Me: How was your day?

C: Good.

Me: What did you do today?

C: Play, eat, learn.

Me: What did you play?

C: Games.

Me: What games?

C: Fun games?

Me: Can you describe them?

C: Yeah.

………..

Talking to students can be a lot like that too. You have to go through a whole lot of that kind of stuff before one randomly tells you what is really happening, how things are at home, how frustrated they are about school, and ….. It often comes out in a torrent. The dam broke and nothing is stopping the flow of information.

Since it takes a lot of very shallow conversations to get to this point, we (youth pastors) have a habit of filling the time with events. It starts of slowly. When I started my current position I had 2 major events on the calendar and plans for a couple others. I just went over my calendar with the students this week, a kind of state of the youth address. This is what we did last year, this is all the cool stuff we are doing this year. We are up to 8 major events with the bulk in the summer. We also have smaller events each month, the events are multiplying. They may be related to tribbles. I have so many things I want to do, but quite frankly I need a system that makes it really hard for an event to get onto my calendar. Otherwise, my summer will just be one long event, staying up till 3 am, getting up at 6 am, and running hard all day for 3 months straight surviving on junk food. It will be one epic summer, especially when my heart bursts right out of my chest on the last day of summer.

What methods do you use to evaluate events? How do you say “no” to great ideas so you can say yes to even better ones?

That night my heart was heavy. I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about this family, and then all the other families in need. I know we made a difference for this family. But my heart was crushed at all of the families out there who need more from those who can help. I kept getting up to pray, then trying to sleep, then getting up again. I finally gave up on sleep at 4am and saw you had already given quite a bit. I was happy to see it but I still kept thinking of everyone else that needs help.

But before I go there, I want to share about what we’ve been able to do and what I’ve been hearing others doing.

To date there were over $300 in donations. My wife is going right now, literally as I type this, to take the money to help pay their rent. I talked with them last night and basically they would be on the street today if we didn’t have this money to give. That is why my heart was so heavy, because I wanted to give them a good Christmas, but what is a nice Christmas morning when you get kicked out on the street a few days later.

The day after I wrote the last post, my wife went Christmas shopping for this family. She bought them food, clothes, and some other presents. The young lady didn’t have a winter coat, so we made that happen too. God has really blessed us in this past year and for once we have disposable income. I was thinking about computer upgrades, other nice toys, generally enjoying the money. Turns out I got the opportunity to really enjoy the money.

The family was just beside themselves with gratitude for the presents. We also got a small tree and a few decorations. They called me a few times just to say thanks again. I am telling you all this because I want you to know they are thankful for your help as well. If it weren’t for you we wouldn’t have been able to give them as much, we would have been forced to chose between giving them food, paying for their rent, and giving them that Merry Christmas. Thank you.

This year we exchanged gifts with friends, and for the first time we were buying and receiving some pretty nice gifts. Normally we had to set really low limits, not because our friends couldn’t afford it, but because we couldn’t spend as much on them as they could on us. I talked to someone I work with online and this year their family did a donation gift exchange instead of their traditional one at the extended family party. They raised $500 for a charity when normally they would have played dirty Santa with stupid little gifts.

Based on that it occurred to me that next year my friends and I could do the same thing, instead of giving gifts to each other we can bless families in our community.

How cool would it be if we all did that next year? At the office party, skip the office gift exchange and raise money for a local charity that is helping keep families warm and full. In your church, sponsor families. With your friends, take the spending limits off and see just how much you can do for the people in your community.

What would happen if we took that same attitude and spread it through the year? What if the 99% said “I don’t need what the 1% has to help my fellow man.”

I guess I’ve been kind of all over the place here. Let me close by once again thanking you from the depth of my heart on your gifts to this family. Because of your giving we didn’t have to choose between keeping a roof over their head, food in their stomachs, and a Merry Christmas morning. You helped us do it all for them, more than anything we could do on our own.

Please continue to pray for them and those in need through our world. Specifically, pray that they are able to get a job and get into the apartments they have been trying to get into, there the rent will be better and they’ll even have more space, a kitchen, and a better opportunity for a better life.

What have/are you doing to help others? Does your family have any traditions this time of year or through out the year? Share in the comments so we can all be inspired to more.

