-We kicked off our new, church-wide, emphasis on love this weekend. We are calling the series “The Face Of Love” and spending the next six weeks helping students think about what love looks like in the daily life of a junior higher. I wasn’t here this weekend, but word on the street is that it was a great weekend.

- The reason I wasn’t at church is because I was in central California checking out an action sports camp that we are considering as a second camp option next summer. SevenOne is located about 20 minutes from Pismo Beach and focuses on wake boarding, skate boarding, mountain biking, surfing, photography, graphic arts and music.

- How ’bout those Broncos. Hey, anything is possible with the help of a referee or two.

- We’re hosting our first of four men’s Monday Night Football parties in the Refinery tonight. Should be a good time.

- Anybody going to be at Y.S. in Sacramento? Should we plan a JH workers meal together?

At the Drive conference several months ago, Andy Stanley shared some “Random Thoughts About Leadership” that I found to be really good. I posted about them here, here, here, here, and here.

North Point has now made the message available here. I highly recommend it.

A former student in our junior high ministry is jumping into his journalism career and I thought we could all help him out! Currently, he writes for the online edition of the Orange County Register. The more people who click on his stories, the better his next assignment becomes. If you want to help him out, just click here for his article and get his ‘hits’ up.

Just wanted to take a second to thank you folks for all the great “thoughts” you submitted for my short little book. I used several of them, and the ones I didn’t I probably should have!

I’m actually pretty excited for this project because I think it is chuck full of little tidbits that will be helpful for young teenage girls as they begin to navigate the world of guys. Plus, a companion book, 99 Thoughts About Girls…For guys eyes only will release at the same time! Both books should be available in late October.

This past weekend was a great reminder of the importance of feeling confident with your lesson and how confidence, or lack thereof, in a lesson has a huge impact on how well it is received.

The lesson this weekend was first and foremost a gospel presentation. We had told our students that if they brought a guest with them, their friend would hear a clear presentation of the Gospel and would get one of life’s biggest questions answered: “Is it really possible to know for sure that you are going to heaven?”

We planned a really fun weekend and I felt like my talk was pretty decent, but I wasn’t sold on it. It felt too long, too complicated and not easy to understand by un-churched 13-year olds. But, I had it prepped and ready to go so that’s what I went with at our first service. Then, at the last minute (as I was literally walking onto the stage) I decided to try to tweak it a bit which made me feel even less confident. Nothing disastrous happened, but the lesson simply fell flat. I lacked confidence, I struggled to move quickly through too much material etc. As a result, students were not well engaged and what should have been the highlight of the weekend, actually turned into on of the low points.

In between services I decided to make one of my stories the entire focus of the message. I yanked about half my content out, made the lesson much more narrative in nature and felt WAY more confident and comfortable when I was speaking. As a result, students were totally engaged. They were making eye contact with me, listening intently and responded very well. The attendance at the second service was almost three times that of the first, but the level of chatter, and the amount of distractions was cut in half.

It was a really tangible reminder of the importance of thinking through my lessons, being comfortable with the content and remembering my audience.

- Our Junior High program this weekend was one of our best in a long time. It was nothing fancy, just jam-packed with lots of elements and variety. Attendance was up with the start of school, and lesson focused on a short, simple gospel presentation. Next weekend we kick off our church-wide “40 Days Of Love” series that we are calling “The Face Of Love”. We have some fun stuff planned and it should be a good series.

- Saturday was our community-wide grand opening of the Refinery and it was a huge success. Approximately 4,000 (of which at least half were on our campus for the first time)people showed up for a three-hour open house. Good stuff.

- Our high school ministry is kicking butt! I technically oversee High School as well a Junior High, but have very, very little to do with anything going on in that department. Josh Griffin has been leading the charge for about 9 months now and, in my opinion, the team and the high school programs have never been stronger. The brand new auditorium that was built for their use in the new building is already too small to handle their Saturday night crowd…a great problem to have but also a bummer in a BRAND new building!

