Thanks to the Lady

Spending the morning at Caribou Coffee. Gas prices are making me limit my visits to every other week or so, but today I have the pleasure of drinking coffee and reading. Working through Andy Stanley's "Communicating For a Change." Good read so far. Nothing like a book that forces self-examination and makes you question your current methods. Anyway, I just wanted to relate that there are still kind people in this world. I have a Caribou gift card that I refill periodically and use to get my coffee. Today, I ordered my coffee and after swiping my gift card, I was informed I owed 65¢. I don't carry cash and sheepishly pulled out my debit card to pay for that large amount of money. A lady behind me slapped down a five and told the worker to just take it out of that. So, thanks to that lady for covering part of my coffee.

Of course, now that I think about it, maybe she just didn't want to wait for the time it would take for them to run my card. Anyway, she saved me some change which I can put to other good use like lunch.

One Idea & Repitition

Last night, I sat in the church basement with "The Brotherhood." No, it's not some crazy version of a board meeting. The brotherhood is the high school age guys in our youth group. Not all of them, but a few at least. We relax, play pool, and try to get into God's Word. Usually, I have a lesson that we loosely work our way through. This time though, I allowed it to be free question and discussion. Always an interesting time. Questions about why we do certain things in church like raising our hands to is it required to pray over our food before we eat. The coolest part was when one of my guys repeated the main point from the previous night's sermon. I included it yesterday. "Every choice is an opportunity to please God." I made the conscience effort on Tuesday to repeat that phrase at least a dozen or more times. I had the youth repeat it with me. I even yelled it as some youth were leaving for home. It was my main point and I wanted them to remember it. So it was really great when one of my guys repeated it and shared that it was burned into his brain and he kept hearing it all day at school. Of course, my desire is that they actually start putting it into practice, but at least I branded it onto their brains a little.

This was my attempt to do something a little different in one of my messages. So far so good.

Choices

Just wanted to pass along the main point of my message from last night's youth group.

"Every choice is an opportunity to please God."

Being Innovative

Our youth just finished up a pepperoni roll sale. I walked away really amazed at how much money could be made by selling some simple food. As I was pouring over the numbers in preparation for placing the order, one of our young ladies stood out. She sold thirty more than the next closest seller, and that next one was really a tag team of two sisters. Here's how it happened. Everyone basically sold to their families and the people in the church. A few had parents that took in order from into work. All fine ways of selling. This young lady though, took it upon herself to go to various businesses in her community and sold to the workers. From what I understood, her method of selling was to tell them that she would deliver them on the set day for lunch. People have to eat lunch. Why not drop a couple bucks if it means that you don't have to worry about bringing lunch that day. She was creative and the sales showed it. How are we doing being creative? Are we examining our teaching, preaching, serving, giving, and a host of other things to see if there just might be a better way? Maybe it's time to try something new again. My goal, in the next couple weeks, is to do something completely different in youth. It might work or it might not, but at least we will try.

Peaceful Friday

This has been an insane week. From Monday on we have had something going on every night. Tonight and tomorrow are no different. At least, for a moment, I am sitting in a quiet place of peace. My wife and children are at the store and I'm sitting in my house waiting for them to return the car to me. It's quiet. Well, relatively quiet I guess. The birds outside are chirping away. Cars are driving by. So, it's not really quiet, but it does feel very peaceful. With the events of the past week I appreciate this moment from God.

The Empty Room Blog

The blog has been silent for about two weeks. Some major things were happening in our lives that were a little unpleasant for us. The title of this post lets those who know what's going on exactly what I'm talking about. Beyond that, I won't discuss the situation itself. It's been very hard though. Yet, we're still alive and moving forward. Looking to get back in the rhythm of things real soon. For now though, that's about it.