2|42 Yesterday's Highlights

So I have been at 2|42 almost a month and I have to say it's going pretty well. I made a promise to Tracie that I would really try to pace myself at 2|42. Usually my pattern for starting at a new church is to jump in and go crazy. Plan big nights, outreach events, say yes to everything, and burn out myself and my family. Well, I actually said the the "no" word last week. Our creative arts director, who is one of the most talented people I have ever been around, asked me to co worship lead with him for Sunday's services. I actually said no, it killed me to, but I did. The kids were crazy sick last week, again, and I knew Tracie needed some much needed relief, so I said no. It was very hard, but I did it. Plus, the musicians at our church are stinkin incredible and deep down I would feel weird playing with them, because I am not good, unless I am playing Hootie, YOU KNOW IT.

So, both services went very well. Our 4 & 5th grade ministry, Kid Fusion, had their own worship team for the first time, and the cool part of that is a couple of them are in our student ministry. Nothing better than students serving in the children's ministry.

We are in a cool series called Difficult People and our pastor Dave, really hit it home. It's cool being at a church where I really track with the teacher. The worship did great and they played the doxology and it was sweet. The older I get, the less I like loud and the less I like super clappy songs. WHO WOULD OF SEEN THAT ONE COMING. I am like the president of the Every Move I Make fan club, but I am on a weird journey when it comes to emotions and worship, and the physical act of it all.

So, the only part that I really don't jump for joy at is getting there at 7am to set up. Sorry, I feel bad about that. We have an unreal group of servants and I feel bad, because I have been there for 4 Sundays, and they have done a year's worth. I am praying about that, that I would love to get there and set up and serve.

The Workout Kicked my Tail

Man, today's workout at 6am, YES you read that RIGHT, 6am. KICKED MY FLIPPIN TAIL.

I can't believe a medicine ball could do that to me, I won't even go into detials, because I know I will get vulgar.

And today is the day I start running again, yeah great day. But the good news, my pants fit better, and my hunger lately is really dying down.

So, It's Working!!!!

Email Problems

Have you ever waited to send a ton of emails because you were tired the night before and you thought, well, I will just send them in the morning. Yeah, that's me. So, today, for some reason our Project311 email has some major problems. Hopefully I can contact our web guru, Matt Farina and get it fixed. Hope so.

Why can't I see people how God does

One of my favorite authors is John Ortberg. Actually, I could read his stuff over and over, I absolutely love it. His book, The life you've always wanted, literally changed my life. Anyways, I was in our local Family Christian Store, which is always a trip. I love being tempted to buy...Testa-Mints, and the newest Purpose driven flash cards (no offense Rick), but something happened this trip that has me shocked and appalled.

I was being helped by a cashier who I judged as soon I laid eyes on him. Why the heck did I do this? What the heck is wrong with me? One of favorite verses to teach on is 1 John 3:11...The message is simple...Love one another. It says to love, no matter what or who. So, I wish I could see people how God sees them. In John Ortberg's book, Everybody's normal till you get to know them, he talks about the As is principle. Too often we won't take merchandise because it's damaged or messed up, but God loves As Is. Every part of us.

My daily prayer is that I will love As is.

The screen is going

The screen on my ibook is going. It's crazy, I have never seen anything like it. Like a windshield, started small and it's spreading. Talk about computer problems, I win the award for 2005-2006. Yes I do.

You know you worked at a big church, when...

So, I am walking through the mall after finding out that apple won't replace the screen, and I hear Jason from the off in the distance. I turn around and it's Bradley, a former student from NorthRidge. He's like, you have to come and say hi to everybody. A bunch of former students were in a resturant and just hanging out. So, it was fun saying hi.

Then one of them says, Hey, can I be a leader at summer camp this year? I was like huh, I don't know. She's like, well, I am a junior now and I really want to help out with jr. high. I was like, well, I haven't been at NorthRidge since June, so you will have to talk to the new jr. high pastor. She was like, who is that?

Weird, you know you worked at a big church when former students don't even know you left.

A trip to the pool

A couple of weeks we got to hang out with some of our best friends in the entire world, Tom & Kara. It was a blast and we took the kids swimming, which was so much fun. My kids love the water and we have a great pool by us, one of those beach type pools.

