Dnow '10 "Live Love" (Video, Pics & Recap)

 This past weekend was Disciple Now weekend for h2o student ministry.  Our theme and focus for this year was "Live Love" from John 13:35, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."  I stand in awe of God and His Spirit that moved with great freedom.  This weekend ranks as one of the best Disciple Now's in my 13 years of ministry.  What made it so incredible?  The movement of God in students lives!  Saturday night the Spirit of God moved in and in the silence of the room students just started praying over one another, others accepted Christ, others hit their knees.  It was one of those indescribable God moments.  (watch the video below)



I believe a big key to a very successful and spiritual growth Disciple Now is the quality of college leaders involved.  The leaders we brought in this year had a deep passion and walk with God.  They were spiritually ready before they arrived.  All weekend long they loved on students and poured into these students to Word of God.

Another key to a successful Disciple Now is the Speaker and the Worship Band.  This year I brought in Pat Cammarata to speak to our students.  Pat spoke with great authority from the Word of God and challenge students to "Live Love" everyday of their life.  As he spoke the Word of God changed lives.  Our band was led by Mark Bartels who brought in several college students with him to lead us in worship.  I appreciated how they focused us upward in worship, it was moving to watch as students were drawn to passionately worship God.

 

  

Disciple Now..."Live Love" this Weekend

 This weekend is our annual Disciple Now Weekend.  This year our theme is "Live Love."  The focus is loving other people as Jesus does.  This is always a weekend that we see students lives radically changed by Christ.  Our speaker this year is Pat Cammarata, he is a man that has a passion to communicate God's Word.  This year we are using college students from Ouachita Baptist University (OBU) led by Mark Bartels as our worship band.

We have so many people that have been great in volunteering their homes for us to use and many other adults that have volunteered to help this weekend.  We have the greatest adult volunteer workers here at Beech Street!  They love teenagers and love seeing lives changed for Christ.

This is going to be a great weekend!

A day at Barksdale Air Force Base

A week ago Craig and I got invited to Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, LA for clergy day.  We were invited down by one of our church members, Ken Wooley, who is in the Reserves and also works full time on the base.  Ken does some pretty amazing work on B-52 bombers.  While we were there we ate lunch at the officers club, toured the base and got up close with at B-52 bomber and A-10 Thunderbolt II.

The Reserves are hero's, these guys work in the civilian workforce and then give up their time to train and defend our great country.  I'm proud to know several of these guys.  I hope you will join me in constantly telling these men and women thank you for their service.  Below are some pictures from the day.

Thank you to Ken Wooley for the invitation.  I love spending time around our military and especially the Reserves.

Barksdale is home to the 917th wing:
The 917th is a composite wing which operates both the A-10A Thunderbolt II and the B-52H Stratofortress. Located at Barksdale AFB, La., the Wing employs approximately 1,600 Air Force Reserve personnel. The mission of the 47th Fighter Squadron is to train students to fly the A-10. The primary mission of the 93rd Bomb Squadron is to conduct strategic heavy bombardment and maritime operations in the B-52. (from their website)

 

B-52 Bomber...these planes are massive and bring the thunder

 Bombs dropped from the B-52.  The one on the right has a larger case to go down into the ground.  You're in trouble if you see one of these things coming your way.

 

Another bomb carried on the B-52.  This one is so smart it can literally be dropped from over 8 miles away and go through the window in your house.  Amazing the technology our military has!

 

This is the bomb bay of the B-52.  They can carry a lot of bombs like pictured above.

 

Cockpit of a B-52.  I got to sit in the pilots chair on the left.

 

Call-sign of the B-52 we looked at

A-10 Thunderbolt II

 

This was a fun day.  Hope to go back again.

What and amazing Sunday!

Our "Super Sunday" had a huge impact on lives.  Every year we take Super Bowl Sunday and create a church wide event called "Super Sunday."  We take the excitement created by our culture and in-turn create excitement for our Savior and Church.  We make the day all about getting people plugged into a Small Group from Children through Adults.

I'm so proud of our church and how people got excited, not about a ball game, but about inviting people to church.  All across our church, in every Small Group, there were new faces.

Our Sr. Adults had a neat get-together before their classes.  They used one of their rooms as a place to serve finger type foods before Small Group.  There was great excitement and joy among them.  Great job to all who worked hard in our Sr. Adult area to pull of this great morning.

In almost all our Adult classes we had to bring in extra chairs.  I love it when I'm having to run down chairs because a class has run out.  There were several classroom bursting at the seems.  It was neat to see them bringing in friends and neighbors and introducing them to their classes.  I'm so proud of how they made it their mission to invite people to be here.  Then they all had parties Sunday Night to watch the Super Bowl and build relationships.  Great job to all our adult classes.

Our Teenagers (h2o student ministry) blew it out of the water by inviting their friends.  We had well over 100 teenagers in Small Groups.  Not to mention they almost took up the entire center section of the worship center.  God is continuing to bless this ministry.  Plus they did an all day event ending with watching the Super Bowl (read more about it here).  Thanks to all our great adult volunteers that served tirelessly all day.

The Children's Ministry also has a big day in Small Group.  All their classes were filled with kids. It was fun to walk around and see all the groups as they taught these kids about Jesus.  They also had a huge event after Worship for the kids to go to Chuck E. Cheese.  Great job to Emily and all our Children's Volunteers and teachers.

This was a great day all about building relationships with people.  I believe God used it and will continue to use to in the days ahead.

Super Outreach on Super Bowl Sunday

Every year for Super Bowl Sunday our Student Ministry does a huge outreach called, "Super Sunday."  Our goal is to see a lot of students connect with our Small Groups that morning.  We developed an event that takes a lot of work but is very successful.  Here is what we do.

For weeks prior to the event we do lots of promotion with mailouts, social networks, phone calls, etc.
Super Sunday:
It all begins with Students arriving for Small Group at 9:15am that morning.  We have a great free breakfast for them, and energetic/engaging Small Group time in God's Word.  Next we attend or worship service.  After worship we load student on buses and take them to a local city park.  There we grill burgers, have chips, drinks & snacks.  While at the park we play ultimate frisbee, some students just hangout and talk, others play other games.  We stay at the park about 2 hours in all.  From the park we load back on the buses and go to bowling alley.  We bowl for 2 hours, this is the only part of the entire day that cost the students.  We leave the bowling alley in time to return to the church for the Super Bowl.  We have pizza for all the students, free, and they can play games, talk, and/or watch the game.  At then end of each quarter we give away a nice prize and at half time I do a brief devotional.  It all ends when the game is over.  This day is all about building relationships.  Here's what the schedule looks like:

9:15am-Small Group
10:30am-Worship
11:45am-Go to the Park for Lunch, Ultimate Frisbee, etc
2:15pm-Go Bowling
4:30pm-Return to the church and eat dinner (pizza)
Go home after the game.

It's a lot of work, but every year God brings us a lot of students for this day.  We usually more than double our normal Sunday Morning attendance.  We have seen God save students here, connect them with our group and finally we have seen several families come as a result of their teenager getting involved.  This has been a very successful outreach for us.

It is very worker intensive.  We have some of the greatest adult volunteers of any church I have every served.  We have parents cook cookies, bring bags of chips for snacks, drive, provide supervision and more.  We have a group of adults that takes care of the food, others that help with the recreation at the park, many other adults that come along to interact and provide supervision.  Without our great adult volunteers this day would never happen.  I appreciate them and value the service greatly.

I can't wait until Sunday to see what God does this year!

s