A church is made up of people not a building, but I had to promote the new Life-Givers building. I stole these pictures while working there last night.
Looks good so far. I’m excited about what’s going to happen in this building.
Thank you, Jesus.
Quickly approaching is the new ministry year for the student ministries (Beyond Youth & Kids Zone) at Life-Givers Ministries. Sure, it’s only June, but the new ministry year starts on Sunday, August 29, 2010; a few weeks after the start of the new school year.
Can I just say that I’m excited? So excited that I want run and jump and scream how excited I am.
Last night, I was deeply thinking and praying for God to solidify the vision he wants for this new year. During this time, God gave me a phrase that struck me hard. This phrase is so powerful that I believe that God will use this new ministry year to drive LGM and it’s student ministries to a new level of ministry and closeness to God.
Here’s the sad part. I can’t share it right now. There’s some work to be done in the background before it can be shared, but keep a lookout. It is coming soon, and it will blow you away.
Friday and Saturday was the annual Talent Quest for the South Carolina Conference of the IPHC. Life-Givers had 16 children and teenagers performing in 5 categories: Vocal/Instrumentals, Painting, Dance, Junior Drama, Teen Drama. Here’s the results:
I consider that a very successful weekend especially since this was LGM’s first appearance at Talent Quest. I very proud of all of our performers, and now we have 2 teens going to national competition in Orlando, FL in July.
This weekend is the annual SC Conference Talent Quest competition held in Lake City. Life-Givers Ministries is sending 16 juniors (9) and teenagers (7) to participate in 5 categories. This is huge for LGM considering that LGM didn’t have any competitors last year and 16 this year.
I’m extremely excited for the performers. I remember participating in this same competition for a number of years as a teenager, and it has impacted my life to this very day.
Please pray for them. Pray specifically for peace over their nervousness, safe travel to and from the competition, and that their performances will bring glory to God.
This past Sunday, we at LGM celebrated our 4th anniversary of opening our doors to our surrounding communities by hosting our annual Family and Friend Day. As you may have read from my latest post on the Monday Morning Rewind series there were 3 Beyond Youth students who opened their hearts to God’s salvation and 152 people in attendance. That was awesome.
What else was cool was the lesson that I taught to the Beyond Youth, and they seemed to enjoy it. At least, if they didn’t, then they should win their own personal Oscar.
The Beyond Youth started a new series entitled, A King’s Story, and I wanted them to make Jesus’ life real to them. A real Jesus for real students. So I dressed up as Jesus to tell the story of Blind Bartimaeus, as found in Mark 10, as if it was coming from his point-of-view. His feelings, his thoughts, his perspective.
Those students were hanging onto every word that I said. Their eyes were glued to me. What they were told were words of love and compassion coming from the Savior (but not really). In the end, 3 students’ lives were changed. It was our best class so far. And I’m expecting better in the future.
Last Sunday was a great day. The main reason was that the teens of the Crossover Drama Team performed a drama that they have been practicing since January. They have been practicing their drama “Break Me Down”, and plan to perform it at the annual SCIPHC Talent Quest in March. But first, to celebrate their hard work and to reward the people who have volunteered time and money to help, they performed it for the first time outside of practicing.
Keep in mind a couple things:
I’m so proud of them, and of Bridgett leading this great group of performers. Enjoy.
If you like it, be sure to be at Life-Givers Ministries on Sunday, March 7th for our Family & Friend Day when they will be performing it once more before their competition. It’s going to be more awesomer (yes, I know it’s improper grammar).
For those who don’t know, the Beyond Youth have been participating in the annual Teens for Jeans program organized by Aéropostale. We started collecting pairs of jeans on Sunday, January 24th, and ended this past Sunday, February 7th. Aéropostale plans to send these jeans to aid in the Haiti earthquake relief. What’s really cool is that they are matching a new pair of Aéropostale jeans for the first 100,000 pairs that they collect and send.
This morning, Bridgett and Stephanie (a Beyond Youth parent) traveled to the Aéropostale store in Northwoods Mall to drop off the jeans that we collected. The grand total? 150 pairs of jeans. How awesome is that! Praise God!!!
If I hadn’t counted the jeans last night, then I wouldn’t have believed that we collected that many. I have to say a huge thank you to everyone to donated, and an enormous praise to God for such a great turnout.
What’s also cool is that they gave us a 25% off coupon for each pair that we gave. So, we have 150 coupons to get rid of by the last day of February. I’ve already given some away at my job, but we’re keeping most of them to give away at our church, Life-Givers Ministries. After Sunday, if we have a lot left over, we’ll figure out how we’ll get rid of them.
Finally, if you’d like to participate in this initiative, then the last day Aéropostale is collecting jeans is this Sunday, February 14th.
Extremely excited about Winter Jam coming to North Charleston, SC on Valentine’s Day. Bridgett and I are taking the Beyond Youth to this concert along with many others from Life-Givers Ministries. Plus, I get to go backstage to meet the performers for prayer before the concert. So cool!
Are you going to a Winter Jam concert or have you been to one already? Let me know.
If you’re interested, here’s the video of my message from last week’s Youth Sunday at Life-Givers Ministries. The title is “The Cards You’ve Been Dealt” and the Scripture is from 2 Samuel 23:20. Enjoy!
Oh, and tell me what you think or if it helped you in any way.
As of last night, Bridgett and I are officially finished with all of the Christmas parties that we had for Life-Givers Ministries. We had the church dinner on 12/3, the drama team party on 12/11, and the Beyond Youth party on 12/12. And I’m spent. Tired. Ka-put. Done. But…
…I have church this morning which entails a youth small group, and I’m excited about what we’re discussing. Grace. Not only grace through Jesus being born as a baby, but the illustration of grace given by Joseph to Mary. Joseph could have easily had Mary tried and stoned for her alleged adultery, but he didn’t. Instead he chose grace to give to her by choosing to divorce her privately. That led to Gabriel envisioning himself to Joseph in a dream and to his belief in Mary’s story about being impregnated by the Holy Spirit to birth the long-awaited Messiah: Jesus.
Oh how God has a way of picking the right people at the right time in the right way, and making it all work out.