Fasting starts tomorrow!

Hey there everyone, Tomorrow we will begin our 30 day fast. Now please read carefully because we will be talking about what a fast is all about. But we aren't fasting from food for 30 days, we are fasting from something different everyday. So everyday I will text you what the next days fasting item is.

We are officially going to fast from 7am - 7pm. If you want to do a full 24 hour fast from the item of day that is great. This fast is all about you reconnecting to God. So if you feel that after 12 hours you have connected with God in a real way, then stop but if you feel that I didn't connect with God today, then continue the fast longer.

Here is what fasting is all about.

Biblical fasting is a spiritual discipline which was encouraged by Jesus, Himself, while He was on earth. When questioned as to why the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist fasted while Jesus disciples did not, Jesus answered, "How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast” (Matthew 9:15).

Jesus was teaching that after His departure, the entire dynamic would change and the disciples would need a different type of preparation and provision. Fasting was to be a vital part of this new preparation. The new covenant is based on the truth that we have received everything in Christ, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3).

Nevertheless, we cooperate with the Spirit in the working out of our salvation with much prayer, meditation, and the study of God’s Word. In addition to all these spiritual practices, Christians should also employ the humbling discipline of fasting.

Biblical fasting, unlike fasting for medical or health reasons, must be done with an attitude of seriousness and sincerity. When we fast, we willingly deprive the body of what it longs for. Your flesh (sinful side of you) will crave things and want to be comfortable; therefore our hearts and minds must be totally focused and directed towards God so that He may be the full source of our strength during our period of fasting.

Fasting must also be done in an attitude of humility. It is not necessary for others to know we are fasting; it is directed towards God. “But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:17-18).

In addition to our attitudes towards God and our stance before man, our motives must also be correct. We should fast in order to further the building up of God’s kingdom by seeking to minister to others. The prophet Isaiah received from the Lord the acceptable motives for our fasts: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter -- when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” (Isaiah 58:6-7).

If you guys have any other questions about fast please email me at cvmcadam@gmail.com

If you aren't on the daily devotional text messaging chain, email me your number and I will make sure you are placed on it!

I will post all 30 days tomorrow in case you want to know what we will be fasting from!

Have a great day today!

Quick Saturday Update

Hey there everyone I hope you are having a sweet Saturday, hope it is relaxing, and you are able to get some rest.

I want to let you know about 1 thing for this coming Sunday morning. We have a comedian coming in and sharing his story, and he is sharing the importance of joy! He is really really funny, and I don't say that very often about a Christian comedian. Believe me :)

Also the youth worship band is going to be leading worship this Sunday morning and I know it means a lot when the students see people singing loud and proud. We are doing songs from youth group and so we will need people to come and clap and dance with us!

Again, I hope things go well for you today.

Hope to see you Sunday morning either 9:45am or 11:15am!

P.A.

Purity Ceremony recap

Hey there everyone I hope you are all having a great morning. I know the students are with their like 20th 2 hour delay. Impressive!

So anyways last night was 4th annual Purity Ceremony, and it was great! I love seeing students and their families connecting over prayer, and honest conversations! God did some amazing things last night and I am so excited what God is going to be doing in the future.

Last night we hit on 2 types of Confessions.
1. Confession to God for forgiveness
2. Confession to others for healing

So many times we are placing wedges between us and God, and us and others. For Purity to happen we need to have those relationships working and well. God's heart is for restoration, and He wants to restore families back to Himself, and He wants to restore purity to students.

I hope you all had a great time last night, I know I did, and I can't wait for the month of march when we are going to be doing our 30 day fast. You will have to check here everyday for our fasting schedule. We will have an entire post coming up soon on what to expect from this fast!

I hope you guys will come out this Sunday morning and support your youth worship band. We will be leading worship for both services! We are so pumped to have a chance to lead the adult worship services. So come on out and sing really really loud! Services are at 9:45am & 11:15am

P.A.

Purity Ceremony

Hey there everyone, tonight is our 4th annual purity Ceremony. We have so much awesomeness planned for you tonight. Tonight is the night where we invite all our parents and students to come together for a night of prayer, commitment, and desserts!

Tonight we are going to be talking about the first part of purity, Confession. I believe the message tonight is something that God needs all of us to hear because as we are all called to a life of purity, it all starts will confession.

