Book Review:

I just finished reading Speaking to Teenagers by Doug Fields and Duffy Robbins. This book had many good principles to follow when preparing a message and did a very good job off reminded us that there is more involved in teaching than just the words that come out of your mouth. But, the book was very much a text book on speaking. A great book to have on your bookshelf or to give out to lay youth workers, but very much a review for anyone that has taken a course on communication. Definitely worth reading if you haven't taken a course like that.

Youth Group Christmas Present

Tonight Kaci and I bought our Youth Group a little Christmas gift. In our youth room are many table games, but the majority of them are very old and in poor condition, so Kaci and i went and picked up a new toy for the youth room. We will present to them on Sunday right before Christmas. I'm posting this on here, because I'm confident they wont see this on my Blog. Merry Christmas all.

Thoughts on Black Friday

I read an article this morning talking about the record breaking sales day that happened this year on black Friday in stores. The article also stated that many of the deals offered in store where also offered online between the same hours, yet still millions of people still opted to wait in long lines and fight huge crowds for deals they could have gotten sitting in their homes in their skivvies. My observation, which my be absolutely false, is their is something adventurous and exciting about being apart of the mad crowds and confusions which makes it worth the hardship. People want to be apart of something; people want a story to tell; an experience. I think there are many ministry applications here waiting to be implemented.

Kal-Haven Bike Trip

What a great day. 30 brave teens took on the 34 mile Kal-Haven Bike Path. The Bike path started in Kalamazoo and then ends in South Haven. We biked all morning and then had lunch in South Haven. Great job to everyone who attempted this, and i would encourage those that didn't come to give it a try next year.

Berlin Missions Trip

This summer our Youth Ministry took our annual missions trip across the Atlantic Ocean to Berlin, Germany. I had the amazing privilege to work along side my wife and 12 teens from our church. We were involved in ministering to children through a VBS style day camp and then in the evenings ministering to Germany teenagers through a Survivor themed Teen Camp. I am excited to tell everyone one that we know of 11 people accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior during that week. But, one thing that i am just as excited about is the future results that we will see in the lives of the 16 of us that went on this trip.

Funny Far Side

I think this is so much more funny, now that i am a Dad.

2 Weeks of Lake Ann

This summer the Lord gave me the privelage to be a speaker at Lake Ann camp this year. I was the Fresh Start speaker for the first two weeks of Camp. Over those two weeks i got to spend time with close to 100 freshman, what a joy. It was amazing to see God use His Word through the ministry of Camp to touch so many lives for Christ. Chuck Norris Rocks!!

Sr. High Girls Mary Kay Party

So one Friday night the girls and I (this is Kaci :) decided that we should have a party with a woman in the church who sells Mary Kay products. The night started out kinda bumpy with us getting a late start and me having to drive the church van through downtown Kalamazoo (scary!). When we finally found the building we had a blast. Karen Mox did a great job showing us how to take care of our skin and the importants of wearing makeup that flatters your skin tone. So overall it was a great night of bonding over magnifying mirrors and lip gloss :)

German Dinner Fund Raiser

This Sunday our Berlin missions team and their parents hosted and authentic German meal for the purpose of raising money for the trip this July. We had such a great time... it took a team of nearly 30 to make his dinner a possibility. It was great to see God pull this dinner together, because most of us had never done anything like this before.

We all had looks of awe as we found out how much money came in from the dinner as we were all pitching in cleaning up after the dinner. I'm am so excited to tell you that God gave us $1200 as a result of this dinner.

I learned a couple things from this dinner. 1. The Lord desires to bless us. 2. Our church is filled with people who love and support our teenagers. 3. No matter how prepared you think you are, if you aren't following God's plan you are going to face frustration. "Thank you God, for teaching us that you are in charge."

Cabin Fever

We'll last weekend was our "Cabin Fever" all-nighter. What a great night. The evening kicked off with several games of Lazer Tag guys vs. girls style at Lazer Land. Not much of a surprise here the boys embarrassed the females. Although Kaci surprisingly had some decent numbers. When then headed over to the Bicking's for some late night swimming. The highlight there was the broken scrub brush. You will have to ask someone about that to find out what happened. We then took our wrinkled selves back to the church where the ladies watched "Flushed Away" and the guys took their aggression out in the Halo world. When we started tiring out we didn't fall victim to our fatigue but played hours worth of Sardines and spoons. Followed by a 1 hour nape during the second showing of flushed away and then a wonderful breakfast served by Mr. Nyhoff. If you were there you had a great time if you missed it stay posted for future events.

