I love David Crowder Band!

I love, absolutley David Crowder Band. They are going to be in our area this weekend and I would love to go, but it's not going to happen. First hurdle, finding a babysitter. Second hurdle, finding money to take Tracie and I. Third hurdle, finding gas money.

Maybe next time, and that's ALL I CAN SAY (if you know what I mean).

More Bally Total Fitness observations

Why are the locker rooms always dirty, yet there are always people cleaning them?

Can there really be chubby aerobic instructors?

I never wear my glasses in the hot tub and the showers, I did today and I know why I never do, WHAT a freakin mess. Going to keep my glasses off for now on.

Should it be legal for men over 50 to wear speedos in public places? At Bally's it is and the bigger the belly the better.

The bally commercials have incredibly hot people working out in them, real life Bally's are not like the commercials.

Some people have horrible form as they work out and the funny thing is, they don't know it.

Typically the guys with the bigger muscles means they stare at themselves more.

There could be no one at the gym but I always pick a locker next the only other person there.

Project311

"The message is simple...Love One Another"...1 John 3:11

What a profound verse. This is one of those verses that is always on my mind, what does it mean? how do we it? love who? love how? So much to think about. I would like to think that we are to love like how Christ loves. I love reading how unselfish his love is, he loved those in the gutter in life, he loved the unlovable in others eyes, he loved the rejects. His love is amazing, beautiful, majestic and incredible. May I love others the way Christ loves me.

I love to Juggle

When I was in 10th grade, I didn't have much of a life and for my birthday my mom got me a book called..."Juggling for the Complete Klutz". It literally changed my life! I started to juggle and I juggled some more. I use to juggle in the cafeteria at school, at home, in the mall, where ever I could.

From time to time I juggle I will juggle during my talks, the only hitch is it's hard to get the students attention after your done.

I never was really that good, I could only 5 balls for a short time, but I could do knives. I attempted fire once, bad idea.

This was last summer at Camp Velocity. I spoke in the biology room and I am juggling on the lab table.

My '66 Mustang

Once upon a time I owned a 1966 Ford Mustang. It was always a dream to own a Mustang and when I was 19 I bought one. The ladies definately noticed me in that car, but it's not like I needed that car anyway. The ladies always noticed me, if you know what I mean.

I loved it, it was sweet and I owned it for 10 years. I sold it back in the fall to make sure my family had food.
I hope to own one again someday. My dream would be to own a 1966 Shelby Cobra and I would love to restore it with my dad and my boys. How much fun would that be!

Double Ear Infection it is.

Bekah has a double ear infection and a crazy cough. I have never heard her cough like this before. Man, what a couple of crazy weeks. I was sick, the boys were sick, Tracie was sick and now Bekah. Crazy.

My Princess is Sick

The Raitz family has been crazy sick the last couple of weeks and now the last one to get it is my Princess, Bekah Sue.

She missed school today and everything. I hate it when my kids are sick. When I was sick as a kid, my mom was incredible. She took incredible care of us, so hopefully, Bekah feels like I am doing a good job as well.

Bostwick Bakery

This weekend I had the largest donuts of my life. At the retreat, Blake and I went to this little po-dunk bakery to pick up breakfast, 6 dozen donuts and when we got back to camp and opened up the boxes we were shocked.

These donuts were freakin huge! Literally a donut was 4 times the normal size and they all had at least 2 cups of frosting on top of them. They were wild.

Wow, we were young!

This is a picture of Tracie and I when I first started at Covenant Community as their youth pastor. I had probably been there 8 months and Tracie was head over heels in love with me. I don't mean to brag, but she really had the hotts for me, I mean, Can you Blame Her?

You know it. We were so young, how fun.

Ward EPC Jr. high retreat

What a great weekend! Can I say this...well, it's my blog, so I think I will...I love being on retreats! I don't know what it is, but I love it. This weekend I had the great honor of spending the weekend with Blake Maurice, the Jr. High director at Ward EPC and his students and leaders. Man, it was a blast!

Ministry Highlights:

1. Traveling with my family. Tracie is brilliant, she makes a dingy retreat room feel like home in a matter of minutes. Not only does she consistently pack everything for all 5 of us, she does it so well and we always have everything we need. The kids do so well on retreats. Youth Pastors who never travel with their kids because they don't think their kids can adapt to a new schedule, we say fewey! Our kids are incredible.

