March 2009

March 16th - 18th - Spring Break Camping Trip (Rappel by Vocation)

Continuing the theme of being rebels against conformity, we took a physically challenging trip to give a physical example of a spiritual lesson. That we must persever expecially when things get tough.
This was a Camping/Hiking/Climbing/Caving trip that would push AHYEAH to the limits. We started out hiking 3.2 miles into the Ozark Mountains and camping on a river bend. The next day we hike a different trail out (4mi.) to the van, then drove the van to Horseshoe Canyon Ranch where we met with our rock climbing instructor (Harvey). We rock climbed the rest of the day and crashed around the camp fire that night. The next morning we were up at 5, and hiked 2 miles into beautiful waterfalls at Eden Falls and also explored Eden Falls cave. It is beautiful; after wiggling our way into the cave it opens into a large room where there is a magnificent waterfall in the room. It was gorgeous.
On the way home we blew out two different tires on our trailor at two different times. It was exciting and we made it home only an hour and a half late.
This camping experience was a crux for AHYEAH. Friendships, and camper/leader bonds were created on this trip that are lasting to this day. It created a family within the youth group through the challenges and successes. God used this trip for so much glory.

March 27-28 - Acquire the Fire

Because of the snow and excallated(sp) prices, we only had 5-6 youth come and attend. Despite the low number of attendance, Jacqui and I had a fabulous opportunity to build relationship with three new girls (the Johnsons). It was actually rather impactful and the message on sex was well thought through.

February 2009

February 1st - Superbowl Party

We had a huge turn out. We all crammed into the Dugdale's game room to play pool and watch the game. We pulled our money for pizza and had wrestling matches during half time. Also, Jacqui's and my former youth group from First Baptist Korean Church came and visited and we all had sooooo much fun.

February 6th - Les Miserables

A handful of the youth (Rachel, Bijan, Kameron, Brittany, Orlando) attending Union scored roles in the imfamous Les Miserables. It was done exceptionally.

February 27th - Scavenger Hunt

We set out on a photo scavenger hunt. We would have to document things such at acting out a skit in the mall, convincing people that it was National Backwards Day, leaving a gold fish in a toilet, cramming in a port-o-potty, or kidnapping a friend. Sadly, only 4 youth and 2 parents came, but we had a blast!

January 2009

At AHYEAH we kicked off the new year with a new theme. The earlier one was "Living Life Stoked!" where we looked at people in the bible who were zealous for God and tried to apply their attributes to our lives. Beginning in 2009 we kicked off "Rebel by Vocation." This was a theme where we looked at Christ and how He was a rebel against cultural misconceptions of His time. We then looked at todays challenges and media messages (such at pride, fear, predjudice, conformity, and sexual freedom) and brought to light how we can rebel against them.

January 7th - Feburary 18th - The Shack

On Wed. nights (Fantastic Friday on Wed) we listened to the audio of the shack. We would get together, have worship to candlelight, listen to The Shack, and play games. Although a few of the youth had trouble paying attention to the audio, most enjoyed it, and some I was worried about really liked it!

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January 10th - Meeting with parents

Pastor and I met with parents for the purpose of presenting the new theme which I assumed would be edgey and also to recruit leadership. We discussed how we were not encouraging rebellion against authority, but ungodly culture. Then we passed out cards for parents to fill out what roles they would be interested in to help participate with AHYEAH. Some of those roles were Boosters (call-on people for materials, food, etc), Events Team, Disciplers, and FX group (adding pizazz to youth messages). Many of the parents came and participated and the Boosters list and Events group that we have today is thanks to those who got involved beginning at that meeting.

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January 24th - Men's Day (dudes only)

This was a day of testosterone. We met early at the church for paintball, then watched a guy movie (Enemy at the Gates) and ate too much pizza. It was sweet, and we had a great turn-out.

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January 30th - Revolve Tours (girls only)

Revolve is a girls only event similar to Teen Manias Aquire the Fire. It is a conferance where girls come from all over the country to hear awesome speakers (Natalie Grant, Chad Eastham, Jenna Lucado), sweet bands (Hawk Nelson, Group 1 Crew), see convicting dramas, and bond together.

A great church in OKC, Sunnylane Family Church, put up the girls for the night and me at the youth pastor's house. The girls loved it and it is becoming a tradition.

