Pastor of Fishing

Well its the last night here…and frankly I thought I would have more time to write and update, but it has been 6am up and 1-2am and I am back in bed throughout the week.  The intensity of it all has made me feel like a rushing wind that blows me away.  Today and yesterday were very heavy days for me because I had to give my seminar.  We also had a real wrestle on the concepts of peace.  What does that mean to be a peacemaker and how does it work in our world today?

I found that here at Convention one needs to come with an listening heart.  I say this because the Holy Spirit is always trying to talk to us, but are we actually tuning in?  Greg Boyd tonight spoke and really gave us a world that includes the Holy Spirit on a regular basis.  He talked of the craziness that God took him through that just didn’t seem normal to the world.  He called us to a challenge to live as ambassadors.  The thing that really stuck to me was the discussion of the Roman Soldier and his affairs.  The soldier doesn’t concern himself in civilian affairs, instead he is concerned about his orders and his superior officer.

Tonight, I sit and just lean back in the chair in awe of the Holy Spirit.  I am staking a claim today to work at listening better.  I am going to be exploring with others at my church and in my world this concept of listening.  Tonight we exercised this on our walk home.  I stopped our group and asked us to pray.  See, we walked past a homeless man that said hi to us.  He didn’t ask for money just said hi, and I said hi back.  It was his eyes, something pierced me…as we walked on for about a block I was just disturbed with this nagging thought to help him…Thus the group gathered and prayed for us to raise funds for this man.  We gathered the money and we had 2 t-shirts (extras cause some of us bought new one’s at the concert).  I walked back and asked the man if he believed in God.  He said yes and I shook his hand and palmed him the money and handed him the T-shirts.  I looked at me confused and I smiled, “God told me to give it to you.”  I turned and walked off.  We were walking down the block and I turned back to see the man clutching the tshirts and looking to the sky…He knew where his help came from.

I write this to give testimony to the freedom within the spirit.  The dollars well it was like $100 that we raised in that moment.  I ask…what more can we do if we just “tune in” to the Holy Spirit?  More to come and this is just the start…a passion and fire has been fanned and fueled for more amazing things to come!!

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It has become very apparent to me as I sat in the arena with 6000 other believers that have similar theological stances that God is just really friggin big.  I know that may sound like something that is obvious, but really think about it…this whole world…how it all was made…and just man…geez.

Blogging on the events of the past two days is going to be very difficult with the timing of it all.  I have begun to write the thoughts and I want to start to summarize over time because its just been a HUGE blast of information.

Today and yesterday I have seen this transformation with the Sr High youth.  This week my focus has been on the Sr Highers.  This is what I am noticing in the conversations…I am seeing this amazement as how God works.  How huge the body of Christ is and that it can do amazing things.  Tonight was joint worship.  If you hit my facebook you can see some shots of the arena.  I had to sit in awe of the situation.  I have been to Creation and seen tens of thousands worship, but this was different.  It was a celebration with multiple ages represented.  We watched a 160 children’s choir perform.  Another youth and adult choir performed.  The joint worship included hymns and praise songs as well as good ol Ken Medema (for those that are not familiar with Ken – he is blind and has a gift of composing songs on the fly to match what we heard/learned that night).  The speakers were a joint female team that described to us the concepts of the Holy Spirit (will summarize these thoughts in another blog).  Now back to the change in the teens…

Tonight we got real.  Last night they had to write their fears on mirrors and then this morning they threw the mirrors away during the morning session.  This caused them to really take a stand against fear and rely on their faith.  Tonight the discussion turned to how the Holy Spirit/wants and needs us/ to work the harvest.  At small group tonight the challenge was made.  It is very odd because we had 4 different high schools represented in our youth group.  That is four campuses that have believers that could make a loving impact…and THEY GOT IT! AMEN!

We will be continuing these discussions because it has now gone to a point of saying that I personally need to live an authentic life of my past present and future with these kids.  It is a calling that my wife and I have to realize that these kids are the future of the church…5 years from now they will be adults….5 YEARS!

So anyways…that is where we are at today in a nutshell.  MORE writings to come!

This was just the tip of the iceberg…just the tip!

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Howdy!

A great full day filled with dynamic worship, speakers that were very spiritually minded…and the seminars seemed to have an overall positive response.  I found our small group time to be rewarding.  I am pretty tired tonight, but tomorrow I will be spending some time gathering my thoughts.  It was a jampacked day and learned my lesson of needing a little down time haha

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Well, in a nutshell today was an experience of a lifetime for me as a youth worker.  We left our quaint community of Schwenksville to hit the open road on a journey across state lines to Columbus Ohio to experience a week with the greater Mennonite body and the Holy Spirit all wrapped into one.  The theme for the week is Breathe and be filled.

Some of the basic items happend on the trip that are normal…pee breaks, food stops, and the occasional malfunction of a vehicle (nothing bad some warning lights came then disapeared (miraculous car healing?))  It was a great ride out and we ended up in Columbus around 3:00pm.  This is where my pateince was tested and my skills at dealing with the mistakes of my humaness.

Ahh the dratted screwed up hotel reservations…my fault of course I had us arriving a day earlier…sometimes I hate computers and the calendar entry stuff hahaha.  Needless to say Todd at the front desk was able to have us all together and actually the rooming situation turned out better than I had set it up previously…God covers my butt AGAIN!

Then we hit registration…now I will say it is my Rookie year and there is a lot to learn.  My buddy Jason went down to give moral support since I was pretty razzed after the long drive and the narrow parking garage (yeah 6’8 clearance in a rental 15 passenger van…not alot of headroom, found myself ducking inside as I drove).  Once we got down there we had some snafus with registration.  Nothing that wasn’t resolved and this time it wasn’t my fault…but hey Jason kept me calm and we worked through the issues.  God was good in all this cause I really was rather tired.

Well we got our stuff and worked out our logistics on how the night would go with the Youth.  We set up our boundries for the evening and poof…off to dinner and then worship.  Some ate Chinese, some had Italian…and others had Subway(nationality help?).  Great first meal the Chinese I had was EXCELLENT!

After dinner we rolled over to the Nationwide Arena…yes the Arena.  This place is a good sized indoor arena where the Youth Worship was taking place.  Mama spoke about getting the Holy Spirit to refresh us in our lives.  To give up the crap and get refreshment in our souls…it was very powerful.  Tonight at our small groups the reactions were inspiring to hear on the first night.  I thank God we were able to hear her in time…just was one of those late getting to it.

After worship the kids went off into the Convention Center for free time.  Ryan and I hit up a Youth Sponsor’s orientation and some of the Adults took in things for the “older” folk.  Slowly people trickled to bed and the contingent group that was left we walked back to our hotel.

I am giving you a brief overview of this time.  I am anxious for tomorrow to dig into some seminars and interact with others of faith here @ MCUSA09.  I highly encourage you to joing up on Twitter .  We are going to be hitting up it heavy with being out the door @ 6:30am…of course I am still up till lights out of 1:00am…the joys of being the “adult in charge”.

Overall thoughts are amazing…just amazing…its something everyone needs to experience in their life…just so powerful.  I am thankful my wife and son are on this trip to experience it first hand with me…a note of just thoughts…My wife was noticing another child around our son’s age and it hit her…in 16 years he could be interacting with her at Convention…so intriguing how the concept of generation discipling can happen.

My prayer for the night into tomorrow:  May God continue to breath into me as I am here this week.  May I be a vessel to exhale love to those around me and touch the lives  of those in my care.  May the group continue to build unity and let there not be a feeling of being left behind.  Thank you Lord for this opportunity.  Thank you Lord…thank you!

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