Hit the Back Button to Move Fwd by Gavin Richardson

justification : love

There is no justification for love, for if there were, then it would not be love. If we love because we are compelled through force, then it is not love. If I give some money to the poor only because someone is holding a gun to my head and demanding the action, then this is not a loving action. Neither is it loving if I act in order to gain a reward, even if the reward is simply the feeling that comes from doing the act. As soon as we say that we should love, then love disappears, for love is the law that has no law, the way that knows no 'should'. Love is the law that tells us when to subvert the law, when to obey the law and when to break with laws, yet love is a lawless law that cannot be argued for.

how (not) to speak of God, -peter rollins

when things go bad : have a woman for discernment

i am thinking this guy isn't married. surely a wife would have said to the youth minister husband.. this is a bad idea. tip, terrance

Indoor Motorcycle Wheelie Goes Bad - Watch more free videos

mountain top removal : wendell berry

the writer wendell berry on mountain top removal during "i love mountain day"

my embarrassment : remembering grandpa

mom sent out this picture last night. its of my brother & me with my grandpa during our breakdance years (my bro's & mine, not my grandpa's. he never had breakdance years.. none that we know of). we had the parachute pants & get-up clothes (i think we were poor as it is obvious we shared a pair of gloves), took the classes, entered contests (which i only remember failing miserably at), and even had the special cardboard to do the backspin. oh the glory years.

what captured me from the picture this time (having seen this picture many times over the years) is my grandpa playing around with us. that & the overall embarrassment.

some backstory.. grandpa was actually quite a big deal. born in Wales he became a renowed engineer in acoustic engineering. found this little write up on him. he has quite a fancy hall named after him at the university he was vice-chancellor.
 

Professor Elfyn Richards O.B.E., M.A., D.Sc., C.Eng., F.R.Ae.S., M.I.Mech.E.

Born in Barry, Wales and educated at the Grammar School there, Professor Richards moved away to continue his education first at University College Aberystwyth and later at St John’s College in Cambridge where he read mathematics and physics.  After a short period with the Bristol Aeroplane Company he spent his war years at the National Physical Laboratory in charge of aerofoil research. In 1945 he was appointed Chief Aerodynamicist at Vickers-Armstrong in Weybridge, responsible for the aerodynamic design of the Viking, Viscount and Valiant. It was here that he developed an interest in aircraft noise that would lead him to become one of the country’s leading exponents of aircraft design and a world authority on noise acoustics. In 1950 he took up the new Chair of Aeronautical Engineering at Southampton University and in 1963 became Professor of Applied Acoustics setting up the internationally renowned Institute of Sound and Vibration Research.  He was appointed Vice-Chancellor of Loughborough University in 1967 and here he achieved his three main goals for the University.  Firstly to broaden its academic base, secondly to become more co-educational and encourage female applicants and finally that it should embrace its University status and expand its research activity and post-graduate work.  He ‘retired’ from Loughborough in 1975 and returned to Southampton to a Chair within the Institute he had founded.

so here is one of englands esteemed academics & researcher getting down with two of his grandsons. that is pretty cool. oh the memories. grandpa died in '95 a number of months after we all celebrated his 80th b'day party. you can still find his obituary.

mass of links : something i really should organize

in my ever growing list of links. i realize i should probably at some point organize them, or offer commentary of my own.. naaah...

