Our Next Sunday Morning STU Series

So, we have Stillmeadow Teen University (STU) every Sunday morning at 9:30, when 6-12 grade students get together to study scriptures together and to grow in Christ together.  It's pretty sweet.  I've been teaching the middle school boys for the past couple months and am LOVING that!

Anyway, we just wrapped up our previous series jumping through Matthew.

Now, we'll be examining what Stillmeadow calls her five core values: Connect, Celebrate, Commit, Contribute and Communicate.  (Yes, they are all "C" letters.)  Essentially, we believe that Jesus modeled these five things in his faithful obedience to his Father, and we want to do the same as a community (another great word that starts with "c").  Since this is "core" to who we are at Stillmeadow, we thought it'd be "cool" to have a series breaking these down with the teens.

If you'd like to see the Student Guide that we're handing out to our students, follow this link.

One of the things we're trying out is giving students a scripture for each day that is connected to the theme of the week.  This way they can be prepared when they come on Sunday.  Not everybody does it, but those that do have expressed that they get great reward from it.  We even send out text reminders of what scriptures we are reading each day.

If you'd like to receive texts with the scriptures for each day (found in the student guide), click on this link.

Stations of the Cross 2011

The Stations will be open from 6-9PM every night during Holy Week.  That's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

The Stations of the Cross are an excellent way of remembering what Jesus did for the whole world when he endured the scandal of the cross.  Each station gives a scripture and a piece of art or an object to reflect on the scripture.  Our youth have put energy into the artwork and into construction of some of the scenes.  They've been doing this since 2006 and I'm excited about this year too!

If you don't come to our church, you can still come!  Our address is:

400 Stillmeadow Lane

York, PA 17404

A Thank You Note...

I just received a thank you note from Jonathan Philips, a missionary to Romania from Stillmeadow.  Recently at our 30 Hour Famine, our teens wrote him some encouragement and prayer notes.  Below is his response.  If you want to follow and support him on his journey, he updates this blog.  Cool God-stories there!


Josh,

I wanted to let you know that this week I received the cards the Stillmeadow teens made during their 30-hour famine. It was an unexpected surprise to receive so many cards. This has been a very busy and stressful week, so it was nice to receive notes of encouragement and to know that I'm being prayed for. Please let the teens know that they brightened my day.

Blessings,
Jonathan

Advent Devotional

Can you believe how stores are already breaking out the Christmas supplies?  Whew!

Well, Pastor Bud over at www.ebayse.blogspot.com has joined the fray and is making available a daily Advent Devotional.  This will be a great way for our Stillmeadow people to journey together towards the celebration of Jesus' birth.  It's a little different than a traditional advent devotional, because the scriptures coincide with our current sermon series: God's Big Idea--Love God, Love Others (here are videos of the sermons). Check it out!

Top Moments from Fall Retreat 2010!

Top Moments from Fall Retreat 2010

1.      The crazy mingle game while waiting for the buses to arrive at Stillmeadow

2.      Having both Stillmeadow campuses worship and play together

3.      The prayer stations

4.      Watching kids play in the creek

5.      When one of the boys brought over a roasted crawdad

6.      Playing Taboo outside with a ton of people

7.      Hearing the bell ring during the prayer stations

8.      The sound of George’s coffee pot in the morning after a short night’s sleep

9.      The Warm Fuzzy encouragement bags!

10.  Hearing the bold prayers around the campfire on Saturday night

11.  Communion on Sunday morning

This is just a start…I’d love to hear of some more from my facebook friends!

www wanderings 02.17.2010

Lent:

It's Ash Wednesday. If you'd like a scripture guide through the next forty days, you can go here to join what many Christians around the world are engaging with. There are some quality prayers and artwork links as well (the pic on the right came from there). If you're at Stillmeadow, I'd recommend the FaithForward Guide that we are using for our community. We gave it out on Sunday and it's available at the welcome desk.

Stillmeadow's on Twitter!

Our church is checking out what it looks like to be a presence on twitter. We'll see how this goes...but it could be fun. If you want to follow, click here or just go to www.twitter.com/stillnaz.

Child Soldiers and American Slave Trade:

Learned from Project AK-47 (follow on Twitter) that one third of the world's child soldiers are in South East Asia. They say "100,000 kids are carrying machine guns" in this region.

Then Relevant posted a study which showed that Ohio is a major hub in the US for human trafficking. Ohio is our neighbor state! 1000 Americans are forced into labor or the sex trade and "800 immigrants are sexually exploited and pushed into sweatshop-type jobs" just in Ohio! Check out what Doma is doing to protect these people.