On Sunday evenings, starting September 7, we will be reading/discussing the book “The Case For Christ” student edition by Lee Strobel.  This book will give you a chance to learn who Jesus was and can be in your life.  This is a book for skeptics- people who don’t really believe that Jesus is who He says He was.  Come join the discussions each Sunday evening at 6:00 at Barnes & Noble, Long Gate Shopping Center (across from the church).

Books will be provided (you can donate $5 for the book if you want), if you email Pastor Ryan and let him know if you plan on coming.  Bring friends!  Join the discussion!

We’ll be following the chapters in the book based on this schedule:

9/7- Intro; “What’s Wrong With Me?”

9/14- “Did Jesus Think He Was Really God?”

9/21- “Was Jesus Crazy to Claim to Be God?”

9/28- Not meeting

10/5- “Did Jesus Match the Identity of the Messiah?”

10/12- “Can You Trust Christ’s Biographies?

10/19- “Is There A Case for Christ Outside the Bible?”

10/26- “Did Jesus Fake His Death?

11/2- “What Happened to the Body?”

11/9- What Did Jesus Do after Easter?”

11/16- “Conclusion- So What?”

A local teacher wrote this great article on teenagers and suffering- how they view it, deal with it, and overcome it.

Read it here, in pdf format. 

Are you ready for this? Are you sure? What appears (and is promoted as being) as a kid-friendly film could surprise you.

This movie is producing some conflict among Christians because of the message it sends to viewers. It is important to know what this movie is about because it does attack the Christian faith. There are different thoughts as to how to handle this film, but my intention in this post is to simply provide some resources for you to consider reading and then decide for yourself how you will handle it.

Please read the following information “with a grain of salt” to learn more about this movie and how to share your faith by engaging in discussions about the film.

Please post your comments below on this site if you want to share anything regarding the movie.

http://www.dare2share.org/students/the-real-golden-compass

http://www.dare2share.org/culturecommission/the-golden-compass

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp

Episode #1

Episode #2

Episode #3

Episode #4

Episode #5

I blogged before about what to do when waiting for your food in a restaraunt, and now I’m adding to my “how-to” blogs with what to do at an airport.  I don’t write these because I know how to do a lot of things; I write them out of my own experiences and hope you might be able to benefit from something I learned.

So have you ever been stranded in an airport?  If you have, leave a comment telling us what you’ve learned.

Here’s what happened to Nikki and me:

We arrived at Reagan airport for a flight to

So we’ll still get to where we need to go—that’s not the problem.  But what in the world do you do in an airport for 8 hours??!!

Here’s what we learned today, and maybe you can find enjoyment in these activities when you find yourself stranded in an airport (by the way- Atlanta, I think, is the largest airport in the country, so if you have to get stranded, it’s the place to be):

What To Do When Stranded In An Airport:

1-     People Watch.  You’ll be amazed how many different kinds of people there are!  You’ll learn about cultures, the latest trends, and you might learn about specific people if you dare to talk to them.

2-     Read.  I actually finished an entire book today.  Always keep one in your carry-on.

3-     Rent a movie.  Did you know that there’s a little shop where you can rent DVDs and watch them on your laptop or portable DVD player?  That will knock of a couple hours for you.

4-     Play the Dot Game.  On your notebook paper that you keep in your carry-on, draw a bunch of dots in rows and columns to create a large rectangle of dots.  Then you and your opponent can battle out taking turns making lines between the dots.  Each player draws one line in one turn, and if you make the fourth line to create a box, you put your first initial in it and take another turn.  The player with the most boxes wins.

5-     Play the Big Fat O Game.  Here’s another one for your notebook paper.  Draw a big fat O then draw a bunch of little O’s to create a border in the shape of a rectangle.  The big fat O should be the corner of the rectangle of O’s.  Player 1 starts on the big O and says the following phrase while counting one O with each word: “Tic tac toe, three in a row, I bet you can’t land on the big fat O.”  Whatever O you land on, cross it out.  Rotate turns saying the phrase and counting the Os.  Whoever lands on the big fat O wins.

