Worship Post-fessional, September 14, 2008

Worship Set:

Because of Your Love (Baloche)
Welcome
From The Inside Out (Houston)
Scripture Readings (The One Another passages from Scripture)
You Are My King (Foote)

Morning Message-Brad Gartman (Brad grew up in our church and is co-pastor CHURCH AT THE SPRINGS in Houston, Tx. He was here this week to talk to our leadership and church about Small Group (Community) Ministry that begins in a week here)

*Congregational Take Away (See Below)
From The Inside Out (Reprise)
Knowing You (Kendrick)You Gave Your Life Away (Baloche)

Congreagational Take Away:
We always try to think of something (if appropriate) that we can give away at the end of the service to reinforce the teaching of the day. Today we gave away Mason Jars-filled with a cookie receipe. The instructions were for the people to take the receipe and do one of two things with it. (1). Make the receipe of cookies and include a tall glass of tea with it and take it to a neighbor. (2) Fill the jar with the ingredients (layered--kinda like a sand scultpure) and take it to a neighbor to share about community.
We also launched our next Series promo THE BIG PICTURE with 4X4 glossy cards with the logo and series information on it. We instructed them to take them to work and to give them out all week long as we get ready for this 14 week series of God's Plan for The Ages. I got them from PS PRINT for $134--2500 of them!! We're also starting a blog for this series.

I'll be away from worship leadership for the next 2 Sundays.  My good friend Rich Smith will come and lead in my place.

This post is part of Sunday Set Lists over on Fred Mc Kinnon's site.

Creative Chaos-Family Camp 2008

Last week's FAMILY CAMP is a memory, but I'd like to highlight some of the creative things we did to engage the parents and kids together in one setting. As I stated before, having so many different ages together was a tough challenge for programming, but it was met and succeeded because of the creativity of the team.

MORNING WORSHIP: This was a time for all of the generations to get together to worship (I'm talking Pre-school-to High School). You may ask how this worked. It was just understood that we were all going to be together. The songs were geared towards the little ones ( a little lighter and more FUN) as well as some of the activities. (ie--the pre-schoolers came and "led"us on a fun song in worship. The older kids provided the rhythm for one of the songs)

How Firm A foundation--New Style from Jim Drake on Vimeo.

Each morning was followed by an opening activity to break the ice with the school age kids, teens and parents. The first day we did a timed instruction sheet (where we were suppose to read the entire sheet of instructions and then just sign our name to the top of the paper,however, my family didn't read all of the instructions and we ended up doing some of the silly stuff like "I'm a little teapot" (see picture). I knew we were doing this so I didn't tell.

Another morning we created foam shadows of one parent and one

child (see picture) and then the parents kept a shadow and the kids took one with them.

Each of them were to write expectations for spiritual growth on them and to use them in our conversation time at night after evening worship. (see picture)


EVENING WORSHIP was just as creative. Brad Gartman used object lessons in each of his talks.

1. Paper Plate--the divided kind. Each family member had to draw their 3 favorite rooms in their house--to talk about where they felt most at home and where the conversations about the busyness of life could take place. Each of our kids did a fantastic job and we're displaying their plate in plate holder on the walls.

2. A Calendar--a 12 month blank calendar was created. Each family member got to draw the picture for the month of their birth. Families were challenged to mark off a family night each week for the next 3-6 months to see if they could institute this practice in their family life.

3. FOIL FAMILIES. Each family received a roll of 25 foot foil and were asked to create a sculpture that represented them. Some of them looked like this. It ended with the largest foil fight I've seen since I've been in ministry. (by the way-foil balls hurt-just like cheaply thrown words and phrases in families--get the lesson?)

4. Communion- Each family was given bread and juice to take back to their rooms to do communion together as a family. For my family it was a time of discussion and also a time for me to share about the provisions God has made for us ( I tied it back to the Table of Bread I saw at the National Worship Leader Conference last week in Austin)

Here are some other random shots of the week:

Our hotel was the Victorian Condo. A great place right the beach-it was the perfect setting for 160 people.

This post is part of Creative Chaos on Ragamuffinsoul.com
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Something Old, Something New

Something Old, Something New

This post is usually one of the first that I do on Monday morning, but since my Sunday night ran into my Monday morning, I'm just now getting around to it.

Here goes!

Something Old:

Randy Elrod- I searched back through my SO/SN posts and can't believe that I've never given props to Randy and his blog. Randy is a creative, dreamer and go-getter in Franklin, Tennessee. He's the "BLOGFATHER" to many who blog now and hosts his annual Re-Create Conference in Franklin in February. To those who already know him--you know his stuff. To my new readers--you'll want to check this guy out. He's inspiring.

Something New:

Brad Gartman- I've already posted about Brad (he was our camp pastor this past week), but you need to connect with him. He's the Co-Pastor of The Church @The Springs in League city. This church has taken a radical approach to ministry and community. They meet bi-monthly and the other Sunday's are dedicated to Family and ministry to the community. He say's their unofficial theme is "The church who gives time back to you".

25 Cloth- This company made our t-shirts for family camp, and you may be saying "Big deal". However, a portion of your shirt costs is forwarded to an ongoing project to relief suffering around the world. Makes you feel better about wearing that shirt now, huh? Check'em out.

Family Camp 2008

I apologize for my absence from the blogosphere the last couple of days.  I have been in transition to Galveston for our Family camp which began on Wednesday.  Tuesday was travel day here and set up--I think it was an 18 hour day--but who's counting

We have 36 families here for a short week of instruction and encouragement.  It is very multi-generational from babies to grandparents.  That makes it interesting in programming, but our worship leader Rich Smith is doing a great job of hitting all of the groups.  It's great to see the little ones worship (they do with us each morning) and the older kids got into the action last night on a new arrangement of HOW FIRM A FOUNDATION that Rich wrote for his new album Sacred.

Brad Gartman, Community Pastor from The Church @The Springs in League City has been our camp pastor.  He's very creative and has given the kids something to do each night in worship while talking to the adults.  Brad is a blogger too--check out his site here.  He's blogging about the experience here at Family Camp 2008 this week.  You'll want to read it!

Other than some initial technical issues with Media Shout and PC (they both died on me) and having to jump to a demo version of ProPresenter to fill out the week--it's been ok.   Technical things have a way of making you crazy.

The internet connection here has been iffy.  Right now I'm on the patio of the hotel catching some WiFi and listening to families argue with each other (not ours!) as they get ready to head to the beach.

I'll try to upload some pictures later today of the camp. We're doing a cook-out tonight for the entire Condo project as an outreach to families here that aren't part of our camp.

Thanks for hanging with me--I'll be back to my regular posting schedule soon!