Eye-Opening Experience

Have you ever had an "eye-opening" experience. One that hits you like a ton of bricks and its so hard to get up? An experience where you are so blown away you can't stop thinking about it?

I recently had one of those experiences. Some of you might not get this post, but being a Youth Pastor, I love teenagers. I think they are God's gift to Creation (sometimes). My job is to try and help teenagers come to a saving knowledge of Christ and have them reciprocate the process to the friends they have that do not know Jesus Christ.

Since moving to North-Eastern Lancaster County, I've always known about New Holland and Garden Spot. Growing up going to Penn Manor High School, Garden Spot was always known as the "Christian" Public School of Lancaster. I always heard great things coming from the area and I couldn't wait to see it first hand.

I've been here since May, and I've seen those things over and over again. But Saturday evening, a ton of bricks hit me.

A friend of my wife and I just took over the position at Cross Connections Youth Center in New Holland. It's a place that teens can come and hang out, kind of a safe haven if you will.

To make a long story short, she was short of help on Saturday and Brittany and I went up to help. It was then that I realized New Holland has a lot of hurting teens. I know what you are thinking, "Chris, you should have known this". But until you see something first-hand, it doesn't hit you.

My heart was broken seeing the 50-75 teens who either didn't go to church or said they did and 2 seconds later were dropping the "f-bomb" and trying to beat other teens up.

There are TONS of churches within a 5 mile radius of this Youth Center. I thought to myself, "WHAT IS THE CHURCH DOING???" Do we not realize this? Do we not see it? Do we even care?

Think about it.

Who are you reaching in your life?

I Wonder As I Wander

So last night we moved on in our series "Still Counting" and talked about Subtraction and things we could subtract in our lives. One of the adult leaders, raised a point which I thought was funny, but I also thought about it as I wandered in the back of the room while the students were responding to the lesson.

Anyways, we looked at Gideon last night fighting the Midianites. We saw that God asked Him to fight the Midianites, and eventually he got the courage to do so. Then God comes up and says I want you to take away a few (that's definitely a paraphrase). So according to Judges 7:3, 20,000 men left! Then God gives his reasoning that he does not want the Israelites to boast about themselves, but boast in God who is giving the Midianites over. Then God says we need to weed out some more of these cats (another definite paraphrase). So God tells them to take the rest of his guys down to the water. God gives Gideon the instruction to tell them to drink and he will weed them out by who laps water like dogs and who goes for the gold and sticks there head in the water and just "goes to town".

Here's the two things I'm wondering?

1. If I were Gideon, how and why does God take my men to the water to "sift" the other men out? It sounds kind of silly.

2. Why in the end, does God take the men who lap the water like dogs? It just doesn't make sense to me.

Think about it! Give me your thoughts!

Still Counting

As some of you know, we started a new series called "Still Counting". In this series, we are seeing that math really does matter to God. We see all throughout the Bible, cases, that deal with numbers. Some we threw out on Wednesday were:

1. The animals in the ark (2x2)
2. Gideon's 300 men to fight against the Midianites
3. 12 Disciples
4. Feeding of the 5,000

As we looked at the beginning of this series we looked at the word "addition". We see that God loves adding things. He added tons of things during Creation. We also see that God added to the number of people being saved in the Church in Acts 2.

At the end of the night, we had a time of personal reflection. I set a box in the front of the room and you or your friends (for those who were not there) thought and prayed over what they were "adding" to their life recently. I received some great responses. I won't put any "super serious" ones on here, but some included:

1. Sports
2. Theater
3. Leadership
4. Older People
5. Self Control

There were some negative ones as well which I had encouraged and will be praying over for the next couple of weeks.
Anyways, if you are reading this and you weren't there this past Wednesday night or you just browse this blog, what are you adding to your life nowadays???

Think about it!

Prayer

What do pastor's have in common?

We all read each others blogs and "borrow" them for our blogs.

I am a avid reader of Pastor Scott Distler's (Lititz GBC) blog. He has read an article by Perry Noble, a pastor in South Carolina, who talked about praying for pastors. So, I want to youth-a-fy it and post this entry.

It is key to pray for your youth pastor on a regular basis. When are some times he REALLY needs prayer.

1. Wednesday Nights. So much is riding on Wednesday nights. Trying to bring other teens in, making sure the lesson is "cool" enough, and making sure everything is ready to go. Wednesday's are the busiest and most stressful for most youth pastors. So this would be a great time.

2. Sunday Mornings. Sundays for our church is a place where teens can go deeper in the Word. So, I, personally am stressed out making sure every verse is studied properly or to the best of my ability and making sure no heresy is taught :)

3. Anytime the Holy Spirit Leads. Whenever you feel like you should pray for your youth pastor, please PRAY! Sometimes the Holy Spirit will impress on your heart to pray for your youth pastor because he may be going through a tough time you do not know about. Pray for them.

As a result of this, we are asking parents to pray before, during, and after the Wednesday night programming to start. If any parent is reading this, please feel free to contact me with a time slot you may be able to pray.

As for you students, pray for the youth pastor and your leaders as much as possible. We need God as much as you do and we would love your prayers!

New Time, Same Place & Exciting News!

Alright Guys!

Unfortunately, if you are not involved with the youth group on any level, you can skip this post because you probably don't care.

First, our Wednesday night time has changed. We are going to be starting at 6:30 PM instead of 7PM. I'm very excited about this because we have a lot of opportunities that can be accomplished after Youth Groups. We will still meet in the Fellowship Hall for Wednesday evenings as well.

Second, with the start of this new time, we are having a pretty cool giveaway this week. If you come at or before the new time of 6:30, you will be entered in a drawing for a $25 ITUNES gift card. That's 2 and a half albums!!! And there's more...if you bring friends your name gets put in the drawing one more time. If you bring two friends, your name is entered two more times and so on and so on.

Lastly, Wednesday night we are unveiling our new logo for the youth group. We decided to change the logo a little bit to update it and make it a little flashy so people can understand what we are all about!

SO...You better be here tomorrow night. You don't wanna miss it!

I will post our old logo for the very last time...enjoy!