Join the 704 fasting team

You, yes YOU, have an enormous opportunity to partner with 704 Student Center, That Youth Thing, and the teenagers of Stanly County.  Join our fasting team, and be one of the extremely important individuals who are praying and fasting for the vision that is 704

Click THIS LINK to head over to the 704 blog to read more about the fasting plan and how you can get involved.  Just one meal a month is all we ask.  Jut ONE meal will go a long way!  How awesome will it be to know that every meal of the year, someone is fasting!  So please CLICK HERE and PLEASE HELP!

Welcome Back

Where have you been? You’ve missed a lot here at philbaucom.wordpress.com. So so so much has happened over the past couple of months:

• 704 is really starting to roll. Stay up to date @ the 704 blog
• So far $35,000 has come in for 704!
• We have a couple of awesome churches coming up that we are presenting at. North Albemarle Baptist this Sunday (7th) and Highland Baptist in January. If you’re interested in hearing the all out presentation feel free to stop by.
• Jennifer and I got a new dog-Lucy. She came from the pound. See picture below.
• I started back the couch to 5k running program. I finished week 3 day 1 tonight.
• David Morton, world’s greatest photographer, did an awesome photo shoot for us. I’m going to throw them up on our flickr account soon. They are a must see because he took somebody as ugly as me and made the pictures look good! (It’s probably all because of my beautiful wife though)
• Thanksgiving was AWESOME!!
• I have the world’s most amazing wife!!! I gotta say, I’m crazy about her!

REACH!

Tonight was the See You At The Pole Post-Rally fondly called Reach (Hosted by That Youth Thing).  We met at the Market Station in downtown Albemarle and rocked that place crazy!  About 250 kids showed up to worship God, hang out with friends, and be challenged to go back into their schools and genuinely share their faith like they mean it.

A huge thanks to everyone who helped out with the event!  What a success!  Just goes to show you we really need 704.  If you build it, they will come.  We made sure to let everyone know of a survey on the 704 site.  It is a survey all about the youth center that we need teenagers to fill out.  This will give us valuable feedback, and give one teenager the chance to win an iPod shuffle!  That’s right, just for filling out the survey, your name (teenagers only please) will be entered in the pot for an iPod!

So what are you waiting for Stanly County students?  Click HERE to take the survey yourself.  There is a limited number, so hurry!!!

Week in a Post

Well, no blogging last week. I know, I’m a loser, but I can’t be perfect all the time…(just ask anybody that knows me, or has ever met me, or has ever seen a picture of me)…

To catch you up on a busy week and a super busy weekend, here’s the whole week in a post:

• spent all week calling pastors to set up a meeting to discuss 704 with them (they can be difficult to track down)
• dinner with Paul and Wendy to plan more 704 and pray together
• lunch with a good friend and attorney Josh Morton to catch up and discuss the legal side of 704
• lunch with local youth pastors to plan out “See You At The Pole” rally in September (gonna be HUGE and AWESOME!)
• researching skate parks: spoke with guys from American Ramp Company and Splinter Skate Parks who were extremely helpful and gave some great ideas (we will DEFINITELY be working with these guys when it comes time for the park)
• went out to celebrate my niece’s 13th birthday, exciting but sad. shes getting too old
• sprained my ankle (this wasn’t one of the highlights, but I did take a picture). It wasn’t anything like the sprain last summer at camp caswell while playing Baywatch. That mound on the left side isn’t normal…
• Celebrated Father’s Day Saturday with my family. We grilled everything imaginable and had a feast to honor dads, including my dad, the best ever! We also did a good bit of swimming in their new pool.
• Celebrated Father’s Day with Jennifer’s family. We went to Longhorn and I bought the first (and maybe last) t-bone steak in my life. It was easily a top-5 steak of my life. Thanks for being a great Father-in law Nolan!
• Today I have a lunch meeting with Reese Linnell, pastor at Centrepointe
• Tonight, last but CERTAINLY not least, we are having our first 704 prayer meeting which will will repeat monthly. We hope to have tons of people praying with us in months to come. If you can make it, we will be in New London tonight @ 7:04 pm. Email me if you want directions (phil_baucom@hotmail.com) If you can’t make it, take a bit of time and pray for the youth center at 7:04 pm tonight. You’ll be praying with us!
• P.S.-I love my wife!

Be informed!

Don’t be misinformed, uninformed, or even worse, deformed when it comes to 704, Stanly County’s Youth Center.  Stay  INFORMED in 3 ways: 

1. Visit the 704 blog OFTEN!  If you come here, and go to Paul’s and Jenn’s, don’t stop there…Go check out 704’s very own blog!  If you don’t go, you’re missing a TON of info about the youth center.  Spread the word to everyone you know to.  Maybe send out a huge chain email to everyone on your list and just copy and paste this in:  http://the704.wordpress.com.  You might have to put something like “Open this if you love Jesus and believe He loves you!” in the subject line, just to get them to open it.  You know how forwarded emails work…
2. Stay INFORMED with our 704 update list!  You will get regular updates on progress, where we are presenting, when we are praying, milestones we have hit, and everything else along the way.  And the best part?  You will ONLY get relevant emails from us when you sign up.  Your email address won’t be touched by anyone else.  Click HERE if you want to join this email update list for 704. 
3. If you want to be extra awesome, and be more involved in a very easy way, join our PRAYER TEAM by clicking HERE.  You’ll get regular prayer needs for 704, and also be part of the most important part of the whole process, praying for it!  “Unless the Lord builds the house, it’s builders labor in vain.” -Psalm 127:1.  Please join us in praying 704 into reality!

