The OC Register had a helpful article for high school seniors and their parents about preparing for college.

Check it out by clicking HERE.

This morning we continued our teaching series through 1 John, focusing in on verses 15-29 of chapter 2. We focused in on the importance of having accurate beliefs about Jesus, looking at the problems that Gnosticism had wreaked on the early church. As far as I can see, Gnosticism isn’t much of a threat to the church these days… but false ideas about who Jesus is, and who we are, and what our lives are supposed to be about are all too common.

We met in LifeGroups to talk about what we truly believe about Jesus and the world he created. We investigated the beliefs that drive our decisions and cause us to seek satisfaction in things that have been created, versus the Creator.

6:30-8:30

We’re kicking off a new 4-week teaching series tonight at EDL called “Rooted“. We’re going to be exploring the apologetic proofs of God, the Bible, Jesus and his resurrection. Tonight our very own Blake Boyd is going to start things off by looking at the evidence that there is a Creator, and that his fingerprints can be seen all over the place. I’m so excited for it! We’ll let you know how it goes

I just left a meeting with Liz Gold (Calvary’s Missions Director in case you didn’t know), and I’m EXCITED about next year! We haven’t nailed down any specifics, but I think we’ve narrowed it down to a handful of amazing possibilities.

Last summer was ridiculously busy, which in some ways is unavoidable and to be expected. BUT, I would love to spread the trips out as much as possible next year, which I think will alleviate some of that busyness. I’m hoping to plan our BIG mission trip for some time in the early summer. That will leave some room between the mission trip and the Hume Lake trip, which is July 19-25th. Shifting the mission trip to the beginning of summer would also open up the trip for some of the students that serve at VBS every year.

Stay tuned

-ryan

Tonight Melissa talked about the power that love has over fear. The disciple John said that “perfect love casts out fear”. Melissa exposed a handful of common fears that high school students are burdened by, and then dismantled them by showing the students that Jesus had already overcome their fears- and as they learned last week- Jesus is the one who makes the Christian life possible by living IN and THROUGH us.

She challenged the students to live their lives in response to the fact that they have been chosen, accepted, protected, and motivated by the love of God.

We started our journey through the book of 1 John this morning by exploring the context of the letter, as well as talking a lot about the story of John. It is such a miracle that we have the letters of a man who spent so much time with Jesus!!! We had a big crowd with us this morning, which is a GOOD thing primarily because it means we didn’t scare anyone away by jumping into LifeGroups last week

I’ll attach the worksheet we used this morning to give you an idea of what we talked about this morning in our groups.

Tonight we started by looking at the story of Moses in Exodus 3. We saw that Moses slowed down long enough to actually notice that the bush wasn’t burning up. We talked about what it meant for God to show up right in the middle of such a mundane and unexpected place. Was it that God had shown up, or that he had always been there? This begged the question: what would be different about our lives if we were absolutely confident that God was ALWAYS with us?

Chantelle read through Psalm 46 inbetween the first two songs of the night, and the crowd seemed less than impressed. The unimpressiveness had nothing to do with Chantelle, but instead it had everything to do with a room full of people who have just become bored. The only problem with the boredom is that I believe it is brought on my disbelief. I’m convinced that if we truly believed what the Psalmist is saying, we would respond much differently. We would respond with a “WHOA!”, instead of the pretty common “hmm…”.

Psalm 46 says that the Lord Almighty is WITH US.

Psalm 73 says he’s not only with us, but he is also holding us by our right hand.

And in typical biblical fashion, Colossians 1:27 says that Christ is actually IN us. Not so much WITH us. It’s not really Christ AND us. It’s just Christ. In us. Our only hope is Christ IN us. That’s very WHOA. Somehow we’ve let that become hmm…

I closed by showing a bottle of ocean water that Lindsay had filled up earlier that day. I said that I had “the Pacific Ocean in my bottle”. Not ALL of the Pacific Ocean, but every drop of that water was 100% Pacific Ocean. And when Christ is in us, we can know that it is 100% Christ in us… not ALL of Christ, but more than enough.

Moses’ only hope in delivering his people from the 430 years of oppression and slavery was that God would be with him. Our only hope for living the Christian life is Christ in us.

On the 1 to 10 intensity scale, this was a 10. But I believe in your kids. We had some amazing conversations afterwards with some students who were tired of living a “Christ and me” life.

Wow, what a fantastic day it was for the high school ministry, one that we should celebrate in my opinion!

We launched 28 LifeGroups today, made up by 33 leaders and 164 students. It looks like we’ll have a few students shifting around into new groups this week, but aside from those few it looks like everything is looking good! We’re also hoping to add one or two more guy leaders in the next month or two just to keep our ratios healthy.

We had a great volunteer meeting today. I am so encouraged every month when I see all of those people in one place. They love, love, love your kids so much… I am especially impressed with how long some of them have been serving in the high school ministry!

We’ll be working on two big projects over the next couple of weeks. First, we want to finalize the teaching material for both Sundays and Wednesdays for the entire school year. We’re actually very close to having it done! And second, we’re working on a resource manual for our volunteer team, made up of all sorts of useful things for our leaders.

Remember that THIS SATURDAY we are meeting at Calvary at 8am to walk over to Cabrillo Park to help clean up and repair the wall. Please come out and serve with us! We should be done by noon. Have I mentioned how much I love Calvary’s commitment to serving their neighbors???

Well that was fun!

We had somewhere around 275 students and 60-something volunteers come out for our first of two Day Zero events. I’d like to see that number double for next month’s event.

The night started with a couple of hurdles! The vendor supplying our photo booth called to say that he forgot(?) to rent a trailer, and that the Uhaul office was now closed. Thank God for Josh Simpson, who hopped in a Calvary van with a trailer to go get it on time! Our rock-climbing wall provider never called, never showed, and has about 30 voicemails from our team asking “Where arrrrrre you????”.

The students didn’t mind the absence one bit! Our team did a fantastic job of creating an amazing environment. Chris Gniffke was our emcee and he was perfect! Melissa and I were out of town at a conference with the Calvary team all week (bad timing), so Matt, Katy, Blake and Erin had to step up big time! I’m really proud of them, and so thankful for all of you who came out to volunteer!

We invited the students who were visiting us to come and hang out with us this Sunday, which just so happens to be the launching day for our LifeGroups! Pray that they would accept that invitation. We’ll be ready to plug them into a group if they come. We’ll also be emailing each and every one of them to thank them for coming and to invite them one more time.

You can check out some pictures that Paul Rosenau sent me this morning by clicking HERE!