My New Favorite Thing

I have a new favorite thing.

I seem to get a new one every few weeks. And right now it is the iMotion App for my iPhone.

It's this incredible little program that allows me to take a series of photographs with my phone camera in controllable intervals and then makes a stop motion video out of the frames.

It is wonderful.

I have been making movies of everything.

During this Thanksgiving break that is pretty much how my kids and I spent every spare minute. We stop motioned our dinner. We stop motioned Isaac. We stop motioned cars crashing (Hot Wheels, of course; not real ones.) Here is a video we made of dough rising.

Or at least our version of dough rising. And my kids came up with most of the ideas and did all of my special effects. It was a blast creating those holiday memories.

As we head into this holiday season, I know many of us will have extra time off with our families. And this should be a time to build relationships and enjoy each other. But I know for me at least the temptation is to get hectic. Or the temptation is to get frustrated. Or the temptation is to get cranky.

But let us decide to go into this time to make memories. So here is a suggested TO DO list for this Christmas season, especially as you have extra unstructured time:

1. Spend a full uninterrupted hour with God.
2. Make some Christmas presents/ornaments/cookies/(fill in the blank) with your family.
3. Make some hot chocolate or other festive hot beverage and watch a classic Christmas movie.
4. Turn off the TV and play some board games.
5. Cram into the family vehicle and drive around looking for the best Christmas lights.
6. Or go caroling.
7. Or purpose to have only Christmas music on in your house
8. Or buy presents for the Salvation Army Angel Tree together as a family.
9. Or serve at Heart 2 Heart (or some other community relief organization)
10. Or come up with your own creative memory-making family idea! (and please share these with us!)

May this holiday season we live out the words of Colossians 3:14-17 - "And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."

And make a memorable Christmas season as we do it!

So...

I haven't posted in a while.

Okay. Like a real long time.

Life kind of got crazy lately. Some expected. Some not.

An awesome wedding. An injured pastor. A death. A birth. Among other things and the wonderfully full life I get to lead.

And a really interesting thing happened...I slacked off of all the social media I use. I stopped updating my Facebook status. I quit blogging.

And it makes me wonder, how helpful is the online community if it's the first thing I chuck when life gets crazy. And interestingly enough, during this time I sought out face to face relationships more than normal.

So are we just fooling ourselves with social media?

Let me know your thoughts. Peace.

He Still Answers Prayer...

Last night at 180 I was bowled over by the number of praise reports I kept receiving.

It seemed like from the moment I entered the building there was this constant flow of young people telling me how God was working in their life and answering prayers we had prayed together...

Improved relations with parents.

Parents improving their relationship with God.

Parents improving their relationship with their children.

There were so many in fact that I think we will take some moments next week to let some of those people share the way God is working.

I know for me it is those tangible reminders that God is working, in both my life and others, that help my faith to grow. Too often we don't seem to expect God to work. We may say a token prayer, but we don't really think anything is going to happen about it.

Praise God that He is raising up young people right here in our community who pray with faith and are praising Him for His works. Last night one of the Scriptures we looked at was James 5:16:

"Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working."

May we continue to pray for one another and see healing in our lives and others!

God bless.

Duct Tape = Good?

The last few weeks a couple of events have sent me back to the nostalgia of my teenage years.

The first was the unwitting destruction of my wallet. Through a terrible accident at the go-cart track (ok, it wasn't that terrible, but I have to make this sound exciting to keep you reading. Right?) my wallet of twenty years was rendered completely unusable. Despair. Tragedy. What was I to do? Well, thanks to my wife's creativity and a hefty roll of pink duct tape, I now have a stylish and funtional new wallet.

The second event was the unravelling of the sole of my Chuck Taylor's. Which, after several other failed options, I decided to duct tape back together.Now, this is where we get to the nostalgia part.

Somehow, in the process of growing up, I arrived at about the age of 16 with the idea that duct tape makes things better. That when I had to use duct tape to continue to make a shoe or a vehicle or a t-shirt be functional, it actually increased my love for said item and a great sense of pride welled up in my heart.

