hit them with the question “How would you describe where you are at on your Spiritual Journey?” It is an intentionally vague question, and there have been a few different answers.

Tonight was a great evening. I got to spend the evening with two teens that I have not been able to spend much time at all with over the past year. And both admitted that they need to spend more time in Scripture. So I shared the one thing above all else that will keep them grounded during this transition. Quality time in Scripture. I encouraged them to start now, building a habit out of it before they even arrive on campus (shameless plug for the Journey With Jesus), and I challenged them to journal their reading instead of just reading and leaving it behind.

Overall, it was a great evening. Good conversation, great topics, honest and open dialogue with two teens who want to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, but just need some guidance in how best to do so. So what do you do with your graduates to help them through this transitional period?