About to leave for Columbia, SC

After some time at work today I am ready to leave for Columbia. My wife, Kristen’s parents are moving into their home after the year long process of building a house. They have been living in an apartment with their son Drew, 18 who has cerebral palsy and their youngest daughter Emily, who is a really great artist and has a creative mind that is better than most that I have seen.

The apartment was incredibly cramped so this is a big celebration for them and I am happy to be a part of it. The house is equipped with all of the stuff that Drew needs and a studio-type bedroom for Emily. I can’t wait to share the fun and excitement with them as they move into the home. Pray for travels as we go. Probably very few blogs this weekend but you never can really tell with me.

out

A lot to learn

As Ned said to me earlier this week, “For all the times we get to slime kids and ride on a segway, we have to do things like this” He was talking about some of the things that you don’t hear about often. (of course it depends on who your pastor is, how often you hear about them).

The negative emails, the interesting phone calls, the people that don’t want to serve, and the people that could care less if you fell off of the face of the earth. It’s the side of ministry that I am just beginning to get accustomed to. I am learning to love difficult people and more than that learn that not everything is always so rosy for everyone.

I definitely couldn’t imagine before I started working in ministry how dejected you will fill after you put your life into something and someone couldn’t stand it for some reason. It is honestly a terrible feeling. But I say all of this in order to encourage and challenge you to do something.

This past week at Adventure Week I got numerous letters from children, thanking Hanz and Franz for the fun times and thanked us for exploding things. We had numerous encouraging emails from first time people, staff members, and parents expressing their thanks. How often do we do this for our staff? For all of the terrible, no-fun emails there should be a number of encouraging ones. I challenge you today, write an encouraging email to a staffer at your church. Tell them how thankful you are for their service.

Role of Small Group Leader

Incredible post today from Dave Wakerley about what Reggie Joiner says about what the role of small group leader should look like.

Check it out.

Some reflective thought

Reading through John 4 this morning I am hit with a few things:

1. God offers a living water to the Samaritan woman.

He talks about a gift where want is no longer something that you have. It’s just 6 days away from my birthday and I am trying to imagine a life without want. That new car instead of driving the Saturn, the new iPhone 3g to curb my technological desires, or the want of an incredible dinner every night that I come home. What would it be like if there was no want? It boggles my mind to think of a place and I also know that I should be living that way now but I’m not. I just “want” too many things and that is unfortunate.

     2. Worship in Spirit and in Truth. The message puts it this way:

23-24“It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”

I think of how I search for who I am and who God is on a consistent basis. To worship God like He wants you must do it “out of your very being” who God created you to be. Man I wish that is how I live my life. This is who I am. My name is J.C. and this is who I am. 

Pray for me as I continue to discover who I am and as I struggle with want. I pray that we as followers of Christ would quit striving to be something we are not and rather live life like God created us.

incredible things

Tomorrow I have a meeting with staffers about this fall’s programming. This is my favorite part out of all of our meetings. We get to discuss where we see children fitting into our ministry. Yes I said it. The idea is not new but the implementation of it certainly is. That God has called children to serve is incredibly life changing. We must give them the opportunity to do so and also the training to do so.

I can’t wait to see what this looks like. I can’t wait to talk about it tomorrow. Please pray for us as we have these discussions. Wherever life change is happening, Satan attacks. We have already seen evidence of this. Please pray that Jesus works some things out as we try to move forward with our vision to get children to be involved in Service for Christ.

A few things learned…

The past two weeks I have been extremely busy and have not had the time or energy for blogging but today I am ready to begin again. I am incredibly excited about the future of children’s ministry here at Brookwood Church.

I heard some incredible things from the adults that were there this past week that included some of the following quotes:

“This is like a camp.”

“I wish (VBS) was like this when I was a kid”

“This is like Promise Keepers kid’s style” that one made me laugh.

In the midst of this giant program I learned some incredibly important values that I want to give to you:

• Even kids desire to be a part of something great.
• When you offer value to people, people want aboard
• Why can’t we give children the type of program that we feel like students and adults deserve?
• It takes a team to accomplish a giant task.
• Imagine the impact on your church for years if the kids are involved from elementary school.

Just a things that I took away. I would love to know about some incredible kid event that changed your perspective on things.

It’s over [:(]

So on one hand I am completely exhausted and tired. But on the other hand I am sad that its over. So I would like to show you a video of our Adventure Week that our Communications Department made.

Thanks to everyone who had a part in Adventure Week. Which is pretty much everyone!

Thursday of Adventure Week

I am incredibly overwhelmed by the incredible work that God has been doing this week.

Today we present the gospel to our upper elementary children. I can only think of one thing this morning as I am praying to God. Two groups of people ran towards Jesus. People that had either a physical problem or a spiritual problem and children. And funny enough, the disciples at separate times tried to stop members of both groups. I am asking today that nothing would allow us today from stopping people to run to Jesus.

Thank you so much for your prayers. I am so thankful.

Adventure Week Notes

I can’t believe that its here but also I can’t believe that we are done with day 2.

I would give alot more information besides the awesome incredible worship and super fun kids. But honestly there is no way I could put it all into a blog entry especially with the schedule for this week.

By the way I am getting and iPhone in 1-3 weeks.

Here it is

Here is the video that I promised you of every boy’s dreams tied in with our theme for Adventure Week