Last Night at Contagious at the Beach

Last night we kicked off Contagious at the Beach.  Each Sunday night we meet for about an hour of fun in the sun and sand.  Then we gather and have our Bible study and then break into our PODz for prayer and discussion.

It was HOT, real feel of around 101!  We drank lots of water and enjoyed the cool ocean then we were attacked by the sea lice!  Then the biting flies tore up our legs.  So a perfect evening at the beach.

Last night we had Forest Davis, a local 18 (almost 19) year old skater dude come and share his passion for Jesus Christ with the students.  Forest attended our youth group for a while in high school.  I had not seen Forest for a long time and then ran into him at a coffee shop several months ago.  Forest struck up a conversation with me and shared for several minutes about how he is passionately pursing his relationship with God.  It was exciting to hear!  I could tell God was up to something in Forest's life.  You can find Forest skating on Youtube.

Several months later I ran into Forest again in another coffee shop (I guess we both like coffee but I can't skate).  Forest began telling me more about his relationship with Christ.  We spent a good half hour of me listening to what God is doing in Forest's life.  Again I was even more excited because this relationship he was passionate about several months before had not waned and seemed to actually be growing even stronger.  I knew that it would be a benefit to our students to hear from a guy their age who is on fire for Jesus Christ.

Forest shared last night some great stuff about how God had worked in his life.  He shared that as a Christian he had a bad habit of using foul language.  God convicted him, "If you can filter your mouth around your parents why can't you filter it around your friends?"  Forest realized that his language was the result of some trashy music he was listening to.  The old garbage in garbage out. 
He came to realize that if he was going to go to church on Sunday but now live like a Christ follower the rest of the week he was "wasting his time". 

I can sum up what I got out of Forest's story this way:  Do you want to settle for being "good with God" or do you want to be great with God?  "God doesn't want fence riders".  Great message from Forest.  I'm excited about the impact Forest is having on young people in our community.

Great kick off to a summer at the beach. 

Loving Google Docs

I love Google Docs!  Recently I have been using this application to create documents for youth group.  Today I took our camp medical release and our "What to pack" list and transformed them into Google Docs.  Now parents and campers can simply click the link and then print off the document.

It works great for creating online registration forms and the data can transfer to excel.  Super handy tool!

This has been part of my process to scale back on the budget in the area of web sites and technology.  I've been looking for great tools to use that are free.

Have you discovered some great free or really cheap tools to use in youth ministry?