| TheSource4YM.com | |
 | Jonathan’s Resource Ezine |
Weekly Resources, Ideas and Articles from The Source for Youth Ministry
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
| In This Issue |
- Something You Can Use: A Glimpse of God in Space-Something different for your weekly program
- New Web Site Feature: “Jonathan’s Favorite” Video Clips Highlighted on Video Clip Ideas Page
- New Movie Reviews: Walk the Line- The Life of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash… Zathura, Stealth, Christmas With the Kranks, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and other new films
- Featured Link: “How to Help Girls Survive in a Barbie World”…a link from the SimplyYouthMinistry.com free newsletter
| If you aren’t a subscriber of this EZINE and would like to subscribe – it’s free – just pop on www.TheSource4YM.com and sign up in the upper right hand corner. |
| Something You Can Use: A Glimpse of God in Space-Something different for your weekly program |
This is a fantastic “activity” you can do with your group no matter how big or how small. I recently did this with a group of over 200 kids.
The One Requirement: A clear night-time sky! But it’s also great to have someone that can lead worship with a guitar in the dark.
Activity: You are going to take your entire group out, lay on the ground and look up at the stars in silence. Then you will give a short talk about space (provided below), next lead worship with the group as they are lying on the ground staring at the stars.
Prep your group the week prior to wear warm clothes for this activity-if you want, you can instruct them to bring a beach towel or blanket to lay down on. (This is not totally necessary, but nice for those kids who are wearing their bright clean yellow jacket or in case the ground is wet!)
Announce the Activity: Tell the group that you’re going to do something a little different. “We’re all going to go outside and take a peek at the night sky. But we’re going to try something a little different. We’re going to do this with no talking at all. Just follow me to the clearing (designate the location- last place I did this activity all the kids laid out on the tennis courts of a camp) and then we’re going to find a spot to lay down by ourselves. We’ll be crowded together, but we’ll spread out a couple feet apart. I’ll give you instructions while we’re out there. Follow me!”
Once Everyone is Lying Under the Stars: tell them to look at the sky for a minute or two in silence. Then give the following talk (or pieces of it) before leading the group in worship.
Star Talk:
Take a look up in the sky and just look at it for a moment. Look from one horizon to the other and look at how many stars you see.
Whenever I look up at this night sky, I’m reminded how small we are.
Think about it for a few moments while you look up at the sky. Picture how small you are here on earth. Think how far of a walk it would be if you didn’t have a ride home tonight and you had to walk home to your house tonight. It might seem far to you, but that walk is probably just a dot on a map of this region. And our region is just a small blot on a map of our continent. And think how small earth actually is compared to all the stars you are seeing out there. If the sun was as big as a bowling ball, the earth would be the size of a peppercorn or “BB” from a BB-gun. And if the earth was the size of a BB, the distance from one end of our solar system to the other would be 10 football fields. Now a “BB” sounds pretty small. Well, the earth is small when compared to our solar system.
How big is our solar system? Our solar system is just a small part of our galaxy which is the Milky Way. As a matter of fact, our solar system is in a spiral arm called the Orion Arm which is just a part of the Milky Way galaxy. A galaxy is just a huge collection of a few million to trillions of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity. They can be several thousand to hundreds of thousands of light years across.
How far is a light year? The light-year is a measure of distance, not time. It is the total distance that a beam of light, moving in a straight line, travels in one year. To understand an idea of the size of a light-year, take the circumference of the earth (24,900 miles) and lay it out in a straight line. Since light travels 186,000 miles per second, it could travel the circumference of the earth over 7 times in just one second. That’s pretty fast. Now picture how far light can travel, not in just one second, but in an entire year. About 6 trillion miles, or 5,865,696,000,000 miles to be exact. That distance….is a light year. And to think that galaxies like ours can be literally hundreds of thousands of light years across.
All of the stars that you see out tonight belong to the Milky Way. If the night was very clear and we were away from city lights, you would see a milky, misty-looking band stretching across the sky. When you look at this band, you are looking into the densest parts of the Milky Way.
But that’s just our own galaxy. There are galaxies beyond ours. The closest galaxy like ours (a spiral galaxy) is Andromeda, a galaxy much like our own Milky Way. It is 2.2 million light years away from us. Andromeda is approaching our galaxy at a rate of 670,000 miles per hour. Five billion years from now it may even collide with our Milky Way galaxy. Anyone planning on being here then?
When I look at space I’m amazed because we know that space has no end.
