Interesting thing to do with your feet

Our Children's Pastor Mick Schultz sent this to me. Try it:

This is so funny that it will boggle your mind. And you will keep trying
it at least 50 more times to see if you can outsmart your foot. But you
can't ! ! !
1. While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off
the Floor and make clockwise circles with it.

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air
with your right hand. Your foot will change direction!!!

A nice email

I love emails like this. I don't post this because of look what we are doing in our group but to encourage you all that we are making a difference even if we can't see it. Here is the story about the boy and then please read the email after that:

"About to graduate from High school, a young man from a wealthy family anticipating his gift. It was the custom in that affluent neighborhood for the parents to give the graduate a new car. Jason and his father had spent months looking at cards, and the week before graduation they found the perfect car. Jason was certain that this car would be his own graduation night. Imagine his disappointment when, immediately following the graduation ceremony, Jason’s father handed him a small, elegantly wrapped package. It must be the keys to my new car, Jason thought. Upon opening the gift, though, all he found was a Bible with his name imprinted on the front. A Bible? He took it out, looking to find car keys in the box. Empty! Jason was so angry that he threw the Bible down and stormed out of the house. His father tried to stop him, but Jason kept on running. He and his father never saw each other again. News of his father’s death finally brought Jason home again. As he went through the possessions he was about to inherit from his father, he came across the graduation Bible. Brushing away the dust, he opened it and began idly flipping through the pages. A paper tucked inside caught his eye and he pulled out of the Bible a cashier’s check, dated the day of his graduation, in the exact amount of the car he and his father had chosen."

email - "Just wanted to let you know the story about the boy and his dad sparked some discussion after church yesterday. When I read it during Sunday School I thought it was an OK example, but not an illustration I would have picked. (but then, I'm a girl.) Anyway, as we left church my jr hi son started telling his little brother about the story. He was moved by it, I could tell. (of course, it’s a vehicular story) Then he said, "I almost felt like I was gonna cry. I mean, he never talked to his dad again." This was a profound statement from my son. He does not talk about feelings/emotions unless prompted. We talked about the parallels, why would he do that, what kind of a car it might have been, was it worth it, etc. The story was a good spring board for thinking questions. Thanks!"

Week 2 of Growing Great Lives – Follow the Leader

I had said that I wanted to try and journal more on how things are going with the growing great lives series. Well I must say I totally blew that one. After listening to Pastor Bob's message (Oct. 29th) about how he blew it for a day I’m really feeling like I’m a complete chump.

Well when I feel like this I usually listen and try to hear the Holy Spirit working through my huge mistakes. He again makes it clear that this life that I have is all about God and not about me. It is so easy to listen to my desires and wants that I forget to listen to the voice that is the most important.

As a leader at New Covenant Bible Church we talk a lot about being servant leaders and that the best way to lead is to serve (which was clearly what Jesus modeled for us – John 13:1-20). The Holy Spirit so often lets me see His work through the IMPACT jr hi youth group that I have the privilege to be the jr hi guy for. Again I had the chance to have the jr hi youth in their special way correct me and show me true servant hood and how even when I make huge mistakes God is still with me.

Today we had Deep Impact (A group of jr hi youth who desire to go deeper in their relationship with God) and with a group of them I was lovingly corrected. I made up two weeks’ worth of devotionals for them to use for the past two weeks. They didn’t take what I put in those devos at face value but looked at the verses, the stories, and the applications and wanted to understand how they worked together. Some of them did others didn’t even come close. It was awesome to have these young adolescents correct me and help me see where I was wrong. I have given them two more weeks worth of devos and I believe I’ve given them a much better devotional material to work with. But I’m really looking forward to the time we will have together again to see how the devos worked for them.

The Holy Spirit works in so many ways and I praise my heavenly Daddy for working through a group of jr hi youth today.

Knot your way

This is like the coolest web site on how to do knots. It actually shows you how to make 75 different kinds of knots one step at a time. I'm not a knot person but I have figured out how to do a lot of these because of this web site.

