A while ago I started reading Nate Larkin's book, Samson and the Pirate Monks as I was preparing for J10Church Porn Sunday. In case you don't know who Nate Larkin is, you can check his story out here: http://iamsecond.com/#/seconds/Nate_Larkin/ In my writing I even made note of the immensity of the story:

So far, it has been an excellent book - it has helped to shed light on a few points that we are trying to convey with our "Hello. My Name Is..." Series. Mainly that we were never destined to do this alone and that recovery starts with someone else. Hopefully the rest of the book holds up with the first 90 pages. I'm sure I won't be disappointed...

This week I spent my $25 on Donuts for an FCA meeting, and let me say that being a part of BRHS FCA is paying off. To all of the Youth Pastors out there, investing in students at local school ministries is one of the most impact-ful things you can do as a part of your career (or whatever you call it). There is so much potential with the students at BRHS and I am so pumped about what our future holds. The only problem is that sometimes it can distract me by the awesome fruit it produces. When I look back at the youth group, I don't see as much, and so it seems to pull me. What I do know is that God is moving and working in both,through both.

I started reading Donald Miller's book, A million Miles in a Thousand Years, and I feel like I have already made it back to the comfort of understanding his writing style. I have read Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What, and my personal favorite book of all time, Through Painted Deserts. I loved them all, mainly because he is so real in his writing. I really appreciate people who are able to just throw all their ideas out there without concern for the safety of their expose'. Donald Miller gives you exactly what he is thinking, especially when it comes to his random thought process... In case you haven't read it ore are interested, make sure you grab a copy to read, because it is excellent!

In John Bunyan’s church in Bedford, England, there is a poem framed in the wall of the anteroom from which the preacher exits to walk to the pulpit. It reads:

Enter this door as if the floor within were gold, and every wall of jewels, all of wealth untold, as if a choir, In robes of fire were singing here; nor shout, nor rush, but hush, for God is near. And so he is! This is what we need.

I wrote this two years ago... Thought somebody might enjoy it...

Sometimes the wind makes us feel relaxed; a cool winter breeze to emancipate us from our loneliness and allow us to feel complete. But, like all things, wind is two-faced. At times wind can be cold and heartless; relentlessly beating down the wall of our homes with an apparent never-ending efficiency. . .

My $25 this week was spent on hanging out with students again... Who would've thought!? Tonight we are leaving to go to a Starfield concert in Gaithersburg, MD at a local church and I invited some of my high school students to go with me and my wife. I love having the opportunity to do extra activities with my students and invest in them...

Last week I used my 25$ to buy materials for a combined CTF (Capture the Flag) Game with both my High School Converge Students and Broad Run FCA Peeps. We did it at night, so we had to use glow sticks to identify teams. It was really cool! the best part was that some of the students were convinced that CTF was only cool when you were in grade school

My recent focus has been LTP 2010, better known as LEGACY. The 2010 Leadership Training Project began at about 5:00pm on November 5th and lasted until church on Sunday morning at 10:10am. The best part was what happened in between. Amongst the campfire, bowling, ice skating & playground tag (yes we did) was hours of brainstorming, processes, sticky notes & pure, straight-up honesty.

So the last few weeks have held some awesome opportunities for me. It has been my intention since I started with J10Church to invest in the local High Schools and I think I am finally in through an organization called... Drumroll Please... FCA. A little background first. I attended, was a huddle leader, and on Leadership at my high school's FCA in Altamont, KS

I have to confess, I haven't been the best at this recently... As you can probably tell, it has been a while since my last post and I feel like a MASSIVE slacker. However, I have recently started scheduling my days out to the minute so I can make sure that I have time to do this. And not just because I HAVE too either... I really enjoy blogging about my thoughts and what has been happening at Converge Students. In fact, it is often hard to find someone that I can talk to about what I am thinking. I know I bore my wife talking about this stuff, so it is great that I have this blog to output some of my thoughts.

Looks like I need to catch up. Four weeks ago I was able to take two of my students out to lunch that I don't get to spend much time with. They are an odd pair of students (just like me), but they are really good kids and I am really glad that they have become part of the youth group. We went and ate pizza for lunch and just talked about life. About their school starting up, new games that they had been playing on their XBOX, and about how they love pizza and could eat it every day for lunch with ease.

I am currently on a trip with my high schoolers called "Flee the SEEN" in Salisbury, MD (quick access to the beach via Ocean City, MD). This trip has kept me from spending my $25 on my students, but luckily I was able to spend $50 last week to cover it. During our hang out time, I took our high school students to Woody's golf course and we played mini-golf for about an hour and a half. Even though the conversation really never turned into anything Jesus, it was just a great time to invest in them and have fun. Part of our 3-Part purpose statement (Awaken. Unite. Live.) is to unite students in God's love; or bring them together in community to hang out and celebrate the awesome lives that God has given them. Mini-Golf provides an excellent setting to just have fun and hang out... This summer, in fact, has been all about uniting students to create an identity. A Converge Students identity. Out of that unity flows the third purpose, Life. The life that we hope and attempt to facilitate is our J10 Life, or life to the fullest. And out of that life flows the first purpose, Awaken. Awakening students to God's love. Hopefully by the end of this summer, we will have accomplished our first task, uniting our students under one purpose, one identity, one name. And out of that will (hopefully) flow Jesus and our outreach to other students. Here we go!