December 2008

December 6th - Angel Tree Wrapping

The youth pitched in and helped wrap gift to be given at the Angel Tree party.

December 13th - Angel Tree Party/Winter Wonder Slam

Many of the youth went to the Angel Tree Party where gifts are given to children in the name of their incarcerated(sp) parents. It was a touching service that several of the youth really moved by.
That evening we went to Winter Wonder Slam. A concert involving Toby Mac, Relient K, and Family Force 5. All are awesome musicians and huge in the Christian and even non-Christian communities.

December 20th - Scarfapolooza!

This was our version of a Christmas party. The only entry fee was that everyone had to wear a scarf to get in. Some forgot and created scarves out of toilet paper or other things. We decorated a Christmas tree with scarves, then set up the sanctuary platform with tables making a runway with a strobe. The first contest was for the most unique scarf, where the contestants would strut out on the runway showing off their scarf doing a turn on the catwalk. (It was a huge hit!) Then each youth had to write a poem to their scarf and read them for extra points, and create a skit where the scarf was the main character (funny).
Daniel Henry was our guest speaker who brought our spiritual devotional for the evening, and wrapped up the evening with a gingerbread house building contest.

December 31st - January 1st - New Years Eve Party

So, Jacqui and I decided to have this event at our apartment (not the brightest idea). We packed out our apartment with over 20 of the youth! We kicked off the night with food and snacks. Then we spend from 9pm - 8am having an Extended Edition "Lord of the Rings" marathon (11 hours of video!). However we did pause at 11:45 and brought in the New Year with worship (very cool). Needless to say, it was more chaos, and 2 verbal complaints and one filed complaint later we closed the event at 8am. It was fun.

November 2008

Novemeber 8th - School Scene of Whispers in the Dark Video

Victory Bible Institute let us use their hallways to shoot footage for the school scene in the video.

Novemeber 15th - Paintball

This was my first time playing paintball with AHYEAH (camp doesn't count becasue I was put out of the game before I pulled the trigger). We had tons of fun, and I discovered that paintball is more fun in the cold (and that Dave is a beast).

November 19th - Fantastic Friday @ the Intermediate High School

Whew, where do I start. This was the most insane, exhausting, want to curl up in a corner and cry thing that I have ever done and will ever do (hopefully). For six weeks, my entire world surrounded this event. The last week before, I couldn't sleep at night because of my mind whirling with things to do. (I thank God soooooo much for a faithful, hardworking, pull-together mentality Events Team that we have today).
This event featured two bands, one dance team, radio commercials, football games, human foose ball, food, drinks, a velcro wall, an inflatable obstical course, fliers, t-shirt give aways, raffles, popcorn, sign up table and more. And all of this was on an empty field without lighting, therefore we needed monster generators and industrial flood lights trucked in (thank you Bob Stillman), along with platforms for the bands (which I planned on getting there but not getting back).
The sum of the event was 2 full youth groups (AHYEAH and META3:14 from Four Square) plus a scattered few that popped in from the radio announcments and fliers. The youth had fun, but the greatest gain was the connections made with the schools, radio, rental companies, bands, gaming companies, and members of our church.

November 20th - Creation Fest

A sweeeeeet music concert featuring Kutless, TFK, Pillar, KJ-52, Fireflight, Worth Dying For, Run Kid Run, Capital Lights, and Esterlyn. It may have been one of the greatest collections of Christian rock bands to date (in my opinion), but sadly only a couple of the youth went.

October 2008

October 18th - Whispers In The Dark Video

Beginning in October and stretching through January of 09' we made a noteable effort to try and create a music video based on the Skillet song "Whispers in the Dark". The video captured a youth's dark night of the soul and showed the spiritual battle that was going on around him.
For this video, we had auditions, pulled together camera men, special effects artists, and a director all out of the youth ministry. Scheduling conflicts and putting off the actual shooting eventually got the best of us. :(

October 4th and 25th - West Tulsa UMC

Jacqui, Jesse, several of the core youth and myself went and played football with some of the remaining urban youth of the West Tulsa UMC minstry.


October 31st - Wacky Watermelon Night

Instead of carving pumpkins, we carved watermelons. :) We had multiple games surrounding watermelons such as water melon stacking (where youth stack watermelons with bubble gum - gross), watermelon pinata (way fun!), rubbing them in lard and having relay races with them, carving, and throwing waterballoons at them trying to put out candles that were inside.
In the midst of the chaos, Tyler decided to make armor out of the broken pieces (see pic above). Basically the event was alot of mess, not many youth, and hours of clean up, but still fun, and nice to remember.

