2012 CIY Mix Video

If you missed the CIY Mix video this morning, featured as a countdown, here it is.  Enjoy!




Click HERE if you'd like a direct link. 

JC

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CIY Picture of the Day (BONUS): Saturday!

Alright...

One more day...

So many good pictures.  And so many great people to include.  But I've gotta do this one.

I didn't do this week alone.  I had some incredible help.  My wife, Jackie, made her return to the summer trip team this year after taking last summer off.  Sue was back for her second year. 

Plus... couldn't have done it without my muscle... Terril and Tim... who helped me corral the boys into bed and taught some great D-Group lessons.  

Donna... who took almost 700 pictures during the week.  Most of those you've enjoyed on here and others you can view on my Facebook page or our Youth Ministry's page.  

And last, but certainly not least, Jordyn who made her first appearance on the summer trip team.  These guys did an incredible job connecting, encouraging, challenging, praying for and helping our students have an incredible week.

Thanks team!
You guys rock!

JC




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CIY Picture of the Day: Friday

Today, being the last day of the CIY picture of the day series on my blog, I thought I'd share the official 2012 CIY Group picture.  I love this picture!  It's an amazing place to take a picture.  It is about halfway out to Laurel Falls on the Appalachian trail near Elizabethton, TN.  Love it!

JC


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CIY Picture of the Day: Thursday

In keeping with this week-long series, there is one thing that I love (maybe the most) about CIY Move... it's the relationships that are established and built up during the week. 

These pictures feature girls and guys... graduated seniors and incoming freshman... kids from four different school districts (Zanesville HS, Tri-Valley, West Muskingum, & Maysville). 

And they are all playing together... enjoying each other's presence.  Without this week of conference, these kids would never have hung out at the pool. 

Splashed around... 

And had fun together. 

Love it!

JC



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CIY Picture of the Day: Wednesday

I'm going to cheat a bit in today's CIY picture of the day... because the picture is actually from Thursday night.  But I'm going to throw it in on Wednesday because I already have Thursday's picture picked out. 

One of the great things about this week of conference was the worship.  Brandon Grissom, from Willow Creek, did an incredible job leading the students in worship all week.  Thursday night, when this picture was taken, was a night dealing with forgiveness.  Each of the students wore a white shirt with a red piece of paper tapes to the shirt reminding them of something that they needed to be forgiven for or something that someone needed to forgive them for.  During the service (at this very point), they were challenged to talk to someone about what was written on their paper.  Only after talking with someone about their issue of forgiveness could they remove their paper. 

But I love this picture because of the white shirts... in the dark room, you can see all the students! 



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CIY Picture of the Day: Tuesday

Continuing in my week-long series of some images from CIY Move last week, here is Alex digging into some morning encounter time. 

Every year, as we are beginning the week of conference, we ask the students some form of this question: "Why have you come this week to CIY?"  Answers usually vary... but almost always, this answer pops up more than any other: "I've drifted from my relationship with God and I need to get back." 

It's a natural occurrence.  School, sports, friends, girlfriends/boyfriends, homework, part-time jobs, families and much more begin to crowd in on the time that students have to dedicate to God every day.

CIY makes space for rekindling that fire.  Every day our students had 20 minutes to dig into a morning devotion, some Scripture and an opportunity to reconnect with God one on one... just as Abraham, Moses, Elijah and Jesus had on a regular basis.

JC



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CIY Picture of the Day: Monday

Back in the day... like 5-8 years ago... I would try to post 8-10 pictures from our CIY trip to my blog.  I would give a brief description of what was happening in the photo and give parents, leaders at our church and anyone who was regular to my blog an idea of what was happening at CIY. 

Since Facebook has made sharing of pictures so much easier and digital cameras have made it so much easier to take pictures, posting a few pictures to my blog every day didn't seem realistic... especially when you're too tired to sit up straight. 

Since I've got about 900 pictures from this week (thanks to Donna, Sue, Jordyn and Terril), I thought I would go through and pick a picture or two from each day to share with a little description of why I like this picture so much. 

