Deck the Halls, Not Your Family

I think its funny, sad and all around entertaining. Too often the Holiday season works people up and leads to stress and frustration instead of joy and peace. RELEVANT Magazine wrote an interesting article title Deck the Halls, Not Your Family and filled it timely advice so you can thrive during this busy season. Please enjoy.

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationship/features/23595-deck-the-halls-not-your-family

Urban Rescue New CD

Just wanted to give you all a heads up. Urban Rescue has a new CD out titled "Just To Be Here."

Urban Rescue has been the worship band at Forest Home for many of our camps. They're fantastic. One of my favorite things about this band is that they have a genuine love for God and want to help others connect with Him. The lead singer, Jordan, is also a friend of mine. I have enjoyed many conversations with him about God and what it truly means to follow Him.

The single off their EP is "Sing." You can hear it for free from their website and blog. http://urbanrescuemusic.com/ http://www.justtobehere.com/

It is also available for download from itunes. http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/just-to-be-here-ep/id403936453

Download it, Listen to it, worship with it!

Back At It

I simply needed the time off. My brain was empty. I needed to recharge. Ever been there?

You would think writting a blog entry once a week would be easy. Well, its not. "Just write about what you're thinking." This un-encouraging encouragement usually comes from those who do not have experience. It reminds me of the baseball fans that see their pitcher screw up and think to themselves, "I could do better than that, how hard could it really be?" Well apparently for me. Its more difficult than I imagined.

This is a short little post that says I'm back at it!

The next few entries will be about what God is teaching me, things I find interesting, and of course, youth ministry.

Please stay tuned.

Facebook

I like Facebook. I think most everyone does. It seems like everyone is talking about social networks; movies are being made, books and endless articles are being published and there seem to be hundreds of Christian Conferences explaining how to use this tool to reach the lost. I like Facebook, I'm just concerned. At the risk of being trendy I've written some of my own thoughts on Facebook.

As a Youth Pastor I'm concerned with how high school students use Facebook as well as their parents. It seems to me parents are not completely tuned in to what their teenager is doing on facebook. Girls are posting half-naked pictures of themselves with their friends. Guys are sexually harassing most female "friends" and/or bullying weaker people and leaving threats on the walls of others. Continually high school students post things on their wall that they would never say in "real life." They have a difficult time differing from their "online life" and their "real life." Unfortunately parents have no idea what their teenager is posting. I'm certain many of them would not be proud of their teens online activity. Many parents say they don't want to "invade on their child's private life." Really? Is that really good parenting? I'm not so sure that it is. In a worse case scenario a teenagers private life is where they hide their drugs, drink their alcohol and experiment sexually with others - not necessarily with the opposite sex. Not wanting to invade a teenagers private life is like believing that what happens in Vegas actually stays in Vegas. Its never a good idea.

As a younger 20-somethings adult, I'm simply concerned for my generation. I've noticed our attention span is getting shorter and shorter. I'm finding it more difficult to stay focused on something long enough in order to complete it. For example, I tried reading a well written 2 page article this morning and couldn't do it without my mind drifting off into lala land thinking the article would have been better if he would have simply added more pictures and made bullet points. Maybe its just me, but I don't think it is. I think as a society we are struggling to focus on things that matter, things of substance. We want our information to include a few picture and 160 characters. To prove my point, I'm willing to bet that people reading this blog post won't make it to the end. If they do, I'm betting that they skip a lines along the way. Let me know how you did!

Lastly, I'm concerned that our culture is becoming more self-centered as we attempt to portray ourselves better than we really are. I leave you with a quote from this mornings article, "A self-image controlled in much the same way corporate brands are controlled. Complete with pictures, videos, songs and most of all, metrics-the number of friends we have, the kinds of friends we have the kind of associations we have. We endlessly noodle, refine, create and consume a digital projection we want others to see. However, we are rarely what we project... The problem is that in real social settings, there are limits to what we can hide. At a certain point, people intuitively see through us." They discover what we really are; our flaws, our weird attributes, and our nervous twitches. Its time consuming to create a perfect image of who we want to be. The problem is that we and others are let down when they discover who we really are.

I'm not against Facebook, I like it, I'm just concerned...

You're Welcome TOMS

I love seeing progress. Its been a small passion of mine for awhile. I like the idea of it, I like the impact of it, and I like how its changing the way people do business and how people buy clothes. I'm talking about TOMS SHOES. I through the idea out to my high school students at PULSE and they jumped on board. At first we just wanted to raise money within our own ministry to help support TOMS. As word got out to others in our church we eventually did a huge shoe drive at Desert Springs and spent over $2,000 on shoes. We even donated the shoes that we purchased as a church to a local rescue mission in Indio. It has been fun to watch our students feel like they are making an impact on peoples lives while learning to give or their resources and possessions.
Thank you TOMS for leading by example, and to the students of PULSE, for having the heart of Christ and fueling our mission with the energy of youth!

groups groups and more groups

Is this normal? Am I the only one who struggles with this? These are some of the questions that I hear from our students on a weekly basis. Students want to ask questions, learn how the world works, discover who Christ is and learn who they really are. The best way to help them along this process is by our Life Groups ministry.

The idea is simple but the results are amazing. Students form groups with five or so of their friends and are assigned an adult leader to help guide the group. All groups will be made up of the same gender and will be lead by an adult of the same gender. So, guys will be lead by guys and girls will be lead by girls. These groups will meet every Thursday night for eight weeks.

The time in groups is designed for students to develop and grow in their relationship with God, and with each other. They will do this by studying scripture together, asking questions about the nights message and teaching series, and praying for one another.

In a time where schedules are double booked, students are buried under a mountain of homework and everyone is so busy its crucial to set aside time to slow down, laugh with friends and reconnect with God.

My prayer is that every high school student will be involved in a life group and these groups will equip them to thrive in their high school years.

Benefits to Sin?

I don't often have an "A HA" moment when I read scripture. Sure I continually learn new things and am challenged by Scripture, but rarely do I jump out of my chair screaming, "That was brilliant! I've never thought of that before!"

I'm reading through Romans right now and in Chapter six verse, twenty-one Paul asks a simple question that for me, became profound. "What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of?" Have you ever had one of those moments when you're arguing with yourself, telling yourself that you're about to do is wrong and I shouldn't do it but at the same time you convince yourself to do it anyways (if you're picturing the little devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other you're right on track!)? Only after you committed the sin do you then feel horrible and are ashamed of what you have done. This is what Paul is talking about and he follows it up with a great question. He asks, What was the benefit? did you get anything out of it? Are you a better person, do you feel better about yourself, are you at peace now, is everything right in the world again because of your sin? Obviously the answer is no.

When I think back through all my favorite sins (everyone has their favorite sins, its the ones that seem to always repeat over and over again) I realized I've never really benefited from them at all. The only thing I have ever gotten out of sinning was losing my self-control and distancing myself from God. Both of which really aren't beneficial.

Paul concludes chapter six of Romans by saying "But now that you have become set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. " - Amen.