They're doing amazing things with fountain drink technology

Well, if you saw my last post you know that I went on a bit of a road trip last weekend (the swim wasnt that bad). Well, I ran across something on my trip that changed my life in an instant.

My friend and I stop at a random gas station in Tupelo, Mississippi. By all accounts, it appeared to be merely your average, run of the mill gas station. That, my friends, was wrong.

My eyes scanned the gas station as I tried to locate something to drink. I saw a big sign above a brightly lit up fountain machine that simply read "BURST". As I walked over towards the fountain drink machine, I noticed that there seemed to be a ridiculously high number of buttons on this particular machine. As I drew near, I saw that beside each drink choice was three extra buttons. One button was cherry flavoring, one was vanilla, and one was lime.

Turns out you can select up to two flavors to add to your cool beverage free of charge! You want a cherry vanilla coke? No problem! What about a lime vanilla diet sprite? Go to town!

I thought you'd be impressed...

No time to talk- must train!

The googles are funny.

I am going to be out of town this weekend. I am meeting a friend at the airport in Little Rock, Arkansas. I went on to my trusty maps.google.com to get directions from here to the airport. For some reason I thought that LRA was the abbreviation for Little Rock's airport, but apparently this is in fact an airport in Greece.

Naturally, google still gave me directions to this little Grecian airport. I would like to direct your attention to step 34 of the directions they gave me.

"Swim across the Atlantic Ocean. 3,462 miles."

That's right, they recommend that I swim across the Atlantic. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go train if I'm ever going to make it across the pond...

Humans- The Poetry of God

Here is the lesson that I am giving tonight. I hope it speaks to you like it did to me.

Prayer

Activity

Divide into groups for poem

• About how one member of your team is so great
• At least 10 lines, must rhyme
• Bonus points if your team acts it out!

Lesson

We are going to talk a little bit more about poetry tonight- not like you do in English class, though

• It is going to help us see how God looks at us, and how we should respond in light of that

Any fans of poetry in here?

• Any particular poets or poems that are your favorites?
• Anyone write your own as a way to vent or just be creative?
• How do you tell good poems from bad poems?

Some people think they are being really great, colorful writers- but in reality they aren’t that good- here are some examples of actual lines from really bad poems and stories

• Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
• Every minute without you feels like 60 seconds.
• Her parting words lingered heavily inside me like last night's Taco Bell.
• He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

So, you see that there is some really bad writing out there- and hopefully you are getting curious as to what all this has to do with the way God sees us.

Speaking of poetry- did you know that you are all poems yourselves?

• It’s true- you are a living, breathing work of art that God made- that every day appears before the world as either a beautiful poem, or a trainwreck like some of those writers we heard from earlier

To prove to you I’m telling the truth, let’s turn to Ephesians 2:10

• For we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago
• Different translations say this a few different ways
• “what he has made us” “creation” “masterpiece”
• The reason there are so many different translations for this is because there isn’t an English word that really has the same meaning as the Greek word used
• The Greek word in question is this: poema- look familiar?

Every Christian is God’s living poem- and every day we had a new line to that poem

Group Discussion Questions

So how do we make our lives end up as masterpieces- beautiful works of art instead of becoming trainwrecks?

• Easy answer- in the second half of the verse-
• He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago

Think about it this way- long before you were a sparkle in your parents’ eyes- you were a complete story- a complete poem in God’s imagination

• Before the world began- God the poet had already pulled out the paper and pen and was thinking about his next creation
• And just like a poet who had a great line pop into his head, God smiled when he thought about what you (his poem) would look like if you decided to “do the good things he planned for us long ago”

God began this poem in his mind long, long ago

• And when you finally showed up on this earth, he actually handed over the paper and pen to you- so you could finish the poem however you chose to

You could have chosen to not fulfill the vision God had for you- you could have chosen to write a really crappy poem

• Or hopefully you chose to continue writing your poem as beautifully as God planned for you

Either way, it’s your choice

I don’t know about you, but that’s what I want for my life- I want to be a beautiful poem that God would be proud to show off to everyone around Him

• And the way I try to do that is by living every day the way I think God would want me to
• I try to handle every situation like Christ himself would- I try to share the love of God with those around me.

And you know what- every time you show God’s love to someone around you….every time you handle a situation exactly like a Christian should…. You are adding a beautiful new line to the living poem that is your life.

I want all of us to bow our heads and we are going to close in prayer

• But first- I want you to think to yourself what your poem has looked like until this point
• Has it been all good stuff, or are there some lines in there that don’t belong?
• Think if there have been any lines added that you really wish you could go back and erase
• I want you to take just a few seconds now and I want you to do two things
• Tell God you are sorry for the bad lines in the poem, for the times you’ve messed up
• And end your prayer by telling God that you are committed to living your life the way He envisioned for you- End by telling him that you want beautiful poetry to your life with the way you handle every situation in every day.