On the off chance that you have never heard of the Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, here is a short synopsis.

*****Spoiler Alert*****
Not sure I’m actually required to do that, over 100 years has come and gone since this classic was written, which I believe is well past the statute of limitations on spoilers, but consider yourself warned.

There is a rich man named Scrooge. He hates everyone and most everyone either hates or pities him. He loves money. He has a clerk working for him named Bob Cratchit that has a sick young boy named “Tiny” Tim.

More than anything Scrooge hates Christmas, thinks it’s a waste of time and money. Then one Christmas Eve he is startled by a familiar face. It is his old partner Jacob Marley (in the Muppet version there are two), unfortunately his partner happened to be long dead. This specter warned him of the 3 spirits that would visit him that night.

Through the night he is shown his past, present, and future by the 3 spirits of Christmas. He sees Bob Cratchit’s poor home full of love, and the hope in the sickly young Tiny Tim. Then he sees the empty chair and the pain and loss in the Crachit house, and finally his own lonely death.

He awakes Christmas morning over joyed to find that he has time to make a difference, and buys the Christmas Goose for the Cratchit family as he begins righting many wrongs. It is a truly moving story.

I’ve been thinking about it because I am truly blessed but don’t always realize it. Sometimes it takes something bigger than me to show me just how blessed I am.

Recently I met a family that was in need. They were asking if the church could help them, and quite frankly I don’t have access to church funds, but I did have some money in my wallet from a wedding I had done a couple months ago. They are nearly homeless, trying to get into some apartments that work with the government assistance programs. They started coming to church, and their daughter came to my youth program. My wife picked her up and found she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. My wife asked if she was hungry and was told, “I try not to think about it so I’m not so hungry.” We got pizza for everyone and made it into a party. My wife also asked if she was looking forward to Christmas, but she isn’t. How can she be when they won’t have anything for Christmas? No decorations, no presents, no visits to family, just staying in a low cost week to week motel, with maybe one meal a day till school starts back in a couple of weeks when she’ll be able to eat breakfast and lunch at school.

My wife wants to give them Christmas and we’ll be able to do that, but honestly I want to do so much more.

I know I don’t have the huge reader base SCL has. Heck I’ve really sucked at writing updated and doing all the things that I’m supposed to do to build a solid base, but I want to help this family and I can’t do it all by myself. I’m not really good at asking for money, but I know if I get others to help we can make a bigger difference.

Thanks to everyone that helped in the donations. I’ve taken the donate button down so I could wrap up the donations and help this family out. I’ll be posting a follow up post.

I am participating in a new series, God Says …, over at Make a Difference to One. In my first post I address the lie that I am unloved and show that God says I am loved. Click through for the article.

Quite Time and Small Group

The first session is just after breakfast. We have our students broken up into small groups and have them get into their groups and have personal quite time and group devotions. Each day the leader speaking in the evening service put together this session for the students. For example, during my session I had them read Acts 6 and 7 during their personal quite time and go through these questions

1. Read: Acts 6 & 7 (You can take some notes here)
2. In Acts 6:1-7 what does it say about Stephen? What was his job?
3. In Acts 6:8-11 Why did they arrest Stephen?
4. What surprised you about Stephen in Acts chapter 7?

This was in the handy dandy notebook that we put together for each student. This tied into my sermon in the evening. In the group devotion I had them go through this

1. If You Had a Super Power, what would it be?
2. Let’s say the most powerful person in the world called you and told you that they would do anything you asked, what would you ask for?
3. Read Matthew 25:14-28
4. What does the master say to the servants that invested their money?
5. What does he say to the one that hid his money?

Each leader handled theirs a little differently, but we did have some basic guidelines for the quite time.

Evening Service

You might call it chapel or something else, but this was the time just after dinner when we had a service that somewhat resembled a traditional church service. Each night we had a different speaker, but planned our topics together so everything would flow nicely.

• Sunday: Real Life Real Faith – Series intro from a local church pastor.
• Monday: Guys and Girls – Teen Dating
• Tuesday: The Title Fight – Christianity v. Atheism
• Wednesday: Live Out Loud (this was mine)
• Thursday: Transform Not Conform

With mine I provided a short fill in the blank for students. Each of these “lies” and “undeniable truths” were blank.

