On The Journey...

Family Pics

2010-04-27T16:30:00.001-05:00

Here are some pics we took the other day...

Tuesday

2010-04-13T07:54:00.002-05:00

Allie had her 2 year old birthday party last Saturday. She is so awesome. We have the best girls in the world!!! Here are some pics from her birthday.

This is a busy week. We have Master's Commission coming in Wednesday night for a special service for REMIX. Then Sunday night we kick off our new time and new day for REMIX. Sunday's are going to work out great since we won't be competing with school. So many kids are not able to be there every week because of homework, sporting events and another school night, so Sunday nights we won't compete with any of that. A lot of students have been so excited that school won't be an issue now on Sundays. Also, many of our leaders have a hard time getting there by 7pm on a work day, so this will enable us to make it easier for leaders as well as being able to gain new ones that otherwise wouldn't be able to get involved. Another reason is that we can go longer now, 6pm - 8pm as opposed to 7pm - 8:30pm. Only having an hour and a half means we have to thump it to get through everything, but now we can extend worship and ministry a bit more and dig a little deeper. Some kids don't get home late on a school night now because service ends at 8:30pm and by the time they get home it's after 9pm. With moving it up a bit we can get them home and ready for school a little earlier. Also, now we can do more before REMIX like something called Pre-Mix. We can have some short burst of small groups, a cookout, basketball games, classes, or whatever we want just a little bit before REMIX and knock it out in one day. This works so much better than trying to do things on different days. Say we want to have a 3 week breakout on understanding and reading your Bible, now we can offer that at PREMIX and get a much better response than if we had to offer it on a whole 'nutha day. There are just a few reasons why Sunday is going to be the best night for us in the long run to connect.

This weekend we kick off our new series, "Go Fish" on Sunday mornings. It is going to be an awesome series for the next 6 weeks, I am really excited about it. Whenever we do a new series there is a lot that goes into the graphics, power point, videos, dramas, decor and more. So the week before a new series is always action packed with getting ready, and this week is no exception.

Well, I need to get at it so that is the story for today.

Time

2010-04-09T23:43:00.006-05:00

Happy Birthday little Allie!!! Today is Allie's 2nd birthday. She is awesome!!! It is so amazing to see your little kids grow up and learn more and more everyday. We pray that Zion & Allie become everything that God has for them. Parenting is about raising up these blessings from God to fulfill God's plan for their life and that is what we are learning how to do daily. It isn't always easy but it is part of the call God has on us as parents. Our 1st ministry is to our girls. We are believing the best for them as well as trying to instill God's love for them. We have been doing a music Monday night for the past few weeks. Every Monday night I get the guitar out, Erin gets some sort of instrument, Zion gets one and Allie. We pick a scripture talk about it then sing a worship song together. Sometimes it's upbeat and fun sometimes it's slow and worshipful, but we want to teach them about expressing our love to God. It is a great way for them to get active with an instrument or just dancing for God. We really want to do more with the girls as far as having family Bible times, prayer, etc... but it is so hard when you get going in life. But I guess you can't wait for time you have to MAKE time for those important things in life. If we wait around they will probably be graduated by the time we get to it, so we are trying to be proactive and intentional about creating and committing to time.

Encounter Weekend was awesome, so here is a highlight video of a powerful weekend!!!

Busy Times Again...

2010-03-29T08:58:00.004-05:00

Well, this last few weeks were crazy!!! 1st off Encounter Weekend was AMAZING!!! We had a powerful weekend where students were giving their life to Christ and encountering God's supernatural work in their life. Our leaders did an amazing job putting on the entire weekend, I am so proud of them for their leadership and commitment. We will have a high light video coming soon.

Last week I went to Louisiana to move up Travis & Ashley Hebert and their wonderful kids. I got to drive a 24 foot beast of a moving truck back up to Indiana. While I was down there I got to eat some serious Crawfish cajun-style baby!!! It is so great to know God is moving up called people to Martinsville, Indiana to get planted into what God is doing here. We have an awesome church that is making a HUGE impact in our area. Our services seem to be getting better and better each week, while lives are being changed for Christ!!!

We just ended our series on the Trinity called "God3". I got to close out the series Sunday morning speaking on WHO IS GOD? check out the message on our website www.hhchurch.com

Here is the 2nd episode of Spirit Hunters...

2010

2010-03-16T16:59:00.004-05:00

Alright, I haven't blogged in like hmmmmm......forever. So here is my first attempt in 2010. What a great year so far!!! God is moving and we are doing awesome!!! There is way too much to catch everyone up with so here goes a little.

Jarred Day moved up here from Texas. He is a 22 year old young man who is awesome!!! He is interning here @ HHC!!! I believe God is going to use him in amazing ways to impact our area for Christ!!!

Church is going great. We are growing week by week and seeing incredible things take place day by day. We have been focusing on raising up leaders to take our church to the next level.

Encounter Weekend is this weekend for the youth. We are hooking up with several other youth groups for an amazing weekend together. Pastor Tim Roberson from Las Vegas is flying in to speak and hang with us all weekend. It is going to be a powerful time, so please be praying for LIFE CHANGE in our teenagers!!!

Erin threw me the best 30th birthday party EVER!!! She so surprised me with old friends from all over (even Louisiana). It was the best birthday I could have ever imagined. It was Mexican food all over and a great time!!! Thank you my AMAZING WIFE!!!

Many other things are taking place that I don't have time to dig into yet, because we are taking our beautiful girls to the park on a beautiful day. So I will fill you in later. Check out this video we did for our series on Sunday as we have been talking about the Holy Spirit.

Christmas Time

2009-12-21T23:23:00.004-05:00

Well I am sitting here with my amazing family doing our Christmas tradition. Every year the week of Christmas we pull out the blow up mattress, blankets, pillows and all into the living room around the Christmas tree and T.V.. We stay up late watching Christmas movies, eating wonderful goodies, and just hang out snuggling together. It is one of my most favorite of times together. Tonight on the menu: Chicken Parmesan, Toasted Bread w/Bruschetta, Tortelleni w/Alfredo Sauce, Strawberry Lemonade, & some great desserts. On the T.V., my favorite Christmas movie: White Christmas. What a great time with family.

A few weeks ago at church we had our Christmas special with the children & youth doing some drama's. We did a human video to the song One Way which the youth band did live. It was awesome. We had almost 50 people on the stage doing the human video. It was a Remix Christmas Musical. Check it out below.

Thanksgiving & Wal-Mart

2009-11-27T23:53:00.003-05:00

Well, we had a great Thanksgiving except Allie got a 103 temperature fever and was not feeling well. She is doing better tonight, but just starting to. We were able to eat lots of food and sit back a little, so that is always good. We are getting over our Thanksgiving food coma I guess. We decided next year we are going to join the hard core shoppers and experience Black Friday at 12am or so. We don't really care about the shopping to much. Erin and I just want to experience madness and see what the craziness is all about, we figured it would be a good experience at least once in our life. So next year 2010 we are going for sure!!! Thanksgiving week is always a good week to rest since we don't have our mid week services. I cherish this time very dearly to have a normal week and not a 110 miles per hour week as usual. You have to know when to put your life in 5th gear and know when to put it in 1st. This weekend I am speaking at church for our Family Is series. I am excited and as always have a LOT to share. I find in putting together messages the hardest part is trying to figure out what doesn't need to be said. I start with about a million thoughts and ideas and have to shave it down to the most important things that flow well together and need to be said. I feel when I put together a message I have to shave 3 hours worth of talking to 30-45 minutes worth. That's not always easy to do, but must be done as a communicator. After all a communication is best when more can be said in a little amount of time rather than a little being said over a long period of time. A rather tough balance sometimes when you have a lot to say but only a little that truly needs to get through. I am always honored to get to speak to our church thought and am very excited about what God has put in my heart to share.

On a side note: Donnie and I were at Wal-Mart the other day getting some spray paint for a project we were doing at the church. Well, when he picked up a bottle the top was busted and it fell to the ground. The nozzle got stuck in and starting spraying everywhere. Donnie quickly grabbed it and stuck in a box until it drained all the paint, but not before it sprayed the floor, display unit and end cap. Then when the attendant came over after all this she picked it up to throw away the empty can and it started to spray everywhere again (revenge of the can I guess). Needless to say we decided it was time to leave. To this day weeks later we left our mark @ Wal-Mart, probably forever.

Family

2009-11-09T23:40:00.003-05:00

So we started a new series Sunday morning called, "Family Is..." The service went great. Worship had a great presence of God, Pastor Chris had a great message and the whole service just went really smooth. Family is a big topic this time of year with the holidays. Sometimes we take family for granted and let it become familiar, but family is truly the best part of life. Family is like a business and the parents are the CEO, the kids the employees (funny thought) and so on. God is the founder, president, chief, head honcho. In a family God has to be first in order to operate a successful family. Then goes the marriage, because so goes the marriage so goes the kids. You can't let the kids run the business. So many times in marriages I think the kids become the focus and the marriage just falls apart. The marriage has to be the foundational rock in a family. Spouses stay kids leave. We train a child in the way they should go and then they go. The spouse stays forever. The marriage is the very heartbeat of a family. The stronger the marriage the stronger the family becomes. That's why it is so vital to have time as a couple to grow, enjoy, & romance each other. When those things go so goes the marriage out the window. So this series will be great talking about God's heart for family and how important it is. After all God uses the metaphor for the Kingdom of heaven, the church to be the family of God. The Bible talks about the family to be a mirror of the structure of God's kingdom and heart. We need to reiterate God's structure in our family, demonstrate God's love in our family, and communicate God's word in our family.

Speaking of family, my beautiful, amazing, talented, strong, genius, gorgeous, God-loving, honoring, sweet, gracious, compassionate, soft yet firm, purpose-driven, smokin' hot, great cooking, caring, home-school teaching, inquisitive, self learner, encouraging, supporting, understanding, super fun, best friend, loving, God-fearing, great leader, hard working, servant, thoughtful, humble, funny (laughs at her own jokes), piano learning, take charge, make it happen, giving, selfless, really great MOM, stunning wife is heading up VBS 2010 next year. She is CRAZY pumped about this. God has given her a HUGE vision to see not only our children at the church be impacted but salvation come to the children of our community. She is planning BIG for a BIG GOD. We made a video (well she basically told me everything to do for the video I just put the pieces together for her) for Sunday morning. Really though she planned this whole video out and I just carried out the notes she left me. We played this video Sunday morning as she pitched the vision for VBS 2010. My new slogan for this is, "VBS 2010, YOU BETTER BE IN"

Mind Mapping

2009-10-28T11:16:00.003-05:00

So I have really been drawn to the MIND MAP way of putting a message together. This is a great way of mapping out the message that you share. I picked up on this a few months ago and I am loving it. On my Mac I have this great program called MyThoughts for Mac that allows me to be creative and map out thoughts. They say that visually mind mapping is the best way to retain thoughts and organize ideas. At first I thought that's cool but not sure I would use it. Boy was I wrong I use it for personal things to map out my life, tasks, brainstorming, organizational flow charts & MORE!!! They say that linear text doesn't stimulate the brain as much as visual pictures, colors, shapes, and flowing. Which makes sense because when I say elephant you don't think of E L E P H A N T no, you think of a big animal with a trunk eating peanuts, right? We are visual learners and thinkers so mind mapping just makes sense to truly tap into creativity. Anyway, had to share that with the blog world. I highly recommend you to look into mind mapping weather with a computer program or just on old school paper. Check it out and research it a bit, I think you will find an amazing way to take your thoughts to a "whule nutha levo". Here is my message for tonight @ REMIX.

Christmas, Choices, & Campins

2009-10-26T22:39:00.002-05:00

Guess what? We have been decorating for Christmas, that's right ladies & gentlemen we are in the Christmas Spirit. Couldn't wait till after Halloween had to start now. Christmas never lasts long enough when you wait too long any way. So we decided to get a head start on the festivities. When I was young I left my decorations up in my room ALL year long (Christmas lights and all). I will post some pictures up when we get more done.

I've been thinking lately about the power of choice. The idea that everything we do in life is a choice. We are not merely victims of the past or just products of our environments & upbringing (although those do play major roles in how we choose the choices we make). But we have the ability and responsibility to make choices. Responsibility in that we our response-ABLE people. God created us with seeds of greatness within, but we have to respond to those seeds and make the right choices to water them. We are ALL able to step up and live the dreams that God has placed in our heart. We may go through some hard times but you can't climb a smooth mountain, there has to be some rocky ridges that are sharp and dangerous. Those sharp hard times become stepping stones for us to learn from and keep moving higher in our destiny. One of the most famous and highly honored basketball coaches of all time is John Wooden (who I might add lived in Martinsville, Indiana as a teenager and took the high school basketball team to 3 state championship finals in a row) said,

"There is a choice you have to make in everything you do. So keep in mind that in the end that choice you make, makes you."

What a great statement, so true. The choices we make ultimately make us. So in the words of the Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, "Choose, but choose wisely." Choose to be the person that God has created you to be regardless of who says you can't or that you can never change. We ALL are able to respond and carry the responsibility of choosing God's path for our life.

A few weeks ago we had our camp-in with the students so check out the highlight video.

