Lots of things going on. Things at church are super busy. We are moving to 2 worship service on Sunday mornings, I moving into a new office, and the building is being painted. With all that happening we are helping our missionary to Haiti collect supplies to ship to down there to help aid those who are sick and lost everything in the flooding in Gonaives from then Tropical Storm Jeanne. John Stone (our missionary) left Haiti on a planned furlough right after Jeanne hit is going back a week earlier than planned to help with the disaster. I leave for Haiti on Oct. 14th for 9 days. I have been looking forward to this trip for sometime now. I’m pretty sure most I thought I would be doing has changed and of course I will do anything I can to help. Please continue to pray for the people in Haiti and all the missionaries down there doing God’s work among a people hungry for the gospel.

This week I started a message series with our Jr. & Sr. High called 4 weeks in Philippi. We are taking a small break from the Seven Check Points and doing a book study. My goal is to show that even though we aren’t the church in Philippi that Paul wrote to or the early church this is still applicable to us today. We worked through chapter 1 last night and looked at Paul’s charge to the church in vs. 9-11 and seeing that Paul is describing who God wants us to be, then we looked at Paul encouragement by see how firm his faith was despite being in chains for Christ, and last we looked at Paul’s expectation that we would wear his sandals and be persecuted in some form or fashion for proclaiming Christ to the world. As I encouraged my students I encourage you: fall more and more in love with God’s word so that you abound in knowledge and insight so that you will be able to discern who God wants you to be and be able to one day say “To live is Christ, to die is gain”.

This last Saturday we took our children’s ministry volunteers to Children’s Ministry Magazine Live a one day workshop for encouraging, equipping and rejuvenating children’s ministry volunteers. This was such a good workshop. They helped us get out of our adult selves and into the minds of children through the games and activities we participated in. If you are looking for a training event for your children’s ministry team this is it.

It is amazing to see how God works on the whole picture of your life even when He is working on a smaller area of your life. In my last post, I talked about James renewing my thoughts about going back to school to get another degree. While at the workshop this weekend the gentleman that was leading, Rick Chromey, was telling me about a project that he is working on for his doctorate degree. He is working on a distance learning masters degree in Youth and Family Ministry. This is right up my ally. As I search for what God has in store for me latter in life, I know that in my heart I want to give back to kingdom what it gave me. I had wonderful, caring, committed professors and maybe this is a sign as to what God has in store.

Since I have been out of school I have thought about continuing my education. I am seeking God’s will for this and lately have been going back and forth as to what type of master’s degree I think would best benefit my ministry and my future (whether I stay in vocational ministry or teach bible or ministry in a college setting). I work with James Jones (check out his blog) and he got is M.A. from Johnson Bible College in Johnson, TN in New Testament. It is a good program for ministers not near a Bible College who want to pursue masters work being that it is distant learning. Today He was telling me about a M.A. of Ministry program at Londen Institute in California. The minister of Crossroads Christian Church Barry McMurtrie is the President and while their curriculum is not as strong in the Biblical studies department it is an amazing practical ministry program. They have Mike Breaux (Willow Creek), Phil Claycomb (Christian Development Fund), Roy Lawson, Ben Merold (Harvester Christian Church), Barry McMurtrie (Crossroads Christian), Greg Nettle (River Tree Christian), Rick Rusaw (LifeBridge Christian), Bob Russell (Southeast Christian) these are some amazing ministers. I encourage you to look into always continuing to further your education whether through reading the newest books, going to seminars, take a class or purusing another degree.

This morning one of the coolest youth planned events happened. Now, I’m not much of a morning person, but I make sure that I am up to be apart of See You At The Pole. See You At The Pole is a student led time of prayer around the flag pole at their schools. This happens all over the world. I move around from school to school each year and this year I met two other youth ministers from churches here in Savannah. If your church is not being apart of See You At The Pole I encourage you to check out their web site and promote it all year for next year.

Hey guys, I feel like am really talking to someone out there. We survived Rock the Universe, barely! We had a great time and saw some awesome bands. Funny story. About 2 years ago, John Reuben had a concert at the Florida Christian Youth Convention and the convention staff messed up and put his concert during a free time session so only about 50 people stayed to hear him. Our group stayed (FCC Homosassa Springs) cause I am a huge John Reuben fan. He did a few songs and began to interact with the crowd and had a few people come up and free style ran and then a girl in our group told him that I knew all the words to his songs and I got up on stage and rapped with him. Anyways he stuck around after his concert at Rock the Universe on Friday night to signed autographs and posed for pictures and we went up and he remembered me. It was pretty cool, I totally didn’t expect him to but he did. So that is my funny story from Rock the Universe. Peace.

Hey everyone!

We are off to war torn Florida for Rock the Universe. It is going to be great. Lots of differnt bands. A small group. See you all on the flip side.

It just noticed how long it has been since I have posted to my blog. If you follow regularly and I have let you down I apologize. If you don’t oh well, you haven’t missed much.

We (my youth sponsors and I) have been teaching over the last three weeks a series called “Trick Out My Life”, an idea loosely based on a MTV show where people write in about how bad their car is and if they are picked then the show will all creative power fixes their car up. I have never seen the show personally but thought what a great idea for a message series about Ultimate Authority. When we give ourselves to God and allow Him with all creative power to rule our lives through what is explained in Scripture as how Christians should live how much better our lives would be.

Since teaching on this topic we have covered: Luke 9: 23 - 27, where Jesus talks about how disciples of Christ must deny themselves, pick up their cross daily and follow Him, 2 Samuel 11, about David and Bathsheba and how much better David’s life would have been had he followed God’s commands, and last night we hit a hard subject with teenagers Romans 13: 1 - 7, about submitting to authorities in our lives (government, school officials and parents).

studying this content as usual is self reflective. How do I need to change my life so that it is in line with Scripture and not for the sake of legalism but so that we are who we say we are, Christ-followers.