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Quantifying results and a busy day of ministry.

Yesterday was a busy day. We had a bunch of new things happen and I was about as tired as could be last night. First I started a new series in the high school ministry called "Jesus' Priorities" part of what we're trying to do with this series is to get our students talking with each other and not just sitting and staring at me while I try to keep them awake for 20 minutes.

We decided to go to a shorter talk/discussion group model with groups led mostly by parent volunteers. We set the whole room up with round tables and went for it. The response from both students and parents was great. I was impressed with the high school leadership team and their drive to make this work.

After high school we reset the room up for our All-Nations fellowship. This was the first Sunday that we were both going to be using the room. Seemed to go off without a hitch.

The rest of the day was great too. I had brought in Chap Clark from Fuller Theological Seminary to lead a ParenTeen seminar that evening. Chap also preached in the 1105 service and went out to lunch with our staff team. Everything he was involved in went phenomenal and I've already heard from many parents that this was exactly what they needed to hear.

As I reflect back on the day I have a couple thoughts. First, I'm glad that I'm still in youth ministry. I think God has given me a renewed sense of my purpose and calling. I can't imagine a better place than Highland Park Presbyterian Church for me to be than at this church because I am able to leverage my strengths.

Second, I think we have a long ways to go to create a space where all students feel unconditionally like we "collectively the church" care about them.

Third, I'm proud of the parents who came last night because they made a good step towards understanding their kids and this world we're all trying to raise them in.

Forth, this goes to the "Quantifying results" title. I'm working on trying to get my head around how to gauge how something like this is effective. I know that most of the parents I spoke to had great things to say but I want to figure out how we can track how change happens. We'll be talking about all of this during our meetings this week and next.

I miss the beach

Most people know that I now live in Texas. What I don't think everyone knows is that I grew up on an island in Washington state. Now I realize Washington isn't known for it's beautiful beach weather but it was great to grow up on the water. Today I missed the water. I mowed my lawn and at one point stopped and realized I was 1100 miles away from the ocean. I do love it here and there is a ton of great things here for our family so I'm not depressed. Just would like to be able to drive to the beach and go for a walk today.

Please don't comment and tell me about Galveston. I've been there. It's not a beach.

What I've been spending too much time doing.

Ok so maybe not too much time but definitely enough time that my eyes hurt. I've been working on our new web page for the last week. As with most churches we're using the youth ministry site to push the envelope a little bit further than our church has ever gone. It's mostly the interconnectedness that I'm excited about. We're working on adding in a twitter feature that will track all of our staff who are out an about and twittering with their cell phones to give students updates of where they are at. A lot of stuff with video will be ending up on the site soon too.

Here's a link for now. In the future it'll have a different name.

Axl Please

This made me laugh today. Apparently Dr. Pepper has said that they will give everyone in America (roughly 300 million cans) of soda if Axl Rose will finally release the G & R album "Chinese Democracy." This album has been in the making for 17 years and a lot of people have been waiting. Good for someone to finally step up and make it so.

Here's a link. Free Dr. Pepper

Preparing for a new Series

I'm stoked to be preparing a new series for the high school group. I'm calling the series "Jesus Priorities" because that's what it is. "Characteristics of Jesus" might actually be a better title. I'll be teaching through the book of Matthew for the next bunch of months.

The talks are going to be a little shorter because we're starting up Sunday Morning discussion groups for the students so that they have opportunity to interact with what I'm teaching and not just sit their listening.

The aim behind this series is to encourage students that following Jesus should manifest some outward change in their lives. There should be new things that excite them and that they start caring about. As I teach through each of these issues I'll be sharing a lot of personal stories and ideas that will hopefully make this topic real to them.

Here's a short list of topics for the next 8 weeks:
Seeking the Kingdom
Spiritual Connection
Justice
Merciful and grace-giving
Peace
Holy Living
Obedience to God
Reconciliation

Back from Colorado

We spent the last 10 day in Colorado. Drove 10 hours today and are finally back at our house. I'm tired and my kids are asleep. Looking forward to getting some work done tomorrow. The vacation was great.

Happy Easter

I spent today at a refreshing church in Western Colorado. Refreshing because it was just different. I love my current church and think there are a ton of great things about it. The church I was at today though was a "come as you are" church. There were suits, jeans, really old jeans and very dirty jeans. I enjoyed the service mostly because I thought it pointed towards Jesus and what he did.

On a funny note there was a huge community egg hunt before the service and my son Soren won the grand prize which was an ipod shuffle. Right before they picked the number he kept saying "pick my number, pick my number" we were all shocked.

So now I have a 7 year old with an ipod. He's been listening to it a big chunk of the day while we drive back to Dallas. On his shuffle: every Switchfoot Album, Le Freak (his favorite song) the new Crowder, and a compilation of Star Wars stuff from John Williams.

That's what the 7 year olds rock to.

No Name Saturday

The Apostles Creed says that Jesus "Descended into Hell". We know that tomorrow is Easter and we celebrate the Resurrected Christ but we don't really have a name for today the in between day of Easter.

So what should we do with it. Len Sweet says that it's the most underrated day in the Christian Faith. That in the future it will become as important as Good Friday.

Me I don't know yet. I know that it's an important day and that Jesus did something huge but I don't quite know what I'm supposed to do with it.

Sometimes I get over my geek head

Most often I'm just a dad, youth pastor, student and friend. But every once in a while the Geek-O-Meter hits at 11 and I enter the world of the net. Today it happened and here's the story. I logged in to Twitter.com where I happened to see that Kevin Rose the founder of digg.com had posted a link to a website called qik.com. Qik is basically a web portal that allows you to stream live your web cell phone camera on the web. It also has a chat feature that allows you to interact with the people who are on video.

So Kevin had just picked up a friend of his from the San Francisco airport named Gary who runs the Wine Library.tv website. They were driving to Sonoma together to taste wine.

Anyways there were only a few of us watching the stream. I was chatting with Gary while Kevin drove. At one point in classic Lars fashion I asked Gary to punch Kevin in the neck while they were on the Golden Gate bridge. Gary reached over and punched him. At that point the world seemed very small to me. That I could chat with someone while they were driving in San Francisco over a cell network and I could watch him hit someone in the neck made me realize how connected everything is becoming.

So there it is. I'm a geek and recognize that to be the case. Today was interesting, at least it was to me.

Flying through the Black Canyon and Ouray Hot Springs.

Yesterday my brother-in-law Mark and I took his plane up for a spin through the Black Canyon here in Colorado. It was pretty amazing and beautiful. The only slightly scary part was the female voice coming out of the GPS the whole time saying "Terrain Ahead, Pull up, Pull up" I felt a little like Top Gun although we were in a 40 year old plane only doing about 130 mph.

Mark started a missions organization called Samaritan Aviation about 10 years ago. They are moving to Papau New Guinnea this summer to be missionary pilots.

Today we're heading up to the town of Ouray, Colorado to go jump in their natural hot springs. We did it once two years ago and it was pretty fun.

Here's a little video about Samritan