Wake Review for 9/21/08

Wake is our weekly meeting for Junior High students at Watermark. We meet on Sunday mornings at 11:00am on the 4th floor of the Watermark Tower. Here is my assessment of this week's Wake.

Program Outline
Attendance: Average
Fun Factor: Average
Leader Presence: Average
Music: Average
Message: Average

This week brought, in my opinion, the return to average. Everything felt like we were getting into a routine. There were some standout moments but overall, nothing too impressive.

The one thing of interest was the fact that we have consistently been welcoming 10+ first time guests each week. A fun thing we have for our guests is the "Guest Suite" (a couch and comfy chair set up with a coffee table and accessorized with Red Bulls, candy, and other freebies). We randomly select two guests each week to enjoy the suite and all it's amenities. This week, we decided to give guests the opportunity to "win" the guest suite and so we just said, "If you're a first time guest and you feel comfortable, come up on stage and whoever can impress us the most will win." It turned into 20 minutes of hilarity and ended with a kid doing non-stop backflips while another kid sang Silent Night with her eyes shut.

The crowd went wild and we spent so much time goofing off with the guests that we had to scrap our game.

Music was okay but we had some no-shows that put us in a pinch. My message had a great concept and challenge but lacked in solid content and effective delivery. If you're interested, you can click here to find a discussion guides that leaders use in their small groups throughout the week.



P.S. We showed the following video towards the top of our program just for laughs...

Today was sad.

Today was tough.  This morning someone came into my office and told me a student at one of our schools that we pull a lot of kids from committed suicide last night.  I was shocked, and soon after that got a call from this incredible mom who told me her son was pretty close with the boy who died.  Her son and I had been meeting for the last 4 weeks or so, and today just happened to be the day he was coming in.  She said he'd come see me at 4:00, and was pretty worried about her son and how he would react.  

Then I went to lunch with an old friend from college, who told me his pastor just resigned from his church because he was having an affair with someone outside the church.  Sad.  

During lunch I felt my phone vibrate, and checked my voicemail when I got back to my office.  A good friend of mine left me a 2 minute voicemail asking me to pray because he was going to tell his wife that afternoon that he'd been unfaithful to her.  So sad. This is a dear friend of mine. I had no idea it was going on, and was completely shocked. 

Then, my student comes by at 4:00, we talk for an hour, pray, and he feels completely numb. I'm praying for him like crazy. I ran home and grabbed a granola bar, and headed to a prayer meeting for the student that passed away.  There were about 400 high school students there.  2 of our student ministry volunteers pulled into the parking lot at the same time I did, hugged their small group guys, told them they were so sorry for losing their friend, and loved on them for about an hour and a half.  The highlight of my day was seeing 2 committed volunteers love students well.  These 2 guys have invested 5 years in the boys that are in their small group.  I thanked them for being so faithful, and headed home.     

Wake Reviews 8/31 - 9/14

Wake is our weekly meeting for Junior High students at Watermark. We meet on Sunday mornings at 11:00am on the 4th floor of the Watermark Tower. Here is my assessment of the past 3 weeks of Wake.

8/31 Program Outline
9/7 Program Outline
9/14 Program Outline
Attendance: Way Above Average
Fun Factor: Above Average
Leader Presence: Above Average
Music: Above Average
Message: Above Average

I have loved my job these past three weeks! We've had tons of kids, tons of leaders, tons of energy, and tons of fun. Bode and Will Washington (a High Schooler who is interning with us) have brought the funny each week and made everyone laugh. We continued the "This is Real" series about identity and I think it really hit home with several of the kids. If you're interested, you can click here to find a discussion guides that leaders use in their small groups throughout the week.

Also, this past week saw the introduction of Joey Quinones to our volunteer program team. Joey is an experienced worship leader and he has done a great job building a team of adults and students to lead music at Wake. I expect that we will take a lot of new ground in that area and I am excited for what our students will experience.

Stand Up For Your Legal Rights

I hope this blog doesn't turn into the bad Christian video blog, but if I keep getting stuff like this sent to me...



Thanks Julie!

He'll Zap You

Watch this video and you'll understand why I'm having such a hard time deciding which member of Sonseed is my favorite.



P.S. Thanks to Todd Wagner for forwarding me this video.

Rats in the Attic

We found a second one in a trap today. I think we've got all the potential entry points covered and we have 5 more traps set in the attic in case there are more. This has been a horrific experience. Hard to sleep knowing that you have these things in your ceiling.

Thanks to Russ, Bode, and Saleem for the having the courage to enter the rat-infested attic on their Labor Day weekend.

Rebellious

Our kids love Lecrae and so do I...Click Here to Pre-Order Lecrae's New Album "Rebel" for yourself and your group! Releases 9/30/08.

Pray for Vintage Church!

This past Sunday my wife and I visited Vintage Church while we were home in Lawrence, Kansas. Put simply, it's amazing.  Vintage is a church start in Lawrence, and they rent out the Lawrence Arts Center on Tuesday nights.  The theater there seats about 300 people, and it was almost completely full.  God is on the move at Vintage Church, and it was evidenced in a few different ways.  

The first thing that stuck out to me was a third of the people there were high school students. Growing up in Lawrence (a pretty cool, yet crazy college town), I've never seen 100 high school students gather to worship Jesus like I saw on Sunday.  I couldn't help but just keep looking at the students, who had a real hunger for God and you could totally see it in the way they worshipped during the music, and the way they listened during the message.  

Second, Vintage's leadership is legit.  John Flynn leads worship and is in charge of community groups.  He is amazing at the guitar, and used to play with Waterdeep.  His wife sings with him, and the rest of the band does a great job of reflecting the art and culture of Lawrence.  Since it was Labor Day weekend, I thought the Lead Pastor may be out of town, and he was.  So Brian Timmer spoke, he's a seminary student in Kansas City who helps out at Vintage and he knocked it out of the park.  Imagine a younger Rob Bell that likes to carry his notes around.  He was very cool to listen to, and did a great job of communicating God's truth.  

Lastly, as young as the church is, they already seem to be experiencing incredible, new testament church kind of community.  I hung around for a while afterwards just kind of watching, and people just kept lingering, talking, and then went to get coffee after hanging around for 30-40 minutes.  Pretty cool.  

Pray for Vintage Church.  Lawrence has needed a church like this for a long time.