I was gone the week of the 4th and super busy the following week, so I had one of my volunteers spend my $25 for me. Here is what she had to say:

I went and hung out with one of our female students from J10 a few weeks ago.  We went to get Ice Cream and talked a bit, then we went to the park here in Ashburn and swung on the swing set. We talked about school and friends, we even talked about memories from when we were both children swinging on the swing set.  Later the next week I was going to take a few students to the carnival.  I picked up three girls and we made our way there only to realize It did not open for 4 more hours.  So we went to the mall and walked around, we got board really fast and came up with a new plan.  We wanted to go paint pottery, so we made our way back to Ashburn.  Once we got there we started to look at the prices and decided it was not worth it.  So we loaded back up in the car and decided to go get ice cream, everyone wanted to go to a different ice cream shop so we drove around Ashburn untill we decided to go back to maggie moos in broadlands.  We finally got our ice cream and sat by the fountain and talked and laughed.  The following week I called three students and a few young adults and older ones from J10, and asked them if they wanted to see a movie in IMAX.  To my surprise NONE of them had been to a IMAX theater before.  We had three students, one college student and three adults including me.  It was SOOO MUCH FUN!  We laughed almost the whole movie, everyone had a great time.  We went to McDonalds after the movie and made one girl laugh so hard she had to spit out her desert.  Last week I had three students over and we watched a movie.  It was fun we made fun of it and joked the whole time.  This past Saturday I went to the outlet mall and walked around and shopped with another student.  This summer I have been so blessed to hang out with all the girls, my bible study has been AMAZING, I cant believe how many of my students have opened up to me and each other about REAL things. Im looking forward to the rest of the summer and all that God has planned for us.

Thanks so much for all of your help and support in the converge students ministry! Our girls would be bored if I was hanging out with them...

This week I was able to spend my $25 on two of my volunteers (and one student). One of the volunteers was one of the regulars, and we had lunch and talked about his involvement with the youth group and whether or not he felt pressured to help ever. Great conversation I have been meaning to have with him - I DO NOT want my volunteers to be overwhelmed.


The second volunteer I was able to invest in was a first-timer at Converge Students. Somehow I convinced him to spend 3.5 hours clearing brush, mowing, weed-eating, and performing many other medial, monotonous tasks in an effort to clean up for the NERF WAR - which I'll add was AWESOME!! He did a lot of hard work and was the epitome of an excellent helper. Since we were sweaty, hot, and probably covered in ticks, we just hit the drive-through; though some good conversations about where he is at and how his life is going for him came out of it. I'm really glad that I was able to invest in him after his help with Converge...


Last but not least, I had some really deep conversations with a student this week about why he doesn't put more effort into telling people about Jesus. Not that he does a bad job at it at all, more of a how can I convince him (and how he can convince himself) that God has much bigger plans for him and that a small percentage of his day isn't enough. The coolest thing about it was I asked him why the most important thing in his life only received 10% of his effort, his response was "He's not the most important thing in my life." Honesty is always the best policy. It is always the best way to start the process of healing or fixing or redeeming. At the least, we can always build off of an honest statement. 

I feel like this is a trend. My usual split of $25 dollars to invest in completely different areas of our Student Ministry program. But this trend is a good one, I think, because let's be honest, buying two meals at Red Lobster and calling that a week sounds ridiculous. Anyways, my first investment was last Thursday during a one-on-one with a student. This guy has Thursday nights practically free and is bored often, so I grabbed him after school and we went to Robeks. Naturally, it was $1 smoothie day for regular smoothies! And naturally, his smoothie was $6. Something that had ridiculous amounts of weightlifting powder in it, of course. Anyways, we got to hang out and talk about life... for 35min while we waited in line. Hopefully I'll get to continue the life conversation in the next couple weeks when we get hang out again... I always have a great time hanging out with this guy.



The second half of my $25 was spent on the competitive nature of Converge Students. I bought some materials to facilitate this nature and make sure that it was a little embarrassing too. If you have ever heard of the "banana challenge", you would know that we shoved some potassium into the faces of our students. So here is how it works: you take a whole banana, have a student shove it in their mouth and chew it up, you put panty hose on their head, and then have them blow the banana through the panty hose. The only problem is that they can't blow the banana through the hose, it just gets blown all over their face. One word. AWESOME.

