Renewal Youth Prophecy

This was a prophecy strongly impressed upon the heart of one of our youth at a recent Flame service which they felt led to share with all of us. Please read it, pray about it and act upon it in the way you feel most led to by the Holy Spirit and with His wisdom foremost in your mind.

/jon

I was just praying and asking God what He wants us, as a youth group, to do now that we have been commissioned with a mission [on the last day of Overwhelmed Camp].

I felt Him tell me that He wants to break our hearts for the lost and unsaved.

If we don't have a heart for people who do not know God, how are we going to do this mission that God has given us to do (telling the lost about Him)? We need to have that broken and aching heart for them, otherwise we have nothing compelling us to tell them about God; nothing that gives us that passion to step out and tell them about God.

God has broken my heart for the lost before, and it was a really painful thing—my chest hurt a lot and I was weeping. God obviously only shared with me a small amount of the pain He feels for His children that turn their backs on Him, and I cant imagine how intense that pain must be that God Himself feels for His children.

Let God break your heart for the lost; let God show you how He feels for His sons and daughters; how much His heart aches for them to come to Him, to turn to Him.

But remember, it’s a big thing to ask God for, so be sure you want God to use you in this way.

Halloween Revisited

Yep, it's that time of the year again, when young Jimmy pleads with his mum to buy him that blood-splattered-glow-in-the-dark meat cleaver on display in the toy store's window.

Halloween is 2 weeks away, and once again I'm concerned at the amount of parents encouraging their kids to participate in a celebration which has its roots in pagan devil worship.

I wonder, as Mary delights in how cute her 5-year-old daughter looks in her which's hat and broomstick, does she have any idea what that broomstick was originally used for?

Probably not.

I've spent the morning revising the Halloween origins study. It is now up to date, and relevant.

Click here to view the PDF.

Please read it through, and even if you don't agree, you will understand it's origins.

God bless,

/Syms

Congratulations, Jason and Rachel!

What a day! A miraculous circle of blue, aggressively defying the grey-fingered clouds, encircled the outdoor wedding of Rachel and Jason this Saturday; and, despite the despairing premonitions of metservice.com, not a drop of rain fell throughout the entire ceremony (afterward, the rain pelted down like a tide of apprehensive children just released by the starting-gun on cross-country day).

Glory to God for a couple bent on living out his purposes and plans!

 

Jason let-off-lightly van der Hulst

He was tackled and beaten into the sand. He was shackled by trailer strops, shoved in a bathtub, doused in flour and water. He was finally taken about 100 metres down the beach and left by some rocks... Hmmm, nice, but he came out of it with his pride 100% intact and his body 100% unscathed. You be the judge.

/j

 

A Hulst-to-be Hens' Party

Some would arguably say that, Rachel, soon-to-be-Hulst, got a far more severe punishment at her Hens' Party than Jase did at his Stag. Personally, I would say they are right.

Some of her tasks, whilst dressed as a vivacious chicken, included:

• Asking for free chocolate at the Fudge Farm
• Asking for a Rockshop worker's cell phone number
• Busking outside Farmers
• Walking down Bank Street in her stately getup 

(Please chasten me if I forgot anything!)

I'm not sure if this was followed or preceded by the frenzic soap-sud wrestling, but regardless, the fierce hens probably won't need to wash their hair for a few, uh, months.

Check out the pics and stay tuned for the ones from Jason's stag. Chaos!

/j

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday Jon!

Yessiree... Jon (who's world-famous in RY) is the birthday boy today.

Hope you've had a great day mate. You are a huge blessing to us all at church - keep being who God made you to be, and try not to injure yourself next time you fall off the stage ;-)

/symon

Thanks Endless Praise!

If you couldn't make it to one of the services this weekend or the worship workshop on Saturday morning then you unfortunately missed out on a rather remarkable time. Both the Friday night Flame youth service and the Sunday morning Praise Celebration with all the CRF churches united (no, not Hillsong United) were led by Endless Praise and were a huge blessing for all who could make it.

From everyone at CRF we want to say a massive thank you Endless Praise! And we'll hopefully see all you guys again next year.

/j

Some photos from the weekend

Endless Praise this Friday!

If you are in Whangarei this Friday night then come to Flame (CRF, 2 Tarewa Road) at 7pm with a mate tagging along beside you. Awesome Australian worship team Endless Praise will be playing, and best of all it's FREE!

If you are a part of any of the CRF churches, on Saturday morning from 10am-12pm we have three workshops with Endless Praise focussing on vocal technique, worship band dynamics and vocal harmonies. All are free but please bring a shared lunch.

Endless Praise will also be leading the Praise Celebration this Sunday (26th) at CRF central.

The Endless Praise website can be found here

/j

Transition Camp Pix

Last weekend Joe and Becks Pyle ran a Transition camp with 30ish kids ages 10 to 13 (yikes). I take my hat off to you guys, and to everyone who helped out also... THANKS SO MUCH!

And Isaac... thanks for shooting Luke instead of my son ;-) Goodtimes!

Click here to view the camp pics.

