Last night was what we called a “worship night”. When the students showed up they were expecting a long night of songs from the band, but we had other plans =) The band had the night off.

We set up seven areas (or “stations”) that gave the students seven different ways to “worship”.

Station 1 was a prayer area. Students could come and pray by themselves or with leaders who were hanging out in that area for that purpose.

Station 2 was a wall covered in butcher paper and stocked with charcoal markers. We let the students express themselves in whatever way they wanted, and they covered just about every inch of that massive wall. I would show you a picture but I’m a bonehead and I forgot to bring my camera last night.

Station 3 was an area where we let the students grab some soil, a seed, a cup and some water. We told them to plant the seed for a few different reasons. Perhaps it represented something NEW going on in their life and walk with Christ, or maybe it would represent an act of creation, or life, or a number of other symbollic meanings.

Station 4 was a cross where students could write notes/confessions or whatever they wanted, and even nail them to the cross.

Station 5 was a communion table with enough bread and juice for students to take very large portions of both. We encouraged them to take some time with their communion. Having a full cup of juice and a huge chunk of bread made that a lot easier to do.

Station 6 was a “lounge” of sorts. They were invited to just sit and listen and be still.

Station 7 was a table set up with three different ways that they could worship through serving. One was was serving here at Calvary, the second was in the community, and the third was a global effort they could take part in right here (via donations).

The students seemed to love it. I didn’t ask her for permission, but I don’t think Lauren would mind if I showed you a post she made on her blog about last night. I hope that her experience was a common one!

Dear wonderful, gracious, and giving parents of EDL. We are in need of seven dozen donuts for this Sunday’s combined service with Junior High and High School at 8:45. We’ve already had a few dozen donated, but we do still need another seven.

Would anyone like to pick these up for us and bring them to the youth service by 8:30 on Sunday morning? If so please leave a comment here, or email, or call one of us and let us know.

Thanks!!!

rguard@calvarylife.org

mbrosch@calvarylife.org

Hey parents,

Click here to see a couple of the ways your family can help those who have been affected by the fires.

-rg

hello parents

First things first: we are postponing “Service Saturday” for this weekend. More details to come soon.

Josh Simpson was the guest speaker this morning at EDL. You can tell that the students love this guy… they were quick to applaud as he came on stage and quick to listen as he shared.

The title for his talk this morning was “How to Be a Fool in 8 Days“, which was of course inspired by the girliest of all girl movies, “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” I renamed the movie “How to Lose Ryan’s Attention in 10 Minutes” when Lindsay and I watched it for the first time a couple years ago. I say “for the first time” because Lindsay will watch it each and every time she sees it on TV… much like “Legally Blonde” and any show about people with babies. (tangents are therapeutic for me).

The text this morning was out of Ecclesiastes 7. Here are the 8 things that Josh said you can do to become a fool and ruin your life:

1. Focus on stuff.
2. Spend all of your time partying.
3. Be fake and always appear happy.
4. Listen only to what you want to hear.
5. Focus on the past.
6. Focus on the future.
7. Live in the extremes.
8. Don’t seek wisdom, just do what feels best to you.

Josh really opened up on point #3 and shared some personal stuff. The whole message was about living a balanced life and becoming complete people in Christ. He was our perfect picture of a balanced life. He was a carpenter,  “man’s man”… who also cried and quoted poetry sometimes!

Check out THIS POST on my blog to read the results of an impressive research project that MTV put together (yep, I said MTV). If anyone wants to know what makes your kids tick its those guys. I posted it over there so that some of the youth pastors that read my blog would find it too.

Enjoy!

-rg

Hey parents,

I won’t normally use this blog for this sort of thing, but I think this time it is worth it. Check out this post on my personal blog for a SIMPLE way to make a huge difference!

And pass it on

-Ryan

Day Zero was great! We had about 400 students attend, and everything went nice and smooth. I spent 5 minutes at the end of the night talking about who we are- I basically told the crowd that we were a group of people that not only liked to have a good time, but that we’re also convinced that Jesus is in fact God, and that because he’s God HE knows how to have the best kind of “good time” imaginable. We invited them to come back, and we’ll be touching base with them this week one more time. I’m pretty sure we’ll load some pictures up on the Day Zero website, and there’s also a bunch of them available over at the Foto Cabina website. The password for the first event was DayZero, but I don’t know the new password yet!

This morning (Sunday) I taught through chapter 5 of 1 John. I talked about the first 5 verses for the most part, in which John says that God’s commands are not burdensome. I hated rules as a teenager, and commands sure do look a lot like rules. I explained that obedience comes when see God’s invitation clearly, and our obedience actually leads to our freedom. That sounds backwards, but most things are with Jesus!

We ended by hearing Isaiah’s invitation to the thirsty, and talking about the wells we try to dig that can never quench our thirst. I asked the students to put down their shovels, and we transitioned to LifeGroups after listening to “Come to the Water” by Matt Maher.

Last night we concluded our Rooted teaching series, and it…was…awesome!

Melissa walked the students through the story of Jesus’ life, leading up to his death and resurrection. She shared the details of the days leading up to the betrayal of Judas, the beatings at the hands of the Romans, the mocking, the crucifixion, and the despair of his closest followers. She then spent time sharing reason after reason why we can actually know that the resurrection occured, not just hope that it actually happened, or believe it because the Bible says so.

The students were as tuned in as I’ve ever seen a group of students. When we ended the night with a few worship songs, you could SEE that God was at work in many of them.

I feel like we can move forward in our teachings with confidence that our group has a strong foundation. Many of our students had heard these messages before, but it was refreshing to hear them again (for me anyways!).

We just scheduled Rich Baker to come and speak at EDL on November 12th. Rich is the head honcho of the high school ministry at Hume Lake Summer Camp.

Here’s Rich offering his body as a living sacrifice (I’m hearing now that this isn’t Rich Baker… but I refuse to believe that it isn’t, so the video stays)

This Friday is Day Zero at Calvary from 9:00 to 11:00pm.

This event has been a great “front door” for hundreds of students to come and check out the high school community at Calvary over the years. Those students checking us out are the primary reason that we put this event together. This isn’t just a party for our Christian kids to come and let loose for a couple of hours. I’m certainly glad that our committed kids come and have a great time. That’s great. They deserve a good party as much as anyone! BUT, and this is a big but, the purpose of this event is to provide our committed students with an event that should be relatively easy to invite their friends to.

So, please encourage your sons and daughters to think about some friends that they could invite. And don’t forget to pray that the high school ministry would be equipped and ready to minister to the students that come wanting to plug in as a result of this event!