Launching

After building up to this point for the past few months, it is relieving to be on the opposite side of the long anticipated launch. Somehow though it has been difficult to relay in words what happened on Wednesday night. Perhaps because while it was a major climatic event for us, it was also just the beginning of long term relationship with the youth of Canyon County. It felt like the race that you train and train for and then once you finally get to the starting line you still have 30 miles to run. It was amazing to get here to this point of starting to run though. As I sat in the theatre and looked around at the youth around us, I found myself thinking about how grateful I was to be in that very position on Wednesday night. It wasn't the most perfect service ever, but I wouldn't have traded what we had in that moment for the most polished, trained team in the world. We have lots of places to grow and I found myself loving the symbolism between our young team and our relationships with the Lord; while it wasn't perfect, it was authentic and absolutely genuine!
Logistically we had 85 people show up for our launch. About 10 of those were parents who showed up to show their support, the rest were Jr High through Young Adults.
Trevin led our worship team, who were amazing for their first time leading a corporate service. Danny preached on becoming part of the NXT. He challenged our young people that they will be the next something, but it is their choice on what that next something is. Either they will be the next leaders of their generation in serving God or they will be the next drop outs or alcoholics or whatever. The young people responded amazingly. I really got a kick out of a few of them that went home and changed their My Space names to various forms of "Be the NXT". We also had a lot of opportunity to talk to people at the theatre who were just curious as to why all of us were there. We passed out a lot of touch cards for the church and youth ministry.
So here we go, we are setting in for the long haul. I can't explain how excited I am for this point. Thank you all who have been praying and supporting us from afar. Thanks especially to those who called or emailed us to encourage us this week. It has been so great to hear from all of you! We will continue to keep you updated and if you want to come and visit in person, we would love to have you!

Restoration

One of the major doctrines that churches in our stream carry is the doctrine of restoration. We believe that God is in the process of restoring to the church all the she had in the book of Acts and all that Jesus said she could have.

Our Pastor preached a great word this weekend on some specific things that God is restoring in light of this belief. I spent much of my prayer time this morning praying through this list and asking God to bring these things to our youth church as we launch tomorrow. I thought I'd share them with you all - pray through these and ask God to restore them to your local church as they were in the book of Acts.

1. Great unity

2. Prayer

3. Word foundation

4. Lordship

5. Relationship

6. Power of the Spirit

7. Judgment

8. Servants

9. Authority over evil

10. Spirit controlled government

11. Strong churches

12. Evangelists

13. Prophets

14. Teachers

15. Pastors

16. Elders

17. City wide revivals

18. Apostles

We're all ready for the launch of The NXT: tomorrow. We'll post in the next couple days to keep you all updated. God is moving!!

All Nighters and Reel Theatres

Happy Shake in the making: a happy meal blended to milkshake like texture.

Happy Shake being consumed while the rest of us tried not to vomit

2007 started with a youth all nighter for us. It was definitely an experience to remember! After 12 hours of lock in, it felt like we had been at camp all week with these young people. It is amazing what a little quality time does for relationship building. We had numerous testimonies of God opportunities that our youth staff had with students to talk with them, pray with them or just understand them better.
We were expecting a smaller night than our Christmas party because of New Year's options and the fact that we were locking them in a gym for 12 hours, however we had 19 new young people that we didn't have on the data base show up to hang out with us. They seem to be coming for all over the valley to find out what God is doing in this youth ministry that hasn't even really begun yet!
On that note, we heard from the Reel Theatre today that we are cleared to start renting a theatre from them starting on the 17th of this month! We are extremely excited! We are just waiting to hear about the rent prices before we confirm everything. So, we are two weeks out from the launch and have tons of stuff to wrap up before then. You can be praying for our sanity in these next few weeks and for supernatural wisdom in decision making.
In personal news, we had a great Christmas season with both sides of our family. And as some of you have already heard, we are expecting a sibling for David sometime around August of next year. We are pretty excited about that too! God has been so good to us throughout this whole move and transition in our lives that we are feeling overwhelmingly blessed right about now.