Visiting the Today Show

I’m in New York on vacation. Today I paid a visit to the Today Show set. I was on the show several times from 8:00-9:00 and then again from 10:00-11:00. I was surprised how easy it was and how small the crowd was. The drizzly and cold weather may have helped. I posted pics below…

Heading to DC & New York on Vacation

A friend of mine who is a college student received an all-expense-paid invitation to a conference in New York through his school, Azusa Pacific University. He invited me to tag along. We’re going to spend a few days in DC, hit New York, then Chicago for 36 hours before flying home.

While he’s at the conference in New York, I’m going to be a tourist. While he’s outside of town staying in a fancy hotel, I’ll be staying in a Manhattan hostel beside Central Park.

When we hit Chicago, we’ll be visiting Willow Creek Church. Both of us are very involved at Saddleback church in Lake Forest, CA. Since we’re a training church, we’ve both been very interested in seeing this other training church.

On this trip we’re getting 3 of my life loves addressed. I love visiting historical places, the adventure of exploring new places spontaneously (I have no set plans for New York), and ministry (in this case catching a glimpse of how others are doing it). This is the perfect vacation for me.

Rick Warren Free Live Online Seminars This Week at Saddleback Church

Tuesday, May 19 – Thursday, May 21, 2009 Rick Warren is doing his Purpose Driven Church seminar live and online at Saddleback Church. They are broadcasting the sessions for free. There is also a live web chat with Gerald Sharon and Mark Carver, 2 of the pastors who oversee much of the work at Purpose Driven.

Click here to view the sessions live

Tesoro Owns The Weekend

Tesoro High School students took charge of this weekend’s high school service at Saddleback Church. They did an excellent job. Three students spoke. Many of their classmates who don’t typically go to church showed up because of the theme. They got a healthy dose of the gospel from those who spoke. It was awesome.

Here’s a funny video they made. It was shown at the opening of the service and then as an encore after the service was over.

Youth Ministry Weight Loss Challenge

Tonight over dinner at Claim Jumper, our conversation turned to healthy eating. Kind of ironic considering where we were eating. Because there were all guys, the conversation turned into a challenge. We decided that starting tomorrow we would see who could lose the most % of weight in the next 75 days. The prize is $1,000. Each participant is putting in $250.

The participants are: Myself (Dennis Beckner), Joshua Griffin, Kyle Cleveland and Chip Bragg.

I predict that in 75 days I will be $1,000 richer. My only concern is that I may not have enough percent of weight to lose compared to others in the challenge without having to be checked into the hospital for treatment. I’m still up to the challenge. At least I’ll lose the extra pounds I’ve put on since Thanksgiving. I’ve hated seeing myself gaining weight after all that effort to take it off a couple of years ago.

If I win the prize, I will pay for one of our students to go to summer camp. The rest of the money will go toward something nice for myself. Maybe toward a flight to Europe to visit some former students studying abroad in the Fall.

Root for me! I’ll need it.

Facebook Ministry Ideas

I’ve been talking with our high school pastor, Josh Griffin, about how we can use our high school ministry Facebook page to enhance our ministry. I asked him for some ideas for what he would like to see done. His list was so good that I thought I’d share it on my blog.

Facebook ideas:

Add in service times

Drop in some generic pictures

Directions to The Refinery (Saddleback Church’s Student Ministries building)

Add in videos

Upcoming series banners/posts?

Create event pages for specific upcoming events

Countdown timer to weekend services

Import blog feed (this is a biggie)

Actively seek out student “friends”

Actively watch friends’ status and if you see HSM, reply with something

Only communicate with students at the beginning of every series, not
weekly.

Ditch MySpace … if we have one, delete it!

All communication from the Facebook is signed HSM, no specific person

Send friend requests to all HSM staff who have accounts, go through
their friends and hit up all of the students

Twitter users can follow my updates by clicking here or by sending “Follow dbeckner” in a text message to Twitter.

Keeping Perspective About “One of Those Nights” in Ministry

In ministry, as in life, perspective makes or breaks an experience.

Tonight I taught a class on how to read the Bible. I put hours of time into the lesson, showed up early to make sure we had the right equipment and the room was set up in a way the students could learn best. However, nothing went right.
– We never got the video projector working
– Right after my introduction, more people walked in. The group doubled in size & we had to pause to accommodate everybody
– There wasn’t a sound barrier between us and the class next to us
– The noise drowned out one of the key elements of the class
– The audio on the video I showed wasn’t loud enough (even though it was when I listened to it a few days ago)
– I had to show the PowerPoint on my laptop computer which only part of the class could see depending on which way I pointed my screen
– My PowerPoint slides turned out to be in the wrong order (even after double-checking them)

Even with all of this,
– God still showed up
– The message got across

We all have that kind of night from time-to-time. We get our bruises in youth ministry, but chalk it up to experience, learn from it and keep moving. There’s no use getting bummed or angry, it won’t change anything. I was glad that, even though the atmosphere and technology weren’t optimal, the message wasn’t dependent on those.

The good news for me is that I get to teach the class again tomorrow night under much better circumstances. Tomorrow night’s crowd will be bigger and some of the students from my small group will be there. I’m glad to have tonight’s experience behind me so I’ll have a better idea of what to do tomorrow.

Like I said before, in ministry, as in life, perspective makes or breaks an experience.

Art Festival Highlights

Our youth ministry at Saddleback Church is having an art festival this weekend. It includes a battle of the bands, film festival, poetry, sculptures, paintings and more.

Here are some of the highlights: