We made it!!!  Today was confirmation.  I wish everyone could stand where I stand during that service.  You see, I get to see the confirmand's faces as they kneel down to receive this "rite".  Some of them close their eyes as their verse is read to them as if they want to allow the words to soak in.  Some...

We made it!!!  Today was confirmation.  I wish everyone could stand where I stand during that service.  You see, I get to see the confirmand's faces as they kneel down to receive this "rite".  Some of them close their eyes as their verse is read to them as if they want to allow the words to soak in.  Some...

On January 13th,  Cheryl, Doug, the pastors and myself sat down with the class to discuss ideas for their upcoming confirmation led worship service.  We reluctantly decided to allow three boys to play in a small band while we also pieced together a string trio with a few girls from the class. Different youth volunteered to take on ...

Sunday was  mentor class where we dove into the subject of Faith.  The book of Hebrews reads "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see".  Sort of like turning on a light switch.  Every time we flip the switch we expect the light to come on.  We may not know why or how it ...

We had a difficult class yesterday.  I spoke to the high school teacher, Martha Dahl, Saturday night and we decided to let go of the lesson plans for Sunday and to instead gather all of the youth in SJH and have a big discussion about the tragedy that took place Friday morning.  After talking to Sami, we brought the ...

Yesterday was a wonderful class!  We invited the parents to join us so that we could talk about some of their family traditions.  We asked the parents to share the traditions that they loved as a child and have brought into the lives of their own children.  We also asked them to share a favorite tradition that might have gotten ...

Since we did not have class yesterday, I still have time to blog about our class on Nov. 18th (last week got a little crazy).  Cheryl taught a very interesting lesson about Justice and Peace.  We did an exercise where we broke off into groups of three and gave a map of a different continent to each group.  Each group was given a...

I absolutely LOVE our mentor classes.  All of them are good but there was just something about the one we had yesterday that felt especially good.   Our topic was Forgiveness and Grace.  We watched a Skit Guys video on The Prodigal Son that hit home to a lot of the adults in the room.  The interaction between the father in ...

When Jesus asked Peter "do you love me?..."  Peter answered yes only to hear Jesus say "then feed my sheep".  Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved him and each time Peter answered yes only to have Jesus give another command of taking care of something else.  Poor Peter, I wonder if he ever understood what it ...

Sunday's class we talked about The 10 Commandments.   We went through the list in order...one at a time trying to figure out how these ideas fit into our lives today.  No, we may not worship a golden calf like the people of Isreal did but do we worship our X-Box?  How many things do we put before God?  Sports,...

Last Sunday we invited our mentors to class as well as the adult class that takes place at the same time.  We had a good turn out which added some excitement to the room.  The idea behind this particular lesson was to help the confirmands realize that they are on a journey.  A journey towards becoming better Christians or if ...

Last Sunday (9-16), we invited the confirmation parents as well as new mentors to join us in class.  The idea behind the class was to get the parents, the confirmands and the mentors to get to know each other.  Not only that but we wanted to start what we hoped to be an open dialog between adults and youth about their own special &...

In this session we talked about the Bible:

• Its origins
• Timeline of significant books and stories
• Differences between the old testament and the Jewish Bible
• Differences between different versions of the christian bible
• How to use the internet to study and compare different versions of the bible
• How to use a study

We went on our Confirmation Retreat at Mo-Val this weekend.  This is my fifth one and I have to admit that it never gets old!  Each year we start out Saturday morning with a low ropes course adventure.  One of the activities of this adventure is a trust fall.  If your not familiar with this, it is where a group of...

The Heart of Jesus Teaching - Matthew 6:5-21 - The Lords Prayer (part 3 of 3)

In this weeks class we studied the last "we petitions" of the Lords Prayer:

Give us this day our daily bread - God gives the gift of daily bread and we must earn it. In Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3, they used the word "Epiousios", it is a unique ...