You can see all the story at http://www.adventuresofsupersquirrel.blogspot.com but here he is Noah David.

Don't miss the premiere of Noah David on July 2, 2009. Check out http://www.adventuresofsupersquirrel.blogspot.com for complete coverage

I have been doing youth ministry at this church for going on 11 years now. In that time we have had one other year like this one when there was a radical change simply because of the group of seniors who were graduating. This year it looks like things are going to change even more. We have a group right now of about 25 regulars. Of that group 11 of them are seniors. So nearly half of our regular group graduated a few weeks ago and will be moving on to college a few weeks from now. The rest of our group (with a few exceptions) are middle school kids.

So everything is about to change.

Honestly I am pretty excited. I think I have taught the seniors what I need to teach them and I am excited about their next stage in life. I am also very excited about having middle school kids again. But here is the problem. Most of the graduated seniors aren't getting out of town. They are going to a local junior college. So they will still be around. Since we don't have a dedicated college program they are talking about sticking around the youth ministry. Which is cool, but at the same time makes ministering to a new group of middle school students difficult.

So I am still trying to work out how to make everything gel. My current plan is to have the college kids hang out with us during the singing time and then go and have their own Bible study during the teaching time. Of course I don't have a teacher for this Bible study yet, so who knows what will happen.

No matter where things take us in the next couple of week I do know that they will be changing, not only that, I know that they have to change if we are going to continue to reach the students of Eufaula.

I am anxious. There are a number of reasons, but they can all be summed up in the fact that my second son Noah will be born at 7:30 on Thursday morning. I have all of the usual Dad worries. Having a baby is rough on a father because there is soooo little that I have to do. I pretty much stand around and have no control whatsoever of an event that is going to change my life. It is humbling and hard.

But since this blog is supposed to be about youth pastor things I also have some of those fears too. You see I have been a dad for a little over 3 years now and I don't think that I have yet to figure out how to be the type of youth pastor I want to be and a dad at the same time. I mean, I think I am doing a pretty good job at the dad thing, well at least an OK job, but I think that makes me not a great youth pastor sometimes. I still haven't learned how to balance the two.

Now with a new little guy coming into the house I am worried about what the future will hold and just where I am going to find hours in the day. And it is about more than just time, it is about mind-share and heart. Hanging out with Nathan is great, in fact it is the coolest thing I have ever known to just walk with him and see him reach his hand up for mine when he gets to a step or somewhere else that he might fall. But spending extended periods of time each day with a 3 year old is very, very draining. I honestly don't see how stay at home moms stay sane.

So I am worried about all of the things I should be worried about and I am also worried about how my life is going to change. With Nathan I thought I knew how things would be different, but I really had no clue. I can't even imagine how things are going to change on Thursday.

But honestly I am pretty excited about seeing the little guy.

My pastor was praying yesterday and he said something about going deeper with God and a little later he spoke about being filled by God. It started my brain to working and I came up with this idea that you have to be filled with God before you can go deeper because going deeper with God isn't snorkeling, it isn't even scuba diving, it is learning how to breathe water.

So basically you have to accept the fact that as a Christian you are radically changed and you are no longer supposed to be breathing air, but breathing in God and when you can do that, when you can surrender and give up and die to yourself that is when you are filled by God and that is when you have the power to go deeper and to really discover who God has created you to be.

There was an 80s era sci-fi movie that I remember not being very good, I think it was The Abyss, but I could be wrong. Anyway, to dive down to the bottom of this abyss the people had to drink this liquid that was over oxygenated (spell check says that's a real word). The idea was that you breathed water for the first 9 months of your life and your body would remember how to do it again, but getting over the initial, "OMG I'm drowning" was very hard. In the end you just had to surrender and wait and get filled with this stuff and you could go deeper than you had ever been.

Really it sounds like that made that movie just to be a good analogy, or maybe it is that movie scene has stuck with me for all these years and that is just where I went with this whole being filled thing.

I am still working out some of the details, but I like the idea that there are some people who snorkel in this God life and there are some people who dive deep for a while with scuba gear on, but the real world changers, the people who really connect with God and therefore make an impact on the people around them are the people who can stop breathing air and can start breathing God.

I uploaded this quiz a while back, but there was a typo. I finally fixed it and put it in the Screen Games section. Check it out if you want a screen quiz based on movie love.

Tonight I was talking about how the Bible can be your guide through the journey of life so I thought I would make a little game that made you journey through the Bible. The concept is simple. You read the first verse and clue and that will give you a number. Then you take that number and put it in the reference of the next clue. Look up that verse and you should find the number for the next clue and so on.

We were going to talk about Jeremiah 6:16 which is why I had students write that one down. You can either use this to make your own game sheet up or you can download the .pdf here.

