There are some who call me … Tim

We had an amazing night on Wednesday the 16th with our Fuse Christmas Program! It was a really special night that mixed together everything that is awesome about Fuse!

If you missed it, our would like to see it again, we recorded the whole night and here are links to most of the videos. There a still a couple left to upload, so look for those soon!

The Nativity throughout art history from Tim Mauriello on Vimeo.

Fuse Christmas Program – Part 1 from Tim Mauriello on Vimeo.

Fuse Christmas Program – Part 4 from Tim Mauriello on Vimeo.

Fuse Christmas Program – Part 5 from Tim Mauriello on Vimeo.

Fuse Christmas Program – Part 6 from Tim Mauriello on Vimeo.

Fuse Christmas Program – Part 7 from Tim Mauriello on Vimeo.

Tonight in Middle School Gathering we will have a special speaker. (Who doesn’t want a break from me?!?)

Chris Provence, the Executive Director from Rebuilding the Wall will be continuing our series on “Hope”.  Click here to learn more about Chris and the ministry of Rebuilding the Wall.

Last week, Eric howard from Outreach Indiana, spoke on homeless teenagers. You can check out more about his ministry here. http://outreachindiana.org/

Journey Bumper Video - very vool!

Weej two of “The Journey” started with a quick recap of our big idea from last week; “God keeps his promises.” Then we mapped the lineage from Abraham all the way through the Promised Land.

* Abraham
* Isaac
* Jacob
* Joseph
* Egypt
* 400 Years
* Moses
* Joshua
* Promised Land 

There were all sorts of crazy, uncomfortable and confusing things that happen in this family and time and we have to remember that these stories are about God protecting the promise. (And the drama and danger of the promise looking like it would get comprimised time and time again!)

To make this week interesting and get the point across in a creative way, I had Jason follow the story and create gestural drawings to go along with it as I spoke. Here they are for your viewing pleasure. I’ll also post the rest of the message here to match the drawings

1. Jacob has 12 sons, one of whom was Joseph. Jacob like Joe best and made him a sweet coat of many technicolors. Joe had dreams of the other brothers bowing down and serving him. And he told them about it…
2. The other brothers weren’t down with Joe being the favorite and sold him into slavery into Egypt.
3. Joseph becomes a very big deal in Egypt. There is famine in the land of Jacob and his family eventually they are reunited with Joe in Egypt. They move in as guests into Egypt to escape the famine. There are about 70 people in the family at that point. It is allvery nice and cozy and wonderful at this point.
4. The jews have LOTS of babies. Over the next 400 years they go from guests to slaves as a new pharoah comes into power and doesn’t like having all these people around who could join their enemies. They continue to have lots of babies. At the time Moses is born there could have been anywhere from 1-2 million jews living in Egypt!
5. Pharoah doesn’t like where things are heading so he orders all the baby boys killed. Moses’ mom protects him by floating him down a river. Moses eventually leads the people out of Egypt, gets the ten commandments and all that great stuff.

We give Jason a big hand for his drawings. aand prepare to sell his drawings on ebay – eventually won by Dave Q!)

This takes us to our Big Idea and an “In your face” end to the message… We need to be very careful to not allow anything, outside of God, to become our master.

The jewish people didn’t become slaves overnight. It took getting comfortable, not being careful and serving a master who didn’t love them. The master that try and do the same thing to us are…

Stuff – When we owe someone money money for anything, we allow them some mastery in our lives. There are too many peoepl who serve the masters of their car payment, home payment and visa bill. And when those masters don’t love us, the only choice we have is to work more jobs and longer hours to serve them. Then, for some it really falls apart and there masters come and take away everything. These masters steal our time, keeping us from our families and from serving and living in God’s Kingdom.

Sin – It always starts small, doesn’t it? Most murders and adulterers don’t start as happy and nice. It starts with a little anger, a little lust. A wrong word or a lingering look. Sin is a master that likes to come in and take control. And if we settle in and get comfortable, sin is a master who doesn’t love us and wants to control our lives.

We need to be very careful to not allow anything, outside of God, to become our master.

Matthew 6:24 No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Paul identified himself as a servant in Galatians 3:29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

The rest of the night
We had another great game night in the gym! The students split up by grade and gender for races in the gym and pyramid building. I don’t remember how music went, but I’m sure it was rockin’!

I’ve been teaching a lot lately (Barry Rod is going to be teaching 3 out of the next 5 weeks, which is a nice break) We also filmed a message that Craig is editing for us to show this weekend at small groups.

