1. I was in absolute wonder and awe of the sheer size of this event.
2. I threw up in my mouth just a little bit thinking about putting on and event of this size

JUMP is a week-long VBS/Day Camp hybrid held at St. Louis Family Church. Over the years it has grown from a small outreach to an event of epic proportions. This year 3,243 participated. Here’s some of what it took to pull JUMP off:

• 987 volunteers (Thank you all!)
• 158 watermelons
• 485 gallons of Gatorade
• 5,700 bags of cotton candy
• 260 pounds and 8,350 bags of popcorn
• 6,928 pounds of ice
• 167 gallons of syrup
• 18,200 sno-cones

Amazing, huh? What spoke to me the most about this is that at Children’s Pastors, we have to constantly be creative and just because we don’t have a resource or staff or facility doesn’t mean God can’t do something utterly amazing through your ministry and church. JUMP is pretty impressive, but it’s a day camp held in the church parking lot. Chances are you have one of those, so what’s stopping you from thinking outside of the box and doing something amazing?

That was my first experience with this book.

One time I even discouraged someone from reading this book. I told him that it wasn’t really a book about leadership, but about leading children’s ministry productions. Sorry Larry.

I’ll say it.

I was wrong.

A few months ago Larry Shallenberger asked for people to review this book for his blog tour. I’m not even sure why I agreed because I had already made up my mind that this book wasn’t for me. I think it was the promise of a free book. Well, I’m glad I got to review it because it may end up being one of the most important books I read this year.

This IS a leadership book that happens to tell a story as a narrative that illustrates the lessons being taught. The story happens to be about a Children’s Musical Production. While skimming, I missed the point and made incorrect assumptions.

More importantly, this book spoke to some of they areas where I’ve felt “stuck” as a leader. It spoke to my frustrations as well as some of the frustrations my team has been feeling. There are many different styles to leadership and no one possesses them all. Perhaps part of the reason I feel stuck is becasue I’m not allowing my team to lead the way God made them which in turn isn’t allowing me to lead the way God made me.

I’m not going to get into the details of the book here. All I can say is that as I read this book I often found myself nodding in agreement, “Yes! This makes perfect sense!” I also found myself getting really hopeful about the way things could be if people on a team actually led this way. Plenty of light bulb moments. I’ve already been talking to my staff about the concepts and we’ll be reading the book as a team this month. We’ll experiment with some of these concepts this summer and fall and if we see certain results, me may look into some organizational restructuring. It’s very exciting!

So, order this book right now! You may have a packed out reading list, but do yourself a favor, pop this book at the top of your list.

Oh, I also have an extra copy of this book to give away. I’ll make this really simple. This post went live on Monday morning, July 5th. The last comment on this post today (Monday) gets a copy of the book. So, leave a comment!

Also, spread the word, I’ve got another copy to give away. The last person to tweet a link to this post with the #kidmin tag today (Monday) will get a book. This should be fun, so tweet away.

So, back in January I posted my reading list for 2010. I had 18 books on the list. For some of you, that’s a leisurely weekend of reading. For me, that’s an undertaking! So, we’re a little halfway through the year and here is where I stand.

So far I’ve read 5 books total, essentially 1/3 toward my goal of 18. I’m really not sure I’ll hit 18, but I still think I can kick it in high gear and get pretty close. Unfortunately, of the books on my 2010 list, I’ve only read 2, Orange and Mad Church Disease. I’m starting Parenting Beyond Your Capacity this weekend (another book not on my list), but I hope to hit my list again next.

I know a lot of you have read the books on my list. Based on what you’ve read, what book should I read next? Below is a little poll. Whatever book gets the most votes, I’ll read it next. I was going to suggest comments on what book needs to be on my list, but I think I just need to focus on the 16 I haven’t read next. Maybe next year I’ll crowdsource my reading list.

Okay, vote below (you can vote for more than one book… just to make it interesting). I’m anxious to know what I’m going to read next.

