I love student ministry.  And I loved being a youthpastor/student minister.  But in my last student ministry job before I left to become a church planter, I had an amazing time serving the students at Community of Hope in Royal Pam Beach, FL.  The students were great to be around and the adults that I got to serve with have become life-long friends.

You’re not “supposed” to have favorites but I did.  I had a lot of favorites.  Sarah was one of them.  Sarah Grunder was a creative and gifted student with an amazing heart for God.  It’s been fun to watch her grow up (through the space-aged technology of Facebook) and see her become a teacher.  Sarah will be impacting the lives of kids for a long time to come and she’s letting her creativity shine through.

Currently she’s teaching kids about vocabulary, and she’s going it creatively through music and video.  Sarah raps. About vocabulary.  I love it.  Check out her other videos if you get a chance, but start with this one…

Space shuttle Atlantis woke up to “More” by @Matthew_West this am! STS-135 Flight Day 5 Crew Wake Up Call: http://t.co/NzYYicV (via @NASA) It was a special song played for Mission Specialist Rex Walheim.

Here is the full song with lyrics… I can just imagine hearing this while looking out the window floating in space. WOW.

Here’s a blog post from Jeff Henderson at Buckhead Church that I really enjoyed.  Check it out at: blog.buckheadchurch.org

No.  Not U-R.

Usually, it’s F-U-N.

Granted, chfunch isn’t a word, but fun is often a forgotten dynamic in creating a worship experience.  Typically, most churches aim for reverence.

I’m all for reverence, but fun is much more disarming.  If you create a fun experience up front in the service, the crowd will be much more engaged throughout their time with you.

An example of this is the following video we played at Buckhead Church from Tripp and Tyler near the beginning of Sunday’s service.  There really wasn’t a point, other than just having fun.

Many people push back on the idea of fun in church, and instead argue for reverence.  My experience is that fun leads to engagement, which ultimately leads to an opportunity for greater reverence at the end of a service.

We’ll discuss and show this in greater detail at next week’s Drive Conference. http://www.driveconference.com/ In the meantime, have some fun.  It might be just the thing that’s missing in your ch__ch.

Jeff Henderson

Tripp & Tyler from buckheadchurch on Vimeo.