Archive - November, 2007

We Have An Incredible Opportunity

November 27, 2007 in Church Related, Youth Ministry with 0 Comments

I mentioned in a previous post that we have an awesome opportunity as a church. I can’t go into too many details yet because nothing is finalized, but I wanted to share just a little. We have the opportunity to rent a 6900 sq. foot room downtown. Our plans are to turn it into a multi-functional hangout for church. We want to add a stage area with seating, a coffee shop area with tables, rec areas with games, seating areas, and church offices.

How could we use a building like this? Why I’m glad you asked. Here are some of the possible uses we have talked about.

  • Youth Meetings: I love the teens, but having more than 25 teens in my living room is tough. It’s loud, there are a ton of distractions, and it’s not an environment that is conducive to inviting friends.
  • Church Offices: I’m working out of my home right now. Which means that when I’m studying, I’m constantly having to move around. Kids are downstairs, I go upstairs. When the kids are upstairs, I go to the basement. I love them, but we really need a place for meeting with people and a quiet place to study sometimes.
  • Small Group Meetings: We have several small groups that really don’t have room for childcare. This would be a cozy, intimate environment that would be great for small group meetings.
  • New Service Opportunities: I have been praying about creating a young-adult service for several years. This would be the perfect place to start a Saturday night service to reach out to teens, college students, and young adults.
  • Hanging Out: We could open it up on weekend nights. We could open it up after school. We could open it up after football games. Just having an awesome place to hangout with free wifi and good coffee will be an incredible opportunity to draw people in.
  • Community Use: Local businesses could use it for conferences and business meetings. Wedding receptions could be held here. And as a church we could use it for all different kinds of community outreach and training events.
  • Sunday Services?: Who knows, it might even workout so that we wouldn’t have to setup in a gym every week.

Now, for this to become reality, we need to do a few things. First, PRAY!!!! And secondly, we need to move from talking about engaging our community to actually doing it. And finally, we will need help with furnishing and equipping this center. Nothing is finalized yet, but we feel like God is definitely leading us to make this commitment. This excites me like crazy, but it also scares me because I know that God is getting ready to do some amazing things. I better buckle in and hold, because I have a feeling we’re in for an interesting ride.

And we need a name. Faith’s Place, Cornerstone Loft, The Upper Room, Cornerstone Downtown, Stoners (on second thought, that might not work : ) …. What are some more? Leave me a comment if you have any ideas. And don’t forget to PRAY!!!

Guitar Hero or Blog?

November 27, 2007 in Crazy Stuff with 0 Comments

My blogging has slowed down for a few days, but hopefully I’ll get back to my normal posting schedule. I usually post after the kids go to bed, and I have been using that time to be a rock star in my living room. I’ve cleared the easy level 100% (all 5 stars), and the medium level 100%. Now I’m making my way through the hard level. Just to keep me humble, Richie in our youth group showed me his mad guitar hero skills by smoking through the flames on the expert level. I’m having fun and it’s been relaxing, but I know I have to get back into the real world soon.

Happy Thanksgiving

November 22, 2007 in Crazy Stuff with 0 Comments

I love this commercial!

(HT to Ben)

My ankle looks like it has a softball inside…

November 21, 2007 in Crazy Stuff, Family with 0 Comments

I was out in the driveway playing tennis with the kids this afternoon and I stepped off the curb and sprained my ankle. I went down to the ground like a 300lb fat man jumped on my back and then I started screaming in pain. The kids ran in and got Jenni and after a few minutes I was able to crawl back in the house. It’s been 6 hours and I still can’t put my weight on it. I sprained the same ankle pretty badly playing high school basketball, but I haven’t hurt it in at least 8 or 9 years. Now it’s just wait and see to make sure I didn’t break it. I had big plans to do some blogging and some church work tonight, but I have been glued to the couch. At least I can watch some football on Turkey Day.

Actually I’m glad I was playing with the kids when I got hurt. We had a ton of fun up until the point I was laying on the ground. There’s really no other thing in the world I would rather be doing.

Flying By

November 19, 2007 in Family, Youth Ministry with 0 Comments

It seems like the last few days have flown by. Before I post some book reviews of books I have read lately, I wanted to share some thoughts about the last few days.

