Posted on November 1, 2011 at sometime around 10:03 am
Calvary Assembly is hosting a FREE seminar on how ANY sort of church leader can use social media well – TONIGHT! This is not limited to pastors or “top” church leaders, but is available to ANYONE interested. There will be information that applies to the beginner and to the pro. I will be the teacher for the seminar and am excited about the discussion that will ensue tonight at 7pm.
Here are some of the topics we will cover:
- What is social media exactly?
- Why is social media valuable?
- What do you write? What if you don’t know what to say?
- 12 pieces of advice from Jonathan
- Where do you go to get good content?
- How can you use Facebook/Twitter and other platforms for your church organization?
- What is twitter and how do I use it?
The seminar starts at 7pm and will go just over an hour (including time for questions). As I said, we are looking forward to investing in anyone who is interested!
If you would like to join us, please RSVP to Calvary Assembly by 4pm today at 585.889.0190. We will have a binder full of information for you tonight!
We made a challenge to all of Calvary Assembly to begin the New Year right by reading a chapter of Proverbs a day and we have loved hearing everyone’s insights. It seems the theme that continues to run throughout all of Proverbs is the phrase, “GET WISDOM”. The question we have been asking at our Wednesday night gatherings is, “Ok…if the smartest guy says to ‘get wisdom no matter what the cost’, how do we get it?” So we took time to brainstorm ideas and came up with a list:
Church, parents, teachers, the Bible, spending time with God, listening to older/respected friends, reading, conversing, youth leaders, etc.
The interesting piece for many of us is that we don’t take time to think about how frequently wisdom is available to us. We often show up to church and barely pay attention. We only go to school because we have to. It seems we miss out on a lot of opportunities presented to us to actually “GET WISDOM”. We are too busy playing games, hanging out with our friends, or just not soaking in what truth is being presented to us. Of course, there is definitely a time and a place to have fun (if you’ve seen our games on Wednesday nights, you’d know this first hand!), but I wanted to challenge you to “GET WISDOM”. As we talked about, this can keep us from the “deep darkness” the Proverbs writer talks about (Prov. 4:19). The way Solomon describes it is that people who don’t pursue wisdom “do not know over what they stumble.” Ignorance is not bliss. Having wisdom so that you can make decisions that glorify God (and not cause pain to you or others) makes much more sense.
Posted on August 1, 2010 at sometime around 8:22 pm
Take a video tour of our church’s new website! The address is www.rcalvary.org and I am SO excited to have this project completed. It’s going to be such a good tool for ministry.
Thank you to Steve Otto for all his hard work. I had so much fun working on this with you!
If you’d like to watch the tour in HD, you can click here. Enjoy!
Posted on June 9, 2010 at sometime around 11:21 pm
Tonight our youth discussed “How to Follow God Through the Summer…And How to Make That Relationship Meaningful.” Sarah and I prepared the lesson and I was pleased with the response from the students. I thought I’d post the slides below, although all the stories and points in between are really what make it interesting. My hope and prayer for the students (and for you too now that you’ve joined the conversation) was that they would intentionally think about how they were spending their time and who they were hanging out with this summer, as their structure of their day looks much different. The phrase the students kept repeating was “Garbage in, Garbage out” (meaning whatever junk you put in will come out in your words and actions). I liked it.
First, I always start youth group with a funny or interesting video, so I’ll let you check out OK GO’s song and Rube Goldberg video. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s incredible.
*Each student had to write at least one thing they were committing to for the summer off of the list. One girl said since she loved drawing she would read a portion of Scripture and turn it into an interesting visual on a regular basis. Pretty sweet way to connect with God, if you ask me.
Posted on May 12, 2010 at sometime around 10:45 pm
Our youth group tonight studied Galatians 3, which you can read online here. I wanted to jot down a few thoughts, as well as our discussion questions for the night. If you are a youth leader and need a lesson, always feel free to stop by here and take any thoughts. Before I share parts of the lesson, I want to show this incredibly awesome video explaining the concept of faith and works, which is a lot of what Paul focuses on for Galatians 3.
That video is just fantastic. If you want to purchase it, go to Image Vine.
“For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” Gal 3:26
The youth listed off ways we have heard of explaining how to attain salvation, other than through Jesus of Nazareth. We talked about most world religions teaching that it is by how good of a person someone is, whereas Jesus says it is about faith.
We defined works as things you do.
We defined faith as what you believe.
Then we had a brief history lesson on Martin Luther, and how he got so upset with the people of the church selling what were called “indulgences” – where people could pay money for their sins to attain salvation. It was a bad period for the church, to say the least. Luther also put the Bible into the language of the people, and made it accessible for everyone, not just the main pastor/priest. We also clarified that Martin Luther is different from MLK Jr. Good distinction for 7th graders.
Then we talked about failure. What it feels like. How we all have failed. Then we looked at Romans 3:23, which says that everyone who does something wrong falls short of God’s glory. We discussed that even the best of people could not make it without Jesus. A few of the kids had never heard this. That is always exciting for me to share.
It’s so basic, but so huge.
Sarah proceeded to talk about John Newton and the story of Amazing Grace. John Newton did some horrible, horrible things (like participate in chaining up slaves from Africa, participating in the killing of African babies, and many more inhumane treatment of people). Of course, John Newton goes on to write about he was the lowest “wretch”, but that God’s grace saved him from that.
We concluded with the video I posted at the start of this post (we actually started with a funny, edited version of “100 Greatest Hits of Youtube Videos in 4 Minutes“) and focused in on the line:
We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.
I really liked how the video distinguished faith and works, and how that relates to our salvation.
What we do matters a LOT, but it’s faith in Jesus that saves you. Doing good for the world though has to be a part of a vibrant faith. This is an important distinction.
Here were our discussion questions. Feel free to add your two cents or thoughts on these:
- Have you ever struggled with not thinking you weren’t “good” enough to be saved?
- Do you really believe that we’re saved by faith?
- Does the idea of people who have done awful things going to heaven b/c of their faith in Jesus bother you? What about people who do good things not being saved because they don’t believe in Jesus?
- The final verse in Galatians 3 says there is ‘neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave nor free, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ What does this mean? What doesn’t this mean?
Questions raised by the students:
- What about people who have never heard about Jesus?
- What about people with mental health problems who are not fully functioning?
- What about babies who die and never hear about Christ?
We concluded by understanding that we have a ridiculously gracious God and that God doesn’t give us every single answer. It was a good night.
