FFUMC Youth Ministry Blog

Got to see Skillet with some of the kids at The Tabernacle on Sunday. The Tabernacle is one of my favorite music venues. It was a great night as Skillet really brought it. Toward the end of their show a mosh pit broke out. Moshing, or slam dancing, started in the late 1970s to early 1980s. The idea is that the music inspires an energy that causes a response of violently slamming into each other. It is almost tribal. This is a ritual that I do not understand. Almost every time they break out, the people involved just look stupid and someone always gets hurt. Usually it is a spectator on the outside.

We are about to start a new series in 1|99 called “Rhythm”. I do not see any rhythm to what happens in a mosh pit. If you want to hit and slam into other people, go play a sport like football or rugby.

Thanks to one of our Solomon’s Porch leaders, Penny Erbe, for sending this to me!

The Kanye instance at the VMAs raises a lot of great discussion topics. As much as I believe Taylor Swift is talented, it IS very odd for a country artist to receive an MTV moonman. Has that ever happened? Isn’t that what CMT is for? Granted she is “pop country”, but still… The bigger questions for me involve why there is even an event for music video awards seeing as no one ever shows videos anymore? I miss the days when MTV was truly music television and played music videos 90% of the time. I also think the whole awards concept in the arts is pretty pointless. Why can’t they just have a celebration event each year with a funny host, amazing live acts, and celebrate their art together without awards? I think it would still get viewers.

So Kanye made a spectacle of himself, again, last night at the VMAs. He interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech. I found out after reading at least 30 Facebook statuses expressing hate and rage toward Kanye West. I went and watched the clip to see what created such a response. It was pretty rude and a classless thing to do, but… really? Is this really worthy of all national news, the top twitter topic, and the focus of anger of many of my friends? Yesterday approximately 29,000 children died due to preventable diseases. I have yet to see that stat ever presented on national news. Joseph Kony and the LRA continue to displace tens of thousands weekly from their homes, turn children into killers, and murder and pillage as they see fit. Kony has never led twitter topics, and sad to say have not seen any anger of my friends regarding him represented on Facebook. There are so many more things going on in the world worthy of our anger and attention. What is the deal with our society? What does it say about us that this kind of thing gets so much attention?

In 1|99 we have been spending the last couple of weeks thinking about the way we view God. We spent the first week discussing how our perceptions can effect our responses. This is also true with our view of God. Our view of God affects how we look at life and how we treat people. This week we have explored the size of our GodView. We posed the question, is our GodView too small? When our view of God is too small and the storms come, then our view gets shattered and causes many to abandon their faith. A storm has hit our community the last couple days as two of our teachers at Whitewater High School got into a lot of trouble and have had to resign their positions. How should our view of God impact our response to this situation that currently surrounds us? We would love to hear what you think.

Our new logo!

Thanks to Lauren Wright, a graduated 1|99er, for designing our new logos. Our goal was to come up with a new logo that would speak to who our youth ministry is while being connected to our new church logo. I think it turned out great, but what do you think?