Saturday Shout Outs!

Greetings friends and neighbors, and welcome to the latest edition of my Saturday Shout Outs!  2013 seems to be flying by- perhaps because I am so excited about upcoming reunion of the Kissimmee Krew on April 20th!  But whatever the reason, it's hard to believe already mid-March.  So let me wish you a happy St. Patrick's Day (a day early!) and get on with the shouting!  Here we go...

• Congratulations to Matt Lupfer and Kristin Landry Lupfer (both FUMC-K alumni) who announced recently that they are expecting their first child! I am certain that Uncle Jacob, Aunt Lindsey and the rest of the extended family are excited beyond words.  Our prayers are with Matt & Kristen as they take on this new adventure.
• My dear friend and champion email writer Susan McBane Tuggle (Quaker Lake) is at the beach this weekend, and I am not.  So this is a shout AT, not a shout OUT...  Love you, Boom Boom, and I hope it is a great weekend!
• The ACC men's basketball tournament is going on in Greensboro this week- or as it is known to many North Carolinians, HOLY WEEK!  I was telling my friend Denise May Langley the other night that while I miss the excitement of being in Greensboro for the tourney, I don't miss 4 days of not being able to get a table in a restaurant!  Most of you know I am a huge UNC Tar Heel fan, and I am glad they destroyed Florida State last night.  But I have to be honest- before the tournament began I picked NC State to win the whole thing.  I think it is because it's the 20th anniversary of the 1983 national championship and I am getting old and sentimental.  So to my many friends who are big Wolfpack supporters - people like Jamie Robinson (Springfield), Todd Farlow (Springfield), Beth McGalliard (New Garden), Jeff Byrd (NCYM), Tammy Foster (New Garden) and many more - I apologize.  My picking them is a certain kiss of death!
• Meanwhile, another glorious event was taking place in Greensboro last night.  The mighty Dook Blue Devils were upset by the Maryland Turtles.  How embarrassing!  While I know this was very painful for good friends like Jeremy & Laura Godwin (Springfield), Butch Moran (Springfield), Karen Chester (Springfield), Robert Damron (Twitter) and Jennifer Wood Jones (Springfield), it also was a bit painful for me.  You see I twisted my ankle while doing my CELEBRATION DANCE after the game...  I must also give props to Eric Tysinger, husband of Teresa Reep Tysinger (FUMC-K) and a huge UNC fan, who is working the scoreboard in Greensboro this week.  Despite his distinguished work in theater stage management, I feel certain posting the final score of that Dook loss was a career highlight!  
• If you were part of the student ministry at FUMC-Kissimmee while I was there, then the time to be making your reservation for the April 20th reunion is NOW!  Visit the Reunion Facebook Page, click events, and RSVP now!
• My old friend Steve Semmler texted me the other day to ask me who the lead singer was for The Hollies on their big hit, The Air That I Breathe.  I did not know, and Steve mocked me for this.  Sometimes having a reputation as a music trivia expert can bite you in the butt!  By the way Steve...it definitely was NOT Eric Carmen.  Turns out he was a Raspberry, not a Hollie.  Oops. My bad. :)
• And finally...tomorrow is Selection Sunday for the NCAA Tournament, which means it is time to make your picks and fill out those brackets!  Carl Semmler, will we be making our traditional bet?  If you win, Alan Brown pays for dinner, and if I win...he still pays?  Let me know!

That's it for today!  I have a couple of cool shout outs that are not quite ready to be shouted about just yet, so check back later this week. There may be updates!  Have a blessed weekend and remember that Easter is just around the corner.  Christ is Risen!  He is Risen indeed!  Have a great weekend, everyone!

Because of Jesus,

Happy Birthday, Conner Dog!