So I believe tonight is going to be a powerful night where the Holy Spirit is going to do some amazing things! So come prepared to have a ton of fun, but also walk away with a very difficult challenge. God has some amazing things He wants to do tonight! So be prepared.

Also tonight we are going to be having a dessert bar afterwards, so tonight if you can bring a dessert to share with people that would be awesome!

I hope to see you tonight at 6:30pm!

P.A.

Wednesday night is going to be so AWESOME

Hey there everyone I hope your day is going splendid! This coming Wednesday night is going to be so awesome, because we are going to be talking about a New life you can have in Jesus Christ.

We were talking in staff meeting today that stats show that people that get threw the wall in their spiritual walk is that make a decision to stick to whatever discipline they are wanting to do like reading your bible, prayer, fasting, or whatever they just stuck with it.

Wednesday night we are going to be inviting you to stick to your guns when it comes to purity in your relationships in Junior High and high school. When you make the decision to stick with it you can honestly change your whole life around by just sticking to what God puts out there about relationships.

So this Wednesday night come ready to start a brand new life with your parents and inside your dating relationships!

Hope you have a wonderful day. See you Wednesday night.

Remember to bring your parents and a dessert to share with people Wednesday night!

P.A.

Purity Ceremony

Hey there everyone! I hope you are all having a super awesome day off school! Thank you presidents for helping us get a day off of school.

A couple things you will need to know about this coming Wednesday night.

1. This coming Wednesday night is our purity Ceremony! It is our 4th purity ceremony that we are doing and each one has been awesome. This year we are going to be doing something a little bit different but you have to come Wednesday night to find out what its all about.

2. If you are coming this Wednesday night bring a dessert to share with people. We are asking everyone, even leaders and youth pastors, to bring a dessert to share with people. It doesn't have to the nicest pie ever but please bring something to share with people. We want to have a time of hanging out afterward so people can talk and meet their small group leaders, and the people that hang out every Wednesday night. So come prepared to have an awesome time!

This coming Sunday morning we are having a comedian come and speak and the youth worship team is doing worship this Sunday morning so come on out and support the youth worship team by singing loud because we are doing songs that we do on Wednesday nights.

Hope to see you here Wednesday night and Sunday morning!

P.A.

Purity and some side of Purity

Hey there everyone, I really hope things are going well for you! I hope all those sickies out there get better, because man there are a lot of people that are sick and I was one of them on Tuesday but I am healed and better then ever. So for those who are still sick we are praying for ya, and we are excited to see you make a recovery.

So here a couple things you need to be aware of.

1. Sunday night 6pm-7pm - This Sunday night is where we are going to be getting into the nitty gritty of relationships and sex. We are going to be giving you practical ways to help you in relationships and also be helping you through the tough questions. You are the ones asking the questions and the great thing you can be anonymous when asking your questions. We want this time to be an open forum for you to ask any question you want.

2. Wednesday night - Purity Ceremony- We are asking those parents and students who will be attending this event to bring a dessert to share with everyone, this event is going to be different then the other purity ceremonies we have done because we want to be able to resource the family with ways to help teens and parents to stay pure in together so its not such a fight between students and parents. We need to make this a team effort rather then a solo fight!

So next Wednesday night from 6:30pm - 8:30pm is the Purity Ceremony and we really hope you can make it!

I hope to see a lot of the students here from 6pm - 7pm this Sunday for the Q and A. Bring a couple friends with you as well we will have some fun with the questions!

P.A.

Sorry for no update yesterday

Hey there everyone I am sorry I didn't update yesterday but I was pretty sick, and so I spent most of the day on my couch sleeping and drinking NyQuil. But here are somethings you can look forward to!

1. Tonight we start our new series on Relationships and Sex, so we have a bunch of fun things planned for you!
2. Tonight we will have some really awesome worship coming your way. So come ready to dance, and sing really really loud :)
3. We have some great games tonight, some games to get ya up and moving and mingling with some other people.


Tonight is going to be so stinking awesome!

Next Wednesday is our purity ceremony and we are going to be doing things a lot different from last year, so if you have never been to a purity ceremony then you have a lot to look forward to, if you have come before this one is going to be entirely different so don't think just because you have come before you shouldn't come!

With this night we are asking if people could bring a dessert to share, because afterwards we are going to have a time of mingling. So write it down in your calendars and get ready to rock and roll!

Hope to see ya tonight!

P.A.

