whirlwind weekend...
after trying to deal with all the idiocy of a website that spews hate against my friends, my ministry, and my church (i say trying to deal with because this website does not allow any comments that disagrees with or tries to promote dialogue about that their assumptions) i went into a whirlwind weekend.
Saturday-
December 10th, of course, is my beautiful bride's B-Day and she worked. so i spent the day working on my sermon for sunday and my youth teaching for sunday night. i think both had the makings of a good teachings but i struggled with both ideas and trying to flesh them out. so i spent 10am-645pm working with scripture, video ideas, powerpoint, etc. basicly, my butt was numb from sitting and my eyes were so sore from hours spent staring at a screen.
to celebrate Jess' B-Day a couple of girls from the youth group and the Headapohl's, one of the coolest families around, came out to watch one of Jess' favorite books the Chronicles of Narnia come to the big screen. Jess loved it. i think she even cried when Aslan was killed so she definitely got into it.
i thought Chronicles was pretty good. i've heard the criticism about being slow and the acting was a little tough to swallow. yea, i could see it but it reminded me of the first Harry Potter movie where i heard the same criticism but just like Potter i think the people that really enjoyed it just loved seeing their beloved characters on screen. the special effects were great and the visuals really were stunning. overall, i thought it was a great movie and could make a great franchise. If anyone ever wondered what Aslan would look like and sound like i think the movie nailed it. Liam Nesson was great. overall, a good time at the movies.
Jess and i made our way home and i quickly got to work on my sunday morning teaching. of course, after reading thru the first draft i needed to move a number things and fine tune some some stuff. by 1am, i decided i need to crash. of course, the dog had other plans. he just went nuts. we couldn't figure out what was wrong. after multiple trips outside, jess took a long walk with him to find out he really just needed to poop. Lesson #63 regarding the Siberian Husky: if snow is on the ground they completely forget why they went outside in the first place. we would take Indy out and he would roll around in the snow or simply lay down so naturally we assumed he didn't have to go but we were wrong. it's now 330am and we are just settling in for the night.
SUNDAY
we get up and make our way to the church where i have to do a number of changes to the powerpoint after all the rewrites that happened hours earlier only to find the computer the church uses isn't there. it finally shows up at 930am. i don't think this would have bothered me if i wasn't on 3 hours of sleep but since i was on 3 hours of sleep i was annoyed. service started, my family shows including Meghan's Beau 'Captain Denny' and service starts running longer than expected. no pressure. i finally get up to preach about Joseph. the goal of the message was to give some encouragement about the chaos of life especially during Christmas. we looked at Joe and how he dealt with unexpected circumstances and the supernatural invading his life. i set up the message by talking about the show Smallville because i wanted to compare Joseph to Jonathan Kent (Superman's Pops). that seemed to work out well but time became crucial and i think i ended up shorting the 2nd half of the message because my message started going past 11am. bummer. Once again, Mark Hamilton did an amazing job with some of my video requests and he handled my last minute curves great, as always.
after service, jess and i quickly gathered our equipment for the youth worship night, quickly went to the farmhouse unloaded, and met with Chris Cornell & Mike Rays. they came to the house to convince me about changing our video game tradition from every two weeks to every week. i have to say, this was a highlight of my weekend because i told them they had to do an offical presentation and they came thru. they showed up with suit jackets on carrying briefcases. their agenda included going thru a series of graphs that covered the 'fun factor', 'cost analysis' (i.e. which kids pay for pizza and who needs to get the beat down', and even had a graph on who uses the bathroom the most and, no, i don't why this was included. all in all, highly entertaining.
1240 saw students meeting up at the farmhouse (aka Amityville according to students) to head out to Brighton for 'Walk the Line'. what an great flick about a tragic life. if Reese and Joaqin dont win Oscars i will do something drastic although the only drastic thing i could really do is actually start watching the Oscars. so we saw the flick, came back to the house and started setting up.
6pm rolled around and we began our night with a couple of games of sardines because the house is pretty scary and it was entertaining to watch a bunch of High Schoolers move around in fear. we came back, did announcements, and then really started the more serious side of the night by watching the 'Hurt' video. i wanted to use this night to talk about Johnny Cash and his life to give students an example of a man who walked the fine line between seeking God and falling into his sin nature. i read that Cash's first verse in the bible is Romans 8:13 which really did define him. i wanted the students to see a Christian who proabably failed more than succeeded but he kept getting back up. i wanted to show the students the legacy of Johnny Cash and how his faith was integral to that legacy. i wanted to challenge the students and ask them where their faith was. are they living it, failures and all, or just acting like it. i don't think it really worked.
i love the movie 'Ghosts in the Darkness' and one of my favorite parts has to be Val Kilmer explaining his lion trap to his boss. has boss asks, 'has it ever worked'. and Kilmer answers, 'no, point of fact it didn't but i'm convinced the theory is sound.' i think this pretty much summed up my sunday. 'did your teachings really come together like you wanted them to?' and i have to answer, 'no, point of fact they didn't but i'm convinced the theories are sound'.
| 