Esther 2:12 - months of beauty treatments
Acts 11:__ - how many brothers
John 2:__ - the number of stone jars
Joshua __:6 - how many priests with trumpets
Genesis 32:__ - how many groups of people
Numbers 26:__ - age of men to be counted
1 Kings __:16 - drunk kings with Ben-Hadad
Jeremiah __:9 - how many shekels
1 Samuel __:4 - Goliath was over how many ft.
1 Chron. 26:__ - how many able bodied men
1 Kings 7:__ - how many rows of pomegranates
Galatians __:1 - number of years
2 Kings __:21 - how old was Azariah
Jeremiah 6:__
Write what God says in this verse below:

In all of the craziness of last week I forgot to talk about my lesson. I stumbled on Psalm 119 last week and it really struck me as a powerful message for teenagers, actually a powerful message for anyone in our "truth is relative" society. I have to admit that I knew that 119 was there and I knew it was the longest verse. I even knew that the VBS pledge to the Bible came from there, but I can't remember ever reading it all the way through.

So anyway I got to reading through this chapter and it is amazing. It really speaks to the heart of a Christian who is struggling with doing the right things. It has heartache and hardship and pain and joy and encouragement all wrapped up in this very important truth: Following God's way is always best.

I was so enamored with this chapter last week that I decided to just read it, all 176 verses of it. I didn't stop and explain (even though the desire to do so was very strong) I just let the word of God speak for itself. I know in my own youth ministry I don't do that enough. I try to find a cool way to present things and I forget that God can speak very well for himself.

This week I am expanding on some of the themes in Psalm 119 by talking about how the Bible is our main map as we are sent out into the world. I will even have a game that I have made that I will post here, but it will be Thursday so that no one cheats.

Nathan has started telling me what to do, including threatening to put me in time out a couple of times. I have to remind him (sometimes backing it up with punishment) that I'm the daddy, not him. He doesn't like that very much. In his mind he has lived on this earth for 3 years so that means that he should be able to do all of the things that daddy does.

Any rational person will know that is absurd. It will be many,  many more years before he will be able to make the decisions that I make. He still has lots of growing up to do and lots more things to learn before he will be ready to make those choices. Right now I am trying to take care of him the best I know how. I may mess up, but at least I know more than he does.

While that is easy to see when it comes to Nathan and me, it isn't as easy to see when it comes to me and God. I keep thinking that I should know better by now. I mean, I have done this Christian thing for going on 30 years now. I think I know what I should be doing. I should be the one making the decisions and choosing where I go next. So I find myself telling God what I am going to do instead of asking him where I should go.

I wonder if he looks at me like I look at Nathan when I do that.

First off, let me say that I am very thankful for my life. This week has shown me a new appreciation for my family, especially my little boy. With that said, this has been a very long week. Of course any week that includes Vacation Bible School is going to be a long week, but events this week of course have made it seem like it lasted a lifetime.

Today I felt like I just wanted to sleep all day, and my lovely wife did let me sleep a great deal, but I had to spend some time at the funeral. Funerals for 8 year olds are just unnatural. The words that you hear at other funerals sound hollow and perverted. You are left clinging to the truth that you know deep in your heart that God is good and holy and righteous, but you cling to them like a castaway clings to hopes of rescue. You cling to them even though everything in your mind screams at you to just give up.

It is these times when my heart turns to two pasages from the Bible. One is when Jesus tells his followers that they are going to have to eat his flesh and drink his blood and many of them turn away. He looks at the twelve and asks them if they will turn away too and Peter says, "to whom would we go, you alone have the words of eternal life." I feel that way right now. I cling to God because there is no one else to cling too, and even though I don't understand him I still cling to him because he alone has the words of eternal life. He alone is my hope.

The other passage is in Job, long after the friends of Job have given their speeches, when God shows up and begins to answer Job's questions. It wasn't the answer Job was looking for, but at the end of God's reminder of His nature and His character Job was satisfied.

I am praying right now that I can be satisfied with the answers that I find. I am praying even more that this family can be learn to be satisfied as well.

I don't know how else to start this entry than that. Today after vacation Bible school two of the kids were with us in the morning were in a car crash. The older brother who was in my class is hurt, but will be fine. His younger brother (and 8 year old little boy) however died in the crash.

I spent some time with the older brother today. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do as a pastor, but when it was over I got to come home and hold my little boy close and tell him I love him and put him to bed.  I can't imagine the pain of this family who didn't have that luxury tonight. I can't imagine what they must be feeling. I feel so deeply for them, and I wish there were magic words that I could say to make everything better. All of the stuff that you know is true because you follow God just seems hollow to say.

