Project Care4Kids

I'm so stoked about a new outreach we are starting here at Nags Head Church!  I know that many of us who serve on staff in churches sort of have an entrepreneurial spirit.  So when there is something new I get to be involved in I get excited.

In 2015 there were 670,000 children in foster care in the United States.  Unfortunately this number is growing each year.  We aren't, as a nation, making headway in helping parents to be better parents.  What is the church doing about it?  In our church we have some who are foster parents and some who have been in the past.  We are encouraging more to get involved.

But what can we do as the church to help meet immediate needs in foster care?  Our church is launching a new outreach to the community, Project Care4Kids. 
Project Care4Kids has four areas of focus:

1. Encouraging people to be foster parents
2. Meeting temporary needs of foster children and their foster parents
3. Supporting our local crisis pregnancy center
4. 
Supporting and promoting adoption

This past Sunday I was able to bring the message in "big church" and our focus was on sanctity of life.  At the end of the message I called the church to action and had an overwhelming response.  We asked them to respond on a communication card.  I have a big stack of these cards on my desk  right now.  We asked people to commit to prayer, giving financially, meeting practical needs, going on mission trips, adopting and foster parenting.  Many indicated they would pray and most committed to other areas as well, even adoption and foster parenting!  The response is overwhelming.

One element of this new outreach/ministry is really going to make in impact in our community.  We formed a team of volunteers from our church (over 30 committed to this on Sunday) who will put together backpacks for foster kids.  These backpacks will be packed according to different age ranges.  In the pack will be age appropriate toys, stuffed animal, school supplies, toothbrush, toothpaste, body wash, shampoo, etc.   Local foster parents will be able to call a "hotline" number, set it up on google voice, when they get the call that they will be receiving a child in their home.  So when they get the call that at 7pm social service will be bringing them an 8 year old foster child they can then turn and call us and someone from our team will drop the back pack to their house.  We will also drop a duffle bag because many of these kids show up with all their belongings in a trash bag.  A trash bag!  What message does this send to the child?  We will also let the foster parent know we are available to help with other needs if they let us know, clothes, shoes, coats, etc.

We will be having in March a Project Care4Kids launch party.  We will gather together on a Saturday morning and divide up supplies, organize and pack backpacks and duffle bags.  We will be also making a "no sew" fleece blanket for each child and teen.  It's going to be a fun time of serving together, building relationships and meeting needs.

We are getting going on this new outreach.  We aren't sure how it will all work out, we don't have all the answers but we are willing to dive in and do something, to put feet to our prayers.
If you would like to know more about this outreach project please feel free to contact me.

Last Night At Contagious

Wow! What a fantastic outreach night. Every 4 to 6 weeks we have a night of youth group that focuses on the gospel. This is a great opportunity for our students to invite their friends to hear how Jesus can change their life.

We started off with a fun video. We are doing a series of "What is Andy doing?" type videos. Last week the students requested I do a search in Nags Head Woods for Goat Man, a creature of local folk lore. Lot of fun shooting the video and lots of fun watching the students watch the video.

Next we showed a video by artist Propaganda about the gospel. Take a look-see if you haven't watched this video before.

Ramon, who has been leading our middle school students Bible study, followed up the video with a great explanation about Jesus Christ and salvation. 4 students put their faith in Jesus Christ!! Three students who have been attending youth group for a while and one was a guest and it was his first night with us.

We now have hang time after our Bible study and POD (small group). Last night we enjoyed Frito chili pie and nachos. Students played ping pong, foosball, Uno and Monopoly. This allowed time and opportunity for our team to follow up with each student who made a decision. We are liking the Hang Time at the end because of the time it allows for follow up and for students to ask us more questions that are related to the Bible study.

The gospel was shared, 4 students put their faith in Christ, hang time was great. I would give the night an A+!

Super Bowl Party on a Shoe String Budget

Last night we had our first Super Bowl party in our new youth room. Turn out was good and we had some guests which is always fantastic. The main purpose of the event was to share the good news of Jesus Christ during the half time. I took about ten minutes and talked about Jesus our Mediator from 1 Timothy 2:3,4. No students made a decision that we are aware of but the seed was planted and we pray our guests had a good time and will return again this coming week.

