A cool new mission geek blog appeared a few weeks ago - Under the Iceberg, by Sam Metcalf, president of Church Resource Ministries. This post references some time CRM spent with Alan Hirsch, one of the authors of The Shaping of Things to Come. I know, I know, I write about it a […]
The church will never rise to be that which she is called to be without clearly seeing how darkness has fallen upon the earth and devours her children.
- Alex McManus on Darkness
D and I watched Born into Brothels last night. As she writes, it took us a while to figure out that subtitles were […]
Worship.
CortR sharing. She did an awesome job sharing about the winter expedition.
One cool thing I got to do this morning - be with the band in one of the back rooms while they prayed before they opened the doors.
One cool thing I noticed this morning - all during worship, some students move around, get […]
We had a fun time yesterday morning visiting The Studio at Fulton, which is a small, cute pottery studio right around the corner from us, just now under new management. The new management, interestingly enough is KJones, the oldest daughter of my youth pastor, RJones. KJones was actually on two of my first […]
Well, ok, Calvin is our dog. But hes been a good friend to me, and moreso to E. E adores him, talks to him, and likes to tie him up in the kitchen. Funny. That is K and Calvin with a ‘candle’ made of dog treats and peanut butter.
Faithful obedience to God is vital, but it is not all God draws us to. It is not sufficient for our healing, no more than doing the laundry is sufficient for a marriage. And it will not be enough in the long run to carry us through. The persecuted Church is vast […]
If you are going to be at CpR this Sunday, here is something to look forward to, in addition to the awesome worship, fun and engaging talk and new and old friends: CortR will be sharing about our SPACE expedition.
She told me yesterday that she is a bit nervous but knows it is something […]
A whole downloadable book, under Creative Commons License, for people to build their own wireless networks, for very little cost in developing nations. Very cool.
Alas, the two chapters on Networking were more instructive than almost anything else I remember from my graduate degree in computer science. (The anything being the great Mahjong games […]
My notes from Shaping the Spiritual Life of Students. Very, very good book. This is a good chapter although there are many in this book.
To be authentic, spiritual caregivers must begin by acknowledging that there is no fail-proof method for making an adolescent develop the moral self we desire. Spiritual caregivers, if they […]
I mentioned before how much fun I’m having trying to recruit summer team leaders. It really has been a lot of fun. Just for my own sanity, I’m listing the meetings that I’ve had in the past few weeks:
Tue intern meetWed NLind meetThu EmGberg meetTue MCCorts phoneThu JScd meetThu MLSchw meetTue EGrab meet[SPACE […]
Tonight, we launched a team for the 11th grade. The big picture here is for a team to go and serve within the KatrinaGrace partnership. At least that is the intent. The first part of this was getting the right leader team together, and this team is really good.
JScd - went to […]
I got a Voxtropolis account today. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it since there are over 1300 posts that I have here on blogger. But if you are thinking about blogging and wondering on which platform, Vox is pretty cool. It’s still in beta though.
The coolest thing, after […]
I went to class #3 of Perspectives tonight because D had just gotten home and was too tired to sit in class. I was her official scribe.
It was phenomenal, as usual. I took some notes on the class material, but the speaker, who lived this incredible life in and out of Iran [he […]
Our first annual SPACE winter expedition was this weekend. The goal was two-fold. First, to take some of our core SPACE kids away and invest in them. This included the ideas of just spending time with them and getting them to bond. The second goal was to work with a homeless […]
Just got back from the SPACE winter expedition. More on that later. In the meantime, since TriciaB loves to read this blog, this shoutout is for you!
Some interesting quotes from Shaping the Spiritual Lives of Students:
Youth ministry is a womb, an incubation ward for potential God-bearers as they ponder and struggle with the news that God is crazy in love with them, would die for them, and in fact, has. What youth need more than gung-ho adults are Godbearing adults, […]
Relevant Magazine has daily dispatches from a writer who is on a week long trip in the Dominican Republic traveling with Healing Waters International, a nonprofit ministry which installs water purification systems in developing countries where clean drinking water is a big problem. Jason writes:
And let me tell you this: You haven’t eaten a […]
Fusion 15.5, the young adult ministry at GCC, has a podcast. Subscribe here. TJ is one of my favorite speakers.
SPACE is really only supposed to care for students that are still in high school or younger. So the summer after kids graduate from high school really isn’t a part of SPACE’s responsibility, although I have helped out with a few teams of kids that age. That is always a fun treat for […]
EmGberg tagged me…so here it goes.5 weird things about me:
1 - When I go to sleep, I like to rub my feet together a lot. Like a cricket, sort of. 2 - Right after I fall asleep, my whole body spasms. Or so I’m told.3 - I like to drink a glass […]
Here is the rough idea:
- F 4:00pm - depart MD- F 9:00pm - arrive CT- F late eve - quick orientation, make lunches for Sat, Why- S 8:15am - leave for East Bridgeport, yo- S 3:00pm - finish, back home, clean up- S 5:30pm - dinner- S 7:30pm - EoS event- S 10:00pm - recap, […]
“If you want to win this world to Christ, you are going to have to sit in the smoking section.” - Neil Cole, _Organic Church_
Dear SPACE friends,Happy New Year and thank you for continuing to think and pray for SPACE - the missions and service component of Grace Community Church’s youth ministry. Here is […]
I just got off skype with my good friend GMcM. For those of you new here, the McMs are a GCC family that live in Brasil and hosted a student team in the summer of 2005.