• myyearbook.com continues to grow. will it be the next myspace / facebook?
• the new romantic engagement process.. not so much
• andy is moving to nashville.. yeah! more music city bloggers
• jim palmer on the church basement roadshow.. i think he nibbed one of my pics. good thing we are friends &:~D
• top twittering church leaders... why am i not on this list?
• andrew wrapping up business of the church series: strategic planning
• allen on how the church is very political
• bw3 breaks down 'the shack' in the way only he can do.. really loong, but great, thoughts
• josh on scriptures that you can laugh at
• simple youth ministry is into the txt game. bit more expensive than my plan
• i have the blogger part taken care of, so if i were a woman, i'd go to this..
• so what your telling me is these sexy teen dramas are bad?
• teens and their tattoos. just don't get the tramp stamp kids
• start of a new job position, teenage green marketing manager. watch for it
• what if rock horror picture show was remade with teen cast? imagine
• i still like the children's book. but for my lazy day, this will do
• most modern libraries in the world.. the one down street from my house is not on the list, though they just got some renovations. i was really hoping
• i'm a new contributor to the technopastor. look for me to.. well give much of the same babble
• go ahead and get started on next years vbs. i enjoyed it!
• i don't know if they set the pace or just take the lead in adopting technology
• wisdom of crowds, customer evangelism.. your consumer is important, you should listen
• to be a rigid parent or not to be & have some rebellious child. that is the question
• is today's generation more or less colorblind (cough.. racist)
• my wrestling will be more family friendly now.. now erin might actually like it (she is my family and it will be her friend)
• sync any desktop cal with google cal.. nice!
• brains (featured above) courtesy of asbo jesus
• rowan williams address to the lambuth conference. brian mclaren got a chance to talk as well
• 10 secrets to better blogging.. dang, are they secrets now?
• the difficulty of singing contemporary
• wasting your money on short term missions..
• print made us more individualistic. great book that i loved
• worshiping the messenger, missing the message (possibly the best title ever jim)
• sam is noticing that people are interested in gen y.. y?
• say it aint so thunder! say it aint so!
• what makes a congregation distinctly methodist? hmm... exactly
• how your church can break into social media and get free pub!
• "typical baptist" (okay, shaun gets the best title award)
• best hardware & software.. stuff you should have or strive to have.
• chris on 50 steps to establishing a social media practice

youth group games : not just for larry & michael

so this is pretty cool. some folks have take the freestyle stuff to the game of horse. not as great as larry and michael (though mj's outfit does bring down the overall legend status if you ask me), but still pretty good. i can only imagine that this would be fun work junior high boys for an hour or so to try and make one of these types of shots.

emergent revival : the church basement road show

so monday night i convinced wifey to join me at the church basement roadshow as it pulled through town. i had agreed to help with set up and whatever else being a part of the cohort. got to catch up with some fun peeps i don't hang with enough, lilly & sally come to mind. jay gave a quick run down. reba was there, though i didn't get to say hi to her in the chaotic fun. there were other friends that actually don't have a blog to link to, so just know they were there. since it was saint b's dixon was obviously there, but too busy to have good times chat. apparently holly, whom i've never met before and only read her blog occasionally, is now in town which was a new surprise.

this was by far the most creative book tour i've been an attendee of. the mix of old school 1908 revival, the fun play with personality and cultural norms, the impassioned storytelling, singing the revival song (especially after lilly, wifey, and myself had a conversation on singing not being the only worship way), the overlaying theological questions to faith and practice explored, and fellowship. i even got to toot on the trombone.. too bad i played sax in junior high, the woodwinds are significantly different than the brass instrument in playing, so it sounded more like fart sounds to me.. which, i guess is amusing in itself.

we bought the balm of gilead, hook line and sinker. way to go tony, mark, & doug. brilliant!

more fun photos from the church basement roadshow

week at a glance : glance of photos too

it was a strange kind of week. so much was happening in short periods of time. it is hard to believe that last week happened and was only a few days. some photos if you like

• after mission experience we had a few days in the office which were.. interesting. i then drove through the late night to lake junaluska to meet with fellow design team members for "convo" the legislative body for youth ministries at the jurisdictional level.
• i started my first day at the lake meeting up with friends at the foundation for evangelism. they've been good to me over the years and i'm big fan of their efforts. they bought my breakfast, which was excellent, and we talked technology and the church. i'm excited to get involved in that conversation
• met up with our design team group. holston conference friend dan & i were put on the worship design group to round out the particulars to worship.
• we planned, processed, prayed, and sat in silence.. then took a break. in the end we had some worship experiences that we felt challenged the norm and gave some new looks for leadership. unfortunately we had all kinds of issues from speakers backing out, tech issues all over the place, & people who just didn't get where we were trying to go. in the end though, God was there, somewhere, even if it was hard for me to see... cause you know, God is suppose to make things go the way i intend for them to go.
• we alloted a bunch of ysf (youth service fund) monies to some great places. i've never really sat in on a process like that with that much money, so it was really neat to know we were making some significant changes spending money.
• hung out with jay and met up with some of the riffraff that was hanging out for soul feast. might have a new book project on youth ministry & social networks. who knows...
• got elected chair of the adult network for the southeast jurisdiction.. not sure what that means but hopefully we can accomplish one or two things in the next two years of my tenure.
• my youth camp to the lake. i ditched all things 'convo' to hang with them on saturday and we went to sliding rock. it was way cool & super cold. i then treated them to pizza, which was fun, till they started scaring the natives.
• i went to the 'emergent' service the duke div school interns were putting on sunday mornings. i had my worship snob mode in full effect, plus i knew that i wanted to get home and see wife & family, so when we started and they said we were going to watch the nooma on silence. i promptly got on the road.
• after arriving home and taking a short nap.. too short.. erin & i headed to smyrna to catch up with little bro and family for madalyn's baby dedication. the church they have settled into doesn't do infant baptism. though my mom called it a baptism. they do dedications.. this is also where i took on role as godfather.
• after the dedication we went to my mother-in-laws house to participate in an odd anniversary. it was her bff's first anniversary of her liver transplant. she had deteriorating health from obtaining hepatitis c back during a child birth blood transfusion. it finally had her down to some poor health and probable death. but now she's back. so we sang happy b'day liver.. talked about the liver's sex change and some other oddities. we are happy for mom's bff, she's a saint and is more than deserving of feeling better after all these years.

