I wonder how hard I make God laugh when I start planning things? I figure my plans must be worth days of entertainment. Of course that's not really much when we are talking about eternity, but still, it sure seems like He would clue me in a bit earlier. Of course I know I can't blame Him. This only happens when I start making my own plans. If I seek God and His plans then I tend to get shockingly accurate details. For example, I've done my sermons a year out the past couple of years. I take time to pray before, not just a quick breath of prayer before my pen hits the paper but days of … [Read more...]
The Darker Side
I understand the dark side has cookies, as well as all the cool force powers like force choke and lightening. Plus they have James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader. I mean how cool is that? The force isn't the only thing with a dark side ... well darker side. To say dark side would assume that there is some evil to it. It isn't evil per se, just less than enjoyable for anyone in their right mind. What is this "darker side" you ask? Church politics. This week I will be involved in way too much on the political front. We have our sectional meeting tomorrow. My denomination is based … [Read more...]
Training to date
My oldest is a sweet little girl who turns 7 this summer. She is pretty certain that 7=teenager. I feel this is a safe assertion based on a few unavoidable facts. She wants to hang out with the teens She tries to act like the teens She claims she is going to be a teenager She is increasingly infatuated with boys This last fact might be the most disconcerting for me. She got her first "love note" from a boy this year. He is a second grader. I'm not sure that he is good enough for her. His spelling and grammar were pretty rough. I remember having better spelling in second grade. I … [Read more...]
Date with God
I am still fighting this stupid blog. I am trying to setup a WordPress MU blog which will allow me to host multiple blogs from one installation. I did a test install in the past and it went swimmingly, but for some reason, now that I need it to work, the stupid thing insists on breaking. I will continue to fight this and I know I will eventually win out, but for the next few days this blog will be experiencing some weirdness ... more than just the things I write. Now back the the regularly scheduled youth night follow-up. I have to admit, last night was unbelievable in so many ways. I … [Read more...]
I’m still working on some issues from a pretty significant switch in the underlying framework on this site. Mostly you won’t notice anything, but there are some significant advantages to how I am doing this that will really help me with setting up a design business.
While I work on all this I wanted to post the sermon I preached Sunday. In the past I had a separate blog for this but I will be integrating things a bit more with my new features and overall setup.
Changes
I think a definition of life probably has something to do with changing. Time is a measurement of movement so I think it is fair to say life is a measurement of change. Don't believe me? Consider anything that is alive and then show me that it does not change either itself or something around it. It probably changes both. Things are changing rapidly for me right now. It is exciting and it is scary. I've launched into a new aspect of life with getting paid for web design. I have a whole new set of ideas for the future of the youth group. A lot of it is built on existing ideas I had but more … [Read more...]
Something that sticks.
Youth this week was very full. I don't mean student-wise. I totally didn't count the students. I'm really bad about that. The subject was really deep and we covered a lot. I saw some comments on MySpace that make me feel like I should share about a specific part of the service. I've started showing more videos because they help to illustrate my points in some pretty spectacular ways. This past week we watched this video: A couple of the students were asking what it meant and I explained it. I talked about my first real relationship. I talked about how quickly I fell in love and how much it … [Read more...]
Too hard on myself?
We just finished the third of four parts in a series on sex and relationships with my students. This sermon was about boundaries. I started by telling about my dog. When he was a puppy we tried keeping him in the house and letting him out to go potty. This worked well for the first couple of weeks but then he wanted to go explore. He found many ways out of the fence so we had to train him to stay in the yard. He was young and never wandered far until one day he came in limping. He had escaped from the yard and, according to a neighbor, went with some boys with sticks over the hill where no one … [Read more...]
Word Press Geekout
I have been blogging for ... well to be honest about 10 years. It was a long time ago that I started my first blog. I maintained it until my second child was born and then my updates got fewer and fewer until I stopped updating all together about 2 years ago when I first started youth pastoring. Several months later I felt the need to start blogging again, but I was so over the previous blog. It really wasn't who I was anymore. I started a blog on blogger and built up a small following. I was learning a lot about writing web pages again at this same time. I started designing webpages before I … [Read more...]
Boys have peanuts and girls have versace
I think that's how it goes? Tonight we talked about the differences between guys and gals. Then we did a big dance number. Wait, no, that was the weird dream I had. We did talk about the differences though. I showed a great clip from the Skit Guys that illustrated that God made us and wants to remake us into what He intended. Then I talked a bit about how we were all created in His image. Actually it was kind cool because I slipped out the side door while the lights were out and waited by the back door which is right by the platform. I began reading the scripture just before I stepped through … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- …
- 42
- Next Page »