Youth Bible School 2009… what a blessing, what an opportunity!  661 young people gathered together listening to sound Biblical teaching for an entire week.

What did we learn?

From David Janzen’s messages on Studies in the doctrine of Faith we looked back through the annals of time and reviewed the lives of several men and women of faith mentioned in Hebrews 11. We explored the reason for their faith and how the same power that upheld them during times of extreme persecution and hardship can be ours, thousands of years later. Out of these sessions, David’s graphic description of Noah’s faithfulness in building the ark over a 120 year period, will remain etched in my memory for a long time.

Dean Taylor spoke on the familiar theme, What Would Jesus Do? Standing in front of the crowded auditorium, he grabbed a can of spray paint and wrote on a white cloth-covered stand, “What if Jesus really meant Every word that He Said?” This remained the theme for his messages during the rest of the week as he explored areas of Jesus’ teachings that are often overlooked by the broader evangelical church community.

John D. Martin’s sessions on Seeking God’s Kingdom, was for me a culmination of many of John D.’s previous messages on Kindom living. He told several familiar stories as well as some that I hadn’t heard to illustrate the vision that Jesus left us on how we are to live our lives as Kingdom citizens.

The evening revival services, conducted by Leonard Guenther, John Ray Nolt, and Mark Brubaker, were times of soul searching and repentance. Several young people turned over their lives to Jesus and found glorious victory over sin after these evening messages.

I am amazed each year at how Earl Fox, the chorus director, is able to get 600+ young people to sing together in four part harmony for Sunday evening’s Youth Choral Program. Added to that the controversial removal of one of the song selections midway through the week, and one can only attribute the strength, patience and wisdom of this man to God.

Prayer and Sharing was a highlight to me this year as nine of us young men shared our thoughts and poured out our hearts to our Savior and Lord. Youth Testimonies were similar as several young people shared about God’s work in their lives to a broader audience. Both of these times are so necessary in Bible School as they deal with areas in life “where the ruber meets the road” as it were.

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I took several photos this year which you can view at the password protected link below. Also included in this album are the group photos that were taken by Roger Weaver.

Link to Album
Username: guest
Password: (first word lower-case of first song in chorus book)

The concern that I have… is not first and foremost that we will fall into some great scandalous sin. My greatest concern for us is that our spiritual passion and zeal for Jesus Christ will be drowned in triviality. That our love for the Savior and our service for His kingdom will grow cold as we waste our lives on a million different allowable, permissable, absolutely inconsequential pursuits. And all the while, all around us there’s a spiritual battle to be fought, and there’s Gospel Truth to be gloried in, and there are souls to be won for Christ, and there are churches to be built, and there are nations to be won for Christ, and children to be discipled and hurting people all around us who are dying in their addictions…  Are we going to be Salt and Light?

My brother and I recently visited Seattle’s landmark, the Space Needle.  You can view more snapshots that I took during our visit HERE.

Charity Ministries will be hosting their annual Youth Bible School running from November 2nd to November 8th this year.  Registration is now open to any single young people aged 16-28 who are serious about their walk with God and would like to be immersed in good Bible teaching for an entire week. This event is sponsored by Charity Christian Fellowship and Ephrata Christian Fellowship located in Leola and Ephrata, Pennsylvania.

From the application form:

We are providing this Bible School for young people who are serious about their walk with God. We intend to provide an atmosphere of spirituality and discourage worldliness and carnality. We are not expecting everyone to be at the same place in their walk with Christ. However, we do expect students to be willing to be taught and guided in their walk with Him.

Our mission and purpose is threefold:

• To give the youth a week of concentrated Bible teaching
• To stimulate them to a closer walk with Christ and a deeper commitment to Him
• To provide an opportunity for them to fellowship with other like-minded youth

The speakers this year will be David Janzen, Dean Taylor, John D. Martin, Leonard Guenther, and Mose Stoltzfus.  As usual, Earl Fox will be the chorus director. There will be three sessions each day beginning at 8:50 AM, as well as a time for prayer and sharing in the afternoon. Revival meetings will be held for several of the evenings when the church people and community are welcome to come.  Lunch and supper is provided.  Housing will be provided through church families.  Of course, space is limited and applications are accepted in the order they are received.

To apply online or download a mail-in application form go to the Youth Bible School Announcement on Charity Ministries’ website.

See you there!

I was with a group of young people on Tuesday trying to learn a new song and no one happened to have a pitch pipe along. That steel cookie just doesn’t always make it into our pockets along side the requisite wallet, mobile phone and keys. So we stumbled along and made do without it for the duration of our song learning efforts.

