Student Led Connections!

We are in our "Chaotic Joy" series, studying Philippians. It is going great! Last night we had our student leaders lead every aspect of our program. What a chaotic joy!

Each component was led amazingly! God was worshiped last night my friends. The students did a great job moving us along after dinner into a very fun mixer. We had a four team relay. The funny part was that they had to run around with garbage cans on top of their heads! There were a lot of near misses and some good collisions. I wish I got a picture...

The worship was led by students, and after a shaky practice (it happens) God totally used them to lead us in some amazing worship. What a joyful noise.

The message was led by students, and after a shaky practice (it happens) God totally used them to deliver His word. Thank you to Aundi Ragan, Ariella Woods, and Stefan Siqueland who put lots of time and effort to share with us how to to have Joy through overcoming Anxiety. (Phil. 4:4-7).

Even the small groups were led by students! Seriously, they did AWESOME stepping out of their comfort zone for a very smooth Connections.

much Love,
johnny

Sunday ReCap, experience God:Prayer

This past Sunday was experience God. Let me tell you, I have grown to like experience God Sundays. I like that the younger kids get to see the older kids step out. I like how the older kids are great models for the younger kids. And I like how the younger kids speak out after seeing the older kids speak out. I like saying the same things over again, but in different ways.

But all kidding aside, I think it was a good Sunday. Prayer is something that many believers don't know how to do very well, simply because they go to God with three requests. "Help!", "Thanks!", and "Sorry!". But we see that prayer can be so much more than that!

Sunday the kids did a couple of simple prayer activities. We didn't teach them A.C.T.S., but we showed them the Ignatius of Loyola prayer method, and a little bit of Lecto Divina. Aren't you impressed?

I was! To see the kids sit in a big circle, meditating on God and phrases from God's word was really really neat. To hear what the kids picked up out of it was also encouraging for them to be honest and open about where they are in life. To see them apply what they just learned through taking a psalm and praying through that was also very cool.

If you missed Experience God, don't worry. We still have two left. And they are already planned. :)

much Love,
johnny

A heart breaking weekend...

Last weekend was a nation wide 30 hour famine. Our church partnered with other churches in the area to raise money for World Vision, and raise our awareness to how hard some people have it in the world.

We raised our awareness in many different ways, but keeping the focus on kids in developing countries. We did this through fasting for 30 hours. This was the obvious hard part, but every hunger pang that we felt was an opportunity to remember what children go through everyday, thus giving us a reminder to pray for them.

We had activities throughout the weekend to keep us focused. We watched a documentary called "invisable children" to give us a glimpse of what life is like for children in Sudan. We set up a "fam cam" in a cardboard booth to share with each other through video about what we are learning and how it will affect our lives. We wrote prayers and scripture on pieces of cardboard to put in our rooms to remind us of the kids.





And that night (friday) we built a cardboard city and slept in the "shacks" to give us a glimpse of sleeping with out a proper shelter.



After tearing down our box city the next morning, we all built 300 little crosses out of popsicle sticks. We spent some time in prayer, and then pushed our crosses into the dirt. After looking at all of them for a moment we learned that in the 15 minutes it took for us build 300 crosses and push them in the ground, 300 children had died. A cross for each child...



We spent all of Saturday doing service projects...on an empty stomach. We helped move the NW Furniture Bank into a new warehouse, then split off half way through the day to help eldery people with yard work.





We finally made it back to Chapel Hill to break our fast with Communion and dinner.

We are still raising money, so I will let you know the totals that come in. I can tell you this though...I am so proud of all the kids at Believers who came out to show that they care about more than just themselves.

much Love,
Johnny

Chaotic Joy

Last night we had another night of looking into Philippians to find a chaotic joy in our life.

It
was
a
hard
night.

What made it hard you ask? I wish you could have been there. The passage in Philippians was 3:12-14.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

This is an innocent sounding paragraph. But the great thing about the Word of God is that it is simple to understand, but has so many applications!