September 2008

September 5th - Guest speak at 4 Square church.

A fellow youth pastor friend of mine was holding a conference at his youth ministry and invited our youth group. He also asked me to give a salvation message. Jacqui and I along with 10 of our youth went over and supported them. Honestly, the my message didn't go very well, but we had fun playing games and building a connection with their youth group. Very cool people.

September 6th - Ministry at West Tulsa UMC

We had a Saturday event there where we took the youth of their ministry to a youth center and hung out with them. We also played a little football.

September 10th - Remedy Drive Concert

A church near us was hosting the fast growing in popularity band Remedy Drive. We went and watched them jam out and had a bunch of fun, including meeting the lead singer who gave us a card, in case we ever have 3 grand to pay them to come play for us.

September 17th - 1st Fantastic Friday on Wed.

After the closing opportinity of continued ministry at West Tulsa UMC, we created a service in the middle of the week that would be a refresher from school. Hopefully a couple of hours of the refreshing feeling of a Friday. It would be an hour and a half of a brief worship, light discussion, and alot of game time.

We also began having our worship time to candlelight which the youth really enjoy, along with fun games such as "murder in the dark," "coffee pot," "sardines," etc. FFonWed has been such a success and created such a fun service for entry level youth that we've continued it every Wed to this day (with very little exception).

September 21st - See You At The Pole BlowOut

To ramp up for See You At The Pole on the coming Wed, we had an event to spark excitement and hopefully some zeal to stand out to go and pray at the flag poles of their schools. We had a guest speaker (Jose) come and minister to us on the power of prayer and handed out a ton of fliers, bracelets, and other stuff. Also, we got together a ton of spray paint and gave each youth a white t-shirt and stencils to create their own SYATP t-shirt. Some of them came out really cool.

September 24th - See You At The Pole

At 8am we went to the IHigh to hang out with the youth that were willing to be open about their faith. Although we started late, quite a few students showed up and a good chunk of them were ours. We actually had prayer around the pole twice. Once with the early group, then as other people got there we did it again. Pretty cool.

August 2008

Presently we were in the middle of a series entitles "Living Life Stoked" where we were studying the Holy Spirit and how He fires us up for powerful personal lives, and annointed evangelism.



Flamingoing
Pink Flamingoing continued all the way through August, on every Friday evening.

Living Life Stoked T-Shirts
Several weeks after camp, Brian Dugdale was able to take the design of our Living Life Stoked T-Shirts and turn them into print. We began selling them on Sunday Aug. 3rd and they went like crazy. We sold them in grey, white, and blue. Pastor wore one on a Sunday morning to help advertise and soon youth and adults were all wearing the AHYEAH t-shirt.

August 10 - 11 - Back To School BattleCry

This was the event to continue building on the foundation that Extreme Camp had laid. It was a launching pad for the youth to take on the school year. It was a 24 hour fast where the purpose was to immerse ourselves spiritually into Christ. It consisted of 3 teaching, 3 worships, 3 quiet times, 3 fellowships, and 3 hours of scripture reading. Terri set up the entire childrens area as multiple prayer stations, the library was a reading room, we had a teacher from ORU come and teach, the youth played tons of team building games.
The last service was taught by Mrs. Terri where she challenged the youth to take the school year for Christ. Then, all the youth paired up with someone that they had agreed to be an accountability partner with: to keep in touch throughout the week and encourage to stand strong in the exhausting atmosphere of school. Each pair of youth were given a piece of thick climbing string to make a bracelet or ankelet with (burn-ons). Basically you melt the ends so that the only way it comes off is to cut it off. Some of the youth wore there accountabiblity burn-ons for long over a year.
Finally, the parents of the involved youth got together and made a pot luck for them to break their fast with. We ate a ton of food, and the youth really grew from the experience.

August 16th - Church Work Day

I expected more youth to show up than did, but we really worked hard and I developed quite a respect for the ones that did. We filled and stacked sand bags.
Later that night, we met for a pool party and had a blast playing pool volleyball.

Ministry at West Tulsa UMC

Through August, Jesse, Jacqui, and I continued to work at West Tulsa UMC with the youth there every Wednesday evening.