Up first: Monday. 
With the conference being in Knoxville, the drive time from Zanesville to Knoxville would have been a little tough for one day.  So Sunday night we traveled to Johnson City, TN and stayed at a friend's church.  With some extra time on Monday, we visited the Appalachian trail and Laurel Falls.  There are a couple of great things about this part of the trip. 

First, most of these kids have never been out in the woods like this.  There are some incredible views (my wife Jackie and one of our juniors Reagan are enjoying one here).  So it gets them out of their element a bit. 

Second, it's an opportunity to begin to build some relationships and step outside of their comfortable cliques of friends.  I don't know what it is... but when we unload the vans and start to head out, kids begin to talk to one another and walk with different folks and hang with different people.  It's quite unexplainable.  But it happens.

And it's crucial to the week!

Plus it just makes for some great pictures!

JC



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Great CIY Believe weekend!

What a great weekend of CIY Believe!

We took seven students and 4 adults down to Cincinnati for CIY Believe.  While it might not sound like a lot, it's actually twice as many kids as we took last year. 

And it was a treat!
CIY always does an incredible job.  This year was no exception.  And I would say, for the most part, this was the best CIY Believe program that I have seen (worship, speakers, videos, etc) since I have been attending CIY Believe (I first attended in 2000). 

It was awesome to see 4,000+ middle school students come together to worship, learn and be challenged by God's Word.  Jeff Walling did the speaking this year (at Cincinnati) and he did a fabulous job! Our students were definitely challenged!

If you are working with middle school students and you have a chance to go to CIY Believe, don't miss it.  It's phenomenal!

Here's the link for more information about CIY Believe.

Good stuff!

JC



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CIY Believe - Holland, MI

In a couple of hours, we'll be departing for a couple of days in Holland, Michigan at Believe.

This event is an incredible 30 hours of intentional middle school programming that is totally top shelf! (Check them out HERE!) They do an incredible job with worship, speakers and other presenters that bring it for middle school students.

I am so looking forward to this trip. It will certainly be a great one!

On the flipside, this is also my last trip with the FVCC students. So while this trip will be incredible, it will also be bittersweet for me.

I'm hoping to get a few photos up tonight!

Jim

CIY Believe dialogue... again...

So last week, I started a bit of a dialogue with a buddy of mine in Georgia... who is way smarter than me (in fact I had to read his entry three times and think about it for four days to come up with something to post... especially since he stated that he would be looking for one).

You can find Nate's second post HERE.
And you can find my first post HERE.


Technology and Youth Culture
I agree with Nate on a couple of points. First off, are our students totally addicted their electronic gadgets? Yes. today I mailed in our registrations for CIY Believe's bigger brother program CIY Move (which is a weeklong version that spawned the weekend version for middle schoolers, if I have my CIY timing down). One of the features of this event in the past has been the expectation on CIY's part that we would not allow our students to keep any electronic gadgets that might distract from the week. This included cell phones, iPods, DVD players and others of the sort. Every year this elicits no small amount of whining, begging, pleading, scheming and attempting to keep electronics from well-meaning adults. (This every year requires me to threaten to EBay any electronics discovered after the deadline to ensure that we have collected them all... which I at this point haven't had to do.) But CIY threw us a curveball last year when they asked for students to bring their cell phones to a couple of sessions... not cool. Actually, it made all of the youth ministers who have abided by the expectations look like the youth minister equivalent of the "big bad wolf" in view of several youth minister who didn't.

Are Adults Any Better?
But here's my point. Are students addicted to their electronics? Absolutely! Are their adult counterparts any better? No way!

In fact, just a couple of nights ago I was hanging out with a group of folks from our church. In the midst of the conversation, one of the adults remarked that he had gotten a new cell phone and had joined the iPhone club (Yay!). He had a blackberry before, but had worn it out. Another of the adults commented that he had worn out the roller ball on his Blackberry three times. Granted, this individual is a business man and uses his phone a lot for business purposes. But furthermore, adults aren't much better at not being addicted to their little electronic drug. In fact, I would have to admit that I first read Nate's comments on my iPhone. And even now, I sit in Starbucks on my laptop using their free Wifi.