I spent last Wednesday driving 9.5 hours to Louisville, KY for a friend's wedding. Needless to say, the drive was boring. In fact, I took (and not entirely by accident) I-68 to I-79 which was extremely lame with a large redundancy of hills and curves. At times it could have lulled me to sleep.... However, I took the opportunity to listen to an entire series by Andy Stanley entitled "Guardrails".

This was an awesome series, and even though it took three hours and fifty five minutes to listen to all of them,  thoroughly enjoyed it... From alcohol to relationships to friendships to generalities, Guardrails hits home for almost every person. Andy really helped me to relate to a few things that I may be able to regurgitate to my students... Anyways, if you want to check it out, click here.

Over the last two weeks, Converge Students has held two volunteer projects in conjunction with the "Hello... My Name Is... series. The first one was creatively called "Hello My Name is... Volunteer". After attempts at trying to merely get the point across via the use of simple lingo and uncomplicated terminology, we decided to just be overly creative and go with the word "volunteer". Last Friday night, a few of our students volunteered to help set up the movie screen at Ashburn Elementary for family movie night - afterwords, we went and played sand volleyball. Personally, I'm glad we went because there weren't too many people interested in helping.



The second of the two events was entitled "Hello My Name Is... Generosity" - and gained much more student attention that the previously noted project. Undoubtedly because of the impact we though we'd make, we had significantly more students. The project was simple: donate money to buy supplies, package them, drive them to dc, hand them out to the homeless, and change the world one student at a time. We convened on Friday night and spent $465 dollars on supplies, after which we headed off to the Adams' house to pack it up... Saturday morning we headed down to DC and handed all our packages out in approximately 2 minutes! We were completely swarmed by homeless people (we were being safe and cautious, however) when we stepped out of the vehicles. It was so much fun! And a great opportunity to watch the students invest in the lives of homeless people. Since I have a short week this week, our liveon25 was donated to this project to help with food supplies.

Oh, and I am working on a cool movie regarding the trip... Here is a picture of the opening scene... Be sure to check out the website when it is up!! www.j10students.com
 

So, I started this awesome new project with a gentleman that loves youth groups and students enough that he is giving me money every week to invest in them. $25 if you haven't guessed yet... So, my task is to take the $25 that he gives me and invest it in a student or students of mine - whether it be lunch, something to do with group, event stuff, etc. it just needs to be invested in my students. The only catch is that I have to spend all $25 every week and I have to blog about what I used the money for. Sound good so far?! I think it is an awesome deal! Why I decided to call it "liveon25" I will never know, I guess that is just the creative side of me flaring up again.

Which leads me to what I used the $25 I received for this week. Well, the answer is two-fold. First, Converge Students is having a massive NERF WAR on father's day. It will be all-out chaos watching the dads light up the students. Anyways, as part of the war, I have to provide some extra darts for field use. That is where part one comes in.


The second "investment" i made with my $25 was two of my students that attend Stone Bridge High School. We had a Starbucks two-on-two meeting (My Wife & I & the two of them) to discuss how their lives were going, their communication with God, their daily devotional time, and last but not least, an opportunity for them to start an FCA at their high school! It was an awesome experience being able to pour into them the fact that they are great leaders and they could easily lead their peers in an FCA huddle. We made a lot of headway. And the best part about it is that I am applying to be a sponsor for the huddle in their school! No better way to connect with students than in their environment! You can check out their website here.


Anyways, that is all for now, but the "liveon25" project will continue. Continue to impact both my students' lives and mine...

-That Guy

I am reading an awesome book about transparency in environment at the moment. It is called Samson and the Pirate Monks. It is all about the life of Nate Larkin and the development of the Sampson Society. Since J10 Church is preparing for Porn Sunday, I felt like this might be the ideal time to crack the book open and read his story. To read about his insane life. To read through some authentic communication about sex addiction and the results of pornography. In reality, a word like insane can't accurately convey his life.

So far, it has been an excellent book - it has helped to shed light on a few points that we are trying to convey with our "Hello. My Name Is..." Series. Mainly that we were never destined to do this alone and that recovery starts with someone else. Hopefully the rest of the book holds up with the first 90 pages. I'm sure I won't be disappointed...

Check out Nate Larkin's story at iamsecond.com.

Hello peeps. This is the start of my new blog. I started this to blog to communicate the cool things that are going on in my life, particularly my new "liveon25" campaign, which I will talk about later. For now, I just wanted to say hi and welcome you to my new page. I know it looks crappy now, but hopefully I'll be able to clean it up soon and make it look good.

Oh, and you may be asking what "The Seven Events" are. My only answer is... I don't know. A long time ago my grandmother impacted my life by reading me Romans 8:38-39 and pointing me in the right direction to live life for Jesus. I knew that was one of the many events that would change my life. And for some reason, I decided that there would be seven. Seven events that would impact me in a way that would change my life completely. I'm still in the process of trying to figure out what those events are (or were). So, I'm with you in the fact that I'm not really sure what "The Seven Events" are, but I'm getting there.

For now, we'll just pretend we're on the same page. I'll talk to you later.