From Sampler to Sower

Recently I ran across this quote, reportedly by Albert Einstein:

Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.

I say reportedly only because none of the many places online which attribute this to Einstein offer any source.  If anyone knows the source, I’d love to know.

Einstein or not, this is a vitally important perspective for youth ministry.  So often we judge our students based on adult standards of maturity  and wisdom.  If you’ve spent any time working with teens you know what I mean.  There’s that student who has been a part of your ministry for years.  She’s active, attentive, and the very picture of what Jesus meant when he said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”  Forget leadership potential; she manifests leadership qualities already, and you intentionally look for opportunities for her to put those qualities to work.  And then you get a call from her parent.  The school called; she was caught doing…

(more…)

Recently my friend and colleague, Matt Todd asked this question on Twitter:

If you had to pick just 6 Scriptures that every Christian should know by heart, which ones would you pick?

Here’s my take. Taking a cue from the awesome folks at YouVersion, in honor of the 400 anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible, all of the quotes in this post will be from the New International Version. (By the way, did you know that between February 12 and March 1 you can download the NIV to your iPhone, iPad or Android phone so that you can use it with the YouVersion app even when you’re offline or in a place you can’t connect to the internet? Check it out here.)

(more…)

A few years back I stumbled across an online game by Grant Robinson called Guess-the-Google. The idea behind the game is simple: the game shows players 20 pictures, all results of a Google image search for a common word.  The player gets 20 seconds to guess the word.  There’s no limit on guesses, only on time.  Points are determined by a combination of how quickly the correct answer was guess, and how many wrong answers you give before you get to the right one.

Go ahead, give it a try.  It’s a fun game, and a bit addictive.

Recently, I adapted the game for use as an upfront game during our weekly youth service. I prepared 12 slides, each with 16 pictures taken from a Google search for a common word.  (The sample above were results from a search for “white.”) Unlike the flash game, I was a little selective in my choices, prioritizing both variety and modesty.  Unlike the online game, we played head to head.  Two students came up front and were shown a slide.  The first to give the correct answer won, and stayed to face the next challenger.  The more rounds they won, the better the prize we gave.

If you’d like to try it on your own, here is a compressed folder with all 12 slides.  The name of each jpg gives you the answer.

Weather is wreaking havoc on our Cultivate series.  We’ve had to cancel three of our last four services. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but our next series starts on Ash Wednesday. That means we have to double up on some of the fruit if we’re going to finish on time.  Therefore this week I bring you joy AND peace.

Weekend Teaching Series: Cultivate

Message Title: Joy and Peace

Sermon in a Sentence: In a world of suffering and injustice, God calls us to make peace and find joy in the grace He gives.

Text(s): Isaiah 65:17-25; Matthew 5:9, Romans 14:17, Galatians 5:22-23

Message Summary:

One of the challenges in preaching this message is the pre-conceptions people have about what joy and peace are. When we think of peace we think of the absence of conflict.  A peacemaker is someone who smooths over the hard feelings in our world and finds a way to keep everyone happy.

And joy is even more difficult because we have to deal with two sets of preconceptions.  On one hand, when we think of joy, we think of happy people.  A joyful person is that annoyingly bubbly person, always bouncing around, naively giddy, filled with the kind of saccharine sentimentality that sets our teeth on edge…

…Or maybe not.  Because you also have the sermons that explain there is a difference between joy and happiness.  Happiness, we’re told, depends on circumstances.  Happiness is affected by what happens to us.  Joy on the other hand is centered in God and manifests itself as an internal confidence that God is in control.  It’s possible, we’re told, to be in unhappy circumstances and still be joyful.

So we approach the subject of peace and joy with these preconceptions.  The question is are any of these concepts what Paul is talking about when he says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy and peace?

(more…)

I’ve always said one of the most important abilities anyone can have is the ability to make yourself laugh, because that way you never have to rely on someone else being around to do it for you.

What I didn’t realize is that my favorite quarterback in the league, Aaron Rodgers, apparently has that ability.  So what if he was a back up for years.  So what if he wasn’t a team captain.  He still found his way into the captain’s photographs.

I actually stumbled across this picture on the blog 22 Words.  And that certainly wasn’t an isolated incident.  Here’s 3 years worth of photobombing the captains photos.

According to this 2007 USA Today story it wasn’t Rodger’s idea.  Fellow former Favre backups Doug Pederson and Craig Nall passed the tradition down to him.  Apparently you have to do something to entertain yourself when you play behind the guy who starts every game.  According to the article:

For every Packers win, McCarthy hangs the picture of that game’s captains on the wall outside his office. Last year, the Packers won eight games; Rodgers appeared in five pictures, missing three with the broken foot. This year he’s made them all.

I knew there was a reason I liked that guy.

This week has been one of those times when everything just seems to fall together and relentlessly point my mind in a single direction.  Among the things that have got me thinking:

The Upheaval in Egypt (and Tunisia, and Yemen, and Bahrain, and…):

I must admit, the happenings in Egypt have grabbed my attention.  I’m not fully sure what I think of the story I’m hearing, in part because I’m not sure how much of the story to believe.

