we have a team of very cool people (lilly lewin, my beautiful wife jeannie) working on creating interactive prayer stations in the general sessions of the national youth workers convention, all around the convention theme of “jump”. they have some very cool stuff planned.

one “bonus” thing they have is not really a prayer station, but a community-building thing based on the jump-themed idea of belly flops. the idea is to put a whole bunch of large pictures up of people doing belly flops in a pool. next to these will be large pieces of paper on which people will be encouraged to write their ministry belly flops — kind of an encouragement that when we jump and take ministry risks, sometimes it just turns out terrible!

so today, we had a bunch of people over to our house (we have a pool in our backyard) to take photos of belly flops. we have a 6 foot high diving rock at the end of our pool. none of us was quite willing to do a full-on belly flop off that, but we did flat-out-in-the-air-it-looks-like-it’s-going-to-be-a-belly-flop launches, and tucked in after the pic was taken. then we also did real belly flops off the edge of the pool. mostly guys, of course. we all ended up with bright red chests and stomachs (and me, the left side of my face). jeannie would do a belly flop, but we talked her into jumping off the diving rock in her clothes (skirt, t-shirt, sweater), which is just about close enough.

so if you see the belly flop pics at the convention, two of them have men with rather large stomachs. one of those is me.