Girls

2009-10-25T22:33:00.003-05:00

I had to post some pictures of our beautiful girls!!! They are growing up super fast. I love being a father and raising these amazing girls. I believe God has great things for their life and I am excited to see it come about. Zion has talked so much about God lately and is always asking great questions to learn more. I love the curiosity and hunger of children, they seem to want to know so much. Somewhere along the lines as we grow up I think we lose the exploration and adventure of learning and growing. I NEVER want to stop learning and asking questions to better my understanding of God & life. Growth does not come automatic in life it is an intentional act of engaging your life. I like the example of the Children of Israel. They didn't have 40 years of experience in the desert they had 1 year that they repeated 39 more times. WHY? Because they didn't learn, they didn't get it, they just keep doing what they always had done and wondered why. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. But if you always do what you've always done you'll always get what you've always gotten. You have to break out of the rut and explore greater understanding of life, family, ministry, purpose, hobbies, etc... All that to say, I will always strive to have the adventure of a little child that is learning new things everyday!!!

www.pastorjohnbarrett.com

2009-10-17T00:01:00.003-05:00

Check out our new family website. I always enjoy being creative and finding new ways to do more. I have been putting t his together here and there late night messing around just having fun.

www.pastorjohnbarrett.com

Friday Early Morning Thoughts...

2009-10-15T23:07:00.004-05:00

Well, I've been off the last few days. Erin has been going through some pain which we are still trying to determine the extent of. Today we had our 3rd doctors visit and got some answers but still have some test to run next week. We have been playing back and forth between hospitals & doctor's office. Everything seems to be alright though we'll know more on Tuesday with the tests. They thought it was a kidney stone but turns out it's some other big medical words that I won't even try to explain. So we're praying for the best and believe everything to be good as we find out more.

I heard a song tonight called "Down" by Jason Walker. It is a great song if you view it from a whole nutha perspective. The words are:

Verse 1

I don’t know where I’m at
I’m standing at the back and I’m tired of waiting
Waiting here in line, hoping that i’ll find
What i’ve been chasing

Chorus

I shot for the sky,
I’m stuck on the ground
So why do i try
I know I’m gonna fall down
I thought I could fly
So why did I drown
I never know why, It’s coming down, down, down

Oh im going down, down, down ( On 2nd time around )

Verse 2

Im not ready to let go
cause then i’ll never know, what could be missing
but im missing way to much
So when do i give up, what ive been wishing for

Bridge

I can’t find another way around
And I dont want to hear that sound
Of losing what I never found

Sound a little depressing huh? Well, to me the song speaks of a life without Christ. Everything falls through. Every dream we could have means little compared to the reality of Eternity. We search for something in life yet come up empty unless we find the true meaning of it all. And that is to connect with our Creator God who loved us so much He gave His one and only son to die for the junk that disconnected us from Him. This song makes me so grateful that I have SOOOOO much hope in that if I try to fly on my own I just git the ground but when Christ is my life the Bible says we will soar on wings like eagles. Life can bring us down but through Christ we are lifted high above the pain of this world. One day Christ will come again and we will forever be. My prayer is that for those who don't know this amazing Savior will come to not be stuck on the ground but will shoot high for the reason they were created, to live for CHRIST!!! This song is a reminder to me of the life that I once had yet now am completely changed for Christ. So Jason God will forever change the pattern of down, down, down to a life that goes up, up, up if you give Him your hopes & fears!!!

YO

2009-10-12T12:19:00.003-05:00

We had our Camp-In Friday night here @ HHC! Since it was raining and very cold we changed our Camp-Out to a Camp-In. We had a blast hanging out all night playing games, video games, & more! We had a great turnout with about 55+ students. We got maybe 3 hours of sleep or so then sent them home Saturday morning. It's always good to have these fun night to build relationships with the students and just open the door of trust and showing that we care about them. It's amazing how spiritual a normal night of just eating and hanging out can be. It may not be directly spiritual but it is for sure a in-direct connection with the students. The more we build relationships the more we are able to speak into their life. In today's culture teenagers are used to a breakdown of trust, leaders, and people that say they care yet don't show it on a practical level. So that's what these nights are ALL about building relationships without any thing in return just showing the students we are here for them. When you have those kind of times you are able to have heart to heart challenging times that take them deeper & further in their relationship with Christ!!! The more you build trust the more we can speak into their lives on a weekly basis.

Worship went great Sunday morning at church. We were able to break out of the box a little and truly let worship ring from our hearts. Our team is AMAZING here @ HHC. I am so excited about the journey ahead of us with worship. The team is united about the purpose of why we do what we do and that is so much deeper than just music. It is about connecting with God's presence and leading others into His presence. That is a BIG responsibility to not only journey into God's presence but lead others there as well. It challenges you to go beyond the melodies, beyond the chords, beyond the music and to go to that focused place of expressing your love and passion for GOD!!! Sometimes that is hard to do when you are thinking about the arrangement, chords, melody, timing, words, is everyone doing their part, sound, harmonies, rhythm, & more! But you have to be able to juggle all that and go beyond into a deeper expression of worship that involves the heart pouring out to God without going through the motions. I LOVE to worship our Creator God and lead others into a genuine experience of His presence. I don't take that lightly. I consider it a joy & challenge to become better at worshiping God and leading others into that place as well. After all we are ALL WORSHIP-LEADERS on the team from sound to singing. We first worship God personally then lead others into that place as well.

Just my thoughts for the day!!!

Capture The Flag

2009-10-05T23:48:00.003-05:00

Sunday night we had our Capture the Flag event with about 6 others youth groups represented. Cory & Michelle Joy put the whole thing together and did an amazing job. We estimated about 125 students then leaders so probably had a great turn out of 150+ for the night. We had a cookout, worship, devotion, and a big game of Capture the Flag. It's always great to get together outside of our normal service and connect with other teenagers and a different environment. Students need to see other students that are involved in youth groups and connected to God. Teenagers move in packs and when they see other teenagers following God they begin to open up even more to the things of God. Sort of a positive peer pressure that gets them truly hooked on the Creator of the universe.

This week we start a new series called, "You Asked For It". We had the students fill out a questionnaire last week and based on that we are going to deal with some issues that the majority of the students asked about. This series will truly be dealing with what the teenagers are facing from their perspective. We are also tailoring the games and more with what they asked for. I am excited about hitting some of these topics that were heavy hitters and kind of the common denominator throughout the questionnaire. Topics like Depression & Anger along with some other ones. Students are dealing with depression like never before. Some of these reasons are: broken families, abuse (physical, verbal, emotional), parents that are too busy for their child's time & energy, & the fact that for some stupid reason it's a fad to be down & out as though the world's against me attitude. So we are going to break these lies & bring some truth to light about joy, peace, God's ultimate LOVE for us that makes you wanna get up and dance baby, yeah!!! Understanding your purpose & why we are here crush many misconceptions about life. We want these students to know that God created them for something amazing. We are NOT an accident that might have good luck or bad luck. We are created in the image of a mighty God who calls us to great things on this earth. The relationship we can have with Christ will truly energize our WHOLE being, physical & spiritual. Now I am preaching, I'd better get to bed!!! Good night!!!

Friday Night

2009-10-02T22:46:00.003-05:00

Haven't been feeling well the last few days but I am definitely feeling better. We had our Caramel Apple Fest 09 Wednesday night and it went AWESOME! We had our biggest attendance night @ REMIX which was great (I guess caramel really draws kids in). We had a blast ending our series. We are starting a new series next month called, "You Asked For It". Wednesday we had the students fill out a questionnaire about things they deal with, topics they want to learn about, food items they want in the cafe, & more! This next month is ALL about letting the students pick EVERYTHING we do @ REMIX from the games to the message. It was really interesting seeing the overlaps of what students filled out. There were for sure some things that seemed like the common denominator with issues they deal with and things they want to know about.

Sunday night is our annual Capture the Flag event with 6+ other youth groups from the area. We are having a cookout, games, prizes, music & more! We were supposed to have it a few weeks ago as a pre-rally for SEE YOU AT THE POLE, but it got rained out. Sunday night is the rescheduled night for this event.

We also had a wedding rehearsal tonight. Tomorrow I am doing Dustin Huffman & Jessica Smith's wedding. Zion is the flower girl and she did amazing throwing the pedals tonight. I love doing weddings. Erin and I were reminiscing about our wedding not too long ago (2003). It is such an exciting and awesome time getting married. Truly I am more excited now about this beautiful thing called marriage than I was even then. Our marriage seems to get better and better over time like a good stew or something I guess. I LOVE my family!!!

Caramel Apple Fest 09

2009-09-30T10:35:00.006-05:00

Tonight we are ending our series, THE APPLE with a HUGE Caramel Apple Fest. That's right we are going to dip apples in hot caramel and let the students walk down a line of candy & toppings and just dip away viking style!!! It's going to be insane tonight. This has been a great series talking about temptation and how the enemy throws fake apples at us to bite into. We talked about how to know the right apples in life, how to overcome the fake apples that will destroy us, and all kinds of great things. This has been one of our best series that really built on each other week to week.

Things are going great and we are keeping busy as always. Our Community Service Day was great. We had 200+ people helping out downtown cleaning streets, cleaning up neighborhoods & more! One guy stopped us and asked who we were and why we were doing what we were doing. He couldn't stop talking about how amazing it was we were here in the community on a Sunday morning just serving. He pulled away in his truck then turned around and gave us a donation (even though we tried to refuse). How cool is that? It made an impact far beyond just our blessing of being able to serve. It blessed others too!!! There were many other stories too. It was truly an act of the church last Sunday!!!

We are in a series right now on Sunday morning talking about, "THE OTHERS". This series is all about reaching out, not sheltering ourselves, interacting with the un-churched, and being the loving, compassionate people God has called us to be. Too many times we have a us against the world mentality rather than a us for them mentality. We are called to be for, encourage, reach, love, pray, and interact with those who don't know Christ no matter WHAT!!! This series is tackling those issues head on!

Community Service Day

2009-09-26T22:12:00.003-05:00

Well, I'm sitting here in bed getting ready for our HUGE community service day tomorrow. We are going to meet for our regular Sunday morning service do a few songs then head out into our community here in Martinsville and be the hands and feet of Jesus. That's right we are cutting our service and getting OUT THERE!!! As our pastor says, "Let's not just do church let's be the church." We are going downtown and cleaning up the streets, ally ways, weed eating, pulling weeds, mowing, & more! What a great way to do something practical for the community. So many times the church prays for the community and talks about reaching out but... nothing more goes on other than that. This service day is a way not to just talk about reaching out but actually doing something that is REAL. Sometimes we over spiritualize things when God is simply looking for those who will GO and serve. Jesus was more about serving & loving than He was about talking & debating.

On a side note I have been introduced to Mind Mapping which is this AMAZING way of organizing your thoughts, plans, strategy, & more. I have heard of mind mapping years ago but never really paid much attention. Then I came across some software that let's you create mind maps and I am learning a WHULE NUTHA way of processing and taking things to a new level. I LOVE learning ways to be better and more efficient. This is going to take my BRAIN to some serious good places. I will let you know more as I study this thing and dig into it. So far I HIGHLY RECOMMEND looking into Mind Mapping. Erin and I have been mind mapping how mind mapping works (kinda crazy).

Here Goes!!!

2009-08-10T21:41:00.003-05:00

Not even sure where to start but here goes...

So many things have happened in the last several months. We had our summer camp INGAGE for the first time. This camp is something that we started this year and God brought the people in. We had 7 churches involved from all around the different states. About 155 people total for the kick off year. It was a great start to something great in the years to come!

We also had Zion's 5th birthday, a great vacation in Florida, a youth trip to St. Louis City Museum, the county fair, the state fair, & much, much more!!!

Things are going great at the church. We are in a great season of moving forward. Each Sunday gets even that much more momentum. Last night we met with our adult leadership team for the student ministry and we talked about the whole semester. We have some great things planned with the different series, events, and creative ideas to take us to a new level. As we talked about the last year we celebrated a big growth year. We have had over 20+ salvations in our Wednesday night services, we have had literally a 300% growth rate over the last year in our numbers. Worship has gone to a new level, and we are hearing great feeback from parents & students about what God is doing in them. We had over 20 events/steps forward this last year which has been great.

Need To Post More

2009-05-27T22:41:00.004-05:00

Well, tonight at youth was fun. We ended our team challenge for the semester (a challenge where students have been gaining points bringing friends, bibles, & winning various games that sometimes goes along with the message). We have a lot going on right now with everything. We are gearing up for our huge summer camp called INGAGE! We are hosting the camp with about 6 or 7 other churches coming from different states. We will be going to Pigeon Forge for an intense week with God. Our students are working hard raising the money for that. I wish every student could go because these experiences are truly destiny changing (I know from experience in high school). Money is always the issue with students being able to go, sadly it cost a chunk of bling to go to these type of environments, but we are believing God to bring in the money for these teenagers.

This Friday is our Experiencing God worship night at HHC. This is going to be a great night of breaking out of the box and truly connecting with God's presence in a laid back way. No agenda, no hurry, no rush just PURE worship to an amazing SAVIOR!!! I am really excited about the night. Our worship team is so incredible. These guys & gals truly have talent and a worshipping heart for God. I love being a part of the team and worshipping together.

I started running Monday night again. It has been almost a year since I was running consistently. I was actually running 3 - 5 miles a day (can you believe that) REALLY I WAS. Then we moved and I packed up the treadmil. But don't fear I got it out Monday and have ran 1.75 miles each night since. It feels great to run and get in shape, it has been far too long for me. I have a lot of weight to lose and some muscles to form so I am on my way!!!

On a side note we got a camera the other day. We were just missing too much of our beautiful little girls life to go without one. So we got a Nikon D40 and started shooting. Here is what came out...

2009-05-12T11:28:00.003-05:00

Well, it has been busy lately as always! We have many things going on here @ HHC! We had our Whyi Conference that went great a few weeks ago. We spent the day with WII's, games, great food, incredible sessions about making a difference as a wife, husband, parent, behind the scenes @ HHC, making a unique difference & more!!! Check out the highlight video below.

Also, we went to the mall the other day to get a few things and this is what happened as we sat around table while eating some great Lucas Pizza!!!