Lie #1: I’m OK, so I don’t need to do anything

Undeniable Truth: You are good with God, which is why you should do something.

Lie #2: Living a good life is enough; I don’t need to do anything extra

Undeniable Truth: Living right is only half the way, bold speech is the other half

Lie #3: I should keep my mouth shut and not offend others

Undeniable Truth: Letting people suffer, die, and go to Hell is much more offensive

Lie #4: The problem is too big

Undeniable Truth: God is Bigger

Lie #5: I’m just one person, I can’t make a difference

Undeniable Truth: God always uses one person to make the difference

Lie #6: I can do it all on my own

Undeniable Truth: You need God for any long term change

I used Stephen’s story in the chapters the students read during their quite time to illustrate the points.

Camp Fire

Camp fire is a lot of silly fun. We sing stupid songs, mostly things that have various gestures, and a shocking amount of pelvic thrusts (seriously I’m not sure how much pelvic thrusting is too much at youth camp but I think every single song requires at least one “ugghn” accompanied by a pelvic thrust. Also, I have said “pelvic thrust” way too many times so now this post is gonna get visit from someone looking for porn, so I should apologize to that person … sorry no nekkid people here, but feel free to look around anyway.) Eventually the songs become more worshipful and less pelvic thrusty and then a leader will often share or we open it up to student testimonies. I shared my testimony on my evening with an emphasis on my conclusion from the sermon, what are you willing to sacrifice to follow God. After the camp fire one student accepted salvation and several more rededicated their lives to God. The girls cabin ended up staying up crying, sharing, and praying till 2:30 in the morning. The next night students started sharing their testimonies till 2am, and we had started earlier. That is the most powerful part of camp, when students really start opening up and letting God use them to help each other.

I’m trying to get a new Middle School group started on Thursday nights. I’ve got one family on board with 4 kids and their friends, but when they can’t make it, like tonight, then no one shows up. I was pretty disappointed when I heard they weren’t coming, but I showed up anyways. Sure enough, no one. Then 3 neighborhood kids, right in the age group I’m reaching out to, walked up to start playing basketball on our outdoor court. My wife was leaving with the kids, but I had driven separately, so I went to hand out and play a little ball with them. I know, not like ti was this huge group, but I gotta say, I’m very happy I had to opportunity to meet them since they literally live a few houses down the road. God is good.

Lame Pranks

As I said, there were many lame pranks. I had some left over bacon put in my bed, a stolen trophy (the golden plunger of power) places under my pillow, and the cabin was messed up with bedding pulled half way out or flipped up. One of the other leaders had his stuff moved into the bathroom, the stuff on his bed moved to the floor, stuff under his bed moved to the top of his bed or just disappeared. The guys hung the cow tongue outside the girls’ cabin and the girls stole all the guys’ stuff that was hanging outside the cabin to dry. I could go on and on, but honestly … lame doesn’t even begin to grasp just how boring these pranks were.

Staff Pranks

I’ll admit, some of the staff pranks were … pathetic. A few were pretty good though. I posted a video of once student getting mayonnaise instead of ice cream during an ice cream eating contest. One of the female staff, who was right hand to the camp director, let it be known before camp she would have to leave if her sister went into labor. Half way through the week she got a call from her sister and told the director “I just got a call from my sister and need to go talk to …” With the information available the director made the logical leap that the staff person had to leave because her sister was in labor … oops. There was some fall out from that, but once it became known it was just a prank the director took it in good humor.

The funniest staff prank was when this same counselor quickly hid in a chest freezer and one of the leaders was sent to the freezer for more ice cream. My only regret is I wasn’t informed before so I could have the camera at the ready. He poured water on his pants and claimed it scared the pee out of him. Personally I think the water was just to cover up a real accident. (safety note: you should never climb inside a freezer, but if you do make sure that you let someone know so they can film the girlish scream of the West Virginia hillbilly youth leader.)

