A change is gonna come

Day 4.  

This is a day that I've been looking forward to for a long time.  Not as much for CIY itself, but for our extended rec time.  We went whitewater rafting.  It was my first time to go rafting in 5 years.  More about that later though.  I actually went to McDonald's for breakfast because Kristin and I decided to go to Wal-mart at 7:10 this morning.  We had to buy our food supplies for rafting.  So breakfast started excellently.  I got back and it was time for morning show, which I skipped out on, but went to Encounter.  Our theme for the day was Worship.  I appreciate the challenges that were given all day.  With a theme like worship, you would think that singing songs would be at least one topic of the day.  But it was mentioned very few times and not the main topic at all.  Instead we talked about idols in our lives.  One activity in our D-group time was to mold an idol in our life out of play-doh.  Of course we were talking about the Israelites constructing a Golden calf when they had thought Moses had left them.  They turned their worship away from the Creator to a creation.  We do that too, not on a golden calf level, but with different things that we elevate to the top of our priority list.  Which, in fact, are just as serious as a golden calf. We had things constructed from cell phones to people.  All had different meanings that we learned about in youth group time.  We were to hold on to these until our evening worship.  

After D-group it was time for whitewater rafting.  We drove about 25 minutes and were ready to go.  Some were scared, others were just really excited.  It was amazing.  I fell out of the raft twice.  I must have an inner ear thing.  But it was a great experience and most everyone had a great time.  They wanted to go again, but they will have to wait for a while.  

When we got back, Kristin and I went to run errands.  We filled the bus up with gas so we can leave early Saturday morning and not have to worry about making a quick stop to fill up with gas.  While we were out we went ahead and stopped at the local Chili's and had some fine dining.   

At worship, the music was great, but it was interrupted tonight.  We were challenged to get out sculptures and take them outside and trash them symbolically representing a cleansing of ourselves.  We went out and met as a group to look at scriptures and talk about the significance of removing idols from our lives.  We then were asked to go back into the auditorium quietly, was our hands in a basin and continue in worship by singing.  It was really a powerful thing.  Some students took it real serious while others missed the point totally.  Our speaker challenged us to kill our idols and completely rid them from our lives.  That was a challenge I gave our group in youth group time.  We all need to give up something.  I am going to give up something, I haven't decided what yet, but I will.  I challenge them to really think about what they could give up that would allow them to put God #1.  I'm curious to hear some responses.  

Great day, can't believe the conference ends tomorrow.  Keep praying for us.

Kingdom Work Day.

Day 3 was good.  Zach Ervin asked a question this question last night: "Does it get better every night?".  I thought that was a cool question because it was his first time at a CIY event.  I think it always seems like it does get better, but it might only seem like that because we are more prepared to listen to God and our worship is a little more true because of the work we are allowing God to do in ourselves.  Today started with the second day of the USA, Canada war.  The battles are now tied at one a piece because Canada won the battle this morning.  How sad is that.  I don't know if we will be able  pull out the victory or not, but I will keep you posted.  

The theme for today was Crossing.  How can we crossover from being enslaved by sin to not being enslaved by sin.  We know that temptation will come at us hard, and today we worked on preparing ourselves for that to happen.  When the Israelites left Egypt, Pharaoh immediately regretted his decision and sent the Egyptian soldiers out to recapture them.  Satan works this same way, he has had control of you for so long that when you try to make a change, it seems like the temptation gets harder.  The Israelites began grumbling and asking Moses why did you bring out here to die?  They said things like "It would be better to be slaves in Egypt than die out here".  They had already lost faith.  They began looking at their past and not to where God wants to lead them.  It is easy to do that in our lives.  Satan uses our past against us.  How many times have you felt like you can never be good enough because of that sin that you always fall back into?  That is Satan's trick.  God always focuses on moving forward.  Pray that our group can focus on the future and always look to where God leads us.  He has proved himself faithful in every promise he has ever promised.  Why would it be any different in our lives?  