With a 30% cut in our budget from last year and basically a spending freeze in effect we had to pull this event off on a shoe string budget. Here is the run down on how we accomplished that:

Stream the game via Internet - FREE! The quality of the video was great. We missed the big commercials but that's OK since a person can go back and watch them on the Internet. This saved the church about $1200 since we didn't have to install cable or satellite.
Hot Wings and Queso Dip - $65 A few from our team showed up early and cooked the hot wings and made the queso and got things set up and ready to roll.

Snacks and Drinks - FREE! We had the boys bring a sweet snack and the girls bring a salty snack and they all brought a 2 liter of soda.

Meat and Cheese Stadium - FREE!! Because of the donations of our local Boar's Head distributor and the donations of some parents of youth we were able to feast on the most incredible party platter I have ever seen.

So for a little more than a buck a person we hosted a fun Super Bowl Party where the love of Jesus Christ was shared.

When we share the love of Christ in practical ways these are the things students remember about their "church experience" long after high school. They don't remember all the lessons or sermons we teach, they remember the fact that some adults loved them and cared for them enough to spend an evening hosting a fun party with an incredible meat stadium and time spent playing foosball and bananagrams. That is what they will remember when they are 21. This act of sharing the love of Christ in a fun and practical way is what will stick with them.

Thanks to the best youth ministry team in the world! I appreciate the time you give to God serving students and I know the students appreciate it too. Thanks to the parents who kicked in the snacks!

Soul Surfer

Several years ago Misha and I were vacationing on Maui (oh I would love to be there right now). We flew in on Halloween. The next day we started our day watching the sunrise at Heleakala and then spent the day on the beach snorkeling and swimming. That evening on the local and national news we watched the report of a young girl, Bethany Hamilton, who was attacked by a 14-foot tiger shark while surfing off Kauai.

I have the DVD that Walking on Water produced about Bethany and have shown that to our students a couple of times in the past. Well produced and really clear with the message of God's plan and Bethany's determination. I highly recommend youth groups to use this film as an outreach event. (Watch for the Walking on Water t-shirt in the new film)

Last night I got to watch a sneak preview of the new movie coming out on April 8th about the life of surfer, Bethany Hamilton, Soul Surfer. First of all I was stoked because I have never been invited to a sneak preview of a major motion picture before. Second, the film impressed me. Soul Surfer was entertaining and had the talent of Helen Hunt and Dennis Quaid to support the role of Bethany Hamilton played by AnnaSophia Robb.

They did an incredible job making it appear that these Hollywood stars can really surf. The movie did portray the faith in God that Bethany and her family have, I was happy to see that. Carrie Underwood played the role of Bethany's youth minister. She did a good job. I'm not sure that Carrie has acted before so this was good for her first motion picture. She even read from the Bible and encouraged Bethany while she was trying to make sense of why God would allow this shark attack to happen.

I think the film is good for middle and high school students but I think the shark attack scene might be too intense for the younger kids. Without giving it away, they did a good job on the shark attack scene.

I hope the movie makes it to our local theater. I see this as a great outreach opportunity and will definitely use this film when it comes out on DVD. Soul Surfer opens April 8th.

What does that say to your community?

I'm excited about Sunday night. It's Halloween and I get to eat cotton candy! But I'm more excited that several years ago we made a change. We used to have the "harvest party" that targeted our church kids and not the community. The event was inward focused. It was our attempt at a safe alternative to trick or treating for our kids. We would have said it was for the community but the attendance proved the opposite.

How do we take an event in the community and use it? We decided that we would do Trunk or Treat. First of all Trunk or Treat required us to move our little "party" out of the safety of the four walls of the church building and into the parking lot where the public could see and not just see but attend. The first year attendance was rather low but was better attended than the harvest party.

Over the years Trunk or Treat has grown. This year we will see thousands come onto our church's property for the event. Hundreds will even funnel into our building for the free food and for their children to play games. Sitting in my office are 1600 gospel tracts to place in the kids' candy bags.

The harvest party catered to the church. Trunk or Treat is for the whole community. The approach on how we treat October 31st changed. NHC took it's eyes off "self" and looked out beyond the four walls.

I've gotten wind of churches who usually have an event "for the community" on October 31st canceling this year because it falls on Sunday. What does that say to the community? I think it is a shame and speaks volumes to the community. Too often we forget that church is not for us, we are the church and the church is for those that need the love of Jesus Christ.

