Next week we kick off our summer ministry!  Our fifth graders will move up to Junior High youth group, which will meet on Wednesdays from 6:00-8:00.  Our eighth graders will begin their "Golden Summer", meaning they can attend all Junior High and all Senior High events all summer long.  And our summer theme, "On Fire", will begin.  This year I wrote a daily devotional for our students.  Each day they will have a page to read about a Bible verse that fits with our theme and introduces our teaching for that week.  Here is the letter I wrote our students, it's from the first page of the book, I hope it will help you understand the thinking behind the theme:

Dear Student,

There is nothing more important in the world than your relationship with God.  God loves you, and He wants to do incredible things through your life; that means you were born with a purpose, you have a reason to be here!  In fact, God loves you so much that He is willing to give you a choice: you can follow Him if you want to, but He won’t make you.  If you follow Him you get to go to Heaven, and that is sweet, but that is not the only benefit of following Jesus.  If you put Jesus in the driver’s seat of your life, incredible things happen!  Your life will have meaning, you will have a reason to get up in the morning, you get to be a part of something that really matters, you get to make a difference in this world, you have a chance to do things that will matter for all of eternity!  There is no feeling in the world like the feeling of knowing that God is working through you.  When that happens a fire is lit within your heart, and your entire life is all about making that fire grow bigger and hotter and letting it spread to other people.  That is what our summer is all about: being On Fire for Jesus.  This book is part of that theme.  In this book you will read about some of the verses in the Bible that have the word “fire” in them.  My hope is that you will learn to love God better, to know God deeper, to follow God closer, and to shine for God brighter.  My hope is that by the end of this summer we will all learn to be “on fire” for Jesus!

I’m looking forward to a great summer with you!

-Pastor Mike

Our church has purchased a new IMac computer.  It is fast, outperforming any of our other office computers by a long shot.  Its purpose: to edit pictures and video, manage the website, and live stream our worship services in order to better serve our church.  Already I’ve edited a video on it that would have crashed my PC at least half a dozen times.  I’m the biggest fan of our new IMac; I love the idea of our church advancing its message by being sufficient in its use of media and the web, but this new computer has got me thinking.

Our church can be the coolest organization on the planet, but still miss out on God’s best.  We can have the sweetest website, the most up-to-date Facebook, and media that is funny and relevant, but still miss what God wants most from us… kind of like Martha.

In the book of Luke there is a story about two women.  One was named Martha, and she was all about pleasing Jesus.  When Jesus came to visit her and Mary, the other woman, Martha went nuts!  She worked so hard, cleaning up, preparing food, making sure everyone was comfortable… I think she really wanted to do her best for Jesus.  But Mary didn’t help out at all; instead, she spent time with Jesus.  Mary knew she only had a limited amount of time to be face-to-face with the Savior, so she didn’t spend it working on making everything great around her, she spent her time worshipping.  When Martha got upset about this, Jesus said to her, “You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed .” (Luke 10:41–42 , italics mine) So what was the one thing He was talking about?  Ben Patterson, in his book ‘Deepening Your Conversation With God’, says it better than I can:  “The one absolutely essential, nonnegotiable thing is to be with Jesus as Mary was. The church grows when its people attend to the one thing needed, not when it is preoccupied with the many things not needed.”

May we be preoccupied with Jesus, and not with the ‘stuff’.  Our new IMac is pretty sweet, but I pray that we will use it to support the one thing that is most important: being with Jesus.

-Mike

I just finished a three hour lunch with my Student Leadership Team.  It seems that every time we meet I walk away encouraged as a youth pastor.  God is really doing some things through our ministry.  2009 was a great year, but as I look to 2010 I am thrilled at the possibilities!  The Student Leadership Team isn’t perfect; we have a long way to go in our training and team development, but today six students took three hours out of their Christmas break to continue preparations for a major outreach Super Bowl party that they are planning.  They could have done anything today, they are on Christmas break, but they chose to use their time for ministry, God is good!

Last night the Senior High Youth Group had a great discussion on the death of Jesus (Matthew 27).  When Jesus died the world went black, the temple curtain was torn, graves were opened and righteous men who had died were resurrected and showed themselves to many witnesses in Jerusalem, the earth shook, the presence of God was felt.

Did you read that?!  The earth went dark and shook and dead men came alive?!?  What?!  This isn’t your average Sunday School Jesus death scene.  Where were the zombies when I went to VBS?  Did they just leave that part out?  And the earthquake?  What about that?  Why do we picture this scene of Scripture as a dramatic and wrongful but otherwise uneventful death?  That’s not what the Bible says!

I have been on a mission as of late to bring a fresh perspective to my students, to help them see the stories of Scripture as if for the first time.  I want my students to ask questions, to see beyond the surface of the story, to have a sense of wonder when they think about who Jesus is and what He is.  In short, I want my students to be in awe of God.

The Senior High ministry has started a Student Leadership Team.  The team is made up of six students who have committed themselves to two goals: introducing students to Jesus, and helping students who know Jesus to get to know Him better.  Our team’s first project was to create a group covenant, a team contract with a list of expectations that we will hold one another accountable to.  The students made the list, and it has things on it like reading the Bible six days a week, church attendance, and setting an example of godliness.