Later, I got to thinking about how if we could just use our cell phone’s ability to play audio and use a pre-recorded set of auditory pitches, we wouldn’t ever have that problem again, since most people always have their cell phone with them. So I went hunting online to find something of that nature that would work for our future music endeavors. I came across the Online Pitch Pipe and figured the MP3’s found on that page would be just the ticket.  Unfortunately, they are no longer available, but thanks to our friends over at the Internet Archive and their Wayback Machine, I was able to download the files from the 2005 version of the website.  I have linked to them below in a zipped folder which you may freely download and unzip before loading them on your cellphone.  Now before anyone argues that the sound from a genuine free reed aerophone is far superior than the sound of an electronic micro-sized speaker on a cellphone, I will quickly agree.  However, having your cellphone blow the pitch is better than no pitch at all    So, I wouldn’t recommend this as an alternative for any of us Mennonite, Beachy or other Acappella singer-types on Sunday morning at church, but it works for impromptu singing events when the Real McCoy isn’t available.

Enjoy!

Cellphone Pitch Pipe.zip

Here are some photos from setup last night:

A friend asked me to convert an audio tape to CD for them.  It is an old sermon recording from 1951 by George R. Brunk, the Mennonite evangelist who spoke to crowds of 15,000+ people under a massive tent back in the ’50s.   You can read more about him HERE and HERE.

Anyway, I looked online and this particular message doesn’t seem to be available anywhere else even from the famed sermonindex.net, so I figured I’d make it available for anyone to listen to right here.

Religion of the Easy Road MP3 | 24MB | 47:00

Working in IT and being in conservative Christian circles has allowed me to have some great discussions on how to implement (or not implement in some cases) the use of the internet by Christian families seeking to follow the Biblical mandate to be “in the world,  not of it”. I want to share some thoughts on this, as well as link to free resources that I have used and recommended to Christian parents who have asked for resources that work.

The internet is an interesting social phenomenon in that there is no central governing agency. Any one government can only control what “nodes” of the internet are physically located within its borders. So any person on the planet can post whatever content they choose to post and as long as that content is hosted in a geopolitical area that doesn’t restrict that particular type of content, anything goes.

As a result, it is up to individuals, familes, businesses and other organizations to “filter” what parts of the internet can be viewed by the computers under their jurisdiction. I’m going to focus on the family and a few best practices that make the use of this tool as trouble free as possible.

Best Practices for Families:

• Parents, take time to learn how the internet works and keep current with any major developments. If you aren’t very technically inclined, ask a Christian friend who is, to keep you updated.
• Parents, use some form of reporting (internet history, reporting software, Vista’s or OS X’s parental controls, etc) to keep family members accountable for where they goes on the internet and for how long.
• Use a form of internet filtering that is effective and can’t be easily circumnavigated. This is not a silver bullet. Parents, train your children in areas of moral purity and in the use or avoidance, depending on age levels and parental choice, of social web applications such as email, IM, blogging, Facebook, micro-blogging (Twitter), and other social media.
• Computer use should be in an open area where parents can easily walk past and see anything that is being displayed on the screen.
• If you can, go on an internet “fast” as a family occasionally, so you can see how the use of the internet affects your family life.
• Parents, make an Internet Use Agreement for your family and post it by the computer or in another prominent area of your home. This is something used even by non-Christian families. Microsoft has an article on this as well HERE.

Free Internet Filtering and Reporting Software for Families:

• Adblocker Plus - If you use the Firefox web browser, install this plugin to eliminate all those flash banner ads, which often promote selfish consumerism and immoral sensuality.
• Open DNS – This filtering solution is easy to implement and can be installed on either individual computers or your router.  The router option is better as it is harder to get around.
• K9 Web Filtering -   Mac/PC compatible software gets installed on a computer and provides filtering and reporting capabilities.
• File Sharing Sentinel -  Prevents peer-to-peer software such as Limewire, BitTorrent, eMule, etc from being installed (Windows only).
• McGruff SafeGuard – Excellent reporting software. Description from the website: McGruff SafeGuard is a service that intelligently monitors kids’ internet activity, including: website visits, chat and instant messaging, search engine phrases, social network profiles on MySpace, Facebook and many others. The Service alerts parents to problems such as Internet predators, dangerous behavior, underage/illicit sexual activity, suicide, drug use, credit card abuse and crime.
• XXX Church’s X3Watch – Accountability reporting software. The free version sends out biweekly reports and you can have up to 2 accountability partners.

Other Books, Articles and Resources:

• Logged On and Tuned Out: A Non-Techie’s Guide to Parenting a Tech-Savvy Generation |  Excellent book by Vicki Courtney who has done a lot of research in this area. You can read a sample chapter HERE (PDF).
• Internet Safety – Building Character and Building Walls (PDF) |  Top-notch article by Focus on the Family that focuses on the core issues.
• Making Space for Character in a Tech-overloaded World (PDF)  |  Another article from the FoF website with some wisdom and insight I found helpful.

Those are the thoughts and resources that come to mind at the moment. Feel free to share your own experiences, insights and other resources in the comments and I will add them to this post for the benefit of others.

Time Lapse Round One from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.