Is anybody else counting down the days until summer officially hits. May 22nd is graduation, and I imagine that there are a lot of students dying for summer vacation to begin. What will you be doing this summer? What about your friends from school? There are a lot of great things happening here at Pantano this summer from miniature golf tournaments to laser tag to summer camp at UCYC. But is this summer only about you, or will it be about how you can help your friends start to experience God (maybe for the first time)?

It is really easy to think about summer as “my summer vacation” and all the things “I want to do”. But is summer about us? While it is great to go out and have fun, it is also one of the best opportunities for us to invite others along to enjoy it with us. Start thinking about the person in your english class that you want to invite to a day trip and ride the water slides with - or consider the friends you each lunch with and imagine having an entire week to hang out with them at day camp playing games and learning about God together. You may be the only person in your friend’s life that loves God, so why not invite him or her to join you this summer.

There is a lot of pressure we put on ourselves to “save” other people - but that job belongs to God and God alone. Our job is to “plant seeds” and to give others an opportunity to see what God is like. So get out there and plant some seeds this summer, invite your friends and let God do the hard work!

Need something to do this Spring Break and you don’t want to start studying for finals yet? Well, never fear, have I got some incredible ideas for you this week!!!

1) Go to pccstudents.org and read my blog (uhh… forget that one, you’re already here)

2) Find out what celebrity you look like at http://www.myheritage.com/celebrity-face-recognition

3) Invite your friends to come to Easter at PCC this weekend

4) Collect loose change you find on the street and donate it to the Free & Clear offering at Pantano to help us pay off our church debt

5) Write a youth coach an encouraging note this week and give it to him or her on Sunday

6) Brush up on your Deal or No Deal skills at http://www.nbc.com/Deal_or_No_Deal/game/dond.swf

7) Go to Chik-Fil-A at El Con Mall and enjoy the tasty goodness

Lawn seats at TEP for Spring Training games are only $5 and there is a game every day!

9) Add the title “DJ” before your name and check out this page - http://www.homestarrunner.com/onetwomixer.html

10) Read your Bible - it is full of good stuff that God wants to say to you.

All right, now you can’t say that you had nothing to do during Spring Break!

Hey, so I was at the Hawk Nelson concert on Sunday night along with hundreds of my closest friends for their Green T Tour. What an excellent show - it is so rare to get quality bands to come to Tucson in the first place. So to get Hawk Nelson to come to town before the release of their new album was great. It was sweet seeing so many PCC students there - we brought about 20, but I must have seen at least another 20 middle school and high school students at the church.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a man-crush on the band, but I love the energy they bring to the stage and their willingness to interact with the fans and have fun with them. I remember seeing them four years ago when they came to Tucson with Sanctus Real when they were first starting out and it has been cool to see how they have grown as a band - including their work with Compassion International and sponsoring children in Haiti. They even showed a compassion video of their trip before they came out for their encore at the end of the show.

If you are interested in sponsoring a child, check out www.compassion.com or www.worldvision.org for more information. For the cost of a few fast-food meals per month, you can provide so much for a child in need in another part of the world!

On a rare occasion, I love to do what I hate to do. Not like the passage in Romans 7 where Paul talks about the stuff he wants to do he doesn’t do and the stuff he doesn’t want to do he is actually doing. I experience that all the time, but I am talking more about the love to do things that are really hard for me. Lent is one of those times. We talked about fasting on Sunday morning and again at MS:PM on Wednesday night, and I have felt compelled to give up some things that I really love - sweets and sodas. If you know me at all, you know that I have very little self-control when it comes to all things sugary. But for 40 days I have chosen to say no to my favorite Coke products, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, cookies, candy, and everything that falls into the dessert category. Already after one day it seems like I am seeing that stuff everywhere, but they serve as a reminder that that stuff doesn’t rule me. And while I hate giving it all up, I love it because it forces me to focus less on myself and what I want and instead it points me to God and considering how He would rather have me focus on Him.