Some churches choose to do nothing on halloween or to continue to do their harvest parties. That's OK. That is up to each individual church. I'm glad that NHC sees this as an opportunity to get the word out to the community through our actions that we love them and care for them and we do so because Jesus loves them and cares for them.

Trunk or Treat Update

Saturday night our church hosted a Trunk or Treat, we have been doing this for about 7 years now. NHC used to have a "Fall Festival" on Halloween night and children would come to the church in their costumes, play some games, eat some cupcakes and hear a Bible story. It was a good event for our church kids but was in no way reaching our community and wasn't growing. Our purpose as a church is to reach our community. So "Fall Festival" was scrapped and replaced with Trunk or Treat. The first year we had several cars set up with decorated trunks and had less than a hundred kids come through and each child received a gospel tract in their candy bag.

Trunk or Treat has grown from a dozen or so church partners involved in this out reach to around 100 partners participating on the trunk, traffic, food, set up, clean up and game teams. We went from just having a dozen trunks to 25 trunks, 4 big inflatable games, carnival type games, hot dogs, cotton candy, popcorn and drinks. The community can attend and there is no charge, not even for the food. Each child still receives a gospel tract in their candy bag.

This year we gave out about 1200 pounds of candy! We had around 2000 people from our community attend. Trunk or Treat is a way our church tells our community that we care for them. This is a great and fun event that NHC partners look forward to working together on each year.

Now it's time to evaluate and plan for TOT 2010!

4th of July Outreach at NHC

SHAPEd to Surf

Today we will teach 20 something middle and high school students how to surf.  Most of these students will actually surf before the camp is done today.  Some won't surf but will have a better understanding of how to surf and they will be able to continue to practice on their own.  It's awesome to watch a student catch their first wave and pop up and ride the wave.

A little over ten years ago Steve Wise, one of NHC's pastors, decided to do something with what he is passionate about.  The H of his shape is his heart, surfing is what Steve is passionate about.  Steve loves to surf so he took this passion for surfing and combined it with his desire to reach people to discover life in Christ and Hukilau was born.   This summer is Hukilau's tenth summer of teaching students to surf and sharing the gospel.

So in about a half hour from now I'll be loading up in the car to head to surf camp.  I'm excited to see these kids learn to surf but I'm most excited that we are going to share the love of Jesus Christ with them today.  Another awesome part of surf camp for me is watching a whole bunch of NHC partners serving in missions by serving at surf camp.  It's rough but someone has to do missions on the beach.

What are you passionate about and how could that be used to reach people to discover life in Christ?

Last NIght at Contagious

Last night was my first night at Contagious since mid February. It was great to be serving with the YM team again and ministering to students. Contagious has met every week and continued without me, and judging from last night's attendance the group has been doing well without me because our YM team did a fantastic job. I'm super thankful for their willingness to serve and share Christ's love with students.

Last night was an outreach night. This is a push for our students to bring (we have stopped using the word "invite" and implemented "bring") their friends. Usually we serve something other than just chips and drinks and the main emphasis is on sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with the students.

Everyone got a coin and I shared the good news of salvation using the following outline: (thanks to D. Fields)
As Believers . . .
Penny - Reminds us that our Past is forgiven in Christ

Nickel - Reminds us that Now that the Holy Spirit lives in us

Dime - Reminds us that God has an eternal Determined Destiny for us in Christ

Quarter - Reminds us that followers of Christ have Quality growth

Bonnie's family group doubled their size last night.  We told students that the group with the biggest percentage of guests would get a prize. This is a group of high school girls and they had the option of  playing laser tag and eating pizza or making jewelry and eating pizza.  They chose lazertag! (and their guests go with them)  Sounds like an outing I may have to do with them to make sure the event goes well.

Some stats from last night:

Attendance was 60% group members and 40% guests

15% of our members were absent

5 of the 10  family groups brought the guests

We consumed:

5 large bags of chips

75 hot dogs with a fully loaded hot dog bar

3 gallons of lemonade

3 gallons of ice cream with a fully loaded sundae bar

Anti-Trunk or Treat

While looking for our Trunk or Treat group on Facebook I stumbled across a "Stop Trunk or Treat" facebook group.  While reading their group description it became very obvious to me that the founder of this group had apparently been to a lame Trunk or Treat.  One of his major complaints was the people were dressed like "Moses" and Bible characters and it just wasn't fun going from trunk to trunk.  

