New book

In a few weeks, I'll have to opportunity to speak at a small winter retreat Youth Forum is putting on for one of our partner ministries.  In order to prepare, I'll be reading more. As many of you know, I'm an infamous book starter. I usually make it 2 chapters in before I'm on to what's next. Working on at least getting halfway through before I quit.

Someone who had a big impact on how I speak is Bobo Burns. Bobo loved Max Lucado. I think that is what drew me to this book:

Max Lucado: A Love Worth Giving.

This quote really struck me from the first chapter:

Some of you are so thirsty for this type of love.  A love that never fails.  Those who should have loved you didn’t.  Those who could have loved you didn’t.  You were left at the hospital.  Left at the altar.  Left with an empty bed.  Left with a broken heart.  Left with your question “Does anybody love me?”

Please listen to heaven’s answer.  God loves you.  Personally.  Powerfully.  Passionately.  Others have promised and failed.  But God has promised and succeeded.  He loves you with an unfailing love.  And his love—if you will let it—can fill you and leave you with a love worth giving.

So come.  Come thirsty and drink deeply.

Doesn't get much better then that. 

Quick Idea.

Saw this idea over at the Young Life Leader Blog

Pray by name through the entire high school yearbook.

What a great idea. Youth ministry friends do you do this? If anyone has an extra yearbook from you school, I'd gladly pray through it with you.

2 Videos of note.

This one is super nerdy, but I can't help my self. It's such a cool idea. Would love to do something like this sometime. 

Backstory from the video's creator: In 2009, Casey Pugh asked thousands of Internet users to remake "Star Wars: A New Hope" into a fan film, 15 seconds at a time. Contributors were allowed to recreate scenes from Star Wars however they wanted. Within just a few months SWU grew into a wild success. The creativity that poured into the project was unimaginable

#2: Nostalgia Time. Listen with CC one for best effect. 

Some interesting odds and ends.

1. I think brotips.com has some good advice on it. It's not all good and It's not all clean. But, it's got some good gags and a few gems in there. I wonder what Solomon would think?

2. Right now there are so many irons in the fire at work, it's hard to keep up. Sometimes when there is so much to it's hard to focus. I have to work really hard to get things done and keep up. It's all good stuff. The curse of a dreamer.

3. Ricky Rubio has got some mad skills. No look passes.

4. Had a self revelation. My over active imagination often makes me think that I've communicated more details then I think I have. Sometimes this puts me on different pages with other people. Going to work on curbing this. I need one of these to make people jump in.

5. Goal this year. Once a month, hack out a blog post.

6. It's easy to get caught in own little mazes and not see the big picture. This has been my life as of late. If I had a prayer request. It would that God would remind to listen more, talk less; especially with him.

7. Hopping to go back to Disney World this April.

NYWC Post #1

I just returned from NYWC and there are quite a few things stirring in my soul. I'm going to be flushing some of those ideas out on this blog. Before the conference I penned a few questions I wanted to wrestle with durring the weekend. I also asked 3 fellow journeyers to pitch in some thoughts: Johnny Davy - my traveling partner for the weekend, Alex - my brother and Kelly - my ministry accomplish. Here is the list we came up with for Youth Forum and myself:

1. How does Youth Forum serve the Summer Festival Team? Right Now? 3 months? 6? 1 Year? 3?
2. What is the vision for project Utah?
3. What is the long term vision of Youth Forum?
4. How can we better promote camp?
5. Camp topics? Fun Idea Topics?
6. What is good database software?
7. How do I regularly become challenged theologically?
8. What does personal bible study look like for me?
9. What are you going to do for the teaching at Link
10. What does ministering to post-modern christians look like?
11. What is YF SWOT right now?
12. How do we minister to hurting young people, with out sacrificing main streamers
13. How can we continue to use new technology to connect with teenager?
14. How do we have meaningful conversation with over stimulated youth?
15. What do you do with confirmands who should not be confirmed?
16. How do we change confirmation to more like the early church?
17. What is the role of morality for christian and non-Christians? Summer Fest Team?
18. How do we show family love in a team setting? How to we heal outliers?

This is what rattling around in my head over the weekend. It was great. Glad to be back. I will be processing a lot of these on the blog?

Executive Committee Celabration

Tonight, I had the chance to have a very fancy dinner with a group of people who've I've grown  rather fond of spending time with, the Youth Forum executive committee. This a group of people who've thrown their arms around me and want to see our ministry succeed. They are very smart and have invested a lot of time, energy, love, prayers and patience with me. If you are in ministry - find people like this. It's so life giving to be invited to be a part of a community of Jesus people who are so faithful and so in tune to what God would have for us. They are the shoulders of giants which this camp generation stands on.

They insisted that I read Dance, Children, Dance: The story of Jim Rayburn founder of Young Life

The book sounds pretty foundational to understanding the movement that Youth Forum spawned out of.  I've been quite burnt out on reading, but need to follow through with this one. I will post some thoughts on it in a future post.

God is faithful. For such a time is this. Can't wait for what will soon prove to be a crazy year of following God.

Welcome back Koter

3 months to the day since my last post. Life happens, well more accurately camp happens.

Camp is no longer the dominating force in my life for a few months. I hope to start blogging again. I have some crazy stories to tell, some thoughts to try and flush out, some programing to share and a heck of a lot of rambling to do.

My buddy Dan just got hired at Tout, a new social media company - kinda of like video twitter. It's pretty dang cool. www.tout.com

my tout is http://www.tout.com/u/tonyducklow/

dan's is http://www.tout.com/u/danweinand