Tim Weston

Friday evening, I had the good fortunate of attending The Altar & The Door Tour at Hersheypark Arena featuring Casting Crowns, Leeland and John Waller.

The concert was over three hours long (including two brief intermissions), with John Waller performing for about 20 minutes and Leeland for about 45 minutes. That left two full hours for Casting Crowns to play some of their greatest hits. I wish I’d kept track of their set list because there were a few songs I wasn’t very familiar with that I really liked.

If any of these artists comes back to the area, I’m definitely going to check them out. In fact, I kind of wish I’d been to their tour stop in State College a few weeks back. Fortunately, Leeland will be performing at Creation Festival this summer so I’ll get to see them again in just a few months.

If you’d like to see some photos from the concert, I have a bunch posted on Facebook (you don’t need to be a member to view them).

I spent much of last week at a conference in Washington, D.C. with a bunch of coworkers (hence the lack of posts). Each year, on the last night of the conference there’s a “Be True To Your School” party where attendees are invited to wear school clothing/colors and hang out with others. There’s music, a cash bar and lots of fun activities; last year they had pinball and arcade games set up around the ballroom, as well as other activities.

This year, one of the activities was a green screen interactive video called PopNoggins. Somewhat surprisingly, there were six people from SU, including myself, who were interested in taking part in this fun activity. We were allowed to choose a song and then the guy running the computer added character bodies and, well, it’s probably easier if you check it out for yourself.

I came across this interesting test over at ysmarko and thought I’d post it here to share with others.

In 2m 1s

Click here to Play

Tonight I finished reading another book that Josh Griffin recommended, The Blogging Church by Brian Bailey and Terry Storch.

While I thought the book was great and very informative, I didn’t get quite as much out of it as Josh did, perhaps because the book really needs to be in the hands of other members of my congregation.

The reason I purchased the book wasn’t to learn about blogging (an aspect of the book in which the authors cover quite well in extensive detail) but instead to learn what benefits a blog has to offer a church.  As it turns out, there are far more benefits than I realized.

The first, and perhaps most obvious, benefit of a church blog is that it can share news about the congregation.  From stories about recent and upcoming events, to testimonies and stories of life change, to ministry news and the weekend message, there’s lots of information about a church that needs to be disseminated to current and prospective members.  A blog serves as a quick, easy and inexpensive means of distribution.

Second, a blog can cast the vision of a church.  Instead of simply posting the church’s vision and mission statement (which should be done anyway), a blog can help define the congregation’s identity.  It can also help answer questions raised by parishioners and explain why the church does the things it does.

Finally, and perhaps most important, having a blog can help a church reach out to others.  This process begins by starting conversations and extends further by helping to develop relationships and, eventually, build community.

I’m going to recommend this book to my Pastor and Directory of Lay Ministries and see what they think about using a blog as a communications tool.  If implemented and used correctly, I think a blog could be a tremendous asset to my congregation.

At this week’s Bible study with The Gap, we spoke briefly about how we have grown/regressed spiritually over the past year.  That got me thinking: how do you measure spiritual growth?  I’d never really thought about that before and now I’m wondering how, if at all, I’ve grown spirituallly throughout the past year.I’m interested in learning how others determine/measure whether or not they’ve grown spiritual from one point in their life to another.  Hopefully some of you will post comments from which I can glean some ideas.

Earlier this week, I came across a WordPress theme on Weblog Tools Collection called StudioPress by DailyBlogTips.  I really liked the design and layout, so I installed it and did some tweaking to make sure things would look good on my site before going live (thanks Ryan Boren for the Preview Theme plugin!).

If you notice any oddities/bugs while reading my blog, please leave a comment on this post so I can investigate and hopefully fix the problem.  Thanks!

Because the 30 Hour Famine was canceled, I had the opportunity to attend an event sponsored by the UMC’s Central Pennsylvania Conference called Creating Worship With Deep Soul. The six hour event was hosted at Christ Community United Methodist Church and led by Marcia McFee.

While the six members of my congregation who attended gleaned some information, it seemed like the session was focused primarily on how to integrate “contemporary” worship ideas/tools into a church’s weekly services. Unfortunately, the discussion on worship design teams (the topic my colleagues wanted to learn about most) was barely discussed as Ms. McFee ran out of time.

