What I believe

This is still the belief I have of who we can be come at MLC.

When God moves

We move with him. I know that God is moving in our minstry right now. We are expereincing some great things and it is only by the hand of God who can move the human heart. I am so thankful for our leaders and the students who are giving so much of themselves right now to reach people who do not know Christ.

If you are expereinceing God moving right now in your life in this ministry let me know it. I would love to hear the story.

And so it begins

We start Fuze tomorrow and I am so pumped up about what God is doing. It’s not the theme, even thought it is awesome, it’s not the music that will be exploding or even the potential of some cool new students coming to hang out. I am pumped that God is at work and I know for a fact that students are coming to pray and confess and cry out to Jesus to continue to move and work among us.

God has been messing us up and I pray that he continues to do so. He is so big and I am not sure I know where this is going, but I know that he is in control of it.

WOW

I am so excited about getting our students to participate in WOW this year. I am challenging our Middle School students to bring some money to give to Jamaica and I am challenging our HS students to make a WOW commitment for the next two years. I am praying that God raises up a large number of our students to own the mission and vision he has given MLC and become investors. This is a challenge I want God to show himself through and I know that we will all be better as a result. I will post over the next couple of weeks about what God does through our students. I am praying for huge things.

Let’s have some fun

Dude student ministry is fun. If your not having fun you are doing it wrong. I love hanging out with students and just getting to know them and asking them questions that make them hate me. One of the greatest experiences in my life will always be hanging out in some crazy place with students. This summer is going to be fun. We are going to be together all summer and love it. We are also hanging out at Andrew’s house this Sunday night and watching some pointless movie. I love it.

Fuel 2008

Well guys it is time to turn our eyes to the summer and make sure we have our spot at camp. It is going to be awesome and you do not want to miss out. We will be going to Flat Rock, NC June 2-6 and the cost until March 31st is $350.00. You need to get your paperwork and deposit in by the 31st to ensure the discounted price. We also have a limited number of spots so don’t miss the first year of Fuel.

In case you are wondering this is going to be an experience in the way of building relationships and making some lasting memories together. If you are looking to get to know some people and have them know you then this is the place. So grab a friend and register on-line or get some paper work at Amp’d or Shift.

TV Night

Farah and I for the first time in at least 6 years sat down last night to watch a little TV. I am not talking about the cable version, but the rabbit ears variety that you can only kind of see enough to know what is going on. We watched the end of American Idol because the world is addicted and we thought we would try to see what the deal is. After that we watched The Moment of truth and came to the discovery that the show stinks. It is crap that tries to create drama out of other peoples personal lives for the sake of shock value to keep viewers entertained. It was a show that had no real value and feel dumber for having watched it. Lastly we watched the local Fox news and here is where I realized why I don’t watch TV. The newscasters pretended to be interested in the stories they were “reporting” and they really just wanted people to think and they had some new revelation that people could not live without. They were goofy and irrelevant and the weather guys computer froze up and wouldn’t report the weather so he just told us instead of showed us what the deal was. Nothing about this news team made me believe or want to believe that they had any perspective on the world worth tuning in every night for.

Well, Farah and I went to bed thinking about our experience and I thought, “I wonder of that’s what people experience when they come to church.” A poorly done production with people pretending to convince them they know something or have some valuable info about the world. I am as disconnected as they come from a TV culture and I was giving them one more shot after 6 years and I was not impressed.

I wasn’t looking for the facts of the situation I didn’t want their opinions about people’s plight, I wanted the truth of the matter. There is a difference between fact and Truth. We can talk all day about facts about Jesus, but what people want when then are giving us one more shot is Truth. The truth that Jesus loves them and that they have to make a decision about who they believe he is.

When people encounter us they want Truth, the heart felt kind that they know we have experienced, not a commentary about the facts. God hep me live your truth.

ReThink Money….I’m buying what he’s selling

Well, we just finished our spending plan for month number 2 after our ReThink Money class taught by Casey Graham. Let me just say that my wife Farah is doing an awesome job managing our budget and even taking huge chunks of money out by being more intentional about what we buy. We are eating better for cheaper for instance and it feels great that we are no longer eating our retirement. We are looking to kill $4100.00 worth of debt this month as well as get our emergency and vacation fund built. We have almost gotten our spending plan into a place where we can live off of my salary and use Farah’s income to keep paying off debt. If you are needing some help to get your fiances under control, please take this class at MLC. We were not that bad off, we were just unintentional in our financial plan and wasting money.

I have seen God move in our finances more in the last month than ever before. He has provided because we are seeking to honor him with what we spend and give. I want to get to place where we are no longer paying a debt service other than the one we owe Christ for life and purpose to our existence.

Onward…

Learing from some Great Ones

Last night I went over to Crosspoint Community Church to check out some amazing growth things that we heard about through the grapevine and man I was blown away. Buck Webb, Crystal Corn, Terry Douglas, Nick Pirtle, Chad Ward and I were amazed as we walked in and were warmly greeted by HS students. Everyone one of them looked us in the eye and asked us our name very genuinely and specifically. This was a culture of acceptance and true desire to have new people be a part. I was truly humbled by these kids because they were inviting people into a relationship with them and with Christ each time they came up and introduced themselves to us.

These students also had a true heart of worship. They were no inhibitions as they sang and worshiped to music played by a CD with no worship leaders. These kids were making it “cool” to worship God and allowed others to experience the presence of God no matter what point they were along in the journey.

All in all Jason Motte, the student pastor expressed a deep humility about what God was doing, but I believe it is his leadership and that of his teams to develop such and effective culture among the students to create the kind of environment where disconnected kids would love to come in a be a part of what God is doing.

I still have more to process, but several things I “knew” about student ministry were challenged and changed by the results and work of the guys over in Birmingham.

Postponed

Obviously we are postponing our launch of Shift due to the weather conditions. I am bummed about this but I am also a little excited that we have an extra week to prepare and make this best possible experience for a first timer to give God and the church one more chance. We will still be giving away Rock Band in both services next week so don’t miss that. I am so pumped about what God id going to do. He controls the wind and the snow and the ice and I know that he will still show up regardless of what week we launch.