Study on the Lord's prayer

Well, lacrosse didn't work out this spring, which is a bit disappointing. However, during the past few months our Discipleship group has been studying the Lord's prayer. We used this music album by Derek Webb and it was awesome.

What Derek did was create an instramental song for each line in the prayer. Such as "Give us this day our daily bread." It was a fantastic study because along with the music the album came with abstract photos and paintings that went with each line of the prayer. The study pushed the youth and the leaders to look at the Lord's prayer in a new way and really consider the words we are saying when we pray the prayer. At the end of the study we each created our own art work to display what the Lord's prayer means to us now. Here is some of our work...

Ambridge Area Lacrosse Registration

Ambridge Youth Ignite, the organization that created the Ambridge Sports & Arts Camp will begin its 2nd season of lacrosse this spring. There will be two boys teams, one for 5th-6th graders and one for 7th-8th graders. The season will begin in mid-March and end in late May, containing approximately 3 practices a week as well as games.

Here are the details...

What: Youth Lacrosse Sign Up
When: February 19th, 2011
Where: 1013 Merchant Street, Rock the World, across from the Post Office
Time: 10 am - 2 pm
Cost: $ 25.00
Info: For more information or to sign up over the phone please contact
Eric @ 724 266-8876 ext: 103
ericgeisbert@rocktheworld.org
www.ambridgeyouthignite.org
***Not Affliated with AASD***

Pixar and Jesus

Over the past few weeks our discipleship group has been watching the Pixar movies and discussing the spiritual ramifications of each film. Its been a lot of fun so far we've watched Wall-e, The Incredibles and Up! My favorite part so far has been a discussion we had about The Incredibles.

The Incredibles is about a family who all has superpowers. Unfortunately for them, society has forced them to live lives where they do not use their superpowers. This causes many difficulties for the family as they try to go about life as a normal ordinary family while hiding their identities as superheroes.

In connection with the movie, we spoke about Romans 8, where the apostle Paul writes about our identity in Christ. "Because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."

The Incredibles desired to live into their identities just as we desire to live into our identities as co-heirs with Christ. Just as the world told the Incredibles that they couldn't be superheroes anymore the world is yelling at us that we are not co-heirs with Christ, that we are not princes and princesses of God (that's what a co-heir is!).

So, know this that you are a princess or a prince of the Living God, with Jesus Christ and the world cannot take that away from you. Pretty fun stuff

Much thanks to Mockingbird Ministries and their book The Gospel According to Pixar.

Summer of 2010

Well the summer seems to be getting away from us. This week Ambridge Area students headed back to school and with that another summer comes to an end. This summer the Ambridge Sports & Arts Camp ran for the 7th time. The camp continues to attract youth as we had an average of 25 - 30 youth at Arts Camp and 35 - 40 youth at Sports Camp.

This summer the Arts Camp team took on a difficult challenge of creating a movie with the youth. During the summer the team and the youth wrote, directed, starred in their own movie. The film was shown on the last day of camp. It was wonderful to see the youth watch themselves and smile and laugh at the film. Where else do youth get to experience that? And for Free?

We are excited about how God is moving in Ambridge and so glad that we get to be a part of it.

Crazy Spring Part III - Lacrosse

Ambridge Area Lacrosse started this spring. It has been a fun spring as 14 middle school aged boys have had the chance to learn lacrosse. The Ambridge Area team is the first boys team in Beaver County and played its first game against Moon on April 20th. We have yet to get our first win but our youth are having a great time and are seeing God glorified in sports. Here are some pictures from our first season...thanks Christina


Before the start of our game at Sewickley Academy



A Saturday Practice



We are the team in blue

Crazy Spring Part II - Youth Alpha

Alpha is a program developed by Nicky Gumbel, in which basic Christianity is broken down into 14 or so sessions. In Alpha, God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are discussed as well as faith, the church, the Bible and the devil. The program has been used all over the world and I have personally have participated in it several times. Church of the Savior where Shea and I attend decided to start a Alpha program this spring and in it a youth Alpha program as well.

Our leadership team has worked with youth who come from all different backgrounds this spring. We have had youth who attended church or church related activities several times a week to youth who don't attend church at all. My favorite story from the past several months is this one...

For one of our sessions we were going to talk about the Holy Spirit, what it is, where it came from etc. We (the leaders) met right before the session and we were a bit concerned that the youth did not know who exactly Jesus was and know Him as their Savior. So, instead of talking to the youth about the Holy Spirit, we spent the whole session talking to the youth about Jesus and answering questions about Him. We talked about Jesus' life and why He had to come, why we needed Him and how He can be a part of our lives. It was an awesome experience and I hope that one day when the youth look back on that day they will remember the things we talked about and how their relationship with Jesus started that day or was accelerated.

Crazy Spring Part I - New Wineskins

Over the next few post I am going to try and update you on our "Crazy Spring", God has given us lots of responsibilities over the past few months, one was the New Wineskins Conference.

New Wineskins is a conference that happens every three years that invites people into a conversation about Christian missions. Ambridge Youth Ignite led the middle school portion of the event. We had a great time with the youth, we talked about loving God, loving our neighbors, loving other Christians and being sent out into the world. Also called the four commandments by this man, Whis Hays. We did two things really stand out, first we created tye dye t-shirts for youth in a specific foster care system (loving our neighbors) and we also made mosaics from broken tile on which we wrote our sins against our fellow Christians (loving other Christians). It was really fun and the youth got into what we were teaching. Toward the end of the weekend, several of the youth were praying for the salvation of their friends back home. They were inspiring me.

I am thankful for the youth that attended and for Sadie and Shea who served the youth along with me.