Category: <span>Ministry</span>

Published March 25, 2007 by

Socks, balloons and productivity

This blog today was described by one of my youth girls as one with those ‘socks at the top’.

We received some very positive feedback from at least one of the kids today. Youth is definitely a ministry with mountains if not whole glaciers of issues, mostly in where to take it but it’s encouraging to see God working in this kid’s life quite significantly and have him say directly that youth has been a huge part of that.

The other feedback received from after church today was that now people outside my immediate family have placed bets on, “When it’s all going to happen” (the Geoff me thing) which is, I think, highly amusing a little because it’s really just no secret to anyone that it’s heading in that direction.

I was party hopping yesterday between Katerina and Jess VW’s 21st’s. Both significantly different. Kat is half Croatian so there was some pretty impressive and some slightly unusual food along with a rowdy 80’s theme. Not as many people I knew as I thought there’d be – although she was space limited. The evening at Jess’ I spent much of helping Geoff run around attempting to fix techie things, but that was a classy/enjoyable/dessert and sit around chatting (+ dancing for some) time. Each party was quite enjoyable although I was incredibly full by Jess’s, sadly so as the desserts were insanely good (here’s to being given ‘take home’ leftovers!).

I also heard from my cousin Jaclyn who is currently over nannying in Canada. She’s guest blogged over on outWORD it’s good to hear what she’s been up to – she’s very, very good quality and the closest female cousin to my age.

While I’m bits and pieces blogging, I have devised a strategy to solve my, ‘must get on top of homework’ dilemma. It does I admit involve wagging a class or two but will conserve what would otherwise be wasted time. I like being effective, productive and what not and it’d be nice to have a clean room again that displays that in all its glory.

For now I must sleep. There is a more significant thought based post coming sometime, it’s been brewing, I just have to find the appropriate mental energy.

Perhaps tomorrow night…

Life Ministry

Published February 26, 2007 by

Camp

blackman.jpgBeen and gone.

Too tired last night to blog about it all. I didn’t even get to my well overloaded RSS reader until about half an hour ago.

Youth Camp.

It flew by. It was hard work. I’d had enough at one point late Saturday it got a bit too much. Retreated to my tent and slept. Organising food is stressful – someone else’s job next time.

God did some good stuff.

We were rained out Saturday morning (not good when you’re camping – especially with a lot of girls). Campsite was roomy but small. Do you like that contrast? It felt safe and I’d use the place again.

The swimming pool was relief.

Had some great chats and quality hanging out with the girls during Sunday.

Glad it’s over. Glad I went. Hope they had fun. Hope they’ll come back. Hope God will continue doing stuff there.

Ministry

Published February 23, 2007 by

Responsible

Hot.

I’ve been running around crazily buying food etc. for camp. We start tonight at a campsite and run over the weekend. We have 15-16 kids and 7 (not all at one time) leaders. Someone else was supposedly doing food but they aren’t coming up until later. So now that’s for me to deal with. It takes quite a bit to feed 25. It’s also fun shopping when you can do it cheaply. Extreme delight when I go up to the registar and the supposed mental minimum isn’t even met.

Yes I shop with lists.

No I don’t touch much that isn’t on the list.

Perhaps in moving out the whole budgeting thing won’t be that much of an issue.

I started laughing in the car on the way to the shops with the odd realisation that I am soley (with the exception of throwing a few ideas at Geoff and watching them come back with an, “okay”.) entirely responsible for something. Other than you know, just keeping me the way I’d like to be kept.

Cooking Ministry

Published February 17, 2007 by

Hello down there?

dragonBig full on day that started early and has finished… well smack bang on average: late. Geoff turned 23! We went and did fun stuff with lots of different people, ate equivalent to small house and by observation he’s even more tired than I am. (He’s also got a preaching spot at church tomorrow!)

So after you go say nice things about him you can read on…

I’m not sure if anyone noticed the sky today but it was beautiful. I got home and had a quick look at trusty Google Reader and found Sammy’s post: God has ADD.

This is the POD (post of the day) for today. It is very simple, very real, and a very decent reminder. It’s both wonderous and almost sad that sometimes we need that nudge to remind us of God,

Look at me!

Remember me!

Hello down there?

At youth last night we tripleted off to talk about what we know about God and the two girls I was with, wound up having a chat about fear. The sky outside was pretty ominous and a little thunder was hanging around plus a fair ammount of wind. *Sarah was talking about how she gets so afraid of storms that she makes herself sick. I managed only somewhat effectively to turn the conversation towards the fear of God and talking about ways we can see God. Granted we didn’t get all that far as Sarah was insistent on relaying her various strategies to cope: taking her walkman to many places so as to ‘drown out the noise with music’.

In thinking about the fear of God (which I know has much to do with reverence – that’s the short version), but in aligning it with fear itself. Fear isn’t something that we can ignore. Not if it is big enough. It’s present, it’s very real.

Like Sarah, how would things be if we took some measures to ‘be prepared’. What would life be if we really feared God and acknowledged his constancy?

As Sammy has very much explained, knowing the presence of a powerful God is certainly not a detriment but something quite amazing and something quite beautiful.

*Name Change

Christianity Ministry Post of the Day

Published February 10, 2007 by

Finally a Youth Group!

pen-ship-sketch.JPGI have talked on and off and rather briefly about my involvement with Youth and as we started back for the year I want to re-introduce you to what’s gone on and what is happening.

Last year kicked off well, I became involved about three or four weeks in as a fill-in and shortly after joined the team as they were pretty desperate for female leaders. By the last term we were plodding through with much lower motivation and a more, ‘lets have fun’ mindset to the evening in a vain attempt to get a few more kids along. We hit an all time low with only four of the ‘most-regulars’ showing up on a Friday and figured we clearly weren’t doing something right.

Our church does not have a paid youth pastor position and to honest if it was financially possible, could probably use someone. Geoff does most of the heading up – he’s been involved for a long time and he would agree that he’s better suited to running Sunday morning youth (which he does a brilliant job on) than Friday nights. As it currently stands of us all involved make for good team players but no one (except possibly one of the other guys) is much of a position to take it all on board.

Geoff has been talking about giving up on attractional based youth which is very much the game plan for this year and a few months ago Soul Survivor called us up and volunteered to ‘run an evening’.

That eventuated last night.

I went down at 5:30pm to open up for them and after setting off the alarm…hohum. They asked me how many kids might show up, to which I replied, “Probably not that many”. I came back and felt decidedly not all that thrilled and really just, crap about the coming evening.

By the end of the evening we’d had ~15 kids show up, a really positive worship time and the kids ended up praying for the leaders, meaning we all split up. God was clearly doing something amazing, we had kids opening up a fair bit, taking risks in letting us know what they thought God was saying, really praying and some deep and significant questions being asked.

I managed to commandeer the three new year 7 girls and although a bit shy about the praying thing we had an insanely good chat from suffering to prayer to ‘weird stuff the Holy Spirit does’ to what we are to God to listening to Him. It was big and quite fun answering and letting them know what I thought.

We were all greatly encouraged and I think are beginning to feel like perhaps that with God we can actually do this thing. The kids are for in the most part at a point where this is altogether necessary – the ‘more fun’ aspect didn’t necessarily go to waste but it’s time has passed.

Please pray for the youth ministry, the kids and those involved in leading.

Ministry