- It rarely happens, but this weekend a junior higher tracked me down after service to tell me that she spent some time telling her parents about my talk from last weekend and how she will always remember it. Of course, the part she remembered and shared with her parents was the goofy story I told to set up my talk. It didn’t seem like she actually remembered what the lesson was about. Oh, well…baby steps I suppose.

-We learned a lesson this weekend that I would like to pass on; one I’m sure you already know: Junior Highers love rubber bands. To promote our new program, The 3, we put stacks of promo cards on each chair. It made sense to rubber band them together, but we didn’t consider the fact that having rubber bands in the hands of hundreds and hundreds of junior highers could have an effect on our program!

- Guilty pleasure of the weekend: A group of “The Guys” went to see a late night show of ‘Death Race’ last night. Totally lame, but totally awesome guy flick.

- Painful moment of the weekend: Before the movie a few of us “old fellas” went for a late night skate at our new skate park. There is a new 5-foot half pipe that I have been promising to drop into and last night felt like a good time to fulfill said promise. I finally made it on my third try, but slammed really hard the first two times. Hard enough that my 42-year-old body is feeling it this morning.

In an effort to bolster some of the in-roads into our community and to leverage our new building, our junior high ministry is kicking off a monthly outreach program this fall. We’ve never done an ongoing program of this sort, so we’re super excited.

We’re calling it THE 3.
- The 3rd Friday of each month.
- 3 hours long (7 – 10)
- 3 bucks to get in.

This part isn’t part of the promotion, but we are also challenging each of our ‘church kids’ to invite 3 friends each month.

A few things I have been thinking about and/or working through lately…

- I’m not entitled to anything.
Entitlement has never been a struggle for me. I grew up in a poor, but loving family and my dad had the best work ethic I’ve ever seen. But as I’ve gotten older, become a bit more “successful” and as my tenure at my current church grows, I’ve noticed myself slipping into an entitlement mentality every once in a while. I don’t like it, I think it’s immature, it wreaks of arrogance.

- I’m no different than the next guy.
I’ve had a few mentors and a few colleagues step away from ministry far too early because of missteps that should have been avoided. I often find myself slipping into a judgemental mode or becoming angry at the dent they put in the reputation of ministry leaders. But then I realize that I’m really not a whole lot different than the next guy…any of us are a few dumb decisions away from the same paths.

- Life is short.
How cliche is that! But man is it ever true. This week I performed the funeral of an 84 year old man who lived a good life. I’m exactly halfway to that age and it’s hard to fathom that my life really is halfway over. It might be time to start a bucket list.

- Very little matters.
At the funeral, nobody talked about this gentleman’s accomplishments, wealth etc. The conversation totally revolved around memories, impact he had made into the lives of others and words of wisdom he was known for. Why the heck do we try so hard to achieve that which nobody really cares about?

- I think I’m going to get an iTouch.
Had to have something light weight in here! Plus, I’ve been thinking about it like crazy and it sounds like something that I’m entitled to, that the next guy already has, and will make my short life a little more meaningful.

- Junior High Ministry had a great weekend this past weekend. We started a short, two-week, series called “New” and highlighted all the new programs and opportunities happening in our ministry this fall. We tied it all around the Newness that Christ offers. We had a hilarious, 4-part video that consisted of four different infomercials. A good weekend.

- Last night I saw “Traitor” with a couple of buddies. I actually really liked it and found myself having a tough time figuring out the direction it was taking. It’s probably worth seeing in theater and certainly a good rental recommendation.

- Man, are the TV networks working overtime to try to convince us that “Gustav” is the next Katrina or what? Obviously it needs to be taken seriously but it feels like they are trying to create news instead of simply reporting it. But what’s new?

- Anybody have an iTouch? I can’t get an iPhone because I can’t switch service providers, but I’m thinking about an iTouch….any thoughts?

- Off to spend the last day of Summer with Cole at the Vans Skate park…his favorite place to skate.