con[DIS]nected

When we moved up to the Bay Area one of my friends in ministry sent me a Facebook message telling me about this guy up here that I needed to connect with.  It took a little while for me to land, and for us to figure out a time, but we finally met up this week.  I drove up to the city and connected with Matt.  We had breakfast, talked about life, shared about our different ministry contexts, shared our faith stories, bragged about how cute our kids are and talked about reaching the Peninsula for Christ.  Everything my friend told me about Matt was true.  He is a friendly guy, a catalytic leader and super rad (I added that).  I left very encouraged this week after connecting with Matt.

Later that day I was driving home from the office and I started thinking about how connected we are as a society.  Now this has been my rant before but I came to the conclusion that we are more connected than ever but more disconnected than ever!  

Let me explain that thought before you close this tab

I feel very connected when I am on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, my iPhone or Email.  I can FaceTime People, Skype, Message, Text, Tweet and have entire conversations with never opening my mouth.  We can decide solutions to problems, talk with relatives and look at screens but there is something about sitting face to face with a person.  

My hope coming from this post would be that you find more conversations to have face to face with people.  I am the person that uses almost every social media avenue so I don't think they are bad; I would just prefer to have more human interactions.  That conversation with Matt reminded me of that.  I love finding other people who are passionate about reaching lost people and Matt is one of those guys.

Now take it a step further.  What would it take in your life to really find true connections with people in your local area?

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hebrews 10:24-25

Too Many Forms of Communication?

A few months ago I was talking with one of the Elders at my church about the many forms of communication.  We were talking about how students are bombarded with all the different ways they connect with each other.  The conversation was interested because for me there were three basic forms of communication when I was growing up:

1. Phone Calls
2. Postal Service
3. Yelling Downstairs

Most people wouldn't consider the third a real form of communication and since my family didn't have a fax machine I am going to leave that off of the list.

Now here is a list of the many different forms of communication that a high school student has access to:

1. Phone Calls
2. Postal Service
3. Fax Machine
4. Email
5. Facebook
6. Twitter
7. Text Message
8. iMessage
9. iChat
10. Facetime
11. Skype

I am sure that there are some forms I am missing (please feel free to add to the list).  Since we all know that Facebook does not just include your timeline but also messaging and chat that could add a few and Twitter also has direct messaging but it didn't seem right to bolster the list too much.

The interesting thing is that with all these new forms of communication it seems that our society is more disconnected with those around us.  This disconnection means that parents, youth pastors, coaches and teachers have to work all the harder to keep students engaged and feeling they are important in a world that can seem overwhelming to some.  This is where the local youth pastor needs to be able to step in, partner with parents and help out to get students into real relationships.

I Never Expected This: Part One

This week I'm going to take some time to share some thoughts that have been stirring in my mind from seminary.  Now I know that over a month ago I was ready to quit seminary but this month has been very good for me in my studies and thinking about what I am gaining from seminary that I never thought would happen!

This last Sunday I had the opportunity to preach at my favorite church in the country; South Hills Church in Henderson, NV.  I have been on staff at SHCC for over six years now but this was a cool Sunday.  I was able to kick off a three-week series on the book of Jonah.  Now something that was a huge blessing to me was having my best friend there, Mark Salazar, to see me preach.

Mark has been key in my growth in my walk with Christ.  Mark is like a "Barnabas" to me.  He has been there through so much and we have both grown in ministry greatly over the last almost eleven years I have known him.  I think that Mark is the kind of Christian man that every pastor needs in their life.

After church Mark brought his family over to my house for dinner and some hang time with the family.  While he and I were sitting at the table he was very encouraging about how my speaking style has grown (Mark has known me for a long time).  He was stoked to see how well I handled the text, how I enunciated my words and how I made sure to engage the crowd.  I was so encouraged to hear that from Mark and get that affirmation from him.

I thought about it and I never thought that seminary would help me in my preaching at much as it has.  I really give a bunch of that credit to Dr. Rod Casey and the course he taught last summer.  I think that course has helped m with my communication style in a huge way.  Rod helped me to get my thoughts together, to keep the message to one main point and to not be scared to leave great wisdom on my desk that just didn't fit into the message.  I guess I just never expected that seminary would help me grow in my preaching as much as it has.

Here is the message if you want to judge for yourself

Guest Host for Announcements: Barak Obama

This week in our High School Ministry we brought in a guest to share what is going on.  Now most people may be thinking: "How did you afford to get the president to come help out?  Wasn't that expensive?"

To be honest in our ministry we live by the principle: "Nothing is too costly when you have a message to communicate" and that is why we asked Barak Obama to come share the weekly announcements:



Now with all joking aside it was fairly easy to make this happen but it took a few keys things to do it:

1) An intern who can make people laugh (if you don't have an intern you can always ask a student)

2) A video that we jacked from youtube using keepvid

3) Once the video is downloaded to your machine we simply dropped it into iMovie and used the voice recorded in there to communicate what we needed to say

4) Now take a break, play some video games, and export it to a quicktime file and you are ready to roll!

Thank you Obama for caring about our country and sharing the weekly announcements; our students loved it!