Elevate :: Day 5

We had an awesome morning today as we traveled to an awesome place called Foster Falls. It was a blue hole (spring) with a nice overlook and waterfall. It was chilly, but a great place to swim and hang out as a church. We had a few brave souls climb and jump off a ledge.

We returned to camp for some free time and to be able to spend a relaxing afternoon together made for a really great day.

Our last chapel and worship time together was really powerful as Tim continued to unpack this concept of Christ as King and living in His Kingdom. Over and over he has emphasized the work of Christ on our behalf and our inability to "be" a Christian. God continued to work in powerful way in all of our lives.

We shared a special huddle time after chapel where I allowed the students to simply share what God had done in their lives this week and any decisions or commitments they had made. It was a sweet time where God's Spirit was really evident and moving in our midst. God is uniting their hearts and my prayer is that this week is more than just a "camp high" but really the beginning of a personal and corporate dependency that will carry us through the year.

We wrapped up the evening with the dodgeball competition and our teams did great, but didn't bring it home this year. And to top the evening off (or actually early morning hours) I shared a special challenge with our upperclassmen.

This has been an awesome week for me personally. I love these hs students and count it a privilege to be here with them learning and growing alongside them. Be praying for our safe return!

Elevate :: Day 4

Well the exhaustion has officially set in for most, but we are still having a great time. We had a fairly "normal" day and schedule, but for our free time - we took the whole group to downtown Chattanooga for a little excursion. We walked around the waterfront, checked out the Aquarium, went across the foot bridge and ended up at the famous Clumpies Ice Cream. Good thing we walked alot, because that ice cream is awesome. We spent the rest of our time down at Coolidge Park throwing the frisbee, sunning, and re-introducing Chattanooga to the Wildwood game of Buck-Buck. It was a fun afternoon in the sun.

The highlight of the day had to have been tonight. God really showed up among our group and some life changing decisions were made in our church huddle time tonight. We had a few students surrender their lives to Christ tonight and others reaffirm their faith. Praise God! This is why I love camp!

We wrapped up the night with some inflatables, Singstar and a Rockband competition. Tomorrow we are taking our own excursion to a blue hole (spring) called Foster Falls. We are looking forward to some alone time with just our students and spending some time away from camp to relax and unwind a bit. Tomorrow is our last full day of camp, so please be praying that God continues to work powerfully in our lives!

Elevate :: Day 3

It's hard to believe that we hit the halfway point at camp already. God has been faithful to meet us here on this mountain and is doing an awesome work in the lives of our students already. Tonight was no exception as we took a look at our understanding of Christ as King and what it means to surrender our lives to Him as He relentlessly pursues us with His love.

But earlier we started our day enjoying beautiful weather and God's majestic creation with morning worship on the overlook. It was a great start to our day and set the tone for a cool day filled with His presence. I am always amazed at how much easier it is to hear God and respond to God when the distractions (TV, music, etc) are gone and we are here on this mountain.

Today we had our caving excursion and although they took some great pics, I forgot to get the memory card so I could upload them. They came back pretty muddy, but had an awesome experience. The rest of us hung around camp and participated in all kinds of activities.

We wrapped up the night with the volleyball and basketball tourneys. We didn't fair too well in basketball, but we had both of our volleyball teams advance almost to the point of playing each other in the semi's, but fell short. It doesn't look like this will be the year we bring home the trophies, but oh well.

Please continue to pray for us as we are asking God to do an extraordinary work in all of our lives. Pray that we would respond to the prompting of the Holy Spirit in our lives!

Elevate :: Day 2

Our first full day here at Covenant was a beautiful day. We started off the day with some great time in the Word and then joined with everyone for a powerful time of worship and preaching.

The afternoon brought some down time where the students enjoyed competing in soccer, playing some paintball, volleyball, dodgeball, basketball, swimming and even napping (but that was mainly the staff)!

Tonight's chapel providing a time of worship and time hearing Tim share about Christ's Kingdom and the enjoyment of being a child of the King. After chapel we had our small group time which is always a highlight of camp. We topped the evening off with a Japanese style game show combined with "Are you smarter than a 5th grader." It was a high energy night full of costumes and youth leaders having to eat gross stuff (somewhat payback I guess).

