Another great conversation with Kevin Twombly today.  Some pretty convicting stuff as well.  I have a lot of things to think and pray over, and a few changes I’m going to have to make for sure.  Here are some notes.

• evangelism doesn’t happen from a message .
  • it happens as I build relationships with our students, and encourage them to do it
  • in fact, the majority of impact comes from conversations, not messages
• student interns:
  • what is the motivation for them to be the intern?
    • Do they want a title and to be the boss?  Or because they want to learn what ministry looks like.
  • don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions
  • let them know that I will be very tough, and it will help them grow
  • assign responsibilities to them that suit them, but give them full responsibility .. don’t micro-mange any of it
  • do they need a title?  should I just give responsibilities?
  • what are the things that other people can do to free me up on the things that I do.
  • give it away slowly, and lead people into it, follow up on it
    • people don’t do what you expect, but what you inspect
• why do my students bring their friends to church?  Do they really believe in eternity (good and bad)?  or are they just trying to make it a cool place?
• am I reaching people in my own life? 
  • how many of my friends aren’t Christians?
  • where are my circles with unchristian people?

we spent so long talking about this stuff today that we didn’t even get to talk about the rest of the stuff on the agenda .. great conversation!

More next Friday…….

Hey All!

Sorry that I haven’t been posting much this week it has been crazy for me, and I don’t have a computer at the house right now so that makes it even harder.  I’ll try to do better next week!  For now, here are the notes from my lunch with Kevin Twombly today .. some very good stuff for all you student ministry types

• find when I’m at my best and give that time to God
• desire, discipline, delight - it takes all 3
• learn to journal prayers
  • it will build faith and consistency
  • it’s great to see God move
• You can’t lead people where you haven’t gone yourself
• daily reading through the bible and journaling
  •  ? - “what are you speaking to me”
  •  
    •   S- scripture
  •  
    •  O - observation
  •  
    •  
      • Paraphrase this verse in my own words
  •  
    • A - application
  •  
    • P - prayer
• take time to be silent before God
  • if we don’t take time to be quiet and listen, we will miss what God is saying to us
• “baby steps” are the way to overcome the negative things that have happened in my “ministry past” and start moving into the great plans that God has for me right now.
  • How can I turn the negative thoughts and fears in my head into the positive things to build on?
• kids want to be involved in something big, but they need someone to grab them and tell them that they can do it.

Whew, I’m totally exhausted from this weekend!  It’s bad when you look forward to mon-fri work as a chance to relax and recover.  But, as tired as I am, this was a great weekend and God moved in a huge way.  Here are some thoughts:

• Lets start w/the bad news - FSU lost.  I mean, I never thought that they were goign to go undefeated this year or anything.  But it still hurt a lot.  Played a really bad game of football too, 7 turnovers and 140 yards of penalties is just ridiculous!
• okay, good stuff from here on out .. 
• The student ministry had a fundraiser yesterday and we raised $950 dollars in 30 minutes.  For a church of our size, that’s tremendous.  God blessed us big time yesterday and he deserves all the credit and glory for what happened!
• THE CUBS ARE THE N.L. CENTRAL DIVISION CHAMPIONS .. Whoo hoo
• Yesterday’s message was tough (not for me so much, but for a lot of the people sitting in our church). Pastor Sean talked about marriage (or the lack of) and divorce, and pregnancy out of wedlock.  A lot of tough stuff to have to deal with for a young church that has A LOT of people in that boat.  But, as PS said, “God forgives and restores” …  I’m so glad that he always offers me another chance.
• The bucs came back from a 10 point defecit with like 2 mins left in the game and tied the game with the bears up with 7 seconds left.  Then, they won in overtime.
• On Saturday we had a worship concert in the park in Ringgold, we had a lot of new faces there and we got to connect with a lot of people in our community.  We could not have asked for more!
• On Wednesday, I’m going to Atl for a church planters lunch.  Will be a great time meeting a lot of cool new people in the church planting world.  Plus, will be a fun road trip for Cassie and I.

Lifechurch.tv has done it again!

They have announced the newest project that they’re almost finished completing called, “Church Metrics“.  This is an online tool to track attendance, giving, baptisms, salvations, etc!

if you know about church tracking software you know that this stuff costs a lot of money normally, and as always Lifechurch.tv is providing all of this absolutely free.

God is using lifechurch.tv to change how his Kingdom works.  It’s not here for monatary gain, it’s here to gain in lives that have been impacted forever.  If you’re not familiar with lifechurch.tv they’ve made several free programs for churches and give away all of their videos and sermons, and anything else that they can find laying around.

I can’t wait until more churches figure this out!

