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 January 4, 2011 at sometime around 11:25 pm
One of the things Sarah and I love to do is share what happened in our days at the dinner table. I generally forget about 80% of my day, so today I decided to write down some of the things that happened in my day. Since I frequently get asked what a typical day looks like for me, I thought I would post it today.
Set up my multiple meet-ups for the week with people
Came up with a creative way to address some of our student’s doubts that the told our youth team when we did a series on Doubt last year (pretty excited about this)
Made the final decision with Steve about how we would be backing up the computers at church (short-term and long-term)
Helped begin to clean out the sound closet with Kevin
Got about 30 notifications of about 50 new friends I suggested for Pastor Bob (our lead pastor)
Gave two friends public speaking advice (still confused why they asked me, but I hope I helped)
Filled in information for 12 youtube videos (still private, but public soon)
Made a couple of changes to Sarah and I’s new budget. We are planning to track every dollar we spend this year. We’ll see how long this lasts.
Talked to a parent about a potential FCWC problem with some students.
Then, I came home and had a nice night with Sarah. I would call this a “typical” Tuesday for me (except I normally have a meeting with Pastor Bob, but he was out of the office all day).
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.
