Today a new Pope was elected and interestingly I saw some rather painful posts on Facebook. Yes, there are many making fun for various reason but those are not the ones that were painful to me. It is the “Evangelical Christians” I see making comments about how Catholics are idolators and deify the Pope and just how sad all of that is.

I’d like to take a moment to thank my RCC friends for taking time to remedy my own ignorance on these issues. See, there was a time that I would have probably joined in, but I’ve learned some interesting things by taking time to ask people who I respect.

I do not have hundreds of Catholic friends. Maybe half a dozen would consider me a friend. They have been very good at answering my questions though. See, I believe that the cure for ignorance is a question. When I was born I knew nothing, then I began to learn by observation until I was able to ask my first question. I do not know what that question was but through school I tended to impress my teachers, not by the answers I had but by my questions.

Eventually I developed this saying, “The only stupid question is the question not asked.”

It seems that some people would rather say things in ignorance on the hope that they are right based on their perceptions. That is fine, but maybe I can help you a bit by asking some of the questions you may be wondering.

To my Catholic friends, please chime in with a comment if I get any of this wrong. I have to defer to your authority on your own beliefs.

Do Catholics worship the Pope and the Saints?

That is a really good question. I was actually taught that they do, but one day I was having lunch with a good Catholic brother and flat out asked him about this. It turns out they do no.

The term most Catholics will use (providing that it is translated into English because most Catholics are not English speaking) is “Venerate.” Now you might think this is splitting hairs, but it is a very important distinction, and to be honest it is one we tend to automatically apply when it comes to our own practices.

It turns out that we elevate certain Christians in a somewhat similar way. For some people it is their local pastor, or that elderly saint who can pray down fire (almost literally). Huge crowds of Christians will venerate someone like Tim Tebow or Billy Graham. They can literally fill a stadium.

We instinctively recognize that our relationship with those people is not worship. We do not believe them to be divine, though we are often shocked when we see they are human. A good example would be Jimmy Swaggart. When he fell from grace it was huge.

So that is the difference between worshiping the pope and venerating the pope.

Ok, but don’t they pray to the pope and saints? We don’t pray to Tim Tebow

See, you guys have some great questions. To be honest I had to ask this as a follow up to my first question too. I mean think about it, if you pray to someone you are clearly one breath away from worshiping them aren’t you?

My friend took time to explain the concept to me though. See, when I pray to God I am asking Him to move in a situation. If I have a sick kid I ask Him to heal the kid or at least let us all get some rest, right?

When a Catholic person prays to Mary or some other saint, it isn’t really to get that person to meet the need. Weird right?

Well, maybe not. See if I have a sick kid I might call my pastor (actually I’d end up talking to his wife) and ask them to agree with me in prayer. In short I’m asking them to take my need before God. That is what a Catholic is doing, they are asking the saint to ask God to move in a specific situation.

Now, I’m not arguing that this is something that is exactly required or even helpful. For me the jury is still out, but I have to admit, it is not exactly the same as what I thought it was.

Other Questions

I’d like to post some more on this issue. What other questions might you have? I’ve asked quite a few things but I’m over 700 words already so I’ll get to them later. Let me know in the comments and I’ll either answer from what I learned by asking or I’ll pester my Catholic friends about the question if I haven’t already asked.

Just updated my blog theme. I kept some of the features from the old theme but added a much lighter color scheme, which I think is easier on the eyes, and I added the masonry script and some other little extras. I hope everyone likes it.

The kids built a blanket fort in the closet then asked to have a sleep over. The boys are sharing the big bed and the girls get to camp out in the closet in their blanket fort. I have to admit they did a pretty good job considering there was no adult help at all. In fact, the 4 year old apparently worked out a lot of it himself before the other kids got involved.

If you can dodge a wrench you can dodge a ball and if you can count to 10 you can try to count how many times two dogs jumped in a video clip.

The Dodge Ball version was much funnier after editing but the video trivia challenge would have added a whole new element to the movie.

I have been wanting a projector for the youth building for years. About 5 years to be exact. That is how long I have been in this ministry position. I was approved to purchase one but it isn’t like I had the money in the budget. At the end of 2012 the Youth helped with our Royal Rangers tree sales and I got a pretty good payment into the department for some much needed/desired things. I set aside some money for camp scholarships, paid for the giant bounce house I bought at the end of November 2012 (that is another story), and finally bought that new projector.

