Archives For Ministry

Hey Wesleyan Tweeps – consider adding the LOVE MERCY logo as your Twitter/Facebook picture for this week – use it as a way of reminding people to pray for what’s taking place in our four locations from December 28-31st. Pray for God to move mightily in the hearts and lives of students across our nation!

If you change your Twitter/Facebook image, post a link to your profile in the comments! If you’re planning on blogging from your LOVE MERCY location, let us know that, too, in the comments!

More on the convention and its four locations can be found here.

Those of you on Twitter can keep up with the ‘what’s up’ by keeping an eye on the trending topic ‘#lovemercy’ on Twitter. Link to the search results is here.

It will be fun to see what people are saying about the convention and attempting to guess which city their talking about – Baltimore, Charlotte, Louisville, or Denver.

For the record, I will be at LoveMercy in Baltimore.

UPDATE: Just re-compiled a listing of each convention since 1968 here.

I just finished watching “The Star of Bethlehem” on DVD tonight. It was given to me as an early Christmas present by one of our friends at church. She asked me to watch it before Christmas. Now I know why.

It’s incredible. Mr. Frederick Larson has done significant research into the “Star of Bethlehem” talked about in Matthew’s Gospel.

The reason he did the research? A simple lawn-decoration in his front yard caused his lawyer-mind to go into overdrive to make it as genuine as possible. He started down the path of researching just what was that “star in the East” to now presenting his findings to thousands each year!

The DVD is a presentation he gives to about 20-people in a unique-looking library. It’s very well produced with plenty of graphics and motion to keep my attention – even at this late-hour!

I was impressed with Larson’s findings and some of his hypotheses sparked something inside of me:

Matthew 2:1-2 – 1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem
2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.”

I don’t know that I’ve ever been challenged to understand the fact that these Magi from the East – these “astrologers” were so deliberate to find the king of the Jews and more importantly that they say that they desire to worship him. “…and have come to worship him.”

Babylonian Astrologers wanting to worship the King of the Jews? Interesting, no?

Remember Daniel? Daniel chapter 2 reminds us that Daniel (captive Jew) was made chief “Magus” over King Nebuchadnezer’s magi!

What if these Magi were the 500-year-later, trained-in-the-school-of-Daniel magi that would obviously seek to worship the King of the Jews foretold about in Scripture?!

I loved that question/answer/hypothesis!

For more on Larson’s research, visit http://bethlehemstar.net. To order a copy of the DVD, click here.

Untitled-1Last night was our youth group’s annual Christmas Party. We had a great time of fellowship, food, and a unique gift-exchange that I’ve held as a tradition for almost 10-years with three youth ministries! As I went to sleep last night I was thinking of all the ways I could have made the event different and/or better. I started scribbling down some of the ideas that I had heard others do for their (youth and non-youth related) Christmas parties and thought it would be a good blog post to share with the world!

CHRISTMAS PARTY IDEAS:

  • Ugliest Christmas Sweater – everyone wears the most horrific Christmas sweater they have and a prize is given to the one with the best (worst?). (there’s a website out there selling only ugly Christmas sweaters for parties just like this!)
  • Christmas Mugs – everyone is encouraged to bring their most over-the-top Christmas mug to the party and use that mug as their beverage vessel for the evening.
  • Christmas Morning – attendees are invited to attend the party dressed in their “Christmas Pajamas” and bring along a box of cereal as the snack for the party. (saw this idea done by @babymase)
  • It’s your turn now! What Christmas party ideas have you heard and/or tried yourself? Comment below!

    Love this from lifechurch.tv –


    youversion-mobile-billionWow. YouVersion, the popular online Bible version that I use daily has just achieved an incredible milestone. Over 1 Billion minutes of mobile Bible browsing has happened since YouVersion launched its numerous mobile applications for today’s popular phones (still none for the Palm Pre, but http://m.youversion.com works for now)

    1 Billion Minutes… That’s 19-centuries, 16.7 million hours of people reading the Bible on their mobile device like an iPhone, iPod touch, Blackberry, etc.

    And it hasn’t cost those reading the Word even a single penny.

    Lifechurch.tv, the church behind the YouVersion programming and brand continues to blow-my-mind with their generosity in giving back again and again to not just their local community and local church but to the Church (big “C”) and WHOLE world with their innovative and resourceful selves.