Keep us in prayer this week. We are starting a new endeavor. This is one of those things that the Lord has begun about a year ago, slowly leading us up to this point. We are starting a new service for youth in our area. It’s something very different in approach. It will be something very simple. Nothing fancy. Our pursuit is simply contemplation, conversation and community.

This whole thing came about from a conversation with a student, over coffee, who wanted something to bring his atheist friends to, but knew they would not step foot in a church service.

So we’re not doing a church service. It’s more of an experiment. We’re facilitating a place where conversation happens and doubts and questions are welcome. But our goal is to establish a sacred space where youth can step outside of their loud busy worlds and come in to talk, contemplate and experience the Lord. It will have a more quiet, prayerful, meditative tone to it. Ventus begins this Saturday at 7pm.

The Labyrinth was one of our most significant spiritual practices we experienced this summer. While we were kayaking the Owyhee river and in the middle of nowhere, I grabbed a few leaders and we took an hour to construct this maze on the beach. I got the idea from a post over at Rethinking Youth Ministry.

Labyrinth is simply a tool to slow down and contemplate your journey with the Lord. As your walk in you think about the things within yourself that you want to give up or let go of. The path brings you toward the center where you spend time with the Lord. And as your journey back out, you think of the things you will take with you from your experience with God.

Our kids really grabbed on to the whole metaphor and had some pretty impactful experiences.

To build you own you can go here and here.

Create your best caption for this pic I took yesterday at our Golf Marathon. It’s one of our students and honestly, we found the cart that way…

Today is the day for the YD Fundraising Golf Marathon. I’ll be golfing 100 holes along with a student.  So, hopefully by the end of the day, we’ll have played 200 holes combined.

Up until this point, the closest I’ve come to golfing was playing Mario Golf with my kids on the Gamecube. I rock at that, but this is another story. Either way, it should be a fun day.

It’s not too late to pledge.

Go here to pledge (Look for Valeriy Bizayayu  - he’s a Russian student golfing with me).

Go here for more info on the marathon and the Valeriy.

I’ll update ya tomorrow!

Ever have trouble keeping track of the names and info of the kids and volunteers in your youth group? Or is the software your church uses too complicated and clunky to do any real good? A buddy of mine runs YouthTracker.net an online easy resource fro keeping track of the people involved in your youth groups. We use it in our ministry and it works great, it’s reasonably priced, and it simplifies things so much.