quite a week

the girl of summer : top plays

this is a long distance dedication to you patti, my blogging baseball friend.

you may or may not have heard of ray lamontagne but you need to. so here is a start

one of the latest batch of books sent to me via the ooze was a real eye catcher. partly because it was on the top of the stack. it was "oh shit it's Jesus, the relevance of Jesus without all the religious crap." i had fun showing it to many of our church staff and other laity that happened to be around (it was right before vbs, so there were quite a few people). i even started reading it myself. however, i have yet to finish myself and i'm not sure i will.. why? people keep taking it to read.

one of the first things that caught my eye with the book is that it has no publisher. i went looking for the publisher mark and found nothing. then reading into the book apparently no one wanted to touch the book. not even a self-publisher company. they equated it to 'the shack' in some ways that is was controversial enough that publishers didn't want to touch it.. i could get that. throwing 'shit' in a title isn't exactly literary norm.

however, in the youth office it has become a funny book for us. lots of giggles. so it wasn't surprising that one of the interns showed his college friend the book during vbs week. she sat down and read it in one sitting, which essentially rendered her useless during vbs but she picked an okay day to do that. i told her she had to write me a review for it.. not sure she took me seriously... i wonder why?

she loved the book. the writing for her was simple enough (ie. no heavy terminology) and flowed well. she felt like the book made some good points that she could identify with.

i was intrigued to get past page 9 which is where i ended the one time i opened the book and subsequently fell asleep on the couch. but it was our mission experience week, not a whole lot of time to read when you are in my position. so in a conversation about books i said to one of our adult youth ministers "i've got a book for you" and showed him the book, which he laughed out loud at. then he took the book and i haven't seen it since. i'll probably see it again but not sure when.

i asked him what he thought of the book so far. he was less than impressed. "it takes some easy pop shots" which for him were not enlightening or challenging. at that point he was hoping for me. but he reads on.. i assume he is reading on. otherwise i'd like my book back. haha!

i've chronicled my various celebrity look alike moments. a new one came this past week at asp. two of the staffers were adamant that i reminded them of keller williams. keller isn't the mainstream musician, so i'm throwing some pub his way.

while on our missions experience i was reminded of a game we developed last year. it's a great way to do the radio for the proverbial road trip. "the scan game" here are the details

• the premise: everyone gets their shot to listen to the radio they want too via scan. fun begins messing with folks and their music choices.
• the rules are simple. press scan on the radio. as it picks up the various signals the car trip members can choose their song by indicating "this is mine" or "i want this one!" you can only get one pick per round. once a song ends, no matter how long or short, it goes back to scan. at the end of the round winners and losers are decided, jokingly of course, with song choice & length as judging points. it is generally obviously who got the shaft on their song choice.
• odd rulings: you can choose a sports event, but the scan starts back up when there is a commercial. same goes for a talk radio. npr can be a little iffy in this rule.
• people can trade or ask others to pick a song for them if they have used up theirs already. but it is generally discouraged.

this can go on for hours. it is fun to pick up the different sounds coming through the radio in various parts of the states. if you are in a very rural part of the land it could be tough playing. especially if you only have two channels that come through. then you can do a manual shuffle on an ipod or other mp3 player.

and that is the scan game.