July 2008

Jacqui and I had just begun working at Abiding Harvest and at this point hadn't even met all of the youth yet. We were still working on names and getting to know the culture and atmosphere of AHYEAH.

May - Pink Flamingoing

When Jacqui and I came to AHYEAH, they were already involved in Flamingoing to raise money for Extreme Camp. We would go every Friday all the way through July to plant 20-30 pink birds in people lawns. Someone in the church would hire the youth group to do this. Ya it was a blast.

July 2nd - Ministry @ West Tulsa UMC

Within the first few weeks of working, I was introduced to a fabulous pastor in West Tulsa, Pastor Bill Welch. He had been working with 10-20 urban youth from the neighborhood around their church. Pastor Chris and I thought that this would be a great opportunity to expand the horizons of AHYEAH and slowly work together with Pastor Welch, perhaps mix services sometime in the future.
We felt the first step was for the leaders to begin working with Pastor Welch and build relationships with his youth. Beginning on July 2,2008 Jesse (a youth leader at AHYEAH) and myself began working together with Ashley, an ORU student who was volunteering her time to the ministry in West Tulsa. We would go hang out with them doing projects, bible studies, and playing football with them every Wed.
Our plan was for the leaders to build relationship with the youth, then start bringing some of the AHYEAH youth to hang out with them. Then after the AHYEAH core had built friendships with them, bring the urban youth to hang out at AHYEAH. This way they would already know the leaders and core youth and feel semi-comfortable.
Several months of volunteering on Wed.s and we were bringing more and more AHYEAH youth, but when school and sports kicked in, many of the West Tulsa youth stopped coming. Then track and school got hecktic with the Ashley the leader everything dispersed. Grunt.

July 4th - 4th of July Fireworks

Our 1st Independance Day with AHYEAH was tons of fun. We went to Liberty Church for there fireworks show, which was awesome. We met some more of the kids, and had an opportunity to goof off with them. At some point we wrapped Spencer in caution tape and put a chair over him. hehe. Then afterwards we went to Steak n' Shake for some milk shakes and watched Rhema's fireworks in the distance. Pretty sweet.

July 10th - Camp T-Shirts

With Extreme Camp right around the corner, Jesse and I brainstormed the idea of all of AHYEAH that was going having identical shirts. Hand painted identical shirts with the theme that Terri and I heard from God about "Living Life Stoked!" Jesse and I agreed on a sillohuate (sp) of a guy with flames behind him. Separately, we drew out what we saw in our heads. When we compared pics, it was the same thing (God is too cool)!!!
We spent all night till 7am cutting stencils, spray painting, running to the store to buy more paint, drying, and having a blast. We cranked out 15+ shirts. They were SWEET!!!
July 11th
More youth brought us more shirts and we painted more!

July 14th-18th - Extreme Camp 08'

Camp was awesome. We rented two vans and drove to Texas, of course stopping at the Texas statue which I learned was an AHYEAH tradition. Everyday we had excellent speakers, great bands, powerful altercalls, and ended the evenings with concerts. After everyone had gone to bed, Jesse and I would stay up and talk about each youth and their spiritual growth brainstorming how we could continue to partner with them through this week.
We saw bands like Skillet, Kutless, and Sanctus Real. We played extreme sports including paintball, which was my first time ever. I did terrible, but loved it!
We got home safe, and the t-shirts were a hit. We had some growing opportunities, and I felt that the youth took them in stride.

July 23rd - Extreme Bash

Immediately after camp, we wanted to prolong the camp high as long as possible. So we had an event remembering camp memories. We invited everyone (not just camp attendants) and split into teams. They would run around the church from station to station completing challenges. The challenges were teambuilding games, low ropes challenges, and it all ended with a service where the theme was Living Life Stoked. It was powerful!

First AHYEAH Blog

Hello soon to be faithful readers,

Wow, there is so much that has happened already in the past year and 10 months that I only wish that I'd begun this back at the beginning. This blog has several purposes.
First, it will document the journey (successes and failures) of a growing youth ministry in the middle of Broken Arrow, OK toward Christ and His goals for us and those we come into contact with.
Secondly, may it continually act as a tangible testimony to/for our God about the many mighty works that He has done and shown Himself in/through.
Third, it is here to keep parents, leaders, youth, and all those praying for us informed of what is going on at AHYEAH and what God is doing in/through us.

May God recieve all glory and honor and praise. Amen