One powerful thing that happened today was a video right before lunch.  It is CIY's Kingdom Worker video.  It starred 3 real people doing amazing things for the kingdom.  The cool thing is that they are ordinary people doing extraordinary things.  We were challenged all day to dream about how things can be different.  We can make a difference in our homes, churches, schools, states, countries, planets.  We were challenged to think about the small things, and also the huge things that need to change.  I'm excited to see what comes from our group when we go home.  

I don't have time to proof this, so best of luck trying to understand it.  Thanks for reading and only 2 more days.  Wish you could've come.

CIY day 2

CIY Move always goes by so fast.  I can't believe we just finished Tuesday and  there are only 3 full days left.  Today was a full day of amazing fun.  It started with breakfast, and then we went into a morning show session.  Apparently USA and Canada are at war here in Tennessee with the winner today being the USA.  I was pretty happy about that because I was sitting on the side of the auditorium that was designated USA.  I love winning.  

Our encounter speaker focused on sin.  It's a lot easier to focus on someone else's sin rather than on our own sin.  I don't know why it is like that but it probably has been for a long time.  Jesus spoke about this in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:1-5.  We continued this thought in D-Group.  One thing we did in D-group was take two wristbands and write down a sin or struggle on the back side of it and put the wristband on our wrists.  The bands were silver so they sort of looked like chains.  We were to leave the bands on all day to set up something pretty special that happened in the evening service tonight.  I will get to that later though.  

That was the morning and after lunch started some great sporting tournaments.  We had a basketball tournament which my team didn't fare so well.  We had a tough draw.  Out of the 32 teams we got the eventual runner-up in our second round game.  Darn the bad luck.  But our volleyball team was the runner up in the volleyball tournament.  Out of 30 teams they took 2nd!  Awesome!  I followed that up with some Ultimate frisbee with some new friends from Kentucky.  That brings us up to supper.  I had a corn dog and a pork chop.  It was the first time I've had that particular combination in my life.

After supper is our evening session.  Of course the worship was outstanding.  The new songs are becoming easier to sing because of the repetition and they are really excellent songs.  In between some songs we were instructed what we were to do with our bands that we put on in D-group.  The adults connected the bands with a third wristband and it connected our wrists together.  We continued singing with our wrists bound and we sat through the entire sermon bound by wristbands.  The significance of this is that we allow ourselves to be ensnared by our sin.  It can become what controls us.  But Jesus gave us a way out.  He gave us hope of something different.  The Hebrews in the Exodus were bound as slaves and God also delivered them.  In the same way he delivers us.  At one point we were to break free from the wristbands.  It was awesome to hear 1400 wristbands breaking throughout the auditorium.  

This led to some great discussion in our youth group time.  Some about sin, some about pain that people allow to control their lives.  Overall it was a very powerful day.  I hope it continues to impact as it did today.  

Oklahoma to Tennessee

I plan on blogging each night from Tennessee.  We'll see if I actually accomplish this goal.  I'm already a day behind but really all I could've said yesterday is that 14 hours in a bus full of kids isn't as bad as it sounds.  That is right, we left Chickasha at 6:20, which isn't terrible because we anticipated leaving at 6 am.  Twenty minutes late isn't too bad in youth ministry minutes.  We drove though major cities like Oklahoma City, Fort Smith, Little Rock, Memphis and Nashville.  We didn't hit much traffic because it was a Sunday.  We stayed at an Econo Lodge just south of Nashville in  a suburb called Murfreesboro.  Slept great because I was so stinking tired from driving about 10 hours.  Woke up and finished our mountain drive to Cleveland.  It only took about 2 hours.  We arrived at CIY early for a change and we had time to unpack, go eat somewhere nice and make our last Wal Mart trip.  Then it was time to come back to campus and get geared up for opening night.  We had some amazing worship let by the Aaron Pelsue Band.  I haven't seen this band in 4 years.  When I was at Kansas I would arrange our CIY trips according to which one Aaron Pelsue was playing at.  He didn't disappoint tonight.  We sang songs that I had never heard before and of course some that we have been singing for some time.  I expect that by the end of the week, the new ones will be some of my favorites.  It always seems to work out that way.  