if you are like me, in the early 30's and a golfer for your high school career, then you might feel like me.. i'm feeling like a teenager again. this guy who was a storm around the professional golf world in my teenage years is back. back in the day golf was one of my high school sports. loved it & lived it. and strangely enough, i watched i religiously. i know all the players, i knew all their swings. i knew all the stats. now, if i remember correctly norman had many leads in many major pro golf tournaments.. and many times he screwed it up or was on the wrong end of some miracle shot. so i wonder what happens today?

update: well, he didn't do it. that would have been great but oh-well. maybe next time

 

i am home from appalachia service project (asp), our senior high summer mission experience. all was great i cannot complain about any of it. the youth were great, the youth minister were great, the staff was fab, the other youth community was great fun.

i should be napping.. not sure why i'm not.. so instead of that i re-enter the blog world with pictures from our week's experience. more later i am sure.

today i am heading out into eastern kentucky with 44 youth and young adults to work with asp (appalachia service project) as part of our senior high mission experience. i don't expect to have wi-fi access at camp, so i'm putting in this twitter feed. i am confident in verizon to give me enough service to give updates via twitter. stop in regularly or subscribe to my twitter updates for your cell phone.

 

hfumc youth asp twit

follow me on Twitter

since i'll be heading out on our senior high mission experience tomorrow i'm guessing this post will stick around for a bit. unless i can find some wi-fi in the area. here are some links that i'm perusing.

• a beer pong video game controversy.. really? check out who has more skill time than one should
• teens opting to get pregnant.. is penelope onto something?
• apparently though the pregnancy numbers are low
• teen dating & other abuse
• what other than the bible is considered sacred literature?
• dealing with sexual brokenness in youth article
• magnetic wallpaper the next thing?
• employers are having to cater to gen y's wants.. how bout a youth pastor?
• honestly,.. virtual reality abuse?..
• jay got me to sign up for jott.. still not sure if i need it
• british methodist church is actually reaching to unchurch young adults
• 80's work for todays teen consumerism?
• what do teens want?
• the new teen trend is to control tv..
  
• teens various views of oral sex
• research says youth get alcohol from adults.. is that news?
• the foreclosure market is helping out the teen party scene
• the "cool" or "responsible" parent that drinks with their teen?

this week are are in vbs week. it is kinda standard the last few years for me to work with the 5th & 6th graders. we try to be more 'big kid' like so that this group isn't feeling so old for vbs. like last year, we are a test church for next years cokesbury/abingdon curriculum. the theme/title is called camp edge. being a camping kinda guy i like the theme, it's a piece of cake to work with decorations wise. our room is in a state of construction so we are sorta minimal in decor, but the rest of the place is off the hook.

the curriculum is still in development, so i won't say it's great or not great. i have liked the daily teaching stuff pretty well, we adapt most of it to fit our schedule and age group as we see it. we have been doing a lot of initiative game stuff that requires rope and other outdoor elements to help keep it moving. i really like the music, it has a good energy and some cool dance stuff (that i cannot do, but the youth can). plus there is a good component of sign language, which i like as well.

i'm starting to post pictures at our youth flickr site from this week. check it out i will keep posting them as i can. i know many folks will be wanting ideas for their vbs next year.

heard an interview of dan ariely author of predictably irrational. he brought up a good point on people trading in their cars (generally high gas mpg vehicles) and getting low value for them, even taking a hit on their loan. all because of gas prices going up. he was saying that gas prices have only gone up a dollar in the last year which can equate to $1000 more over the year, but to take on new payments or pay interest to eclipse that raise doesn't make sense financially. you loose more money now with that reaction. so what is someone to do? hmm...

reading this i was revisiting my 'renaissance years' as i call them.

i was, and probably still am not, much of an academic. i had two very unfruitful college credit years in my first stop at university of alabama.. though i do have some decent stories to tell. i needed some perspective so i pulled out of the campus grind and began a two year journey i called my "renaissance years/period."

let me set the stage. i suck at college. i return home to new jersey after two years of college and mission service as summer staff. my fathers only request, "don't stop school," his fear being that i would not go back.. probably true too. soo...

