700th post!

Hey there everyone, I hope your Thursday is going awesome. I know my Thursday had a great start I got to spend some much needed time talking with my wife over breakfast! Love spending time with my wife she is pretty stinking awesome.

Anyways, I am going to update you on a couple things that are coming up in the near future.

1. We don't have youth group next week due to the fact that a ton of people are going to be on spring break, and a lot of our leaders are going to be on spring break. So take a night to yourself next Wednesday night and relax and enjoy a night of free time. I know that doesn't happen very often.

2. The blog will not be updated next week because I will be in West Virginia with some students whitewater rafting. So I will not be updating next week.

3. When we return in April we will be starting a new series called Identity Theft. I am so stinking pumped for this series because I believe that so many of our issues with Christ, and living out our Jesus in our every day lives stems from not understanding who we are in Jesus Christ. I hope you can join us for the series in April!

I hope you all have a wonderful spring break, and a great weekend. Take time this next week and spend some great quality time with Christ.

P.A.

Small group outings Pt 3

Hey there everyone, I know my posts have been all about these small group outings but I believe they are so important for our ministry. Here are a couple reasons we do small group outings.

1. It shakes up the schedule - The one thing I hate about schedules is that a lot of times there isn't a lot of time to just have fun and hang out. So many students go from school to practice to homework to bed. I want to be able to give 2 hours of unabashed fun!

2. Get to hang out with people who care - Students get to spend extended time with their small group leader. Someone who cares, someone who takes time away from their family to pour into a their small group of students. This a lot of times can break down walls by letting the students see their small group leader just having fun with them.

3. Allows the student to have some ownership of the night - The students and the small group leaders get to plan the night, so it gives the student a chance to voice his or her opinion on what they want to do. So some students might want to go and have fun playing laser tag, while some might want to go and help out at the mission. There are a ton of different options and it is really fun to see students get excited about their small group outings.

Those are some reasons we do Small group outings. I hope you guys have a great time tonight, please make sure you contact your small group leader if you aren't not quite sure what you are doing tonight.

P.A.

Small group outings Pt2

Hey there everyone I hope things are going well for you. Here are a couple of the small group outings that you need to be aware of

7th & 8 grade girls - Frosts house
7th grade guys - Wesleys house
8th grade guys - Wings Ect. Elkhart, and then moving to a private arcade
9th & 10th grade guys - Call Mark Metcalfe
9th grade girls - Call Charell and Kristen
10th grade girls - Call Esther for details
11th grade guys - Bowling at Maple City
11th & 12 grade girls - Panera in Goshen
12th grade guys - New York Buffet in Goshen

Those are the ones that I have for sure, the others have things they are doing but they are detailed out more then what I want to type on here!

So for any more information you want or need for the small group outings please call your small group leaders for all the fun information!

I hope you guys have a great day!

P.A.

Small group outings

Hey there everyone, I hope things are going well with you today. I know for me its been a long weekend, but last night I slept like a rock! I am not sure if rocks sleep, but anyways I slept really well last night.

So this coming Wednesday night is a little bit different because we aren't having normal youth group, we are doing small group outings. This is where your small group goes out and does something totally different then what we normally do. This way you guys get to know your small group leader a little bit better and everyone in your small group gets to hang out.

Tomorrow I will be posting where all the small groups are going, but you should of heard from your small group leader already. If you haven't please contact me at cvmcadam@gmail.com and I will make sure they do or at least tell you where they are meeting and what they are doing.

I will also be posting where all the small groups are going and meeting so just in case you have a practice that goes long, you can just go and meet your group where ever they might be.

So Just another reminder that this week is small group outings, and Next week during Spring Break, we don't have youth group, because so many of you are traveling and it gives our leaders a week break to recharge their batteries as we make the final push towards the summer!

I hope you guys have a great day today!

P.A.

4 easy ways to get into and out of depression

Last night we talked about Elijah and his bout with depression.

So here are 4 ways that you can easily get into depression. Trust me!

