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Our first Advancement story of the year this year is Chuck Swindoll, the pastor at Stonebriar Community Church and the Chancellor at DTS.

Probably the biggest shock I had when I came to DTS as a new student was to see Chuck in chapel the first week. I’d only ever heard his voice before . . . it was weird to hear the voice and see him talk at the same time!

Anyway, on this piece I ran the Steadicam during the interview and shot some broll. But, true story here, when we were filming some broll in his office before the morning service, he started reading some of his illustrations to us. Then, in the sermon, he said he had shared the illustration with “some friends” before the service started. That’s right! Church Swindoll called me his friend!

This is the first of our new campaign called One Story. We’re operating under the assumption that everyone has a compelling story that can be told in one minute. The One Story campaign is for the admissions department at DTS, featuring students, faculty, and staff. We’re hoping it sparks interest in the seminary by showing that not everyone at DTS is a book-nerd – there are so many different stories here!

On this piece I didn’t do too much – just ran one of the cameras during the interview.

While setting up cameras and lights and suchlike for a video shoot at work, I got in front of the camera and horsed around for a while. I even delivered some cheesy lines. Anyway, one of the editors down here got his hands on the footage and want gangbusters.

Austin thinks he’s soooo funny!

Now this is a cool story. Chico West runs a half-way house for young men in their transition into recovery. I helped out on this piece by filming broll and taking some stills. One of the other editors did the story and color work.

The most interesting part of this piece was filming the support group meeting. It took place above a garage on a weekday night. I’ve been involved in small groups in church and with DTS before, but I’ve never been involved in something as open and honest (and brutal) as this support group. These guys weren’t joking around; they were taking their recovery seriously, and each guy was invested in the lives of the other men in the group. It was amazing to see.

I’m a big fan of this guy. Tim Kimberley worked in the web development department at DTS while going through seminary. He’s the brains behind helives.com and biblemap.org. Tim’s work with high school students on helives.com is the focus of this story.

This was a fun one, for a couple of reasons. I was involved in the interview, cut the story, and filmed the mini-story that is interspersed throughout the piece. It was fun, because I cast my wife as the moody teenager. She did great! It was also fun because we lit the interview really poorly. I don’t know what we were thinking, but I learned a lot about working in Apple’s Color while trying to fix our screw-ups. That, and creating the look for the parts Jenna is in was pretty fun, too!

This story from the BBC caught my attention today. Seems people have hit on the idea of using pink flourescent lights to keep teenagers from congregating in public areas. How? Because after dark, the pink light highlights any facial blemishes these kids have.

Wow.

The last thing teenagers need is another group of people (in this case, the housing association) pointing out their inadequacies and telling them to go somewhere else.

Though you know, if you think about it, we don’t have a pink light at the church, but every time I say something sarcastic to a kid, I shine a 1000 watt spotlight on his inadequacies. Every time I single a kid out for doing something I don’t like, I point out his faults. And every time I (God forbid) tease a teenager about his appearance (don’t judge, you’ve done it too without thinking), I tell him he’s not wanted.

There’s no place for sarcasm, public humiliation, or teasing in youth ministry.

(HT: Youth Specialties Blog)

Editor’s note: This was written last night, and is posted now (maybe I should get the internet at home?).

Today, as I was sitting in the library working on my Hebrew paper, watching the rain pelt the campus and listening to the thunder roar overhead, I saw Dr. Stanley Toussaint walking through the downpour.

Dr. Toussaint walks with a limp and uses a cane to get around. He doesn’t move very quickly, but he’s got one of the brightest smiles (and some of the best jokes) on campus. Today, he was walking through the pouring rain with his cane in his right hand and his bag in his left.

No umbrella.

I watched him struggle through the rain with his head down, suit and tie dripping wet, and felt sad that he didn’t have anything to keep himself dry. I watched others walk by my window with umbrellas, staying dry, and wished one of them would go help Dr. Toussaint. Mentally I ran through a checklist. Did I drive the car today? Nope. That means I don’t have an umbrella. Without an umbrella, there’s nothing I can do to help him.

I felt pretty bad. I really wanted to go help him, but I didn’t have an umbrella.

Later, I went down to my office and mentioned what I had seen to a few of my coworkers. One of them asked, “Why didn’t you go out and help him?” I replied, “I didn’t have an umbrella with me.” He said, “Well, you could’ve at least gone out with him. Carried his bag or something.”

At the time I thought he was just making fun of me (and he probably was). But as I laid awake in bed, I realized that he was exactly right.

What I should have done, I didn’t do. I should have ran out to Dr. Toussaint, taken his bag, and said, “Sir, I don’t have anything to keep us dry, but can I at least walk with you?”

Is that what it means to be “incarnational”? I don’t know, but I have a strong suspicion that the right thing to do would have been to be in relationship with someone else in spite of (maybe because of?) their need at the moment.

I need to get over my Messiah complex. Sometimes (most of the time) I don’t have all the answers. I’m not called to have all the answers. But I am called to be with people when they’re in need. Maybe I can provide, maybe I can’t. Sometimes, that’s not the point. The point is to simply be with people, involved in the messiness of their lives and open to their pain and hurt.

It’s 11:30 at night while I write. I couldn’t sleep thinking about this; I had to get up and put it into words. I’m sad, because I had an opportunity to be with someone in a (relatively minor) difficult time, but I didn’t act because I didn’t think I could help without having all the answers.

Sometimes we need to forget about having all the umbrellas and just stop being afraid to get wet with people.

Sometimes, it’s really nice when the seminary you work for realizes that not everyone will go out into the pastorate, and is okay with that. David Hampton is a DTS grad who is also a professor at West Point (the military academy). It’s great to see someone doing their best in their occupation because that’s as much of a testimony as anything.

So on this video, I didn’t do much beyond offer suggestions while it was going through the editing process. I can’t even remember if any of my suggestions were taken! Either way, Austin did an awesome job on this one.

With a name like James Bond, the guy’s gotta be some sort of awesome pastor, right?

Anyway, JB Bond is a pastor in Stillwater, OK. He talks so fast . . . I had to pick some slow music to slow him down some! I wasn’t in on the group that went to do the interview and broll, so all I did was edit the story and color correct it.

One of the assignments I did (with two other guys, Adam and Mike) in my Church Ministries with Youth class was a retreat for parents. The purpose of the retreat is to get away with just the parents (leave the kids at home!) and talk to them about youth ministry. Since it’s important to work with parents in their discipleship of their kids, we organized our parent retreat to discuss adolescent culture, adolescent development, worldview issues, and our philosophy of ministry. We also added time to discuss parenting tips and tricks and solid take-home stuff for the parents. It was a pretty fun project!

Here’s a link to our workbook and teaching notes.