Allie's 1st Birthday

2009-04-15T12:22:00.003-05:00

Well, we had Allie's 1st birthday last Friday! It was a great time with family! I can't believe she is one year old now it has gone by so fast! She is so awesome! I have the BEST family in the world!!!

Photoshoot

2009-04-07T19:49:00.004-05:00

All I have to say is we had a photoshoot with our family the other day!!!

Home School Convention

2009-04-05T21:37:00.006-05:00

What an incredible weekend Erin and I just had! First we went to the Indiana Home School Convention Friday & Saturday with about 1,000+ other people. We really wanted to home school our girls for several reasons some of those being:
. Erin is a stay at home mom already
. Being a pastor our schedule is crazy and home school would be a great way for me to be more a part of the girls education than a traditional public school approach.
. Zion is NOT a class room type girl, she is for sure a hands on creative learner which home school offers a little more freedom for field trips, outdoor science projects, less sitting in a chair and learning and more doing basically.
. We want to really base our girls education with a Biblical world view (especially in the science area as well as literature & so forth)

The Home school convention blew us out of the water. I figured it would be all about down with public school and yada yada yada! But man was I wrong. It was so informative and so cool to see the amazing curriculum out there that is Godly based yet incredibally acedemic. For example there was one that incorporated a lot of ideas together like:
- Learn recognizing the Letter S
- Phonics with the sss sound
- Writing the letter S s with a creative method
- Learning the word SUN
- Talking about the science of the Sun how it gives light - also with fun flashlight games
- Then Bible talking about how Jesus is the light of the world
- Then doing math with how long the sun is out and counting the hours & other fun elements
So it incorporated ALL these concepts into a really cool cirriculum. That was one of probably like a thousand that were there (a little overwhelming). But Erin and I were just so excited and learning so much about child development and creative technics of teaching your children and creative ways to instill concepts into them.

The speakers there were AMAZING! Again I figured it would be about teaching kids, how to set up a classroom or something like that. NO WAY the key note speakers were professional world known communicaters. The first key note speaker was Ken Ham the creator and owner of the largest Creation Museum located in Ohio. He has been on the O'Reilly Factor, CNN, Good Morning America, & many more national venues. His ministry is called Anwers in Genesis is mind blowing! He is a genius on creation vs. evolution and the science behind it ALL. He had some phenomonal messages about raising our kids up with an understanding of where we came from and how God is CREATOR of the world. It blew our minds with the things Ken was speaking about and his ability to communicate these concepts. We learned so much! I wish I had time to talk to each one of you about this event but I would type all day if I put everything down we learned just go to ANSWERSINGENESIS.ORG for the BEST resources I have EVER come across concerning ANYTHING on creation and history of the world.

Well, I could go on and on about all this but man was it great for us to go to a whole nutha level in our understanding of Genesis, Creation, Evolution, & More! Boy did it wear us out all weekend learning and studying stuff. We were up crazy early and home late but it was all worth it!

Also, today is our 6th year annivesary for Erin and I! It has been the BEST 6 years of my life hands down. Erin is the best wife a man couldn't even dream of! She is so supportive of me and everything I do, she literally is SOOOO encouraging to me even when I don't deserve it! She is the best friend I have ever and could ever have. We have a blast together in life just enjoying it. We have so many fun inside jokes & experiences that only we can share together and it's great! She is the best mommy EVERY! I have never seen a woman so in love and dedicated to caring for their kids like Erin! She would sacrifice ANYTHING for them. She is the most selfless person I know! She holds my life together, without her I wouldn't be anything I am. She is literally the glue of my life outside of Christ. I LOVE her so much and couldn't have hand-made, selected or fashioned a better partner than her! So here is to 60,000 more years with the love of my life!

Holy Smokes!

2009-03-28T15:43:00.005-05:00

Holy Smokes! I haven't blogged in FOREVER! I will give you a snapshot of life these past few months.

We are rocking and rolling here with ministry! We started REMIX for our 6th -12th grade @ HHC. Is is going great. We kicked off with our band (they are doing AMAZING), team challenge, new series, our awesome cafe each week, & more!!! We have a great team of leaders and things are going ever so smoothly and many new students have started coming as well as students giving their life to Christ in our services.

4Twelve is going great at the Salvation Army in Brown County. The students are growing and fired up. Josh & Emily Smith started a student leadership team that is going great. And we have some great leaders there helping out with Dramas, media, & more!!! God is truly doing a strong work there at my parents church!

We just had our Encounter Weekend 09 this last weekend. We had almost 70 people with both of our groups (HHC & 4Twelve). Pastor Tim Roberson flew in from Las Vegas and spoke throughout the weekend. It was off the hook. Students were encountering God's presence in a real powerful way some for the first time EVER!!! The weekend went above and beyond our expectations (and we were expecting a lot).

We are moved in to our house still unpacked though!!! We literally haven't had any time to unpack our stuff and when we do we are so worn out and just want to rest a bit so... We will get there.

Life is great! Ministry is awesome! And we are pressing into new & great things!

Erin and I have been going through the book THE CREATIVE MARRIAGE by Ed & Lisa Young (our favorites) and it has been very eye opening. It has opend the door for Erin and I to go to another level in our marriage and put words and strategies behind things we have experienced and are experiencing. I suggest it to ANYONE who is married or even thinking about getting married.

SNOW DAYS

2009-02-06T23:27:00.004-05:00

Well, we had a huge snow storm a few weeks ago and I figured since I haven't blogged in forever I would start with this. We had like a foot of snow and Zion and I went outside to shovel the driveway and play in the snow. Erin took Allie out earlier and I don't think she liked the cold too much. So Erin kept her inside while Zion and I worked outside. We had a great time! It is so fun to be with our family and spend time together those are the most important times a person can have above anything else. The legacy we leave behind in our children is our heritage and that is the first ministry we are called to.

On a side note we kicked off all of our youth stuff this last week and it was AMAZING. I will blog about ALL the stuff later just wanted to get these pics up of Zion in the snow!!!

2009

2009-01-05T15:44:00.004-05:00

WOW! 2009! This last month of December was awesome! We had our Christmas parties and they went great! New Life Drama Company from Tennessee was here and did an amazing job. We also did a STOMP routine for our Sunday morning service right before Christmas! The students did GREAT! They nailed it! We had dancers and stompers.

We are getting our house set up still. We are getting ready to lay our hardwood floors and carpet soon! Then we can finally unpack after 6 months (whew). Well I gotta run and get going so check out these pics from our STOMP!

Where To Start?

2008-12-08T10:41:00.002-05:00

Where to begin?

We have been so busy working on the new house and with ministry that I haven't had time to post! Well, here it goes.

Youth @ HHC is going great.
- We are practicing our STOMP routine for the Sunday morning Christmas service the 21st. It is going great and we have like 22+ people in it. They are having a great time with it.

- We had our Concert and event a few weeks ago with like 150 students here in our youth facility rocking out! We hooked up with some other great churches and had an awesome time. Many students responded to salvation and rededicated theirs lives to Christ.

- Zion was in her fist live drama last Saturday night at the Salvation Army for the Legend of the Candy Cane. Erin, me & Zion all had our own parts in the play. It went great and she did amazing. She remembered her lines and all her cues. She is a natural at acting and she LOVES it.

- I have been leading worship here @ HHC on Sunday mornings lately when Gary hasn't been able to be here and it has gone great! We have an awesome team of people that are great singers and musicians. I love worshiping together and leading our great church into God's presence.

- We have installed our recessed lighing in the house and have been painting like CRAZY. I and my dad & father in law layed ALL the tile in our upstairs bathrooms and laundry room.

- We are getting ready for our big formal Christmas dinner here in a few weeks. New Life Drama Company from Tennessee will be coming in to perform that night. It is going to be a lot of fun dressing up and playing some fun games & eating some great food for Christmas to celebrate Jesus' birthday.

- I got a new MacBook computer that I am setting up. I am pretty excited about that. I guess I sold out to Mac now and became on of "those" people (Jared Day don't say anything).

- Many other things but that's all I can write for now. God bless!!!

Family Pics

2008-11-07T00:23:00.004-05:00

Well, things are going great as usual! We have been busy as always getting the new house ready, ministry, life, voting, and everything else in life. We are only getting a day or two a week to work on the house since things are so hectic right now with events, services, and all that is going on in our lives and the churches. We did get some time a few weeks ago to get some amazing pictures of our family made and they turned out great! I love my family more than any other part of life and these pics capture the essence of that I think! Check them out!!!

Need To Blog More

2008-10-29T10:51:00.005-05:00

Well, it has been busy like normal. We close on our NEW house this FRIDAY, YEAH!!! God opened up a HUGE door for us to get a house here in Martinsville this last month and we are walking through it! We have a lot of work to do to it, but that is always the fun part. Fixing it up and making it yours is always an exciting thing! Erin and I are looking forward to getting in there and working on it!!!

Things are going great. We had our campout a few weeks ago and it was a BLAST! We got both the youth groups together from HHC and 4Twelve and had a fun night of eating, playing games, hanging out, and camping together! Then a few Sundays ago I got the opprotunity to speak at our main Sunday morning service and it went fantastic. We did a human video at the end that really solidified the message and drove the point home about serving each other. You can check out the message @ hhchurch.com, tell me what you think.

The other day we took our family out and went to Apple works and had a great time. It has been super busy so we took advantage of some time and hung out together playing. I love being with my awesome family. Here are some pics of that.

Others!!!

2008-10-14T15:39:00.002-05:00

What a great month this has been so far!!!

Youth is going great on Wednesday nights. We are running about 30 students consistently (which has really been growing). Numbers don't mean everything but we know that anything healthy is going to grow. I think of numbers not as a statistic but as an individual soul that is being opened up to the things of God, so when you look at it that way numbers really do matter to God. Every number represents a life being reached out to! Also it shows that our core students are excited and proud to bring their friends to a place where they are confident they will have fun and more importantly come to know Christ!!! When you gain the trust of the people you gain their confidence to connect to and get involved. God does not want us to sit on the sidelines watching He wants us in the game playing and working our hearts out for Him!!! It's about serving others and reaching out to those around us everyday!!! That was the mission of Jesus to reach out to others!!! He was not here for Himself He was here for others!!! He humbled Himself and made no reputation over people but for them. He was the ultimate servant! We want to serve others and reach them to show the love and power of Christ!!!

4Twelve has been going great as well. If you do not know yet Erin and I help out with my dad's church the Salvation Army in Brown County of Thursday nights. We started a youth service called 4Twelve which is reaching about 30 students weekly. Some of our students from HHC have come over and hung out. It is great to see students get exposed to God in different places and with different people.

Last weekend we were super busy. Friday night all the youth groups in Brown County came together for a big tail gate party before the football game. Our band played out there and we cooked hot dogs. It was a great time of getting into the community and reaching out! Then Saturday night the Salvation Army had a community block party in front of the church downtown. There were around 450 people that came through. We had blow up games for kids, our band played, free hot dogs & lemonade, prizes for kids, face painting & more!!!

Needless to say Erin and I are crazy busy but for the Kingdom of God for sure!!! My family is awesome and I cherish every moment we get together to hang out and be with each other. I value our time together very much. On a side note Zion asked to pray for our house to sell in Oklahoma and Erin said she prayed and not only asked God to sell our house but for another family to buy it so they could have a house to live in like us. How cool is that? She is learning about others and to always think of them!!! God ROCKS!!!

VERY BUSY

2008-10-07T11:00:00.002-05:00

Things are going great! We are rocking and rolling! Our services have been going great and growing. Last week we had 5 STUDENTS GIVE their LIFE to JESUS in our Wednesday night service. God has been bringing us new students that are getting connected and we are starting to see them respond more and more!!!

We have an awesome Campout coming up next weekend with HHC & 4Twelve it is going to be awesome. We are camping out, playing capture the flag, eating, and more! WE are going to have a blast! It takes these kind of events to really connect on a personal level with the students and get to know them in a fun atmoshphere!

This is going to be a VERY BUSY month so I will keep you up to date!!!

Capture the Flag & Captured

2008-09-23T15:08:00.003-05:00

My goodness!!! I am back!

Well, Sunday night we had our annual capture the flag event and it was awesome!!! We had 125+ students from 6 different youth groups there connecting together. Cory Joy did an awesome job putting it all together and planning the event that reached across county lines and many churches. The heart behind it was to get the students ready for, "See You At The Pole" Wednesday morning. We wanted to rally the students together and encourage them to take a stand at their flagpoles tomorrow morning! It was a great event that really went well.

I am here in the office going at it getting things created, planned, organized, scheduled & more! We are super busy up here at the church moving forward and doing the things God is calling us to do. Wednesday nights have been going great here @ HHC. We are growing and adding new students weekly. We are starting a new series tomorrow night called, "Captured" We will be talking about what we are captured by and how God captures us.

Whew!!!

2008-09-03T08:56:00.003-05:00

WOW! Time is going too fast. It has been forever since I last blogged (sorry). Anyway, we have been super busy with great things going on here! The youth are doing great here @ HHC and things are getting better and better each week. We had our Back to school Bash a few weeks ago and had about 50 students (which is a great turnout). We had a fun, awesome time! Then on Thursday nights we have started a youth ministry called 4Twelve for the Salvation Army in Brown County. We go over there once a week to help them out. My dad is pastoring there since the spring time this year. They started with about 8 people and have grown to around 70+ in a matter of months. Erin and I helped start the youth ministry for 7th - 12th grade and it is going great. We started with about 3 students and are running about 15-20 on Thursday nights. Things are going great there. So between the two we keep pretty busy with ministry and events. We love being a part of the local church impacting others for Christ, so it is more of an opportunity than anything.

