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Camp is finished

Over the past couple weeks I have spent a great deal of time at camp as many of you know.  It has been an incredible experience for me.  I believe the students and other adults involved in these camps were truly blessed as well.  The biggest thing I took away from my time at camp is to make sure that I take advantage of every opportunity I have when it comes to ministering to other people.  It doesn’t matter if you are dealing with students, adults or young children.  We need to be proactive with our faith.

June 14th-16th my wife headed up a Mother/Daughter Camp.  We had 117 campers and it was a great experience.  It didn’t hurt that we had Jamie Grace kicking off our event with a concert and as part of the concert Jamie’s mom, Mona Harper, spoke to the mothers and daughters.  At this camp Mothers and daughters were able to enjoy time with each other, and hopefully begin some habits of talking, praying, and reading the Bible together.  This Mother/Daughter relationship is so important when it comes to raising up a God Girl!  We of course had a great deal of fun and food mixed in to create a memory that hopefully won’t soon be forgotten.

This past week on June 17th-22nd we attended Middle School Camp.  We had 128 campers at this event, and I must tell you it was one of the best weeks of camp I have ever been too.  We of course had a special concert from Icon for Hire .  If you haven’t checked them out yet, then you need too.  Seriously though we had 27 students make first time decisions for Christ!  That is incredible.  It was amazing to see what God was doing in the lives of these students.  Many students already had the idea that they wanted to make a decision, but they had questions that they wanted answers to.  From day one of this camp these conversations began, and clarity was found for many of these students.  I pray for each of them that this life changing decision is one that they take seriously.  God has moved in them and now they need to trust Him with everything.

Middle School students are a great gift from God!  They can be quirky and stinky at times, but they can also be some of the most understanding and insightful people you could ever spend time with.  I would encourage you to invest some time with a middle school student today.

Music That Works for Us

This weekend I was able to attend an amazing Concert with some awesome friends.  We went to Winter Jam

on Saturday Night.  It was an interesting night for us because they call it Winter Jam, but the weather was 65 – 70 degrees outside.  That is definitely my kind of winter.Also a mother of one of our Junior High Students was the volunteer coordinator for the event this year, so we had several  people just volunteering and not participating in the concert.

We were blessed to worship with some amazing artists.  Building 429

, Peter Furl er , and Skillet were some of my personal favorites of the night. Several junior high students and their families attended. My son was telling me about his favorite part (he is 6), and he said it was Building 429, Skillet, and Nick Hall (the speaker).  I thought it was cool that the speaker was powerful enough to reach us all.  God uses people in amazing ways.

We advertised this as an event for families to attend since it only cost $10 and only 30 minutes from our church.  I saw this as a great opportunity for families to experience this together.  The response was awesome, and everybody seemed to really enjoy the evening.

I had several parents talk to me about the event when it was over.  They talked about how many of the bands reminded them of non-Christian bands that they listen to all the time.  This was a great chance for me to talk about the difference Christian music can make in their lives and the lives of their junior high students.

Music is a powerful tool that the world uses to fill our minds with their agenda and worldview.  We have to be careful not only what we put into our minds and hearts, but we also have to really think about what our students listen too.

A few weeks ago I was speaking to a pastor about an upcoming concert/event I am working on.  We were talking about the plans and the timing of the event and I told him we were hosting Jamie Grace

and her mom for part of this event.  His response was, “Who is Jamie Grace?”  I understand that not every person will like every Christian artist, but we need to be aware of what is going on.  How can we expect our students to know about Christian music if we don’t share it with them or even listen to it ourselves?

I work hard to make sure I know about all different types of music because we have students that listen to things that I have never heard of.  Once great resource I would share with you for Christian Music is interlinc

.  They have a program called YLO that gives you the opportunity to receive a variety of Christian Music at a reasonable price.

Christian music is a valuable tool that I use in ministry to Junior High Students and their families, and I hope you will evaluate your time, budget, and need to see that it can be a great asset for you as well.  How do you use Christian music?