Warrior Day of Service

I have the best job/call in the WORLD. Seriously. Don't even try to argue with me, today, you won't win (catch me on an off day and perhaps I will compromise with a tie for world's best job/call).

Part of having the world's best call is the fact that I have the world's best colleagues, both at the church I serve and in the area in which I serve. Once a month, we intentionally get together, drink coffee, commiserate, and think up brilliant plans. (Really let's be honest here, we hang out all the time, we just make sure once a month we actually do it during work hours, which what are those anyways, and see what God is up to.) A couple months ago some how, someone (I think Vicki is guilty here) came up with the plan of creating what has become known as "Warrior Day of Service."

During homecoming week, the kids are released from school at 1:00 pm. (I don't know whose brilliant idea this was to let all that energy out early - really the teachers probably think it is wonderful) We decided that we needed to channel all this beautiful energy into something good. So we created service opportunities for all kids 6 through 12th grade (yes we are nuts), feed them dinner, and then have a community worship service. We had high hopes of 200 kids signing up (this was our first go at this and we didn't want to dream too big, and weren't exactly sure what we were getting ourselves into with less than a month before the day).

Much to our surprise about 350 kids signed up. And it was AWESOME.

Wednesday we spent the day serving all over our community, enabling youth to use the gifts and talents they have to serve the community we live in. They painted community hockey parks, the football team painted elderly fingernails at a nursing home, we cleaned up yards, we organized for other nonprofit groups, we cleaned up a local park, helped at the local library, and sooooooooooooooo much more. IT WAS AWESOME. Kids from different churches, teams, and individuals came together, to work side by side, to love our neighborhood, to prove to the world that they are capable, able, and willing to make a difference in the world. They served with their whole heart, laughed those contagious laughs, smiled from ear to ear, served unconditionally, filled their bellies with pasta, and loved as they first have been loved.

It was an honor to walk alongside them as they made a difference in our world, one day at a time.



Do you volunteer anywhere?
Do you accompany young people to make a difference in the world?
Where is your favorite place to serve?

Summer Stretch

While all the wedding chaos is happening I am still working and while balancing time with my family, friends, and work. It is interesting and I feel like I am running 12,000 places at once but actually enjoying it during the process - so we are going to go with it.

Today begins one of my most favorite things of the summer - Summer Stretch - six Thursdays out of the summer roughly 150 middle schoolers from seven different churches and four denominations gather together to serve our area. In the morning we all head out all over town and we do service projects of every shape, size, and in nearly every location. We walk alongside our nursing home friends, our fire stations, our animal shelter, other congregations and ministries, our food shelf, the middle school, and so much more. These kids make a deep impact on our community and people eventually start looking for the mob of kids all dressed in the same shirt to be around. (Not to mention it gives me an amazing excuse to wear a t-shirt to work one day a week) 

After our morning service project we find a park or some green space or link up with another church somewhere and we eat our bag lunches and do a bible study. EVERY church is doing the same bible study (obviously with our own swing on it) and this summer we are focusing on Jesus and our call to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world.

The afternoon is spent as a ridiculously large group doing all sorts of fun fellowship. We live in a bit of a touristy area, however, most of our kids don't have the opportunity to do many of the touristy things. Soooo we make deals with the local places and they cut us great deals and let our kids come and play for a few hours in the afternoon. We spend our afternoons at a local water park, the big mini golf course, playing at the beach, playing games in a park, paddling down the mighty Mississippi, biking up the amazing bike trail, and eating copious amounts of ice cream. The local paper is even coming during our afternoon fun today to take pictures of our kids and put them on the front page of the newspaper. THIS is the kind of stuff I love to see in the newspaper!

The idea for Summer Stretch came out of a Summer Stretch ministry that is happening the in Minneapolis/St. Paul area. 

My youth look forward to Thursday every week and are VERY annoyed with me when they graduate out of the ministry and no longer can participate. I am always tempted to begin a Summer Stretch type ministry with the high school youth except they all have 12,001 things going on between work, summer sports, and vacation. 

Unrelated side note: my wedding to-do list is getting shorter and shorter by the minute and while I am off summer stretching my mom and dear friend are continuing to cross stuff off my list! GLORIOUS!

2012-2013 Calendar

AHHHH my colleague and I just set our 2012-2013 calendar for church, it is crazy exciting and crazy overwhelming. We have tons going on and lots of new things happening all of which I am super jazzed about but when I see everything that needs to get done it makes my head spin!

Excitement for 2012-2013 at Bethlehem -- we are going to try Family Faith Journey Sunday School for our 2-4th graders and their parents - parents and youth in Sunday school together! I am jazzed about this prospect because all the research shows that kids learning alongside their parents is the most effective means of ministry. I am excited to see where this leads us. This is a daunting task to me as it means I need to write a years worth of curriculum. We are going to try a 3 year rotation focusing one year on the old testament, one year on the new testament, and one year on lutheran basics. We are opting for a very non-traditional Sunday school type model for our 2-4th graders with the potential to expand it to more grades after we try it for a year or two to see how it goes.

The way I understand my role as pastor is that there are three key aspects to passing on the faith to youth/kids - one is the role of the parents, one is the role of the church (pastors included), and one is the role of other adults - together we all get to share the faith and help kids and youth to grow in the faith.

Our Family Faith Journey will have several aspects: serving in worship (ushering, greeting, reading, leading the Lord's Prayer and the Apostle's Creed, and communion serving), learning the faith (learning the stories and the Lutheran basics - grace, law, gospel, saint, sinner, trinity), community (community building activities - fellowship), and service (reaching out to the world). Through the course of the three years we will also be focusing on faith practices such as prayer.

I am excited to see how the Holy Spirit moves in and through our learning and growing as families. I pray that this will help to take away from the parents dropping their kids off for Sunday School and leaving to go grocery shopping or whatever and will help them to learn and grow alongside their kids.

Come Holy Spirit, Come.