Our beloved Cocker Spaniel, Conner, turns 10 years old today.  That's 70 to you and me- but you would never know it!  He still acts like a pup; he just takes more naps now.  To be honest that is not that different from me! Still, 10 years is a long time to be part of a family.  It's a lot of Beggin' Strips; a lot of walks; a lot of 4 am wake ups howls; a lot of time begging for food; a lot of time growling at Will; and a lot of time just wanting our love and attention.  It's one Christmas tree tackled and a lot of wrapping paper ripped from gifts.  And it is HUNDREDS of squirrels chased!  Will likes to say that Conner is spoiled, because he has his own recliner and occasionally gets his own steak and cheese sub from Subway and his own sausage biscuit from McDonald's.  Will is not wrong.  Conner is family.  And today we will celebrate with him!  Marilyn thinks he may deserve his own Dairy Queen Blizzard to mark the big day.  Conner would never argue with that!

So Happy Birthday, Conner Dog! Thank you for all of the joy and laughter you have brought to our little family.  But was it really necessary to get me up at 4:19 this morning to start the party?  Have a great day and a blessed weekend, everyone!

Because of Jesus,

The Prayer of Saint Francis

A Lenten devotional in honor of the new Pope, Francis I.

Pray this incredible prayer penned by Saint Francis of Asissi.  Don't just read it; PRAY it!  What would it mean for your life to become "an instrument" of God's peace?  What does it mean to know that "in giving we receive?"  Pray for Jesus to enter your life in new and exciting ways.  Pray that you would be WIDE OPEN to being so full of Jesus that this world seems like a foreign place to you. Who can you bring light, peace and joy to today?

Because of Jesus,

Life Together

"When you are weak I will be strong,
 when I fall back won't you pull me along-
This is LIFE TOGETHER!"

For six years (from 1994-2000) the student ministry of the First United Methodist Church of Kissimmee was my family.  We laughed together, played together, prayed together and cried together. We took amazing trips, had incredible adventures, learned great lessons and survived some huge failures. We lived life together in the name of Jesus, and, in the process, became a community that loved and counted on one another. The years and the miles may have separated us, but that has not made our youth family any less important in our hearts and in our memories.  The fact that 80 or so different folks have been visiting the Reunion Facebook Page on a regular basis since Teresa Reep Tysinger put it up over a month ago is proof of that.

On April 20, 2013 there will be a reunion of that family.  Almost 19 years to the day after Marilyn and I arrived in Kissimmee, we will gather to greet old friends, tell old stories and share our new families with one another.  While there will certainly be important members of our group missing that day, we are anticipating a good crowd and great times.  Old friends like Lisa Kraus Spires, Courtney Moon, Connor Lewis, Carol Kraus, Lauren Carr Cacciatore, Cindy Martin, Angie Whalin Klein, Jerry Hanbery, Stephanie Potter and Kelly Jeck Trace are already officially signed up, and we trust many more will join them! We will once again be sharing life together.

The slideshow below is my love letter to the hundreds of students and adults who made the Kissimmee years such an amazing part of my own journey.  It features over 90 pictures from those years- some of which have not been since since they were on the bulletin board in The Attic.  It also features the great Geoff Moore & the Distance song Life Together- a song we used as our Youth Week theme in 1997 when Geoff and the boys came to play a concert for us. You may remember that we lost a lot of money on that concert.  You may also remember that in our failure we grew.  Life together does that to you. When you share life the way we did, it is not all rainbows and unicorns. Neither is a life spent following Jesus.  When I decided to put this together to help us get excited for the reunion, it seemed to me that this was THE song to tell our story.  As you watch this video, listen to the words.  I can promise you that the pictures on your screen and the lyrics of the song are together for a reason.  They tell the tale of a youth ministry that changed lives.  I have tried to include pictures featuring as many old friends as possible, including a few who are no longer with us.  And one particular 3 picture section is a thank you from me to all of you who have loved me through my own trials and tribulations over the years.  