Creative Prank

The only prank from a student that really impressed me was done on my bunk. They took some “invisible” fishing line and strung it above the mattress, then put my sleeping bag and pillow on it. From a distance or in the dark it really looked like it was floating. All day they were waiting for me to see it, and even asked if I had. I did see it earlier in the day, but kept pretending I hadn’t. At the end of the night I walked in and they started talking to me, so I stood with my back to the bed talking to them, then walked out the back of the cabin so I couldn’t see the bed. When I came back I started talking to them again and backed into the bed without looking. The guys were so frustrated that I never looked, then I started laughing and congratulated them on what I felt was the most original prank done that year. Of course they’ll try and up it next year … so long as they put some thought and originality into the prank I’ll be happy.

Last night we concluded the series “The Truth About Sex.” This was a video series from BlueFish.tv led by Doug Fields. I don’t use the leaders manual so much. Instead I used an illustration with glow sticks, asking the students to keep them un-broken. Most of the students didn’t make it through the video. Then I gave them brand new ones to illustrate God giving us new life instead of repairing our broken life. Cool part, a young woman was there that hasn’t been to church in a couple of years. She responded during my “altar call.” More later.

Actually I can’t complain too much about the sleeping arrangements. While I got less sleep than any of the guys (I think some girls got less than me) I did get more sleep this year than any previous camp. The dorms had huge attic exhaust fans, which really helped with the heat. One night I even considered zipping my sleeping bag, but then just rolled over and went to sleep. I am usually the last to go to sleep and was teh first up in the guys dorms all week. That’s just how things go at camp though. I got about 5-6 hours a night though, which is way more than the 2-4 hours I’m use to at camp. This left plenty of energy for fun at camp, not that a lack of sleep ever kept me from the fun. We played plenty of great games, so I figure I’ll kick off this series by talking about some of them, and a few other things we did in the “fun” category.

Soccer

Soccer is a lot of fun by itself, but we add to the excitement by using a 42″ ball. I’m not sure how many goals there were on each side, but getting such a large ball moving is tough, stopping it is even tougher. The highlight reel (if I had remembered to use the video camera) would surely include several of the smaller students being completely run over by the ball. Before you feel too bad for them, I let my own kids play with the ball and it was bigger than most of them.

Swimming

You can’t have camp without swimming. We did that every day. The pool was the nicest of any camp we ever used, between the bunks, pool, and cafeteria I really want to look into this camp again. Mostly the students just enjoyed chilling in the pool, splashing, and generally having fun. One day we went on a very short hike to a nice swimming hole in the river than ran along the camp. Students were given a choice between swimming in the river or in the pool. In the end most went to the pool, but the river was actually really nice. It was probably nicer since the adults in the river had much fewer students. The other really fun thing we did was a midnight (actually it was 2-3am) swim on the last night of camp. I cracked out about 150 glow bracelets and we had a great party. So worth the loss of 3 hours sleep.

Frisbee

Ultimate Frisbee is a super fun game, made even better by camp. If you aren’t familiar, the basic rules are:

• Two Teams
• Football like end zones
• Football like “throw off”
• Once you catch the Frisbee you have 3 steps to stop or throw the Frisbee
• Incomplete, out of bounds, or interception/knockdown results in a change of possession

There are several more rules, but that should give you some sense of how it plays. Of course, we can’t leave well enough alone, so the last 10-15 minutes was played with a frozen (but quickly defrosting) cow tongue. It is amazing how the students get into that. If you were wondering, you can’t really toss a tongue like a Frisbee, more like a bola since the tongue gets kind of stretched out.

Kickball

Again, with the giant soccer ball. I was surprised at how far the students could kick the ball, but more impressive was the manner in which some of the students were taken down. One was running for home when the ball completely bowled him over, another was running for home when someone ran into him with the ball. he tried jumping, but the ball just bounced him into the air, then he supermanned off the ball. I made sure he was ok before laughing … well I at least didn’t laugh to hard till I knew he was ok.

Gestapo

Three teams play at a time, running across an open field to try and put tickets into a bucket. The only thing stopping them, a tired group of adults looking for a bit pf payback holding tube socks with a cup of flour. The adults had to throw then recover the tube socks. Once a student was hit they had to return to the starting line before they could try and cross to the buckets again. Several of the students developed some great strategies to avoid getting hit, including sacrificing slower players as shields and jumping over the thrown socks. In the end I think I needed some O2.