Prayer

Well, I just got back from our 24 hour prayer vigil! I had the 1am - 2:20am slot to watch over! We had a hand full of teenagers up there praying at 1:30am and it was awesome! They presence of God was there and we were able to really let our request & praise known to God!!! I got hungry and went to Cox's Corner store and got some wonderful 3 in the morning fried food! Now I am watching some Bob Ross while I eat my healthy deep fried, greased out, awesome food! I better get to bed since we have such a big day tomorrow but now I am awake and excited as I prayed and watch Bob Ross! What more do you need in life? ...Maybe you should pray for me.

EleventySeven

Check it out! Tomorrow is the EleventySeven concert! OH YEAH! This is going to be an awesome show for our community of teenagers here in Sallisaw!!! Students love going to concerts so why not bring it here to our community and what not a better place than Journey? The doors open @ 5:30 and the show will start around 6pm! We still have some room left so come on out and get your tickets at the door! What an opportunity we have to show teenagers how awesome it is to follow Christ and rock out! These guys are great too! We have talked with them on the phone and they truly want to come and bring a message of hope and life! We are expecting tons of teenagers tomorrow night for the concert! Our students are sooooo excited about helping out and taking ownership in the night too! They will be working with our awesome parents and adult leaders doing all kinds of stuff for the night! Don't miss it tomorrow!!!

Next Generation Conference Pics

I got some pics from the Next Generation Conference that we put on here @ Journey! We had 10 different churches represented from 3 different states! It was an amazing conference that God used to take ministries to a whole 'notha level!

WOW!!!

Wow! What a last few weeks it has been! I think we might have a small opportunity to breath now! Easter Sunday was awesome! We had 3 services Sunday morning and had 614 people at Journey! That is an all time record high attendance! More importantly we had many salvations with people giving their life to Christ for the 1st time ever!!! We had 2 huge dramas that were great! It wasn't your traditional Easter service and it was great! Pastor Jeff is such a good communicator and pastor leading this growing church!!!

The City Wide Easter Egg hunt was off the hook! We had somewhere between 1,500 - 2,000 people there! We had 10,000 eggs for the kids to race and get to! The whole football field was FULL of eggs every square inch! We were able to meet and reach out to soooo many people in our community! There were great prizes to give away and eggs with money & gift cards! Our church did such a wonderful job leading this event and Pastor Tony & Mrs. Erin are AMAZING Children's Pastors!!!

Easter night we had a cookout at our house for the high school students. We had almost 40 teenagers hanging out at the house with our adult leaders. We were cooking out hamburgers, brats, & hot dogs! We had a great time just relaxing, laughing and just having a good ole' fashion cookout! Our house felt like a mini doll house with 50+ people in it!

This week we are getting ready for some cool things coming up and our services that are going great and a church that is making a HUGE impact in our community! That's what it is all about reaching people as we are called to go and advance the Kingdom on this earth!!!

Easter Egg Hunt

Well today we are going at it! We are getting ready for the HUGE city wide Easter Egg Hunt this Sunday afternoon! We have 10,000 eggs stuffed and ready for being hunted! We have tons of eggs with some awesome tickets for prizes in them! We've got people stuffing eggs today, I've got 10 teenagers working on making HUGE signs for the event. The office is bumping today with people and energy! Since it is spring break we are using the time wisely working on things and getting people involved with all the things going on here @ Journey!

We had a fun service last night for spring break! We combined the 6th - 12th grade for service since sooooo many people are out of town this week! We had our second night of "Reality TV" and we talked about the REAL WORLD! We said what the Real World all about:
1. Relationship - show me your friends I'll show you your future
2. Endurance - staying in the game no matter what the cost - change doesn't come overnight
3. Attitude - your attitude determines your altitude in life
4. Leadership - leadership is taking charge of your life and stepping up to what God has for you

That was our REAL world message for the night! We had a great service and it was awesome having the middle school & high school together!!! Well, I need to get back at it and direct these awesome teenage leaders who are working so good today!

Next Generation Children's Conference

Well, we had an AMAZING weekend! We had our NEXT Generation Children's Conference that WE put on here @ Journey! We had 10 different churches represented from 3 different states! Friday night we kick off with a great opening service! We had 100+ people for the opening night. It was powerful, emotional and set the tone for the whole weekend! Pastor Eli from Faith Family Church in Texas spoke and we had some powerful videos from our children here @ Journey! Then Saturday we had sessions, break outs, worship, dramas, and a great time connecting with Children's workers, pastors & leaders!

Then to end the whole weekend we had a huge Kid's Craze Saturday night! Parents and kids met at the church at 5:30 to go pick up their friends in vans, cars & trucks to bring them back to the service! We had an absolutely AWESOME service! The worship center was decked out with tons of balloons and banners to bring an exciting atmosphere! We had around 150 adults and almost 225 kids come out for an action packed service. I mean ACTION packed, top notch, creative, energetic, all hands on deck service! We had tons of kids from the community and parents! 72 kids and adults responded to the altar call to give their life to JESUS! WOOOOOOOOW!!!! That's what it is ALL about reaching families and connecting them to the life source, JESUS CHRIST! It was one of the BEST kids services I have seen!!! We had live worship, crazy games, videos, a great message by Pastor Eli, and more! It was off the hook!