You will want to pause the show at various points so you can spend more time viewing certain pictures.  That is great- but let me ask a favor of you.  The first time through, just let it play.  Take in the whole story.  Then go back and explore.  It is my hope that this will serve as one more reminder of why we will gather April 20th.  Enjoy this gift, and please let your old friends know it is here.  I love you guys.

Because of Jesus,

Thinking About Prayer

Today I offer a reminder in this season of Lent that prayer was important to Jesus, and therefore should be important to us.  Easter is coming. Prepare your heart.

Matthew 6:9-13
And Jesus said "This, then, is how you should pray:"

Jesus gives the disciples this prayer so that there will be no doubt about what prayer is to be and not be.  It is not to call attention to yourself, by praying on street corners or using lots of pious words.  You should pray "like this" (not necessarily this prayer, but like this!) because God already knows what you need before you ask Him. Give praise to God.  Pray that His will be done.  Pray for your needs and the needs of others. There is nothing too large or too small to pray about.  Take everything before the throne of God.

Questions:
1)  What does "hallowed" mean?  Do you keep the name of God and the name of Jesus full of meaning, or do you use it too casually?
2)  We know we need daily bread.  What else do we really need?  Do you pray for need, or for want?
3)  When we pray for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, what are we really asking for?  Are we willing to do our part?  It has been said we are God's Plan A for taking Jesus to the people, and there is no Plan B.  Are you praying to be a part of that plan?

Because of Jesus,

Live To Tell 1996

These survivors LIVED TO TELL!

Creativity is such an important part of student ministry.  As a youth worker you are constantly striving to come up with ideas that have a WOW factor.  You want to keep students a bit off-guard, wondering what you might come up with next.  You are always seeking new ideas, or at least ideas that are new to your group.  Not to sound too much like the Rev. Jesse Jackson, but tameness, sameness and lameness are enemies of a successful youth program.  Finding ways to keep students engaged is an ongoing struggle.  You find yourself always pushing the limits of what is acceptable and what is possible, all because they have to show up before you can share Jesus with them.  And every now and then, you cross the line between the creative and the insane!

On August 2nd, 1996, the student ministry of the First United Methodist Church of Kissimmee went flying over that line.  As part of our summer ministries, we decided to do a Mystery Trip.  Students could sign-up, pay their $35 and have absolutely no idea where they were going.  We would only give parents the information when they arrived at the church on the day of the adventure.  There was a tremendous amount of excitement generated by this new event, and about 25 of us (see group photo at top) prepared to share in the mystery.  The only people who knew where we were going were Jerry Hanbery (my intern) and myself.  We had decided to take the group to Myrtle Beach, SC.  Many of the students had never been, and we were planning a major trip there in the summer of 1997.  A weekend in MB seemed like a wonderful idea for an adventure.  And it was- eventually.

We were planning to leave the church at 7 PM on Friday, August 2nd, but there was an immediate snag in our plans.  We had to wait for someone to finish their participation in a fashion show at the local mall, so we wound up sitting in the mall parking lot until around 8 PM.  During this wait, Kendall Crotty began to pass the word around that we were going to Myrtle Beach.  His mom had ratted us out!  Before we ever began our Mystery Trip, the mystery was solved.  That was the first bummer.  The second bummer was that I had been to MB a hundred times in my life, but never from Kissimmee, FL.  It's a long way.  A very long way.  About 9 hours.  I'll let you do the math, but suffice it to say that we arrived at the Days Inn in MB in the very early hours of Saturday morning.  The last few hours of the van ride were brutal;  I later heard rumors of people (Connor Lewis?) just laying down on the seats, regardless of the fact the seats already had people sitting in them.  I was just trying to stay awake so I could drive.  We arrived, checked in, and went to bed.  It was noon before we were up and about and enjoying the sun and surf.