So, are students to blame for their electronic gadget addiction? Sure. But they are in part a product of their environment. Does that make them innocent? No. And should youth ministers be cautioning our students against the excesses of electronic addiction? Probably... but only realizing that some may be as bad as their teenage audience. (This youth minister might be in that later category... depending on who you ask...)

Now, this is in no way a condemnation of technology. I am quite possibly the biggest techie that I know. Just the other day, the worship minister at my church (who doesn't blog or twitter, so I have no way of introducing him to you if you don't already know him) and I were talking in the office about the potential benefits of Twitter in the worship service. This service/addiction isn't that difficult to figure out, but it still has many over the age of 40 scratching their heads. But I am a huge technie.

So to blame the students for their electronic addiction isn't exactly fair. Our soceity at a whole is addicted to their electronic leashes.

I'll kick it back in Nate's direction...

A Word of Caution
I do want to issue one word of caution that some have missed in the previous message. This dialogue is a friendly dialogue for the purpose of learning and growing and Kingdom advancement.

This is NOT a debate or an argument! It is a friendly discussion.

I received one comment on this thread that saught rather than adding to the conversation to rundown Mr. Gilmour's reputation as "worldly," "haughty," "lofty," and "self-endowed." This sort of commenting will not be tolerated. This is a friendly discussion between TWO kingdom workers... one in the youth ministry and one in the college classroom.

I would certainly have expected better from a member of the CIY group.

If you would like to impune the reputation of either Mr. Gilmour (which sounds way too formal, but we'll go with it) or myself, go and get your own blog and post over there. If you do choose to post over there on this topic, we'll read your postings and comment appropriately. Therefore, your comment (Mr. Jefferson) has been removed.


An Invitiation:
For everyone else... If you're following along and would like to comment, we (Nate and myself) would more than welcome your thoughts, insights and comments. But let's keep them civil.

Jim

CIY Believe dialogue...

It's been many years since my undergraduate education at Milligan. My time there was invaluable. Not just because of the education, but because of the friendships and worldview that I gained. I don't have any biological brothers... just a sister that I love to give a hard time to. But because of my time at Milligan, I gained several "brothers."

One of those is Nathan Gilmour.

He is seriously one of the smartest dudes that I know.

While most of us are still trying to figure out what we want to do with our lives and wondering if we will ever grow up, he was just named a Professor at Emmanuel College, in Georgia!! Seriously!!! I'm 32 years old and one of my best friends is a college professor!!! Wow!!!

We both have some serious experience in the world of youth ministry. As many of you know, who are faithful readers, I've been doing youth ministry fulltime as a career and a calling for nearly 10 years. Nathan, or Nate or Nate-dogg to me, has been doing it about as along as a volunteer. (Which may in many ways make his opinion worth more than mine... the outside opinion is usually the better one.)

Recently he attended a CIY Believe date in Georgia. And made some posts about his experience (HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE). I took issue with a few of his statements, in the sense of open dialogue and learning.

He posted my response HERE. Here's a snipet:
"I think a lot of what CIY does is try to grab their attention and hold it for long enough to share the message of the gospel, and I think they are trying to do it in a way that does a couple of things:
1. It ministers in a fresh way to kids who are Christians already (because don’t we all need a kick in the butt every once in a while when we get off track)
2. It opens the message up to those who have never heard it before.

In my group, for instance, two of my 18 were kids who had never been to church before. They came because their friends said, ‘You’ll like this… it will be fun.’ Now, have they gotten saved? Not yet… but who knows what seed has been planted in their hearts and minds?"

As I said, Nate is a smart, smart dude... way above my intellectual level. But we thought maybe we could have some open dialogue on some of the topics of students, church, worship, conferences and the such. This is NOT IN ANY WAY a "Nate is wrong and Jim is right" thing. This is an opportunity for dialogue, discussion and learning. Are there some things that youth ministry could do better at? Absolutely!! Let's talk about some of those things...

We welcome your input and participation.

Jim

Believe 08-09 - Theme for Leaders

Man... I love Believe. It's hard to imagine that they are getting ready to start another tour. We'll be taking our middle schoolers to Anderson, IN in April.

If you aren't taking your middle schoolers to this event, you are truly missing out. It's incredible.

Jim

Check out the video HERE