Tom's son Isaac, loved it as well. Actually he really loved it and didn't want to get out. This guy is a walking miracle, he is something pretty amazing. I can't even count how many times he's been the hospital and doctors and all that. Tom and Kara are amazing parents and I am so blessed to have them in my life.

Trip to the Apple Store

Well, my trip to the apple store didn't go to well. They said because it was accidental, it's not covered by my apple care. And to top it off, my screen will probably go out very soon. Right now it looks like a windshield. Guess how much to fix, come on, guess.

$795.00. AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Interesting Case Study

I have been sitting outside the store hollister for about an hour now. My observations:

1. The music is loud. I am at least 25 feet away from the store and I can hear the music very well.
2. Everyone who works there is super skinny.
3. 80% of the girls who have entered have had barely any clother on. Which is funny, because even though it's spring in Michigan it's snowing a little right now.
4. Everyone who enters basically has the same look, that of a tool. (No offense to all you Hollister shoppers)
5. Parents leaving with their children don't look happy.
6. A group of chubby kids were outside and I could tell they were thinking about going it, and then a pack of skinny kids came out, and they went the other way.

Now, I have never been inside a Hollister before, but these were my observations from outside the store.

Off to the Apple Store, Again

So, my ibook is messed up again. This time not my fault. It was sitting on my desk and a shelf from my wall fell and it and all the contents from it fell on my computer. It hit my laptop screen and now it looks like a windshield that was hit by a stone.
Hopefully it will be covered by Apple Care.

My new friends

These are my new friends, Jess and Steve. They are the main reason that things have gone so well for StuCo. They actually moved to the Detroit area from Kentucky to help plant the church and they are in love with student ministry, especially Jr. high. I have loved getting to know them and they are just plain fun to be around. Jess was an instant hint with my wife and kids and so is Steve. Steve actually hung out at our house last week and our best friends in the world were there, and they gave him 2 giant thumbs up. They were giant thumbs up, because my buddy Tom is 6'5 and has the biggest hands I have ever seen.

StuCo is going great

My new youth ministry is called StuCo, short for Student Community. It's going really well. Right now our Jr. and Sr. high are combined and we meet every other Sunday night for a meeting called Elevate. The fun part for me is getting to know everybody. One of my ministry passions is learning everyone's name. My goal is for every person who attends to know that we cared enough to learn their name and to find out some stuff about them. This may be scary for some, but at least kids are known. When I was at my last church, it was really hard to learn names. Sometimes we would have 100 kids at one of our services and then they would leave and another crop would come in. I made up my mind at that point, that I would find adult leaders to do all the other stuff. Set up/Tear down/ Sound/Set up/Etc, and I would invest a lot of time and energy making sure I could call every student by name. I didn't always know everybody, but it's amazing when you put your mind to learning names how easy it comes.

Just Tired

I know I am the world's biggest panzy, but I am just flat out tired. Which is really intriguing to me because I went to bed at 8:30 last night and slept right through my alarm clock and woke up at 7:30am. Man, that's a lot of sleep. I wonder if it has to do with:

...Financial pressure
...Financial worries
...Financial worries for Project311
...Just starting a new job
...Getting to know everybody at our new church
...3 sick kids
...3 sick kids again! Bekah has strept, Bobby and Zach have some massive problems holding down food
...A sick wife
...My kids throwing up all over our couches and trying to clean them
...Straining to hear God's voice
...Weird emails
...Our Jr. high youth worker training coming up and again hoping we have enough to cover costs
...Blitzfest. My new staff must think I am crazy. Yesterday at a staff retreat we were going over
our life maps. And outside of losing 3 relatives in a car crash, Blitzfest was and is the worst time
of my life. My lowest point. So, while telling them this, I just lost it. I know a sissy.
...Trying to figure out how to be a good dad, scratch that, a great dad.
...Trying to figure our how to be sick in love with Tracie. I want our love to consume my thoughts, I want to dream about her
and I want her to feel that there is nothing more important than here.
...Weight. I am so tired of being fat. 2 years ago, I lost 50 pounds and it was the best time of my life! I had more confidence that I have ever had, my back felt great and my life was disciplined.
...I am tired of trying to figure out a consistent time with God. Too often I get to busy to be alone with Him.
...I am tired of trying to make people laugh.
...I am tired of always being the one to make sure that nobody has a beef with me.
...I am tired...

