As most of you know, I am now a student pastor at LifePoint Church.  I get to walk beside middle school kids as they enter the most awkward, trying, and clueless time of their life.  Believe it or not, it’s a lot of fun.  The first thing most people say when I tell them what I do is, “Ewww…middle schoolers.”  It’s like this age group has a disease that you can catch and most people want to stay as far away as possible. Well, I guess I got the disease because I can’t wait to see my students on Wed night.

I love hearing that they are mad at their boyfriend because their square dancing partner in gym class is a girl that is pretty.  I just wish that was the extent of the issues that they are dealing with.  They run much deeper than you can imagine. There is a LOT of pain and hurting.  I now respond to the question of “Why middle school?” with “Everyone Needs Healing.”

Anyway, that 150 word introduction has now lead me to the point of this post. Tonight we start our moral boundaries series.  The big series of the year!  The one that causes parents to cringe and small group leaders to suddenly get sick. This year we called it “fLee”.  An obvious rip from one of my favorite shows, “Glee.” It’s not a series to slam the show, although that would be pretty easy, it’s a creative decision.

We filmed 4 glee-style music videos a while back. Complete with rewording the songs and recording audio tracks. It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun and the students are really excited to see what we came up with.

Week 1 is “Shady” set to the song “Baby.” We are talking about the type of person you date and give them 5 signs that they should flee a relationship. I will post the video and update of the specific message points this weekend.

Here are the lyrics:

This lesson is still going and it has to do with community groups.

I lead a small group.  I take that back, I lead a medium group. Well, it really could be called a large group and has been called a small church, but let’s just stick with “medium group.”  It all started one September afternoon after reading The Hole in our Gospel with a friend, we decided to start a small group. [..]

“Oh, we are totally going to shave your head! I am going to invite everyone I know!!”

That right there was my inspiration for inviting people to “Friend Day” at church.  For those who didn’t grow up in church or didn’t get the joy of having Friend Day, it’s one Sunday a year where EVERYONE invites neighbors, classmates, friends, maids, garbage men, etc to church.  They didn’t even have to be your friend. [..]

Ah revival. The time of year that you go to church on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night. As a kid this was a death sentence. “Every night!? Really??”

As a pastor this had to be a humbling time. If you are reviving something that means it was close to death. So you hire someone to come in and revive it. Or as I saw it as a kid, scare the crap out of everyone. [..]

MY PERCEPTION:

We were lost. Behind me there were 19 other cars waiting for me to make a move. I was their leader. I looked around and that panic feeling came over me again. “I’ve brought 40 people out into the middle of nowhere and have no clue what to do.” My volunteers were beginning to get restless. I checked my cellphone once again, no service. [..]