Last weekend we went to Holiday World with Erin's family and had a BLAST! I rode the best roller coaster of my life called the, Voyage or Voyager. Anyway, absolutely amazing to say the least! Zion had a great time there as well with all the kiddy rides and games! It is so great to be with family and spending time together!!! I love my family and doing life together with them!!!

Well, we got lots and lots to do today so I need to get at it. I will try to blog more (famous last words I guess). God bless!!!

Student Leadership Team & The Park

2008-08-18T08:29:00.005-05:00

Well, Sunday we had our 1st student leadership team meeting. This team is for students who want to step up and be the core of the core in our youth group. We meet outside the church right after the baptisms after service. Which I might add Erin got to baptize a girl in our youth group already! How cool is that! What a great opportunity! Anyway, we had some pizza for the student leadership team and hung out and talked about what the students want the youth group to be like in one word. Some of the things were: Helpful, fun, Spirit-Filled (wow), amazing, spiritual, super-duper, different, welcoming, etc... It was a great time of talking and getting to know these students a little deeper in a laid back environment. We have a great group of student to work with here!

On a personal note, this last weekend Erin, Zion, Allie & I went to the park and hung out playing. Allie got some shades and was style'n. We had a great time outside! Zion LOVES going to the park and swinging!

Fair, Salvation Army & Date Nights

2008-08-11T08:52:00.005-05:00

Yesterday my whole family went to the Indiana State Fair! We had a great time eating, looking, riding rides, eating, listening to some bands, playing in the kids areas, did I mention eating? Anyway, it was a lot of fun! We left right after church and didn't get home until 10:30 or so. It was a long day but always good going to the fair.

Saturday we went down to the Salvation Army where my parents are pastoring in Brown County and hung out for a bit while they had a School Supply Drive. People were donating school supplies and money for supplies as they set up in town and gave away free hot dogs and drinks. We had Zion ring the bell and get some training for the Salvation Army. She did a great job. It was a biker drive so there were a bunch of bikers there donating and helping out so Allie got to sit on her first (and I might add last) motorcycle. Then Erin and I got to go out on a date night while my family watched the girls. We had a great time going out to eat and shopping. Those do not come as often as they should but we are working on it. It is so wierd to be out in public and actually walk around with having to keep an eye out on the girls and have them with us. It still seems wierd whenever we do go out but date nights are VERY important to us!!!

Thoughts

2008-08-05T16:22:00.004-05:00

Isn't God so AWESOME? He is always there, always comes through, always protects, always loves, always equips, always provides, always is moving, always is working. He gave His life on the cross for such a sinner like me and everyone else. Without Him we have nothing, do nothing, hope for nothing, feel nothing, work for nothing, live for NOTHING! But in Him we live, move and have our being!!! Sometimes I think we forget the power that God has given us through the Holy Spirit to accomplish the great tasks He has for us and others. We get to caught up with the immediate, the status quo, the average, the money, the fear, that we live not jumping over the edge but living on the ledge watching and wondering what it would be like if we truly had the faith to be ALL that we want to be for Christ. We dream of the day when we will be everything we want to be but why not just become who we are? We wait for the day that we will arrive but maybe life is more about the journey than it is the destination. Because when we arrive it will be the end of this life and the beginning of eternity within the safety and comfort of our Almighty God!!! Myabe life is about growing and becoming rather than arriving and being. Not that we don't be who God wants us to be but maybe being is becoming. Or let me rephrase and say that maybe life is ALL about the process rather than the event. Because when we finally start being there is a whole new level of becoming again. So maybe instead of beating ourselves up for not being who we want to be we just start embracing who we are becoming by the grace of God. Life is a journey and it begins with the 1st step and continues with step 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc...

Just some thoughts.

It's Been Too Long

2008-08-04T09:56:00.004-05:00

Wow! Time is flyin' bye lately! It has been forever since I last blogged. Things are going great here and we are keeping busy for sure! Last Wednesday we had our 1st overnight called, "AllNight" we had 35 students come to service then stay all night at the church. We had a great service, played some crazy games like Kenjavi Can-Can, ate pizza, had a choclate fountain, rock climbed, had Halo tournaments, facials for girls, movies, sumo wrestling & more! It was a blast staying up all night well until about 4 then it was zombie time! We have such an awesome youth group and things are only going to get better and better.

We are doing a series right now called "buildIt" we are talking abut building an awesome youth group and what it is going to take. We gave all the students nails last week and told them you are like a nail that God wants to use to build this youth group, "so get hammered for Jesus". It was a good start to building this youth group! We have some strong leaders in our youth that we are going to challenge to step out for the things of God!

Grandma

2008-07-17T07:56:00.003-05:00

Yesterday we had my Grandma Barrett's funeral. She passed away last Saturday night. The service was great my dad directed it. It was great to see all the family again. Some of them I haven't seen for 20+ years. After the service we went to Golden Corral and had lunch. My grandma was a great lady that loved the Lord. I remember going to her house and playing as a little kid. I also remember living with her for a summer in high school while I worked at a carpet warehouse. I had super long hair and one day decided to cut it all off and bleach it. I never told her so when I got home and knocked on the door she would not let me in. She said she didn't know who I was even though I was trying to tell her. Finally I convinced her it was me and she let me in. She is now with the Lord in heaven having the time of her life in God's amazing presence.

A Lot Going On

2008-07-14T08:10:00.004-05:00

WOW! What a busy last few weeks.

1st of all we took 39 students to King's Island Thursday and it was AWESOME! We rode rides, ate good food, and the Newsboys were there, Hawk Nelson, & others! We had a great time hanging out and getting to know the students. There is nothing like bonding together flying down a huge hill with your stomachs in your throats!!!

Also, we have been doing Wednesday night services and they are going great and growing. We have been talking about how we view God and making sure we have the right view. This week we will be talking about how we view youth group. So many times we see it as a social club or something like that. But in reality it is the life source for teenagers to get connected and be used by God to change the world!!! I love the LOCAL CHURCH!!!

I also had the opportunity to speak last weekend at the Sunday morning service. It was an honor that Pastor Chris allowed me to share the pulpit and speak about this generation. The students all got together and did an awesome drama that involved like 15+ kids on the stage. They LOVED it! They all were super excited and felt so connected. It takes things like this to plug them into the adult service and life of the whole church!!! It was a great morning!

I also got my new iphone! Praise the LORD!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love it, it makes life so much easier with being able to get my email whenever, wherever. Also it makes connecting with students, leaders, & just people in general so much faster and more efficient. Not to mention it also is a great tool for GPS, searching internet (easily) keeping my calender in sync (which is huge) and so many other things it can do. I think it cooks dinner as well but I am not sure I have that application yet, jk.

Anyway, I could write all day but I won't. I will try to blog more often now!!!

New Logo

2008-07-02T11:27:00.003-05:00

I have got the new logo for HHC Student Ministries, it's pretty cool (Daryn Crawford inspired me). Anyway, tonight we are having youth for the first time with our students. This weekend I have the opportunity to speak at our Sunday morning service and I am super excited. We are going to get the students involved and do a big drama thing. Tonight we will work on it and get the kids involved. It will go along with my message and all that so it should be awesome! Then tonight we are having a game night just hanging with the students getting to know them! We are excited for the journey ahead of us and all that God is going to do! I also start working with the worship team tonight and will start to train them up. Dave Hubbard has been doing a great job working with them and now I will start to come on board and go for it! It is great to have a group of students to work with and raise up!!!

Another Day Getting Settled

2008-06-30T15:57:00.003-05:00

Well, I am getting settled into my office and the flow of things here @ HHC! Sunday was our 1st service here and it was GREAT! Pastor Chris did a great job speaking and the service had a great feel to it! We are so excited about being here and getting things going! It is always hard to start new and get to know so many people and all that but we are doing it! Tonight we have dinner with a great couple that has been leading the youth for the last few months. They have done an amazing job at keeping things together and planning some wonderful events like next week to King's Island (yeah)! We are eating together at Jesus' kind of favorite food (Mexican)! We are anxious to get to know them and serve together.

My office is all decorated and set up so hopefully this week I can get acclimated with computer stuff, paper work, and all that. It is so hard transfering everything back onto a new computer, especially when you have so many files and stuff! Well, I am sitting here in my office getting ready to head out to dinner so...Adios!!!

Busy, Busy

2008-06-27T08:50:00.002-05:00

I really need to blog more I know! I have been super busy this week getting oriented into the life and flow of HHC as well as unpacking and building bookshelves, desks & decorating! It has been a great week getting to know the staff and getting settled in. Wednesday night for service pastor Chris interviewed Erin and I for the parents & teens and it was great! We were able to share vision, get to know you stuff, and more! We had a great turn out of parents that were supporting their church and kids which is awesome to see! This next Wednesday we are going to do a game night to just hang with the students and get to know them in a fun atmosphere. This Sunday we are being introduced to the church and it will be our 1st service, so we are anxious and excited!

Well, we are waiting for our house to sell in Oklahoma so we can begin to take the next step here and get unpacked. So be praying for the favor of God with all that! We can't really do anything until that situation gets settled.

Our heart and brains are being filled with vision and anticipation for the great things God is going to do with this area. We are ready to move ahead and be the willing ones God wants to use to bring His glory to this world!!! Get ready!!!

Back in Indiana

2008-06-21T16:23:00.002-05:00

WOW! We are here in Indiana getting settled in (as much as we can). We have been super busy with seeing people, looking at houses, hanging with family and already practicing for worship and planning ministry stuff! Tomorrow I am going to lead worship at my Dad's church for their Sunday morning service. Thursday night we practiced with the team! I am excited about being there tomorrow and seeing first hand what God has been doing with the church. They started with 6 or so people and now have grown into 40+ each Sunday morning within a few months!

Monday morning I start at HHC (our new church) in Martinsville, Indiana. We are excited about getting started and getting to know everyone. We start with a pretty busy week getting oriented on all the operations of the church and all the leaders. This next week will fly by I am sure. Tonight we are sitting at my parents house relaxing for the first time and just doing laundry and getting some things organized for this next week.

To ALL of our AMAZING Journey friends we LOVE you and miss you guys!!! You have been such a huge part of our lives over this last year and a half and we are so grateful for the time together. We will be back soon to visit when our house sells (which you can be praying for) and say hey to everyone there!!!

Diamond Daze & Game Night

2008-06-04T11:28:00.002-05:00

Well, Diamond Daze is coming up tomorrow night for the next few days!!! We are super busy getting ready for that up here @ Journey! The students will be doing an awesome STOMP and also our youth band is going to rock out for the community wide service tomorrow night @ 7pm. There will also be some bands from others churches, we are doing the HUGE Disney drama, and much more!!! We are going to bring a great service for the community tomorrow night that will be upbeat and inspiring. Of course our mammoth booth will be set up with the flat screens, lights, an outdoor cafe, bookstore, games, and more! What an opportunity we have to show the life that Jesus gives! We are taking full advantage of it!!!

Tonight we are having our annual GAME NIGHT for the students and it is going to be great! We will be playing dodge ball and some other great games. We will have prizes for best dressed gamer, best dressed team and other random things! We have refs all suited up with whistles and air horns, this is the real deal!

Also, if anyone can we are asking for Journey members to donate some baked goods for Diamond Daze. In the youth section of our booth we will be raising money for the students. So bring in some brownies, cookies, cakes, pies, etc... on Thursday or the latest by Friday @ noon! Every little bit helps so just come by the church and drop it off with us!!! Thank you so much!!!

WOW!

2008-06-03T11:44:00.004-05:00

WOW! This has been a big last few weeks! If you haven't heard already Erin and I will be moving to Indiana about mid June. We have been so impacted by Journey, Pastor Jeff, and ALL the people here in Sallisaw! We were not looking to move or anything like that but how circumstances played out we felt the Lord was calling us to a church in Martinsville, Indiana. The timing was a lot sooner than we anticipated, but we felt the Lord was strongly putting a vision in our heart for the people of Indiana. Before we moved here to Sallisaw we didn't really have a heart for a certain region just a heart for people. But by being here in Sallisaw and being exposed to one of the healthiest churches we have seen God began to put a vision for the region of Indiana. Pastor Jeff & Mrs. Steph have really opened us up to the vision behind small county America and Significant churches making an impact in their local communities. I remember hearing Pastor Jim Graff (Pastor Jeff's pastor) say when he went into a small town to minister he felt like he knew what to do since he had grown up in small towns. I remember when he said that I felt in my heart that I knew what needed to happen in Indiana for God to reach the area. Journey has impacted Erin and I's vision of what a community church can really be. The church exist to reach the lost and that is what we have been immersed in. We LOVE the people of Journey SO much and feel like we have made relationships that will last a lifetime. It is bitter-sweet for us to be moving but we know God is in the midst of it. Not to mention the fact that Jarred Day will be taking over as youth pastor here @ Journey and that is amazing!!! He has worked so hard and has been so committed to the vision that God has taken him to a whole 'nutha level! Pastor Jarred Day will be perfect for the fit here @ Journey and will take the youth ministry into the next phase! Praise GOD that He knows how everything will work out at ALL times. He is in control and with God in the driver seat who knows what amazing places He takes us!

Painting

2008-05-27T13:11:00.002-05:00

Well, last night we taught Yogurt (Rachel Gluesenkamp the Master's student living with us) how to paint Bob Ross style. We told her at the beginning of the year that by the time she left she would have done a painting. So last night we walked her through the process and she did an awesome job. Painting is so much fun, I just started about 8 months ago and I'm learning more and more and enjoying it more and more! Check out her picture!

