Tuesday, November 21, 2006

What is Quest?

Kellie asked waht the draws of Quest were, so I thought I would make it a blog. It's interesting the students here would not bring their friends to a normal crew night, but they wanted a "bring your friends night" or something like that, so we advertised it as this is the series to bring your friends too. We are also doing a team competition in which 50 pts is given for each new person that comes, so that's part of the draw as well, but the main draw is just making it known to everyone that this needs to be a place to bring friends too. So simple, yet so effective!

By the way my 10 page paper is done. Yey me!

Monday, November 20, 2006

Yes I'm still alive

I'm sorry it's been way too long since my last update. It's been a very busy couple of weeks. Here are some highlights

  • Had 2 trips to Oregon, both were very fun. The first weekend was for sarah's 21st birthday. We had a great time with her family. The last one was for a friend's wedding. I was a groomsman, and will never understand why they got married on Apple Cup weekend being a die hard husky fan, but it was a great ceremony.
  • Youth committee meeting went well, both mission trips got approved so definately excited about that
  • Had a long stupid Council meeting, but nothing new there.
  • Went to a dessert with the sr. pastor and the area director of young life to see how our church can partner with him.
  • Should have done a lot of school work but didn't (I'm now updating instead of writing a 10 page paper)
  • We started the Quest last night for high school. Quest is a 4 week high program outreach series designed for them to bring friends. We had 5 new people come, so that was awesome. It was a great night with lots of energy.
  • Jr. High Turkey Dinner went very well. 16 jr. highers eating lots and lots of food.

It's been a crazy few weeks, so it's very nice having a relaxing week. I can get started on some more future planning stuff, and really get a lot of that out of the way when I don't have weekly program. Well, don't know what else to say back to my paper.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

b-rad's travels

Back from Anaheim and now sitting in a hotel room in Portland, because I have seminary in the morning. The rest of the conference was awesome. Since I wrote last we heard from Shane Claiborne who works with homeless in PHiladelphia and Philip Yancey spoke on prayer. What a great time of encouragement and training. I guess the 3 things that I would take out of the weekend are
Creativity: Just being creative in how I teach, and really put in a lot of effort to teach effectively
The One: Being willing to go after the one and risk the 99, which is the idea that we focus on people and not programs. The program is a means of reaching the people but not the total goal. Hence me starting small groups for the underclassman guys. It'll be a great way to connect with the students outside of sun. nights
Rest and Reflection: I need to make sure that everything I do is prayed over, and really following where God wants the youth group to go. I also need to make sure I take my personal time with God, and on my own. That time is easy to ignore, so I need to make sure I'm doing that.
I've also started to schedule the winter and spring activities. i'm very excited about the the events and message series that we are going to do.
Also looks like our summer mission trips are coming together. Pray for our youth comittee meeting where these get approved. I don't want to say what we're doing in case students find the blog, but it'll be different than what river ridge has done, so I'm hoping everyone buys in to where we are going.

And on a Brad's not very smart note, I am in a holiday inn express and am hungry so thought I would order a pizza. I think I'm dialing Papa John's, and hear the lady at the other end say hoiday inn express, so I think wow she already knows what phone I'm calling from that's cool, and proceed to order a pizza, until she says "Are you a guest" and it clicks how I'm incredibly smart, so yeah good times!

Saturday, November 04, 2006

NYWC Anaheim

So I'm finally getting around to updating. I am currently in Anaheim, CA at the National Youth Workers Conference. It has been a very good trip so far. It's been great to be with Ben's (old youth pastor at river ridge) group so I feel like I'm not totally by myself here, but at the same time feel like I have the freedom to be alone when I want to be. It has been a day and a half of overload with tons of information, tons of encouragement and tons of just trying to listen to gone. With so much to process, I thought I would give the half way favorites list.

Favorite Main Stage Speaker: By far Mike Pavalacchi. I totally butchered the last name but he is the founder of Soul Survivor in England. He talked tonight about the importance of going after the "one" whether that be the one non-Christian kid, or the fringe person or being in the world, just risk it to go after individuals, and show your love to individuals. It was a great encouragement and reminder to keep my focus small. As I focus on the big things like program, focus on the individuals too.

Favorite Seminar: Chap Clark's having a deep ministry in a shallow world. What a great practical session on ways to go deeper. It just focused on being purposeful in everything in order to take the ministry to the next level.

Favorite thing God is saying to me: There are so many things, but based off lots of prayer and thinking I will be leading a small group. I don't know when or how it will look like, but I feel called to lead the 9th and 10th grade guys group myself. I'm excited to get back and process that more.

Favorite band: David Crowder is awesome. I've heard them so many times that they seemed to be getting old, and I wasn't too excited about 4 sessions of Crowder, but it was amazing, had some newer songs, and really led us in worship.

Favorite stupid trick: Gotta say the comedian who balanced a ladder on his face was awesome. Too bad i don't know his name. Also love Ted and Lee's skits.

Favorite meal: Chicken Quesadillas from the Hilton restaurant were amazing tonight!

Favorite Critique: Had to continue with the favorite theme but I think the biggest thing is that the training and seminars are awesome, but it seems almost too big to network. Haven't talked with a ton of other people, as most are in their own groups, and just wish there was more network possibilities in a smaller setting! But for training and encouragement on a big setting there's nothing like it.

There have been no bad session/seminars, I've heard from Kenda CAsey Dean, Effram Smith, Kurt Johnston, Mike p, Matthew Barnett, Doug Fields, and Chap Clark. Excited for tomorrow, the last full day of the conference. I'm also really excited about Monday. i've decided to not go to any of the morning conferences and just spend the morning alone. Ben's group leaves at 5am so i'll have the room to myself (provided they don't kick me out when they check out) and i'm just going to try to start processing everything before I get home. I can get cd's of anything I miss, so i want to take advantage of the quiet time. I'll update when I get back!