My eyes were opened today to the frailty of this life that we hold. One moment these kids are learning about Peter and singing about being on the Boomerang Express and the next their family is talking about making arrangements and we are trying to figure out where God is in the middle of this. I thought all afternoon about the things that I didn't say and didn't do that I should have done today at Bible school and tonight after church when all of the youth were going to the Blue Moon to hang out I came home to put Nathan to be simply because I could, and the fact that I could is something that I take for granted way too often.

Please pray for this family and pray for us tomorrow as we go back into VBS. We have to figure out what to say to the 50 other students who will be looking to us for how to respond. Pray that God will give us wisdom and strength.

Before I go on there is something you need to know about me. I am not one of those "let's stop and pray about it" type of people. I have often wished I was, but I'm not the guy who thinks to stop and pray when bad things are happening. Well, at least not out loud. Inside I am often caring on a dialog with God and myself so I generally pray when things are stressful, but I rarely ever am the person who suggests that the whole group pray.

I think it one of the big reasons is that I am scared of what will happen if we all pray and then things get worse. I guess I am afraid of God letting me down. But that is a whole other longer issue that I need to work through.

Today Nathan and I ended up out in a very open parking lot virtually all by ourselves in the middle of a very strong storm. I think I could have handled that (and Nathan would have slept right through it) if it wasn't for the hail. It started small, but it wasn't long before walnut sized pieces of ice were bouncing off our van. It was very loud and Nathan woke up saying, "Daddy, it's loud!"

He isn't a big fan of loud things and I could tell that he was very close to being upset. I was pretty anxious too, by now so I am sure that didn't help his mood much. I tried to put on a brave face and turned on a DVD. That didn't really help because the hail was so loud we couldn't hear the DVD.

So I am sitting in the front seat trying my best to smile at Nathan in the back seat and assure him that everything was going to be OK, when all the while I am praying in my head asking God to really help things be OK.

That is when it hit me. How will Nathan ever learn that he can pray in times like this if he doesn't know I am praying. I debated for a few minutes about the best way to let him know I was praying. Finally I just went for this conversation:

Me: Nathan, are you scared?

Nathan: [nods]

Me: Do you know who can take care of us when we are scared?

Nathan: Mommy

Me: Yes, but God can take care of us too. Do you want to pray and ask God to take care of us?

Nathan: [nods]

Me: OK, say, God will you take care of us.

Nathan: God? Will you take care of us?

That was it. Nathan prayed and even the cynic in me has to say that God responded. In the first place the mood in the van lightened considerably. Somehow we both knew we were going to be fine. In the second place the hail ended almost immediately and within a couple of minutes the rain let up to just a nice summer shower.

Later I made sure that Nathan told Meredith that God had taken care of us when it was raining. God will take care of us when we are scared. That is a lesson I don't want him to forget.

I don't want to forget it either.

Our children's Vacation Bible School starts next Monday so today is my day to get my ducks in a row and get ready. We are doing the Boomerang Express like all good Baptists so if you have any suggestions or ideas let me know.

Speaking of VBS, I live in the south where that term used to be ubiquitous. Everyone knew about VBS because everyone (even the people who never went to church) would spend at least 1 week, and most of the time several weeks making macaroni pictures and learning Bible stories.

But recently I have met several people, including a few teens who have no clue what you are talking about when you say VBS. Times they are a changing. I just made a flyer to give to someone who asked for more information and I was careful to include what Vacation Bible School is along with directions and times. I think as culture continues to move we in the church will need to reevaluate our terminology and make sure that we are explaining as well as just proclaiming.

I had one of those "why didn't I see that before" moments this weekend and it was this: The Israelite didn't have to go through the Red Sea. Of course God could have just spoken and placed his people in Cannan, but not only that, Egypt wasn't an island cut off from the rest of the world. There were ways to get to the promised land that didn't involve a supernatural deliverance. So what we have in this story is God leading his people into a difficult situation, actually leading them into an impossible situation when they are trapped between the Egyptians and the water. Hear that again, God led them to an impossible position. Why? Because they still didn't understand the fullness of his power and grace, and he was about to give them a very big lesson. Not only that, a whole generation later when they finally walked into the promise land the people living there were still talking about the power that God displayed at the Red Sea. I don't know what struggles you have today, but those struggles are a great way for God to be glorified in your life.

Sometimes we find ourselves in impossible positions, but that is when God can shine the brightest. In the middle of your struggles, look to Him. His grace and love are more than enough to see you through.

I read something very challenging in the Fuge adult quiet time guide. I thought I would share it with you.

"Faith by definition is living in the unknown. Faith requires risk. What are you willing to risk for Christ in order to allow Him to work through you?"