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Kick-Off 2017 – Bazooka Ball

For the past few years we have started off the new year for our students with a fun activity.  We take a break from our regular programming over the holidays and so try to jump-start January with something that creates a little bit of a buzz.  Last year we had a Black Light Bash and played 9 Square using black lights.  Pretty fun.

This year we played Bazooka Ball.  Our students were introduced to the game at our church camp (Butler Springs) and they love it.  Any time we go to camp, either during the summer or for a retreat, the students want to know when we get to play Bazooka Ball.  So, to get back into the swing of things in 2017, we brought Bazooka Ball to WCC!

And a good time was had by all.

This recap video shows a little bit of the action.  As we were cleaning up, one of our junior high students came up to me and asked, “Will we play this again next year?”

A good sign that the game was a success.

IMPACT Color War ’16

To kick off this school year we planned to do a fun thing that many youth groups have done – a Color War. The weather didn’t cooperate so we had to reschedule. A few weeks later we got together on a sunny Sunday October afternoon after small groups and had our first ever IMPACT Color War. It was a blast!

Report on the State of Social Media 2015

My daughter is a marketing intern at U of L and works in the digital side of things. She retweeted a link about the current state of the major social media networks. I have posted some articles on the supposed decline of Facebook and the growth of Instagram in the past, so I found the article interesting. Simply Measured did a report to be a resource for people working with social media. I kind of glanced through the 47 page report, but thought this graphic was very compelling.

It’s kind of mind-blowing to think that Facebook has 1.4 billion monthly active users and 936 million daily active users. Instagram has 70 million photos per day, there are over 500 million tweets per day and 1 billion views each day on YouTube. That’s a lot of activity in our digital world.

Kind of makes the number of followers I have seem pretty small.

Found this information interesting and wanted to pass it along.

State of Social Media

Some Good (& Free!) Parent Resources

Lunch Box Note from Matthew Paul Turner's Instragram (https://instagram.com/p/6zkxRKB4WS/)

Lunch Box Note from Matthew Paul Turner’s Instagram (https://instagram.com/p/6zkxRKB4WS/)

About a week ago I received an email with some free resources for parents.  After looking through the resources, I thought they were definitely worth sharing.

These resources come from a ministry called Parent Ministry.net.  They desire to help churches build an excellent parent ministry.

Around the same time I received the email, I remember seeing a lunch box note post on Matthew Paul Turner’s Instagram account. He shared a lunch box note he left for his son.  It underscored the importance of the resources that Parent Ministry shared.

The first resource is called Lunch Box Notes. They provide ideas for parents to use to leave various notes of spiritual encouragement to their children.  They offered 50 ideas for parents of children and parents of teenagers. You can view, download or print these PDF resources at these links:

Lunch Box Notes for Parents of Children.

Lunch Box Notes for Parents of Teenagers.

The second resource Parent Ministry provided was short videos for parents.  The videos are geared for parents of toddlers to parents of teens.  They deal with a variety of subjects that may speak to the specific season of parenting you may find yourself in. If some of the videos don’t apply to you, my guess is you have a friend or family member who could benefit from hearing one or more of them.

Besides, who couldn’t use some free parenting tips?!?

You can check out each of the videos below.  It is set up as a playlist and there are 8 different videos.  You can watch all 8 or just select the ones that interest you.

Shia LaBeouf Youth Pastor?

I’ve had the email sitting in my inbox for a couple of weeks now. It is a promo for Student Life camps. I have never attended a Student Life camp, but whoever came up with this video is genius!

If you have haven’t seen Shia LaBeouf’s Intense Motivational Speech, you need to watch it. It only has over 17,659,000 views. He really is intense and it’s fun to watch. In fact, this summer at MOVE Summer Conference, one student did his best Shia LaBeouf impersonation presenting the speech. If you haven’t seen the original, go check out Shia LaBeouf’s Intense Motivational Speech.

Here is how the Student Life used parts of Shia LaBeouf’s speech to promote their camp. Pretty good!

Shia LaBeouf is a Youth Minster from Student Life on Vimeo.

Amazing Video Conception to Birth

I’ve been reading a book by Philip Yancey called Vanishing Grace. His book is an exploration of why the church doesn’t seem to be doing a good job of demonstrating grace to the world. The question he asks is “What ever happened to the good news?” Through the book he talks about our world having a thirst that only God can satisfy, yet the church doesn’t always good job of presenting how God can quench that thirst.

Yancey explores some questions about the importance of faith and how people are searching for meaning. One area he looks into is science and how some scientists are pointed to God as they study. One extraordinary example he uses is Alexander Tsiaras. Tsiaras is a professor at the Yale Department of Medicine and has written software that utilizes MRI technology. He developed a video that he presented at a TED talk which compresses the nine months from conception to birth into a nine minute video.

I looked it up and thought the video and the facts shared through it are pretty amazing. Tsiaras shares in his TED talk about the complexity of the development of a baby and makes this observation: It’s a mystery, it’s magic, it’s divinity. It speaks so loudly as evidence for a creator.

This is the video he made (there are some graphic images).

One Safety Video to Rule Them All

I haven’t logged a lot of frequent flier miles, but I have flown enough to go through the safety instructions given before each flight.  Below has to be one of the best safety videos of all time.  It is for Air New Zealand and capitalizes on the success of the Lord of the Rings movies.  If you have seen the movies, you will enjoy it.  Some great creativity in this short video.

10,000 Reasons & Psalm 103

10,000 Reasons is a pretty well-known worship song and has been used in a variety of venues.  Just this summer I’ve sung it with our congregation, with about 900 high school students at a CIY MOVE Conference and with about 100 junior students at our week of summer camp.  We used it as part of our song set yesterday in our morning service and it seems to really connect with groups of all ages.

Before we sang it yesterday, we played about the first two minutes of this video where Matt Redman (who helped write the song) talks about the story behind the song.  Since I’m not a song writer, I find it interesting to hear about the process writers go through.  I like what he shares as it gives the back-story to the song we love to sing and points to Psalm 103 and what it says about worship.

Redman also gives a good reminder that God is always giving us reasons to worship Him.  Whether we are young or old, on the mountaintop or in a valley, loving life or struggling to get through the week, God provides numerous reasons to worship him.  A good reminder not only for our Sunday worship sets, but for how we live Monday through Friday.