In The Zone

2008-05-21T14:48:00.003-05:00

Tonight we are ending an awesome series we have been doing called, IN THE ZONE. The first week we talked about living in the zone with Christ. We talked about not being consumed with the land of ING meaning datING, sportING, playING, doubtING, survivING, BLING, BLING, BLING! We need to live in the zone white hot for Jesus! Then the next week we talked about the O-Zone the OBEDIENCE zone! Jesus said if you love me you will OBEY what I command. So we talked about the umbrella effect! When you are obedient to God you live under the spiritual umbrella where God's protection and blessings are. But when you step out from the umbrella (obedience) you start to get rained on, dumped on, and pounced on by the enemy and life!

Tonight we are talking about the Cal-Zone! I will have a piece of dough with all kinds of good stuff to stuff it with and some nasty stuff like worms, dirt, etc... I am going to talk about what are you filling your life with? God wants to fill us with His awesome plans. When we open our heart up to God we get filled with the right stuff. But when we allow and give in to temptations in our life then the enemy starts to empty us of God's BEST and fills us with junk and nastiness! It is going to be an awesome night!!!

Rock Band Highlights & Magazine

2008-05-15T14:42:00.002-05:00

Here is the video highlight from the Rock Band Tournament last Friday night! Also, is a magazine cover we are making and framing for each of the winners!!!

Rock Band Tournament

2008-05-13T14:46:00.007-05:00

Well, we had our Rock Band Tournament last Friday night and it was awesome!!! We had a bunch of bands and tons of students come out to play and support their bands!!! We took the video game Rock Band and had teams sign up for a competition to see who the real rockers really were! We also had a panel of judges who critiqued the bands and judged the results for us! Each band was judged on creativity, skill, crowd involvement, and stage performance. By the end of the night we had a winning band called, Big Tim and the South Side Boys. Each band member won many gifts like, School of Rock the movie, candy, toys, a photo shoot and a real rock band t-shirt with their band name and cool photo. It was a great night of hanging out and building community within our students. Many parents were there hanging out and watching the concert it was great! The kids were asking when the next one was right after we got done! We will have a video up tomorrow from the night but here is a sneak peak at the photo shoot of the winning team.

HUGE Weekend!

2008-05-06T15:00:00.003-05:00

Oh my goodness! What a huge weekend it was this past few days!!! Saturday we had our HUGE, Arts & Crafts, Swap Meet festival in the parking lot of Journey and it was AMAZING! We had over 50 booths set up from people in our church selling, crafts, garage sale items, candy, food, etc.. We had the children to adults set up doing all kinds of stuff. Teenagers were doing a carwash, getting eggs smashed on their heads for money (which actually worked well) crafts and all kinds of great things! I set up my painting and actually sold 15 of them! I set up my easel and did some live paintings and that seemed to really draw people in. I was so blessed to be able to use a talent I have just learned to help out in this event! ALL the money that we raised went into our first offering for the great investment which will be for our new land and new church!!! Everybody did their part and worked so hard all day! I got fried out there in the sun, my face is peeling off right now as I write! Then Sunday morning Chad (our worship leader) got sick and I had the opportunity to fill in for him! We had a great service to end our series, MY OFFERING.

Then Sunday night we had our vision night where Pastor Jeff shard the future vision of our church. We had 200+ people there for the service. When we took up the offering for the great investment we raised $25,000 that night!!! What a testimony of the faithfulness of God's people stepping up and using their time, talent & money for the Kingdom of God in Sallisaw, Oklahoma!!!

Haircuts & Late Nights

2008-04-26T01:11:00.004-05:00

Well, today Erin gave me my first haircut! We We decided that getting some clippers and just doing it ourselves is a much better investment of money, time &efficiency. So I got some clippers and Erin went at it! She did a GREAT job. She is so good at figuring things out and doing them well! She is a natural at oil painting with Bob Ross and now a master hair cutter! She picks things up fast and well, I am so proud of her! She really is the brains behind so many ideas, ministry and creative things that we do. Sometimes when we talk about stuff I just overwhelmed with ideas because she has so many stinking good ones. I know I can always count on her to help me out when I am stumped or not sure what to do!

Right now I am watching baby Allie while Erin gets some rest! I have been listening to one of my favorite speakers, Ed Young. Fellowship Church (which Ed pastors) does a monthly leadership training called Leadership Uncensored! It is an amazing resource that any one in ministry should receive. Ed is one of my favorite communicators of all time! When we went down to his church in Texas for the C3 conference a few months ago we were blown away with the church and the level of creativity they have! Anyway, I have been sitting here on the couch with my ipod taking notes and writing down so many thoughts as I learn from the best! I LOVE learning and growing in the calling God has called me too, the local church! I have heard it said that pilots have to under go strict training every year again and agian no matter how long they have been flying. Someone asked why they have to keep doing training and the response was, "Because lives depend on my skills." I believe that as Christians and as leaders in the church lives depend on our skills to reach out and challenge people to become ALL that God has called them to be!!! If it were simply up to God to reach people don't you think EVERYONE would have been reached? Of course they would have, but He chose us to be His ambassadors and servants to go unto all the earth and share the good news! I don't know about you but I want my skills to be sharpened by the Holy Spirit as I press on to the calling God has for me!!!

By the way, Zion took these pictures! Isn't she the smartest 3 year old ever?

JSM & Allie

2008-04-23T22:45:00.003-05:00

Man tonight at JSM was great! We had 55 middle schoolers and over 80 people in the zone for service tonight! Daryn Crawford spoke about not just living the normal American dream but to live the dream God has for you! He did an awesome job communicating! We are getting more and more students every week! The service was fun tonight too, we did our own American Idol game tonight that was pretty fun!

Here are some more pics of little baby Allie! Things are going great! Erin's dad and step mom were in town here for a few days and left early this morning. It was great to be with them and show off baby Allie. Zion had a great time with her grammy & papaw too. Right now I am watching Allie and letting Erin try and get some rest! We are a little lacking in the long block of sleep stuff. We or more so Erin only get a few hours of sleep at a time then it is up with changing diapers or for mommy feeding Allie! It will be nice to get back to at least a 5 hour chunk of sleep, but we are cherishing every moment of this season. Well, I just got done watching American Idol and I am going to read a bit and study then hopefully try to lay down and get SOME sleep.

Tuesday What A Great Day!

2008-04-22T12:39:00.002-05:00

Well, we are doing great with little baby Allie! We went yesterday to her check up and she is doing perfect. She gained 4 ounces which I guess would be like 30 pounds in a few days for an adult (sounds like something I could do easily). We are having a blast with her and Zion! She is a very peaceful baby! Is is somewhat hard to get up in the morning now on schedule since we are getting interrupted sleep throughout the night (well at least mommy, I just moan for sympathy and turn over telling her what a great job she is doing).

Youth has been going great these last few weeks. Danny has filled in leading worship which has been a great opportunity for him to grow and get some experience leading. There is no better teacher sometimes than just jumping in the lion's den and learning how to survive and conquer. Different leaders have been speaking each week to the youth. It has been awesome for the students to hear different leaders and there unique way of talking about great issues we have been dealing with in our series. I love to get leaders involved and give them opportunity to use the things God is depositing into them. To many leaders and churches just depend on the "LEADER" to do everything. They never give people chances to step out and be used in fear of it not going the way they WANT it to go. Sometimes you have to give up your control on things and let others step up to the plate and take a swing. You can't get anywhere being a ball hog and never passing the ball to others and let them shine. I would rather be a stage for someone to stand on and shine than be someone who stands on others to try and shine for myself. God is good and we are called to lift others up into their destiny. What you make happen for others God will make happen for you!!! If you just help enough other people get what they want out of life you to will get what you want out of life! And more importantly what God wants for your life! Serve then be served! You are blessed to be a blessing! Be a lifter not a sifter! When you are around others lift them up rather than letting them be sifted down to the bottom.

1st Full Day Home

2008-04-13T23:31:00.004-05:00

Well, today I wasn't able to make it to church! We were up most of the night getting Allie situated, fed, diaper changes, walking, etc... about the time church came around was the time that Erin HAD to get some rest and I held Allie and watched her. Erin is such a trooper, she is running on like 30 minute naps here and there and still able to do all she does!!! I married a mommy machine, she is the VERY BEST ever!!! Allie is doing great, we are home now settled in our routine (kind of). We are doing our best to switch duties every now and then letting each other get some rest and share the parental stuff. It is a little different than last time having another little one too. We have to take care of Zion and make sure she is getting what she needs too, baths, play time, food, sleep, learning, etc... So it feels like a full house with 2 little ones, but it is AWESOME!!! Rachel (the 1st year masters commission student living with us) is a HUGE help. She is always doing dishes, cleaning, playing with Zion, and just being such a servant. It has been a huge blessing having her live with us!!! We are so excited to show Allie off to everyone here and our family back home! We are so proud of both of our super duper awesome girls! The church is making us meals all week and tonight the Starnes family brought us some amazing food! It is such a blessing being part of a loving and thoughtful church!!! Here are some more videos of our family!!!

Baby Allie

2008-04-11T18:50:00.004-05:00

Well, Thursday morning about 12:30am Erin felt like she was going to have little baby Allie. So we left in the midst of the nasty storm and headed to the hospital after packing EVERYTHING of course. She had dilated to a 2 by the time we got there, then as they monitored her a 3. So we got checked in and got ready to get the adventure started. Not long after getting everything going Erin started moving right along and after 10 minutes of pushing baby Allie entered the world at 11:55am Thursday, April 10th weighing 7 pounds 4 ounces and 19 and a half inches long!!! Erin did such an amazing job at giving birth as usual!!! Now we are hanging out in our post-partum room until tomorrow. The doctors want us to stay one more night to keep checking things and all that so here we are! We have had some visitors and some awesome gifts (like the cookies & fruit from the McClanahan's man they rock! And some awesome flowers from Journey!!!) We are doing great and trying to sleep every second we can since they don't come often here! We have the most perfect family ever!!! Zion is so excited about Allie she kisses her and pets her head all the time and keeps telling her, "I'm your big sistol"

On a side note shouldn't churches be like hospitals (besides the smell)? I mean think about it the church should be a place of healing & restoration. We should be saving souls that are broken, hurt, dying, sick, lost, etc... I think the church should be reaching these kinds of people. A hospital isn't made for the well but for the sick, and Jesus said he came for the sick not the well! Don't get me wrong though the "saved folks" should be like the staff at a hospital. They are the ones who are serving the sick and making sure the hospital is doing what it is supposed to do! If you are in a church and saved you should be serving the vision of the church not for your own well being but for ALL the people who need you (the sick & broken) When church becomes about the well being more well then you might as well turn the church into a daycare feeding spiritual babies who complain about wanting deeper bible studies, deeper worship, more theology, more of the really "DEEP" things of God they say! I think the deep things of God are doing what He COMMANDED us to do all throughout scripture, come follow me and I'll make you fishers of men!!! God wants fisherman not yacht tanners! Meaning He said if you want to follow me then you have to go fishing for souls not sitting on your spiritual lazy floaty getting more "SUN or SON" as the spiritual deep people say I guess. The church should be like a hospital where the saved and Christian people should be serving the broken and hurt of the community! I think the emergency room should be our Sunday services! That's where the intense good stuff really happens. If someone is sick that is where they usually go to get better quick. If someone is going to come to church it will probably be the Sunday morning service! So we better be ready to medicate them with Jesus! Man I am starting to preach now! Well, I could go on and on about this as I write it is coming to me! Then the different wings of a hospital should be like the different ministries and on-ramps we have for people to get well and restored! Anyway, you get the point! Man this is good! Well, we have a new baby and it is awesome!

5th Year Anniversary

2008-04-05T12:05:00.003-05:00

Man, Wednesday night at youth was awesome! We had 51 middle school students & 2 students prayed the prayer of salvation. There were 70+ people in the zone between leaders, students, & high school leaders! Jarred Day spoke and did an amazing job communicating with the students! Our topic was MythBusters and Jarred broke some myths that we believe about God!!! We did the pop rocks & coke challenge. Which the myth is it will make your stomach explode...but no teenager blew up so that is good! We had a great service!!!

Today is Erin and I's 5th year anniversary! And it has been the best 5 years of my life!!! I love my family more than anything in this world!!! We are going to go up to Fayetteville today to go out and eat and Erin wants to walk around in order to have the baby! She is VERY ready to give birth and doesn't want to be induced. So hopefully this might be the catalyst to get things rolling!

Well, we are going to get ready and head out for our anniversary!!!

A Great Day

2008-04-01T12:48:00.003-05:00

Man, the concert was AMAZING Saturday night! We had tons of teenagers helping and taking ownership in putting on the concert! The bands did an amazing job and we made a great connection! We were able to hang out with them until late night talking and just laughing together! They are great guys doing a great work! The students were blown away by the concert, they had a BLAST to say the least! I had students calling me, emailing me, etc... saying how much they loved it!!! What a great opportunity it was to have EleventySeven come in and their opening band, the Switch!

Well today I got the opportunity to speak at the high school during lunch for youth alive! I had about 15 minutes to share about salvation & Jesus! So it was a great time of hanging out and speaking into the lives of these awesome young people!!! I love going up to the school for lunches and things it makes such a huge impact of these teenagers to be part of THEIR world! So many times we ask them to step into OUR churches. but sometimes we have to go to THEIR places too in order to reach them and show them they matter to us and GOD!!!

Tonight we are ending our 12 week leadership training we have been doing every Tuesday night! We have taught hard, covered much vision and ground going through lots and lots of things! We have really built a solid leadership foundation! We just opened it up to any and everybody who wanted to get more involved in the life of Journey. We had an average of 50 - 75 people each week as we taught on several different things! Tonight we are ending it with a big pitch in dinner to just hang out and end with a bang!

Prayer

2008-03-29T03:09:00.002-05:00

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

2008-03-28T16:10:00.005-05:00

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

2008-03-26T10:21:00.004-05:00

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!!!