6-     Eat.  There are some good little restaurants in

7-     Call your friends…several times.  You might run out of things to say, but they’ll know you care. 

8-     Play the State Naming Game.  Use the

9-     Write a blog entry.  Maybe someone would be bored long enough to read it.

Hope you loved summer traveling,

Ryan

So when you go to a restaurant, always take 3 pennies with you.  Why?  Because you won’t be bored while waiting for your food.  Some of our youth discovered this after our Sunday evening worship service this past weekend.

Here’s how the penny game works:

1-Clear the table of condiments, sugar, etc., and sit across from your opponent.

2-Whoever is going first, put the 3 pennies in a triangle, all together, with the top of the triangle facing you.

3-The opponent puts his index finger and pinky on his end of the table to make a “goal post.”

4-Player 1 uses his finger to push the pennies.  However they land, that player must proceed to push one penny through the other 2 (no matter how they land) until he gets the penny into the goal post the other player is creating.

5-How to lose your turn:  flick a penny off the table, or touch any pennies together.

6-Highest score wins.

Don’t forget to eat your food when it comes…

It’s Friday, the last day of camp, at 7:11am.  Today our students will go to their Bible studies then the closing celebration, and then we’re on our way home.  Last night we talked about how we can take what we learned and actually put it into practice.  There were some great ideas, so we’ll see things happening.

We’re set to leave by 11:00 this morning.  As I think about the week, I realize how amazing it was!  I was able to get to know our students much better, and I’m sure they know something more about me.  Like how I moo really loud sometimes.  You’ll have to ask them…

We had a couple of our youth make decisions to be more committed in their faith yesterday!  That’s what came to me.  Maybe there were other decision made personally.  Hopefully, all of us come back renewed from camp, ready to serve and be more committed to Christ.  Yesterday was a lot of fun for our students.  They had the traditional Mega Relay, which I will have great pictures and video clips coming soon!  We also had our pizza and talked about a lot of different things last night in our group time.

I’m not sure what else to write really.  I know there were so many things that happened from other peoples’ perspectives, so let me ask our students who were at camp-  what were the highlights of your week at camp?

Here’s the 7 am update today!  I smell grits so I’m going to try to make this quick.

There’s a lot of exciting things from yesterday though to report on.  I haven’t been talking much about the mission sites where some of our students are working throughout the week simply because I’m not there.  Two of our youth leaders, Rhonda & Michelle, are.  But yesterday, one of our guys, Bryan, had a chance to share Jesus with a kid at the YMCA and led him to salvation!!!!!  It was great to hear about!  Bryan was even given a chance at our evening worship last night to share with the entire camp.  Great job Bryan in taking advantage of every opportunity to share Christ!

One of the groups here at camp is from Kentucky.  They had a really tough night a couple nights ago because they found out about a murder/suicide incident back home that involved the death of a girl that was really close with many of their students.  It was hard.  The whole camp has sort of embraced them, and they worked through it.  God has comforted them.  But some of our youth have had opportunities to talk with the KY youth and help them through it.  Robyn was able to talk with a girl yesterday that the girl seemed to be helped by.

I’m really being challenged by our theme this year, which focuses on oppressed and abandoned people in our world, specifically the Roma people who are in the Eastern European area.  I hope our students are being challenged to think beyond themselves and to serve others.  Last night, Nikki led our time of mission focus in our church group time, where we looked at the Roma people and Muslims in Canada who need Christ.  She did a great job getting us focused on that and then we took up our mission offering to go to the groups who are helping these people.  It was great seeing our youth give.  After the mission emphasis, Bryan and Nicole led some songs, and then Big Dave came to talk with the youth.  Dave has been a huge blessing to our group at camp this week.  Our guys loved him enough to jump on him and pound on him a little last night.  Dave will be leaving at dinner today to go play at Creation with his band Unsearchable Riches.  This is a huge deal really, and we’re really proud of him.  I don’t think he told anyone all week about this either; he’s just a humble guy.

