You are here: Home / Archives for AC

For Students: 7 Ways To Make Summer Camp The Best EVERRR!!

July 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Instead of doing one of our normal team posts today, we wanted to point you toward a great blog post for your students. There are a ton of student ministries headed to summer camp soon, including our own High School Ministry. AC (Aaron Crumbey) wrote an awesome post FOR STUDENTS that explains how to make this year of summer camp the best one EVER. We’ve posted the first 3 below, and you can check out the rest of AC’s post here.

If you are going to summer camp this year this post could be helpful to you.  Students go to summer camp for all types of reasons.  The most popular reason would be to hang with friends for a week.  Which is awesome and was definitely one of the big reasons I went to summer camp.  Since camps are right around the corner here are a few things that you could do to make this the best camp ever:

  1. Take advantage of the fact that you have a whole week to focus on your relationship with Christ.
  2. If you are going to summer camp and you are still investigating who Christ is, take advantage of having a leader in your cabin and ask them the questions you have.
  3. Think about your current relationships.  Do you need more people in your life who are genuinely following Christ? Start praying now that God will bring those people into your life at camp.  My favorite part about camp is seeing new friendships formed.
Filed Under: For Students, Repost, Summer Camp, Youth Ministry Tagged With: ,

Daily connection with God

June 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment

One of the things that Steven and I both strive for is a daily connection with God. It’s not always easy and a lot of times I have to be very intentional about having a daily connection and quiet time with God. Our friend Aaron Crumbey wrote a great post on his blog about helping students know the importance of this daily connection. Here’s a tease below, the rest can be found here.

 

For Students: Something You Must Do!!

In order for anything to move their must be a constant flow of energy.  I’m learning it’s the same way with my life being effective for God.  In order for me to be moving in the right direction there must be a constant flow of acknowledging God in the matters of my life.  When that doesn’t happen I stall. I make bad choices and decisions.

Do you have a daily connection with God?

The effectiveness of my life for God is only as strong as my daily connection with Him.  My ministry should be a direct reflection of my daily connection to the one who holds the purpose to my ministry.  For example:

  • The same unconditional love I receive from my relationship with God should flow over into the way I love others.
  • The way that God has given to me, should flow over into how I give to others.
  • The way God has cared for me through our relationship, should flow over into how I care for others.

Those things are hard to do consistently when I’m not connecting with the source daily. Whenever my life seems super overwhelming and I feel like I’m lost in it all, I first check out how often I’ve spent time connecting with God.  We never purposefully stop connecting.  We either get distracted by the craziness of life or sometimes even the calmness of life can derail us. We get very comfortable with things being great and we don’t see ourselves drifting away from our daily connection.  Things have to get rough in order for us to fall back in line with connecting with God.

Go here for the rest!

Filed Under: Repost, Spriritual Life Tagged With: , , , ,

Shipwrecked

April 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Our friend Aaron (AC) Crumbey is on the High School team at Saddleback Church. This guy has a huge heart for students and I love to watch his interaction with them. AC has his own blog called yoacblog.com. I saw this post on his blog this week and it hit home with me. How many times have I thought I knew better than God? Check out his post called Shipwrecked, I bet it will hit home with you too! We’ve posted a tease below, the entire post can be found here.

 1 Timothy 1:19 – “Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked.

Basically, this verse is encouraging anyone of faith to rely on, trust in their faith and listen to their conscience when it has prompted them to hold on to what is right.  It’s also warning us not to violate our conscience by clinging to what we believe is right and not clinging to what God says is right.  I violate my conscience when I think I know better than God.  I violate my conscience when I refuse to heed it’s calling to do what’s right.  A lot of times we think “oh I would never make the decision to do anything crazy”.  I reply with, not at first but over the course of time not clinging to your faith, violating your conscience becomes easier.  The things that you thought you would never do, you will find yourself doing.

I can recall many times in my life when I thought I knew better than God.  I thought that I had a better understanding of how I should live my life than he did. Proverbs 3:5  Of course I never said these words out loud, I just lived like it.  If my life could talk it would’ve said “God, I will do it your way in all the areas of my life except:

  1. In my relationships with the opposite sex.
  2. When I’m hanging out with my friends.
  3. How I treat my family (whoever has authority over me).
  4. How I make my decisions because you don’t know me the way I know myself.
  5. (You fill in the blank).
Filed Under: Repost, Spriritual Life Tagged With: , , , , ,

GUEST POST: Aaron Crumbey – Grandma’s Turkey

November 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Aaron Crumbey works on the High School Ministry team at Saddleback Church and is a good friend to us. Aaron, or AC as we know him, just started his own blog and yesterday he ran a post about his grandmother’s turkey. AC and I both grew up in the same neighborhood in Detroit, just in different decades. Reading his blog yesterday brought back a flood of memories of Thanksgiving in Detroit and my mom cooking all night. We’re reposting it here today. You should add his site to blogs you read everyday.

Grandma’s Turkey

 I remember when I was younger we would spend thanksgiving with my grandmother.  She would start cooking the day before thanksgiving at around 11pm and would cook all night long.  The house would smell so good it would be hard to sleep.  When it came time to eat my mouth would water as all the food made its way to the table.  One of the last things that would come to the table would be the turkey.  The turkey would be huge, my dad would carve it and from there we would eat turkey for the whole week.  Meaning my grandmother would find ways to use the leftovers.  She would make turkey sandwiches and turkey salad.  Even the neck that came inside the turkey she would use, she wasted nothing.As I was reminiscing about my grandmother and the turkey it made me think about my life. God has used every part of my life.  Even the things that I thought was useless.  I’ve had some great moments in my life, and I’ve also had times in my life where I could have been labeled a screw up.  I’ve come to learn that just like my grandmother with the turkey God doesn’t waste anything, but he uses it all the good and the bad.  I’ve seen God use parts of my life that I was kind of ashamed of.  He used it to help others that was going through the same thing.  I’m not giving you a green light to do the bad, but I really want to encourage those who have messed up.  Which would be everyone if we’re being honest.  You might feel or even see yourself as worthless but God sees you as priceless, and all the hurt and pain you’ve been through He can use to help others.  So if you’ve done things that makes you feel useless and/or unwanted.  I really want you to know that God still loves you and your life still has PURPOSE.

Trust God with your life
love u all

Aaron Crumbey a.k.a “AC” oversees Pastoral Care for the High School Ministry at Saddleback Church in CA. He is married and has three children and also has served for over three years in youth ministry. He loves youth ministry and cares deeply about seeing the next generation win.

Filed Under: Guest post, Spriritual Life Tagged With: , , , , , ,