In getting ready for the video I found that I had to work very hard on the exact words I said and saying them exactly the right way. Which led me to this thought… Do we put too much pressure and emphasis on any one message to change a student’s life?

On one hand, I take each message very seriously (even if I have a lot of fun with it!) but I also know that life change doesn’t seem to happen very often because of any one message. So should our concern be with consistenly teaching similar themes and ideas that can lead to life change over a period time?

My concern there is that I don’t think we should teach on the same topic every week. So, what does it look like to consistenly teach well, carry similar themes throughout and yet be creative and original in a way that leads to life change? All the while allowing for any single message to have an impact on its own…

And, are those themes the kind of things we want to students to know or feel? For example, it’s one thing for a student to know God loves them, but it’s a whole othere thing for the to feel God loves them.

Any thoughts you out there on the internets have would be great! I think I’ll work on a list of the themes I would think need to be woven in and out of messages so that a student leaves knowing or feeling these things or ideas after their time in the ministry. (I’m not talking topics, but ideas that fit into topics… like “We can’t earn God’s love”

Journey Bumper Video - very vool!

(We’re actually a few weeks into the Journey series, but I thought I would get back to posting recaps, so I am going back and starting from week 1.)

We’re starting a longer series this week on “The Journey.” Looking specifically at the journey God’s people took going from Abraham to the Promised Land. Week 1 was an intro week, setting up the series and the main idea that will run through it; “God keeps his promises.”

I started things off with pictures from some of the greatest sci-fi stories of all time and some of the worst. the point being that the good story writers always knew what happened first, before the story we saw, sothat everything made sense. This week, we had to talk through “the story before the stories” so that everythin else made sense.

We looked at all the promises God made to Abraham in the light of the promise being a “Hittite Suzeran Vassal Treaty” (You’re favorite treaty and mine!) Basically, what matters is that God’s promise, or treaty, isn’t made between two equal parties. God is God and Abraham isn’t. And God keeps his promises. In fact, a lot of the goofy and crazy stories that come after this, are more about God protecting and keeping his promise than each individual story.

Abraham lies about his wife, saying she is his sister, so she almost taken as someone else’s wife and the other guy is punished!?!? The moral of the story is not “God wants you to lie.” but “God keeps his promises!”

Since God keeps his promises, we ended the night listing out the promises of God we can hold on to today. The students had some awesome answers and we prayed as group thanking God for those things!

Click here to listen to the message.

The rest of the night
This series is the first one with Craig settled into his position and he and Noah are working really hard to make the games new, fun and creative. Most will be team games and we split the students up by grade and gender to make six large teams. We did the games at he end of night (I had to get home to a very sick wife and the guys adjusted for me… I love them!) and they were just some fun, new silly relays… and the kids loved them!

Week 5 in our series on 2 Timothy was a good night! All the students that didn’t come on halloween were back and excited to be there! 

This was the final chapter. (4) The next week (today as  write this) is our “Experiential Night” Where we will have different interactive elements to engage with the Big Ideas we’ve been through in the series. The Karate Kid Clip has us near the end the movie and Daniel entering the karate tournament. He starts a bit timid, but then through self control and discipline he makes it to the finals. This clip is all to one of the all-time great 80’s rock movie themes… “You’re the Best!” So awesome!

I started with a reminder that this is a letter and we see that as Paul asks Timmy to bring him his cloak and greet some folks. It’s a letter!

Chapter 4 starts the chapter out with a big command to Timmy… “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage.” Christians who like to throw bibles at people and condemn and bang their fists love this! But, Paul qualifies this statement with the rest of the sentence “with great patience and careful instruction.” When we read that along with the rest of the chapter, we get a different picture of how Paul wants Timothy to give out his message.

I used Vinnie as an example. He does this thing now where while he is eating he clenches his fists and waves them in the air and does this battle cry kind of grunt thing. It’s very funny! But, it takes a lot of patience to deal with him, because this could mean…

• I love my food and cry out in victory!
• I don’t like my food, how could you feed this to me?
• I see you eating something, and I want to eat that!
• I am Vinnie!!!!

If you know me, you know I’m not always the most patient person in the world. The only thing that really keeps me patient with Vinnie, is that I love him. The only motivation to be intentionally patient with each other is love. The same goes with “gentle” as Paul said. Without love as our motivation, we have no reason to be gentle. Which leads to our Big Idea…

Our message doesn’t matter unless we less we love the person we’re giving it to.