 If you have been thinking about participating in Lent, you can check out PCC’s website at http://pccwired.org/sftoolbox/2008/01/28/2008-guide-for-lent/ to get more information. And make sure you have the right attitude about it all (see Matt 6:16-18 to see what Jesus says!)

Hey, I am heading to California for a week to see family - but I wish you all a most excellent Christmas. I love this time of year as we celebrate God giving us the ultimate gift of His very Son sent to earth.

If you’re looking for a good last minute gift idea, I would recommend “Remedy” by the David Crowder Band. They are my favorite worship band and this CD is excellent.

This past weekend I took my family to Puerto Penasco, Mexico for the church’s annual Rocky Point mission trip. It was the first time that I have gone and what an awesome experience! If you have never gone, you need to seriously consider going next year. The church sent over 300 people and built 7 homes for Mexican families. Additionally, separate teams put on a children’s program for the barrio kids and there was an entire team responsible for feeding all of us! There were quite a few students who went, and I can’t even begin to express how impressed I was by the students who were there and worked their tails off for God.

It was a pretty challenging weekend for me personally - mainly because I don’t really have any handyman skills. Don’t get me wrong, I know how to drive a nail and how to use a saw, but I didn’t have a clue about a lot of the stuff we were doing. But that was the really cool part - there were other people there who could teach and train me to do the stuff I didn’t know how to do (or they just did it instead of me). It was amazing to see how 20+ people who had never built a home together could work as a team to built a two-bedroom home in only two and a half days! But with everyone doing their part and working together, the house was built so quickly.

It is actually a pretty cool analogy to what the body of Christ should be - each one of us doing our part for the kingdom of God. When we can all work together, it is amazing how God can use us to change the world. But when only a few people are working while others watch, things never seem to go as they should. So what is it that you would like to start doing as part of the body of Christ?

So on Sunday morning I talked about the idea of what it means to sit at the feet of Jesus. The message came from the story of Martha and Mary in Luke 10:38-42 and it really spoke to me. You see, I am definitely a Martha personality, it feels like I am busy all the time - and to be totally honest, I can take pride in appearing busy. It makes me feel like I am being a productive Christian, but does God really desire us to be “productive” for Him if it means we aren’t really spending any time with Him? Well, I felt pretty convicted about it and decided this morning that I was going to spend some alone time with Him in one of my favorite settings - the desert.

After sending Nathan off to school and saying goodbye to April and Logan (they went to the zoo), I packed up a backpack with my Bible and some water and went off hiking trails with God. I had no agenda, no timetable and I turned off my cell phone so there would be no distractions. Just me, God, and His creation in the desert. And I can’t tell you how awesome it was! I spent an hour and a half talking with Him, noticing his handiwork in nature, sitting in silence with Him - it is totally what my soul needed. Normally on a hike I don’t take any time to stop and observe nature happening around me, I am usually too busy try to reach the goal of getting to the top to notice anything. But with no agenda and no “goal,” I found that I was able to see a lot of things I would have never noticed otherwise. Like the design of certain cactuses, or all the different kinds of bugs around. I was even able to observe a couple of jackrabbits just off the trail; one of which I saw later on in my hike - he let me get about 15 feet away before he took off.

When I can spend alone time with God in nature, it is so much easier for me to see the creative and inspiring God that we serve. I hope to find more times like this morning where I can just be with God and enjoy just hanging out with Him.

Man, I can’t believe that almost another month has passed since my last posting. Bad blogger, bad!!! (slap on wrist)

Anyway, I would like to start using this space to write about several things, but I certainly hope that it will become a place that I can share about where I have been reading in God’s Word and how it is changing my life. I was sharing with the youth staff at our retreat a few weeks ago that it always builds up my faith when I can share with others about what God is teaching me, and so I hope this blog can serve in a similar fashion - to build my faith while helping to build others up as well.

We are going to start a new series in Luke on September 23rd called “I’ll Follow.” It is going to be a series that goes through the gospel of Luke, so I started reading through Luke to see how God would speak to me before we started teaching. What I read last week slapped me in the face and prompted me to take some action. I was reading through Luke 11 and came across a passage in which Jesus is giving the Pharisees a lesson in humility, and it spoke to me as if I were sitting at the table and he was talking to me. In verse 46 Jesus says to them, “woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not life one finger to help them.”

