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 June 10, 2010 at sometime around 12:19 pm
The list below was compiled by Youth Specialties. These thinkers and practitioners have been huge in my personal growth and understanding of what it means to be an effective leader for young people. Check it out!
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.
Posted on April 26, 2010 at sometime around 2:18 pm
Here is the link for the Flower City Work Camp Video I created telling of our amazing week:
Here are some of facts / statistics from this years Flower City Work Camp:
- Over 65 churches from all different denominations
- Over 650 students from across Rochester city gave up their Spring Break to serve others
- 53 houses renovated, all of which hung a sign to say it was because of the love of Jesus
- 1,000 kids came to participate at the sidewalk clubs over the course of the week!
- Close to 200 kids made first time commitments to Christ!
- Calvary Assembly had 15 kids, over 15 adults, plus parents, from our church which was a HUGE first year response!
As I shared at church on Sunday morning, my personal favorite part was seeing the balance between serving others, while also learning and growing individually. The FCWC experience is holistic: serving and discipleship. Our night sessions and “cabin time talks” were some of the best I’ve had with the students here.
