"last days and helium sticks"
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 Filed in: daily photos
| my life
so, as you may or may
not know, i’m going to be teaching a few classes at
Biola in the fall. of course, the irony of this is
not lost on anyone who knows me and knows that i’ve
always made fun of Biola. but there are two reasons
that i’ve decided to do this.
first, i’ve been asked to help change some of the very things i’ve made fun of. (not all of them... but some of them.)
second, the classes that i’m teaching are in areas that i’ve been personally exploring. the first class is an Evangelism and Discipleship class where we’re going to look at what it even means to be a Christian and what kind of response we can have to a God who loves us the way He does. of course, this relates directly to my blog from last month (“my significant insignificance and maybe too much information”).
anyway, the reason i bring this up is that it became the subject of our entire retreat here. i got to test out some of my ideas and thoughts on these kids and they loved it and we had some great conversations. i’m excited to get into the classroom and give this stuff a go. it’ll be cool because we’ll all be on a journey together discovering the same things instead of my simply standing and lecturing and giving the “right answers.”
today was the last day of the retreat here and we looked at ourselves in the context of history and God’s big story. it was a great sendoff for all of us. but before we go, we had to complete the annual tradition of playing Helium Stick.
if you don’t know what Helium Stick is, you have to try it some time. get some thin bamboo sticks (you can get a bag of 5 at Home Depot for like a buck) and have 4-6 people get in a group. hold the stick out at about shoulder level and have them gather on both sides. they can use one finger (their pointer) which must be facing up with the stick laying on top of it and must be straight out (not crooked). the group has to lower the stick to the ground without letting anyone’s fingers come off the stick at any point. if someone’s finger comes off even for a second, the group must start over.
lower a stick to the ground together. sounds easy! ha ha. sadly, nobody succeeded this year.
first, i’ve been asked to help change some of the very things i’ve made fun of. (not all of them... but some of them.)
second, the classes that i’m teaching are in areas that i’ve been personally exploring. the first class is an Evangelism and Discipleship class where we’re going to look at what it even means to be a Christian and what kind of response we can have to a God who loves us the way He does. of course, this relates directly to my blog from last month (“my significant insignificance and maybe too much information”).
anyway, the reason i bring this up is that it became the subject of our entire retreat here. i got to test out some of my ideas and thoughts on these kids and they loved it and we had some great conversations. i’m excited to get into the classroom and give this stuff a go. it’ll be cool because we’ll all be on a journey together discovering the same things instead of my simply standing and lecturing and giving the “right answers.”
today was the last day of the retreat here and we looked at ourselves in the context of history and God’s big story. it was a great sendoff for all of us. but before we go, we had to complete the annual tradition of playing Helium Stick.
if you don’t know what Helium Stick is, you have to try it some time. get some thin bamboo sticks (you can get a bag of 5 at Home Depot for like a buck) and have 4-6 people get in a group. hold the stick out at about shoulder level and have them gather on both sides. they can use one finger (their pointer) which must be facing up with the stick laying on top of it and must be straight out (not crooked). the group has to lower the stick to the ground without letting anyone’s fingers come off the stick at any point. if someone’s finger comes off even for a second, the group must start over.
lower a stick to the ground together. sounds easy! ha ha. sadly, nobody succeeded this year.