Matt grew up in a Christian home in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, where he enjoyed surfing and beach volleyball. Rachel grew up in Madison and attended Blackhawk from a very young age. They are both graduates of Wheaton College, where they met playing volleyball. They were married at Blackhawk in 1994, and were involved in youth ministry in Ft. Lauderdale for the next three years. From 1997 to 2000 they served with Peak 3, a high adventure ministry to youth in Colorado. They moved to Madison and Matt began his ministry at Blackhawk in August/September 2000. Hannah was born in October 1999 and Leah on January 1, 2002.

We just found out about this so sorry for the late notice.  If you have heard anything about Passion 2012 happening January 2-5 in Atlanta, Georgia, then you most likely know that it is going to be an event that you don’t want to miss if you are college age at this time.  Tonight, Wednesday, November, 30 at 8PM CST, Passion will be putting on a live podcast to gather students together prior to the event.  You won’t want to miss it as we here from Louie, Tomlin and Crowder about what God is laying on their hearts as we draw closer to January.  Tonight, go to livepodcast.268generation.com in order to connect in with students form all around the globe.  Don’t miss out!

It was so great having a chance to speak at CAM again this past Tuesday!  To all of you who were there and were wondering about the resources, here are the passages of scripture that I used as well as a link to the youtube clip for the “Choose Your Own Adventure” journey with Chad, Matt and Rob. Could be a great way to spend the evening…

Gen 12:1 – 3

¹The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

² “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.^[a]
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”^[b]

Jeremiah 17:7-9

⁷ “But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.
⁸ They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”

⁹ The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?

Proverbs 13:20

²⁰ Walk with the wise and become wise,
for a companion of fools suffers harm.

The story of Rehoboam is found in 1 Kings 12 & 13.  It’s good to read both chapters to get a little bit more of a perspective as to what is taking place int he big picture of the story.

And don’t forget the cheesy line of the night that I picked up from another pastor years ago.  “The relationships that I will choose will affect life’s “D’s” & “Q’s”.  D = direction and Q = quality.

Lastly, her is the link for the youtube clip.  Enjoy….and let me know how the story ends.  Enjoy choosing your own adventure with Chad, Matt & Rob!

This past Sunday, we kicked off a new series at Blackhawk called, “Here is Your God.”  I think it is going to be a pretty amazing series that will help all of us wrap our minds more around this God whom we serve.  I know that we had a great conversation last night at the life group that my wife, Rachel and I lead for college students on Sunday night.

Pastor Chris talked some about ways that we view God that are not really what God is like.  It reminded me of a book that I read not too long ago that was given to me by my good friend Adam Penning from Campus Crusade.  It’s titled, “Imaginary Jesus” and is written by a pretty humorous author named Matt Mikalatos.  This is a fun book.  It’s a story rather that is pretty out there.  Don’t pick it up thinking you are going to get a deep conversation into theology but it does make you stop and think in many ways about how we have created views of Jesus that are not really Jesus at all.  Take a look and let me know what you think….

Just got this email from my friend, Greg Ruhland on campus who work for YWAM.  Sounds like a great opportunity we wanted you to be aware of.

Hey friends – our ywam student organization on campus is hosting a documentary film showing about child sex trafficking in the USA this coming Monday night.  The film was made by a talented team of ywammers out of Kona.  It’s a pretty eye opening film.  We would love for you to join us for a viewing of the film.

Greg

What:  Documentary film – “Sex and Money: a National Search for Human Worth”

When: Monday 9/19 – 7pm.

Where: 3650 Humanities Buildings – UW Madison

I had a blast last night at CAM!  Hope the rest of you did as well.  In case you’ve missed the 1st 2 weeks, we are in a 3 week series right now called 101 where we are looking at the basics of what a relationship with Jesus looks like.  We’ve actually stolen the idea from a series of Andy Stanley’s at Northpoint community church called Simple.  So, if you want to catch up, you can listen to some of Andy’s talks which are WAY better than mine anyways.

Week one’s details are in my last post.  Last night in week 2, we talked about the idea of moving from a place of following Jesus to a place of believing that he truly was who he said he was….the son of God.

The passages that we looked at together were Matthew 16:13-16, John 6:65-68 & Romans 3:21-26.