I started thinking about this passage more after this past Sunday. I was teaching both in The Rock and Epic and I asked everyone who brought their Bible from home to raise it in the air. Out of 180 students, there were maybe 20 who brought their Bibles from home. It really busted my chops - how are we not bringing our Bibles to church? I then proceeded to go on a short rant about how if we are to truly follow God the good shepherd we must be willing to spend time in His Word. But on Monday, I started thinking about that passage in Luke. Did I load our students down with a burden and then fail to help them carry it? I don’t really know - I don’t feel like I was adding any new “rules” to what the Bible already said; but yet I still felt like I threw down a challenge without offering any helpful ways for them to move ahead. So I decided to take action.

I am currently working on creating a Bible-reading plan/devotional/whatever you want to call it for students. When we start our “I’ll Follow” series, we will have an 80-day devotional that will take students through the entire book of Luke as we study it on Sunday mornings. But students can have a plan for Bible study reading and their prayer life; and my spirit can rest in knowing that I have at least “lifted a finger” to help carry this burden.

Hey, sorry for the long lapse in between blogs. My wife April and I were on vacation in Washington DC and New York City for ten days to celebrate our ten year anniversary and this week I have been getting back into the groove. Since I work at the church, I get to see firsthand the progress that is being made on the Towne Hall renovation every day - and let me tell you I really like what I see. The room is HUGE and I can’t wait for our first service in the new Towne Hall Student Center on August 26th! That is only a couple of weeks away!!! Obviously I am excited - and not just because we get out of the heat on Sunday mornings (thanks to all you students who have been patient this summer and have endured having our services outside during the hottest time of the year). And on this Sunday, we are going to give students a sneak preview of the room and we will do a walking tour during our services for middle school and high school!

Anyway, it is good to be home and I hope that everybody is prepared for the incredible things that God is going to do this Fall in Student Ministries.

I got back from UCYC summer camp with our middle school students on Friday afternoon and it has taken me this long to get back in the swing of things and ready to hit the blog again. So many excellent memories from the trip that I can’t really put them all here or most of you would go blind attempting to read it all. So here is a top five list of the best things that I was able to witness/take part in at camp…

5. About 100 “pinkbellies”

4. Stephani and Sarah in helmets and innertubes running into each other at full speed.

3. Joe Duron winning the championship dodgeball game as the only man left standing vs. ten guys (including two adults)

2. Talking with five guys late Thursday night about baptism and what it means

1. Listening to students talk about what they need to “die to” in their lives

That last one may not make a lot of sense, so let me explain. Each day had a different theme as we studied the account of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (check in out in Daniel 3, it is awesome!) The theme of the last day was “Die.” The three guys in the story all decided that they would be willing to die for what they believed in rather than bowing down to the golden idol created by King Nebuchadnezzar. I love their commitment and willingness to stand up for God to the point of death, but let’s be honest - how many of us will ever stare death in the face as the result of our faith? I am not saying it never happens in the U.S., but we need to consider how we can die in our daily lives for God.

We were posed with the question, “What do you need to die to for God to live in you?” I repeated the question to our students that night to our students and I was so impressed by the people who were willing to be vulnerable in front of their peers. I heard answers like “fear,” “anger,” “not reading the Bible,” “impatience,” and “my appearance.” For me personally, I know that I need to die to laziness. It is a constant struggle for me, I can be so content just watching TV, surfing espn.com, sleeping in too late, and just putting off responsibilities. I even lost the battle this morning - I was awake in bed and thought about getting up, reading my Bible, and working out. I managed to drag my butt out of bed and read in Luke 1 this morning, but I then crawled back into the bed and skipped out on exercise. Not that sleep is a bad thing, but I didn’t “feel” like working out, so I just skipped it. I figure the battle will not be easy, but I’ll just take it one step at a time as I learn to die to myself.