Ever sat through a long sermon?

Copyright © Dan Piraro | Bizarro.com

Oregon State 33, #3 USC 31

Enough said.

Still here

Yeah, I'm still here. It's been a week of ups and downs. I have lots to share, but no time to share it.

God is good.

Stonehenge

Wanna know how they built Stonehenge? Or at least one man's idea? Well, he did it, and all by himself with only tools they would have back then. Check it out.

Destiny?

20 years ago I was 7. 20 years ago I started liking baseball. 20 years ago I was a front runner. 20 years ago the New York Mets won the world series and I became a fan.

I haven't been a front runner with them since...but still a fan.

20 years later, they are one game away from going to the World series. And while I couldn't name their whole roster, or even their first baseman, I have a sense that this could be the year.

Go Mets! (consequently, they beat the Dodgers [my dad's favorite team] to get to this current series!)

Retreat Video

Here it is...the Mid School Fall Retreat Video made by Brian

Unity

We had a unique (dare I say it should not be) experience last night at youth group. For our monthly second Wednesday worship (2W2), we spent the night just reading, singing, praying and then took communion.

It was a stretch for some students, but I know others and the leaders benefited from the night. We sat in a circle and interspersed songs with Ephesians 4 and 5 along with time to reflect aloud on what we had read.

It was neat just coming together to be unified in a few things that the Church is called to do.

Retreat

First off, my congrats to Jon for his return to the blogging world. Seriously though, he had a good post.

I have got to comment on our mid-school retreat this past weekend. It was incredible. We saw mid schoolers open their hearts and bodies in worship to God, and He truly used the weekend to direct the course of their lives. May they continue on the course and not be won over by the daily grind. Check out a great video on Brian's blog of the worship time. I'm sure you'll be seeing the whole retreat video soon.

A Shadow (and other reasons I know I'm getting older)

This past Monday, one of my high school students did a job shadow with me. We had a great day. No day is typical in my job. Sometimes I'm writing out a lesson, making a flyer or calendar, updating the web site and many other odd jobs.

This day, we planned a game and music for Wednesday night, went shopping for the Mid-school retreat, planed a giant lake race for the aforementioned retreat, and various other things.

As I was thinking about the day, I couldn't believe that I was at a point in life where a high school student could job shadow me. It brought to mind other signs I've noticed that I'm getting older, including:

• The 10th Anniversary 'Jagged Little Pill' from Alanis came out this past year.
• I was disappointed that "The Container Store" was closed and couldn't wait to go there for the first time.
• I could spend hours at Ikea and find it fun to buy a wardrobe to store things.
• I read 4 books over vacation and didn't complain.
  

...and others that just aren't coming to mind right now.

Maybe the brain cells are going into long-term hibernation.

"How 'bout that?!"

Just had to quote Marko on this one. Cool? Cool!

at my church, they’re in the midst of a teaching series on doubts. in a nice attempt at creating a bit more of a communication loop, they invited people to text message questions during the sermon — questions about points that needed more clarification, or about related doubts and questions. at various points during the sermon, the teaching pastor stopped and some of the questions appeared on the screen, where he read them out loud and took a stab at responding to them. it brought greater clarity to some of the issues being addressed, and brought up some great ancillary discussion. for a large church, this worked way better than having an open mic where people could ask questions, as it was substantially quicker, and allowed for some pre-screening of the questions. it also allowed people to ask questions who would not normally make their way to a mic to ask something in front of a room of 1000 people.