Feelin good...

Christmas time is here. I am still on vacation, visiting our friends Keith and Emily. They have moved into a nice new house down here in DC (or more accurately northern Virginia), and it's been good to get away and spend some time chillin. Sort of like a de-tox from work.

I've been spending some serious time working on my book about my Malawi trip. As I was there in August, I wrote Sarah a letter every day of the trip, trying my best to detail everything I could to her. Now, I'm taking the notebook of letters, and trying my best to put it all into words. I actually started the project right after I got home from Africa, and started two chapters. But lately I've been working on my writing skills, and the Africa project seemed to be the best place to work. I spent this morning finishing the third chapter, and re-viewing it and re-writing certain sections. I started chapter four, but it's about a dear friend I met in Malawi named Silas, and it's really hard for me to put into words how he and I interacted during my time there. Chapter four is going to be difficult.

(giraffe butt...)

We're getting ready for a day out on the town, including coffee shops, christmas shopping, and a trip to the national zoo to see some pandas. All in all, the vacation has been wonderful. I wrote a new song while I was down here too, based on this news article.

Sad world.

Anyway, I should get ready for the day. Enjoy!

Godspeed,

Jason

Photoblog!

Hey guys!
Sarah and I have gone to Washington DC. You can track our progress on Twitter over there---->
Here are some photos!

3rd annual display of big trucks! Awesome!

We ate here. It was delicious!

Emily made fun of me camera phoning. I camera phoned her. That'll teach her!

You may have to tilt your screen to see that properly, but Keith Sarah and I went grocery shopping, and they had tiny carts for kids. Obviously I had to use it!

Then I hitched a ride on Keith's cart.

Keith kicked me off. I took a photo of this flag...

Little boy...

More later.

Jason

Post 19: I will not celebrate post 20.

Greetings friends.
Today's Bridge faced more technical problems than Apollo 13.

First of all, it was a day where I was both the preacher and the worship leader. I hate those days. A lot of people don't really see why, but it's so hard for me to keep my focus on both of those identities. So much so that I actually left my guitar at home this morning, and had to ask Ed to break into my house and get it. 

(Creep)

For a sermon today, I basically walked us the whole way through human history. Only took me 20 minutes. I was actually trying out my sermon for First Presby in Murrysville in two weeks, just to make sure I could actually preach something without an outline. So far I've been pretty free flowing, and I don't think it's been messy.

I spoke about Jesus being our Everlasting Father, and how Jesus has been with us every step of the way. Furthermore, I worked us through how because Jesus always was, is, and will be, that means Jesus wants to work us through our past, present, and future. I feel pretty good about what it will look like at First Presby, save the few minor issues we had:

#1) The microphone didn't work.

After spending about as much time as I was willing to spend trying to fix it without results, I wound up screaming my whole sermon. Which any other day would have been fine, except that I was the worship leader as well, so a scratchy voice did wonderful things to the last two songs of the day.

#2) Christmas Lights

My sermon illustration for the day involved Christmas lights. However, during the set up, it turned out the light string was about six inches shy of the extension chord that would provide them power.

(4th and inches)

I was comforted a little by Ed's laughter.

(Moral Support)

Notes:

*Sidney Crosby is not a human being

*I am on vacation this week, so I will probably not be posting.
*GLOW starts this week, you should come (yes, I will be there) (yes, during my vacation)

Peace,

Jason

The Consumer Word, and why I would not fit in...

Hello friends,
I am still learning where this Blog fits in terms of topic. It started out as a blog for youth ministers, by youth ministers. Now I think it's sort of the hub of the Youth Ministry/Bridge/GLOW at Westminster. I'm more than OK with that, I just hope that people will hop on and read and comment and take part in the conversation. Otherwise it will only be me and some goofy youtube videos:

I took the afternoon to come down here to Farmhouse Coffee and enjoy a cup of Java and hopefully gain some ground on the more creative items on my to-do list. No dice there so far, but I have seen something that truly disturbs me.
They have placed a Starbucks right across the street from Farmhouse. That drives me crazy.

(Personal Note: Blogger fixed the issues with photographs, making it much easier to add them now. I am happy!)

But serriously, Starbucks? I am a big fan of coffee, and I know that they have some success, but I feel like it's so cold and overdone in the dining room of your typical 'bucks. I'd much rather sit in a place with a little bit of personality and warmth. 

So this is a call to arms.

We must keep Farmhouse alive. Everyone come here to drink their favorite caffeine infused beverage. They must remain, and the corporate giant must be shown they cannot push us all around.

Love one another?

Sorry it took me so long to post my typical after Bridge thoughts. It's been a rather weird day, complete with an incredibly long nap.

Tammy had the hill today. She always does an incredible job. Today we were looking at 1 John 4:7-16, about how God has called us to love one another. Tammy had the guts to use that passage to deal with the usual tendencies to want to kill your family members at the Thanksgiving dinner table. On the one hand, I was really glad that someone had the guts to take that issue on. A lot of times, we like to pretend that everything is OK when our worlds are in turmoil, and that's not the essence of Christianity. 

But then I really started to think about the Thanksgiving Holiday, and how my family doesn't really fight at all. The closest thing to drama we got was the one year that my Grandfather (who doesn't hear well at all) thought that Sarah was pregnant and that she and I were hiding it. Turns out, he had overheard my aunt talking about her friend Tara who was pregnant. (In case anyone was wondering, Sarah and I are no where near ready to have kids). Though certainly I'll always be able to entertain our kids when the time arrives:

So what's the funniest Thanksgiving story you have? If we can't laugh, we're just not living.

Godspeed,

Jason

Christmas Worship Leader

Hello friends,

I spent the day today working out most of the Christmas worship here at Westminster. It was a wonderful moment, because the snow was starting to come down outside our window, and I was listening to some examples of Christmas songs, and I had a wonderful cup of coffee. Rather cozy. 

Every year, our Christmas songs take on a certain flavor, mostly based upon whatever band had put out the more influential Christmas album that year. This year, we're about a year behind, and we are definitely being influenced by Jars of Clay and their last album:

Pansy Rock Christmas.

Question of the post: What's your favorite worship song?

Kids do the darnedest things...

I shalln't be long, but tonight super things were done. 

The kids all gave up pretty much their entire youth group. 

We did not play dodgeball.

We did not have a time of goofy worship.

We did not spend an evening focused in on ourselves. 

Instead, we spent an evening patrolling the neighborhood, collecting can goods. 

We took a video of the proceedings, because it seemed magical. We collected somewhere in the neighborhood of 813 cans of food. Estimating that each provides two servings (which while many of the items were way bigger than that, we figure that's a pretty good average) that means that 1626 people will be fed as a result of our actions tonight. 

It warms my heart. 

Video tomorrow.