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Weekend in Review – July 25, 2010
•July 26, 2010 • Leave a CommentWeekend Topic: Brick Promises – Holding on to our burdens can build barriers between us and God
Understandable Message: We all experience anxiety in one way or another. We explored the things that cause us to be nervous or anxious and the methods that people use to cope with anxiety. We examined 1 Peter 5:7 and Psalm 55:22 and learned that because God cares for and loves us so much, he wants to take those burdens from us. All we need to do is completely give our worries over to God.
How to apply the message: To visually understand how our burdens can build barriers between us and God, we took bricks and wrote on them the anxieties we face or the worries we have. We stacked them together to see how they form a wall, that is, to act as a barrier between us and God. On the other side of the bricks, we wrote “I will give it to God”. We left with instructions to take the bricks home to act as reminders of what we should do when we are worried or feeling anxious. We ended with Matthew 11:28 – Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Element of Fun: Human Foosball. Need I say more?
Up Next Week: No Well meeting next week. We will resume on August 8th.
2010 Mission Trip Prayer Guide
•July 20, 2010 • Leave a CommentAs we prepare ourselves for serving the local residents in Window Rock Arizona, please pray for God to open our hearts and our minds to what we are going to experience and do.
I have created a prayer guide for the days we are gone and hope that you will join the others who will be praying daily for all of us who will be serving:
2010 SOTP Mission Trip Prayer Guide
Day One and Two (July 30th & 31st)
Pray for safe travel from Chicago to Albuquerque. Pray for rest and the preparation of our hearts for ministry. Pray that all goes smoothly with the logistics. Pray daily that God will touch their hearts and that they will experience His grace in all they do.
Day Three (August 1st)
Pray for the team to open their hearts as they learn in greater detail about the specifics of how we will be serving the community. Pray that they make valuable relationships with the students from the other 2 churches that we will be serving with. Pray that we are an encouragement to those we will be serving this upcoming week.
Days Four, Five, Six, and Seven (August 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th)
Pray for strength and endurance as the team begins to interact with the community through either the work projects or introducing the children of the community to the love that God has for everyone. Please pray for our team as we spend time with members of the community. Pray for good connections, good conversation, and for the week to go according to God’s plan. Pray for our partnership with YouthWorks. Pray for the kids that we are ministering to will have open hearts to the message of Jesus Christ. Pray for the students on our team who are painting, cleaning, teaching, singing, and leading. Pray that we would be open to ministering outside of our comfort zone. Pray that we would stay focused as a team and that fatigue would not set in.
Days Eight and Nine (August 6th and 7th)
Pray for safe travel back Huntley. Pray that we adjust well spiritually emotionally, and physically. Pray that God would continue to work in our hearts after we return. Pray that we would continue to remember and reflect on our journey to the Navajo Indian Reservation.
We ask that you specifically pray for the following participants of the Mission Trip:
Jordan Trevino, Alex Blanchard, Haley Sabie, Zoe Dowell, Rilley Tangen, Brody Burkart, Joe Browne, Ally Miley, Emily Yager, Lauren Kerch, Laura Miley, and Greg Dowell
He must become greater, I must become less
-John 3:30
If the world was just 100 people…
•July 19, 2010 • Leave a CommentWhat would the make up of this world be like if reduced to just 100 people? Share these thought-provoking numbers with your youth and see what they think. More information can be found here.
50 would be female
50 would be male20 would be children
There would be 80 adults,
14 of whom would be 65 and olderThere would be:
61 Asians
12 Europeans
13 Africans
14 people from the Western Hemisphere
50 would be male20 would be children
There would be 80 adults,
14 of whom would be 65 and olderThere would be:
61 Asians
12 Europeans
13 Africans
14 people from the Western Hemisphere
There would be:
31 Christians
21 Muslims
14 Hindus
6 Buddhists
12 people who practice other religions
16 people who would not be aligned with a religion
17 would speak a Chinese dialect
8 would speak Hindustani
8 would speak English
7 would speak Spanish
4 would speak Arabic
4 would speak Russian
52 would speak other languages
82 would be able to read and write; 18 would not
1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer
75 people would have some supply of food and a place to
shelter them from the wind and the rain, but 25 would not
1 would be dying of starvation
17 would be undernourished
15 would be overweight
83 would have access to safe drinking water
17 people would have no clean, safe water to drink.
Ask: What surprises you about this list? What saddens you? If the world were more like the Kingdom of God, how would these numbers be different? What response to you feel compelled to make? Is there any way we might respond as a group?
“The Well” Weekend in Review for 7/18/2010
•July 19, 2010 • Leave a CommentWeekend Topic: Looking for God – What are the ways we might experience God speaking to us, and how might we hear Him?
Understandable Message: Looking for, and hearing God doesn’t always happen the way we think it might. Sure, God walks and talks in the garden with Adam and Eve. He tells Noah to build an ark. He becomes Abraham’s real estate agent. He gives dreams to Joseph. He speaks to Moses from a burning bush. It seems so ordinary. Is that what happens to us today? Maybe…sometimes. More often than not, God speaks to us in ways that we might not expect Him to. There are lots of Christians who are frustrated because they’re not hearing the voice of God. Or at least they are not recognizing it. We took a look at a video of a couple of students who struggle to hear God’s voice. One has dyslexia and feels that if he has troubles reading the Bible, he won’t hear God speaking to him. The other student was sort of an outcast. She felt she wasn’t pretty. She lacked confidence. She struggles with determining her value. She struggles to find support in a cruel world and feels that God looks past her. What these two students (and our own children as well) don’t realize is that God made them as perfect creations in His eyes. Just the way he wanted to. He has a purpose for their lives and knows the number of their heart. He has a plan for them. We learned that they need to look at the different ways God reveals Himself and speaks to them, just the same way our children need to look at the different ways they encounter Him, and understand that their true value comes from God and not from the shifting values of the world.