Then this morning Pastor Eli spoke at church and it was great! God did an amazing thing this weekend! Now we are all passed out and resting (well at least me)! Our people did some amazing things this weekend with greeting, helping, serving, leading, speaking, praying, food coordinating, bookstore, registration, etc... We had an amazing church that is rockin' and rollin' for JESUS!

LOOK

This morning the Lord was speaking to me about some cool stuff! In life we face decisions, situations, challenges, etc... everyday. So how do we find God's truth and direction in our lives for our ministries, families, friends, financial decisions, etc... I think we do a 3 step process. I want to do a series some time called, "LOOK". It hit me today what we need to do and I got some cool ideas for a good series.

First we LOOK UP! That has to do with turning to God for ALL our needs and questions. So many times we turn to God as a last resort, but He should be the number one thing plotting our decisions and values in life! We don't turn to the stars, business principles, Oprah, or anything else. We need to look up to God first and foremost in order to get on the right track!

Second is LOOK OUT! We then need to look out around us and surround ourselves with Eagles and not Chickens. Chickens waller around in the dirt and in the low places but Eagles fly high above the mess and dirt. Eagles use their abilities and soar above their circumstances and issues. We need to surround ourselves with the right people and the right kind of thinking! You will never go anywhere if you are surrounded by complainers, sifters and not lifters, takers and not givers!

Third you have to LOOK IN! So many people believe in God but not themselves. They think God could never use them for something GREAT! But God is into the business of taking nothing and making something! You have to look within yourself and know that you are a child of the most high God! You have to know that God can USE YOU to change the world! He isn't looking for ability He is looking for availability from the hearts of people! So believe that you have what it takes to accomplish something great and don't tear yourself down with stinking thinking!

Well that's it, just some thoughts I had today as I was running on the treadmill this morning!

Great Things Happening!

God is doing amazing things here @ Journey! I got to fill in Sunday morning and lead worship (which I absolutely LOVE to do) and it went great considering I found out at about 8am Sunday morning. A situation arose for our main worship leader Chad Jasna and he was not able to make it so I stepped in and went for it! Sunday morning services are so great here @ Journey filled with life, excitement, care, and creativity! Pastor Jeff always does an amazing job at bringing the word EVERY week in a powerful, creative & compelling way!!!

This Sunday morning we were able to show the GIVE-A-Way video from JSM. Our students had been collecting non perishable items all month to give away to a family in need in our community and we made a video to show the church what our students are learning by giving of their time, money & talent! So check it out below!

Also, this week was awesome @ JSM we had almost 100 student between our 2 services. The middle school on Wednesday night and our high school service on Sunday night! It is so awesome to see our students fired up reaching out to friends and connecting with the services in a powerful way! Our high school students help out a lot too for our middle school service on Wednesday nights. Between our middle school, high school students & adult leaders we have about 70 people each week just for the Wednesday night service. We are growing and each week we connect with visitors that LOVED the service and can't wait to come back the next week! It is so great to know that if a student comes in to a service they almost 100% of the time stick and absolutely LOVE the service. We had some middle school girls that I talked with months ago that said, they would walk from their house if they had to in order to come to service. The students are fired up and God is doing great things!!!

Last Night & Reality TV

Man, last night was awesome! We had almost 50 middle school students for our service. We also had 12 high schoolers helping out and it was a great service. We did team challenge and went back through our last series "Love in 3D" The students got points based on some Love in 3D trivia based on the messages and services. I was so impressed what the students remembered and learned from the series. Many times in youth ministry you just have to pray that the students are "getting it" because 6th-8th grade can be a tough group to connect with if your not careful. But man did they get it! They were spitting out answers left and right! I was so proud of them!!!

Our next series is going to be, "Reality TV - is it really real?" We are going to take some of my favorite and not so favorite shows and talk about God's perspective on it! We will take shows like, "The Apprentice" and talk about how to be God's apprentice and living the Christian life - in it to win it! Also shows like, "The Biggest Loser" we will talk about life is about coming in 2nd place and serving others, dying to our pride! Shows like, "Mythbusters" we will talk about the myths we believe about God. It is going to be a fun series and our leaders are going to speak on some of the nights too! I like to have a running element in our series we do. For example the, "Out of the Box" series we talked about a different Bible character each week. For Love in 3D we ended with a human video (drama) each week. For this next series we are going to have some of our different leaders share and let our students hear some teaching from different perspectives. I love getting leaders involved and giving them an opportunity to speak life into these students. I also think it is great for the students to hear different leaders speak. It shows how our leaders are passionate and fired up for the things of God as well! It is going to be a great next few months!!!

Great Weekend!

Well Erin's Birthday was Saturday! Her mom & step dad come into town and we went to Tulsa to spend the day! We had a great time! It is so fun to be with family and spend time together. I LOVE being with my family and spending time with them, they are the most important thing in my life!!! It was great for Zion to have mamaw & papaw to play with and spend time with! It was great to explore Tulsa a bit too! We haven't had much time to explore any areas around here since we have been so busy, so it was good to see some new things. Then the church hosted a baby shower for us and it was AMAZING! We got so much stuff for baby Allie and we were so blessed. We are still sorting it and putting it away so how cool is that? We have such a great church family here that really show there support in more ways than one!

Well, we are hard at it up here in the office getting ready for the Next Conference, planning events, connecting with people, writing sermons, making videos, scheduling upcoming series & other things, doing the day to day grind of running a church! There is SOOO much to be done and so much to plan for that it can get overwhelming, but thank God we have such a great church and staff to pull it together as God empowers us!