Category: light force

Tonight is session 6 of 3 Story Life. (Our churches adult small group spin on YFC’s 3 Story) In a lot of ways it has been fun doing this re-write, but in a lot of other ways, it has been really hard.

It’s been fun to not just critique the curriculum, but to really spend time taking it apart and rearranging it, adding some parts I thought were missing and getting rid of things that I thought were too much. It’s also been fun training our leaders, getting feedback from them, and making the whole thing better along the way. (Several times I’ve re-written something after it didn’t go well on Monday for the Tuesday group.) It has been fun to see where peopel interact with the material, where they go "hmmmm" and where they go "ho-hum." Very interesting because it is mostly at times when I wouldn’t have done the same things!

The not-so-fun parts. Well, re-writing something that a bunch of people worked on to "make perfect" isn’t any fun at all. Looking back, it may have been easier in the long run to leave the original as it was. While tinkering with it has been fun, it has also cost me a lot of time. Specifically, every day off for the last several weeks has been consumed working on this project. It hasn’t been fun that I haven’t been able to finish this sooner. (Such as, I have to finish tonights session this morning. It hasn’t been fun that we thought it would work out well as a 6 week small group, but we’ve learned it may be better in a 4 week format.

All in all, 3 Story Life is a great project. To get the adults of the church talking, thinking, and trying to share their faith is amazing. It’s always been my hope that this would be the beginning of changing our community. Let’s hope so!

Since I was reminded by someone that I was a wee bit behind. I’ve updated all the talk notes over on the Light Force site. There is always a link here on the left side, now it’s all updated. Thanks for the reminder.

Back a several weeks ago I had lunch with Jason Raitz. It seems like in this conversation we talked about 100 things. Last week I saw him again at the Detroit Metro Youth Workers lunch, I really like him. He’s a cool guy with a great heart for students.

So, here is a part of our conversation he recorded in his ministry’s newsletter:

    I was having lunch with a youth worker not to long ago who
said something that really got me thinking: "my kids really
aren’t into to retreats anymore, so we don’t do
them". REALLY?!?? Seriously, I could not stop thinking about
that statement for weeks and here’s why, and get ready for the
depth of this answer; I love retreats! I do, I always have,
and I think I will till Christ returns. But more important than
my personal feelings, I believe that retreats can become, dare
I say, ebeneezer moments for your ministry. Because of
that, I believe we should invest a great amount of our time
and energy into them. [Project 311 March Newsletter]

Later he wrote: "        I don’t even have enough space to convince you why you
should you put a large amount of your energy into the
planning, preparation, and execution of your retreats"

First off, I’m not mad that he used this private conversation to make a point publically. Heck, I do this all the time. But I do think his idea bears some feedback.

I’ve asked Jason to write an article for YMX talking about the importance of retreats in student ministry. I will write an article called "Why I kissed retreats goodbye." I am looking forward to this not because I think I have a superior opinion, and not because Jason will represent the majority opinion and I will represent the minority opinion… but because this is something that we need to be thinking about. In most student ministries I know, the bi-annual retreats are major peices of the ministry philosophy. The question is "Do you know why it is or isn’t part of your ministry philosophy?" For many out there, it is the single most expensive thing (time and money-wise) that they do. But should it be?

Of course, this leads directly into my larger "Pastor Adam rant" about events and evangelism. [Shivering just thinking about it!]

Proof #1 Stuff like this still makes me giggle. When I start thinking about the mess and the weirdness of it all, then I can’t call myself a youth dude. But there is just something funny about 4 girls wanting to get messy just to win… NOTHING!

Proof #2 On the way home tonight I correct my daughter that it was a co-art and not a snart when you cough and fart at the same time.

I very reluctantly had our pews listed for sale over at usedpews.org. (Just so you know, I had all the boards permission to do this first!) Our hope is that we can find a new ministry or maybe an old ministry that is looking to buy some used pews. They are high quality, they are in pretty good condition, and I hope this isn’t the end of the road for them in ministry, just a new location.

This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your Holy Presence
Living in me

These are well know words to a song we sing often. But I have been so busy and going in so many directions lately that I am not feeling like I can catch my breath.

A phrase I say all the time is "I’m really busy with stuff, all good stuff, but I am sure busy." I find myself really longing and desiring time to just breathe. I take that back, I don’t want to "just breathe," I want to breathe deeply.

Last night at Light Force it made the girls giggle that I kept refering to a group of sheep as a flock and not a herd. As Dave pointed out later, "They do call the person who works with sheep a ShepHERD and not a ShepFLOCK.

Upon further review, a group of sheep is often refered to as a flock. According to wikipedia, "The adjective applying to sheep is ovine and the collective terms for sheep are flock and mob. The term herd is also occasionally used in this sense." [Read here]

So we were both right.

He tends his flock like a shepherd:
He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young. Isaiah 40:11

To some this will seem like no big deal, but to others what we did today is a massive thing. Just a few hours ago I put together a purchase order to replace our church pews with the chair pictured to the left. This isn’t something that we did flippantly, but I recognize that it will signify something very hard for our people. The tipping point for going to chairs was money… isn’t that always the case. At the end of the day, re-upholstering them every few years was just too expensive when we looked at the one time cost of a chair.

What will happen to our pews? We are hoping that this isn’t the end of the road for Romeo’s pews. I am currently working on finding a way to sell our chairs to a new church or old church that needs them. I found a very cool website called Used Pews for doing this. If all else fails, we will be finding a ministry in the area to donate them to.

There are a lot of side benefits to changing the auditorium to chairs. But there is also a lot of sentimentality to keeping them.

3 Story groups have now spent 3 weeks discovering God’s Story, My Story, and Their Story. Now we are turning the corner and starting the connection process. I am very much looking forward to this. I know to this point we’ve poised more questions than answers, from here on out it should be about light bulbs going off.