Part of the Glue

I started reading the “Hole in our Gospel” several weeks ago and it quickly became one of those books I couldn’t put down.  Author Richard Stearns also President of World Vision tells a very personal and gripping story of a modern rich young ruler that when heard the call to sell everything and follow Christ did just that.  Richard’s personal story of leaving the life of a successful CEO and journeying with World Vision for many years is a story of calling and ruthless trust just as much as it is a story of understanding the entire Gospel.   Throughout the book Richard, like Dallas Willard author of “the Great Omission,” makes claims that Christians and the church are often guilty of portraying a gospel that is incomplete.  While this may not be a new idea or viewpoint with the resurgence of countless books (oftentimes too liberal to be taken seriously) in this camp in the last five year, a book like this one is needed in a time where the left can’t be trusted and the right is often missing the point.  Stearns seems to have a way to somehow bring these two sides together and call us to action without throwing our theology out the window.

As I was reading this book I began to think about poverty and the poor and an upcoming trip I will take to Africa in a few weeks.  I can’t help but to feel a burden and desire to stop thinking about poverty and do something.  My hope is to tell stories while I am in Africa with my camera and like Richard help Christians in America who are incredibly blessed begin to see the verses in our bibles that have holes in them and to be obedient to this call.

Recently I got the opportunity to create some videos for Lead222 servant leadership experiences this summer. This year’s theme was “living in 3d.” As I begin to pray and think about how I could possibly begin to conceptualize “living in 3d,” I begin to consider that maybe I was trying to hard to teach something. Sometimes when we create videos we can teach some valuable lessons and yet other times we can create something that asks a question or leaves the audience to wonder. Jesus frequently did this using parables and sometimes even left some questions uanswered. Jesus knew that if he explained everything as easily as possible that when people recieved the message it would not be there’s to discover and they would feel no ownership in discovering the meaning behind his parables. We can do the same thing Christ did and use metaphors/parables that may not scream “Christian” but may cause students to think and feel ownership of what they are being asked to understand. Below are three of the videos we created for each of the night’s sessions.

Churchkreatives.com launched earlier this month.  Church Kreatives is a multi-contributer blog by church creatives for church creatives.  In addition to posting on partoftheglue I will regularly be posting on church kreatives….so come check us out and join a community of creative christ followers

ChurchKreatives

Every summer we take hundreds of teenagers to camp and every summer we do everything imaginable to get them there.  Last year we created three camp promo videos that were based off a super bowl ad.  This year  I decided to take a comical approach that would threaten physical harm if they somehow didn’t. We wanted to create a video that students would actually want to share with their friends and perhaps use as an effective way of inviting them. Check out the video below.

Tuggle, a youth ministry management web based software now allows for paypal integration.  Tuggle boasts that they’ve created a management tool that is so fun to use, people often mistake it for one of those wildly popular social networks. Before tuggle’s system had sign ups but no way to collect payment.  Now with the simple paypal integration ministries/organizations and schools can connect their accounts to this system and allow their members to pay right there and then.

Below are some screenshots of these new features.

Every year our student ministry does an event called LYF Awards.  LYF Awards honors all the students and adults that are currently serving in our ministry and have been serving over the last year.  Each year we develop media pieces for this program. Below is a video we created to honor the seniors who had served long and hard over the last six years.

A little over a month ago at the shift conference, Kurrent (a new web portal powered by unifyer) launched to the public for the purpose of developing leaders for spiritual formation among this next generation. This is a new global youth ministry network built specifically for youth leaders, volunteers, parents, and educators. You can watch the intro video here.  This new network is great because it can allow youth leaders the ability to receive online video training, resources and ideas that before were unavailable or hard to get to. This site also allows you to create your own group and create your own content specific for your ministry.

Our youth ministry has been dealing with some difficult circumstances over the last several years in regards to awareness.  We currently have a student ministry building that is literally located across the highway from the rest of our church.  We provide shuttles on Sunday morning for students to ride over there, however we still face the issue of awareness because we are not literally connected to the other church buildings.  Over the last several months and really the last year we have been building a campaign to close the back door to our ministry.  We built a website www.lyf.net in the fall of 2008 to bring about awareness online.  Just this past weekend our ministry hosted a ministry fair inside the commons of our church. We setup different booths with giveaways, information and giant displays that hopefully yelled “yes we do have a youth ministry…come and check us out.” We started telling better stories during our worship services by creating short 2-minute videos that tell the stories of serving and leading in our ministry. Below is one of the videos we recently showed.