Fall Mixer - Mega-fun PLAN B

Well we had our Fall Mixer (The Mega-Fun) event. With all the rain, strong wind, and low 40s we had to do PLAN B. My team was awesome as the adjusted to the plan, came up with a different way to mix the group up, and had a lot of fun and relationship building time. This was one of the events where I saw my sponsors (our adult volunteers) mix it up with each other. We had a much lower turn out than I would have hoped (we had just over 40 there). We will try to do an outdoors event in Nov to make up for this one (and burn the huge pile of brush we have). If you would like to see pictures of this event please click the picture.

Week 1 - Growing Great Lives series

We had our week 1 get together tonight with the Growing Great lives series our church is doing. One of the things I'm commented to do is journal what is happening with the group, what is happening in my life, and allow my small group to correct, guide, and encourage me by my blog journal entries. Thanks to my friends for wanting to be a part of this journey of journaling with me.

Week 1 – Focused Dependency
Pastor Bob Westrom shared in his message that “We are to run the race with endurance.” When I was younger I was a cross country runner and I still like to work out as often as I can but what I’ve discovered is as I work out I just don’t have the energy I use to. I’ve been doing this work out for about 4 weeks and I’ve discovered that I’m getting more energy slowly. I get this energy by enduring the regular every day work out I’m doing. I get endurance and thus I can work out even more which then gives me even more energy to do more. I’ve found that I’ve slept better at night, that I have more endurance when I get home from work, and that I just have a general “happiness” felling about me.

If you are a student of the Bible, in fact if you read and hear it somewhat often you know where I’m going with this. Sometimes in our lives we are placed (and sometimes God places us) in situations that causes us to “run” hard and it is a lot of work. It comes in many forms, a hard day at work, at home, at school; situations with a sibling or our spouse; controllable situations that we choices to let happen or do that stress us out; or uncontrollable situations that also stress us out. They all can cause us to “run” and “run” until we are worn out. But to this and through this endurance is built up and we often and suddenly find ourselves do things we never we could do for God is ways we never thought we could do it.

Run the race so that endurance can build up in you and watch as God builds in you His will.

Nathaniel gets it

Today Oct 13, 2006 is yet another famous day for the Eades home. 5 years ago I was able to meet a gentleman by the name of Mark Forstrom the Youth Pastor of New Covenant Bible Church. On that day both Mark and I knew we had a destiny together to impact youth in Cedar Rapids, IA area. Then later that day my daughter (at the age of 5) came out when I was mowing the lawn to say she wanted to have Jesus as her Lord and savior. We looked through God's word together and my LLL (Lovely Little Lindsey) accept Jesus as her Lord. Now today my son Nathaniel (also 5) came to me this morning to say "I want to be a Christian." We spent some time talking over what that means and he gets the idea that Jesus is the one who died for his sin. At that point my BB (Baby Buddy)-Nathaniel Mark Eades asked Jesus to be his Lord of his life. PRAISE GOD!! There is much more I know for him and me to understand and grow together on. I'm looking forward to that growth.

Alot to do

I'm in the office today all alone and with enough stuff to do to keep me busy. Here are my big 3:

1) Get ready for Leadership Community - get thoughts together about the meeting with our awesome Team Leaders
2) Winter Retreat planning - We have a meeting Sat (Oct. 21) and I just found out last night that another leader has pulled out. That leaves me with only 3 (my wife, my self, and sponsors). Going to need to contact other sponsors and try to get a couple more on this team.
3) Get the final touches done on my message that goes with our 6 week churchwide series coming up this Sunday - Growing Great lives.

I also have 20+ emails to filter through and 12 tasks to get done. I think I better get going.