I ended sharing about a former student who was on fire for Jesus when he was in Middle School. Though, he had parents who gave him the right messages “Jesus loves you, be good, etc.” but in the wrong way. (Hypocritical lifestyle, verbal abuse…) The result was that he turned away from Jesus and has never returned.

The right message without love is the wrong message. So let’s make sure we love those who need the message!

Click here to listen to the message.

The rest of the night
The students were very amped up, which can lead to lots of fun, but also a little loss of control. We were also light on leaders and felt really outnumbered out in the crowd! We played a couple of crazy games in the gym and worship was good, too. Noah played bass as Matt couldn’t be there and Ted couldn’t fill in, so we only had one electric guitar, so it was a cool little change for a week!

(I’m a bit behind on recaps… sorry!) Week 4 in our series on 2 Timothy was on Halloween. We had the lowest attendance ever! 19 students and 14 adults. (Gotta love the student to leader ratio, though! We relaxed a bit with the game (and saved a cool movie video clip thing for the next week) but continued in the series and worship.

This week was chapter 3. The Karate Kid Clip was Daniel putting all his training to use as he practiced on his own. Probably the least “cool” clip of the series, but still awesome!

I started by listing all the common excuses we give and hear every day. “He made me do it” “But I have ADHD” “Everyone else is” “I’m angry” and “It’s Halloween” I took a second with that one to say that one of the biggest issues with Halloween is that people use it as an excuse to do what they wouldn’t normaly do or what they know is wrong. Which is not good. I then read a story of looting and rioting from Chicago because the Bulls had won the championship. People used celebration as an excuse to destroy, injure and steal. All because the lost control. Which leads us to the Big Idea for the night…

We need to take control of our lives so we can give up control to God.

This is a willful decision to release our lives to God. Kinda like choosing to give candy to a trick-or-treater verses them knocking you over and stealing all of it.

Paul opens 2 Timothy 3 talking about evil desires and how people out of control are swayed by them. It’s interesting that if you read the list it sounds like it is describing and out of control child. A spoiled 8 year old fits the description of “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God”

Jump to the end of the chapter and we get to Paul’s challenge to Timmy on how to not live like this and how to lead people to not live like this. The key is understanding is that the verse is FOR us not to be used BY us. Meaning, when I allow scripture to teach me, rebuke me, correct me and train me; then I can do “good work.” So often, we use this passage as an excuse to tell people what they are doing wrong, instead of letting it teach us. This training leads to my self control which then allows me to give up control to God. (and that is good news and good work!)

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Click here to listen to the message.

The rest of the night
The game we played was like group “rock, paper scissors” and was fun with a small group. Also, out leaders stepped up and made it a blast for everyone. Worship was good, but was probably a bit too hugh energy for the crowd we had. Looking back, I would have still done a message and worship, but maybe taken a break from the series and done something different. Still a fun night!

Last night we started our latest series called “Timmy” on the book of 2 Timothy. Though I focused last night on 1 Timothy chapter 1.

The Big Idea was “We are all a mess if left to ourselves. We need people sharing God’s love and grace with us, so that we can then share it ourselves.”

After our Karate Kid clip (see below) I started by bringing students on stage and working through the idea that these books are actually letters from Paul to Timothy to help Timothy lead and shepherd. We talked aobut who Paul was, who Timothy was and what was going on at the time. If I wrote a letter to someone and ended by saying “I love you.” The meaning would be totally different depending on who I wrote it to and why.

Then we talked about how Paul, who was this amazing leader, considered himself nothing outside of Christ and the worst of sinners. The greatest leadership lessons he passed on to Timothy was his example of true humility and love.

The challenge for our students was to become leaders of influence by making 1 Timothy 1:15 their hearts cry and prayer and to receive the love and grace their leaders are sharing with them. We ended praying…

“Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.”

We’re also watching clips from the “Karate Kid” through the entire series. (Which is totally cool!) I realized as I was picking them out, that movie is as much about an established leader’s influence on young leaders as it is on karate or the underdog fighting back.

The rest of the night

Noah did the intro and games. To go with the movie theme of using Karate Kid, we did a simple up front movie title unscamble game and then just played train wreck. Noah always does a great job and makes everything more fun with the way he leads them!

Worship was good too. (It usually is!) Craig got a sweet new guitar. I was a bit distracted by some of the students and being tired from a late night with sick Vinster.

Click here to listen to the message.