Of course, now that I have a projector instead of having to beg every time I want to use one, I will be trying to come up with every excuse to use it as often as possible.

A Legend is Born

After testing the new projector I started trying to come up with ideas. I went through video illustrations for the sermon series I’m doing, but honestly, I’ve done that and it just didn’t seem like the right way to celebrate the blessing of a new projector. Then it hit me, to celebrate we should have fun. So I started planning a game.

My good friend Google didn’t let me down. At first I was going to buy a video trivia game but ended up finding the site Rivvid on my first Google search. The concept was perfect. Basically people make a quiz that they share. There is a short video clip followed by a multiple choice question with a count down timer. The question might be about the clip or it may require knowledge of the subject.

There are quite a few categories to choose from and most categories have multiple quizzes already made. Personally I loved the 80s movie trivia and to be honest my students did better than I expected they would in that quiz.

Trivia is not enough

Well, it might have been. The students had a blast just doing the trivia portion, but it isn’t enough for me because I like overkill. When playing Madden I alway take the 2pt conversion because why settle for 1 when you can have 2 right?

I figured the more active students would want something they could do rather than just watching someone answer questions, so I added a physical element, dodgeball.

Rules for Video Trivia DodgeBall

• Students take turns as contestants
• Students take turns as “bouncers” (the ones throwing the ball)
• The contestant picks a category then a quiz
• Everyone watches the video clip and the student has one chance to answer correctly
• If they answer correctly they get a point
• If they answer incorrectly the bouncers throw dodge balls at them
• If the contestant catches a ball they get a point
• If the contestant gets hit they are out for that question
• If the contestant dodges all of the balls they get a point
• But hurry because there are no pauses between questions and the next video

The most important part is to really ham it up as the “game show host.” Work on the voice, keep the energy very high, and keep asking things like “is that your final answer” and “are you sure you wouldn’t like to change your answer” while the clock is counting down. I was able to select their answer as the clock hit “1″ one several occasions.

Additional Notes

I went through quite a few videos. I did come across one that had some inappropriate language. So be warned, you should review as many videos as possible. The one I caught was in the teen category. I tried to find it so I could share incase you wanted to know just how “bad” it was and if you needed to skip it or not but I couldn’t even find the category, so it might have been removed.

During the “physical challenge” things need to move pretty quickly. I had three students with dodge balls and gave them each one chance during that particular question. This means the person throwing could catch 3 balls and get 3 extra points. If a student got a point by catching a ball but then got hit I let them keep their point. After throwing I had the “bouncers” retrieve the balls quickly so they would be ready after the next question was answered. In some cases that was actually pretty funny because they would be rushing around trying to find a ball that had rolled under someone else’s seat.

I think the dodgeball addition was a lot of fun and I’ll probably do that most of the time because more students can be involved, but I am also thinking of other physical challenges I can introduce. Maybe a point multiplier where students have to stack cookies on their forehead then if they can answer while the cookies are still stacked they get that many extra points.

If you have other ideas for additional physical challenges or point modifiers leave a comment.

I make a cameo with part of my youth around the 45 second mark.

The previous album, Healing of Harms, was full of haunting melodies, quite different from previous work. I truly enjoyed the progression, but it seemed like a different group. Now, on the other hand, sounds like 10 extra tracks were made for Unbreakable. Some of the songs are so similar I had to listen to them back to back to know for sure it was a different song.

Overall I think this is a good collection of songs from a band I really love, but while I’d give Unbreakable 8 or 9 out of 10 I can only give this about 7, maybe 8 out of 10. I love the sound, but it is just too much like their previous work with little sense of growth and change. Bands that hold too much to their classics (if you can call 4 years ago classic) might make some fans happy, but I think they lose something for lack of dynamic growth.

That said, if you like rock with a female lead (such as Flyleaf or Paramore) then give Now by Fireflight a chance.

I opened with Tamar, who wasn’t a Jew, who lost 2 husbands and lost hope in the promised marriage. She took matters into her own hands and posed as a prostitute to get what was owed to her. We learned that sometimes people in teh church will give us lip service, claiming that we belong, but treating us like we don’t. We also learned that God never gives us lip service, and will bring us honor even if everyone else puts us into a place of dishonor.