Big Chill Recap

Hey there everyone I am so glad that all the students had a good time, we had a ton of fun with your students and we got to have a ton of great conversations, and we got to take time to pray with a lot of them as well. Totally psyched to see how these students are going to take their unstoppable relationship with Christ and take it to school today.

The weekend was fantastic. We got to worship together, we got to serve together, and we got to learn about Christ together. God has done some amazing things in our students. Saturday night was a powerful night, but now our prayers need to switch to having our students living out the decisions they made. Our prayer as leaders for these students to have changed lives, not just a great memory of a weekend. We hope and pray that this weekend is the starting blocks to a brand new life for some of these students. So please pray with us for these students to be strong, courageous, and bold with their faith today. Also if you had a student go on this trip please encourage them in their walk with Christ. Take time to talk with them, go back through some of the questions we posted about this weekend.

Thanks for praying with us this weekend!

A couple things to be aware of.

1. Purity Ceremony is on February 23rd. All parents and students are invited to this! 6:30 - 8:30pm. Dessert Reception following the ceremony.
2. Relationship and Sex Q & A this SUNDAY from 6 - 7pm. Junior High and High school students only.
- We will post the questions on here that the students asked. Everything will be anonymous to help with openness and honesty from students.
3. Please encourage your students to attend the next 2 weeks for our Purity Series.

P.A.

Big Chill Session 3

Hey there everyone! I hope your night was awesome. I know our night was great.

Tonight's messages was all about Salvation. Jesus Christ came to rescue us from our sins. There were a over 20 students who gave their life to Christ tonight and then over 40 more students that rededicated their lives to Christ. It was an amazing night! Keep our students in your prayers tonight as their are a lot of students are dealing with very hard questions.

A great night of worship and our leaders stepped up in a huge way. I don't normally brag on our leaders, but you need to thank them for taking a weekend out of their lives to really speak truth into their lives, and these leaders are right a long side of them crying because they love and care for your kids in such a deep deep way! Be proud of these leaders.

We are excited to see you all tomorrow night around 8pm at CVMC

Talk with you tomorrow night.

P.A.

Big Chill session 2

Hey there everyone, I hope your day is going well! I hope for those parents who sent both students with us this weekend that you have a great early valentines day date. All I need to say is.....Your Welcome.

Anyways, this morning session was a great session. The students were totally pumped up this morning to worship God. It was so awesome to see students worship like that after a night of not much sleep. Totally a God moment.

This morning our speaker talked about John 8 and the adulterous woman. We talked about God wanting to restore from your past failures. And that Jesus can take those failures and you can start a new life following Christ.

Here are a couple questions you can ask your students.

1. What do you think the woman felt like being thrown in front of everyone?
2. How do you think God can restore situations like that?
3. Have you ever felt like God has restored your life? Why?
4. What do you think Jesus was writing on the ground in this story?
5. How would you feel if someone paid off your debt with one check?

This afternoon we are splitting our group into 4 groups to go and serve people around the area up here in Mears, MI. I love that our students get excited to go and serve others!

Be praying for our session tonight, we are going to be having a worship experience with the students tonight. We are going to be setting up 7 interactive stations so after the message they have an opportunity to commit to Christ in a couple different ways.

We have already seen some amazing things already happen here and God is moving and working so please continue to pray! Its working! So please continue to intercede on our behalf. We will be praying for you guys at CVMC tomorrow morning.

P.A.

Big Chill Session 1

Hey there everyone I know this update is really late, but we hit a snow storm on the way up and that slowed us down a ton. So we got a late start to everything. So here is a little recap for our first session.

Justian Liab is our speaker for this weekend, and he brought it tonight!

He spoke on the John 4 and the woman at the well. He talked about how God wants to reach the hearts of everyone even those who have messed up backgrounds. He talked with the students about God wants to do somethings amazing in them because God.
1. Likes them - because for some students that is a huge thing because they aren't liked at school or even their home.
2. Wants them - That God is pursuing them! Period.

Here are some questions to ask your students:

1. Ask your students if they believe God likes them?
2. Ask them if they think God wants them?
3. Ask them if they have felt alone?
4. Ask them if they have ever experienced God in a real way?
5. How do you think God wants to move through them to reach those who are alone?

I hope you are taking some time to pray for our students. Please pray there is a spiritual war going on so continue to pray!

P.A.

Big Chill Information

Hey there everyone! I am hoping you having an awesome day. I know I woke up this morning ready to head up to Big Chill! Here are a couple things you need to remember about tonight and this weekend.

