Passion, Purpose, and Designer Jeans

May 20, 2007 in Blog, Everything with 3 Comments

You may look at that title and say, “What in the world is that supposed to mean?” The title of this post is also the title of a sermon Louie Giglio preached at Passion 2006 and is available on the Passion ’06 DVD. I encourage you to check it out.

The concept behind the sermon is that whether you are a pastor, missionary, or a fashion designer, you should do everything to the glory of God. He says that you don’t necesarrily have to sew a Bible verse into the label of the jeans, or anything blatant like that, but that it could be as simple as making those jeans the best of the best, being honest, and giving back to the church and community. Amazing things could come from a concept as seemingly simple as that.

Some of you may know that me and Ryan are Mac freaks. We love our Macs. Windows is just weird (no offense to our Windows readers, we love you guys, just not your operating system of choice :) ) Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple, and today I was reading a post online about his top 10 quotes of all time. There was one quote that reminded me of this sermon and inspired this post. It said:
“We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else would we even be here?”
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Can the kids in your ministry stand up in culture?

May 17, 2007 in Blog, Everything with 7 Comments

Seeing as I am the only one who hasn’t posted yet, I figured I should do that. I have been reading “What You Didn’t Learn from Your Parents About Christianity”, written by Matthew Paul Turner and published by Th1nk, a division of NavPress. There was a section at the beginning of the book that hit me hard with relation to our ministry. I’m going to post a few excerpts of it here, and comment on each section immediately after.

“I started hanging out with Jesus when I was 4. I loved Him like I loved Big Bird. Of course, I knew He was much more important than Big Bird, by my affection for Him was similar. The songs we sang in Sunday School made Jesus seem more like a novelty act than a Savior. Jesus was someone who liked to give me hugs and pull me onto his lap, and every once in a while, he would teach me a great truth about how I should be treating my little sister.

See? JUST like Big Bird. Although sometimes Big Bird was actually a little cooler than Jesus. He had his own skating show: Big Bird on Ice. Jesus never put on ice skates, and he didn’t have cool friends like Bert and Ernie.”

Is this not what happens many times with our younger kids? We make Jesus look like the always happy, smiling face who always loves us. But yet at the same time, we make Him look like a total nerd who had no friends outside of church and even those friends weren’t that great. While there’s nothing wrong with singing “Jesus Loves Me” and “The B-I-B-L-E”, we have to tell kids that there is more than that to Jesus! He is deep. Many times we attempt to “dumb down” Jesus for younger kids, but it may be surprising to learn that many times they are not accepting Jesus younger because they are not learning Jesus younger. I accepted Christ at the age of 3, and I feel confident that I knew what I was doing. I don’t expect every kid to be ready then, but recognize that while you may be teaching them more, you can’t always guarantee that your volunteers are promoting the same ideology. Be consistent!
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I’m the teenager

May 11, 2007 in Blog, Everything with 4 Comments

Hey! This is Evan Doyle, and I’m the teenager on this blog. As Ryan has already mentioned, I am the Technology Director for KidzMatter, and for the Children’s Ministry at our church. I have grown up in Ryan’s children’s ministry since day 1, so we’ve known each other for quite some time. I got started working in ministry in 2003 at the age of 12 running the PowerPoint for our Sunday morning Kids’ Church. At the time, the computer we were running only had a floppy drive, so imagine trying to fit a PowerPoint with pictures and text onto a 1.44 MB floppy drive. Not fun. Since then, we’ve had 2 new computers, moved our entire song library from PowerPoint to MediaShout, and some other fun stuff. But that’s not my entire life.

I am also a home-schooled sophomore in high school (only 2 more weeks!). In 2004, I attended teen camp in 7th grade and felt a strong calling to Children’s Ministry. This has allowed me to take advantage of some amazing opportunities with Ryan. So I’ve taken on a volunteer position with KidzMatter, working in the office on Tuesdays. You may also remember meeting me at the KidzMatter booth at CPC, in both Orlando and San Diego this year. Another position I hold is as the Technology Support guy. If you’ve ever submitted a Trouble Ticket, I probably responded to it. In addition to all of this, I also hold a part-time job at a local Long John Silvers/A&W. So all in all, I have a very busy life.

Ryan, KidzMatter, and the other blog posters here have very much become like friends and mentors, and help me to grow as God would like. I look forward to sharing with you through this blog, and hearing your comments and advice. It is an honor to be given this opportunity, and to be mentored by such great people. See you again soon, and have a great day!

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