If the church is going to use an event as a bridging event the church needs to make sure it is not lame.  Followers of Christ need to think of how the event will impact the un-churched.  I'll admit I think if I went to the Trunk or Treat this group was describing I may have the same feelings.

Please let's not do "lame" events, they don't work in reaching people.  If we are going to do an event to reach the community we need to strive for excellence.  If we can't do it with excellence we should probably not do it at all.

I'm glad that NHC's Trunk or Treat wasn't lame.  On a side note to the Anti-Trunk or Treat group there was not one Bible character at our Trunk or Treat.  You won't see me dressed up as Baalam, I'm Elvis, "thank you, thank you very much".    

ToT 08 How did we do?

How did we do?

I have already received an e-mail from a family in the community who is not from our church.  They had a great time and look forward to future Trunk Or Treats.

I quickly cruised through the drawing cards this afternoon and 30 parents checked off that they would like more information about NHC and our children's and youth ministries.  It will be cool to see the results of this year's event.  

The biggest accomplishment is that every family received the gospel as well as noticed that NHC is a church that loves families and where children are a priority.

Thanks to the great team of around 80 for helping make a successful bridging event.

Trunk Or Treat 08

Trunk or Treat 08 is over and was bigger than ever.  Now to plan for ToT 09. . .

Tonight we saw around 1,000 children come through and they were loaded with candy.  We gave out several hundred pounds of candy.

The inflatable games were a blast and they were huge.

We ran out of the popcorn about an hour or so into the night (note to self - order more popcorn)

We gave out around 300 bags and cones of cotton candy.  (order more cotton candy)

I saw many sipping on cups of hot coffee and hot chocolate.

Boars Head was serving up the hot dogs.  (thanks Fred Flintstone)

The traffic team was working hard directing the hundreds of cars that came through tonight.

The trunks were great.  I saw several that were fantastic and it would have been hard to pick a winner this year.  A few of my favorites:

The Penguin family complete with infant penguin.

The Men in Black family complete with infant alien.

Aunt Jemima and her pancake.  (Mark was a good Aunt J.  Sue was a great short stack)

Shreck and Fiona were quite green.

Cat in the hat was popular this year.

We were fair and balanced with both Obama and McCain there and even Sarah Palin paid a visit.

The ToT team did an incredible job, I'm not sure of the count tonight but I think we had at least 80 from our church helping pull of this most excellent bridging event.  All the teams did the great job.  Now it's time to evaluate and adjust.  Wonder if there is any candy left in the house?

Evaluate and Adjust, Evaluate and Adjust

Seven years ago NHC had a "Harvest Party" at the church for the children.  The children would come in their costumes eat some junk food, hear a Bible story, and play some games.  The only children that attended were our usual crowd of 15 or so from Sunday morning.  Six years ago was my second year at NHC and we did the Harvest Party again and I quickly realized the event did not fit with the purpose of our church.   We did some evaluation and made an adjustment.

The next year we started Trunk or Treat at NHC.  We put up a few posters and had around 100 show up for Trunk or Treat.  The Harvest Party was typical of a small church with no desire to grow.  Trunk or Treat screamed "reach the community".  The Harvest Party was not a quality event that would draw people in.   We evaluated Trunk or Treat and made adjustments.

Each year Trunk or Treat has grown and each year we made adjustments.  Last year we made the adjustment of really promoting the event, we were even able to send TOT cards home with kids in our local schools.  We added hot dogs, popcorn, cotton candy and hot chocolate and games with prizes and made the event more of a fair atmosphere.  Over 1,000 attended!  Each child got a gospel tract in their candy bag and each parent went home with the Purpose Driven life booklet.  We evaluated because with that many people traffic flow was tricky to say the least since our parking lot is no where big enough for that size of crowd.  We have also added more inflatable games.  Our auditorium has been cleared out and will be set up with lots of games and prizes, the goal, besides giving the kids a fun time, is to get people to simply walk through the doors of the church.  We will have Kidmo playing on the big screen and music in the background.

Tonight is Trunk Or Treat. I'm about to head out the door and spend my day with volunteers who will be dropping in setting up for this now huge event.  It's going to be a fun day and I look forward to watching Trunk or Treat unfold tonight and see what sort of crowd we attract.  I hear that Elvis may even be spotted in the crowd.  After ToT is all cleaned up and packed up we will evaluate and adjust again.  Anything we do in the church should be evaluated often to make sure we are hitting our target, accomplishing our goal, carrying out our purpose.  This may mean killing off some sacred cow programs.  Have a safe night!