1. We are meeting at SUGAR GROVE CHURCH at 5pm.

2. Please eat something before you come, or bring something small to eat. We will be having a big snack up at camp tonight. But that won't be till later.

3. If you need a packing list scroll down through the past couple posts, and there will be a packing list download post, where you can click on that and get the packing list.

4. Parents, we posted the entire booklet for you to look at it has the schedule, devotions and everything you will need to know about what we have going on up there this weekend.

5. Parents again, I will be updating this blogspot with highlights from the day, and after each session we have to give you some questions to ask your student when they get home. I posted yesterday about 3 ways you can prepare yourself for when your student comes home. Check it out.

6. We will be back around 8pm on Sunday night, but we are stopping for dinner on the way back so depending on how long that takes it might be a little later or possibly a little earlier. We will have students call parents when we are about 45 minutes away so you can plan accordingly. Also we will be dropped off at CVMC, reason being is that 80% of the students going on this trip don't drive so we are making it easier on the parents not having to drive all the way back over to Sugar grove on a Sunday night.

Pretty excited for this weekend, God is going to do some amazing things. So please keep us in your prayers and we will see you tonight!

P.A.

Big Chill Devo Booklet

Download the .pdf for a taste of what's to come for Big Chill 2011:

Big Chill Booklet

Big Chill updates

Hey there everyone I hope things are going awesome for you on your 2nd day in a row with another 2 hour delay. So enjoy the time sleeping in, or as I was talking to students last night they were just going to stay up 2 hours later.

Alright so this update is for all the parents that have students going on the big chill. Tomorrow night I will start updating our adventures right here at the blogspot. Twice a day after each session I will tell you all what we talked about, questions to ask your students when they get home, and some highlights from the days, and hopefully some pictures and videos.

I want to make this a resource for parents so when your students get home you don't have to ask the typical "How was it" and get the typical "tired" answer. My goal in updating the blogspot with questions and pictures and video's is that at the end of the trip you can sit with your student and talk with them about what they learned with specific questions from the sessions, and look through pictures together.

Now this will only work if you attack from a couple angles.

1. Take time to pray for your student while they are up at Big Chill, maybe you go as far as to fast from a meal on Saturday or Sunday and pray for them. Just know that without putting prayer into this situation the results could be very minimal.

2. Take your student out for a lunch or like their favorite place to eat and talk about this. I promise you if you try to ask them right when they get home you will get limited answers, because they will have just been on a 3 and half hour bus ride, sleep deprived, and restless. Wanting to have a deep awesome conversation will not work at 9pm at night when they get home. So schedule a time on Monday or even Tuesday to take your student somewhere and just talk about it. Don't wait to long or you might lose out on some really neat details from the trip.

I hope this trip will be as amazing as last year, but for that to happen we need you guys lift us up in prayers a couple ways to pray.

1. For safety through out the whole trip. Bus rides, tubing, working, and all the fun we will have.
2. For students to have open hearts to allow God to work
3. For no drama, sometimes the way the enemy works is to divide the group up with drama. So be praying for unity.
4. Pray for the youth leaders that are going, that they will have energy and wisdom as they talk with students and hang out with them all weekend.
5. Pray for our times of worship and for our speaker.

Can't wait to start this adventure tomorrow......

P.A.

The Other Six

Download the devotional for this week here

EPIC Wednesday night!

Hey there everyone, I hope things are going well for you today! I am so stinking pumped for tomorrow night because we have so many fun things planned for you. Here are a couple things you can look forward to for youth group tomorrow night.

1. You get to see people who absolutely want to see you succeed in Christ! Thats a pretty special thing, don't take that for granted.

2. We get to play some awesome games tomorrow together, One is called Poopdeck! Its a ton of fun, so come prepared to have your face melted because we are going to have so much fun.

3. IF you want to help us with blow the socks off of a food pantry up by our camp bring a couple cans of food, because we are going to give them to a food pantry who is low on food and they only think we are coming to help sort, and fix up their building. So they have no idea what is going to be happening! I can't wait.

4. Tomorrow night after youth group we are going to have a Big Chill meeting just reminding you on the packing list, and what time to be at Sugar Grove, and when we are coming back. So just a quick little meeting afterward. So be ready for that right afterwards.