1. Totally wear yourself out. - Seriously, do everything! Join that club, make that team, practice every single day. Then on top of that make sure you get good enough grades to impress the "ok" colleges. But if you want to impress the "great" colleges, do all that stuff plus go out and join another club so they can see that you are a well rounded person that only sleeps 1.5 hours every other day.

2. Shut out everyone - When things do get tough, simply stiff arm people out of the way. Wall yourself in with your own emotions, and deal with things on your own. Because lets be honest even if you told your best friend what was wrong they really wouldn't understand what you are going through. So deal with this one on your own.

3. Focus on the Negative - When things go wrong make sure you only look at the negative in every situation. That is the only way you are ever going to figure things out is if you look at the negative stuff and totally leave out the positive things that you can learn from this problem. Just keep going over and over and over it in your head its the only way things will get worked out.

4. Totally forget God - Forget everything God has ever blessed you with in your life. If God wants you to be happy then He obviously wouldn't have placed this situation in your life! So forget all about everything He has ever done!

Now obviously I don't want any of you to actually go through with those steps, but the issue is a lot of us end up doing those exact steps and wonder why we aren't happy, or are relationship with Jesus feels distant.

Here are 4 ways to avoid/remove depression from your life.

1. Eat and Rest - When the Angel of the Lord came to Elijah, the angel told him to get up eat this meal, and then rest. We have to understand that rest is a vital part of our relationship with Jesus. We can't use all our energy pouring ourselves out onto all sorts of projects, games, practices, and clubs and then expect to press repeat every single week. You have rest your body and your mind!

2. Replace our lies with Gods truths. - We go into Self pity mode all the time, where our mind just exaggerates everything that could and will go wrong. We get into a downward spiral after something we just think about too long. We have to take our lies with believe in our head, and replace them with Gods truths. We have to remember what God has done in and through our lives, and we need to understand that Jesus Christ loves us so much that He can remove shame, doubt, and any other emotions that can hinder.

3. God speaks in a still small voice. - God spoke to Elijah through bringing fire down from the sky and burning up the alter, God spoke to Elijah through no rain for 3 years, God spoke to Elijah when he was eating from birds. God spoke to Elijah through some pretty BIG events, but God wanted to speak to Elijah in a new way, through a gentle whisper. God wants to speak to us today but sometimes its going to come through a channel we might not be ready for.

4. God has given us divine opportunities. - God told Elijah to go back and do what prophets do. God has given us certain people, and certain opportunities that we need to take advantage of and talk with people about what God has done in our lives.


This what the students learned about last night! I am excited about small group outings next week! Have a great day today.

P.A.

Crazyness shall begin soon

So tonight is our final night studying the awesome life of Elijah. Tonight we get to see that he is actually human and struggles with life just like we do. So tonight come and hear how we can defeat depression and how even the hero's of the faith deal with emotions and junk that comes up in their lives!

A couple things to remember about tonight:

1. Bring a friend with you tonight, ask them after practice if they want to come join you at youth group. Its going to be a blast tonight! I promise you that.
2. Bring a bible because tonight we are going to circling things and writing things in our bibles, I know some people don't like to do that, but I think it helps me remember points when I go back and read the story again.
3. Urban plunge and Student Impact applications are out! Junior High students don't miss out on this great opportunity to go and serve. Also all students are able to apply for student impact so if you want to talk with your small group leader about getting an application.

We hope to see you tonight here at Crystal Valley at 6:30pm and we will wrap up right around 8:30pm tonight. Can't wait to see you guys tonight!

P.A.

Elijah runs away

Hey there everyone, I hope things are going well for ya today. I know for me I have a long day ahead of me and I am already tired. Is that bad?

Oh well!

On to the important things of the day.

1. Tomorrow nights youth group is going to be so stinking awesome. We have a new game we are going to unveil! We have some awesome worship planned, and then we get to talk about depression! SUPER FUN :) No, but we really are talking about depression because Elijah went into a deep depression in 1st King 19, and that's what we are going to be looking at tomorrow night.
2. Small Group outings are next week~! So please make sure you know where you are going, please ask your small group leader tonight for all the details! I will also be posting all where all the small groups are going on the blogspot next Wednesday so just in case you forget!
3. Urban plunge and Student Leadership forms are due the week after Spring Break. So if you want to go on the Junior high missions trip or you want to apply for our student leadership please make sure you pick up an application Wednesday night!

