CSMDO Wants You!

Thanks for coming. This blog is an attempt to avoid lots of brainstorming meetings...and maybe capture your ideas when they come to you (as long as you're near a computer. J., Kathy and I are passionate about Jr. and Sr. high school students finding, knowing, and experiencing God at work in their everyday lives. And on top of that...we want that for our own lives too. And the key word is experiencing (for this forum). We want to challenge the students to actually "DO SOMETHING" about what they are learning about God. And I think you have untapped creativity that could lead our kids into a more active faith as a result of what they hear from stage. So we're gonna try something new and brainstorm on-line...and see how it goes. Here's how it will work:

1. I (Paul) will work with J. to understand the desired overall objective for a message series for CSM JR & SR.
2. I will then translate that objective (desired outcome) to this blog.
3. There will also be a challenge attached to the objective...for you to post your responses & creative ideas in the form of a comment...to each blog posting from CSMDO. Your posts should describe an activity or a tangible challenge that can be communicated or promoted from stage or Live groups. These activities could be a group thang...or an individual experience. But they should be derived from the series message and objective. And most importantly, we want them to lead the kids to an experiential understanding of who God is...and how he works in and through us.
4. I will collect the ideas from your comments, follow up on the ideas that work best for that series, and reloop with the blog and individual on how we will make the ideas into a tangible challenge for the students.

This is an experiment, and i'm sure the process will be tweaked as we see what works and what doesn't work. But your participation is critical for us to succeed. No ideas are bad. Be creative...even if you think you are not creative. This could be huge...but i need you to help make it work. Cool? Cool.

That's it.

PO, JW, KR

WATER

Alright, this will be our first attempt at on-line collaboration. And the only way it will work is if you bring your very own creativity...and post your ideas as comments on the information presented. So here goes.

PURPOSE OF "WATER":
This Summer we will spend 12 weeks discussing and experiencing WATER. We will look at a bunch of water's characteristics and how water can show us who God is. The 12 weeks to be very tactile / visual so that the students will not just walk away from each week with a teaching, but also a sensory experience. For senior high, this will be accomplished by going offsite, encountering smells from locations, see, touching actual places and things. For junior high, we will be using video and various other techniques to bring the tangible experiences into our services at Crossroads. Each week should stand alone, but they will also culminate to a point at the end of the summer - water washing away sins and crap in their life through baptism. The final “do” in the series would be to interact with the students' new understanding of water and have them give water away as a service project. It's gonna be a wet summer for CSM.


WEEK 1 - ALL AROUND US
- Intro series and the idea of modern day experimental parables.
- Water is all around us vital to life, beautiful to the eyes…God same way
WEEK 2 - TRANSPORTATION
- Water moves people / connects people
WEEK 3 - FREE FLOWING vs CONTAINED
- We can try to put God in a box...but our attempts will fail
WEEK 4 - COVERS US
- Covered in prayer. Covered in water
WEEK 5 - UNKNOWN / MYSTERIOUS
- We can see the surface, but God has depth that we can't always see
WEEK 6 - LEAK!
- Question what you thought was solid in your life.
WEEK 7 - DRY vs WET
- Water’s impact come into contact with it. God’s impact when you come into contact with him
WEEK 8 - HOT vs COLD
- You become what you encounter. Hot or Cold. Not lukewarm
WEEK 9 - SEPARATES
- Two banks. Where you are now, your end goal. Water divides
WEEK 10 - PURIFY
- Water can be renewed. God renews/forgives
WEEK 11 - BAPTISM
- Dive in. Surround you.
WEEK 12 - REFRESH
- Refreshing. God is refreshing.
- Interact with new found respect or “knowledge” of water. Give out water


SO...those are all of the preliminary concepts for the summer WATER weeks. We are looking for locations - that are not Crossroads - that a large group of students can actually go to and experience water based on the characteristic of God for that week. If you've seen a NOOMA video...think like that. We will hold CSM at each location and actually teach there...in that setting to experience the smells, sounds and sights of WATER in that scenario. Be creative. This is a brainstorm. Post your thoughts. No idea is too big or too small. Just get them out there. We'll collect them...and we'll let you know what we decide on. Cool? Any questions...you can post those too. I'll probably assign a deadline for ideas very soon, but we're not that far yet. Think WATER.

(wow...all this WATER talk...well...now i need to pee. nice.)

PO, JW, KR