/symon

Flame Deluxe, Arcticly Cool

If you had the privilege of attending Flame Deluxe last Friday (26th June), then you will know that it was a huge success and everyone who went had a fantastic time. It was simply copacetic, laudable, meritorious, sublime. A huge thanks to the legendary Dave Wiggins, Les Boucher, Jamie Garrick, Viewmaster, Buchanan duo, the waffle making extraordinaires and everyone else who worked hard to make the night possible. You guys rock!

If you missed out then you'll definitely need to come along next time, or better yet, come to Flame youth church on a Friday night.

/j

Dylan... Jon Dylan

For those of you who don't yet know, RYM has its very own living legend... Jon Dylan (otherwise known as Stephen Garton). Jon/Stephen has graciously accepted the offer of keeping this blog regularly updated with a whole plethora of new and exciting posts, pics, clips etc.

THANKS JON!!!

So, until Jon starts transforming renewalyouth.com (and the RYM noticeboard) into a visual masterpiece, check out his blog here.

Sayonara

Congrats to Dave & Arna!

A mammoth CONGRATULATIONS! goes out to Dave and Arna on the arrival of their awesome baby girl, Lily. Look at her... She's praising God already! You are an awesome family, and may God bless you more and more!

New RYM hoodies and tees this term!

This term, the 09 renewalyouth tees and hoodies will be produced (insert loud applause here).

Start saving your pocket money now, and make sure you post-a-caption for the retro Star Trek pic to be in to win a free hoody for winter: click here.

Flame's First Birthday!

Tomorrow, Flame Youthchurch will be celebrating its first birthday!

Seamless is playing (and will be intro-ing another great song), the anticipated mysterious 'item' is rumoured to be happening, and I'll be bringing a vision-cast-new-direction-ish message (among other raves)...

The night's gonna rock! I'll see you there ;-)

Easter Outreach rocked!

Once again the Easter Weekend outreach in the pasrk was a blast! A huge thanks to Prem and Richie (and their awesome team) for overseeing the event and all the hours of hard work they put into it. Next year's Easter Outreach promises to be bigger and better, and is already in the planning stages with some very exciting concepts being talked about...

You may have seen the following pics on Kristy's blog, but if you haven't... there they are.

See you tomorrow night at Flame! GBU

Symon

Blast from the past

The legendary Jon Dylan posted this archival video clip on his blog yesterday. Definately worth a look, even if it just to see a baby-faced Jason in handcuffs sniffing his armpit.

Now that you're curious...

Post a caption, win a hoodie!

That's right folks... I've found yet another random retro sci-fi movie still (above). All you need to do now is create a caption for it, make it a comment on this post, and perhaps you will win you an all new new-design renewalyouth hoodie!

The competiton will run for around a month and you can make as many comments as you like. (No dodgey captions please.)

Emil: Wildman Missionary

Emil phoned me from Peru this morning. He's been living with some remote Amazonian tribes the last few weeks... Just doing the normal stuff, like eating monkeys, turtles, hunting wild pig, seeing huge anacondas, getting impregnated by insect eggs while sleeping, telling people about Jesus... AWESOME!

I was extremily challenged and humbled by Emil's hunger for, love and devotion to God.

Please keep him and his team in your prayers.

Emil and the lost Amazonian Tribe

Last week Emil phoned me from Peru.

By now, he is a week into a 2-week journey (up the Amazon river by boat, then on foot) where the destination is an isolated tribe of Indians who have never been told about Jesus. This particular tribe has only been in contact with Westerners on a couple of occasions, and the reception was less than polite.

Emil won't be able to contact us for at least a couple of months... the deepest darkest parts of the jungle don't have good cell phone or internet coverage... yet ;-)

Please pray that Emil would have continued divine protection, anointing, health and that the tribe will welcome them, and it will be start of a great spiritual awakening there.

Loud!

At last week's Flame service, Ben Larrit won our somewhat impromptu shouting contest with is whopping 116 dB! The current Guinness World record is 121.7 dB. Ben wasn't that far off (although, we don't know how far from the shout our dB meter should be). Ben's shout was equivalent to a sandblaster. Heh.

There has always been debate about how loud is too loud when it comes to worship band volumes.

Maxed-out worship at Flame Youthchurch is around 100 dB (for anyone who is wondering). At that volume, we could have a two-hour non-stop-maxed-out worship time before there would be danger of permanent hearing loss (for anyone who is wondering).

Click here to discover more. Isn't it interesting how loud a clarinet is ;-)

Fellowship of the Flannel

Any church-going kid growing up in the 70's will remember flannelgraph only too well. It was THE Christian storytelling tool back in the day. Nowadays, it is nothing more than a nostalgic memory (although I'm sure some retired Sunday school teachers would still swear by it.)

I love reading, especially stories which strengthen my faith in Christ. I also love recommending good books to others. So, I have come up with a cunning plan. To create a blog where myself and other like-minded friends can share our views on the various novels we've read... hopefully encouraging you to buy them, read them, be encouraged, and support the authors in using their gifts to glorify God.

What better name to call this... than 'flannelgraph'. Click here to visit the site. Please click the FOLLOW button once you arrive, as there will be a review posted every day or two. Go flannel!