Chik-Fil-A

Warning, semi-annual political rant coming: Chicago, Boston and San Francisco claiming that Chik-Fil-A is unwelcome because of their stance on gay marriage and Hermain Cain and company campaigning to block the building of a mosque in Murfreesboro, TN (and claiming all communities have that right) are opposite sides of the same ugly coin. No government has the right to prevent someone from building something in the USA just because they disagree with their political or religious views.

It's nice seeing the right stand up against this nonsense, but sooooo many who are against government intrusion in this case were for it in the mosque situation (and, it must be said, vice versa). The hypocrisy is sickening, and both sides are equally guilty.

The government needs to do it's job and quit overstepping its bounds, and officials like Menino and Cain and Emanuel need to be put in check, no matter which political party they are aligned with. People on both sides need to wake up and quit supporting government overstepping its bounds just because they disagree with somebody, or we're going to quickly end up without the right to peaceable dissent.

There's a much bigger picture here than Sharia Law or gay marriage, we're talking freedom to openly disagree with our government (and/or popular opinion/conventional wisdom). When that's gone, we're no longer America.

/rant

Gay Marriage

The debate has become front and center in our culture, and it seems everyone has an opinion. This blog post by Geoff Surratt is the best article I've yet seen on the topic, and comes very, very close to articulating my position on it. Check it out and let me know what you think.

P. S. I don't have time to enter a complete discourse on my feelings on the topic, but I did enter a discussion on Facebook with a friend from NC who was frustrated with her opposition to gay marriage being labeled as "hate". Here was my response. This should illustrate fairly well how I feel about this debate:


The sad truth is that there IS a lot of hate spewed towards homosexuals, oftentimes from Christians. Obviously, those with an agenda have exaggerated that and leveraged it so that anyone who opposes the agenda is associated with that hate, but the hate definitely exists. I'll never forget talking to a guy I worked with who was gay and he told me I was the first Christian who ever treated him with any respect.

Homosexuality is a sin, and as the salt and light of the world we must be willing to stand up and say that. However, Scripture compels us to speak the truth IN love, and while many conservative Christians get the truth part right (and many liberal Christians get the love part right), the amount of God's people who walk in both (particularly on this issue) is sadly low.

I'm not saying you aren't walking in truth in love. I'm just saying there's a reason we are being branded as haters, and it's not just because in the last days men will call good evil and evil good. A lot of it has to do with the unChristlike way the church has responded to homosexuality.

Gay marriage is going to be legalized in our generation, I think that's basically a given. I do continue to have hope that the church will rise up and not just proclaim truth, but show Christ's love. We tend to be better at hating the sin than loving the sinner. I believe we can and will do better.

Kony 2012

Absolute must watch. Let me know what you think

Incredible Article On Arguing For Life

This is one of the best pieces I've ever seen on building a case for zygotic and fetal life on reason. Really well done, and a must read for believers, in my opinion.

Print Recommendations Part One: Vinyl Banners

Like many youth ministries, the662 has an extremely limited budget. In fact, for about the past 5 years we have had a $0.00 budget, up until around February when we started getting the small but extremely appreciated sum of $80 per month. Anything else we spend has to come from fundraising, which we are thankfully pretty awesome at (don't worry, we'll cover in another post).

Recently, I've been in need of a variety of different printing jobs, and with the slim budget I've been forced to really shop things around. I've been fortunate enough to find plenty of quality at what I feel are very reasonable prices that I'm sure would benefit others in ministry, not to mention those in business. Over the next couple of weeks I will run a series on different types of print projects that I've recently had done, with some examples of what I have had printed, who printed it and what it cost me. Keep in mind I did all my own design work for these - if you need a project designed and printed it will obviously run you quite a bit more.

Vinyl Banners

Perhaps no type of signage is both as versatile and universal as vinyl banners. I think vinyl is often overused, and prefer other materials such as coroplast for many outdoor jobs that are more permanent in nature and foamboard for the more permanent indoor jobs, since nothing looks worse than a vinyl banner that is not fully stretched out and is caving in on itself. That said, for signs that you can't leave up all week long you can't beat vinyl's ability to minimize required storage space, not to mention it's portability. I've recently ordered three vinyl banners from my overall favorite print company, splatprint.com, and have been very happy with each of them.

Project One: Two 1' x 2' Check In Desk Banners

For our Check In Desks, I ordered two of SplatPrint's Indoor Banners. I chose the 15oz. Super Smooth Scrim Vinyl Banner material. Since I used two different designs for the banners they were treated as two different projects. I suspend these from the ceiling grid with small bungee cords, so I had grommets put in the top corners of each banner. Splat put the grommets in for no extra charge.