Our speaker tonight spoke about Moses.  We will be learning lots about Moses and the Exodus because that is the focus of this summer's conferences.  Our theme within the theme tonight was Identity.  The speaker had a thought that really stuck with me tonight.  He told us that we normally think about our identity is what makes us different than others.  But we get the word identity from a Latin word that means same.  It has the same root word as Identical.  So our identity is what we are the same as.  Whatever you are most like that will become your identity.  If you always want the most expensive and new things, your identity might be greed.  Our Identity should be God, that is who we should pattern our lives after.  That is who we should be the most like.  Interesting?  I think so.  

We had our youth group time and I did much of the talking and asking of questions.  It is always like that on the first night.  It is always awesome to see the change in that time where it is mostly led by students and their brokenness and willing to share how God is moving in their lives.  I pray that happens again this year.  I hope you guys pray the same will happen.  

I closed with a thought.  I said that God is the same always, he is going to move this week, so He is always moving.  The only difference is that we are more focused on Him this week.  I wanted them to realize that we are the ones who need to move now.  I challenged them to listen to where and how they need to move this week.  I'm excited to see where that leads.  

I'll keep you posted.

Washita Valley 2009

All summer long, I debated whether or not to play in the Washita Valley Golf Tournament.  I try to play every summer, but this year I haven't been playing much golf and didn't think I would have much fun.  I decided after much deliberation to go ahead and pay $150 and register.  I'm really glad I played.  For those of you who don't know, the Washita Valley Golf Tournament is the oldest annual golf tournament in the state.  This is the 81st playing of the tournament.  We play three days of slow, grinding, draining golf.  I've never played very well in this tournament unless you count 4 years ago when I played in C flight and had a 5 shot lead with 5 holes to go.  I ended up losing the tournament by 3 shots.  That was very hard to swallow. 

 So back to this year.  The tournament started off great for me.  I teed off at 1:50 and my first hole which was a par 4, I drove the green.  I made a 20 foot putt for eagle to go 2-under par after one hole!  My next two holes I went bogey-birdie, so I'm still 2-under after 3 holes.  I remained under par until I bogeyed hole 7 to go to even par and it went down hill on the next 2 holes.  I went double bogey-bogey on 8 and 9 to make the turn in 39.  Starting with hole 10 I went birdie-par-birdie-bogey-par-double bogey-par-par-bogey and finish with a 76.  That is my lowest 18 hole round in this tournament to date so I felt really good about my first day.  I am tied for 3rd position.

Day 2

Day 2 didn't start as well as day 1 as I only parred hole number 1 and 2.  Hole 3 I birdied and I parred holes 4 and 5.  I was 1-under par through the first 5 holes.  I ran into trouble on 6 with a bogey and parred hole 7.  The easiest hole on the course is hole 8 and it gave me trouble all weekend.  I double bogeyed it again on Saturday but I bounced back with a par on hole 9.  I make the turn with a 38.  Little did we know that 9 holes would be all that counts on day 2 because play was suspended because of rain and lightning.  This wouldn't be that big of a deal except C, D & E flight finished their 18 holes in the morning rounds.  Because B, A & championship flights only played 9 that knocked out the bump rule.  (The bump rule states that any player within 5 shots of the lead in the next flight ahead will get bumped into that flight.)  This is a big deal because I was tied for 2nd after day 2, but we were all 10 shots back of the leader who would be 1 shot behind in both championship and A flight.  So doing away with the bump rule really hurt the three of us who were tied for 2nd because we should be tied for 1st.

Day 3.  