I close with quick prayer.

Update

First of all, the teen in my group that was having such terrible physical problems is doing much better. Thanks to any that might have joined with me in praying for him.

Secondly, District Assembly was honestly not that bad. I met several people that will be good for me to know... NYI president, Camp director, NYC Director, District Superintendent, etc. As far as the actually assembly itself- it had it's moments. If you can get past the droning business sections and incessant NPH pimping, there were some really excellent visions for the future cast.

Oh well, I'm about to head to youth group... I'll give you all another morsel of information soon!

District Assembly, Here I Come!

Hope everyone has a great week- I'll be spending the rest of mine at District Assembly. We'll see how that goes...

In the meantime, please pray for a young man in my youth group. To make a long story short, it seems like he has a large polyp on his colon, for lack of a better explanation. He was taken to a hospital in a bigger city yesterday so they could better take care of him. More tests this week will hopefully tell us why he is having these issues at such a young age.

I just don't know sometimes...

Blessed be your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where the streams of abundance flow
Blessed be your name

Blessed be your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be your name

Every blessing you pour out,
I turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your glorious name

Blessed be your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's all as it should be
Blessed be your name

Blessed be your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be your name

Every blessing you pour out,
I turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, Blessed be your name

This is the song that I heard sung by thousands of teenagers at a Newsboys concert last night. Hands were stretched to the sky all across the venue as they all sang at the top of their lungs. It was an emotionally driven, feel-good moment for most involved.

I know that I can be too cynical at times, but I couldn't help but wonder how many of those teenagers were paying any attention at all to the words of the song. I'm particularly interested in the stanza below:

Blessed be your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be your name

I truly believe that these are beautiful and powerful words, but do we really realize just what we were singing? I've been to about a dozen camps on a few different districts, and I've always been bothered by the emotion-driven worship that we feed our teenagers. Have we sacrificed authentic training and discipleship for a feel-good moment with kids flooding the altar? We get a charismatic speaker who knows exactly what to say to stir a crowd, and the services end with literally hundreds of teens at the altar. On the surface, this looks like a wonderful experience!

My concern is that youth ministers are becoming too caught up in altar numbers, just like some pastors have become too caught up in attendance numbers. My question is whether or not we are doing our teens justice with this movement. If we intentionally prick their emotions and they spend an hour at the altar crying with their friends, will the experience matter a year from now? Have we equipped them for the rigors of the Christian life outside of our protected camp atmospheres?

As a fairly young youth pastor, I can clearly remember my own experiences as a teen a nazarene summer camps. I got "saved" five summers in a row. Anyone else out there have similar stories? I can name you plenty of teens from youth groups I've pastored to experience the same thing- is this not a symptom of a larger problem?

Emotions come and emotions go- which is why I don't want my teenagers' faith or major spiritual decisions to be based on emotions only. We have basically closed the book on preaching "hellfire and brimstone" because we realized that in essence we were scaring people into making decisions. The problem with scaring people into decisions is that they were only scared for a few hours. Their faith wore off as their fear did. Can we not expect the same results from playing to positive emotions? Teenagers won't always have the warm fuzzy feeling that comes with teen camp. Will the decision they made there still hold true in their lives when the struggles of the world hit them in the mouth a few weeks later?

The bottom line is that I feel we have sacrificed true spiritual maturation for tears and snot on the altar.

I'm aware that this is a hastily written post and my thoughts are all over the place, so I may not have been clear or made a valid point at all. This is just something that has been heavy on my heart this morning, so I wanted to share... any thoughts?

So far, so good

Sorry for the delay, blogland. I know that during my hiatus, you all were frantically checking the net every day to see if I bestowed you with any more pearls of wisdom...well your wait is over, my friends!

Of course, I kid.

In news that isn't fake, I implemented a competitive small groups model for my Wednesday night services. At some point during my lessons, we split into small groups- each having a teen captain and an adult- to go deeper with the topic. The groups are "competitive" because they received points for showing up, bringing Bibles, bringing visitors, memorizing a weekly verse I assign, mission projects, and a slew of other random things. Whichever group has the most points at the end of the summer will have their way paid on our summer trip to six flags.

I introduced this two Wednesdays ago, and last night was our first "real" meeting with the small groups. You have to understand that since I have arrived at this church a month ago, I have seen one visitor and one person bring a Bible. Last night we had three visitors, six people brought Bibles, and five people memorized our Scripture for the week. I was quite pleased with the result.

I know that the reason they did these things was because of their competitive spirit, but I really don't think that is the most important thing right now. I am trying to develop good habits in them, and if takes a silly church competition to get them memorizing scripture, inviting friends to church, and bringing their Bibles to church- I'm totally ok with that.