My wife is leaving Saturday at 3:30am to catch a 4:30ish flight to San Francisco. She is helping to lead our level 2 HSM trip to the YWAM facility there. You can follow the team and all their adventures and prayer requests by blog and pictures here.
The good part is that as I have shared I get Malachi all to myself…
I have had him overnight a couple times, but this is the big one. The grandparents will both be in for the days next week while I am at work, but Saturday, Sunday, and Monday are all mine.
Here are some things we will have to do…
- Work out and swim everyday
- Take showers, because men don’t take baths
- Have some hip-hop dance parties.
Having Malachi is the exciting challenge, but the bad side is that I will be away from my wife Here are some reasons I will miss her.
- She is hot.
- I come home everyday and download my day to her. Sometimes she calms me down and sometimes I get her worked up.
- She is my best friend and we do everything together.
Well as usual my posts have been lacking recently so why not catch up with some bullet points mind dump!
- Operation Barnabas orientation is going on at our church right now.
- That means we have 15 incredibly encouraging adults and 100 just as encouraging students under one roof…what a privilege.
- I am excited to get some time with them all this week and for our staff to cross paths.
- The teams will be picked later this week and you can follow their orientation and team blogs here.
- We have 3 women who are handling the food for OB orientation. The food is so good it blows my mind. I am just eating my meals at the church. I actually feel bad for the students because they will be spoiled and than get out on tour and have to eat cheap hot dogs and fritos.
- Dave Guiles from GBIM spoke at our church this morning on the nations and was on point!
- The last couple weeks I have been hiding out and recharging from the school year but it has been good to hang out with my grace group again. Noah McCaman is a good looking kid.
- HSM has two trips taking off next week; Urban Hope and San Francisco.
- Kristin is going on the San Fran trip, so that means some quality time for me and Malachi. I am excited. I will tough it the first weekend and than my parents are gonna come down and go to the zoo and spoil him.
- OK, so I gushed about OB being here but the busyness has had one let down. My friend Tug was part of sponsoring a concert with Lecrae and the whole Reach Records label in Lima. I was unable to go to the concert and Tug made sure through voicemails and twitter that I knew that he saved spots for me backstage and all that jazz. Anyone who reads this knows I like hip hop way too much and Lecrae is truly someone that encourages me in Christ and musically. I can’t stress enough how much I wanted to be at that show. I am sorry to Tug and sorry to myself for letting me down.
- Sidebar-Read Tug’s blog and pray for his next step as he is transitioning from his church.
- Just watched the Lakers win a championship. Really been watching Kobe and reading up on his work ethic, and his quest as a man, father, husband, player, and leader. He is on a level that the league is not.
- Having said that I love Lebron and the Cavs more, but as Ali G says “Respect” to Kobe.
- Tomorrow is the day off. We are hitting the Y together as a family and I am sure we will also try the usual water activities/zoo trip and some yard mowing in the middle.
Once in a great while a blog post is written that is so dead on with where you are and what you would say yourself that you can just link to it and save yourself the time.
Tim Schmoyer hits this one on the head with WHY STUDENT MINISTRIES SHOULD SLOW DOWN AND TAKE A BREATHER IN THE SUMMER.
I have been a bad blogger for months now. So much to say. I think I am gonna go the mind dump right and just throw it at the wall and see what sticks.
- Graduation party season is very hard in my profession. I put on weight and get sun burnt, what a tough life.
- Actually this is a pretty low-key year. We are graduating one of our last small classes and they spread their parties out pretty well.
- So far my favorite party food was Steff Fisher having Rita’s Italian Ice.
- Last week was one of the most refreshing, “productive” weeks of my year. I went into hiding from people and that is bad, but I knocked so many things off my to-do list.
- I am working on my teaching calendar for next year and I LOVE that type of long term planning. I will post it on here later.
- My life has finally slowed down. I went on a date with my wife and am catching up on yard work so that I don’t have to do any on Sunday or Monday-my day off.
- Here’s an example of life the last couple months. I had my first two funerals, two three teen pregnancies, and a fake suicide on top of “normal” ministry stuff.
- Having said that I wouldn’t want to do any other job. Spring is always crazy so now it is time to focus on slowing down.
- OB orientation is at our church in 13 days.
- We are getting a new roof in the next couple of weeks. I think we may pull the trigger on the kitchen updates too.
- Malachi had a fever of 102 todayL
- I wish I could give LeBron a hug today.
- I wish I could give LeBron a hug everyday though.
- Time to hit the YMCA hard this week.
- I enjoyed Kary Oberbrunner’s message today. He took the comedy up a notch and that is how I love communicators to work it.
- I am leading worship this week. I stole an idea from Travis Davenport and we are using the chords from Viva La Vida to lead into Your Grace is Enough.
- If I had cable I would watch the MTV Movie Awards tonight. I will just watch it online tomorrow.
- I am too lazy to link to half the stuff I am mentioning.
- I wish there was another good superhero movie coming out this summer.
- Malachi is really starting to like dancing. That is one of my goals as a dad, to make our fellowship of churches a little better at dancing through my offspring.
- Welp that is enough for now. I think in the next week or so I may have some cool posts coming around so stay tuned.
I consider it my duty to let the world know when someone I love starts blogging.
ANNOUNCEMENT TO THE WORLD; CHECK OUT ERIC MILLER’S NEW BLOG!
Eric went to Grace with me, and is now the student ministry pastor at Grace Community Church in Frederick MD. Those are the things I am expected to say but the truth is I will always remember having every class together the fall semester of our senior year and how much we DID NOT pay attention.
HSM WEDNESDAY NIGHTS ARE OVER FOR THE YEAR. HERE ARE SOME STATS I WAS CRUNCHING TO MOVE FORWARD AND PLAN….
HSM Stats for 2009-2010
| 2006-2007 | 2007-2008 | 2008-2009 | % growth f/06-07 | % growth f/07-08 | |
| visitors |
5.03 |
5.515152 |
0.096451593 |
||
| registered students |
63.03 |
72.27273 |
0.146640128 |
||
| total students |
42.827 |
68.2 |
78.33333 |
0.829363226 |
0.1485826 |
| adults |
7 |
9.606061 |
0.372294372 |
||
| bodies in room |
75.07 |
87.93939 |
0.201357841 |
200 students who came at least 2 times
Out of those 200 the average comes 35 percent or every 3 weeks.
A couple of weeks ago Tony Morgan (if you don’t read his blog you live under a rock) said he wanted to do a blog tour and make a stop in Columbus, OH. I immediately thought “hey that is where I live” and got with Kary Oberbrunner so we could try and make it happen.
Long story short it did happen and TONY MORGAN IS COMING TO MY CHURCH but I am going to be at the Momentum conference. I love Momentum and wouldn’t miss it but I sure wish I could catch Tony and get to spend the day with he and Kary. Simply put that sucks.
Oh well I still want everyone to come and check it out and have a good time at my church with Tony and without me REGISTER HERE.
Not much that I care to write about recently, but much I want to journal.
If you want to stay up to date follow my Twitter feed to the right…
I HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS AND HAVE MENTIONED IT IN PIECES BEFORE…
5 THINGS HSM IS DOING WELL RIGHT NOW
- Wednesday night atmosphere
- Grace Group participation
- Number of students serving
- Summer trip participation
- Encouraging life-change
5 THINGS HSM NEEDS TO BETTER NEXT YEAR
- Creative teaching/communication of Wednesday night big idea
- Having enough Grace Groups to make sure everyone can find one.
- Percentage of students serving
- Long term planning for summer trips-Fund Raising and leader recruitment.
- Personal Outreach