On one hand, I’m fairly sure that if tens of thousands of protesters started gathering on the National Mall insisting President Obama (or Bush, or Clinton, or Bush, or…) resign immediately rather than wait for the next scheduled election to step down… Well, long story short, if they did, he wouldn’t.  So I wonder why our politicians are pressuring the Egyptian government to do what they themselves wouldn’t.

On the other hand, I’m also fairly sure he wouldn’t use strong-arm tactics to secure a 30 year term for himself, nor would he send plain-clothes thugs out to start flinging Molotov cocktails into the protesting throng. And just about the time I can’t stomach the thuggery of the pro-government protesters any longer, the anti-government crowd starts flinging the fire bombs back.

But what really captures my attention is how the upper class, middle age generation of Egypt has traded their freedom for security and economic stability.  They’ve voted for a tyrant because tyranny is good for business.  And also how the younger generation is refusing to follow in the footsteps of their forebears, even to the point of shedding their own blood and potentially laying down their lives.

And what stands behind their steadfast perseverance? In part it is a sense of stewardship — that the movement for freedom which was passed to them from Tunisia is too important for the Middle East for them to give up.  They owe it to those who protested before them and to those who will be inspired to protest because of them, to stay the course.

(more…)

Last Sunday was a great day for football, unless you’re a part of Steeler Nation.  And I’m definitely not.

It was also, from most reports, a mediocre day for commercials, which was a disappointment, since the Super Bowl is supposed to be, well, the Super Bowl of advertising.

There were a few high points.  Talking to my boys, the consensus was the winners were Audi (Release the hounds!), Coca Cola with its border crossing ad, and whatever it was that Ozzie and Bieber were selling (it had something to do with G’s).  Of course, can you call a commercial a winner when, after seeing, you can’t remember what it was advertising. (“Was it a Sprint phone or something?” was the best my boys could come up with.)

And there were lots of losers.  Take Dorito’s.  When asked, they said they liked them (especially Grandpa’s ashes). But they didn’t mention any of them at any point in our discussion until asked about them afterward.  Plus there were plenty of advertisers we won’t be patronizing.  There’s nothing like the Super Bowl to remind me why I always use iPower for all my DNS registry needs.

But one advertising rivalry really caught my attention. After a year’s hiatus in which they skipped the Super Bowl and focused on the Refresh project, Pepsi was back going head to head with their prime competitor Coca Cola.

After the jump we’ll break it down, and hopefully, while we’re at it, learn a thing or two about ministry in the process.

(more…)

Recently my very good friend Todd Owens upgraded his cell phone. After 29 years of carrying the Palm Uno, he moved into the 21st century by upgrading to a Motorola Droid 2.  (Okay, so maybe it was a Treo, but barely….)  It wasn’t long before he was texting me to ask what apps were most helpful for youth ministry.  Which got me thinking: Blog post?  Apparently the answer is yes.  So here they are, my can’t work without apps.

Astrid: The first app I downloaded to my Droid is perhaps the best of them all.  Astrid is the To-Do list of the 23rd century.  Features I like the best? The widget puts to-do list on my home screen; the app features the ability to prioritize tasks, schedule repeating tasks, and list according to context; and it syncs with Remember the Milk, so my wife can add things to my to-do list as well; and finally, setting both goal and final deadlines reminds you lest you forget something important. (Granted RTM has since released a Droid app, but Astrid works so well, I’ve not even considered changing.

(more…)

All I can say is I am still reveling in last night’s Packers victory, so I thought I’d take a minute to gloat here.  It feels awfully good, especially since things looked so shaky in the middle of the season.

Here’s photographic proof that @aaronscottallen has perhaps the coolest family in Middletown.  I walked out of the church Sunday morning to find this cupcake creation sitting in the front seat of my van with a nice note from a family of die-hard Colts fans who wished us a happy Super Bowl party. And it was happy.

Brett, my #2 son, is my only true Packers comrade in the family.  The rest are all Colts fans.  So it’s fun sharing the joy with him. I’m hoping he realizes how special this is.

(A bitter?) Pastor Phil tweeted last night:

I suppose @pastorbuhro actually thinks we enjoy his incessant packer tweets Phil Rogers

In honor of him, I’m posting them all here, because, honestly, I make myself laugh.  And that’s all that matters.

(more…)

In the fifth and final sermon from our True Love Waits series, the goal is to help students understand the pledge we are asking them to consider making.  We look one more time at what the Bible has to say about living lives of sexual purity, and then we break down the True Love Waits pledge to see that it really is a reflection of Biblical values.  The service ends with an invitation to prayerfully make a True Love Waits commitment and to communicate that they made that pledge by turning in a commitment card.

As usual, after the jump you will find a summary of the lesson as well as a fill-in-the-blank outline master and sermon audio. Also include is a sample of our True Love Waits commitment cards and the parent’s letters that we send to the parents of students who make first time commitments, as well as those renewing their commitments, inviting them to take part in the True Love Waits ring ceremony.

(more…)