Watermelon Boy

Another high quality video for our youth group.

Hukilau Surf Camp

Pastor Steve combined his passion for surfing and his passion for Jesus Christ several years ago and Hukilau Surf Camp was born.  Today we finished up our surf camp season for 2008.

August 16th's Camp in a nut shell:

• 28 Surf Campers
• We went international with one from Russia and one from England
• Surf wasn't great today but campers learned how to withstand a pounding from the waves and boards, paddling and how to stand up on the board.
• Mickey McCarthy shared with the campers about surf photography and took some shots out in the water
• Nags Head lifeguard, Emily, shared about beach and water safety
• Steve shared how waves are generated
• I shared that God the creator of the surf desires a relationship with us and has a purpose for our lives
• More than 30 volunteers from the church served as coaches and support staff
• I forgot to rub sunblock on my noggin, Ouch!
• The lad from England won a gift certificate to SOS, a local surf shop at milepost 16ish
• Couple of other kids won fudge (not sure how that ties into surfing) from the Culinary Duck in Duck, NC
• All campers got a sweet Hukilau shirt, goodie bag, Noah's Arc DVD.

What is your passion and how can you use that passion to spread the love of Jesus Christ?

A Surfing Weekend

One of the reasons I love living on the Outer Banks is because I love the beach and ocean.  I also love to watch surfing.  I used to surf but due to my out of shapeness I no longer surf.

Friday night at church we showed a surf movie, Distant Shores.  This was an outreach event geared towards youth but we had a great turn out of all ages.  The showing was the passion birthed out of one of our member's surf trips.  Mike saw the film and knew right away it needed to be shown at NHC.  He came back from his trip and went to work putting the event together. (It's great, as a youth pastor, to go to a youth event and not have done the work putting it together.  My basic responsibility was to share the gospel at the end of the film.  The rest was all organized without me.  That's what ministry is all about!  Members getting equipped and turned loose to minister.  A big thanks to all those involved in pulling off this event and to Maximus Pizza and Hukilau Surf Camp for providing the pizzas, all 30 of them.)

The message of the film was powerful.  We are fortunate to have some local pro surfers, Jesse Hines and Noah Snyder living in our area.  Both of these guys love to surf and love to use their sport as an avenue to spread the love of Jesus Christ.  Jesse, Noah joined Nic McLean (Noah's Arc and Walking on Water) to introduce the film and then answered some questions afterwards and hung out with us and threw out some Hurley freebies to the kids.  Thanks Nic, Jesse and Noah for investing in the lives of kids.  You guys are a blessing.

Mike, Nic,  Noah, Jesse

Noah Snyder

Jesse Hines

Nic McLean

Nic, Noah, Me, Jesse

(I'm the heavier dude nestled between the two lean, mean surfing machines)

On Saturday we hosted our first Hukilau Surf Camp of the summer.  This year we are holding 3 camps for students and one for international students.  Hukilau Surf Camp is an outreach of NHC and is the passion of Pastor Steve.  I think just about every camper stood up and rode a wave on Saturday.  Thanks to our camp team and coaches!  The good news of Jesus was shared during one of the breaks.  One young man even showed up for youth group last night at the beach!

Pastor Steve

Operation Backpack

I'm excited about an outreach event our church will be doing on Saturday, August 9th called Operation Backpack.  Over the next couple of months we are asking our partners here at NHC to bring in school supplies like notebook paper, spiral notebooks, #2 pencils and crayons.  We are also collecting the lists from the school as soon as they are made available in June so we can be more specific with the items needed.

The day of the event should be exciting and quick we will run till the supplies are tapped out.  We will have the moon bounces up to entertain the kids, we may even pop some popcorn and give out cold drinks.  Parents will be able to come and go through our auditorium which will be set up s the distribution center and pick up the items they need for their child's school supply list absolutely free.  While they are walking through the distribution we will have our Kids' Church curriculum, Kidmo and 'Lil K, playing on the big screen. 

The whole purpose of this event is to show our community that NHC cares for them and to meet a need.  You know the old line, "They won't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

This will be our first Operation Backpack.  We hope it will grow ginormous as our Trunk or Treat has.  

If you are an NHC partner I encourage you to join the team today!