Category: Student Ministry

Last Night we held a special Banquet for our graduating Seniors and their Mom’s and Dad’s.  It was a great time!!!   Hearing stories from parents of how their son or daughter influenced them to develop a stronger relationship with Christ was so powerful.  We also laughed at some of the things that these grads did as kids.  Good times, good food, great bonding experience for families; so encouraging.  Their leadership will be missed!  Thanks class of 2008 for all you have done while serving God and attending Fusion!!!

For the last couple of months I have been leading an 8th grade boys small group.  It has totally rocked!!! I filled in one week when the leader was gone, but do to schedule and moving, I have become their leader.  The guys are great and God is doing some neat things in our group!  Tonight we hit an attendance high with 14 from the usual 6 that we started with.  

Last week we had a professing atheist join us, and this week he came back and led one of the questions during our small group.  He still says he doesn’t believe in God but he said tonight that he was searching.  I love his honesty and truly do believe that he isn’t just saying this to get attention, but something he believes, I think because others may be afraid to talk to him, myself included at first, about spiritual things because of the way he comes across.  He comes across as uninterested and not willing to engage or listen.  It would be easy to ask then “Why does he come?”  God is teaching me a lot just in getting to know him.  Here are three things I learned tonight,

1.  All students, no matter how they look, what they believe, or why they come, need the same thing, attention and the truth shared in love.

2.  Even the hardest students will participate if given some sort of responsibility.  I saw this tonight when I asked him to lead out in one of the questions.  The question he had to ask was, “What is something new God is asking you to do?”  What a question for an professing atheist to have to ask everyone in the group!

3.  Even if they act like they aren’t listening, they more than likely are, and when they share, it is very powerful!!! 

The 8th grade guys are awesome.  I am encouraged every week by their willingness to share and the growth I see in each of them.  It reminds me every week why I work with students! 

Thanks God for letting me have the greatest job in the world!

Getting ready for day 2 of the PDYM Regional – Dallas. Last night was good. Megan talked about Life Hurts God Heals, starting with an overview of the ministry and moving into practical insights of how it can be used in our ministries, by showing how it is used in their ministry. I think that makes sense. Very good stuff!!! Especially the importance of leaders!

Today, Doug will share about Purpose Driven Youth Ministry. I am excited! I have all of our paid youth staff and some of our volunteers at the conference and look forward to followup conversations with each of them. It will be interesting to see how Doug takes a 3 day conference and packs it all into one day. Should be great learning with the team!

I don’t know about you, but it is hard for me to do anything without some form of music. I love music, but I am finding myself listening to the words more closely now. I think this started happening when I was with some of my interns at the time and “Candy Shop” came on the radio for the first time. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing.

Now l have always said, “I don’t listen to the words to much I just like the song.” Teenagers tell me this all the time. When I look back at my life there are certain songs that I still like. For example, I still like Creed, Metallic, and Live. (Yes I am a youth pastor so go ahead and re-read what I just wrote). Last week I was working on my talk weekend listening to The Unforgivin by Metallica. (thats out of the box) One of my favorite songs this summer was by Lincoln Park called “What I’ve done”. Today, I found myself listing to Creeds, “My Sacrifice”. These song remind me of different things in my life but there are some deep words and meaning in these songs. I have found myself listing to these songs through a christian world view and it has caused me to like some of them even more.

Here is my learning, even though the artist may not have Christian values, God can still share truth with us through their songs. We used this video this weekend and it was amazing!

Any thoughts?

Tonight, Josiah and I attended the Allen High School Talent Show. Two students from our ministry performed. They both did such a great job. As I sat in the stands I couldn’t help but admire the courage each of them had to perform in front of their peers. I sat with two sets of parents who were just gleaming with pride as they watched their teenager perform and wow the audience. It was a special moment for me and I am glad I got to be a part of it! What an awesome night!!!

Below is a post I wrote 2 years ago after a volunteer meeting. I am reposting it because of the the previous blog titled “MUSIC” I posted earlier today!

Yesterday, during one of my meetings the topic came up about what I and others watch on television. I don’t think it was a negative thing, I just think some people were surprised when I said that I watched MTV. In shock the next question was, “Do you watch it to learn teen culture or for entertainment?” I simply said, “I watch it for both reasons!” After I said that, it was almost as if people looked at me in a different way. Like they were shocked that I had just said that I watch MTV for entertainment purposes. Now please hear me when I say this, not everything on MTV is good, but not all of it is bad either. The question here really isn’t IS MTV OK, the question is what is the content and purpose of what you are watching on any network channel, MTV or TBN. We have become people that are more worried about what people might think instead of challenging them to think and relating to them. Yes, there are some shows on MTV and other popular, more “Christian acceptable” TV stations that my wife and I won’t watch simply because of the message or the vulgar content of the show. But at the same time there are many things that have caused us to talk though and challenged us to take our faith deeper. On the same note, I have also had countless opportunities to have spiritual conversations with people who don’t have spiritual conversations because of something that we both have seen on TV.

The truth is simply be careful what you watch, and be able to explain why you don’t watch something or you don’t listen to something. Let me give an example. When my son was first born my wife would watch a show that was designed to help women start over and get a better handle on life. The show was a great tool for those women. But for us it caused a lot of problems. After watching a few shows, my wife began to over analyze our marriage and family and look at all the negative things instead of looking at the positive things. It really became a battle for us and we began arguing about things we never use to argue about. When we sat down and talked it out, we realized that this show was creating some problems that we really didn’t have. (some of you may be thinking I was trying to cover up a problem, but there really wasn’t one. The enemy was using this show to produce doubt. He does that you know John 10:10) So we cut that show off and things amazingly got better. You see even though the show was something very good, for us it had become something that was damaging to our relationship. Now does that mean others shouldn’t watch it . . . not at all, it just isn’t something we are going to watch.

Now I understand some will try to bring out the extremes and say does that mean I should get drunk to be accepted by people who get drunk in order to share my faith with them. The answer is no, the Bible tells us not to be drunkards for one but we miss the point. I am simply saying that there has to be willingness to learn and relate to a world that desperately needs Christ. How we do that is the dying question. What makes something good and what makes it bad? What makes something Christian?

I realize that all truth is from God, and it may come from places that are least expected. Example, the death of a WWE superstar caused the gospel to be heard by several people watching a couple of weeks ago when WWE did a memorial event to recognize and celebrate the life of Eddie Guerrero.

Here are a couple of verses I think of when it comes to this topic, check them out and let me know what you think if you have the time!

Galatians 1:10; 2 Corinthians 10:5; 1 Corinthians 9:19-23; 1 Corinthians 10:31-33; Philippians 4:8; Colossians 2:2-6