Wed night Oct 11th Team Groups

I'm putting the lay out of the night for our youth group here to let others see what we are doing with our group. Would enjoy reading any comments, quesions, or thoughts about this:

Wed night (Oct 11) line-up –
Pictures of Unity –Lesson 3 - Stones in God’s temple
Opener –
Announcements: FALL MIXER (OCT 21); Deep Impact Party (Oct 15) from 12:30-2pm; Others
Review of last team group night:
What was the main points of our last two team meetings?
Harmony encouragement – We are children in God’ family.
How many of you took the challenge of doing the 1 min devos?
Where Team Groups:
6th grade
Grade group meeting room – Jr Hi room
Small same gender meeting rooms – Jr Hi room, Duct tape rm, & Music sheet rm
7th grade
Grade group meeting room – College rm
Small same gender meeting rooms – College rm, Black light rm, youth office
8th grade
Grade group meeting room – Rms 110, 111
Small same gender meeting rooms – Rms 110,111; Rm 112;
Rm 124
Hook – Mixer – By the Way
Have everyone sit in a circle. Go around the circle and have each person say her name and add, "by the way" plus a four-word phrase that describes something about them. For example, "My name is Pat and by the way my cat is fat." As they move around the circle, each person must repeat what all of the previous people said so that they get to know each other better. This game is really funny because the students get really creative about what they say and how they say it.
Book – I Peter 2:4-8 (MSG)
2Pe 1:4 In this way he has given us the very great and precious gifts he promised, so that by means of these gifts you may escape from the destructive lust that is in the world, and may come to share the divine nature.
2Pe 1:5 For this very reason do your best to add goodness to your faith; to your goodness add knowledge;
2Pe 1:6 to your knowledge add self-control; to your self-control add endurance; to your endurance add godliness;
2Pe 1:7 to your godliness add Christian affection; and to your Christian affection add love.
2Pe 1:8 These are the qualities you need, and if you have them in abundance, they will make you active and effective in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.


Look – What does the Bible mean?
Prep reading for the sponsors leading Huddle Groups:
Peter never claimed to be “the rock” on which the church is built (Matt. 16:18); he states clearly that Christ is the Stone (v. 4). Christ was rejected of men, but chosen of God. Read carefully Matt. 21:33-46, Isa. 28:16, Acts 4:11, and Ps. 118:22-23. Believers are living stones built on the Living Stone (1:3), comprising a spiritual temple for God’s glory (Eph. 2:19-22). We are also priests in this temple, offering up spiritual sacrifices through Christ (see Heb. 13:15-16). Christ, the Stone, is rejected of men; but whoever believes on Him will not be ashamed. Unbelievers stumble over this Stone and will one day be crushed by it; but to us, He is precious.

Sponsor’s Use this reading and the verse II Peter 2:4-8 to help you explain to the kids what Peter was sharing. Here are some questions to use:
1. What is Jesus called in this passage?
2. What are we called? What's the difference between Jesus and us in this building?
3. How was Jesus treated? What's the result? What does that say to us, who are part of the same building?
4. What are some characteristics of a stone? How do these apply to the Christian?
5. Why is it valuable to have different kinds of stone when you're building? How does this principle apply to our group?
Took - application –
Discuss with the kids about the recent shootings at Amish one-room school house. Ask questions like:
What do you think of what happen?
What do you think about the Amish peoples reaction?
What are some ways that we could be like the Amish when it comes to our ever day problems?

Large Group Sum up:
Pastor Tye Male has been blogging a lot recently about the Amish situation and I’ve asked him to come and share with you all as we close tonight about what he has read.

Offline relationships - what an idea

Working in such a great place like New Covenant Bible Church has been awesome. One of the things we really focus on is relationship. We believe as our old sr pastor said many times, "ministry happens in the context of relationship" and that is such a wise statement.

I was reading this and thought "how interesting" people who are doing relationship face-to-face, getting off the computer and talking, not so focused on text messaging, etc. Hmmm...

Ask anyone that knows me and they will say that I'm a gadget guy to the max but this article was refreshing to me that it is really all about developing relationship so that through those relationship Christ my inter into someone’s life.

He said it - oh my

Well my son Nathaniel finally said it and what he said both scares me and excites me (the picture is of him and I at his first day of pre-school). Over the weekend I get a chance to do different things with my boys. This weekend we got a chance to get hair cuts. Now I do all the hair cutting for the boys in the Eades family. As I was cutting his hair he just said, "I want to be just like you daddy." He wasn't talking about his hair cut - he was talking about what he is seeing from me - OH MY! Lord help me as this time of Nathainel's life is so important and so scary.