youth group

Putting Together My “Crazy Love” Puzzle

October 5th, 2009 at 1:38 pm / Amy Bennett / 5 Comments »

I keep recommending Crazy Love by Francis Chan and I do recommend the book. But I think there’s a bigger picture brewing that has me so excited about it. I could start the story when I stood inside a Books a Million and spotted it on the shelves among other recommended books but I think I’ll start a few years back.

This is a long one but a good one…

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Recap of Winter Jam 2009 – Charlotte

January 12th, 2009 at 8:14 pm / Amy Bennett / 3 Comments »

We were able to figure out the kids being juggled between our parents (thanks, ya’ll!) and were happy to be off at 4 yesterday for the concert. Toby Mac was the headline artist and I’ve been a fan of his since the early 90s during his DC Talk days. I thought I’d never seen him but I remembered going to a concert at a church in Charlotte sometime when I was in high school I think. I definitely hadn’t seen him since he went solo.

By the time we got there, the doors were already open although we heard a few of our college students had been there since 1:30 and had 4th row seats. The youth group had to go to the upper deck to sit together. Scott and I and another couple in the youth group moved to be more centered on the stage. A few minutes in our seats, and the college students text us and say they have 4 open spots. Yippee!

The only downside was that we only had our zoom lens assuming we’d be far away so all of our pictures are REALLY close up. From 4th row, I couldn’t get any wide shots at all. No complaining…just sayin.

So here’s the line-up.

Pure NRG. These kiddos were helping to promote PreciousGirlsClub.com, a web site for girls…Emma was already signed up there. Their performance was….well organized yet….peppy. I didn’t even upload a picture of them I just realized.

Stephanie Smith. She was cute as a button (see tutu) and definitely has a big voice. She sang a prayer type song mid-way through the concert and it was amazing. We were still up in the upper deck at this point and I took a picture from the megatron thingy.

Francesca Battistelli. I didn’t get to hear her because I went and ate. Friggin’ $17 for chicken, small fries and a drink. Rip-off. I did hear a lot how pretty she was when I got back. Sorry, that’s all I got. LOL

NewSong sang some great worship songs. I’ve seen them several times in concert. I still love that Nate Sallie is singing with them. I love him! They also sang Arise, My Love and man, that song gets you every time.

Hawk Nelson came out and I have seen them a time or two before as well. Every Little Thing is still my favorite of theirs. They are really fun on stage.

Brandon Heath came out and WOW I was really impressed with him. If you listen to Christian music you might recognize a few of his songs..”I’m Not Who I Was” and “Give Me Your Eyes”. They played a video during that one and it was very thought-provoking.

Finally Toby Mac and his band Diverse City came out and WOW. They did not stop from beginning to end. I may as well and get this out of the way and say Toby looked OLD. And if not old, VERY tired. I wanted to tell him to drink some water and go to bed. See?

Turns out he’s 44. Man, does that make ME feel old?! But he’s still cute as a button when he smiles.

The show was a ton of fun.

And Toby ended it well by jumping it to the crowd at the end. Scott caught him mid air.

Overall a very good concert. Toby Mac was definitely the star of the show and made the night.

I’ve uploaded all my videos although I haven’t labeled them all.

If you’d like to see all the (very upclose) pictures we took, have at it.

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Costume Party 2008

October 30th, 2008 at 12:08 pm / Amy Bennett / 4 Comments »

We had a really good time at the costume party for our youth group last night. All the leaders actually got into it. In fact, we had great participation across the board. I changed my costume a bit last minute. I had planned to wear a dress and heels but it was just too cold and I didn’t want to be uncomfortable. I also had fake eyelashes that wouldn’t stay on. But, it was enough to tell what I was. The lighting and therefore pictures were REALLY bad since they had no lights except for blacklights. It’s hard to see the blood I had on my chin and my eyes were a lot darker than I normally do them.

Scott actually won the costume contest. He had (fake) sound effects and all. They hooked up his machine to the sound system so randomly you’d hear it all across the room. He was so proud.