Pricing Breakdown: $6.87 for the printed banner, $5 PDF upload, $9.20 standard shipping = $21.07 total cost (each)
Recommendation level: High

Project Two: One 8' x 8' 662 Front Entrance Banner

Our CityChurch front entrance banner is suspended on a pole that runs through the top and supported by a pole that runs through the bottom. To add some 662 branding to our Wednesday night experience we decided to get a 662 banner to put in that place for Wednesdays as well. I was so happy with the Check In banners that I wanted to order the same material for the Front Banner, but unfortunately Splat won't put Pole Pockets in their indoor banners, so, with some hesitation, I ordered Splat's 13oz Vinyl Matte Banner . Not to worry, the printing and material is excellent. I honestly can't see a difference in quality between this and and the 15oz indoor ones.

Pricing breakdown: $125.54 for the printed banner, plus $5 PDF upload, plus $10 for top/bottom pole pockets, plus $13.59 for standard shipping = 154.53 total cost

Recommendation: High

Summary

I cannot express how thrilled I have been with Splat's banners. I have seen banner printing as high as $8 per square foot, and we have typically paid around $4 per square foot in the past. Even if you include the extra expenses (pole pockets, upload and shipping) the 8 x 8 banner breaks down to $2.41 per square foot. When you're dealing with 64 square feet, that's a savings of over $100 over anything we've ever ordered before.

Obviously, price isn't the only consideration, but when you factor in how thrilled I am with the quality, I cannot recommend splatprint.com for your banner needs enough.

I would love to hear from those who have had experiences, good or bad, with printing vinyl banners. Who do you use? How well has it worked for you?

Youth Pastors: You Can Create Your Own Camp

You Can Create Your Own Camp

When I first took over our youth ministry of 15 students in the fall of 2005, I was 25 years old and had no idea how little I knew, but I was confident of three things:

1) I wanted our students to regularly experience serving and sharing their faith through short-term missions.

2) I wanted our students to have an incredibly fun and impacting camp experience that would both fire them up and give them a chance to expose their friends to Jesus each year.

3) I was in a small church and I had basically no budget, and the people in our church were not loaded.

I really felt like God laid it on my heart to give our students a mission trip and a camp each year, I just had no idea how I was going to pay for it all. We’ll get to the mission trip financing in another post, but once I started shopping around for camps it did not take long for me to realize that there are a ton of great options, but all of them cost $200 - $300 per student. I just didn’t feel comfortable asking for that on top of a missions trip (which have run anywhere from $600 – $1050), so almost by accident, I decided to try and create our own camp.

The first year was not without its hard lessons – we tent camped on the land of some church members which kept costs low, but we had some difficulty keeping teenage hormones inside their own tents. So the next year I was committed to finding some sort of a campground with cabins or bunkhouses where we could keep a tighter rein on comings and goings. So in the summer of 2007 we created and held our first full scale camp (complete with bunkhouses) and our youth ministry has not been the same since.

Producing our own camp has easily been one of the top 3 best decisions I’ve ever made in youth ministry. The beauty of the producing your own camp is that you can keep it to under $100 a student, which makes it possible for virtually any student who wants to go to either afford it, or find sponsorship. So each year we have the majority of our students attend camp, as well as quite a few of their friends. You can produce your own camp, too, and it’s easier than you think. Here’s how:

A) Find the right location – the location is the kicker. If you go to your local private campgrounds and rent cabins, you’ll probably get decent facilities, but the price can be sky high. The big key to this is the state park system. I cannot vouch for all 50 states, but I know Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi all have group camp facilities at various state parks. These facilities are not usually spectacular, but plenty nice. Scout them out before you book them.

Tip 1: Planning ahead pays off! These places can book up quickly.

Tip 2: If possible, get a place one to two hours from home. This is far enough to give your students the feel of getting out of town, but close enough that key leaders can get home and back fairly quickly if they need to.

B) Keep It To Three And A Half Days, Max – I learned this one while interning at Church On The Move. Dry Gulch, USA is as incredible of a camp experience as you will find for teenagers or kids, and they run two sessions every week, Sunday evening to Thursday morning, and again Thursday afternoon to Sunday morning. Keeping the camp brief keeps it affordable, makes it possible for your adults to be a part of it (especially if you follow D), and most importantly, allows you to pack all three days with activities.

C) Understand Free Time Is Overrated – Counting spring break, fall break and summer break, I’ve overseen eight different camps, not to mention those I was a part of at Dry Gulch, and I’ve never once heard a student say “Why don’t we have more free time?” NEVER. Students want structure. They don’t want to have to think of what do to, they want you to do it for them. All free time does is give them a chance to get upset with you for not letting them bring their cellphones (which reminds me: DON’T LET THEM BRING THEIR CELLPHONES). I’m not saying to never give them a moment to catch their breath, but make sure they never have more than 30 minutes that is not structured or scheduled. Nothing good comes from bigger free time allotments than that.

Tip: Bring enough adults that you can make sure they don’t have to be working around the clock. Just because the students don’t need free time doesn’t mean the adults don’t. Especially if your adult force is heavier on post college, full-fledged adults, be intentional about getting them some rest.

