I’m not much of a graphic designer but I think it looks pretty good. I’m all about minimalism as you can probably tell from the websites I’ve made, so this cover art is in keeping with what I value in good web design.

Subscribe and Review

You can help me out in two ways.

1. You can subscribe to my podcast, either through iTunes or your favorite RSS reader.
2. You can review my podcast. It doesn’t have to be anything huge, just a rating (between one and five stars) and a little blurb to go with it. You can write your review in iTunes, either in the desktop program or the mobile app.

The Monday Monologue Podcast: Now Available on iTunes was originally published on Andrew Ledwith's blog.
© 2004-2011 Andrew Ledwith. All rights reserved.

Deliberating the Future of my Facebook Presence was originally published on Andrew Ledwith's blog.
© 2004-2011 Andrew Ledwith. All rights reserved.

First a few of our guys in the FSU Navigators made a video inviting the ladies in the ministry to the annual Valentine’s Banquet, called Stuff Nav Guys Say. So, naturally, the men created Stuff Nav Girls Say and played it at the banquet itself. Once again, there’s a lot of inside jokes that only our Navs will understand but it’s still a fun video. Well, I think it’s a fun video. I’m not sure how the women felt about it.

Stuff Nav Girls Say was originally published on Andrew Ledwith's blog.
© 2004-2011 Andrew Ledwith. All rights reserved.

Lionel Worthington is back and better than ever in the fourth installment of Campus Safari. My roommate Zack reprised his role as the awareness avenger. This time he’s advocating alcohol safety. Once again the short film was directed by Bryan Zhang.

Almost everyone else who had a hand in making this film is a friend of mine. Rachel plays the startled woman enduring Lionel’s lesson. Clint is her on-screen and real-life boyfriend. Patrick returns as the man in charge of cinematography.

I was hoping we hadn’t seen the last of Campus Safari. Only three episodes were produced for the Breathe Easy Initiative (plus one special edition film). I’m now expecting many more.

And just because I like embarrassing Zack, here’s a quick video of Zack starting to lose his mind between takes. (You may not be able to view it due to the privacy settings of its owner. Sorry about that.)

The Revenge of Lionel Worthington was originally published on Andrew Ledwith's blog.
© 2004-2011 Andrew Ledwith. All rights reserved.

The audio quality on this episode is much better because I used Quicktime instead of my iPhone. I should probably do that more often.

Links from this episode:

• The surprise party was for my roommate Zack.
• On this day two years ago Joe moved out of Camp Special.
• Back when Joe got married I had a little fun with one of his wedding photos
• You can always check out the FSU Navigators Podcast. I specifically mentioned my two messages on idolatry and the three messages from Ignite 2012.
• Matthew 7:1-6, the passage that helps inform my blogging policy.

Risky Business was originally published on Andrew Ledwith's blog.
© 2004-2011 Andrew Ledwith. All rights reserved.

Kyle Hettema at Torreya State Park.

Feats of Daring: Kyle Hettema was originally published on Andrew Ledwith's blog.
© 2004-2011 Andrew Ledwith. All rights reserved.

To get the ladies of the FSU Navigators excited about the upcoming Valentine’s Banquet a few of the guys made a fun video lampooning some of the things the typical Nav guy says and does. Yeah, there’s a lot of inside jokes specific to the current students, but anyone who’s ever been around a collegiate Navs ministry will see things they recognize.

The same guys also created Stuff Nav Girls Say, a video they played at the banquet itself.

Stuff Nav Guys Say was originally published on Andrew Ledwith's blog.
© 2004-2011 Andrew Ledwith. All rights reserved.

Messages from Ignite 2012 was originally published on Andrew Ledwith's blog.
© 2004-2011 Andrew Ledwith. All rights reserved.

You can listen to both messages online (embedded below) plus even more messages by me, other staff, and our student leaders on the FSU Navigators Podcast.

When to Say What?

I wanted to teach a message series so badly because I wanted a new challenge. Before this I’d taught at Nav Night twelve times and led workshops at conferences and retreats four times, but never before had I ever taught consecutive weeks or a series of any kind. If I’m going to grow as a teacher I need to stretch myself from time to time.

My first challenge was to determine what I wanted the focus for each week to be. But in order to do that I needed to figure out how best to divide the source material I had to work with. And even that meant I needed to decide what was worth keeping in the mix and what wasn’t. But how could I tell the difference if I didn’t first know what the focus for each week was going to be? I might sound like I’m just trying to be funny but I really did manage to think myself into a circle more often than I want to admit.

I finally decided to leverage the fact that I had two weeks to work with. The first week I chose to give a straightforward biblical definition on the subject. Week two I built on that foundation by looking at a specific Old Testament example.