There is a small possibility that some of the students we met and befriended last summer are […]
I had lunch with an 03 guy last week. It was fun. During the conversation, we talked a little bit about the proportions of guys from our Dteam who still follow Jesus. Not exactly A+. Or B. Maybe not even C. I know I’ve said it before, but I […]
Since November, there have been fourteen YWAM’ers that have died around the world. What the heck… Read more here.
This entry is total fluff. Oh well, here is what is on my mind.
I worked all night Saturday night. In contrast to our 30-some-hour marathon in October, things went brilliantly. It was a nice change of pace. I think my team proved to everyone - most importantly, ourselves - that we […]
JF, one of the GCC youth min interns (who I wrote about here), wrote a paper entiteld “The Impact of Youth Ministry on Teen Culture.” If you are interested in the paper, let me know.
In the paper, she comments on music, films, relationships and television. One other interesting thing to note is that […]
Marc posts about his involvement and the results of the European Spiritual Estimate. Some really detailed information here about Europe’s spiritual state.
- 72.7% of Europeans would be culturally affiliated with Christianity.- However, only 4.12% are Christians that are actively concerned about the spiritual condition of their friends and neighbors. - only one […]
Tonight, the SPACEintern and I met up with MLSchw, who is leading our 2nd missions trip for the summer (so far at least). This team consists of 20 current 10th graders and leaders and will be going to Washington, DC with the Center for Student Missions.
Even though DC is relatively in our backyard, we […]
Last night, we went to the Mall to have dinner because that’s where Em wanted to go for her birthday. As we walked into the Mall from the parking lot, a car full of high schoolers went driving by with three of them standing up outside the sunroof screaming and laughing.
K: “They […]
Fun meme from Kottke
Your 2005 in citiesOrlando, FLFairfield, CTGoshen, VANew York, NYHilton Head, SCSavannah, GAGilbert, AZBernsville, PADulles, VALondrina, BrasilHagerstown, MDYork, PA
Your turn now, and leave a comment if you do it.
Here are some links that I got in an email from the Caleb Project regarding Domestic Unreached missional organizations. The list was actually built from feedback from a previous email where the Practical Mobilization author asked for reader recommendations about organizations that specifically try to work with unreached people groups that live in the […]
**from the MacWorld keynote with Steve JobsApple sold the equivalent of 100 iPods every minute during the 4th quarter of 2005. What the heck?
**Some key Perspectives readings online here from the US Center for World MissionPS - D liked the class last night a lot
**The top three unreached, unengaged people groups by people group […]
Today is Em’s 5th birthday. Happy Birthday Em!
To those of you that know Em, you know that she loves:- any kind of animal, except for snakes, which she is allergic to.- her dog. Both her stuffed dog, named “doggie”, and her real dog named “Calvin.”- to dance and sing, on or off key.- […]
KMcN and I have had recurring conversations over the past 18 months or so about a SPACE team visiting and serving with them. He and his family are in Western Europe and have been there for a little over a year. The very cool thing is that they are originally from GCC, having […]
We are convinced that God has a “world-sized” role for every Christian in His global purpose. Whether people go to distant countries or stay at home is a secondary issue. The primary issue is what most people are hungry to discover: vision to live a life of purpose. Discovering that vision […]
I don’t like to say no. Most of the time, saying no makes me feel bad. I got a call today to ask me to do something ministry-wise, sort of. And I said no. And I feel bad. But not bad enough to say yes.
Context matters - in […]
You’d find that there are people in every one of these organizations who were influenced directly by Ralph Winter. That’s what I told Ralph Winter about a year ago. I wrote him a letter because he is sick. I said, “Ralph, I know that you would say the world’s greatest missiologist in the 20 century […]
I’ve been digesting a new youth ministry book that I got for Christmas - more on that in a second. I realized that I don’t have a lot of youth ministry books. I know there are tons out there and I’m sure most of them are really good. I just don’t have […]
I don’t know much about it other than this:
Designed for Mission Trainers, Mission Educators, Mission Senders, Mission Receivers, Mission Goers, Mission Service & Equipment Suppliers, Mission College & University Candidates!Engaging, Useful Editorial Focusing on Strategic Partnerships, Mission Initiatives, Medical Issues,Global Issues, Mission Sending, Short-Term Mission, Mission Training and Equipping and more!
But you can order a […]
I’m happy to report that one of our trips for this summer is officially off the ground. Happy is not quite the right way to put it - I’m actually ecstatic. And not just because its one trip that is starting to come together - that in itself is always fun. (That […]
From Jim Rutz, the author of MegaShift, the top 10 overlooked stories of 2005, including:
1. World evangelization.The Earth is becoming Christian at a very fast clip. My best estimate is that there are 64 million more Christians now than a year ago. That breaks down to 175,000 a day.
4. The church.It has taken us almost […]
Rudy has written a great article here about projects and when they come to an end. Or not. A lot of us try to be careful in that when our students graduate - our projects - we send them to college and we are done with them. We wash our hands. […]
Well the first week of January means “Lets get rolling about the summer time!” Whenever I think of the word “summer time”, I get that Will Smith song “Summertime” in my head. You know, “summer summer summer time..” Anyway…
I’ve got a series of meetings scheduled this week (and hopefully next week too) […]
In light of George Verwer’s recent challenge that everyone that considers themselves a mobilizer get busy speaking about such things, I’ve been thinking about the most significant missions experiences I’ve had.
Mostly these are just for my own notes. But if you ask me to speak to your team, I might use one or all […]
Well today GCC goes into another chapter. Today was the first day in our new church building. It’s pretty cool. And quite large. You readers know what kind of stuff I have been reading lately - not exactly big advocates of church building projects. But…
Of course, the first message in […]