2008-03-25T10:36:00.004-05:00

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

2008-03-20T12:59:00.004-05:00

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

2008-03-16T22:19:00.003-05:00

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

2008-03-13T10:01:00.003-05:00

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!

2008-03-11T11:44:00.002-05:00

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

2008-03-06T10:13:00.003-05:00

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!

2008-03-04T16:09:00.003-05:00

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!

Encounter Weekend

2008-02-26T15:24:00.003-05:00

As my daughter Zion says, "OH MY GOODNESS!" Encounter Weekend was off the hook this last Friday - Sunday! We had almost 50+ students come out for a life changing Encounter with God! Friday night we did worship and the Lord opened the door for ministry and for us to lay hands on the student and speak life into them! The Holy Spirit was moving and speaking to teenagers and calling them to step up and be a leader in their generation! We had an amazing time playing games, eating, laughing, and most importantly connecting with God and His presence!!! Students were sharing their testimonies left and right about what God was doing in them throughout the whole weekend! We taught them about having a quiet time, what it means to step out of the world and into Jesus and what happens when we step out of Jesus and into the world! It was truly an amazing weekend! ALL of our adult leaders did a great job with connecting with the students and doing what it took to put on a weekend like this! Sunday we all came to 2nd service and stayed after for lunch. We invited ALL the parents of teenagers to have lunch with us as the students shared testimonies of what God did over the weekend! We had almost 100 people in the cafe crammed together it was great!

I think I am rested from the weekend but I guess I'll sleep when I die! God is doing off the charts stuff here @ Journey and with our students! It is great to be a part of such a life giving and life breathing church!

Last Night & This Week

2008-02-18T13:37:00.002-05:00

We had a killer service last night for High School! We talked about Eros Love the romantic intimate type love! It was a great night of getting the right view of sex, love & romance the way God intended it! We had an amazing human video to the Lifehouse song "Everything" that was super powerful! Then we gave ALL the students an envelop, paper & a pen to write down a purity letter to their future spouse! They wrote a letter to give to their spouse on their wedding day that talks about how they have kept themselves pure as their special gift to them! They will have it sealed and dated saving it over the years for that special day! It was an awesome night, everything went great from worship, games, drama, message, ministry. It was one of our best nights yet!

We are here in the office today on our day off getting caught up on so much to do! We are going to Ed Young's church in Texas for the HUGE C3 Conference at Fellowship church on Wednesday! So we have a LOT to do since Encounter Weekend is this weekend! Erin and I will get back on Friday the day of the retreat so...wow! We already have like 50 students signed up and more to come! Our church has been so amazing at responding to sponsoring students financially! We have almost 10 students who needed the amount or else they would have missed it! Since our church responded so well to the need we are able to provide a way for theses students to go and experience life change!!! What a great church we have here at Journey, it is unlike any other! Well I better get back to it, lots to do in a little time!!!

Encounter Weekend

2008-02-13T15:11:00.003-05:00

Man I am SOOOOOOOO excited about Encounter Weekend. It is going to be awesome! We are meeting at Dwight Mission Friday, February 22nd @ 6pm for a weekend of having a blast and encountering God's presence. I can't wait to tell you the things we are going to do but I have to wait till after the event so we don't give it away. Then on Sunday we are having the kids picked up at Dwight Mission and asking parents to come to 2nd service with their kids and then stay after for lunch and as we close out the weekend! I can't wait till next weekend!!! The registration form and money are due tonight for the students, so make sure you bring them guys!!! If anyone is interested in sponsoring a student will still have some that need the full amount of $75.00 or whatever you could do. Just let me know a.s.a.p if you want to invest into the life of a teenager. We are believing God for life changing encounters this weekend with His presence. Check out this video promo for the event!

Love in 3D

2008-02-12T14:14:00.000-05:00

We started a new series Sunday night called, "Love in 3D"! It went great! We said that we use the world LOVE for everything but God sees love in 3 dimensions. The Bible uses 3 different words for love:
Phileo - The brotherly/caring type love
Eros - The lovely dovey type love
Agape - The unconditional/No strings attached type love

We talked about Agape love Sunday night! We talked to the students about how much God loves them time and time again even when we mess up. We gave all the students a pair of 3D glasses at the end of the service to remind them to see love the way God does! To understand He has amazing things for their life because of His love for them! It was a fun night! We did a drama to the song "Time After Time" which went amazing! The song captured the theme for the night. The chorus says, "If your lost and you look you will find me, time after time. If you fall I will catch you I'll be waiting, time after time." It is great to know that our students our understanding God's passionate love for them even when we feel unlovable and empty! God always forgives and is there for us time after time!!!

Chamber Dinner

2008-02-10T00:25:00.000-05:00

Well, we had the opportunity to go to the Sallisaw Chamber of Commerce Banquet tonight with all the staff @ Journey! We had a great meal, saw some great people, and met some new ones! It is great to be connected into the life of the community! Pastor Jeff has done a great job at building bridges with the Chamber and the community at large. We had our very own table since Pastor Jeff is on the board of directors this year! NO other church sponsored or even came to the banquet. I think being a part of the chamber is a MUST in church life! If you want to be a part of raising the standard spiritually, emotionally, physically, financially, practically then you HAVE to become part of the community! For so long churches have just stayed within their 4 walls and hope that what they do IN there changes things OUT there! But that just isn't the way you impact culture! You have to do things OUT there to bring them IN to a relationship with Jesus! If doing things IN the church was all that had to be done then why haven't communities been changed? I don't think the problem is IN the church (although I will say that most churches fail because lack of cultural relevance to the people and communities they are trying to reach) but it is the lack of OUT there that they do not do! I am not saying that one or the other is the way it should be because it is both combined that CHANGE communities. You have to go OUT there and impact them in order to bring them IN to something that is life-giving and impacting. On the same token you have to have something of significance IN the church in order to go OUT and change culture too! So it is both combined that churches are able to experience revival, life change, culture change and success in reaching the lost and raising them up to be ALL that God has called them to be! Anyway, it was great to be part of community life and speaking positive favor over our community here in Sallisaw!

By the way I painted a new painting the other day in my painting corner in the sun room. I kinda like it, how 'bout you?

Flag Football & Other Stuff

2008-02-06T11:11:00.000-05:00

Tonight we are going to recap the last series we have been doing, "Out of the Box". We are going to have some fun tonight with the middle school. We have been pretty intense these last few weeks so tonight is going to be a more laid back night before we start our new series next week! Things are going great here at the church God is opening up so many doors for us to impact the community in a HUGE way! It seems like God is just clearing the way and pouring out His blessings on everything! Youth is going great we are having students step up as leaders and students are responding to the move of God!

Last week at the Flag Football day we had 150 students and parents come out to the football field to hang out! It was awesome, Christ Sharp one of our adult leaders did a fantastic job putting together the event completely. It was so great I just got to show up and hang out and our great leaders ran with it and organized it to the "T"! We had several students from different youth groups come out and hang and new students who don't go to any church. I was able to connect with like 5 students who didn't really go anywhere so hopefully we can get them plugged in here @ Journey!!! Next year we are going to even make it bigger!!! Then we had our super bowl party and watched the game here in the zone. We had about 80 people here hanging out, eating in the cafe, playing games, and watching the game. What a good game it was too, the last few minutes were intense in the zone to say the least!

Well, we have some great events coming up with the Give-A-Way, Encounter Weekend and our new theme for this month! God is moving and we are just running with Him as HE leads us!!! God, give us the strength and endurance to follow Your Spirit wherever you may lead!!!

Great Week!

2008-01-31T12:24:00.001-05:00

What a great week we are having here! Last nights middle school service was great! We are really challenging the students to step up and become passionate about following God. We prayed with about 11 students at the end of the service who came forward to move from just living a religious going through the motions type life to a passionate relationship type life with Christ! God is really raising up some leaders with our middle school. Then Sunday night we had some great ministry time with about 18 students who responded to the message and just got filled up with Jesus!!! We have a lot going on right now with our BIG Flag Football day Sunday @ 1pm at the football stadium. Different youth groups from around the community are coming out to play and hang so it is going to be awesome. We are having a HUGE tournament with real officials, chain gangs, flags, all that stuff! Then we are having the Super Bowl party here in the zone @ 5:30 until the end of the game!

We have been collecting food for the Give-A-Way and it is going amazing! We have tons of stuff already and still another week or so of collecting things. Our students have responded to the call to bless others in our community and it is great to see. We are taking a team out February 9th to deliver the items to a family in need and I can't wait to show this family God's love through our students here @ Journey!!!

Just a side note for Christmas I got some Indiana Jones posters to finish my collection. Here is a picture of them hanging up in my office for inspiration throughout the week to live an adventure type life!

Middle School / Revelation

2008-01-24T11:17:00.001-05:00

We had a great service last night with the middle school! 5 students got saved and prayed with us to follow Jesus!!! Our middles school students have come so far these last few months. We still have a ways to go, but man it is great!!! We have about 40 middle school students that come out each week. God is really doing awesome things with our youth. They are catching the vision of the Give-A-Way, bringing in all kinds of great items. I am so excited they are understanding what it means to bless others!!! We have just a few weeks left of collecting things until we deliver it in February. It is going to be a great day!!!!

I don't know about you but I have so many ideas and information that I am constantly learning, reading, and coming across and it gets so hard to remember it all. I am always coming across things that are great quotes, illustrations, truth, revelation, etc... I remember hearing that if you don't personally grow intentionally you will never grow, because growth is not automatic. You have to intentionally apply yourself and make sure you are disciplined to keep moving forward. So with that said I am going to try and start filling things away better and really put some systems in place to make sure I don't just forget and drop all the great things God puts in my path. I have started systems in the past but by getting SO BUSY with stuff it is hard to keep up. But I am determined to become better at retaining information and making sure I don't just forget all the things God is teaching me!!!

Habakkuk 2:2 says,
"Then the LORD replied: "Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it."

I want to make sure the revelations God gives me is not forgotten, but used to accomplish all that God has for me and others!

Give-A-Way

2008-01-23T11:51:00.000-05:00

it is freezing here in Sallisaw! Lots of ice and cold weather. Hopefully it will start to warm up soon! I like sunny warm days, oh man they are great! I get all excited and motivated on nice days!!!

We started a new ministry with the students called, "Give-A-Way" We are collecting non perishable food items, household supplies, etc... all month. We are challenging the students to go out and get items then bring it in each week under the foot of the cross in the Zone. We have been hooked up with a family in our county that is in great need. A thirteen year old boy is living with his grandparents that were taking care of him then his grandfather passed away leaving just his grandmother and him. They do not have much means for basic needs and they are just in a really hard place right now. So we are going to collect as much stuff as we can then bless the socks off of them and bring them a whole kitchen full of items. We are going to take a team out the 1st or 2nd Saturday of each month and do this to various families that are in need. We are teaching the students multiple things such as: Being a blessing to others, giving, reaching out, elevating your community and those God has put around you, etc... We are super excited about getting into our community with our students and giving a way for people to experience God's provision and love for them.

Great Week!!!

2008-01-22T12:10:00.001-05:00

What a great week it has been! We had a great service Wednesday night with the middle school. God was really working on their hearts. We challenged them to step over their fears and become like Jonah and do what God is calling them to do! You could really tell during prayer at the end of the service that the students were getting it! Then some friends came in from Indiana to stay the weekend with us. Josh & Emily Smith who I had the privilege of marrying 2-3 years ago came in to visit us! We had a great time hanging out and showing off our awesome church here @ Journey! They were able to experience a Sunday morning service and the high school service Sunday night! It is so great to have friends come here to visit us cause we love to show off our church and all that God is doing here, we are so proud of it all!

Well, we have a lot coming up with the Super Bowl party/Flag Football Day February 3rd! We are hosting a huge flag football tournament down at the football stadium @ 1pm Super Bowl Sunday. We are having officials, flags, whistles, chain teams, etc... It's the real deal. Students will form teams of 8 with at least 2 girls per team. It is going to be off the hook! Then we have our huge Encounter weekend coming up in February! Where we are going to Dwight Mission for a weekend retreat to get away and encounter God's awesome presence! We have much going on and God is doing great things!!!

Retreat was Awesome!

2008-01-16T11:57:00.000-05:00

What an awesome weekend we had at our leadership retreat! We hung out, played games, and hammered out the strategy & plans up through the summer! We have a great team of leaders who God is doing great things through. When we get together things just start falling into place! The cabin we stayed at was AMAZING to say the least! This place was top notch and made the weekend even that much better! It definitely was a youth leadership weekend, there were some crazy dares given to some people like: licking Daniel Hayes' toe, eating ear wax, & drinking a mixture of mustard, coffee, mayonnaise, creamer, hot sauce, salsa, seasoning, & more. So there was some good laughs!!! Someone also put dishSOAP instead of dishWASHER soap in the dishwasher and we had a nice foam leek everywhere! I won't say who but you know who you are and will never live it down. These weekends are so necessary to build relationships and spend time together brainstorming and working out youth ministry details. Check out some of these pics from the weekend.

Leadership Retreat & Sin City Outreach

2008-01-11T12:59:00.000-05:00

Well, tonight we are taking our adult leadership team on a weekend retreat. We rented an awesome cabin at lake TenKiller and it is going to be a bast. We are going to have worship, play games, talk about 2008 & ministry, eat, and simply hang out! We got a great deal on this sweet cabin that overlooks the lake. I love leadership and investing into those that are investing back into a generation behind them. The level of your leadership will determine the level of your ministry and we want to raise the bar as leaders, because in turn the ministry will rise inevitably. We looking forward to a great weekend.