Think about that for a second as you look up into space. We can only see the Milky Way, but beyond that there is more. It keeps going and going and going…. it has no beginning and no end.
I can’t even understand that. I used to think, “There must be a wall or something eventually… it can’t go on forever!” But if there was a wall… what is on the other side of it?
It’s hard for our brains to even comprehend space. It has no beginning and it has no end.
Guess what? It’s hard to comprehend God. God is so big. He always was and always will be. He has no beginning and he has no end. I’ve had friends that have come up to me and said, “But how can that be?”
I just tell them, “Look up. You’re looking at something that has no beginning and has no end.”
Space gives us just a glimpse of who God is as we look at his incredible, vast creation.
Lead the Group in Worship: Let’s worship a little bit together while we look at the sky. Go ahead and just continue lying there and we’re going to sing some songs praising God for his creation. If you don’t know the words, no worries, just listen along and take in the beautiful sky that God has created.
Jonathan McKee is president of TheSourceForYouthMinistry.com and author of the new book “Do They Run When They See You Coming? Reaching Out to Unchurched Teenagers.” (CLICK HERE FOR THE BOOK) Jonathan speaks and trains across the country and provides free online resources, training, & ideas for youth workers at www.TheSource4YM.com | New Web Site Features: “Jonathan’s Favorite” Video Clips Highlighted on Video Clip Ideas Page |
Now, at a glance, you can see what VIDEO CLIP IDEAS are some of Jonathan’s favorites.
Why should you care?
Good question. In the last few years, all VIDEO CLIP IDEAS that have been added to the page have several elements: they have the key dialogue written out for your review, they have a passage of scripture, small group questions and a wrap up. Jonathan’s favorites include these elements.
So if you’re looking for more than just a quick clip, check out JONATHAN’S FAVORITES for all the elements you need to fill the teaching portion of your program agenda! This means less work for you…and more time for you to spend doing more important things. And as always…these resources are all free!
So click over to the VIDEO CLIP IDEAS page on our web site (CLICK HERE) and look for those clips marked A “JONATHAN’S FAVORITE!”
| New Movie Reviews: Walk the Line- The Life of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, Zathura, Stealth, Christmas With the Kranks, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory… |
This week there are several films worth noticing. The first is a film I have been eagerly waiting for…WALK THE LINE, the story of Johnny Cash starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. I screened this film last week and loved it! See my review for this film and a few others below:
WALK THE LINE– Coming to theatres this Friday!Directed by James Mangold (Identity, Kate and Leopold, Girl Interrupted and Cop Land.)
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Robert Patrick…
Just before his death in 2003, a 70 plus year-old Johnny Cash made an award winning music video to his song Hurt that captured the emotion and the respect of America… even the MTV generation. Many of us didn’t know the whole story behind this music video, the chronicles of the “hurt” in the life of the Man in Black. Walk the Line is “the rest of the story.”
Walk the Line was beyond my expectations. It’s real, it’s raw… and it’s relevant to a hurting culture looking for happiness in temporary thrills.
I don’t own any Johnny Cash albums and I’ve never read any books about him. The day I saw Walk the Line I went home and Amazon’d a book about his life and clicked straight over to browse through the collections of his hits on CD.
Walk the Line covers a period of time in Cash’s life that many don’t know about. The movie focuses on the circumstances surrounding a young Johnny leaving home to go into the military, his rise to stardom, and his decent into an amphetamine addiction. The film ends around the time of Cash’s famous live concert recording in Folsom Prison. The story ends with the end of his alter ego “Cash” and the beginning of the man that June called “John.”
Some have compared this film to Ray, others to A Coal Miners Daughter, neither are bad comparisons. But Walk the Line was more than just another powerful biography about the rise and fall of a great musician… Walk the Line was a unique love story. The film tells the true story of a girl named June and a young man dressed in all black named Johnny. They traveled together from one gig to the next in a car with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and others. Through the good and bad, June and Johnny developed a friendship and eventually a love that lasted for a lifetime.
Director James Mangold couldn’t have found anyone better than Reese Witherspoon to play June Carter…the character that we know in recent days as the late June Carter Cash. Most people knew the end of the story by her name alone- but many didn’t know how she acquired that name. Witherspoon gives you a glimpse beyond the humor and into the heart of the animated, witty southern doll. But she also brings a fun element to the film as June often did in Johnny’s life during dark times. She’ll have you in stitches with her one liners and- my favorite- her rules for proposing.