So to end today, just keep praying that God will open hearts up this last full day of camp.  We’ll be leaving tomorrow about 10:30am to go back to Ellicott City and start impacting that area.

Oh yeah, if you want to see a good pirate, our leader Michelle is right up there with Johnny Depp.  Ask her about it.

So it’s 7:15 this morning, and I thought I’d fill you in on our awesome Day 2 yesterday.  So far, no injuries, no lost students, no major pranks, no problems!

Please pray for us as the week continues.  Pray for our camp staff from LifeWay who are doing a great job running this camp.  Pray for our students who are learning this week about underpriviledged and often neglected and abused people.  We are learning about the Roma people, a specific group of people in Romania who are opressed.  The theme is really stretching the minds of our students and adults to take the focus off of ourselves and put it on other people who need help and we’re not doing anything about.  I had a great opportunity to share the Esperanza Riding website with our students last night to show them an example of a normal person developing a huge heart for people who aren’t treated fairly.

Yesterday, the Damascus Road opened up during free time, which a huge man-made water slide down a hill.  It was a lot of fun.  And I discovered that it’s hard to beat Dave Corbin (one of our youth leaders) and myself in tetherball.  We’re a good team. 

I have to mention our adults this week- what an amazing crew of leaders.  Rhonda and Michelle are on the mission sites this week, driving youth and doing the work alongside of them.  Theresa is simply amazing the way she left her 2 kids at home and still came to pour her life into our students.  Dave is a great leader and the students seem to like him.  If they didn’t like him I don’t think they would have stolen his clothes when he was in the shower yesterday…and my wife, Nikki, is about the most amazing thing here at camp besides the Holy Spirit. We’re very blessed at Bethel to have great adults leaders investing their lives into our students.

And I have to say that we’re very blessed to have such a great bunch of young people too.  Our youth are pretty amazing.  We’re having a lot of fun and learning a lot about each other.  We have a lot of youth serving on the mission fields this week and a lot going through the different tracks here at the camp.  I must say that they are pretty creative too.  I walked into my room yesterday afternoon with “I love you, Ryan” written in shaving cream on our wall.  And some girls (initials are A.C., N.L., S.P., R.A., & A.M. to protect their identity) decided they would give me a birthday present of water balloons and just water out of the bottles last night at 11:00.  There should be a video posting soon of that fun!

 Pray for Day 3- breakfast is starting…

Hey everyone.

It’s Tuesday morning, 7:00, and I’m sitting here writing this update.  We made it to camp at Skycroft Sunday night, had our first full day yesterday, and this morning I saw no guys at all up and moving yet!  Everyone is having fun and is getting worn out it seems.

Apparently Bethel youth have a reputation here at Fuge.  Everyone knows Bethel.  Whether it’s for a hayride accident, clogging toilets, or other things.  So far, though, we’ve had no injuries, no missing students, and really no problems at all!  It’s going really well.

The theme this year is the Underground, which is like a take-off of the Subway system.  Our teams are all named after Subway stops and the decorating resembles the Subway system.  The Biblical aspect of this theme is a focus on neglected, abandoned, people; people we could consider as being part of the “underground.”  It’s a very missional theme, and is exciting to see how it unfolds.  Last night our camp pastor, James Jackson (isn’t that funny Pastor Jimmy??!!) talked about what it means to be a child of God; that we have been adopted as sons and daughters of God.  It was a great message.

Finally, our church group meeting times have gone very well in the evenings.  Sunday night and last night, we went around hearing the testimonies of each student and adult.  Some brought tears, some brought laughter, and hopefully all brought encouragement.

We’ve got a great bunch of students at Bethel.  I’m priviledged to be here with them this week.  But today is my birthday, so I’m watching my back for pranks…

Ryan