I’ve been given the tremendous opportunity to go through a 10 week mentorship program with a veteran in youth ministry named Kevin Twombly.  The most amazing part is how much our lives parallel.  He was where I am today 11 years ago with his church.  He started as the youth pastor at a plant church with 1 student, and God has tremendously blessed him and the church.  I thought that for the next 10 weeks on Friday I will share some of the thoughts from him, and some of the thoughts that I have on his thoughts:

• I can’t do everything myself - even on a small scale
  • develop leaders to do stuff - so you don’t have to do everything 
  • develop student leaders to do a lot of the work as well
     
• don’t compete with the Churches who have more
  •  If you try to compete with huge churches you will burn out 

• spend time building relationships 
  • small events with fewer people help build more than any one big event
     
• find out where my students are in their spiritual life and build your bible studies around what they’re wrestling with right now
   
• “do not despise your small beginnings”- verse in OT
   
• Try to grab a student to do your daily errands if possible.
  •  Try to find ways to maximize time for relationships in between things
     
• Express the need to parents that you want to connect with them and their children
   
• Learn how say “no” to good things .. and “yes” to right things
   
• What is my dream student ministry??
  • This is something that I’ve never really thought about in that context.  I’ve always just thought, “big and healthy” but I’ve never really broken down the specifics .. I need to pray and brainstorm a lot over the next few months.
  • I’ve got to know where I”m leading before I can lead
     
• How dependant am I on “toys?”
  •  What if someone pulled the power on the ministry?  Could I still do ministry?
     
• I have to learn how to questions everything!  Everything that we do as a student ministry, and learn to question everything in student ministry.
  •  ”sacred cows make good hamburgers”

This is making it’s way through the blogosphere as of late .. finally couldn’t resist sharing it with all of you guys…

and before you ask .. yes, this is real

I guess last week was the week for churches to start coming out and supporting different sides of the political spectrum.  I lost count at the number of churches/non-profit ministries that all of a sudden jumped to one side or the other in support of a candidate.  I don’t care what side of the political spectrum you fall on, I definitely have a few thoughts about what is starting to happen:

1) I LOVE POLITICS - I have said it on my blog here before.  Seriously, I enjoy watching speeches, and I’m already looking forward to the debates.  I love seeing the rthetoic and spin put on by BOTH SIDES, where they twist the other side’s argument to somehow prove themselves right.  I think it’s a lot of fun to learn the strategies that go into what they do.
2) I HATE POLITICS - I don’t know that our country has had one “eternal” impact made for God’s Kingdom in the last 75 years because of a law passed in Washington.  Do you want to change the world?  Do you want to end abortion?  Do you want to feed the hungry?  Do you want to help the oppressed people scattered all across our nation and in the world?  Then, Don’t go to Washington.  Start by “loving your neighbor” .. real change happens one person at a time.  None of the people who are running for president are going to make an impact for God’s Kingdom like you can by showing real love to someone in need tomorrow.

With all of that said .. the main reason that I’m writing this is because of how saddened I am that pastors, churches, non-profits are all starting to take sides once again this four years.  I mean, I have a person who I support and who I will vote for because I believe that he will bring a little more change than the other person, BUT I will not talk about this in public, and I will never post about either person as my choice on my blog.

I deep within my heart believe that every single church should strive to be aggressively committed to remaining non-political.

The issues and concerns of Jesus Christ and the church for effecting change in the world are bigger than our politics. Environmentalism isn’t a Democrat thing, it’s a God thing. The sanctity of life isn’t a Republican thing, it’s a God thing. The church isn’t the place for political discussion or promotion. Rather, the church should be the model politics looks to for how to govern/live.

I don’t know when we started to turning to Washington to regulate the laws that we should be living out in our daily lives.

Nowhere in scripture does someone become a Christian and then start running to rome to see how they can change the government of the day to promote their Christian values.  They didn’t mess with politics.  THey lived the change in their daily lives, they devoted themselves to the causes that they so strongly believed in.  They understood that real change didn’t come from the top, down… it comes from bottom up.  They didn’t let their message get tied in with bi-partisan politics that never really truly make any kind of significant difference.  I just wish that church would follow suit, whichever side they fall on…

it is so much easier to pick a political party and blame the other side for the faults with America and the world. It takes personal responsibilty away from us and allows us to hold other people accountable for what we’re called to do.  You want to know what’s wrong with the world .. it’s not the democrats or republicans .. IT’S ME.  I would rather donate money to a cause, then work on it.  I would rather look to Washington to solve all the problems with the world, than to be the answer myself.

You want America to change for the better?  BE THE CHANGE.  Don’t take either side.

If you’re a pastor/church/non-profit .. please keep God’s Kingdom out of the mess of politics.  Keep your personal opinions personal.  Don’t allienate members of your organization by getting into a mess that we shouldn’t be in.  There are GREAT CHRISTIAN PEOPLE ON BOTH SIDES ON THIS ARGUMENT.  Why should we loose new members and continue to give people the same ole’ opinions of Christianity.

Trust me, from someone who has heard 3 different stories from people ticked at the pastor of their church (each a different church) because of something that he said about one party or the other.  stay away from politics.  You are only going to make your members mad at you, people will leave your church because of what you say and I don’t care which side of the argument that you take.  And I hope you don’t support either side so strongly that you’re ok with that.

“The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year.”
John Foster Dulles

never thought about it quite like that ……

Here’s a great thought that I found on Tony McCollum’s Blog

What’s the one thing that you could do right now that would transform this day for someone else?  Who could you call?  Who could you email?  Who could you surprise?  Who could you pray for?  Whatever it is, do it right now.

hmm.. great idea .. maybe the boy scouts aren’t quite as nerdy as we thought with there “do a good deed daily” slogan …  Actually, on second thought, forget I said that, they’re still just as nerdy!