I am also putting together the Sin City Outreach packets for our students. We are taking a team of high schoolers to Vegas this August to do a huge outreach in the inner city. This is an amazing opportunity to step out and reach the lost in a VERY lost place. We will be meeting as a team throughout the year and gearing up for this mission trip heavily. There will be requirements for students on the team that they will have to meet in order to go such as: Spiritual requirements, financial, and commitment to JSM! God is going to assemble a strong team to go and make a great impact in this place! We will probably need to rasie around $600 - $800 dollars a person in order to provide plane tickets, lodging, meals, transportation, etc... Which I believe we will be able to do! Hopefully people will invest into these students as they step out and take the gospel out into the world!!! It is going to be a great adventure.

Tuesday

2008-01-08T10:39:00.000-05:00

Tuesday morning ready to go! We had an awesome service Sunday night with the high school. We talked about not putting God in a box. Meaning so many times we minimize our view of God to our present circumstances or feelings, but God is soooo much bigger than that. Many times we put place God's power within the confinement of our brain & fear, rather than realizing God is huge and and is able to do more than we could ever imagine. Ephesians 3:20 says,

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us"

That is our God, able to do more than we could even ask for, wow!!! 1 Kings 8:27 says,

"The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you."

We challenged the student to think of some boxes they have put God in like: fear, religion, our brain, emotions, circumstances, sin, doubt, confusion, questions, etc... Then we had the students come up front and rip a piece of cardboard off the boxes we had on stage and write down what some of the things were that they have boxed God into. It was a great night of realizing the greatness of God and getting our view of God out of the box! God is awesome!!!

2008

2008-01-04T10:48:00.000-05:00

Wow! 2008 is here and ready to go! Time goes bye faster and faster! Well, we are getting ready for the new year with the church, the themes, leadership, creative things and more. Also, with the youth we are gearing up to kick-off our new theme for January called, "Out of the Box". We will be talking about how BIG, and awesome God is. We can't minimize Him to our formulas, boxes, agenda, feelings, etc... He is the great and mighty King, Ruler of all!!! So we are going to challenge the students to have the right picture of who God really is!!! The most important image you have in life is your image of God! So we want to paint a true picture of God!

We also have tons of events we are going to be doing this year from, retreats, overnights, crazy events, services, bible groups, camps, mission trips, community outreaches and more! This is going to be a great year! One thing the Lord spoke to me was that, "We have been building a youth group but this year God wants us to build an army!!!" So we are going to challenge the students to step up and live out loud for Christ!!!

Branson & More

2007-12-14T11:27:00.000-05:00

Man, we had a whole lot of fun at our staff retreat in Branson. We got all our Christmas shopping done, which was great since we don't have one evening free to shop until after Christmas. We had a great time hanging out, eating, shopping, playing games, and just retreating!

Last night we had our adult leadership Christmas party and that was great! Everyone made food and we had a white elephant gift exchange. I stole a play shotgun thingy and Erin got bubble gum floss. Then we played catch phrase the remainder of the night. We had a great time hanging out and building relationships with our team! We are going to have an adult retreat in January at TenKiller lake which I am looking forward to. It's great to grow together as a team and honor those who give their time week in week out! We have a great team here at Journey and we couldn't do our services & ministry without them!

Well, tonight we have our 4/12 student leadership Christmas party, tomorrow is the home openers Christmas party for Master's Commission, Sunday night is the staff & elders Christmas party, Monday is the school band Christmas concert, Tuesday our worship team plays at the high school and we set up for the Youth Christmas party that night, then Wednesday is the BIG FORMAL Christmas party for 6th - 12th grade, then we leave Thursday to go home for the holidays and spend time with our family!!! We have a busy next so many days before Christmas.
Well, that is about it for now. By the way I have scored 77,770 on PacMan, YES!!!

Jr. High Service & PacMan

2007-12-05T16:03:00.000-05:00

Well, I am pretty excited about the message tonight for our jr. high service. We have been doing a series we started called, "Light of the World". Tonight we are talking about God calling us to be a light to the world by letting our light shine into others! God has been speaking to me about this topic and some cool things. Our prayer for the students is out of Job 42:5 where he said, "My ears have heard of you, but now my eyes have seen." We want our students to see the light of Christ and then shine the light of Christ so others can say the same! Tonight is Erin and I's last normal Wednesday service with the jr. high students since next week we will be gone on our staff retreat then the week after that is our BIG Christmas party, so tonight is going to be fun. Daryn Crawford is sharing next week for the jr. high service!

We have been getting into pac man a lot here at the office. During lunch we head out to the back lobby and play some pac man on the arcade game we have and it is fun. I never really played pac man too much in the past, but I am loving it! We are trying to get the high score and see how high we can get it. Right now the high score is 44, 300ish which is pretty darn hard to get. But with some skill and God's anointing we can get there, I believe!

Christmas Time

2007-12-04T12:58:00.000-05:00

Christmas Time! Yeah! I love it! The lights, movies, games, food, all of it! This is our favorite time of year! We have been playing Bing Crosby the last few weeks non stop! It is a busy time thought starting this Friday every night until the new year EVERY night is accounted for with parties, events, services, school specials, you name it. It is going to get crazy, but in a good way! We have our big Christmas party coming up Wednesday, December 19th. We are dressing up formal and having a full course dinner, games and more! We also have the opportunity to play at the high school for a special event. So our worship team is going to jam there on Tuesday the 18th! God is moving and doing great things. We have a big Christmas party for our adult leadership team coming up which is going to be great and a student leadership Christmas party for the 4/12 team! So we are going to be party'd out by the new year!!! Well, I need to get working with all that needs to be done so just wanted to update things!!! God bless!!!

Thanksgiving and More!

2007-11-27T11:25:00.001-05:00

Well, Last Sunday the 11th after service Rachel, Angie and I headed to Indiana for Thanksgiving! We drove throughout the night at nothing could stop me from seeing my babies (Erin & Zion) We got in about 7 in the morning and it was a great trip. Angie stayed with Rachel and got to see our home town in Indiana and meet some of the families. We had a great time seeing family, eating and hanging out with them!!! We miss them a WHOLE LOT so it is great to spend time with them!!! Then we headed back Friday the 23rd about 3pm or so and got in early Saturday morning! Then we decorated for Christmas all day on Saturday and got our tree up and all that fun stuff! Then we watched one of our favorite Christmas movies, ELF!!! It was so fun this year putting up decor since Zion is old enough now to help out and have fun decorating! We LOVE Christmas time at the Barrett household!!! We love to decorate and listen to Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra Christmas music while eating wonderful goodies and watching Christmas movies!!! What a great time of year this is!

Sunday night at youth was amazing! We had a worship night, where we just got down to business with God and spent time in His presence. No games, no fluff just the meat & potatoes. God was moving really strong. We as leaders went around and prayed for students and God was really speaking and touching the hearts of the teenagers. Students were confessing of things to empty themselves and make room for God's presence. God was speaking into students lives for the future. And many students just received God's touch for whatever was going on! It was a great night of ministry and worship! We have such an amazing youth group here at Journey and amazing students that are stepping up into all that God has for them!!!

Well, it's time to get at it now that we are back and to get geared up for the next month and the upcoming year!!! We are starting a new series with the youth for the month of December called, Light of the World. We will be talking about Jesus being the light of the world and what that means then US being the light of the world and how to do that!!! We also, have our huge formal Christmas party coming up December 19th for 6th - 12th grade. We will have a full dinner, dress up, have games, goodies, give away a free ipod, and more it is going to be awesome!!!

Off The Hook

2007-11-13T17:53:00.000-05:00

Man, the Transformation conference was off the hook! It was an incredible weekend totally in the presence of God!!! The teaching was intense, the worship free, the ministry powerful. I am still resting up a little from it, because it was non stop!!! The Lord really spoke some things into me during the week and it was great to see lives literally transformed from the inside out! I love going out to Tim's church in California and seeing everybody that I have built great relationships with over the past 5 years or so! It is also great to eat some REAL Mexican food, oh yeah!!! Yesterday, Jay Jay, Leslie, Jay & Kelly, Jarred and I went downtown Hollywood to see all the fun sites. It was Jarred's first time there so that was fun! We walked down Hollywood Blvd., Sunset Blvd., Santa Monica Blvd. and more! We went to L.A. Ink from the show on t.v. but they were closed for recording so we pulled into the back where they were hanging out and I got to talk to Kim one of the artist on the show! Then we went to Beverly Hills and got out and walked around the high class stores that you have to ring a bell to get in! We had a great time and we also saw the youngest boy from the Brady Bunch I forget his name but he walked by us in Hollywood! It's always fun to see who you might see when you are there! What a great time it was of ministry, refreshing, revelation and more!!! God is doing great things and it is great to be back in Sallisaw ready to keep pressing on for the things of God here in our area and our people!!! God come move in power!!!

California Transformation Conference

2007-11-11T12:31:00.000-05:00

Well, Jarred and I are here in the hotel getting ready to go to service for the last day of the Transformation conference here in California! It has been amazing!!! God is moving powerfully, worship is super intense, and the ministry and teaching has been outstanding! There are about 10 of us from out of town that flew in for the conference here with the Gate Church. God has been speaking to me about this generation and the things He is desiring to do as well as some things specifically for Sallisaw! It has been great to enter into the depths of worship, it has been very powerful. Jarred has been able to make some great contacts for Masters. There have been some students really praying and thinking about it! Tonight he will get to share before the whole conference about Masters and get some contacts for those who are interested. We have also made some great contacts with other youth pastors around the country. Our youth are invited to "Sin City Outreach" which is a huge city wide outreach in Las Vegas. Wal-Mart has donated all their charity to this ministry because of the testimonies of lives being changed by this. They usually have 3 trucks full of stuff that Wal-Mart donates, but this year Wal-Mart backed out of all their contributions to other things because of the lack of impact it was making. Yet this ministry is so powerful that they are donating 11 truck loads of items to give away to the poor, broken, abused, hurting, and lost! So the main director of this ministry and I have connected here at this conference and he has personally invited us to come and bring our youth and possibly for me to lead some worship during the week when we meet together. God is opening all kinds of doors! I miss being back in Sallisaw with our students, but I believe God is downloading some things in my Spirit for our youth and community!!! Well, we are getting ready to head out here soon, so I need to get loaded up and ready to go!

Just a side note when we got off the airplane waiting for our ride near L.A. there was a movie being shot outside at the drop off area! It was called Cab Driver and I think it was a love story cause a couple was holding hands and looking at each other as a WHOLE crew had lights, camera, and action going on! So if they keep that scene we were there driving by twice with our head out the window starring at movie making!

Bacheloring>Youth>Holidays

2007-11-07T14:59:00.000-05:00

Well, Erin and Zion are in Indiana with the family right now! Erin's grandmother passed away last Friday and they flew out Saturday morning for the funeral and to be with the family! Erin was going to come back today because we were going to fly out to California for a conference with Tim Roberson that I am leading worship at! Then we were going to go to Indiana for Thanksgiving and get Zion then and take her back with us! We weren't sure if it would be good for Zion to be away from both of us for a week and a half, so we were going to play it by ear! Erin didn't think she was going to do well since she has been with us everyday since we moved to Oklahoma. So Erin is staying back and just waiting for me to come up for thanksgiving break! So I am a bachelor for like 2 weeks, YUCK! I hate being away from my family they are my WORLD and take first place under God! So...we switched Erin's ticket to California for Jarred our 3rd year masters students. I am super excited he is going though and he will love it!!! He is going to do some recruitment for Master's so that will be great!!! I miss my babies though already and I still have a week and a half or so left! But there is a lot to be done around here and at home so I will use the time wisely!!!

Things have been super crazy with all the events we have been doing with the youth. We have had an overnight with 70 students, a fall fest wit about 80 students, a 5th quarter with different youth groups with 300+ students, a tailgate party after a football game with almost 100 students, Wednesday & Sunday services, guys night at my house, a chick flick movie night with the girls, and more!!! So I am looking forward to the holidays to slow down a bit with events and all that has been going on! Youth ministry can be tiring since it is so event driven. Services during the week are only about half of the impact youth ministry has! The other half is being a part of students lives which means going to games, concerts, events, etc... and doing youth events such as all that we have been doing! Staying up all night, creating fun events, inventing games, memories, and excitement to keep their attention and momentum! That's why I love ministry though...it's what makes it alive, passionate, fresh, God centered! I love doing what God has called me to do. Their is nothing like living in the destiny God has set for you! I wouldn't trade if for a 9-5 job any day, even though sometimes it's like a 9am - 5am job sometimes!!! Their is nothing wrong with a 9-5 job some are called to that type of job, but I love the heartbeat of the local church even when it doesn't clock out. Holidays look out cause I am going to embrace my family and hopefully rest a little for a fresh new year!!!

Fall Fest

2007-11-01T10:48:00.001-05:00

Last night went great at the Fall Fest here @ Journey! We had around 70 teenagers and probably around a few hundred children throughout the night! We set up in the parking lot with the JSM band, had ping-pong, basketball, & pumpkin bowling! We played some great group games that was a blast! Pastor Tony and Journey Kids were all set up inside the building with mazes, games, and different stations for the kids! I didn't get to go through but I know it was a huge hit. We had tons of people come from the community and just stop by. It was for sure a great Fall Fest to honor God!

Last night I dressed up like a pirate. I had the whole outfit, eye patch, hook, hat & earing. It was a lot of fun. Zion dressed up like a bumble bee she was sooooooooooooo cute look at these pictures! Zion is getting cuter and cuter everyday. She is soooooo funny too! The other night we were playing on the floor rolling around and I picked her feet up off the ground and she said, "I don't like to be man handled!" I laughed my head off cause she loves the movie, "Night At The Museum" and that is where she heard that line!!! How funny are little kids! Erin's belly is starting to show and she looks so cute too! We find out in few weeks what we are having, we are so excited! Well, mom and dad are coming into town today just for the night. I need to get some things done so I can spend some time with them. They are on their way to Arizona, so they are just passing through!!!

