Who is my neighbor?

Linkin Park |MTV Music

Used this video at our service tonight. We talked about how this video relates to the message in Luke 10 where Jesus is asked "who is my neighbor".  Who my neighbor is has changed.  With social media and internet connectivity we can be a "neighbor" to someone half way across the world.   How can we walk across the street to someone that is numb?  How can Christ followers take a step in the right direction to care for those that are numb?

Rockin out

I've been home just long enough to update my wife on some of the wins from our U-Rock event tonight. Because our group is called United and we were featuring our new RockBand 2 game our leaders liked the name. To go on record... I had NO idea! We had just about half of the students participate in the RB2 contest and they were very into it.  Students arrived early for the night and started right in on the RB2 and didn't stop... ever! That would be great, but we had about 22 other game systems there. We had a PS3, some Wii systems, 360's, and then the old skool... super NES & N64. All in all it was a great night. 

I am so proud of our team doing so great tonight. Chris totally went above and beyond! He seriously hooked us up tonight.

Some of my favorite moments:

• getting a song dedicated to me.
• seeing some very creative costumes.
• rocking out to some talented students performing RB2 songs.
• Freshman guy with chocolate on his face after consuming LOTS of candy saying ... "dude, it's like a five o'clock shadow... with chocolate".
• seeing new students getting connected with new friends.
• connecting with parents and seeing them love what their kids are doing.
• scaring kids as we were cleaning up.
• the guy that said that there needed to be more groups like ours around.
• a guest of a volunteer that loved it and just may give church another chance.
• our leaders that did SO great.
• coming home exhausted after knowing I gave my all today.

I'm sure there are more... hopefully I can post a picture or two soon...

Unscripted!

There seems to be a ministry trend where we put a lot of effort into programming out a service down to the last drop. Programming is great and good planning is important but it's not everything. The programming doesn't own the service. With all of the programming we can miss the unscripted moments. The unscripted moments seem to end up leaving people most changed. God often uses our unscripted moments... those moments where I often cringe and think "ouch... that's gonna leave a mark".

Have you had an unscripted moment lately that made you cringe and think ouch? Those are actually great moments. They are moments to be fully aware of because some of the best things can happen in the unscripted moments.

I have been thinking about this past week of ministry. My unscripted moment of the week was using slingbox at our student service to interact between our campuses during a Q & A. We had a six second delay. If you know programming, six seconds is an eternity. At every delay, yes there were more than one, I would cringe because the transitions were so off. In reality the students loved the unscripted feel and totally engaged in the questions. I am blown away with the awesome questions from our students.

It's super easy, as a leader to get wrapped up in the moments that are unscripted and make us cringe and loose sight of the big win. Overall the night was a big win. The questions spurred on great discussion and led the students to grow relationally and spiritually.

My prayer is that I can be aware of the unscripted moments and celebrate those rather than cringe.

Apache, bumper boats and go-karts

It was quite an eventful day...to say the least.

The last two Fridays we've been trying to do more of the "Friday-day-off-routine-traditions-stuff". We hit up a new coffee shop and enjoying it. Today we started with an early Sonic lunch with my daughter at her school. Sonic is literally on every corner! I feel sorry for those that don't have a Sonic on every corner... ok I don't. After lunch we headed off to the rest of the Friday traditions. Today we added dinner to the event plans.

A family favorite is having dinner on the patio at Central Market. On arriving, there was a shock... someone parked an Apache helicopter in the parking lot! Sam was pumped! The kids were so excited to see this sweet machine up close... ok, so was I. After a quick photo shoot, we grabbed dinner, then off to U-Pick.


U-Pick was our North TX multisite event. I had a blast hangin with some awesome students and leaders at Mountasia... unlimited go-kart + unlimited bumper boats + unlimited mini-golf = unlimited fun!


Makes for a good night. Whew... what a day. Now off to prepare of the aftermath of Ike.