Tomorrow we have a similar day other than it is our Caving Excursion for those who signed up. I didn't take too many pics today since I got stuck refereeing soccer all afternoon, but I'll shoot some more tomorrow!

Elevate :: Day 1

Not too much of an eventful day, since we spent most of it on the bus. I-75 is still doing construction in the same spot... I think for 10 years now. Anyhow, we had safe, but fun travels... watched a few movies, took a few naps, talked and talked some more.

We had a good southern-style dinner at the Cracker Barrel and then our hats went off to Jack, our bus driver, for getting us safely up the hairpins turns of Lookout Mountain Drive.

Our opening session with Wayne and the band was a good start to our camp week and we were challenged about our focus and hearing from God this week.

Enjoy some pics from today!

the power of denial

Peter. The Rock. He was a guy in Scripture that got a great name change. He’s one of my favorities when it comes to character studies. This guy lived petal to the medal, all out, full-on with reckless abandon for Christ. Yet when Peter would fall – he would fall hard. But Peter had a unique way of bouncing back after hard falls.
I’m thinking specifically of the time when Peter (who probably thought he was at the top of his game) denied Christ. Not just a brick shot at the hoop, but a total air ball. No net, backboard, iron – no nothing.

That must have been devastating. But instead of sitting the second half out – Peter wants back in the game. His next step was to surrender to God’s strength. He realized he was operating out of his own abilities and what he thought was strength. It looked great from the outside – on fire, speak what’s on my mind, going all the way, I’ll never deny you attitude… but what his mind and heart desired, couldn’t be sustained by his strength alone.

Lesson learned. For Peter that is. For me… well… still learning. Jesus said it this way, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Jesus says deny your own strength, abilities and talents and let me support your passion and desires.

This is so opposite from what we hear in the world around us. I was raised here in the do it yourself, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, if you want to be it – believe it culture of “success”. Yet as true to form, the Kingdom operates quite opposite of culture. Every day of my life, I must come to the place where I fall on my face and say, “God I can’t do this on my own. I give up.” The power of denial.
That’s where it must all begin… it must begin at the end of ourselves.

God bring me to the end of myself – the place where I rest in your strength alone.

busy pastor

I was recently captivated and challenged by a quote from Eugene Peterson in his book The Contemplative Pastor, where he says that the adjective 'busy' describing 'pastor' ought to sound to us as jarring as 'adulterous' and 'husband' or 'embezzling' and 'banker'.

Here are some more quotes from Peterson's book and really have implications to any profession (beyond pastors) and simply in how we live our lives and structure our days.

“I (and most pastors, I believe) become busy for two reasons; both are ignoble.

“I am busy because I am vain.

“I want to appear important. Significant. What better way than to be busy?… I live in a society in which crowded schedules and harassed conditions are evidence of importance, so I develop a crowded schedule and harassed conditions. When others notice, they acknowledge my significance, and my vanity is fed.

“I am busy because I am lazy.

“I indolently let others decide what I will do instead of resolutely deciding myself. Let people who do not understand the work of the pastor write the agenda for my day’s work because I am too slipshod to write it myself…. It was a favorite theme of C. S. Lewis that only lazy people work hard. By lazily abdicating the essential work of deciding and directing, establishing values and setting goals, other people do it for us; then we find ourselves frantically at the last minute, trying to satisfy a half dozen different demands on our time, none of which I essential to our vocation, to stave off the disaster of disappointing someone…."

I don't know if my life fits these descriptions or just simply "I'm busy because I don't know how to operate otherwise!" Meaning I can't get everything done that is asked of me and haven't learned how to prioritize or say "No".

All I can say is that I'm really challenged by this. I desire to focus on what is important to God. I want to invest in the Kingdom and eternal things. I've taken some words of Paul from Philippians 3 to speak into this area of my life, "As a result, I can really know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I can learn what it means to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that, somehow, I can experience the resurrection from the dead!

Basically, can I know Christ is such a way to overcome busyness? Can I be raised to new life and experience the power that allowed Him to minister out of the overflow of His connection with His Father? Can I keep the main thing the main thing and invest like Jesus did in what matters?