My week this week

Hello all you punks in never never land, it's time I resurface again and do more than just update my twitter. I love twitter by the way, you don't need to have anything important to say, it's easy to update and i really feel connected to people through the smallest of details I'm regularly let in on. For instance, my sister-in-law started twittering and instead of 3-4 phone calls to them and one week a year if we're lucky i feel like she/they're not as far away and that does my soul good, well, whatever, you know what i mean. Okay, back to this week. I'm pulling double-duty and thinking this is going to work. I'm speaking in the evenings at the youth services of Family Camp for our district. Five talks in all. This week also happens to be the week of our middle school camp up at George Fox University called YouthQuake. The camps are only about twenty minutes apart and fortunately Family Camp really only needed a speaker for the evenings, not the regular type speaker where you're expected to dive in and get to know students and participate in as much as possible. They've got staff for that apparently and so after consulting with my VIP's we decided this might just work. Our staff for youthquake is solid and so I'm excited. I'll spend the days and sleep at youthquake and spend the evenings at family camp. Unfortunately, my wife has to work and won't be able to join me for either, but such is life and we're trying to be adults. Also, she's got one more mouth to feed and butt to clean up after in case you hadn't read. I was going to give the same general messages I gave at DYC earlier this spring which are huge in my mind and heart right now but I'm beginning to think that plan won't work as well as I maybe thought. I'm kind of sensing an audible right now. For starters, I've got four talks from DYC and found out a couple days ago family camp was five talks, not four, wups. Also, some camps/retreats are very message/general session focused meaning the week(end) is geared largely around the large group worship and message times and there are some camps/retreats that are very much activity focused meaning the worship and message times supplement the rest of the stuff. DYC was an example of the first, family camp is an example of the latter. Case in point, (or is that phrase, 'case and point?') at DYC i was given around 45 minutes per message. Last night as I was getting up to speak the guy tells me, why don't you shoot for, ohh, maybe 20 minutes. I laughed to myself and said, alrighty, here we go! Also, DYC was a bit more of a serious retreat where I felt the students were really there to be challenged, grow and wrestle through some things in their faith, this camp has a lighter feel I'm sensing, still an importance on growing but not quite as deep maybe. What I'm not saying is that one of these is better than the other. BOTH have their time and place. What I am saying is that the purpose for a gathering of students and the circumstances in which they're gathered really do affect what type of message should be given. So...I'm still figuring out where we'll go with talks 2-5. I feel good about the first one, it was a combo of 2 Kings 6 with Elisha, 1 Peter 5:8 and Jeremy's classic poop story, (i'm gonna get so much mileage out of that story, thanks bro :). My main goal was to break the ice, let them in a bit on who I am and establish the foundation for the rest of the week. I'd appreciate your prayers as we make some 'game time decisions.' I'll try and let you know where we end up going! A side treat that is ironic and fun is that the group doing the music all week where I'll be speaking is lifevoice from Crown! It's so trippy. They are a phenomenal group and it's been fun to serve alongside them. I love that place! Becca and I hosted one of them Saturday night at our house. After four or five choir tours, a summer of touring with stand your ground and close to one hundred host homes it was finally our turn to be on the other end. Okay, gotta run, adios!

This entry was posted by Josh Mann, on Monday, July 14, 2008. WEIGH IN.