We had a great weekend.  We played together, ate together, visited the Myrtle Beach Pavilion together and worshiped together.  We spent 18 hours in vans to spend 30 hours at the beach when we lived in Florida; that was the insane part.  But we had wanted a memorable event, one that the kids would talk about for years to come- and we got one!  We had titled the weekend Live To Tell after the Geoff Moore and the Distance song for two reasons.  One, our theme for worship was that our lives should tell the people we meet that we were followers of Jesus.  Secondly, we wanted them to know that this weekend was about survival; that they had lived, and should spread the word that strange and wonderful things were happening in the youth ministry of FUMC-K.  On both counts the weekend was an amazing success.  It is safe to say that in those years Jerry and I were often wrong, but we were seldom boring...

We did another Mystery Trip a couple of years later that was not as insane and was much more dramatic- but that's a story for another day.  Have a blessed weekend, everyone!

Because of Jesus,

You Have To Be There!

Will and his Mom!

My son Will leaves after school this afternoon (but not until after 3 PM; spies will be watching to make sure they don't leave a minute too early!) for a band trip to our nation's capital with about 90 other students and their adult leaders, and he is very excited about the all night bus ride (just kidding) and the great itinerary planned for them while in DC.  But the trip was almost sabotaged by some Hillsborough County School Board member.  In their infinite wisdom, someone denied the request to miss two days of school for the trip, saying they were only allowed one approved day.  So everything had to be re-arranged, almost derailing the trip.  The thought process of some educational administrators never ceases to amaze me.  Someone actually thought- worse yet, actually believed- that being in classrooms 2 days before the start of Spring Break would be more important to the learning process of high school students than time spent in Washington, DC.  Some extra-intelligent administrator with a master's degree in education felt that hours spent in class daydreaming about spending next week at the beach would be more useful to the student's education than being on a tour of the White House (which they will be one of the last groups to do tomorrow thanks to the current "sequestration") or the Capitol building.  Missing a day of Spanish 2 could never be replaced by time spent at the Smithsonian Museums.  One more history lecture could make a bigger difference than participating in the ceremonial "Laying of the Wreath" at Arlington National Cemetery (which they are doing) or visiting the Holocaust Museum, the Vietnam Memorial or Mount Vernon. Since NONE of that makes any sense, I am left to assume that it was calculated that missing one extra day of school would somehow negatively impact the be-all, end-all of education in USAmerica today- the almighty test scores. Thanks to hard work and good leadership, they are still getting to do all of those things, giving up an extra day of their Spring Break so that they can experience the REAL education of seeing DC. But that ridiculous decision could have ruined it all.  You can talk about history, civics and national pride all you want, but nothing educates like actually being part of it all.  We learn so much more through experience than any other teaching method.  I am so glad Will gets to go, because just hearing about life doesn't work. You have to be there!

The same is true when it comes to our faith.  The church often acts like we believe that people can be educated into the presence of God.  We offer so many classes and spend hours debating theology and biblical interpretation. But if we really read those bibles we take classes to be told about, we will notice a trend.  No one is educated into God's presence.  It must be experienced!  Great church leaders like Peter, Paul, Martin Luther, John Wesley and George Fox were all changed by encountering Jesus, not by reading about him.  Certainly learning helps us to experience the wonders of the almighty, and often prepares us to see God in new ways. But if we "stay in the classroom" of faith, we are missing the point.  Jesus says to "follow me."  To "love one another."  To "feed his sheep."  These are all actions.  The heavily educated church leaders of biblical times were called Pharisees- or the "brood of vipers" as Jesus referred to them. Is that how we want to end up- with lots of knowledge of the law but with no concept of grace in action?  There is an old Quaker saying about going to church.  When someone asks, "When does the service start?" the correct answer is, "When we walk out the front door!"  To discover the Holy Spirit at work in the world you can't just talk about it.  You have to be there!

So by all means, today you should do your daily Bible reading and take time to pray.  You should contemplate the things of God and what He requires of you and your life.  But don't miss an opportunity to get out there and DO in the name of Jesus!  You can encounter God in random acts of kindness and love in whole new ways.  Don't miss out.

Because of Jesus,