Also, just for fun, if you want to see the clip I used from the movie K-PAX, here it is…….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUxQLlN7rnc&feature=related

For those of you interested in seeing more photos from the day I went surfing, here is the link to a guy’s facebook page.  He was there taking shots of a few friends.  Maybe you should even say that you “like” his photos! Great Lakes Surfing is alive.  Enjoy!  See you next week at CAM for part 2 of our series, “101.”

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.285543314796288.95695.100000218641556&type=1

This is always a fun time of the year.  So much is going on that it is hard to keep up with the pace for very long.  Last night, we had our big grill out at the Regent while Paul Lefeber’s band played.  It was an epic evening!  We figured out that we went through over 600 hotdogs so way to go bringing your appetites. Life groups opened up last night and lots of people signed up to be in groups for the semester.

Tonight though is the 1st CAM of the year at 8PM in the basement of the Regent on the west side of the building.  Don’t worry if you don’t know where that is in the place.  We will have our peeps all over to show you where to go.  Tonight we will be starting a 3 week series called 101 that Kayla Dunnum and I will be teaching together.  The idea of 101 is getting back to the basics of a relationship with God.  We have done a great job throughout time making it very complicated.  But if you look at the life of Jesus and what he was about, we realize that he came to make things simple, basic, foundational….101ish.  So that is where we are starting tonight.  We’ll look at the life of Matthew to get there as we see how Jesus encouraged Matthew to follow him…..

If you want to read ahead, take a look at Matthew 9.

Hope to see you there tonight!

This coming Sunday, August 14, we are making a big move in the way that we do church at the Majestic theater downtown.   Up to this point, due to many different reasons, we have had to watch sermons from the week prior at Brader Way.  In other words, we have been one week behind what has happened at our church on the west side.

Well, as of this Sunday, that will no longer be the case!  We have been able to upgrade technology and make some moves as a church that have made it very feasible for us to be on the same schedule as our church on the west side.  This is great news!  So now, if you are in a life group, it will not matter which site you attend.  If you decide to visit our church at the Majestic, you will no longer be seeing the same message that you did the week before out at our Brader Way location.  It will give us the ability to feel more like one church with different locations rather than 2 separate churches.

Needless to say, we think that this is a great move and we are stoked to see it happening before the school year begins for college students.  I believe this is going to unify us as a college ministry in a great way.  So regardless of where you are attending a service at Blackhawk, we will all be on the same page.  Yes!!!!

Since my sermon that I preached a couple of weeks ago, I have been asked by people about more information on the books I mentioned.  Here are the titles and authors.

AW Tozer – The Knowledge of the Holy

John Piper – Desiring God / (He also has a small version of the book called The Dangerous Duty of Desire)

Francis Chan – Crazy Love

All 3 of these have been great resources for me that have affected my life at particular times and helped me to remember the true gift we have been given in Christ.

People have also asked about the video clip I used about monster wave surfing.  It is from a movie called the Billabong Odyssey.  The surfer’s name is Mike Parsons.  It’s a ridiulous wave in a pretty incredible movie.  If you haven’t seen the clip, here is the link.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPxLs0Cv4zY

On July 17 I will be giving my next sermon at Blackhawk at Brader Way.  The part I get excited about is then being able to give the message again the next week to our Downtown Church at the Majestic.

In this new series that we are starting, we are looking at the parables of Jesus and what He wanted to teach us from them about the kingdom of God.  The particular parable I get the chance to unpack is actually 2 parables….in 3 verses of scripture.  These parables are short on wording and large in meaning. The parable of the hidden treasure and the parable of the pearl of great price found in Matthew 13:44-46.  Feel free to brush up on them ahead of the 17th if you want to….

As I’m studying these passages, I’m blown away by the idea of duty verses desire for God.  The crux point in my opinion of these 2 parables is in 3 words found in the middle.  “In His Joy.”  The man who finds the treasure in his joy sells everything. Why?  Because he knows that what he has found is worth so much more than everything he owns.  It’s a rational decision on his part.

Jesus is painting a picture of God’s infinite worth to us.  In other words, if we knew how valuable a treasure God truly was, we would joyfully sacrifice everything for him!  May we understand this more and more in our lives that our relationship with Jesus would be less about duty and more and more about joy!!!