How to apply the message: God reveals Himself in many different ways. Through nature, music, our friends, the Bible, the nagging voice inside our heads, our parents – the list is really endless. Often it requires quieting ourselves and opening our hearts to hear God. Sometimes God can be screaming at us, but we don’t hear Him because so many other things have our attention. The Bible says in Jeremiah 29:13, that “If you look for Me wholeheartedly, you will find Me”.
Element of Fun: If you don’t watch “Minute to Win it”, you should. It’s a fun game show where contestants have 60 seconds to perform a task such as getting an Oreo from your forehead to your mouth without using your hands, or separate M&Ms by color. This weekend, we played “Hanky Panky” and “Keep It Up”. In Hanky Panky, the players race to remove all of the tissues from a standard tissue box – one at a time. In keep it up, the players needed to keep a feather floating in the air by getting under the feather and blowing to keep it aloft.
Up Next Week: Give it up to God; Outdoor games
The Short Version Of Christina’s WooHoo
•June 9, 2010 • Leave a CommentThis is the short version of Jonathon McKee’s post talking about how Itunes “clean” label for lyrics isn’t always clean. I want to highlight here what to do to find out exactly what the lyrics are of the songs our children want to listen to. But please, take the time to read the full post.
Peace, Greg
Parents… listen up.
It’s a simple tool called Google. When your kids want to download a song, just pop on Google, type the artist, the song name, and then type the word “lyrics,” and hit search. In this case, you would type: Christina Aguilera Woohoo lyrics.
Read the lyrics and then have a conversation with your kids. Don’t tell them it’s wrong. Have them read the lyrics out loud to you. Then ask them. “What’s this song about?”
Christina’s Woohoo
•June 9, 2010 • Leave a CommentChristina’s Woohoo
from JONATHAN’S BLOG FROM THE SOURCE by Jonathan Mckee
By now many of you have heard the buzz about Christina Aguilera’s performance at the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday night where she debuted her brand new song Woohoo. It’s difficult to miss when an “artist” sings a song basically asking someone to lick her vagina. MTV not only allowed Christina to peform this song live Sunday night, but they also zoomed in for a close up of her crotch at the end of the performance with a lit up heart on her… should we call it her “woohoo?”
As a parent who researches youth culture for a living, it takes a lot to surprise me. But I confess, I was truly shocked with how far MTV was allowed to go on Sunday night. (You can catch my detailed synopsis of this popular event watched by literally millions of our teens and tweens in this week’s Youth Culture Window article.)
As for Christina’s new album Bionic, released today… I guess I’m not surprised at all by its racy content. Christina has always trumped Britney on the road to skankville. Bionic features the song, Not Myself Tonight, a song and video that I already blogged about a few weeks ago. That particular video was number one in iTunes for a few days– it’s the 5th most downloaded video today. If you’re a parent, you might want to take a peek at what your kids have access to only a click away.
As for the third song on the album, Woohoo… there’s not much to say. Here’s a glimpse at the lyrics:
You know you really wanna (hey)
Wanna taste my (woohoo)
You know you wanna get a peak
Wanna see my (woohoo)
You know you wanna put your lips
Where my hips are (woohoo)
Kiss all my (woohoo)
All over my (woohoo)All the boys think it’s cake
When they taste my (woohoo)
You don’t even need a plate
Just your face, ha (woohoo)
Licky, licky, yum yum (woohoo)
What a great guy (woohoo)…
One of the sad elements of this song if you listen to the entire thing is that it is so casual about drinking and hooking up, with, of course, no mention of the numerous consequences to this physically, emotionally and spiritually. I’m not the only one upset by this kind of irresponsibility.
Another interesting thing about these lyrics– notice how Christina never uses any cuss words or says anything outright. (I mean… yes… HELLO! It’s as blatant as ever… but I can hear kids now, “What are you talking about mom! The song is clean!”) Interesting enough, iTunes still has labeled the song explicit. I say “interesting,” because they and many others didn’t label the “clean version” of Lil Wayne’s Lollipop (also about oral sex) explicit. They just edited out the cusswords, but left all references to licking the lollipop… and poof… it was “clean.”
Parents… listen up.
It’s a simple tool called Google. When your kids want to download a song, just pop on Google, type the artist, the song name, and then type the word “lyrics,” and hit search. In this case, you would type: Christina Aguilera Woohoo lyrics.
Read the lyrics and then have a conversation with your kids. Don’t tell them it’s wrong. Have them read the lyrics out loud to you. Then ask them. “What’s this song about?”
I’ve written an entire article about this process here: Dad, Can I Download this Song?
Keep having these conversations. Because as long as the Christinas, Britneys… and even Mileys of the world are out there, we need to teach our kids discernment with their media choices.