The Nursing "Home"

Today i learned a valuable lesson.
One winter morning sitting in my office jamming to worship music while working on a number of things, a women came into my office asking if we would be willing to bring our teens to her nursing home to lead their residence in worship and then to spend the evening playing bingo with them. Sounding like a great ministry opportunity for our teens, i eagerly accepted the invitation.

February 21st, we left Northeastern heading for the Nursing Home which was about 4 miles away. Not having been their before we drove to the destination looking for a large building with a good size parking lot. We found nothing. So, we continued to drive up and down the road of the street of the address looking for it. Finally we found the street address on a tiny sign that was half coved with snow. We pulled into the drive way of what was a small house. Convinced this was the wrong place, i parked the church van and went to the front door of the house and knocked and was greeted by a women who had just as a surprised look on her face as i had on. After a short awkward conversation we both realized the same thing. Neither of us was prepared for what happened next.
I went back to the caravan of vehicles and unloaded our group of close to 30 people along with musical instruments and supplies, and we all entered this house which had 1 worker and 5 residence.
As we jammed ourselves into the living room which had just enough chairs for their residence i began to have flashbacks of spelunking. While the teens were getting "comfortable" i had yet another awkward conversation with the worker informing her of our plans for the evening. When i finished she changed my plans by letting my know non of that is going to work, due to the fact that the residence need to be in bed in 15 minutes.
We passed out the songs that we were planning to sing for the evening and our worship leader began to lead the 5 of them in some familiar hymns, while the residence began to fall into different stages of unconsciousness. To kind of redeem myself and put a spiritual emphasis on the evening i opened up a time of testimonies to allow our youth leaders and students a time to share what Christ has done in their lives. Once testimony time was over the teens were very ready to begin playing bingo... which gave me the privilege of shattering their desires by saying "it's time to go". It was interesting listening to some of the comments from the confused and uninformed teens. My favorite quote was, "Oh, we must be going to the nursing home now."
We packed up and headed back to the church. Instead of being back at 8:30 p.m. like i had told their parents, it was then almost 7:30, which gave me plenty of time to answer the student’s questions.
As, i look back at the evening i realize the valuable lessons i think the Lord was trying to teach me: Even simple events need a lot of preparation and always have a plan B.

NSM Snow Camp 2007

Well, we got back yesterday afternoon from our annual snow camp.
We had such a great time this weekend.

Here are a couple of highlights from this year's snow camp.
* NSM Film Festival- Congratulations to Bord-Um
* Challenging Sessions form Todd
* Several Tubbing Injuries- "Extreme Tubbing"
* We averaged a little under 5 Hours of sleep a night
* Who knew Todd Hill was a prankster

Hope to see you all there again next year!!!

NSM Super Bowl Party 07

Well as i mentioned i will be using this blog site to give you a review of some of the things that our happening in my life as well as the life of our student ministry.

Feb 4th, NSM held their first every Super Bowl outreach party. What an amazing event.
For the last 4 months we have been planning like crazy for this party. Working on details from Super Bowl tickets all the way down to what type of deritos to offer. I just want to give a few highlights of the party.

1. Our church family denoted all the food, drinks and prizes to give away that the entire party cost us less than $50.
2. Even though we had the worst snow storm of the year on the day before the party and the day of we still had over 60 people able to attend as well as our speaker who lives over a half hour away.
3. Many local organizations donated give aways to our party including gift certificates, bowling passes, and even tanning passes.
4. One of our helpful adults was willing to climb his roof during the snow storm to tear down his satellite dish so that we could get great reception in our gym.

What a fun event it was and we saw God do great things that evening.
Thanks for reading.

My First Blog

Hey everyone,

This is my first ever blog, and i fell very uncomfortable as i write this first blog. I fell that now that i am a blogger that i need to change as a person. I think that now i have to dress like a blogger and get blogging friends and drink tea instead of coffee. Write quotes written by anonymous and recite lyrics to songs that might not really exist. Maybe, it's just the realization that i am writing things that might never be read. But alas, i am excited to enter the world of blogging.

The reason for this blog is to allow friends, family and students in my youth ministry to find out what has been going on in the last few months. So, expect updates on what God is doing in Western Michigan.

Thanks for viewing my first blog.

“…so that in all things Christ might have preeminence.” – Col 1:18b

www.northeasternbaptist.com