The rain was gone, but the aftermath of rain is humidity and usually a north wind, which makes this particular course a lot tougher.  I started out par-par-double bogey-par-bogey.  So I'm 3-over after 5 holes today.  I'm in a little trouble on 6 when I miss the green by about 20 yards short on my approach.  So I chip up to the green and ball looks good and it rolls right into the hole for a birdie to move me back to 2-over par.  I finish the 9 with 3 straight pars to shoot another 38.  I have moved ahead of the two I'm tied with by hole 9 so things are looking pretty good.  We make the turn and I bogey hole 10.  Hole 11 is where the wheels fall off.  I drive the ball way right because there is Out Of Bounds to the left.  I'm under a tree and try to punch the ball to the green but because of the rain and the long rough my ball gets hung up and I'm quite aways short.  So my third shot I try to pitch the ball over the bunker and I end up right in the middle of the bunker.  I'm normally a pretty good bunker player so this doesn't make me nervous.  I take my practice swings out of the bunker and step in and try to make a good pass through the sand, but I don't hit any sand.  Instead I blade the ball over the green through the street and it goes out of bounds.  I'm very frustrated with myself as now I'm still in the bunker hitting my 6th shot.  I'm so nervous to try a blast that I barely advance the ball and I remain in the bunker now hitting my 7th shot and I put it over the green.  I chip on the green for my 8th shot and 2 putt for a smooth 10 on hole number 11.  A 10!  I haven't made a 10 on a hole since I was in high school.  So let's say I'm not in second place anymore and I'm not sure if I will finish top 5.  I bogey my next 2 holes so now I'm 9 over in my last 4 holes.  I was only 9 over for my first 36 holes and in four holes I doubled my over par status.  UNREAL!   I was very heated but knew if I could string pars together I could still be in 4th or 5th place at the end of the tournament.  So hole 14 I parred along with 15 and 16 and I thought to myself I could bounce back from this.  I birdied hole 17 and parred hole 18.  I shoot an 81 on Sunday and finish in 4th place.  I was dissappointed with my finish, but I was very impressed with myself that I could turn around from a 10 and make a respectable finish.  

This tournament was lots of fun and I can't wait until next year to play again.

What I learned from Middle School Camp.

Middle School camp is always my favorite week of camp.  This year I had the opportunity to co-dean the week alongside Joel Dyer.  Joel did such a great job planning and I tried to do whatever he needed me to do to prepare for the week.  We had much of the same activities as the middle school camps have had in the past but we wanted to make some things different.  Two of the big things that we did differently was go to visit our mission for the summer personally and we had what we called ministry groups.  Normally our mission is something in a different country that is doing work for Jesus overseas somewhere, but this year our mission was Refuge Oklahoma City.  We took a group to downtown Oklahoma City to clean up a neighborhood.  We did mowing, weeding, edging, picking up trash, hauling trash and many other "odd jobs" while there.  It was 103* while these middle school students served Jesus outside, and the complaining was minimal.  I couldn't believe it.  By having the mission close to camp it allowed our students to take an active part in the ministry of the mission.  I've heard many students say that they want to bring their families to serve, or get friends together to go and help.  Awesome!

The ministry groups took the place of a youth minister or teacher teaching classes to the students everyday.  What our ministry groups were aimed for was giving the students an active part of serving in camp.  We had seven groups:

1.  Service group - cleaning camp, helping whomever needed to be helped, etc.....

2.  Encouragement group - making cards, bracelets, anything to encourage other campers and/or staff

3.  Tech Group - take pictures, make slideshows for worship, run easyworship for our singing time

4.  Drama group - write and perform a skit that would teach students some sort of moral or lesson 

5.  Prayer group - encourage students to pray and also engage the camp in new prayer opportunities

6.  Music group - allowed students to take part in leading worship at camp fire and sometimes opening our main worship session with songs led by this group

7.  Testimony and devotional group - Taught students about their testimony, encouraged them to write and share it, and students wrote devotionals and/or shared testimonies at the camp fire

These ministry groups turned out better than I could have thought.  Students served and were taught at the same time.  Our prayer now is that the students would take these skills and desires and get involved in their own ministries at home in church and youth group.  It could happen!