And I just have to stick this one on the end…Darian (my first Twilight convert) and I huddled on the couch with our Twilight series books and discussed!

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Youth Camp 2008 Pictures

June 25th, 2008 at 2:00 pm / Amy Bennett / 5 Comments »

First, if you checked my tweets at twitter at all while I was gone, you’d know I thought that the Wake Forest campus was beautiful. Let me show you a few pictures..

The first thing we saw was the Wait Chapel

This is inside Wait Chapel where we had all our services. Each side was lined with 5 or 6 of these big windows that let in the morning and evening light perfectly.

Flowers were everywhere and gorgeous

Here are a pair of buildings at night. Not sure what they’re used for but they’re attached to some dorms.

Now the next pictures are a lot of ME but I assure you we took over 600 pictures and the minority are of me but I don’t want to go plastering people’s pictures on my blog so you’re stuck with just me

The kids teased me because yes, I did end up on my phone a lot.

I actually did participate though…here’s on one of the rec days. I’m the one climbing on top

Here I am actually running playing ultimate frisbee..I’m on the far left in the full running pose. That building behind us holds the cafeteria.

See all those kids rolling on the ground? That’s our STOP, DROP AND ROLL deal we had all week. It really was hilarious.

And here, let me show you where I got dumped on on Water Day.

First, I run. And they chase me.

And then they catch me while everyone looks on

While I say Nooooo!

And they dump not one…

….but two buckets of water on me.

SCORE!!!!

I’m officially drenched

Somehow I keep the glass on though

They love me anyway…

…but still can’t get enough…I get picked to get sprayed with a water gun in the next game.

By the end, I had fallen off my stool, still drenched and I think trying to hide in the grass. It didn’t work did it?

I’m ok though! Still smiling!

Pizza that night makes it all better.

And there you have it. Amy at Youth Camp 2008.

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Youth Camp Recap

June 22nd, 2008 at 8:26 pm / Amy Bennett / 4 Comments »

I’ve been putting this post off the entire week and weekend because I knew it could get really long if I let it. In fact, I’m going to skip the pictures for this one just so I can get this much posted.

I have yet to pick a word which can sum up the week. Most of the youth say “awesome” or “amazing” but I just can not use words like that. In all honesty, last week was HARD. The past two years we had our old youth pastor and his wife and I get along quite well. We were roomies for one year and for both years, hung out with one another quite a bit. This year, I was the only female chaperone. It made it lonely and stressful at times. Don’t get me wrong, we had awesome and amazing moments but as a whole, I’m not sure.

See, I don’t like confrontation. And when something arose this week, all signs pointed to me as the responsible adult. I had to listen to the complaint, decide how to handle it and then actually handle it. Yeah, I had to be an actual “youth leader” this week.

And it wasn’t easy.

There was the

“naked girls in the bathroom” complaint,

“your youth was throwing up in our bathroom and stole our trash can” complaint,

“your kids need to throw their cups and plates away” complaint,

“don’t push around the chairs because you might break the legs” complaint,

“that girl is mouthing things to our boys” complaint,

“her shorts are too short” complaint,

“they’re being too loud and i’m the bus driver and need my beauty sleep” complaint.

Plus add in acting as a alarm clock in the morning, the buzz-kill at lights-out time at night and the one and only female counselor for all 15 or so girls, well, I was a frazzled mess.

I think it was Monday night I just cried into my pillow wondering why in the world I had left my family and spent a ton of money to make up for my time off to come do this.

Of course it’s clear that God changed lives while we were there and there needed to be some female chaperone there. But I really think it wasn’t just the kids that grew. I learned how to accept complaints and deal with them, how to gently correct someone, how to get things done that needed done. I really think I grew a little more backbone this week.

So that’s all about me.

As for the week, it was normal camp stuff…breakfast, morning service, bible study, lunch, rec time, dinner and evening service. My favorite times were on Thursday afternoon. The first was during our water day. The kids basically rotated through 8 games that had to do with water. Everyone got soaked. They decided to steal my camera and dump two buckets of water on me. Then I was the target of water guns in the next game. I was dripping by the time we left but that was definitely the best time I’d had all week. Seems sort of backwards right? After that we all went and played a game of ultimate frisbee and that was so much fun! I’ve never played before and we were all in such a good mood and everyone was playing together and I really think it was a bonding moment for all of us.