2. Tubing with my kids. We got to go tubing as a part of the retreat and I tubed with Bobby on the small hill and Bekah went on the big hill with one the Ward leaders. Bobby did get hurt though. I am an idiot! It was before we were even on the hill, a couple of jr. high boys we screwing around and I didn't know Bobby was behind and they ran right into him. His forehead bruised up pretty good.

3. Getting to encourage jr. high students to Love God passionately and to Love others selflessly, PRICELESS! I love it, these kids were great and they laughed, they listened and I think they learned. I love getting a chance to encourage students, what an honor. I would do this every weekend if I could.

4. Spending the weekend with Blake the Jr. high director at Ward. Man, this guy is sharp. He is the kind of the guy that just does things right. He handled the weekend beautifully even with a little accident at the beginning. He brought a charter bus and a little bus from church and the little bus was making it up a very icey hill to get into camp and it started to slip and then started to slide back down the hill. Well, it turned sideways and crashed right into the charter bus, shattered a window and broke some mirrors. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

5. I know this will sound selfish, because I know the "guest speaker" has a little impact on the over all success of a retreat, but it's always really re-affirming when jr. high students come up to you and let you know that you did a good job. I love when a 12 year boy thanks you for the great speech, priceless.

6. I love hearing jr. high students sing. It is awesome.

7. I love talking with jr. high students who don't' fit in. I love looking for the chubby, over weight, not dressed to good, goofy jr. high students and I just love to hang out with them.

It was a great weekend and I am so thankful that God allows me to do this.

My Tracie before I knew her

What a cutie! She is not going to be very happy with me about this, but man, what a cutie.

JUST TELL HER

Note to Clark Kent: Tell Lana, Now! Just do it.

Don't loose her, it's not worth it. And...stop wearing blue and red. I didn't even realize it till last week when my brother told me, huh, how did I miss it after 5 seasons?

Smallville, what happened?

SMALLVILLE....What did you do? Why do you have to go crazy some nights? Why can't all episodes be like 2 episodes ago?

Why? Just tell me you won't go weird anymore.

And by the way, KEEP LANA AWAY FROM LEX!

And it's hard for me to say, but Dave Kurt may be right about Lost. It is moving so slow. Speed it up.

Funny Church Story

I have been employed by the local church for almost 11 years. For some reason, a church hired me when I was way too young to be there youth pastor. Anyways, the last 11 years have provided a lot of interesting and funny stories.

So, at one of the churches I worked at, our youth ministry was planning a huge event one year with the band Relient K. That was before they wanted $50K to play for an hour, anyways. We planned for months, reserved everything ahead of time, promoted and prayed a lot. So, the morning of the event, we arrived at the church to start setting up the stage and look what we found.

A FREAKIN HUGE STAGE built on the existing stage. See, when you bring in bands, you have to provide a certain amount of room for them to play. So, our event was a month before the big church outreach event and they didn't check any of the paperwork and just decided to build this huge stage on the stage. It was a major bummer because we actually went through all the proper channels and it still didn't work out.

Well, Relient K was cool about having a 8 foot stage to play on. It ended up working out, but I thought it was funny.

I love Mark

Today I had lunch with Mark Butler. Mark is a great friend, a great youth pastor, a great husband, and a great dad. Wow, that's a lot of greats. And he bought lunch, that was GREAT.

Big Month

Well it's going to be a crazy stretch the next month.

2.9...Teaching at Chapel
2.10-12...Teaching at Retreat
2.17...Speaking at Lock-In
2.24-26...Teaching at Retreat
2.27-1...Choose to Lead Conference

Plus we are getting ready for the Youth Workers lunch Project311 and SpringHill Camps is hosting on March 10th.

Does it get better?

I am watching the Grammy's (before Lost of course) and U2 is playing Vertigo, I don't think it gets better than that!

I also learned that most of Fall Out Boy still lives at home with their parents, huh, the reason...
their moms clean up after them. Yeah, that makes sense. I also saw someone from E interview Jars of Clay, that was cool. Now, Kelly Clarkston is on, she is great, and I love her a lot. I am actually in her fan club, no I'm not, (you know I am).