I hope to see you guys tomorrow night! Praying for you guys today. Tomorrow night can be a life changing event, so who are you going to invite to come out to youth group?

P.A.

Wow....My bracket looks like trash

Hey there everyone, well after a wonderful 4 days of college basketball and countless hours of cheering, yelling, and eating. My, what I thought was an awesome, bracket looks like a horrible shrewd of wishful thoughts. I was wrong on so many levels on so many games. It was so funny last night I couldn't sleep real well and so I started praying for students and leaders and then God started bringing my brackets up again and again. So I finally just prayed God what is up with my thinking about my brackets. Then this thought occured......

You thought you were right on but you were way off. Is that how you view your spiritual life?

I was blown away, I was almost going crazy thinking about all the things I thought I was being disciplined in but wasn't at all. So last night was a conversation of repentance, and setting goals so this doesn't happen again.

So students and parents this is our final week of our 30 day fast, and my question to you is. Since we have been fast for almost 22 days now are you any closer to Christ then you were before or was is it just wishful thinking like my brackets were?

God wants to do some amazing things in your life, but are you allowing Him to do that or are you fooling yourself with things you are picking to put into your life?

Here is the final week to our fasting:
22- Fast from making fun of people
23- Fast from talking, spend as much time in silence as you can. Don't be disrespectful to your parents or teachers during this time. We will break the fast at youth group.
24 - Fast from your IPod
25 - Fast from Video games
26 - Fast from facebook
27 -Fast from busyness take a rest day
28 - Fast from your lunch table
29 - Fast from junk food, go home and help your parents with dinner
30 - Fast from food, you can break this fast at your small group outings.

Tourny Time!

Hey there everyone, I hope your Thursday is going well! I know mine started early and will end late tonight. But at least today I can have caffeine since we were fasting from it yesterday. But I didn't think our fast all the way through, I normally on the first day of the NCAA tournament, I get taco bell and sit and watch the tourny but today we are fasting from Junk food so I think I have to find a salad or something healthy and watch basketball. STINK! Oh well tomorrow I am hanging with some students and we are doing a 100 nugget challenge from Mcdonalds so I am going to get my full junk food intake!

So last night was super powerful, I love getting to walk back through the sanctuary last night and look at all the prayer requests, and then get to see all the hand prints over them to see how many times they were prayed over! So cool, we are hopefully going to leave them up over the week and next Wednesday we will get to see how many of those prayer requests got answered by God!

For those who missed out last night, here are the 4 ways to make prayer effective!
1. Humble yourself
2. Pray specific prayers.
3. Be persistent in your prayers
4. Be expectant in your prayers

When you combine those 4 things to your prayer life, God can do some amazing things in your life!

We hope to see you next week as we end our Elijah series!

P.A.

Elijah prays

Hey there fellow human beings! I hope you are having a wonderful day so far today. I know I am wicked tired this morning, and since we are fasting from caffeine today, today should be fun!

So tonight we are going to following Elijah tonight as he prays for rain! We have talked about Elijah going into the ravine and being fed by ravens, then last week we talked about the showdown they had about idols, and tonight we look at when he prays for rain.

We are going to talk about 4 ways to make your prayer life effective, and how prayer effects almost ever part of your life. I believe tonight can be a really powerful night because we have some pretty cool prayer elements that you get to participate in.

So come tonight ready to have a ton of fun with our impossible shot, also your small group is going to be filling out brackets to see if you can win a pizza party for your small group! So we have tons of really fun things planned for you tonight.

Hope to see you later.

P.A.

Making the come back.....

I love this time of year! March Madness is awesome. I love watching basketball all day Thursday, friday. This is my tradition that I have done the past couple years. I go and get Taco Bell, I turn on the projector, and basketball commences. I absolutely love it because I get to do work and watch great basketball. But what I love more is when the little guys beat the big programs. I love it because a lot of times the little guys don't get the chance to play on a big stage, but when they get the chance the step up big time.