Thursday evening Todd Agnew stayed up on stage singing so long Dave Edwards didn’t even get to speak. We all just worshiped God for like 2 hours. It was an amazing time.

We did have some drama though. We had one girl who was hyperventilating at service after crying so hard and had to be taken to the hospital. We also had four girls who ended up with the stomach virus. That was fun. I was woken up at 6:15 one morning and had to go down 3 flights of stairs just to listen to someone puke a few times all while trying to decide whether to call her mom or WHAT to do with her. I’m telling you, this adult thing SUCKS (sorry, Mom, it just does).

One funny thing though was our “STOP, DROP AND ROLL” moments. Somehow it got started at camp and a leader would call out really loudly stop, drop and roll and the ENTIRE youth group would drop to the ground and then roll over a time or two. It made for some HILARIOUS moments when there was a large crowd. I think other youth groups either that we were crazy or a little jealous we had something cool to do. A couple other kids in other groups started doing it with us. It was kind of funny. I think the majority just thought we were a tad immature and maybe we all are!

I’ll try to get some pictures up soon because the ones from water day are just great. Thankfully the girl who took my camera actually took some pictures.

In closing I can say I’m glad I went. The speaker and Todd Agnew were really good (although he did spend the entire time only singing like 3 songs). I saw people make decisions for Christ. I even saw a leader completely step up and come out of their shell through the week. I grew as a person and got to experience God move like I hadn’t in awhile. And to me, that’s worth it.

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Youth Camp, Here I Come

May 28th, 2008 at 8:58 pm / Amy Bennett / 2 Comments »

So it seems like I will be going to youth camp as camp counselor for the third year in a row. I really hadn’t planned on going but there was absolutely no other female to go so I did some arranging and I got the kids places to stay so I’ll be headed to StudentLife camp the week of June 16 where Todd Agnew will be the worship leader. I’m getting pretty excited about it now that’s it’s starting to sink in. Camp is always a good time and I hope to enjoy the week. The kids were ECSTATIC when I told them where they were staying each night that Scott works so it’s always good to leave happy kids behind.

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Sunday Scripture

March 9th, 2008 at 9:25 pm / Amy Bennett / 3 Comments »

Matthew 7:24-28 24“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

OK, I have to give God lots of glory tonight. For long-time readers you may remember a girl that started our youth group about the same time I did and she had “issues”. She came from a bad home life, she herself had gotten into drugs and alcohol and she believed that she was gay. It’s been almost two years since I first met her and since then, she has admitted she had a crush on me when she first met me, come to my bible study high on cold medicine, come to my Sunday School class with a hangover and thrown up in the trash can, talked and texted with me endlessly, attended counseling sessions for anger management…gosh where do I stop? Let’s just say it’s been a long two years with her. But let me not forget the good stuff about her…even during this stuff. The girl is smart as a whip. She’s always the one wanting to read and ask questions. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. She will do anything anyone asks her to do. She’s respectful and mature and funny and well, she’s just great to be around.

The reason I’m saying all this is we had youth Sunday today and she gave her testimony. She talked about her family issues and growing up with just her dad and brother and how they hurt her and how all that led to her dressing like a boy and hating boys and acting like a boy and just getting confused about who and what she was. How she got messed up with drugs and alcohol with several different family members but then talked about how one day she came to our youth group and kept coming just to get away. How she had gone to church her whole life and she knew she was doing wrong and finally after over a year of attending our youth group, she finally realized how hypocritical it was to go to church week after week and then go home and do what she was doing. She decided to make a permanent change. Her testimony this morning basically ended there but I’ll continue for her….Her aunt and uncle decided to take her in last fall and her “inside” had finally changed at that point but she was still dressing like a boy and they bought her an entire new wardrobe and took her for manicures and pedicures and got her ears pierced and she bought a purse and suddenly her outside matched the beautiful young lady she had become on the inside.