D) Book Your Camp Over A Weekend – This year we are doing our camp over the students’ Fall Break, and our camp begins at 6pm Friday at our church. We will go over some ground rules, load up the vehicles and arrive at our bunkhouses by around 8pm, and then return to the church on Monday around 6pm. This gives us exactly 72 hours from the time their parents drop them off to the time they pick them back up, yet the majority of the adults we are taking will only have to take one day off work. If they are committed to your youth ministry almost any adult will take a day off work once a year without even hesitating. (Many will do more than that willingly, and those are the ones you take with you on missions.) You can bring a full staff of adults if you honor their time by telling them up front this will only cost you one day of work.

Warning: Run this by your Lead Pastor first. If he is not comfortable with you being out over a Sunday morning, then don’t be out over a Sunday morning. But be sure to go to him and show him how this schedule is a win for your people and your student ministry. You can even turn it into a win by setting up a Skype call from your Sunday morning camp service to the church’s Sunday morning service. The keys here are to be proactive and communicate.

E) No Camp Is Complete If They Don’t Compete – Nothing makes young people embrace the inherent, well, campiness of camp like competition. Guys who are otherwise too cool to stand up during your worship service will let you paint their face pink while they eat spam flavored jello and sing falsetto Justin Bieber tunes if there are points involved. Team colors are tried and true, flags are always a big hit and cheers bring cheer. Check out our 2010 camp highlight video for a peak at some of our competitions and how intensely our students get into them. 

Camp662 highlights

Tip: Assign adults, preferably one of each gender, to lead each team. Coach these adults beforehand to get into it – if they don’t, the students never will. Everything rises and falls on leadership.

F) Build God Time Into Your Schedule – We require everyone to spend 30 minutes with God every morning. We usually do this after breakfast so they are all out of their beds, awake and at least semi-alert. Since many of them will be completely unfamiliar with what it’s like to spend time with God, give them a specific reading assignment, and/or prayer or devotional topic.

Tip 1: Require everyone to bring a Bible, notepad and pen, and to have all three out and in use during God Time

Tip 2: Ensure your leaders are participating in this, too. Lead by example.

G) Do Your Services Up Big, With Your Team – I understand the allure of a guest speaker and worship band as they both give your team a break and offer a fresh voice for your students. With our commitment to keeping the price under $100 per student, this hasn’t been possible. And yet we’ve always had incredible services and amazing impact at our camps. Why? It’s not because I’m such a great speaker, that’s for sure. Here’s a few steps to making lasting impressions in your camp services:

1) Develop a camp theme. This is HUGE. Find one idea that the entire camp is wrapped around, and have every service refer tie to it in some way. This is essentially just like having a message series, you just need to ensure it’s powerful and impactful.

2) Have your worship team introduce two or three new songs to change things up, including one “theme” song that will preferably tie to your message theme and serve as a spiritual high point of the trip. Do this theme song every service.

3) Involve every creative area you can – dramas, videos, lights, etc. These services must feel like an event. Involve your competitions at every turn as well – points updates are always good, and you may even throw in a quick competition during the service.

4) Do communion at least once. Depending on your specific tradition, Communion aka The Lord’s Supper can be infrequent at best in youth ministry. This is the perfect setting to introduce it to students. You have to explain it to them and really make it special and sacred. We always do this during our last camp service and it is incredible the way our students respond to it.

5) In general, take risks. Camp is a great place to experiment and try new things. You don’t have to worry about a bad first impression causing a guest to never come back to your service as you have three days of captive audience to build relationships and get into their lives. Take advantage of it. Get new people involved. Let an older student preach a morning session. Change up your speaking style. Some of the greatest discoveries we’ve ever made for our youth services happened by accident by trying something new, just for camp.

For example, in 2007 our adult worship leader had to work in the mornings but was driving in for our evening services, so we asked our bass player, a rising senior, to lead one song for our morning chapels. He had never lead vocals before for anything. By the end of the camp, our adult worship leader came to me and said “you’ve got to make him your new worship leader”, and basically everyone agreed. That young man led worship for us for over two and a half incredible years after that, all because of a camp song.

I won’t sugarcoat it, developing your own camp takes work. But the payoff is incredible. You get a proving ground for new talent and leaders, an opportunity to energize the majority of your students at one multi-day event and the chance to see young people come to Christ who may never attend your church but get signed up because of the allure of the competitions.

Try it one time and I bet you anything you’ll never do anything else.

Armed To The Teeth

With missions, Go Big, and pastoring both our children's and youth ministries, I have been a terrible blogger of late. I haven't completely stopped writing though, as I've been dabbling again in some Mariners coverage. This screenshot was taken 5 minutes ago at espn.com's Mariners page. I'm sure my name won't be there long, but it's pretty cool to see for now. If you're interested, you can read an article I wrote for ProBallNW.com by clicking the title to this blog post.