I am in new territory with music, I am the first to admit it. I grew up on a pretty strict diet of only "Christian" music, bands like...Mylon Lefevre (that's spelled wrong), Petra, Whiteheart, WhiteCross, Rez Band, Servant (you go Randy Brown) and really for the most part of jr. and high school, my parents wouldn't let me listen to "secular music". So for years, I was a "christian" music only guy. I still listen to a lot of "christian" artists but "secular" artists have started to make it into my listening ears. From a music standpoint, there is no such thing as "christian" or "secular" music, just the worldview they present I guess. As a youth pastor I spent years telling kids that if they listened to music that wasn't godly, they were lovers of satan. I don't think I would say that now, I know I would not.

I will tell you this, it was hard all those years not listening to Hootie and the Blowfish, man I love them! Love you Hootie!

So, I am on a journey with music and enjoying it.

Teaching at Chapel

Tomorrow I get to teach and lead worship for a chapel at Plymouth Christian in Plymouth, MI. Should be a blast. I spoke for their 'back to school' retreat in September 05 and that was awesome. I haven't led worship in awhile, so I am probably going to pull out some sweet MWS or Michael Card or maybe even some sweet FFH. Ha, I am so funny. You know what, I don't even think I have played my guitar since October, oh well, at least I can pull out my freakin KAZOO. That is a great instrument to lead worship with, YOU KNOW IT.

My topic: Love

My title: Love Who?

My theme verse: 1 John 3:11

My Big idea: We are called to love everyone from family to friends to foes.

My funny story: "I like Cheese"

I love teaching at christian school chapels, I love it. What is really weird is I might be teaching at my daughter's chapel very soon, weird or cool. I am going to go with both: WEICOORDLD

Jamaica

I was going through some old pictures last week and came across a bunch of ministry trips I have been on. So, I figure since this is my blog, I am going to start posting my youth ministry history. Doesn't that sound exciting, not really.

But, this was a great mission trip to Jamaica. I know this sounds not so spiritual, but the best part was our trip to Dunns River Falls, oh man, that was AWESOME. We did stay at this great place near somewhere, I can't remember and we did spend time just singing in this open mall area, kind of weird as I think about now. Anyways, the trip went great, except for some sickness and that bull getting hit by the bus, that was weird.

My first office

This is a classic picture of the ceiling from my first "official church office". Wow, it was nice. Paneling walls, missing ceiling tiles, leaky window and no computer. I moved in to this office in 1995 and the church did not provide computers for their staff, that's a weird thought now.

Well, to make up the time from not having a computer, I got real good at throwing pencils into the ceiling.

NICE! It was.

Tired

I just feel tired all the time. I don't know if I have ever felt like this before, it's a new feeling.

I went out tonight, scraped together some money and went and saw the movie Glory Road, wow, what a great movie. I loved it.

I love stories of people or teams that are written off by everybody else and overcome it. That gives me some energy.

It has been a long, rough, tiring year and we are looking forward to this next year.

Pet Peeves: Personal Version

Here is a short list of some of my personal pet peeves:

1. Rude People. I really dislike them, people that treat others like they don't exist, hate it.
2. Rude Fast Food Cashiers. Oh, I hate this! LOOK AT ME, ASK ME WHAT I WANT. ASK ME!
3. Snow. Now, I live in Michigan, shouldn't I love it? NO. I hate snow, ice, black ice, frost, scraping windows, is Snow a pet peeve, well it's mine.
4. People that don't ever have to pay the dues. Have you noticed how some people get everything handed to them and never have to pay their dues. I hate this. I am all about working hard for what you want and not giving up. Paying the Dues.
5. People that don't return emails or phone calls. Now, as I type this I can think of SEVERAL messages I am late in returning, so that's a darn good reminder.
6. DVD's and all those darn previews and all the other crap they put before the movie. I have 3 little kids and when they want to watch a movie, they want to watch it. And I stand there forever waiting to get past all those dumb previews.
7. End of a flight, we pull up to the gate, and everybody gets up and Waits, Waits, Waits, Waits. People look so silly standing up sideways. I don't get it, stay seated, wait till we can move.
8. Expensive food. Don't get me wrong, I would love to take Tracie to Morton's some time, but I hate how expensive Pop, Hot Dogs and such is at the movies and at sports games. WHY?
9. Making a pet peeve list, that's stupid, stop complaining.