  • We just finished week 2 of our Just Walk Across the Room series at church. It’s been challenging to me because I feel like I struggle sometimes in developing friendships with people I don’t already know. But I think some of the best sermons come from issues that you struggle with. I think pastors need to be authentic and not worried about trying to look perfect. My generation is longing for that authenticity and realness of life.
  • The youth praise band had a practice and I heard that it was awesome. I can’t wait to hear these guys and girls lead worship in a few weeks in church. I’m thankful that God has brought some people into our church that love teens and love music and can head this up. I just didn’t have the time to put into practicing with the youth praise band. Even though I’m not playing with them this time, I guarantee that I will be their biggest cheerleader.
  • It’s tough being the mommy and daddy at home. Jenni has had a bad stomach bug for a couple of days over the weekend, so she was out of commission around the house. So that meant I had to take care of the kiddies and the house, so you can imagine what the house looked like! I’m thankful that she’s feeling better now and I’m even more appreciative of how awesome she really is. I’m blessed because I have the best wife in the world. Seriously!
  • We bought a Wii for the kids for Christmas and Jenni and I have been playing it every night after they are asleep. It is so much fun. But we finally decided to let them in on our little secret, so it’s an early Christmas. Luke even told us we didn’t have to get him anything for Christmas because he loves it so much. And my awesome wife (see above) even surprised me with Guitar Hero and I am absolutely loving it. I’m playing in career mode and have almost cleared all the songs on the easy level (I think there are 42 songs to play through, so it takes a while)
  • We announced some big news at church yesterday about an opportunity that God has opened up for our church. I will post on that tomorrow with some more details. I don’t know why I am surprised when God answers our prayers.
  • I’m meeting another local youth pastor for lunch tomorrow. I really want to do this more often. I want our church to build bridges, not walls with other churches in town. We are not competing, but working together to seek and save that which is lost.
  • Now it’s time to try and clear another song or two on guitar hero.

My $50 Challenge

November 14, 2007 in Family with 0 Comments

I have been thinking of some ways to engage our children in reading their Bibles, so I came up with a plan. Emma is in 3rd grade, but she is reading books like crazy. She is already reading with speed and comprehension, so I felt the time was right to offer a challenge. Last night I told her that I will give her $50 if she reads through the New Testament. My only stipulation was that at the end of each book, we would sit down and talk about what she learned. She was so excited that she started reading the book of Matthew last night. I can’t wait to spend good quality time with my daughter talking about God’s Word. And of course, the same offer will be given to the boys when they get old enough to read through the New Testament on their own. I want to teach my children to feed themselves spiritually, and it starts when they are young. I think $50 is a very small price to pay to get my children excited and reading and talking about the Bible.

I Need to Wii

November 14, 2007 in Family, Technology with 0 Comments

We’ve been bouncing around the idea of getting a Nintendo Wii for several months. We thought it would make a great Christmas gift for the kids (and Jenni and I too). But if you’ve tried to find one in stores, you know that it’s not easy. We looked around in Winston and couldn’t find any, so I turned to the internet. I found a cool site called Wii Alerts that will send you an email and text message when any of the major online retailers get them in stock. Typically they are only listed for about 10 minutes on most online stores. I signed up on a Saturday, and the following Monday morning I got a text message that they were available online at Circuit City. Since I already had a gift card from the church for Circuit City, we went ahead and ordered it.

We finally got it yesterday and we stayed up way too late trying it out. My arm is hurting from playing baseball, tennis, bowling, boxing, and golf on Wii Sports. It is really, really cool. Now we just have to decide if we are going to wait until Christmas to give it to the kids. I have a feeling it may be an early Christmas in the Morris home. I just keep thinking how much fun this would be in a youth center. Maybe someone reading this will feel led to donate one to church. I can always hope. We’ve got Wii Sports, Wii Play, and EA Playground, so we have a bunch of games to try out. I’ve grown up with video games, so I know how important it is to set limits and boundaries so our kids don’t become obsessed with games. I even listened to a podcast last week on video game addiction, so I hope I know what we are getting into. And I think I may be asking for a little Guitar Hero this Christmas for myself.

FaithEngineer On MySpace

November 13, 2007 in Technology with 0 Comments

I finally broke down and created a myspace page. I want to continue to explore how the church can use both myspace and facebook. So if you’re reading this, help me out by adding me as a friend. It’s easy to remember my page, http://www.myspace.com/faithengineer. I’m wanting to get a network of young adults in our area built up so that we can advertise and promote concerts and events and church.

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