I’m in Indianapolis this week for the FUEL youth pastor’s conference. Speaking this week is Pastor Dave Bever. He’s pastor of the New City Church in Cleveland and has become a great friend of mine over the past few years.
FUEL has about 150 youth pastors gathered for renewal, retooling, and refreshing. I’m honored to have been able to help plan and carry out this event! I love that the Wesleyan denomination values our youth pastors enough to pull together an event like this to train and refresh our youth leaders!
The following video comes from a pre-session sound check.
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If you’re like me, every Spring and Fall you get a little nervous about the upcoming “Daylight Saving Time” clock-fiasco. For my entire life I’ve known about Daylight Saving Time, but I’ve never taken time to really understand the when, why, or how it works.
That changes for me today.
I was researching the “Fall Back” date to be sure to announce it at church and decided to do a little reading on the subject of Daylight Saving Time.
DST has been happening in the US since World War I. It’s main goal was to allow an ‘extra’ hour of daylight during the Summer months to help farmers eek-out the extra daylight everyday. That makes no sense to me, however, since every farmer I ever knew would get up and begin work HOURS before daylight everyday anyway!
Since 2007, DST always begins on the second Sunday of March and ends on the first Sunday of November and actually takes place at 2AM on those beginning and ending dates each year.
I think everyone in America prefers the Fall-back end to DST rather than the Spring-forward start.
One trick my Dad always played on us growing up was turning the clocks forward or backward a day-early so that we could get used to the time-change. I have begun the same tradition in my own household as much as possible.
Anyone else have any DST tips or tricks?
One of my “worship arts” heroes is Blaine Hogan. He’s a creative director on staff at Willow Creek, a small church in the Chicagoland-area.
I was a fan of his before I knew he was on staff at Willow, too. Jess and I were fans of his acting performance on one of our favorite shows of all-time, Prison Break.
This video he just released was a creative collaboration between him and a few others that was a part of the Global Leadership Summit at Willow Creek this year. I was eating my lunch today when I saw it. Time slowed as I watched it and soaked it in. Watch “Be Here Now”:
I have always been a fan of creative-uses of media in worship settings and this is one of my new favorites!
I finally checked out the band, “Gungor”. One word: Wow.
Passionate Christ-centered lyrics, skillful instrumentalists, and a unique band name (which is merely lead guy Michael’s last name) = amazing.
They played at Catalyst in Atlanta last week and ever since there has been quite the grassroots movement on Twitter/Facebook/Blogs promoting this band to the masses. If you’re looking for a fresh worship band to add to your playlist, I think you’ll like their passionate acoustic version of “Beautiful Things”:
“Beautiful Things” Lyrics:
All this pain
I wonder if I’ll even find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found
Could a garden come up from this ground at all
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us
All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us
You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us
Their new album, “Beautiful Things” is on Amazon MP3 right now for $9.99.
What an awesome morning at First Wesleyan, Shippensburg! I preached a message entitled, “3 (more) Qualities of the Real Church” (sermon audio is here if you’re interested). The final quality this morning was that the REAL church has a “consuming focus”. I reminded our church that NASCAR fans have a consuming focus that we could learn from as Christ-followers!
I also laid out the vision I believe God has for us at First Wesleyan – to be about Loving God and Loving People – it’s been a theme that God has given me again and again over the past 8-years and I believe Jesus saying that loving God and loving our neighbors are the first and second ‘greatest’ commandments is reason-enough for us to adopt it as our church mission.
I closed the message with an opportunity for people to make a commitment to the Lord and we had one person do just that! I also challenged anyone else wanting to recommit their life to the Lord and we had at least 3 respond to do that! My final challenge was asking those who call First Wesleyan Church their church to take a stand and commit to have a consuming focus to Love God and Love People and nearly everyone in the sanctuary that could stand DID stand. It was another humbling, God-moment for us!
I’m so excited about our church and our consuming focus and that our people are excited about where we’re going. We have had a few new families in attendance every couple of weeks and I trust the Lord will continue to bless us as we are consumed with loving Him and people!
Please continue to pray for First Wesleyan of Shippensburg as we trust the Lord and discern His will for us. Please pray for me, too, as their shepherd that God would continue to challenge me and inspire me in new ways to lead this church to be salt and light in our community!