• i enrolled at the high institute of learning that is burlington county college. i took mostly evening classes. so i could work a normal job.
• the normal job i attained was as a security guard with a top secret clearance. i worked at lockheed martin & this odd navy base. the strange thing though was i had this curly long hair and baby face patrolling the hallways in an outfit that likens back to a certain sheriff's outfit . no gun, mace or stick.. just a whistle to thwart back evil goers. this was my day job.
• i joined the fire department. mostly because i was 21 years of age and the other firefighters were amused that i could drink with them. my brother was already a member of the fire department, joining as a junior firefighter. i went to fire school, got my certificate and started... well.. mostly we hung out and drank.. stuff rarely burned around us. but i've got some good stories when things did burn. that was my free time & sometimes days when they would pay me.
• over the weekends i became the junior high youth minister at our church in new jersey. volunteer position of course. no funding, some 45 junior high youth, a ton of energy and no real experience. my only real strategy then was wrestle and beat the strongest kid in youth group, you gain instant respect then... i don't try that now.. not sure i'd win these days. those were my weekends.
• being in the fire department the trend those days was to get in with the ambulance squad. so i did too. joined in the 809 and went to emt school. my brother and i worked the night shift like 3 or 4 nights a week. they gave us this police car looking response vehicle so that we could go straight to the scene and someone (who lived closer to the squad house) would bring the truck. nothing was cooler than being 21 & 22 driving something that looked like a police car with siren & lights in the middle of the night at high speeds. those are some great stories, probably the ones i tell the most. what i liked about ems and the fire work was having tools and presence to help people in their greatest need. that was pretty cool. that was my night job.

i don't know where the idea of going straight from one milestone to another has become such a given that taking time to develop life experiences is odd and newsworthy. i am grateful for my two years as a renaissance man. it was the best learning i had while i was supposed to be in some education process.

i have now been in hendersonville for three years. in those times we have started a family, made many friends and gotten to know many great people. but being an implant into a small town atmosphere has its interesting moments. like this

i'm walking the children's hallways one day and i see this little girl whom i see with her parents in my sunday school class every week. i say hello to the child and the teacher proceeds to tell me "do you know who this is?" and before i can even respond "this is hank thompson's grandchild." this confused me.. this is addison, amanda & john's little girl.. then i remember, hank is amanda's dad, who just happens to be the ex-mayor of hendersonville. he was the family member with the name and long standing member of my church, i just knew the family a little backwards from everyone else apparently.

hank passed away on sunday. like others of our hendersonville cloud of witnesses that have passed away in my three years time, i am still capturing who these people have been. i really only knew him as the dad to amanda. but as i found out through the last two days spending some 16 hours conversing with people touched by this man & seeing the full family in resolve & grief i know this new witness a whole lot more..

so other than working our vacation bible school (another posting). i was playing a different role mixing that 'do all things needed for ministry' to a job and doing all things for your friends. services were yesterday & today (visitaion & service). i never planned on ushering some 700 people (over 1000 in all) through the pews of our church in a maze i likened to an amusement park ride line. staying hours and hours later than a planned day, just to be a presence. standing holding seats, handing out bulletins, grabbing water, moving flowers, giving pats on the back, crying and laughing.

i grieved for the family & have prayed for them for over a year now, these last two days though have given me a little more clarity as to who was in my prayers and why our cloud of witnesses becomes a little more colorful.

but as son lance mentioned via

“He did not talk a lot about his faith because he didn’t feel like he had to,” Lance Thompson said. “He lived it out.”

i think hank will find a friend in saint francis.

driving down and back from vacation i got into my habit of listening to random radio stuff. bad christian preaching radio, old country, classical, you get the picture. not so random in the listening line up is npr. they had a great profile of victor wooten. it got me wondering what the fleck crew has been up too. i haven't seen bela fleck for a few years, since he came on stage with bobby mcferrin to do a set of dueling banjos, only mcferrin used his voice. that was awesome. so why not, get the fleck on.

last spring jay & and a crew of us teamed up to lead worship with brian mclaren at the festival of homiletics in an 'emergent' service. coming up with 'emergent' at 8:30 am  with 1400 people was interesting to imagine. the tenets we thought up were images, participatory, and community.. the community part was manifested in our singing as our music had three musicians (jay being one of them) and each led a song. none of the songs were mainstream, but jays was one of his home brews and he's now sharing that sound and music for the song.

my friends at the center for youth ministry training are putting together a pretty good looking conference this fall. i'm still working out the dates to go, but hope to make it myself. deech and the others are people i am happy to call friends and talented & knowledgeable youth ministers.

deech has made available some of his braintrust for those interested. he's got some powerpoints and note outlines from some work he presented to the virginia annual conference.