This sunday night I challenged our students to step up this week and be a "burden bearer" for their school. This is a chance for our students to step up to the big stage and do some amazing things for Christ.

I believe that this Wednesday night could be a time for of our students to step up and get on the big stage. We are going to be talking about prayer and we are going to be giving out students some time to pray for other students in a really neat way.

I can't wait for Wednesday night! I hope to see you there.

P.A.

Selection Monday - Next 7 days of fasting

Hey there everyone, so this is the Monday where everyone takes their work breaks filling out brackets and picking which teams will get upset and then which teams will be the ones moving on.

I know this time of year brings some fun games at our youth group. Every March we do a game called the impossible shot. Where students get a chance to win cash if they can make our impossible shot. So far we haven't had anyone make it, but last week we had a student that came really close. Also this coming Wednesday each small group will fill out a bracket and who ever gets the most teams correct they win a pizza party on a Wednesday night during small group time.

This coming Wednesday night we are going to be talking about Elijah's prayer! So come Wednesday night to have a ton of fun while worshiping, and learning about God's calling on your life. We had a great time last night at our High school NEXT class. I just want to remind them to be Seed Chuckers!

Can't wait to see you guys this coming Wednesday night!

Next 7 days of fasting:
Tuesday - Fast from Sarcasm
Wednesday - Fast from Caffeine
Thursday - Fast from Fast food and Junk food
Friday - Fast from your computer, unless you need it for homework.
Saturday - Fast from friends today, spend the day with your family.
Sunday - Fast from Texting
Monday - Fast from Television today

Praying for you guys this week.

P.A.

Toothpaste and Idols

Hey there everyone, I want to tell you last night was so much stinking fun. Mark Metcalfe brought it with games last night. The toothpaste game was awesome, look at some pictures on my facebook. We also had a pretty riveting game of "order up".

But the real awesome part of the night was when we got to take some time with Christ before we went to small groups. Here is the short review on what we talked about last night.

1. False gods only promise what only the true God provides
2. Quit treating God like a friend with benefits
3. Use what is number 2,3,4 in your life to glorify what should be number 1 in your life, Christ.

I hope you guys have a great day today!

Tomorrow we are fasting from food again! Please make sure you are prepared for this, if you can't do a full 12 hours then skip 1 meal and pray.

Have a super day today everyone!

P.A.

Elijah steps his game up

Hey there everyone I hope your Wednesday is going well or possibly even great! I know my Wednesday has got a late start with only having 1 car to get around in but its all good in the hood. Get it, hood of the car, nevermind.

Tonight we are going to be looking at 1 Kings 18 where Elijah confronts the king and they have a verbal stand off and then you as a small group are going to discuss the battle on Mount Carmel. That is one of my favorite bible stories, such a cool victory for Christ.

But Tonight we are going to be talking about the first commandment. (I would come knowing the first commandment you might be able to win something)

Tonight's message is going to be so much fun to talk about but the issue is it kicked me square in the teeth, and it was rough for me to wrestle through so tonight be prepared to hear from God. I know I love it when Christ speaks to me! That is my prayer for you guys tonight, to hear from God in a new and cool way.

Youth Group starts at 6:30pm and is over at 8:30pm. Can't wait to see you tonight.

P.A.

Youth Group eve!

Hey there everyone I hope you are having an awesome stinking day. I know my day is full of getting things ready for tomorrow night. I am so excited about tomorrows night message because I think that tomorrow is going to be an eye opener for a lot of people. I am praying that God will take control of tomorrow nights youth group and just make it an awesome night for us His Children.

So a couple things you need to be aware of.

1. Tomorrow night we are continuing our impossible shot. So make sure you come ready to rock that out.
2. We are continuing our series called "ELIJAH" tomorrows message is called which god do you serve?
3. Small group outings are MARCH 30th! So make sure you get with your small group leaders and plan out what you are doing.
4. Bring a friend tomorrow night, because we have some awesome fun things we are going to be doing.
5. Keep going strong on our 30 day fast. I hope you are taking this seriously and striving after God with everything you have! I promise that if you seek after Him you will find Him!