When Paul says our goal is to press on, he gives two ingredients to do that.

Step One: Forget the past
Step Two: Strain forward toward the goal

Sounds simple. But in order to "forget the past," we have to deal with it. This, just, got, hard.

Dealing with our past can be hard. We all struggle with confidence, depression, the way we look, anxiety. That can be hard, and when you throw in the stuff that we have been through personally (addictions, cutting, abuse, suicidal thoughts, divorce, loss of family) it can be very hard to deal with that.

Our small groups last night started that process! I have heard great things (don't worry, no details) about how open a lot of people were about their past and how they need to deal with it.

The reason we need to work through step one (deal with the past) is because it can hinder step two (grow in God). So many times we feel that we are not becoming more like Christ because we are still hurting about our past.

Guess what? We have an amazing God who is the Remedy for broken-ness, pain, hurt, loss, (insert your past situation here).

When are you going to forget the past? What steps have you taken to deal with the past? What is keeping you from forgetting the past?

much Love,
johnny

p.s.- I am still trying to forget this part of my past!

Sunday ReCap

It has been a great Easter/Spring Break/vacation for Brooke and me (johnny), which is why I haven't blogged much. But I am back in full swing, we are back on our regularly scheduled programs (wed/sun meetings) and are working hard to finish the series we started a long time ago!

So, in our Crosstalk Sunday school we are in the midst of our "Bible Jesus Read" series, where we are looking at the Old Testament book by book. Last Sunday we were in the book of Job, where we over viewed the whole book, looked at what the main point was, and then asked what the heck we can learn from a book thousands of years old. There was much fun had by all.

The book of Job is poetry. We lumped it in with our "wisdom" literature section where we have looked at the Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclessiastes. Job is a great book. The first couple chapters set up the heartbreak and questioning of God. Because of what happens to him (Job) he starts to as the tough questions in life; Why do bad things happen? Why did you do this to me God?

We jumped over a lot of the dialogue between him and his friends (pretty much the bulk of it) and skipped to the end. This is where God speaks for himself and answers Job (a pretty gracious act in itself) and we see why God is doing it. Actually, we see in God's answer that He is God, and we are not.

Essentially what we learned on Sunday is that we need to remember what it is like to fear the Lord. The main question we can ask ourselves is this: HOW DO I HUMBLE MY SELF BEFORE THE LORD?

We discussed this, and we asked another question: DID JESUS COMING TO EARTH MAKE US FEAR GOD LESS?

I think it did a little. What are your thoughts? And how do we humble ourselves before the almighty God?

much Love,
johnny

Vancouver Mission Trip

This week we got back from the first Middle School Mission Trip. This was so exciting and there is so much to share but I decided that I would just talk about one or two things that stood out to me this week.

The first one was how amazing our teenagers did when it came to talking with complete strangers about life. If I'm honest the first day scared me and I did not know what we were going to do because all the kids were in shock after the first day. It was almost like the forgot how to talk to people but, as they did it more and more it became more natural. By the second day transformation had taken place. They were talking to people at the Chiliwagon all by themselves and were getting to know more about their stories and what life was like for them. It was amazing for me as a youth pastor to see all of these things that we have been talking about actually happen. It seems like everything that we have been talking about in Transit was starting to take place. These kids were starting to live out the very words of Christ right before my eyes.

That led me to the next thing that I learned. I learned that these kids are hungry for more. They want to know more about Christ and they want to live out what he says and I have to help them to see that. These students were hit with a lot of hard issues but I think that they walked away being more hopeful of what they can do instead of bogged down with what they can't do. One student said it best when she said, "We could have done nothing and could have steered away from these conversations but I'm glad that we didn't and now I know and now I have to do something about it." This is some of the incredible things that these kids have learned this past week.

I'm excited for what is next. What God has in store for these kids but, I'm leaving it up to God to show me that at the proper time instead of trying to do it myself. So, my prayer to God is that he will break all of our hearts for the things that break his.

Peace,
Scott