State of Emergency

OK, so, this blog is kinda turning into me just talking about what I'm doing in youth ministry, but that is basically all I do out here, so that's all y'all get. And since a bunch of you are already involved in youth ministry, and a bunch more of y'all should be, maybe these kinds of posts will give you some good ideas about where to go or what to do. Or, you can also shout things back at me in the comments like "that sucks!" or more constructive things like "i think it would be cool to do that same thing with shards of pottery and glass" or whatever.

I think it'll be fun.

So tonight was my last official regular old Uturn of the summer, which is crazy how fast this summer has gone by. Anywho, Jon (the youth pastor) set it up long ago that I would be speaking tonight, so I prepared a whole lesson based around the life of Joseph (Old Testament). I mainly talked about how God uses the parts of our lives that we don't like or don't make sense to us to bring us to the place where he wants us. I called it "State of Emergency" because Joseph rose to power just in time to save the world in that huge famine. But mainly because I listened to this Bjork song "Joga" and that's where the whole idea for the teaching came from. I think the speaking portion was better last time I spoke. Also, I definitely heard from a bunch of people afterwards that I pace like mad. There was one freshman girl who said she felt like she was watching a tennis match. Note taken.

The cool thing, though, about tonight was that we put together this awesome mosaic. I told a story from my life that a lot of y'all probably remember from a few Christmases ago, and just talked about how in that situation, and in a lot of situations, I just don't understand why God has certain things happen. So I asked the kids to write down a situation similar to that in their lives on these little sheets of paper. The sheets were covered in dots of random colors and sizes which everyone just kind of wrote over.

While I was talking about the life and times of Joseph, the students on the student-leaders team at Uturn arranged the dotted images into the mosaic which they were each a part of. Anywho, this has been kind of confusing to write, so I took some pictures so that you could see it in action.

This is the full image. I talked about trees at the end. I don't know how well that part stuck. But I think this image came out perfect.

I also took a couple of close-ups:

How amazing are these students?

Peace, love, and joy to you all.