There were a number of interesting things I learned, though (primarily because I’m not part of my congregation’s worship design team):

• Whatever we do for worship, it must be spirit-filled and meet peoples’ yearning to be touched.
• Worship with integrity is engaging, elicits a response and causes worshipers to be changed. It also offers something for people in each of the eight categories of multiple intelligence.
• If we don’t witness various perspectives of our worship services, it is direct evidence to the dominance of a few.

The last bullet really caught by attention. No matter how many people are on a church’s worship design team, unless we’re reaching out to others and asking for their opinions on their worship needs, we aren’t doing enough to make sure worship is changing peoples’ lives.  After all, isn’t that what worshiping God is all about?

For the past three or four years, Christ UMC’s youth group, The Gathering, has participated in World Vision’s 30 Hour Famine (read about the 2007 30 Hour Famine).

Earlier today, I had to make a difficult, disappointing decision: I had to cancel this weekend’s 30 Hour Famine. The weather forecast called for four to seven inches of snow, eventually turning into sleet and freezing rain, so I called my pastor and spoke with him about the situation.

He said the only other events at the church tonight were Celebrate Recovery and AA, but that they make up their own minds as to whether or not they cancel an event. We discussed how some of the youth would have to travel a fair distance to get here (two of our students live about 30 minutes away), how we didn’t think driving the youth around town for the morning’s pantry raid was a good idea, and the fact that there were only going to be two leaders there as one of them had to work over the weekend.

After a few minutes of talking, we both agreed that canceling (or perhaps postponing–we haven’t decided yet) the event was, unfortunately, our best option. I thanked him for his time and guidance and then called the other leader. I explained the discussion and she agreed that it was probably for the best. I asked that she call one of the youth (her boyfriend/fiancé’s son) as well as those who were scheduled to prepare Saturday evening’s meal.

Finally, I called all of the youth (which was easy, as all schools in the area were closed today) and told them the plans. While some sounded indifferent about the cancellation (after all, that meant they’d be able to eat food today and tomorrow), there were a couple students who were really disappointed and asked if we were going to reschedule. I explained that such a decision hadn’t been made but they would be the first to know once it had.

I hope we can find a weekend sometime this spring when we can hold this event, but I’m not counting on it. Most people (including myself) already have their weekends planned for quite some time, so I’m guessing it will prove quite difficult. On a positive note, the money the youth raised will still go to help feed those who are less fortunate, so even if we can’t hold the event, the youth will have made a difference in the lives of others, which is what the event is really all about.

A couple days ago, I finished reading Max Lucado’s 3:16: The Numbers of Hope. I’d heard lots of rave reviews about Lucado’s books, but this is the first one I’ve gotten around to reading. The book stood out to me in a display at Barnes & Noble during my Christmas and New Year’s vacation: the reference to the famous verse in the Gospel of John takes up nearly the entire front cover with two nails serving as the two dots of the colon.The book is broken down into twelve chapters, each of them focusing on a portion of John 3:16:

¹⁶“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life…”

Lucado does a fantastic job summarizing the scripture in the first few pages of the book:

A twenty-six-word parade of hope: beginning with God, ending with life, and urging us to do the same. Brief enough to write on a napkin or memorize in a moment, yet solid enough to weather two thousand years of storms and questions. If you know nothing about the Bible, start here. If you know everything about the Bible, return here. We all need the reminder. The heart of the human problem is the heart of the human. And God’s treatment is prescribed in John 3:16.

He really hits the nail on the head here. If you’ve just discovered the amazing story that is the Holy Bible, John 3:16 can serve as a CliffsNotes synopsis. On the other hand, if you’ve read the Bible for years, John 3:16 is a great compass that can put us back on track.

There are countless passages in 3:16: The Numbers of Hope that caught my attention and made remember that Christ is truly the center of all things. I’d love to quote all of them here, but that wouldn’t give you much reason to buy the book and read it yourself, would it? I highly recommend this book for everyone with the slightest interest in Jesus and Christianity; it will either put things in a brand new light or reaffirm things you learned long ago but have since fallen out of focus.

I want to take a minute to say that the Pastor and the Director of Lay Ministries at my church are awesome people who do an excellent job working with volunteers.  I’m certain that they are doing what God has called them to do: making a difference in people’s lives and guiding them to Jesus.

Pastor Larry and Jaime, if you read my blog, thanks for all that you do for me and other volunteers at  Christ UMC!