update: been able to upload the many pictures from our days at the beach

hey folks, forgot to mention that i'm on vacation with my side of the family unit. we are chilling out for the week in fort morgan alabama. got a fat pad right on the beach and haven't done much of anything all week. awesome!

music monday : saved by a woman

you may or may not have heard of ray lamontagne but you need to. so here is a start

the hand that steadies : where are you

oh shit it's Jesus : reviewing sorta

one of the latest batch of books sent to me via the ooze was a real eye catcher. partly because it was on the top of the stack. it was "oh shit it's Jesus, the relevance of Jesus without all the religious crap." i had fun showing it to many of our church staff and other laity that happened to be around (it was right before vbs, so there were quite a few people). i even started reading it myself. however, i have yet to finish myself and i'm not sure i will.. why? people keep taking it to read.

one of the first things that caught my eye with the book is that it has no publisher. i went looking for the publisher mark and found nothing. then reading into the book apparently no one wanted to touch the book. not even a self-publisher company. they equated it to 'the shack' in some ways that is was controversial enough that publishers didn't want to touch it.. i could get that. throwing 'shit' in a title isn't exactly literary norm.

however, in the youth office it has become a funny book for us. lots of giggles. so it wasn't surprising that one of the interns showed his college friend the book during vbs week. she sat down and read it in one sitting, which essentially rendered her useless during vbs but she picked an okay day to do that. i told her she had to write me a review for it.. not sure she took me seriously... i wonder why?

she loved the book. the writing for her was simple enough (ie. no heavy terminology) and flowed well. she felt like the book made some good points that she could identify with.

i was intrigued to get past page 9 which is where i ended the one time i opened the book and subsequently fell asleep on the couch. but it was our mission experience week, not a whole lot of time to read when you are in my position. so in a conversation about books i said to one of our adult youth ministers "i've got a book for you" and showed him the book, which he laughed out loud at. then he took the book and i haven't seen it since. i'll probably see it again but not sure when.

i asked him what he thought of the book so far. he was less than impressed. "it takes some easy pop shots" which for him were not enlightening or challenging. at that point he was hoping for me. but he reads on.. i assume he is reading on. otherwise i'd like my book back. haha!

monday music : another celeb look alike

i've chronicled my various celebrity look alike moments. a new one came this past week at asp. two of the staffers were adamant that i reminded them of keller williams. keller isn't the mainstream musician, so i'm throwing some pub his way.

for the youth road trip : the scan game

while on our missions experience i was reminded of a game we developed last year. it's a great way to do the radio for the proverbial road trip. "the scan game" here are the details

• the premise: everyone gets their shot to listen to the radio they want too via scan. fun begins messing with folks and their music choices.
• the rules are simple. press scan on the radio. as it picks up the various signals the car trip members can choose their song by indicating "this is mine" or "i want this one!" you can only get one pick per round. once a song ends, no matter how long or short, it goes back to scan. at the end of the round winners and losers are decided, jokingly of course, with song choice & length as judging points. it is generally obviously who got the shaft on their song choice.
• odd rulings: you can choose a sports event, but the scan starts back up when there is a commercial. same goes for a talk radio. npr can be a little iffy in this rule.
• people can trade or ask others to pick a song for them if they have used up theirs already. but it is generally discouraged.

this can go on for hours. it is fun to pick up the different sounds coming through the radio in various parts of the states. if you are in a very rural part of the land it could be tough playing. especially if you only have two channels that come through. then you can do a manual shuffle on an ipod or other mp3 player.

and that is the scan game.

i'm a teenager again : can he do it?

if you are like me, in the early 30's and a golfer for your high school career, then you might feel like me.. i'm feeling like a teenager again. this guy who was a storm around the professional golf world in my teenage years is back. back in the day golf was one of my high school sports. loved it & lived it. and strangely enough, i watched i religiously. i know all the players, i knew all their swings. i knew all the stats. now, if i remember correctly norman had many leads in many major pro golf tournaments.. and many times he screwed it up or was on the wrong end of some miracle shot. so i wonder what happens today?

update: well, he didn't do it. that would have been great but oh-well. maybe next time

home from mission : the pictures

 

i am home from appalachia service project (asp), our senior high summer mission experience. all was great i cannot complain about any of it. the youth were great, the youth minister were great, the staff was fab, the other youth community was great fun.

i should be napping.. not sure why i'm not.. so instead of that i re-enter the blog world with pictures from our week's experience. more later i am sure.

senior high mission experience twittered : asp in real time

today i am heading out into eastern kentucky with 44 youth and young adults to work with asp (appalachia service project) as part of our senior high mission experience. i don't expect to have wi-fi access at camp, so i'm putting in this twitter feed. i am confident in verizon to give me enough service to give updates via twitter. stop in regularly or subscribe to my twitter updates for your cell phone.

