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.

The Pleasure Cruise of the Disciples

So, youth ministry has always been a big thing for me, right? A bunch of times you'll see it show up in my posts or whatever.

It's always weird to me, though, because it's such a huge part of my life but most all of my friends and even family members have never really seen me doing youth ministry stuff.

A few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to speak to Uturn (which is the youth ministry here at El Segundo Foursquare Church). I talked about trusting God and facing your fears, which have kinda been the things that I'd been working through with this whole internship experience.


Anyway, the message got recorded, so I thought it might be fun to post a little bit from right at the end, kinda as proof to you guys who haven't really ever seen or heard me do youth ministry that I actually do it. Oh, and to give everyone the opportunity to make fun of the fact that I don't seem to fully understand the concept of a microphone, or that it's pretty obvious that my speaking style is more influenced by dane cook and nick swardson than billy graham or some other preachery guy.

Anywho, here's a little ten minute chunk I like to call the tennis story.

A Realer Post About California

It's awesome.

El Segundo, for those of you wondering, really is a small town stuck on the side of LA. I'm right south of LAX (and am nearly constantly reminded of the fact when I'm at the house where I'm staying), north of a huge Chevron oil refinery, west of highway 1 and east of the ocean. It's pretty rockin.

I can't go anywhere with staff members without running into several sets of people that we (meaning they) know. Last night, just to pick up some Chicken Dijon we ran into no less than 3 different groups of people, all out on unrelated errands who wanted to talk to us.

I, having lived here only five days, have already run into somebody that I know out on the streets. Walking home from work today, I ran into one of the members of El Segundo Foursquare Church who happened to be picking his child up from daycare as I was walking by. I refused his offer for a ride home not because I had anything against him, but because it was such a gorgeous day in El Segundo today.

I've been to the beach a little. I'm planning on going back on Friday sometime.

This experience is really stretching and exciting and scary and hard and amazing. I love the people here; I don't know that I've ever felt accepted into a group so quickly. And, instead of really putting me to work on their pet projects, they've really given me the opportunity to tell them what I enjoy doing and try to figure out ways to build ways for me to do that as part of the greater mission of ES4sq.

Which is really cool. And at least a little frightening. I just really want to do well.

I think that's all I've got tonight. I hope y'all are having wonderful summers, and I hope to hear from all of you soon.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.