Suncreststudentlife’s Weblog

Our 4:30 Christmas Eve service has just started and  I decided to sneak away to take a moment to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.  I am hoping that everyone has a great time with family and friends.  My prayer is that you will create some great memories and in everything you do bring glory to Christ as we celebrate his birth.

I found this picture on www.holyfolks.com it is a company that creates dolls of people from the Bible for kids to “play and pray.”  I’m not sure how I feel about this concept, but thought the image of baby Jesus was amazing and had to share it with you. Let me know what you think!

So I had to turn in my man card tonight. That’s the punishment when a man decides to do something that other men would deem as soft or wimpy. I am going with my wife and her girls small group to see the movie Twilight. For those of you that are not aware this phenomenon, it started off as a series of books designed for teenage girls telling a love story about vampires or something like that and now have made a movie into it. It is every bit as popular as the High School Musical movies. As a youth pastor, I feel at times I need to see these kinds of movies whether I like it or not so that I can be informed on what is going on in teen culture. I figured this was the time for me to take a chance and go see the movie since I skipped out on the whole High School Musical series (man do I hate musicals in general). Besides Amy really wanted to see the movie as well. So, if I get to be a more aware youth pastor and I score some brownie points with my wife, I can stomach a teen romance movie…I hope.

It’s mid December already. I can’t believe I’ve been here for 6 months. Jared’s mentioned it several times, but I (Nathan) have been interning with him since June 1^st. I thought I’d take the initiative and just let you know a little bit about myself, what drives me, and where I think God might be taking me.

My dad is the senior pastor at Post Road Christian Church in Indianapolis. He and my mom have been in ministry for close to thirty years and they have been an incredible blessing in my life. They have shown me, from when I was little, what it means to let God be a part of every area of one’s life. Ministry and life were nearly synonymous in our household and they did an incredible job of instilling in us this holistic concept. I, for one, loved being a preacher’s kid and loved being at the church whenever possible.

From there, my family is also much like the beloved Von trap family (the sound of music family)–as I often tell people. Music is something that resonates within us and we all sing and play instruments and have a good time doing so. With this, God has been doing things in me as I’ve grown in my relationship with him that have continued to point towards using my heritage and gifts in creativity and music to point others towards a creative and personal God. One of the things I’ve loved about working with Jared (and Suncrest in general) is that he has allowed me lead out in the places God has gifted me and allowed me to grow and learn as I figure all this ministry stuff out. So with that, God has used Suncrest to begin pointing me towards where he might want to take me next. Which –as of right now – looks like it has to do with worship and creativity within the Church. So I’m excited to see what else God will teach me before this internship is over and I am so thankful that I get to learn so much more about myself as I enjoy the time and relationships with your students.

-Nathan-

Despite the snow we are still having re-Mix tonight.  Don’t let the weather scare you.  However, you should probabably  give yourself a little bit of extra time to get here.

When I was in high school my church had a New Years Eve lock-in and I always had a blast, and this year we are doing one here at Suncrest. We already have a ton of great things planned for the night; a comedian, bungee run, 24 foot inflatable slide, karaoke, Call of Duty 4 tournament, Texas hold-em tournament, and tons of food. The cost is only $5 if you sign up ahead of time and its $10 at the door. It is going to be a great time and we would love it if you joined us!

Growing up I was always amazed by older Christ followers that really knew the Bible.  I mean really knew the Bible.  If you had a question about something in the Bible they could tell you off the top of their head exactly where to find it in the Bible.  As a youth minister one of my concerns is that students are becoming completely Biblically  illiterate.  On some levels it is a byproduct of our society, and how technology helps us and hurts us.  Similarly to how people  are forgetting how to spell because of spell checkers on computers.

I was reminded of this yesterday in a painful but yet kind of funny way.  I had to drive 2 ½ hours for a meeting for ICTC and I took 2 other youth ministers with me.   On the way home I received a phone call letting me know I needed to pick out a scripture for a special element in an adult worship service for December 21^st.  I was amazed at how hard it was to find the verse that we were looking for even with a Bible with us in the car.  As we took turns looking through the bible and its limited concordance in the back, we laughed that we didn‘t know what to do without the internet and www.biblegateway.com or at the very least a study Bible. In the car was 12 years of Bible College training and years of ministry,yet, we still were helpless without the internet.

Iʼm not sure what that says about us as ministers, but I think it says a lot about how valuable Bible gateway is as a resource. I have found the keyword search to be invaluable.  In the keyword search you can limit it to a portion of the Bible or use multiple words.  Check it out some time.

I got to spend Thanksgiving in Florida with Amyʼs family.  It was great for Gibson to get to spend a week running around outside in shorts.  He loves hanging out with his Grandpa hunting lizards.  At Amyʼs parents house, they have these little lizards that love to hang out in trees and bushes.  I have been going down there for the holidays for almost 10 years now and every year I am blown away at how different things are down there. Much of it has to do with climate, geography and the fact that southern FL is such a melting pot of culture.  Her Uncle Pete ,who lives just outside of Panama City, FL, brought a cooler full of oysters down and the whole family sat around shucking oysters and eating them raw.  If you have never tried them, let me tell you they are soooooo gross.  In fact I canʼt describe them without being too gross.  The picture below is Gibson watching Amyʼs cousin Luke shucking oysters.  Apparently, that is part of their Thanksgiving tradition.   It was  a great week. Hard to complain sitting out in the sun.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, I attended the National Missionary Convention.  It was a great experience! The reason I attended was because next year the Missionary Convention will be in Peoria and is merging with ICTC. As part of the team that plans ICTC, we wanted to see what they do, so they sent Jason Wetherholt, another youth minister on the team and me.  A nice surprise was that I happened to run into a couple of Suncrest people ,Les Andrew and Janelle (Clark) Knox.  They are doing great, and it was cool to see how God is working in their lives.

It is good to be home.  As I look back over the last month it is a blur, I was only home for 14 days in the month of November.  I apologize for not blogging more, but with all the travel I just forgot or put it off.  Over the next couple of days I will give you the rundown of what happened in Student Life Ministries and in my life in the month of November.

Early in the month we took students to ICTC. It was great!  We had a great time, and our students came home with some great stories.  On top of the typical conference experiences, we got to walk to the old Illinois state courthouse and pray as a youth group.  I was able to sneak a couple of students and Jason backstage in between the Family Force 5 concert and the Flyleaf concert.  The lead singer said hello to our guys, and they turned into a puddle of mush on the floor.  It was funny to sit back and watch!  One of our students learned about Bloodwater Mission, a group that puts clean water wells in remote villages in Africa for $3000, and has started raising money at school.  It is cool to see God moving in the lives of students.