You may have noticed without warning I stopped blogging for the past month or so. It wasn't something that I initially planned, but I decided to go with it once I realized I stopped for several weeks in a row.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx1-q0KP3NI This fall for one of our middle school events we are going to be taking our students to an indoor trampoline park called Sky Zone. I just recently heard of them popping up all over the place and was pumped to find out that we have one less than an hour away. I've never been to one, but I can't imagine it not being a hit. What could be better than tons of trampolines to play dodgeball, basketball, and do flips on.
Have you been to a Sky Zone yet? What did you think?
All the doctrines that we believe hinge on our understanding of how God has revealed himself to us in the Scriptures.
It's been just over two years since I've started this blog. After 255 posts, I have learned a lot about myself, my ministry, and becoming a better writer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KQb3Mx2WMw I have read articles, books, and blog posts about the teenage brain several times, but none of those quite compare to this video of Rainn Wilson (Dwight from the Office) explaining why teenagers are the way they are. The teenage brain is incredibly fascinating and greatly affects how we minister to students. If you work with teenagers in any capacity or are a parent of teenagers, I think you'll find this video amusing.
While a clear, compelling vision is certainly important, we would do much better focus first on the people on our team and let the vision follow.
You may not think of yourself as a theologian, but you are one. This series will describe various doctrines from a lutheran perspective.
Over the past week I have been hanging out with our high school ministry in South Carolina at Myrtle Beach. Despite a flu virus hitting 1/3 of our group, the students had an incredible time.
This week our creative team decided to get together and do some Christmas planning. And yes, I do realize it's July.
[tentblogger-youtube XFGAQrEUaeU]
If you could have a conversation with your 12 year old self, what would you say to yourself? Think back to when you were only twelve years old, what did you care most about? What were the biggest worries in your life? What did you want to be when you grew up? As someone who spends a lot of time with students that are around that age, I often have to try to remind myself what I was like when I was 12. There are certainly some differences to being 12 now versus being 12 when I was a kid, but there are also many things that haven't changed.
What would 12 year old you say to you?
I check my blog's traffic way too often; I too easily get sucked into checking my website statistics far too frequently.
[tentblogger-youtube q-KyQ90XByY]
I've be re-reading Good to Great by Jim Collins again. The insights made by Jim Collins describing what separates a good organization from a great one are incredible. Collins notes in the early chapters of the book that great organizations are run by level 5 leaders and create a culture of level 5 leadership within their team, while good organizations have excellent level 4 leaders. A Level 5 leader is a leader that combines humility and an enduring will. While we commonly think of great leaders as being ambitious, charismatic, and innovative, the truth is the best leaders are humble, want to stay out of the spotlight, always give credit to their team, and take the blame when things go wrong.
The primary role of the preacher is to take their lives, the scriptures, and other people's works and curate them into the sermon.
How cool is it that we get to live in a country where we are free to publish whatever we want online?
One of the most important jobs that a leader has is finding other leaders and giving them an opportunity to lead.