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Click right here to listen to/download the message from this week's IMPACT youth service.  Great kick-off to our series!
 
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You can listen to the message from this week's IMPACT youth service by clicking right here!  Comments/feedback welcome!
 
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You can listen to last night's IMPACT youth message by clicking right here.  Enjoy!
 
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We started a new series at IMPACT last night: FUEL.  Here's a run-down of the series, including each message!

::LENGTH
3 Weeks

::DIRECTION
The Christian life is filled with highs and lows, and sometimes it feels like your faith is running on empty.  BUT there are certain things we can do to fuel the fire for Christ in us.  During this series we’ll look at three ways to fan the flame and “gas up” for this journey called life.

::MESSAGES

Part 1: Remembering (Worship)
oMessage in a minute - When you feel like you’re running on empty, remember who God is, what He has done, and what He has promised to do.
oText - Psalm 42

Part 2: Reading (The Word) GUEST SPEAKER
oMessage in a minute - There is no fuel in this life quite like reading God’s Word – it is not just a source of information, but a catalyst for transformation.  Fill up on the Word!
oText - speaker’s choice.

Part 3: Reaching (Evangelism)
oMessage in a minute - Nothing will set you on fire and get you moving in your faith like reaching others for Christ.  It is one of, if not THE most exciting experience you’ll ever have - seeing someone you love come to Jesus!
oText - Acts 2
 
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I had a great conversation with a student last week that is on her way to Jesus.  In the conversation she kept coming back to the idea of good vs. bad.  "I'm mostly good, and I think God only punishes bad people."  "I know I do some bad stuff sometimes, but I'm a good person."  This is nothing new, but I found myself really desiring some different language to frame things in.  After all, at the end of the day, I don't think the Gospel is reducible to morals or "good vs. bad".

As we talked however, we got away from using those words, and made our way more towards two different words I think will forever replace good and bad in my spiritual vocabulary:

Broken and whole.

Because isn't the Gospel less about Jesus coming to make bad people good and more about His making broken people whole?  Don't you find that when you talk about sin and the human condition in terms of bad vs. good that we tend to put degrees on it and keep score of how's bad, worse, worst, good, better, and best?  When we get away from that though and start thinking of broken instead of bad, we realize that we're all inherently flawed (sin) and we're all in the same sinking boat, no scorecard needed.  And thinking of the work of God in our lives as a journey toward wholeness sounds so much more appealing to me than thinking of myself as getting better (because often what I really mean is "better than you").

I love learning as much if not more from students than they learn from me.  Going to wrestle with this some more and see what God is teaching me...
 
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I had the opportunity yesterday to preach the morning service at FBCCS.  I really enjoyed preparing for and delivering this message, and, as usual, I learned more studying and getting ready than I'm sure most people got out of it!

You can check it out by clicking right here.  I'd love to know what you think!

- Tim B.
 
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The news of Osama bin Laden's death and the subsequent discussion on how Christians should appropriately respond to it has DOMINATED the internet this week (at least the part I frequent), and I know that many youth workers are looking for ways to engage young people in discussion about how exactly we can respond in a godly way to the past week's events.

I'm using an inductive study and discussion format this week to discuss ObL's death, violence, justice, and God's heart with students.  Instead of having a "sermon" or message where I give only my perspective on the issue, I think it's important to involve students in the discussion and come to some "conclusions" (using that word loosely!) together.  Frankly, I'd be lying if I said I knew exactly how to feel about the whole thing.  But I embrace the opportunity to discuss, discern, and discover what it means to follow Christ well in the midst of what I think we'd all agree is a profound moment in our generation.

I'd love to share the study and discussion guide with you.

Here's the student sheet - use this at the front end of your discussion to get students thinking biblically about violence, justice, death, sin, etc.

Here's the discussion guide - use this to move your students through a discussion on the issues.

Let me know how it goes!

- Tim B.
 
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So I'm doing some digging through old files - specifically message and study notes - from the last 5 or 6 years, and I made a few interesting discoveries about my speaking/teaching.

#1 - How I use the Bible in messages has changed.  When I was younger I used the Bible as support for my points.  Most of my points were (luckily) Biblical, but I was starting with what I wanted to say and THEN bringing the Word in.  More recently the Bible has been my starting point, and I draw my points from the text.  The intelligent-sounding way to say this is I've become much more exegetical vs. isogetical in my preaching/speaking.

#2 - I've been talking about the same things for years.  It's kind of funny. I've been teaching on the same handful of topics for years, because I feel they are the most relevant to students.  They are:
- Who Jesus is, loving Him.
- The Bible, growing in your faith.
- Serving others.
- The importance of Christian community.
- Family.
- Sex/dating/relationships.
- Friendship.
- Being different (in a good way - see Rom. 12:2).

#3 - I'm at the point where I can stop writing messages.  Seriously.  I could just edit and reuse what I have now for the rest of my life.  Obviously I'm not going to do this, because my favorite part of YM is communicating God's truth to students in new and relevant ways, but it's nice to know that if things get crazy one week I've got a nice vault of stuff to pull from.

What about you?  Have you looked back through your archives lately?  What does your teaching/preaching history say about you?

- Tim B.
 
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So last Sunday night I gave a talk to the adults in our church called "Youth Culture: Challenges and Opportunities".  The message is a (brief) overview of 5 areas of youth culture - technology, pop culture, family, sexuality, and spirituality - and the challenges and opportunities for the church in each area.

I may have been a little overconfident in trying to cover this much content in such a short time, but received a lot of good feedback from some of our adult youth and children's ministry workers and parents and grandparents in the congregation.

If you want to listen to YC:C&C, click right here.  I'd love your feedback!

I'm hoping to take this material and share it with other churches and teams sometime in the future as well (contact me if you'd like me to do this seminar or one like it at your church!).

- Tim B.
 
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Wow!  The last few weeks have been a blur.  It seems like it's been one thing after another as our family has been through illness after illness (this week it's chicken pox with Grayson!) and at the same time ministry and church life chug ahead at full steam.

I did want to take a second and talk about a great opportunity I had last weekend.  I spoke at a youth retreat called "Remade" at a Great Wolf Lodge north of Cincinnati for a group of about 35 middle and high school students.

It was a super-short (less than 24 hours for me) but fantastic experience.  I spoke at three sessions (Friday night, Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon) on the idea/topic of God's desire to remake our hearts and our lives.  The sessions looked like this:

#1 - We are broken.  Romans 3:9-18.  Focus on our need to be remade.

#2 - We can't fix ourselves.  Mark 10:17-22.  Focus on the foolishness of the question "what can I do" to be remade and our inability to fix ourselves.

#3 - Jesus can and wants to remake us.  2 Corinthians 5:16-17.  Focus on the only true way to be remade - in Christ.  Special emphasis on not just God's ability to remake us but His desire to do so.  Only a great love for us can explain that.

Worship was great - led by Isaac Pitman from Apex in Dayton, Ohio - and I think one of the big strengths of the weekend was how well the theme came together, from music to media to message.

It was a lot of fun, and I look forward to adapting the sessions in to a series here at FBCCS soon.  I'll share with you what comes out of that on here!

- Tim B.