 

hfumc youth asp twit

follow me on Twitter

things on tab : linkage for the week

since i'll be heading out on our senior high mission experience tomorrow i'm guessing this post will stick around for a bit. unless i can find some wi-fi in the area. here are some links that i'm perusing.

• a beer pong video game controversy.. really? check out who has more skill time than one should
• teens opting to get pregnant.. is penelope onto something?
• apparently though the pregnancy numbers are low
• teen dating & other abuse
• what other than the bible is considered sacred literature?
• dealing with sexual brokenness in youth article
• magnetic wallpaper the next thing?
• employers are having to cater to gen y's wants.. how bout a youth pastor?
• honestly,.. virtual reality abuse?..
• jay got me to sign up for jott.. still not sure if i need it
• british methodist church is actually reaching to unchurch young adults
• 80's work for todays teen consumerism?
• what do teens want?
• the new teen trend is to control tv..
  
• teens various views of oral sex
• research says youth get alcohol from adults.. is that news?
• the foreclosure market is helping out the teen party scene
• the "cool" or "responsible" parent that drinks with their teen?

camp edge : vbs week at hendersonville

this week are are in vbs week. it is kinda standard the last few years for me to work with the 5th & 6th graders. we try to be more 'big kid' like so that this group isn't feeling so old for vbs. like last year, we are a test church for next years cokesbury/abingdon curriculum. the theme/title is called camp edge. being a camping kinda guy i like the theme, it's a piece of cake to work with decorations wise. our room is in a state of construction so we are sorta minimal in decor, but the rest of the place is off the hook.

the curriculum is still in development, so i won't say it's great or not great. i have liked the daily teaching stuff pretty well, we adapt most of it to fit our schedule and age group as we see it. we have been doing a lot of initiative game stuff that requires rope and other outdoor elements to help keep it moving. i really like the music, it has a good energy and some cool dance stuff (that i cannot do, but the youth can). plus there is a good component of sign language, which i like as well.

i'm starting to post pictures at our youth flickr site from this week. check it out i will keep posting them as i can. i know many folks will be wanting ideas for their vbs next year.

high gas prices : what we overreact too

heard an interview of dan ariely author of predictably irrational. he brought up a good point on people trading in their cars (generally high gas mpg vehicles) and getting low value for them, even taking a hit on their loan. all because of gas prices going up. he was saying that gas prices have only gone up a dollar in the last year which can equate to $1000 more over the year, but to take on new payments or pay interest to eclipse that raise doesn't make sense financially. you loose more money now with that reaction. so what is someone to do? hmm...

renaissance years : not quite the gap of today

reading this i was revisiting my 'renaissance years' as i call them.

i was, and probably still am not, much of an academic. i had two very unfruitful college credit years in my first stop at university of alabama.. though i do have some decent stories to tell. i needed some perspective so i pulled out of the campus grind and began a two year journey i called my "renaissance years/period."

let me set the stage. i suck at college. i return home to new jersey after two years of college and mission service as summer staff. my fathers only request, "don't stop school," his fear being that i would not go back.. probably true too. soo...