5. 1 More thing you need to be aware of. Coming up on February 20th, we are going to have a sex and relationship Q & A. Sunday night, Feb 20th at 6pm - 7pm. You will be able to text your questions in that night and be able to ask anything you want. Esther and I will try to answer as many questions as we can. This is an open forum for you to bring friends to and they can ask questions as well.

I hope you have a great night everyone! Hope to see ya tomorrow

P.A.

Wednesday night is gonna rock!

Hey there everyone I hope things are going awesome for ya. I know last week we didn't get to meet because there was 50 feet of snow on the ground but its all good because this week is going to stinking rock!

A couple things to know for this Wednesday night:

1. This weekend at the Big Chill we are going to be surprising a local food pantry with canned goods, they are really low and they think we are coming up there to just help them around their shop, but we want to bless their socks off! So if you can bring can or multiple cans of food this Wednesday night that would be great. If you are going to big chill you can bring those on Friday at 5pm to Sugar Grove with ya!

2. This is our finale to our Sun Stand Still series! The culmination to this series will be at Big Chill and we are going to doing our final challenge to you guys on Sunday afternoon before we come back. I am super pumped for this weekend!

3. The packing list for Big chill is up on the blogspot, and we will also hand it out Wednesday night for those who haven't printed it off yet! But I would print it off and start getting ready for this weekend its going to be stinking awesome!

Come ready to experience some awesomeness Wednesday night!

P.A.

Big Chill 2011 Packing List

Click to download: bigPackList.pdf

Cell phone usage

Hey there everyone, Check out this pretty insane statistics for cell phone usage with teenagers.

It goes to show that us as youth pastors need to use smart phones, and texting as a tool for ministry. If students are on their cell phones that much, then we need to tap into that and help direct them to Christ.

http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/2011/02/cellphone-usage-infographic/

Back to somewhat

Hey there everyone! I was super unhappy when we had to cancel last night, but our parking lot wasn't even plowed till this morning because the guys were so swamped so even if we wanted to have it we couldn't! So here are a couple things we were going to be talking about last night!

1. For those going on the Big Chill we have a detailed packing list for you! We will upload that here to the blogspot later today. So look for that.

2. We are going to be doing a service project up in Mears Michigan. We need each of you to bring a couple cans of food, because there is a food pantry up by our camp that is low on food, and we want to surprise them with a ton of food! So we have set up a time with them up there Saturday morning where we are going to head over there with everyone, and give them just a ton of food! Its going to be amazing to be able to bless people who are serving Christ every single day. So bring some cans with you. More the merrier we want to bless the socks of these people!

3. Just another reminder that we don't have High School NEXT class this Sunday night because of the super bowl. Go and hang out with Friends and show them by your actions that you love Christ!

4. Feb 20th is going to be a huge night! We are going to be having a relationship and sex Q and A with my wife and I. That night when you show up we will give you a number to text so you can ask your questions we will answer as many as we can. This will start at 6pm and go to 7pm. This night is entirely up to you how well it goes. We want to give you a platform to ask open and honest questions so take advantage of this time. Bring a couple friends with you as well. We are only going to be answer questions you ask. So if you have friends that have question about Relationships or Sex bring them.

5. If you still have permissions slips or money you need/want to turn in for Big Chill please do it by Sunday. We need to make sure we get them a solid number that is coming. So we have enough food for everyone :)

Have an awesome day I hope you guys all have a great day today. I know I swamped with work so I will be at the church today working on things so please if you have any questions come on over and we can hang out a little bit and maybe you can help get somethings done around here :)

See you later.

P.A.

youth group canceled

hey there everyone youth group is canceled.

Tuesday the day before the SNOW!

Hey there every one it looks like we have some snow on the way, so here is the procedure for tomorrow night for youth group.

1. We will check the roads around 2 tomorrow afternoon, the main reason we will be checking earlier is because we have Adult classes tomorrow night as well. So its not just the Youth Pastors call tomorrow, we will be talking with the Senior Pastor and the teachers.
2. If we do cancel we will post it on Channel 16, NBC, and we will post it on Channel 22, CBS. Also we will post it on Twitter, Facebook and right here on the blogspot. So please check here early and often.
3. If you haven't heard anything by 5pm, then we are still on.
4. Also just everyone knows. IF they cancel school for tomorrow that doesn't mean we are automatically canceling. We will check through out the day to see what the best course of action is!

I do hope to see you tomorrow but ya'll need to know the protocol with this big snow storm heading our way.

I hope you have a great night! Be careful out there its going to get nasty.

P.A.