The following week we learned there are a lot of prostitutes in the Christ family tree (ok, maybe not a lot but the first one pretend to be one and the second one was one, so it sure seems like a lot). Rahab probably didn’t grow up with great plans on how she was going to sell her body, but for what ever reason that is the path she ended up walking down. Then one day she got some customers that didn’t fit the mold. She was certainly full of fear, but she also had hope, probably for the first time in years. Over the course of several days she probably had some seriously mixed emotions. She betrayed her people in the hope that the spies would keep their word. Would they save her? Would she go from bad to worse or would things get better? She was an outsider, not part of the invading army she was trusting. Would they leave her and her family to starve? In the end she marries a war hero and lives happily ever after. God saw her in her brokenness and shame and saw fit to lift her up.

Last week we talked about Ruth, who’s life took a terrible turn through no fault of her own. Her sister in law went back to her old life and her mother in law found nothing but misery in the pain of her loss, going to far as to name herself “bitter.” God redeemed Ruth for her faithfulness in tending to her mother-in-law.

This week we will talk about Bathsheba. She also experienced loss, and more likely than not a good deal of shame and judgement. Even now she is judged. Was she trying to show off her body for the king and trap him with her womanly ways or was she forced into a no win situation by the most powerful man in the land, one clearly favored by God? How often do bad things happen because good people over step their bounds and how often do the victims get painted in the light of accusation? Fortunately we have a God who sees all and desires grace for the victims.

What a wild and crazy family tree, but we know that Christ didn’t come for the perfect, he came for the broken.

I had some free time today so I decided to finally get to that project where I convert my personal blog over to the same theme I’m using on my Designs By site. When Tapestry came out (the theme y blog was built around) I thought it was amazing, and Streamline 2.0 is the first theme to come along that looks better as far as I’m concerned.

From a visual perspective I changed very little, but I did import all of those new post format features I had setup last fall. So this has all teh amazing looks of Streamline 2.0 with the Tumblog functionality I want. I’ll probably have some more work to do, but till then, what do you think?

From there I got into WordPress development and this in turn created a living for myself. It has been a crazy 4 years but I’ve never met Jon, even though I’m listing in the thanks section at the end of the Stuff Christians Like book.

When I saw that Jon was a keynote speaker at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference that I had already planned on attending, I knew I had to stalk him.

If you somehow know this blog separate from SCL then you may not be aware of the posts in which Jon talked about Skittles, and his first meet up which was terribly unsuccessful despite having brought a huge bag of Skittles to share.

There is a lot more back story there but the important part is that I went and bought a big bag of Skittles. Then at 5:30 am I left the bags n my desk. So I had to spend time after I left hunting down Skittles.

Eventually I got some based on a twitter tip and successfully hunted down Jon to give him his Skittles, talk for a few minutes and get a signature in the SCL book.

So, I know you are looking for tips on how to successfully stalk Christian thousandairs. Here is how I did it.

First, get to know them before they become a wildly famous Christian thousandair.
Then tweet them before an event letting them know you plan on stalking them. You might desire to skip this step, but it makes the last step much easier.
Wait for them to tweet back where they will be so you can stalk them.

If you follow these three easy steps you can stalk a Christian thousandair too.

Have you stalked anyone? How did that work for you?

We had the “Winter is over games” and for the opening ceremony I used my t-shirt cannon. Several of the students had never seen it before, so that was a treat. I launched over 30 glow sticks about 40′ into the air. It was pretty impressive. Then the opening game was a snowman building competition, but we have had a really crappy winter (actually really good because I hate cold and snow) so we had to make due. First everyone had to wear gloves, because you can’t build a snowman without gloved, then I gave them a box of instant mashed potatoes, and some candy for decorations. I have to admit, they did a really good job.

Then we had a bob sled competition. Basically I setup an obstacle course in the youth building and gave the teams a big flat piece of cardboard. One person sat on the cardboard and had to be pulled/pushed around the obstacle course. If they crossed any of the lines or otherwise “wrecked” I stopped them for a couple seconds. One person totally missed a turn when they were way in the lead in the first lap, and the reset cost them dearly.

Finally we had a bunch of boxes. I let the winner pick a spot in the room and 3 boxes. I didn’t say why. Then the other team got to pick their boxes. Then I let them in on the rules. They were building an igloo and could use the boxes they picked, then could go get one box at a time and place that box, and only then could they go get another box. Boxes could be moved, but only when the whole team was there, when someone went to get a new box everyone had to leave the igloo alone.

In the end we had a lot of fun, but had a good deal of instant mashed potatoes left over. Turns out that makes some pretty good snowballs. I’m kind of hoping the evidence isn’t in the parking lot come Sunday.