Too Good to Resist

There were all sorts of passages in the Old Testament I could have chosen to focus on in the second message, but I just had to teach Haggai. Call it the Holy Spirit, call it my never-ending desire to do the unexpected; I couldn’t say no. It was a perfect fit too. Not only does the book address a very real issue our culture is caught in today but it’s a short, relatively self-contained book. My fear in choosing a book like Jeremiah, pulling one selection here and another there, was that I’d spend half my time filling in the narrative hoping each student was able to keep up. But once you set up a little bit of the history behind Haggai it’s actually pretty easy to follow from there.

Sources

One of my primary sources was my journals. I went back through them–literally hundreds of pages–and found when I’d been most impacted by what I’d read that day about idolatry. What I found to be important at the time I tried to use as a guide for what I’d make important in these messages.

Bob Thune’s article, Every Sin is Idolatry, was very helpful. Thune directed my attention to the need for discussions about a person’s idols to take place within the context of our discipleship relationships. Since discipleship is what the Navigators major in I thought it was a necessary point to raise. He also quite succinctly put that when pride is your idol you’ve made yourself your own god, which I used as a summary thesis statement for the second message.

I used the article Suffering Does Not Rob You Of Joy—Idolatry Does by Tullian Tchividjian to shape out a major point of emphasis in the first message. He uses Job 1-2 to prove that when you have your identity rooted in something other than your stuff you’re able to react to suffering and loss in a God-honoring way, that any other kind of reaction likely points to an idol in your life. This is also where I stumbled across the quote by Paul Tripp that I used at the end of that talk. “How is your present disappointment, discouragement, or grief a window on what has actually captured your heart?” I found it oddly convenient to come across an appropriate quote from Tripp since he’d spoken at a marriage conference in town just six weeks prior that many of our students and staff had attended.

The introductory challenge from my message on Haggai was adapted from a similar challenge Francis Chan gave in a message of his I watched a while back. It really resonated with me, especially since I’d been getting the kind of feedback he was describing. Often I wonder if anyone, myself included, really applies much of what we hear in a message we deem “great,” “convicting” or whatever other superlative we assign it. I really do hope someone comes to me later in the semester and tells me how they applied something I taught in one of these talks.

To get a strong foundational understand of the history leading up to and during the time of Haggai I read the appropriate volume of Holman’s Old Testament Commentary.

Last, the comparison between Luke 14:26 and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet was lifted from a talk given by Donald Miller entitled Your Story and the Gospel of Jesus. He wasn’t making exactly the same point I was, but the allegory worked for both of us.

Obscure Reference

You can’t hear it very well in the recording, but approximately eight minutes into the second message I make the following statements, as if having a conversation with myself.

“Haggai? Who reads Haggai?!”
“Christians do.”

This was inspired by a tweet I’d read last spring by Erik Braun, pastor of Four Oaks Community Church.

At LifeWay- buying a book on Minor Prophets. Cashier: ‘Obadiah. Who reads Obadiah?’ Me: ‘Christians!’ gotta love them Evangelyfish zombies.

— Erik Braun (@erikbraun) May 21, 2011

What I’ll Remember

The reason this subject seemed to jump off the pages of my Bible as I read through the Old Testament last year is because God was revealing some serious idols in my life. Like I said toward the end of the first talk, idolatry is a love story. And when your lover breaks your heart it can be very difficult to get over. It was both cathartic and haunting to go back through my old journals. The man I saw in those pages was someone I didn’t recognize, full of confusion and bitterness and pain. God has brought me a long way. I’ve closed the book on some of those issues, others are still hounding me. It’s my sincere hope that something–anything–I said in these two messages helped prevent even just one person from going through what I did.

An unbelievably strong sense of dread came over me before the start of my second talk. It was all I could do not to come apart at the seams. I paced up and down the second floor of HCB all the way up through the middle of the last praise song before I started teaching. I always get a little nervous before something like this but this wasn’t nerves. I’ve never had that strong a sense of oppression leading up to teaching before.

Lots of friends who either were never Navs or who haven’t been active in a Nav ministry in years came out to support me. It was great having my newest roommate Peter in attendance at the second talk, both because he’s so busy as a film student and because I got to share one of my passions with him for the first time. To all of you who took time out of your busy lives to cheer me on you have my deepest gratitude. You humble me with your presence.

Feedback

If you were at Nav Night when I gave these messages (or if you listen to the first and second talks online) and would like to give feedback or ask questions you can do so in the comment section below.

This post is part of my ongoing post series, Nav Night Messages. In these posts I highlight the content and writing process of the messages I teach for The Navigators at Florida State University.

Nav Night Message Series on Idolatry was originally published on Andrew Ledwith's blog.
© 2004-2011 Andrew Ledwith. All rights reserved.

My roommate Zack just celebrated his 26th birthday yesterday. My friend Tyler and I put together a surprise birthday party for him. Zack is a total health nut and would never eat an actual cake. So in an effort to honor him on his birthday we put a bunch of broccoli in a baking pan, then stuck 26 candles in it. He couldn’t stop laughing.

Photo by Bryan Zhang.

Zack’s Broccoli Birthday Cake was originally published on Andrew Ledwith's blog.
© 2004-2011 Andrew Ledwith. All rights reserved.