August 2010

August 6th - Pink Flamingoing

Because of the number of awesome people that gave so that youth could go to camp we began Flamingoing every Friday at 8:30. Before we flamingoed every other, but then again we also had enough birds to do four houses. Because of theft of our birds, we're down to doing two. Anyway, we're still having a blast. Thank you so much Abiding Harvest for supporting us to go to camp. Because of you serving Christ we raised $900 dollars to send our youth to camp! AMEN!!!! God is awesome.


August 15 - AHYEAH

A-Team: The A-Team meeting was excellent. It was one of our best turn-outs in a while. I must say that we have a very faithful group of youth that want to serve Christ in their daily lives. This meeting was not only to provide the next challenge but also to let them know that the A-Team will be expanding it's influence. I asked that from now on the A-Team would lead Wednesday night discussions. Each member would take turns bringing a relevant topic that is important to them and provide some discussion questions and bible verses on the subject. This will not only make Wed nights relevant to their lives but also give the members an opportunity to grow as leaders. Intense I know.

The challenge: To organize how you would share your testimony with a non-believer. Then, record yourself giving it and post it on Facebook tagging all of your friends. Also intense.


AHYEAH: The topic of AHYEAH tonight was an interesting one. "The Purpose Driven Youth Ministry" defines students in one of five categories. The community (those within driving distance but do not attend a ministry), the crowd (the bulk of student in a youth ministry), the congregation (those who are semi-committed enough to regularly attend), the committed (those who are commiting themselves to spiritual disciplines), and the core (those who are not only taking on spiritual disciplines but also are looking to pour out.) The service wasn't attempting to classify anyone and made it clear than no place is better than another. We are all under construction by God, but it was to challenge our youth to perhaps step to the next level. I passed out slips of paper plus duplicates asking them where they would place themselves and what would it take to step up. They were to keep one and turn one in. The message itself was dry, but the written responses were powerful. Many of them were eagerly desiring to grow and some of them simply felt lost and felt they were missing God. They have become a source of prayer for our youth.


August 21st - Back to School Bash


This event was another one that took last minute pulling together. (I'd swear I plan for these things.) The event was mostly planned out and was set up to be a river float trip. We had a few complications with the idea and had to start over again. An idea that Jacqui had was to have a party over at Camp Loughridge. So I called and found out that their pool was $300 per hour. Ouch! Having very little money left in the youth budget after camp that was way over what we could afford. The kids that came were going to have to pay for it. Then the camp informed us that the pool was already taken for that day. grunt. BUT, they had another pool, a salt water pool, that they would be happy to give us a discount for. Plus, if we had our own life guard they'd discount us even more. I love Jesus. So, we took the offer and called it set. Then two three youth moms (two of which are leaders in our tween ministry called Grapplers) pulled together behind the event and made it happen. They bought food, cooked, and took care of everything. Thank you Nancy, Tammy, and Kristi. Ya'll rock!


The event went very well. Salt water pools are way nicer than chlorine. Plus, we had a huge deck to have our mini service and program on. The service went well. I gave a quick push to the seniors to hang on to what they've learned and an exhortation to the 6th graders coming into youth to grow all that they can while they are here. We then initiated in the fourth graders into Grapple and the 6th graders into AHYEAH with an initiation chant and body signings. After which Justin, one of our graduates, gave a quick speech about pressing on through touch decisions. Finally, it all closed with our seniors Justin and Kameron passing candles to our initiates. We initiated 5 new youth into AHYEAH that evening, and all of them have been coming regularly. It was/is so cool.


August 22nd - AHYEAH


Tonight was the kick off of a three week series discussing who we are as a youth group and where we are going. Our purpose for being can't simply be to show up and have fun. Our drive must be towards 5 basic biblical goals. We discussed the first two, Fellowship and Worship.

To illustrate fellowship we had small groups first where each youth would fill out a list of their likes and dislikes and people would try to guess who they were. It was a fun mixer.

Then for worship we had a longer time of worship where the Spirit of the Lord poured out. His presence was so rich that I couldn't disrupt it, so I signaled Jacqui to continue right to the end of service. It was sooooo cool. God was annointing what we were doing. Amen.

Leaders - 5
Youth - 35
Visitors - 1

August 29th - AHYEAH

News: Beginning today we kicked off morphed versions of our typical AHYEAH programming. After anaylizing each of our running programs through the eyes of the 5 'C's, we redefined each of the services to be geared for specific groups of youth. Fantastic Friday on Wed. would be set up to be a low flinch-factor for new people. If there was a service to bring an unchurched person to this would be it: light worship, relevant discussions, extra game time, geared for the Community, Crowd, and Congregation. The AHYEAH sunday night service would be more serious (not unhappy serious, just indepth and genuine) about worship, the message would be more scripturally intensive, and the small groups would flesh out the questions and build fellowship. It is designed for the Crowd, Congregation and the Committed. Finally, our "9" has been redesigned to focus deeper on scripture and leadership developement. It, being married to the A-Team, which is 'action' focused, is perfect for our committed and core who want to grow in spiritual disciplines, leadership, and taking action outside of church.

The "9": Today we began a series based on the book "The 21 Irrifutable Laws of Leadership" by John Maxwell. The book is being taught in conjection with scripture (since the book is biblically based already, this is a rather fluid task) to be a Godly based leadership class. The class began with 10-15 minutes of worship music being played for each youth to spend some time in prayer and worship. Then Dave brought the topic, "the law of navigation" and fused it with scripture and some illustrating stories. The law of navigation deals with the principle that a leader needs to know where he/she is going in order to lead. It was well done and kicked off a series that I think will be very maturing for ALL of us (especially me). Where we have, on average, 6-8 youth come for the "9" we had a whopping 14! God is doing great things.

AHYEAH: Sunday night service also went very well and God's annointing was all over it. We discussed the next to directions that AHYEAH should be driving toward. Last week they were fellowship and worship. This week they were ministry and evangelism. I recieved this cool illustration from our awesome administrator/secritary Mrs. Dayna - thanks Mrs. Dayna. Immediately after worship I took three volunteers who took off to hide and we sent everyone into the back room where they were instructed to count to 100 and go looking for them. While counting, I pushed play on a movie and pulled out some snacks and cool-aid and put them up for grabs. It was perfect, after counting all the way through only half of the youth left to go find their friends, but the other half stayed and munched with me. After hauling everyone back into the sanctuary it made a perfect illistration of what ministry was. Some of us are distant from Christ and need encouragment, correction, friendship, exhortation; some are seeking them out and ministring to them; and some are just disctracted by school, relationships, drama, sports, etc. Cool, huh? Then to illustrate evangelism I sent everyone back onto the back room and taught two kids how to tie a certain knot, then gave them two pieces of rope each and sent them to teach two others and so on. It worked out OK. It was a rather complicated knot, but I think that it got the idea across. Anyway, it was a cool service and God did what He does best, being awesome.
Leaders - 5
Youth - 28
Guests - 1