• i enrolled at the high institute of learning that is burlington county college. i took mostly evening classes. so i could work a normal job.
• the normal job i attained was as a security guard with a top secret clearance. i worked at lockheed martin & this odd navy base. the strange thing though was i had this curly long hair and baby face patrolling the hallways in an outfit that likens back to a certain sheriff's outfit . no gun, mace or stick.. just a whistle to thwart back evil goers. this was my day job.
• i joined the fire department. mostly because i was 21 years of age and the other firefighters were amused that i could drink with them. my brother was already a member of the fire department, joining as a junior firefighter. i went to fire school, got my certificate and started... well.. mostly we hung out and drank.. stuff rarely burned around us. but i've got some good stories when things did burn. that was my free time & sometimes days when they would pay me.
• over the weekends i became the junior high youth minister at our church in new jersey. volunteer position of course. no funding, some 45 junior high youth, a ton of energy and no real experience. my only real strategy then was wrestle and beat the strongest kid in youth group, you gain instant respect then... i don't try that now.. not sure i'd win these days. those were my weekends.
• being in the fire department the trend those days was to get in with the ambulance squad. so i did too. joined in the 809 and went to emt school. my brother and i worked the night shift like 3 or 4 nights a week. they gave us this police car looking response vehicle so that we could go straight to the scene and someone (who lived closer to the squad house) would bring the truck. nothing was cooler than being 21 & 22 driving something that looked like a police car with siren & lights in the middle of the night at high speeds. those are some great stories, probably the ones i tell the most. what i liked about ems and the fire work was having tools and presence to help people in their greatest need. that was pretty cool. that was my night job.

i don't know where the idea of going straight from one milestone to another has become such a given that taking time to develop life experiences is odd and newsworthy. i am grateful for my two years as a renaissance man. it was the best learning i had while i was supposed to be in some education process.

hank thompson : remembering the cloud of witnesses

i have now been in hendersonville for three years. in those times we have started a family, made many friends and gotten to know many great people. but being an implant into a small town atmosphere has its interesting moments. like this

i'm walking the children's hallways one day and i see this little girl whom i see with her parents in my sunday school class every week. i say hello to the child and the teacher proceeds to tell me "do you know who this is?" and before i can even respond "this is hank thompson's grandchild." this confused me.. this is addison, amanda & john's little girl.. then i remember, hank is amanda's dad, who just happens to be the ex-mayor of hendersonville. he was the family member with the name and long standing member of my church, i just knew the family a little backwards from everyone else apparently.

hank passed away on sunday. like others of our hendersonville cloud of witnesses that have passed away in my three years time, i am still capturing who these people have been. i really only knew him as the dad to amanda. but as i found out through the last two days spending some 16 hours conversing with people touched by this man & seeing the full family in resolve & grief i know this new witness a whole lot more..

so other than working our vacation bible school (another posting). i was playing a different role mixing that 'do all things needed for ministry' to a job and doing all things for your friends. services were yesterday & today (visitaion & service). i never planned on ushering some 700 people (over 1000 in all) through the pews of our church in a maze i likened to an amusement park ride line. staying hours and hours later than a planned day, just to be a presence. standing holding seats, handing out bulletins, grabbing water, moving flowers, giving pats on the back, crying and laughing.

i grieved for the family & have prayed for them for over a year now, these last two days though have given me a little more clarity as to who was in my prayers and why our cloud of witnesses becomes a little more colorful.

but as son lance mentioned via

“He did not talk a lot about his faith because he didn’t feel like he had to,” Lance Thompson said. “He lived it out.”

i think hank will find a friend in saint francis.

music monday : bela fleck and friends

driving down and back from vacation i got into my habit of listening to random radio stuff. bad christian preaching radio, old country, classical, you get the picture. not so random in the listening line up is npr. they had a great profile of victor wooten. it got me wondering what the fleck crew has been up too. i haven't seen bela fleck for a few years, since he came on stage with bobby mcferrin to do a set of dueling banjos, only mcferrin used his voice. that was awesome. so why not, get the fleck on.

more brain trust : revisiting the festival of homiletics

last spring jay & and a crew of us teamed up to lead worship with brian mclaren at the festival of homiletics in an 'emergent' service. coming up with 'emergent' at 8:30 am  with 1400 people was interesting to imagine. the tenets we thought up were images, participatory, and community.. the community part was manifested in our singing as our music had three musicians (jay being one of them) and each led a song. none of the songs were mainstream, but jays was one of his home brews and he's now sharing that sound and music for the song.

if you are around nashville : some youth ministry braintrust

my friends at the center for youth ministry training are putting together a pretty good looking conference this fall. i'm still working out the dates to go, but hope to make it myself. deech and the others are people i am happy to call friends and talented & knowledgeable youth ministers.

deech has made available some of his braintrust for those interested. he's got some powerpoints and note outlines from some work he presented to the virginia annual conference.

forgot to mention : on vacation

update: been able to upload the many pictures from our days at the beach

hey folks, forgot to mention that i'm on vacation with my side of the family unit. we are chilling out for the week in fort morgan alabama. got a fat pad right on the beach and haven't done much of anything all week. awesome!