Category Archives: Entheos

Nooma Rain as an iPhone/iPod app

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I was quite excited today to learn that Rob Bell’s Nooma videos are starting to come out as applications for the iPhone/iPod. If you at all believe in God, it’s worth the $4.99 to download and watch his video, and talk about it with some friends.

Nooma Rain Screen shot

When I was volunteering with high school youth at our old church in Lake Oswego, we played the DVD version of these videos, and had small group discussions about the particular topic – it’s still some of my fondest memories, being in these small groups and listening to youth explore their religious beliefs.

I hope more of these dvd’s show up as apps! I can’t wait to start showing these to my daughter and discussing them with her.

Facebook is going to be huge…

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A few months ago I created a facebook.com account, to help keep in touch with the older youth that had graduated or are about to graduate that I volunteer with at Entheos. I could only find a few of the youth when I joined, mainly the ones that had graduated last year.

The past few weeks though, the younger kids that I know have been creating accounts and adding photos and making friends. So much so that my ‘news feed’ section of facebook has mainly been full of “youth1 and youth2 are now friends”.

You heard it hear first. Facebook is the next MySpace.

QotD: What causes us to dream?

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Instead of today’s real question of the day (on VOX), I’m going to answer/ask this one, what causes us to dream?

I ask, because last night I had an incredible vivid dream about a youth who hasn’t attended youth group in a while – in my dream she and I went out for coffee and got caught up.

Which, well, hasn’t happened. I haven’t thought about her for a few weeks… and I thought to myself when I woke up today, what caused me to have that dream? If you believe in God, could it have been God whispering to me to call her and actually do that?

I don’t know – I’d be curious what you think causes us to dream – but it kinda freaked me out. Enough that I’m going to call her this afternoon and see about coffee at some point soon.

Learnings from a sophomore

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We are working slowly at Entheos towards having ‘permanent’ small groups, starting in January until the end of the school year.

On Sunday the youth met with the volunteers (everybody but me because I’m down at Apple right now) to talk about the what they liked and disliked about small groups in the past.

In Jennifer’s group, a sophomore named Kelsey who was in my small group last year mentioned that we had a great small group. Jennifer asked why and she said it’s because I let them be serious when they needed to be serious, and let them be goofy when they needed to be goofy.

This has gotten me thinking today about how to apply that to business. I believe if you are running a meeting or getting a group of people to talk about a topic, you should allow people to talk. Don’t forcefully cut things off. Allow some frivolity in your meeting before getting serious. And if it gets serious, let it. Don’t be afraid of frank and serious talk.

That’s my learning for today from a 13 year old teenager. Are there any young people in your life you can learn something from?

Back from mission

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Well – I’m back from mission, and once again it was great. The youth were great, no real complaining about the heat or humidity or the work. We got a lot of different tasks done, and really affected the lives of 8 people.

It’s also really amazing to see the devastation down there. It seems basically that no one had ‘flood’ insurance, and the insurance company classified the damage the homes got as a ‘flood’, so the owners are out of luck.

Take this family:

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This is what’s left of a multi-million dollar home on the waterfront. Notice the FEMA trailer in the background behind the beams of the house.

Part of me doesn’t get it… why not rebuild? I guess if insurance doesn’t pay, what do you do? Submit a request to the First Presbyterian Church in Bay Saint Louis and pray people like our youth group keep coming I guess.

“Preached” tonight at Entheos

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Well.. more like yesterday now I guess.

I talked tonight at Entheos, for a bit about the busyness of our lives. A bunch of the youth, and adults too, had been talking about how overwhelming life is these days, with homework, sports, school, hobbies, their parents asking them to do stuff, friends, tv, internet, instant messaging, etc.

(click through for more info, religous in content).

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Tonight’s confirmation statement of faith

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I had the pleasure tonight of tagging along with some of the youth I volunteer with at Entheos to their statement of faith presentation to the head honchos at the Lake Grove Pres church.

It was pretty eye opening.. a lot of them are well versed in the the bible, and what a statement of faith seems to be… I’m sure there were some who believed what the wrote a bit more than others, but for the group I sat in on, they all seemed really sincere..

One thing struck me tonight though – Liz was asked who her mentor was in her faith, and she mentioned Brian Craker, who used to work at Lake Grove Pres as a youth directory, but is now becoming a full fledged pastor..

But Liz mentioned how Brian always had these great talks, and was always available for her at any point of the day or night for questions about her faith… Brian’s legacy lives on in Liz, she’s not going to forget what Brian meant to her..

That’s really the kind of mentor I’d like to be.. I can see it being harder because I’m not paid staff, so I don’t have the direct involvement with youth that they do.. but maybe, someday in my own way, I’ll affect a youth like Brian affected Liz.. and then.. well, life will be all good. :-)