For you mathematical analytics out there, that looks like this:

ANYTHING + DUCT TAPE = GOOD

And this week, I have discovered that I still hold that equation to be true, as I felt that same increased love and bubbling pride with these new duct tape conquests.

Now this is where you come in. Do you agree with this? Do you find my equation to ring true in your own life? Do you think maybe I need psychological evaluation? Or all of the above?

Looking forward to your thoughts. God bless!

What's My Job?

My official title is Youth Pastor.

...but sometimes I'm called an Associate.

Truth is I wear many Name Badges and even some Hairnets.
On any given day I could be one or several of many roles.

Policeman or Punching Bag
Counselor or Custodian
Friend or Father-figure
to name a Few

But I'm finding that to be a Follower and Lover of the One who died for me is the only way to fill the job I was meant to be.

So what is your job?

I had a very pleasant surprise this weekend: I got to see Shane Claiborne speak!

I received a text in the middle of the week from a friend advising me Shane was going to be speaking at Drury University on Sunday. If you haven't heard of Shane, he is an author and a follower of Christ who is living out his faith in an intentional community in the poorest neighborhood in Philadelphia. His writings and lifestyle have served to challenge me in many ways over the past few years. You can learn more about Shane and his community here.

So I talked to my small group of young men about it and we decided we would go...but I guess the word got out because about twelve young people showed up to come to the event.

So we loaded up the bus and headed to Drury.

I'll share with you some of the words from Shane that really caught my attention in a moment, but first I want to talk about this group of young people who went with me.

First of all, it was exciting that they were interested enough to go sit through a service just to hear this guy speak. Secondly, they were very polite and considerate everywhere we went that day, even when others were not so. Also, they were excited enough about what was going on that they invited friends to join us. (There were like five or six people they got to meet us there!) And afterwards they wanted to have a discussion of what Shane said to try to apply it to their life.

These are high school students mind you.

I am encouraged to see a growing group of young people who are living differently from their peers. Let's pray that their culture of hunger for God's Truth in their lives and the desire to share that with others in a loving way would continue to spread.

Now, about Shane. Here are some of the things he said that stood out to me:

"Evangelism is spread best - not by force - but by fascination."

"Do people 'see and hear' Christ in my life?"

"People need to know we are Christians - not by our bumper stickers and t-shirts - but by our love."

"That was back when I thought church is what happened on Sunday. Back before I knew better."

"We may not have the answer - the silver bullet. But maybe we can be part of the silver buckshot."

(quoting an Iraqi Christian bishop speaking to Shane of the American church) "You didn't create Christianity in America. You only domesticated it."

Let me know your thoughts on Shane's thoughts. And may we, as the young people who went with me, wrestle through how God would have us respond. God bless & peace.

The Mathematics of Life

I had a mathematical revelation last night.

...or maybe it was a relational epiphany.

...or could it be a relational mathematic discovery? Or a mathematical relationship correlation?

Anyway...I came to the realization that Isaac, my one year old son, likes pretty much everything I do. He is like my biggest fan. I can just look at him and he laughs until he falls over. Of course he falls over a lot because he is still learning to walk, but you get the idea.

However, soon after this realization, it also became apparent to me that Ethan, my eight year old son, does not hold the same view of me. He probably only likes half of what I do and thinks the other half is lame/awful/tedious/dumb.

And so I went further down that path and thought about my second youngest child Hannah, who will be four tomorrow. She probably only likes about three-fourths of what I do.

...are you seeing it yet?

So I got out a pen and paper and worked out what I call the Parental Approval Theorem. It looks something like this:

If A = age of child
and if A < 18;
Then Parental Approval Percentage = 1 - ((A/4)* 0.25)

As you can see from this equation, our approval rating as parents significantly decreases, even dipping into the negative for a short time, until our children reach adulthood. By my hypothesis then Ethan will only like 25% of what I do by the time he is twelve and absolutely nothing by the time he is sixteen.

As with all great mathematically theorems, I know this must need revision. This is actually already the second generation of the theorem as a room full of teenagers helped me lower my threshold age from 20 down to 18. So let me know your thoughts and additions.

...or subtractions.

...or maybe even logorithms, as the case may be.

By the way, this is for fun. Please don't take me too seriously;)