Joaquin Phoenix played Johnny Cash and the Oscars had better take notice. I’ve always had an eye on Phoenix’s ability. I’ve mentioned before -from his childhood performance in Parenthood to his Oscar nominated performance in Gladiator-Phoenix always delivers. In Walk the Line he transforms again, this time into the Man in Black. And Joaquin’s Cash delivers a few one liners of his own. In one scene someone refers to June as his wife. Cash replies, “That’s not my wife. I keep asking her, and she keeps saying ‘no!'”
ZATHURA- In theatres last Friday!Directed by Jon Favreau (Elf… wrote Swingers)
Starring Tim Robbins, Kristen Stewart, Frank Oz, Jonah Bobo and Josh Hutcherson
Zathura was a pleasant surprise.
I admit, when I first saw the ads I wasn’t rushing to Fandango to buy tickets. Needless to say, I didn’t have high expectations at the screening… neither did others. I took a fellow youth worker with me to the screening. Five minutes before the film started, “What’s the name of this film again? Who’s in it?”
“Zathura. Written by the ‘Jumanji’ guy, directed by the ‘Elf’ guy. It’s ‘Jumanji’ in space.”
But the film ran and right away we found ourselves both laughing. We were immediately drawn in by the relationship of the two brothers.
It’s nice when a film doesn’t place all bets on action sequences, creature affects and space battles- not that Zathura lacks in these areas. The movie starts with a realistic glimpse of post 2000 youth culture, sibling rivalry, and family relationships. Then it throws these individuals into a fantasy/science fiction adventure.
The kids were real. It’s obvious that Favreau has his thumb on the pulse of today’s youth. The teenage daughter was dead on this generation of young people. And the whole theater identified with the two brothers fighting like we all did as kids: the older brother tries to ignore the younger, the younger persists, eventually the younger sets the older one off and they chase each other around the kitchen in socks, slipping and wiping out into the cabinets.
And the film captured the typical “split home” struggles. “Dad, why are you leaving? I thought we weren’t going to Mom’s until tomorrow?”
“No, this is a ‘3 day dad week’ and a ‘4 day mom week.'”
“I thought it was a ‘4 day dad week’ and a ‘3 day mom week!'”
Or when one of the kids complains about the dad’s house. “I like mom’s house better.”
Dad quickly agrees. “So did she… and now it’s hers!”
STEALTH- On video and DVD todayDirected by Rob Cohen (Fast and Furious, Dragonheart, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story)
Starring Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, and Jamie Foxx
One word to describe this film: Rental.
Yes, it was clich?, predictable at times, shallow … but it was also mildly entertaining and creative.
Ben, Kara and Henry are navy pilots who have a new partner … an AI (artificial intelligence) controlled fighter plane that goes crazy. (“This is highly irregular Dave.”) They must get the AI plane back from its rogue mission, destroy it, or be destroyed … which is it? I really didn’t expect much from this attempt at Top Gun meets 2001 a Space Odyssey, but I guess it had a few surprises.
THE GOOD:
- Performances were first rate. We all know Jamie Foxx can act. But Josh Lucas and Jessica Biel weren’t disappointing in any way.
- The plot actually had a few turns I didn’t expect.
- The flight scenes were very well done. Great action and solid affects.
- I predicted several elements of the film going into it and they all turned true: 1. Jessica Biel would end up in a bikini. 2. The powers that be would turn corrupt, trust the AI, get burned, and then attempt to cover it up. 3. And lastly, I predicted the fate of Jamie Foxx’s character (there’s a rule of thumb about the fate of the black guy in films like this!) Clich?!
CLICK HERE FOR MORE NEW MOVIE AND RENTAL REVIEWS ON JONATHAN’S MOVIE REVIEW PAGE INCLUDING CHARLIE & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS…
| Featured Link: “How to Help Girls Survive in a Barbie World”…a link from the SimplyYouthMinistry.com free newsletter |
I have received Doug Fields free email newsletter for years now. A quick article in the last issue caught my eye. Sarah Washington writes a small blurb “How to Help Girls Survive in a Barbie World.” I appreciated her insights, I think you will too.
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Jonathan McKee
Jonathan McKee is the author of over twenty books including the brand new The Guy's Guide to FOUR BATTLES Every Young Man Must Face; The Teen’s Guide to Social Media & Mobile Devices; If I Had a Parenting Do Over; and the Amazon Best Seller - The Guy's Guide to God, Girls and the Phone in Your Pocket. He speaks to parents and leaders worldwide, all while providing free resources for youth workers on TheSource4YM.com. Jonathan, his wife Lori, and their three kids live in California.