As I listened to her stand up in front of hundreds of adults and tell this story and give God the glory for changing who she was, I couldn’t help but run up there with her. I about had Pentecostal church at the Baptist church this morning. I shook and I cried and I hugged her and told my church how proud I was of her. I told them how she was an outcast in our group because the boys didn’t like a girl that looked and acted like a boy (she literally was mistaken for a boy) and the girls felt uncomfortable around her but our youth leader was wise enough to tell her to keep coming and God got ahold of her and she is a completely different person inside and out .

The key to her story is she decided to stop doing what she was doing and live according to God’s plan. She chose to make Jesus Christ her foundation and now everyone knows how different she is. She’ll tell you, her family will tell you, the youth members will tell you, I will tell you. She is a different person. And God did it all.

And you know what? I am SO glad God chose me to be involved in that. This morning God got the glory for what He’d done in her life and I just want to use this as another vehicle to say that God is real, He’s alive, He can change your life if you just let Him. It’s an awesome thing.

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Changes are starting

January 24th, 2008 at 9:15 am / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

I knew the changes were going to come to our youth group but yesterday’s surprised me. I met with K before church yesterday and basically we’re scrapping our entire web site and boiling it down to a one pager. Part of me bristled at the idea. I mean, I worked HARD on the current web site. But part of me knows that it’s not used like it could be and it really could be boiled down to a lot less than it is. I should look at it as on opportunity to develop a web site, learn something new and move on.

Under the advisement of G who has helped take over the band, we’re going to scrap the live band and sing to tracks for awhile while the band practices until they are more sure of themselves. I’m good with this as it needs done but it will be kind of weird doing it. Last night I didn’t sing as a new youth visitor has stepped in since last week and she has an AWESOME voice. Besides timing issues, they were great last night. I felt like the mother bird in the back of the room pushing them out of my nest.

Looks like there’s changes in the horizon on the Sunday School front as well but they may not come until the fall with the new church year.

I always like to say I’m progressive and don’t mind change a bit but I’d say my gut reaction to yesterday told a different story.

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Band practice – help indeed

January 15th, 2008 at 11:10 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

This evening we had our first very organized practice in awhile. The semi new leader G was able to make it last minute and our guitar player and bass player were there. And believe it or not, I kept beat on the drums. Seriously. We sang through three songs we all knew pretty well to prepare for tomorrow night.

Thursday is G’s big meeting with all the band including our lead guitarist who has been absent for awhile and a new lead guitarist who will backfill for him. I’m excited but somehow I see myself getting MORE roped into this than LESS roped into it.

BUT it was actually a lot of fun singing tonight. G played with some harmonies and since he sang so loudly, it let me sing louder and we actually sounded pretty good. Now if we can just pull that off tomorrow.

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hi, i’m amy and i hate making up titles

January 9th, 2008 at 11:10 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

Tonight was actually enjoyable at youth. That sounds horrible but I’ve been dreading it recently because of the whole band thing. This week we talked to a guy in our church G who is apparently very passionate (and good) at singing and music in general. He is PSYCHED about it which makes me PSYCHED that he’s PSYCHED. Now we just need students that can come regularly to practices. I say “we” but I’m not really sure I mean “we”. I think I may hang in there and go to practices and maybe sing backup to him with a few other youth but ultimately I’d like to be out of the loop. We’ll see. I really do like singing so I don’t mind singing with someone who can lead which I know he can do. Yay!

I do have to say my feelings were a wee bit hurt tonight…K gave all the kids chances for Q&A and he asked what needed changed and in a split second a few said The Band! I was like OUCH. Part of me wanted to cry, part of me wanted to quit on the spot, part of me wanted to say you wouldn’t have had ANY band if I hadn’t stepped in to help and snapped my fingers and part of me wanted to say AMEN, the band sucks. I really do wish we could have been more successful on our own but you can only do so much with what talent your given.