So, there’s a book out there that I want to point you towards. It’s called “Lead the Way God Made You.” I’ll be honest, it really spoke to where I am right now as a leader in many different ways. I’m doing an official review for this book on Monday, July 5th which I’m writing right now. It’s a holiday weekend and I’ve got a feeling that a lot of my regular readers will be soaking in some rays as opposed to reading my blog. On Tuesday, be sure to log in and read the review. I’m kinda excited about what this book might mean for me as a leader. Maybe if it helps me, it will help you.

Larry Shallenberger published this book five years ago and to celebrate the anniversary, he’s organized a blog tour. So far you can read Larry’s summaries here as well as the first few stops of the blog tour here, here and here.

If you haven’t read the book yet, go ahead and pick up a copy or two right here, I highly recommend it!

After this week I don’t plan to publish any more camp posts. My production director was on a post-camp vacation last week, so I just got the final day of camp video. It’s a great video that shows a snapshot of all the best parts of camp. It’s about 10 minutes long, so feel free to skim.

The link to the service wasn’t online when I wrote this post, so I’ll add the link when it’s up.

Full service:

So, this was my first real camp experience with these kids. When I got to Gateway two years ago, about 15 kids were signed up to go to a summer camp. There hadn’t been a lot of promotion and since we were financially committed to this camp, I ate about $5,000 in expenses and ended up scholarshiping 20-25 kids. It was a fun camp, but a little weird. It felt like we were at camp with the Von Trapp family. Everyone liked to sing a lot, and everyone knew all the songs… except our kids. It was like a musical… we’d be walking down a trail and then people would just start singing. Again, it was fun… just a little weird. We didn’t do camp last year, so this year we took 58 kids (two got sick) to Camp Zephyr in Sandia, TX.

For all of the kids, it was probably the most fun thing they’ll do all summer. For most of the kids, it was life changing. Seriously. Already we’re getting feedback from parents about how moved their kids have been. Parents have been overwhelmed by what their kids are talking about. Many of the kids made first time commitments to Jesus. What a catalytic event in the life of a child. I’ll leave you with what some of our parents are saying on our facebook page.

Take it in & Live it out. Build my life on what really counts.

Today we’re adding to this with: Choose to see you the way God see’s me. The scripture base is the parable of the Good Samaritan. This morning we challenged the kids to think of who the Samaritans are in their lives. Bullies, siblings, people that are just plain hard to love. We left them with the challenge this morning to think about who the Samaritans are in their lives and what it would look like to show them love.

Tonight we’re going to challenge the kids to make a heart decision. It’s one thing to “show love” to people who are hard to love, but an entirely different thing to truly love your neighbor as yourself. We’re going to challenge the kids to see others the way God sees them. This isn’t a switch we can turn on or off, but something the Holy Spirit has to do in our hearts. We just have to be willing to let him change us.

So, join with me in prayer tonight that the 400 kids at camp this week would be attentive to the words they hear and that they would open their hearts to the work God wants to do in them. This could be the start of a Revolution of Love!

I’m thinking of offering it up as a bit of a verbal quiz that would indicate your level of patience. Here are some of the questions I’ve already thought of:

• As a child, did you ever unwrap your presents early so you’d know what you got?
• Have you ever read the last page of a book you were reading just to see what would happen?
• Do you ever repeatedly push the menu button on your DVD remote during the FBI warning and get frustrated that nothing happens?
• Have you ever pushed the elevator call button after it was already illuminated just to make sure it was working?

I think I want to use this illustration for both the kids message as well as the adult message. Do you have any additional questions? How about some questions that would relate specifically to 4th and 5th graders. Remember, this is creating opportunities to laugh at oursleves, not meant to make us feel guilty.

Also, can you think of any other examples of our impatience that is just kinda ridiculous? These would be things that we do that are a little absurd, but our impatience leads us to do them.

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate you crowdsourcing help with this message.