Another Busy Week

2007-10-30T11:49:00.000-05:00

Whew! We have been busy to say the least! Last Friday went great at the 5th Quarter United. We had probably around 300 students hang out throughout the night! All of our bands played, which was awesome! We had a inflatable boxing set, a huge slide, pizza, and just pure hanging out! Everybody is already talking about trying to do another thing like that again, they loved it so much! Then Erin had her, "Chick Flick Night" They had a great time playing some great movie games and eating some awesome snack food!!! Erin does such a great job when she does events and basically anything she does!!! I LOVE her sooooo much!

Things have been going great with the students, we are doing our series, "Who I Am" and it is really tuning the students into what God wants to do in their lives! Sunday night with the high school we had like 45 students, so that is great! God is really moving and opening the students hearts up. Tomorrow we are having Fall Fest 07! We are setting up outside in the church parking lot and having our band play, games, and some food & a costume party! It is going to be a lot of fun! I have a pirate costume, Zion is going to be a bumble bee, and we still need to get Erin an outfit! It is going to be a lot of fun outside tomorrow! Then Friday night after the football game we are having a TailGate Party in the parking lot until 12pm! We will have hot dogs, some music and just good 'ole fashion parking lot hanging! Sometimes students just want to hang out and not do anything so we are going to just hang Friday night! Then on Sunday the girls are going to join the Ladies Night that Mrs. Steph is putting on for the women of the church. While that is going on the high school guys are going to come over to our house and cook out, play some 360, and play some other games!

Well, a lot is going on so I am going to get back to it and hammer things out for all that is going on this week and the weeks to come!!!

Another Wonderful Day

2007-10-25T00:34:00.001-05:00

Tonight we had a great service with the jr. high! We started our new series called, "Who I am" talking about who we are in Christ and how God sees us! Wednesdays are always really fun services and we have a huge group of 6th - 8th graders. This Friday we have a 5th quarter united that we are doing with 3 other churches in the community at the middle school gym after the football game! We are having inflatables, live music, pizza, drinks, and more. It is going to be a great night of hanging out and doing the event together with other churches! Erin is having the chick flick movie night for all the girls this Saturday from 6pm - 9pm in the zone! They are going to play movie games, eat food, and watch a chick flick movie!

We are keeping super busy with the day to day operations of running the church and more! God is doing great things though! Tonight I had a parent tell me about how God is just blessing their socks off everywhere they turn! Miraculous thing too that are totally God and nothing else! It is so great to be part of such a wonderful church where God is moving all over the place in the lives of people!

It's late right now and I can't sleep! My brain starts to wake up at this hour and it is not good! I have been running 1.5 miles everyday and yesterday I ran 3.5 miles! I felt pretty good and couldn't come up with a reason to stop so I kept pushing myself! I figured since Rachel (the MC student staying with us) could run 26 miles on Monday out of nowhere then I could push a little more than 1.5 miles. It felt good, I hate to run but I love how it makes me feel afterwards. Well, I am going to attempt to lay down and try to fall asleep. Hopefully I don't become more awake thinking and brainstorming, I tend to do that way too much at night!!!

Operation Overnight & More

2007-10-22T12:50:00.000-05:00

Whew I am still resting up from operation overnight! We had 70 students come out for this awesome event! We played dodgeball, crazy games, worship, food, skavenger hunt, picnic, and more. It was a blast!!! 24 hours of intense youth ministry at it's best!!! Sunday at church was great, we started our new series Identity! I was able to lead worship since Chad was out of town of vacation and that is always fun! Then Sunday night we started the youth new series called, Who I Am. We are talking about what's makes us, us! And how does God see us! We had a fun night, and a great time in worship together. Our high school is totally pressing into worship and going deeper and deeper each time we meet!

Today we are cleaning and just catching up on things. These last few weeks have been crazy with everything going on! We are getting caught up though with everything today! Tomorrow we have a doctors appointment for Erin and the new baby! We are excited to go! Here in a few weeks we get to find out what we are having, yeah!!! I think we are having a boy or a girl, so we will see! Well, lots of thing to do today so I better get back to it!!!

Oh YEAH!!!

2007-10-17T23:03:00.000-05:00

Friend day went amazing we had 560 people within our 3 services! Many people got saved and rededicated their lives to Christ and it was great! Then we had party at pastors which had about the same amount of people! We had multiple inflatables, food, music, hayrides, pony rides, 4-wheelers, mechanical bull (which really hurt by the way), horseshoes, chili cook off, and more! It was great to get everyone together within all the services and just hang out! Everyone did an amazing job rallying together and working all the events and making Sunday morning services be all they are! As pastor Jeff says it takes great people, serving a great God to make a great church, so true and we have GREAT people here @ Journey!!!

Tonight we had a blast at our 6th - 8th grade service. We are in between starting a new series so we had a fun night of team challenge and just having a good time! Tomorrow is Operation Overnight and we have like 50 students coming already! We are staying the night at the church from 6pm tomorrow until 6pm on Friday. We are going to have a blast hanging out, playing games, video scavenger hunt and tons of other stuff!!! It takes many events outside of normal weekly services to make youth ministry really powerful. You can't just rely on services to impact teenagers it takes so much more to get into their world! They have to really build trust and respect for leaders in order to really open up their hearts. Sometimes students have been so hurt from family and friends that they tend to keep high walls up between others. Events really tear down walls and build great relationships and memories for the students. It makes the weekly services that much easier and better to speak into their lives. It was super busy last week and yet super duper busy this week for the youth ministry too, so I will be sleeping like a baby on Saturday to say the least!!! God is awesome and doing great things. It is so great to hear parents come to me and say, "My son/daughter NEVER would come to church or youth and now they beg me to bring them out on Wednesday/Sunday for youth!" We are hearing praise reports and changes of attitudes and other things all the time from parents. That makes everything so much more rewarding when you see the seeds sprouting right before your eyes!!! What a great church, great pastor, and most importantly GREAT GOD we serve!!!

Trying To Post More!

2007-10-11T23:32:00.000-05:00

Alright I am going to try and post blogs a little more often! We have been so busy though. This is peak season for us as a church with ministry. August - November seem to always be the BIG months that churches have the most people and most opportunity to impact! And that is what we are doing!

Today the t.v's for the foyer got hooked up thanks to Kevin Rodden! He did a great job running all the power and everything else! We have got some painting done thanks to Daryl Jones & Angel and we will have more helping these next few days with other projects. We have a lot of irons in the fire so to speak! This weekend is going to be great!

Tomorrow Erin's dad and step mom are coming into town for a few days, so we are excited about that! Homecoming is tomorrow night and the parade during the day, so that will be fun as well! Football is like the state fair here! The whole town goes to the games on Friday nights, kinda like the movies! It's a lot of fun seeing everybody there and getting to meet new faces!

Well, Zion and I are watching Annie and just hanging out getting ready to go to bed! I am still doing some laundry though, so I might wait up a bit! I had lunch today with the youth pastors here in town and we are doing a combined event October 26th after the football game in the middle school gym. This will be the first event we have done together in a long time I guess. It will be fun to get together and reach these students. The youth pastors are great guys doing a great job in their churches and the community! Well, I am going to get to the laundry and clean a bit, Good Night!!!

8 Students Got SAVED!!!

2007-10-10T22:19:00.000-05:00

We had a great service tonight 8 students gave their life to Christ!!! God is moving and doing great things! After worship tonight, I just felt like the message I had prepared wasn't for the night so we changed things up a bit and just let the Holy Spirit lead us. I just got up and shared about being connected to the power source Jesus Christ and how we are like an extension chord. An extension chord is nothing of itself but when it is connected to the power source (an outlet) it comes to life and has juice!!! So we just gave a salvation call and 8 students responded. We have grown so fast that we have many students who just simply don't know Christ and what it means to follow Him. We have a great opportunity right now to build some foundations in these students with salvation. I love when God brings totally lost people to you and you don't even have to go out! Our students are doing the work bringing friends and God is touching their hearts week after week!

Well, this is an insane week with getting ready for friend day, party at pastors, and everything it takes to make that happen well! We are on top of it though and everything is falling into place the way it should! We have such great people here at Journey that make things easy, fun, and such a joy!!! Friend Day is going to be great with tons of people here that don't know Christ and we get to help point the way to Christ, HOW COOL IS THAT? God is going to move in power and anoint this service soooooo much! It's awesome being at a church that is so healthy and focused. We have such a great pastor that leads us and great people who serve so faithfully each week, I am blown away!!!

Well, I am so tired and ready to just lay down and rest!!! We have much to do these next few days and only so much time to do it!

Time Is Flying

2007-10-03T10:12:00.000-05:00

Whew! Time is flying bye! It seems like time is a snowball effect the more it goes bye the faster it gets in life! If what I hear from older people is true, which is, "Just wait till you get my age and see how fast it goes!" then a day will be like 3 minutes (which is not good). Anyway, things are going great we are rockin' and rollin' as usual! We have so many great events coming up with Friend Day, Party @ Pastor's, Operation Overnight, Football team meal, Halloween October stuff, Services, Dig (which is going to start October 17th for the high schoolers on Wednesday night. Dig will be second base for all of our high school students that want to go deeper into God's word and their relationship with Him! Daryn Crawford is going to be leading it while the jr. high service is going on! 1st base for our high school students is coming out to Sunday night high school service then going deeper on Wednesday with Dig! It is going to be a great!

Holidays will be here before we know it! We are so excited about seeing our family back home around the holidays. We have been here 7 months and I have only been able to get back home once for a few days for my brother's wedding, so we are so excited about seeing our family and friends back home in Indiana. Our parent's have come and visit quit a bit actually which is awesome! But we haven't really been able to see our brother's, sisters, nieces, nephews, and so on! We are anxious to see them! I can't believe that it is the fall already! Time is flying and we are sailing on the wind of it! God is awesome and is moving all the time!!!

Busy Times As Usual

2007-09-29T23:32:00.000-05:00

Man it has been busy! But isn't that life? Today we had a Frontline Ministry lunch at the Sharp's house and it went great! We talked about the fall and just encouraged everyone in what they are doing and Chris shard some great stuff! We have a great team of ushers, greeters, welcome center workers, cafe workers, parking lot workers, and so on! I believe that this ministry prepares the way for the word, worship, and all that God wants to do in a persons life! Ministry happens as soon as people pull onto our property and their experience needs to happen as soon as they step foot out of their car. We have a great team doing a great job here at Journey!

Things are going great with the youth! We had see you at the pole Wednesday morning, it was more like see you at the flood though. It rained and thunderstormed all morning long. We had it in the gym at the high school & middle school! We had a great turnout though for power going out and downpours. 65 at the middle school and about the same at the high school. Tuesday night there was a prerally at another church in town and Erin, Danny and I went to that. It was a great service of worship and just preparing the students for the event Wednesday morning. Then Wednesday I got to speak at Central schools youth alive. Which is a lunch time bible study group and that was fun! I also went to Sallisaw's youth alive on Tuesday and hung out for a while both lunches. It is great to see the students in their schools and stepping out for God! It was a busy week with the students for sure! God is totally moving here more and more as we press in!

Well, I am tired and I need to get some rest for tomorrow. Another big day of church and high school service tomorrow night! I have a great message ready about being either a firefighter in life or a firelighter. We have the ability to either put out people's fire in life or set them on fire for Christ! It is going to be good! Good night!

A Lot Goes On

2007-09-23T22:58:00.000-05:00

Well, tonight was great at youth! We had our high school service and talked about keeping the fire burning in our hearts. What it takes and the things that will put our fire out if we are not careful. Sunday's are great in the zone, the feel is warm and worship is going really good. We have been having some good pressing in times during worship. We have an awesome high school group that we LOVE!

The last few days Zion has had a fever and is not feeling well. Today Erin stayed home with her and has been resting herself from being sick! Zion is so clingy when she is sick it's kinda fun to snuggle with her, not that I want her sick by any means though.

We have been busy here with football games, planning events, services, and simply the nuts and bolts of ministry. A lot goes on in order to do everything we do like: Message prep, creative brainstorming, setting up, creating games, caring for people, visiting schools & games, planning events, budgeting, leading volunteers, reaching out, cleaning up, organizing ministry teams, tracking and assimilating attendance, discipleship, the list goes on and on. It takes a lot to simply run the daily operations of ministry. I love it though and couldn't think of anything I would rather be doing than building the Kingdom here on earth.

Zion and I are hanging out watching Bob Ross. We like to watch him together, Zion loves him, it's so funny to hear her ask to watch Bob Woss!!! Well, we are going to go to bed soon we are very tired and some very sick, so...

God is on the MOVE!

2007-09-18T14:47:00.000-05:00

Sunday night at the high school service was awesome! We had 43 high schoolers and God was doing great things! We talked about how God is a consuming fire and when we get close to Him He will burn the junk out of our lives! We took a clump of wax that was all nasty and said this kind of represents our lives (sometimes a mess with sin, hurts, fear, confusion, etc...) and when we draw near to God He burns them out of our lives. So I took a torch and melted the wax into liquid. Then we said, "Now God can mold us and shape us into the awesome vessel He has called us to be, which we had a beautiful candle that was crisp, clean, and smelled great! We said now God sets us on fire again so that people can smell the fragrance of Jesus through our actions. The light is like the hope that we give people through Jesus and the beauty of the candle is the awesome relationship we have with Christ! It was a great night, the students are responding more and more to the things of God!!!

Well today I had lunch with another youth pastor here in town and we had a great time eating some Mexican food. We are going to be doing some things together for see you at the pole next Wednesday and after a football game coming up soon! It is great to hook up with people that have a heart for teenagers here in the community and to see what God is doing through all of us! God is on the move and we are following!!!