Whoops, there it goes

So, you have probably never done this, but I am sitting at my desk, got my headphones in, jammin to some Amy Grant (Yeah, You Know IT) and I wasn't thinking. Not even paying attention and I just let out a massive fart, hate to be crude, but that's what I did. My desk is in a room with 3 other desks, whoops there it goes. My co-workers probably think I am a no good slob. Well, didn't mean it.

The Project311 Board

I have to say I love the Project311 board! I was having lunch with a youth pastor not too long ago and he asked who were the people at the lunch who opened it up, and I said, they are some of our board members. He was shocked, he didn't know or think there was anyone else apart of Project311 other than Jason Raitz. That is really cool to me, the fact that there are people who are apart and who believe in our vision of loving students and loving the people who love students. So, we had a board meeting last night and it went really well. We have some great plans and ideas for loving and encouraging youth pastors and we are excited about the Jr. High Youth Worker Training on April 12th.

Jr. High Youth Worker Training Day

I am so excited about our Jr. high youth worker training day. One of our dreams for Project311 is to be able to offer some training for our youth workers in Metro Detroit and on April 12th we have the honor of having Scott Rubin coming to town to do some training.

We want to offer practical training, stuff that will help in the day to day grind of youth ministry. I can't wait. I hope some volunteers will be able to attend, but I know we partly messed that up by having it on a Wednesday, but hopefully.

I have to get some information about it our website, I will do that now.

I am so lame

I have wanted to submit an article to youthworker journal for years, but everytime I write something and almost get up the courage to send it, I chicken out. I have a million excuses for why I never send it, but this time I almost sent it. They are accepting articles for an issue on "teaching" and I have this idea on teaching that I that I have been developing for some time. My biggest passion in ministry is teaching, it has been since the beginning. I love teaching God's truth and I love telling stories to go along with it. Actually, in 11 years of ministry (don't you like how I throw in a number? I have worked for churches for 10 + years and I know how to use number, ha, I am so funny) I don't think I have ever turned down on opportunity to teach. Except the ones that I weren't able to because of my commitments at church. I have been so blessed to tell lots of kids about Jesus. Anyways, in all that time, here is the phrase that is behind my entire philosophy on teaching. My goal is to speak with students, not at them. That's it, not very revolutionary I know, but I have seen so many people speak at, talk at kids and nothing sticks. They check out and it's over. So, my thought is to speak with students. Bring them along, use a page from HollyWood and build mad tension, tell stories that come alive, and make students have to work at keeping up with you. Anyways, I almost submitted it. What a wuss.

Just show you how bad it was...

This is a post from my buddy Dave Kurt's blog about the workout this morning, yeah, it was rough.

"Today's 6AM workout was kind of a greatest hits. It consisted of Crab walks, Bear crawls, one legged box hops, two legged hurdle jumps, bag pushes, push ups, split lunges, tricep dips and some others that I've probably blocked out at some point. This was one that we were all dying on today - the kind that makes you dig deep and I came up empty."

Yeah, I could fall asleep at any time.

Take a Coffee Break

My body is dead!

So, I have missed the last three weeks of our early morning workout. I have let some crappy life situations take over and I used that as my excuse to not go. So, today was my first day back and I can't feel my body. I can barely type these words or use my fingers, my body hurts.

You don't understand! I know your thinking, this guy is a PANSY! You should come, 6am and work out with the ex-Detroit Red Wing trainer and you will know, oh yes you will.

Jr. High Youth Worker Training Day

I have work to do

I am driving home today with my daughter, Bekah Sue, and we are singing. We play this game, we made it up, and basically you sing whatever comes to mind and then the other person has to sing it. So, I start singing goofy words and I say, it's your turn.

Well, Bekah sings...Daddy's to tired to play, he has to work, he's on his computer and his back hurts.

Wow, humbled me right then and there. Right from the mouth of my daughter, hit me hard.

So, I have work to do. Lots of it, because I cannot waste any moments of my kids lives. I am not going to be like the dad in the new adam sandler movie.