So here I am again Interneting my life away…so much to do, so little time.

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That was a bad American Idol audition

January 2nd, 2008 at 9:26 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

I’m nearing my breaking point with this youth band thing. I love my band members, but we were HORRIBLE tonight. Our drummer, base guitarist and lead guitarist were all out tonight. We had one guitarist and two vocalist. You’d think that’d be ok but we haven’t practice in 3 weeks and we winged it. Scott said we sounded like a bad American Idol audition. And surely we did. I even got so embarrassed during the thing I turned bright red. Thank goodness we have colored lights on us on the stage. I have a little hope a guy in our church might take over or at least help with the band but I am SO not cut out to be the lead singer of a band. I can sing ok in a choir when I have rehearsed much but this. I just can’t do it. I mean I’ve been doing it for several months now but I’m to the point of not even looking forward to Wednesday nights anymore. I really don’t want to see the end of the band and that’s the only reason I hang on. But now two of the main guys got part-time jobs and it’s just not working without them. The students aren’t into anymore. The students were actually sitting down while we were singing it was so bad. As much as I want it to work, we may just need to scrap the whole thing unless something or someone major happens.

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Youth Cotillion

December 12th, 2007 at 10:03 pm / Amy Bennett / 4 Comments »

So here’s the obligatory couples shot. The night was a breeze really. Just some set up at the beginning to arrange the few things on platters and that’s about it. We reused our gym that was decorated for the seniors dinner from last weekend. I didn’t really get a good picture of it (or most things) because we had the lights off and only Christmas lights and candles on through the night. The numbers were way down compared to last year but that’s understandable since we haven’t had a youth pastor for 4 months now.

After we ate, we took a bunch of individual/couples/group pictures and had some fun with that. Apparently youth really like their picture taken.

We finished the night off with a quick Chinese exchange. Apparently they do the exchange differently though. For theirs, you go ahead and pick a gift and open it and then you can pick whether you want to keep it or exchange with someone else’s gift. And after that, the person you exchange with is stuck with whatever was switched. The game was not nearly as fun but it made it quick. Last year when we had over 100 people, that was important. This year, I think we should have done it the way I’ve always done it…steal someone’s gift or chance opening another one. If you steal, you get to steal or pick.

Anyway, no major hiccups and I even got to head up to our extra choir practice when the games were done. After all that drama with the dress though, I sort of wish I hadn’t spent so much time and money on it. Most of the girls didn’t dress up as much as last year and with a small crowd it seemed sort of overdone. But oh well, I’ll take any excuse I can find to buy new clothes and dress up!

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It’s official…

December 9th, 2007 at 10:30 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

So it’s official as of today. Our new youth pastor was unanimously voted in. I think there are some reservations with some youth. But some are extremely excited which is great. Honestly, I’m not 100% sold but I’m trying to offer the benefit of the doubt and keep an open mind. I realize he’s not going to be S and different can be good. It’s just I think I had expectations that so far haven’t been met. But, I’m so happy that there is now a leader and that us on the youth council can breathe a little bit. Yes, it will be a few weeks before he’s on board full time but just knowing relief is coming feels great.

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Julian Drive

November 13th, 2007 at 11:49 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

I just found out about this band Julian Drive two weeks ago from my pastor. Our church is known for southern gospel music. Or at least has in the past. The pastor is trying to offer something for the younger generation because he can see he’s losing them. Especially since we don’t have a youth pastor right now.

Well, he saw these guys in concert recently and has since scheduled them to come to our church at the beginning of next year. I am really, really excited about it. They are actually really cool. If you know that song by Hoobastank "The Reason", they have a version of it as well. I can not WAIT to hear that played live.

So tonight we had an initial kick off meeting with a group at the church to raise awareness about it and also get some pledges for them to come. Also, we got a project manager type guy over it. J is doing the accounting and I’m handling the advertising and "computer stuff".

We’re actually now talking about doing this in the local high school auditorium now just because we think it could be a really, really big hit. By then we should have our new youth pastor in place and it will be GREAT to start out with something big like this.

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