BIG IDEA: Happy are the clean in heart. We talked about our responsibility to love God and to love others.  But to do that you have to start out with a clear heart yourself…and to get there we have to take on the righteousness of Jesus because of the messiness of our lives.  I used a large window pane to demonstrate what happens as we live our lives…rubbing dirt and then paint as we talked to show that there’s just a bunch of stuff that gets in the way…brokenness in our families and other relationships, sinful choices all keep us far from God.  Then when we decide to open up to God and his ways we can offer our strength and even our wounding and scars to help others.  I washed the glass off…although not perfectly clean we can see things better and can offer our strength to a world that needs it.

FUN:  Again our good friends at www.youthleaderstash.com had a great game called “apples and mallows” that just added the right amount of excitement and energy release for our crowd tonite.  finally we had an impromptu costume contest and you’ll have to watch the video to see who won.  lots of fun.

We also showed a video from  Up to Faith from a church in Hungary that has a crazy idea of impacting the world with a huge flash mob on Easter morning 2011.  We talked about our organizing to take part in Resurrection Dance.

this was our first real week back at the church since CHRISTmas.  we hosted dogsled ’10 last week (see the video below)  so much fun for leaders and students.

we used some video from the web to set up the discussion.  we looked at some maps to get the location set in our minds.   aaron spent the next 30 minutes sharing some stories of his journey there during the summer of ’08.  we looked at a few scriptures Psalm 60, 143 to wrestle with the tension of why bad things happen to people and pushed through some conversation about where was God in the mess.  the good word was the assurance that God was where he has always been…right there.  as an act of worship and prayer each person lit a candle in silence for the haitian people.

volunteer involvement: it was great to have a couple new parents join us.  we were a little light because of the girl’s chrysalis flight happening this weekend.  so excited for the three students who are on the weekend and the two who are serving on team.  we lost our older guys too because some special work they had to do on the weekend.  but its worth the sacrifice for them to invest their time.

student involvement: the biggest take away is next week’s rockin4haiti. as of now, we’ve got four amazing regional bands (hope to add a couple more) committed to sharing their talents and helping us raise money to send to haiti.  it was cool to see the students texting their friends to get the word out even before we prayed ourselves out.  next week will beanother moment where even though we’re in a small town, we can have global impact for the Kingdom.  we used the video from our pals the elms this is how the world will end to send us on our way.  it was a positive end…as the video gives a sense of the beauty of the haitian people.

go here….FoF09

the lead team will be meeting starting next week.  do you have something to offer…leave a comment or email me.  be part of something big!

dare 2 serve 09

so its been a quiet summer summer for the student ministry at new hope. we had an amazing time in june with our friends at berean for d2s09. 28 of us worked together for 6 days to impact mansfield and it was alot of fun.  we’ve launched this new website and you can find our fanpage on FB.

we’ve got some plans in the works for a new and creative year of growing students and adult leaders in to fully devoted followers. stay tuned here for “what’s up next.”