So that is leading up to the last night.  Our speaker Doug Bean spoke about breaking down walls that we've built that separate us from God.  These walls could be anything from fear to relationships to sin that we struggle with.  During our worship set, after Doug spoke, he gave the students an opportunity to go grab an adult to talk and pray with if they needed to do so.  Some students did, but others went and found other students to pray with.  The pain was evident and so students embraced one another.  Before long students were walking around the room looking for someone to apologize to or just share with or to encourage or hug someone.  Needless to say, walls started crumbling.  God is amazing!  I was amazed that students began to own the week so much that they became ministers to each other.  This is the way it should be, not just in youth ministry, but the whole church.  Why do we never embrace the hurting?  encourage the broken?  weep with the sad? rejoice when God moves in our friends lives?  This could happen in our churches and not just at middle school camp.

I think I was shown the meaning of a verse this week without without being told.  Matthew 18: 1-4 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"  He called a little child and had him stand among them.  And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Inspiration

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to preach on Sunday morning.  My topic was inspiration.  I talked about things that might inspire us and closed that as Christians we should be an inspiration to others.  I'm sure most of you are like me and inspiration comes in many shapes and forms.  Last night I watched a movie that was very inspiring.  The movie is 7 Pounds starring Will Smith.  I must warn you that this post will have many spoilers about the movie, so if you haven't, but plan on watching this film, you might wait to read this until after you watch.  

The main character in this film is Will Smith.  His character has experienced severe heartache that came when he lost his wife in a fatal automobile crash.  Six others were killed in this crash as well.  This haunts his character throughout the whole film.  He claims to think about death and dying every moment of the day.  I'm not sure why, maybe he feels guilt because he was the lone survivor.  But he didn't die and he now has a purpose with the rest of his life.  He plans on helping seven good people out of bad circumstances.  The people he helps are in desperate need.  He donated his own bone marrow to a child with bone marrow cancer.  He donated part of his lung to his brother who was in need, part of his liver to a stranger, his home and fortune to a lady in an abusive situation, as well as a kidney to someone who was in dialysis.  The last two are kind of tricky.  He gave his eyes to a blind man and his heart to a woman in desperate need of a transplant.  The problem with the last two is you must be dead to donate these two organs.  That is right, the character chose death to better the life of people around him.  I don't promote this activity for any of us, but the parallels here between Will Smith's character and Jesus are very evident to me.  Jesus chose death on the cross so that we would have a better quality of life.  I've heard it said that when we accept Jesus we receive a heart transplant, the old is gone, the new is come.  Jesus didn't commit suicide like the character in the film, but he did choose death, even death on a cross.  So this got me thinking about what we should do, short of dieing, to help others.

What's my conclusion?  Fair question.  I don't think we have to die to improve someone's quality of life.  We have the capabilities right now.  Today you can befriend someone who is friendless.  You can love someone who others might say is unloveable.   We can show mercy to someone who does not deserve it.  Isn't that what Jesus does to us?  He is our friend when we are alone, He loves us even when we don't love him, and He continues to forgive and offer His grace even when we fail over and over.  If we are to call ourselves Christians, let's start being Christlike.  This alone will improve the  quality of life of those around us.

Let's give this a try.

Hello everyone.  My name is Shelby Crawford and I want to thank you for stopping by and giving your time to read my blog.  I will start by telling you who I am.  First of all, I am a person being saved by the grace of God, and because of this, most of my blog will be related to this process that is taking place within me.  I am married to a wonderful woman that I enjoy spending my life with.  Her name is Kristin and sometimes I might blog about her and the things that she does that makes me the luckiest man on earth.  I love what I do for a career.  Youth Ministry!  It is the most frustrating, yet rewarding thing I've ever tried.  So you might read some updates about some teens or trips or something related to youth ministry.  I love doing lots of different things like playing golf, racquetball, basketball, reading, watching movies, jogging, scuba diving, thinking about a subject all day, having deep conversations, and much much more.  Something that I absolutely adore are my two dogs.  Their names are Boomer and Layla.  I'm sure you will hear a little about them sometimes.  If you want, follow me in these things.  If not, I understand your time is precious.  Remember, greater things are yet to come........