I hope to see you guys tomorrow night. We are super pumped to see ya tomorrow night.

Be Strong, Be Courageous, Be UNSTOPPABLE!

P.A.

Wow! I have missed updating

Hey there everyone I have been gone the past few days at the simply youth ministry conference which was just awesome. I got to spend a lot of time talking with other youth pastors about how they do youth group, and I got a ton of teaching on student leadership, equipping small group leaders, and then some student on student evangelism. I am super pumped to bring this stuff back to you guys and implement some of the great idea's into our youth ministry here at CVMC!

A couple things for you guys to reminded of:
1. We are in the middle of a series called ELIJAH, where we are learning about the life of Elijah and how his life can show us different ways on how to get closer to Jesus Christ! So come this Wednesday and answer the Question "Which God do you serve?" Its going to be a great night.
2. We are doing our impossible shot Wednesday where you can win a crisp $100 bill. So come on out and try to get picked to try our impossible shot.
3. We are in the middle of our fast for 30 days I really hope you are keeping up with it. Today's item is friends, and we are wanting you to step out of you comfort zone and talk to other people, and then tonight spend time with your family doing something.

Here are the next 7 days so if you miss a text or a facebook update you can always check here.
Monday - Friends
Tuesday - Your lunch table
Wednesday - Non-Christian Music
Thursday - IPod
Friday - Food
Saturday - Making fun of people (A lot harder then you think)
Sunday - Gossip

So there are the next 7 days of our fast! Can't wait to see you guys on Wednesday night! We have some awesome things planned for you!

P.A.

Fasting day 2

Hey there everyone I hope things are going well for you! I know I am super pumped for youth group tonight. We have so many awesome things coming your way tonight.

1. Cornerstone University will be here tonight and they will be giving us ICE CREAM! So if you want some awesome ice cream and hear about a great college come tonight and listen to them for a little bit.

2. We are bringing back and old game where you can win straight up cash money! And its not what would you do for a dollar! But something that happens in MARCH. Think about it. mhmmmmmmmm

3. Tonight our very own Caleb is going to be speaking tonight! We start a new series called Elijah and tonight you are going to learn the back story to Elijah and its pretty stinking incredible.

So tonight is going to be amazing!

Also, for those who didn't know we are doing a 30 day fast in March. Yesterday we fasted from food for 12 hours, and today we are fasting from texting for 12 hours!

For those who are doing this fast let me give you a couple tips on how to get the most out of this fast.
1. If you aren't spending time reading your bible, praying, worshiping, sitting in silence before God, journaling, ect.....during the times when you would be eating or texting. Your results from this fast are going to MICRO! The entire point of this fast is to connect with God during the times you would be doing whatever item we are fasting from. EXAMPLE: Today if you think about texting, say pray to God thanking Him for something or someone, if you receive a text message open up your bible and read a chapter. If we are solely counting down the minutes till whenever we are able to do whatever we are fasting from, this whole fast is going to be pointless! So please please please take the time to seek out Christ during the times of fasting!

I hope that tip helps you get more out of this fast!

Hope to see you tonight.

P.A.

Fasting day 1 - 7

Hey there everyone, so today is day 1 of our fasting and we are fast from food today, now I know for some people you will have to do something a little bit different because of ISTEP, or Practices, and medicines, where if you didn't eat it could be bad. Please eat in those situations but this whole process of fasting from things is connecting with God in a deeper way. So maybe today before you eat take time to HONESTLY thank God for this meal and as you eat read your bible or talk to someone about what God is doing in your life.

So I am going to post the first 7 days here so you know what is coming up and you can prepare, also if you don't get our daily text message please email me at cvmcadam@gmail.com, and tell me your number and I will get you all hooked up to receive those.

Also for students who are committing to this, you can leave comments here on the blog about your experiences, and or text me your experience through out the day! I want to know how we can be praying for you and what you are learning from this process!

Be Strong and Keep up the good fight.

Here are the next 7 days.

1. Fasting from food
2. Fasting from texting
3. Fasting from television
4. Fast from facebook today
5. Fast from music today
6. Fast from Video games
7. Fast from friends spend time with your family today.

P.A.