(NOTE: After signing up for either email list, you will receive a confirmation email which you must reply to simply by clicking the provided link to confirm you want to join the email list.  If you do NOT click the link, you will not receive any further emails.)

Gonna make it, gonna make it! pt.2

First off, if you didn’t read the Scripture in the previous post, it would be best to go back and read over Paul’s words to the Church in Rome.

Second, when I read this passage a couple of days ago, I thought of 2 things.

1. The 3 Amigos (no, I’m not ok in the head, and neither am I…)
2. 704, Stanly County’s Youth Center

 If you’ve never seen The Three Amigos, it’s a classic, rather senseless comedy starring Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Chevy Chase: one of the greatest combos of comic genius ever on screen.  There’s this one scene where Steve Martin is in a jail cell, chained up to this contraption with weights.  The only way to get out is to pull the chains which lifted the weights higher and higher until he was close enough to pull the release lever. 

He tries and tries and tries and just can’t make it.  He chants “gonna make it!” with each step.  Finally, after a ton of hard work, pain and agony, he reaches the lever, only to be pulled all the way back again.  He eventually gets back to the lever, pulls it, releases the weights, and is free!  You should watch it sometime.

The passage also makes me think of 704.  For years and years (at least since I was in high school) people have wanted a youth center in Stanly County, but for whatever reasons, it just hasn’t happened yet.  When reading Romans 1 I couldn’t quit thinking of the correlation between Paul desperate for Rome and myself and others desperate for a youth center:

• vs 8, we are thankful for this generation and everything that comes with it
• vs 9, only God knows how much we talk about establishing a youth center for these students
• vs 10, we pray for these students all the time and for 704 to happen 
• vs 11, we can’t wait to meet the students who will come to 704, and show them how important they are to us and to God
• vs 12, we can’t wait to teach them about life and learn a lot about life from them
• vs 13, we want them to know how hard we are trying to bring 704 to these students and that we value them
• vs 14, we owe it to them and we owe it to God!
• vs 15, we are pumped about making 704 happen and even more pumped about showing these students what the love of Christ really is!
• vs 16 & 17, we aren’t ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus either and know it CAN and WILL change a ton of teenager’s lives!

So, is 704 gonna make it? gonna make it!  NO DOUBT IN OUR MINDS!!!  It will continue to take a lot of work, with a lot of ups and downs.  However, we are NOT pulling the chains by ourselves, and it isn’t just us who wants to show the students of Stanly County just how loved and important they are:  God is leading the charge!

704 Update

• Started calling pastors of local churches today to schedule times to present about the center during services.  We already have a couple booked up.  We’re pumped about sharing our vision with people all over the area.
• Jenn, Paul, Wendy and myself have made a 704 timeline with every possible thing we can think of that will need to be accomplished between now and the grand openning.  Of course the amount of things will increase (a lot) but it should help us get everything done just right. 
• Today we ordered 1,000 704 pens and 5,000 704 window clings for cars.  We want to see to see WAY more 704 stickers driving around than 91.9 plates and OBX stickers!
• A group of us will be heading to Rocketown at the beginning of August to tour one of the original youth centers in the country.  Go check it out!
• We have our volunteer list going and are adding to our 704 Update Email List.  If you are skilled in some trade like carpentry, yodelling, contracting, …having lots of resources, or something else helpful to the start up process, email and let me know if you’re willing to help.  If you would like to be on the 704 Update List, click HERE!
• The Grand Openning for 704 is March 10, 2010!!!!!  Get your 704 countdown widget HERE!!! (Macs only…) (BUY A MAC!!!)

Bridge Video

We have the video of the Bridge up over on the 704 Blog. Click HERE if you missed the first 2 links to go over there and watch it. You’ve got to go see this to get a little of our perspective!

Final Thoughts

Some final thoughts about our trip to Joplin, Missouri to tour The Bridge:

• starting small and renting is ok
• enormous ministries like this one take tons of time, patience, commitment, and faithfulness
• “be faithful in the little things and God will entrust you with the bigger things”
• the most important aspect is a solid team of adults (volunteer and paid) that have a genuine heart for kids
• regardless of what we do and on what scale, it MUST be done with excellence (a lack of excellence is usually what dooms ministries)
• a commitment to regular change is very important
• a happy, unified staff is a good staff
• have fun with your flight attendants. most people don’t pay them much attention but they smile a lot when you joke around with them.
• learn what the kids in your area want and don’t want
• KEEP BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH KIDS!
• declare your standard and NEVER EVER ABANDON IT!
• our standard is to reach the culture with the Gospel, no matter what it takes and no matter who gets ticked off at your method
• SURVEILLANCE is a great thing
• time and love are a lot more important to kids than toys and fun
• kids are capable of being very respectful and considerate if you treat them like you believe that
• don’t be afraid to stick to your guns and enforce rules, even if it means kicking a kid out forever
• not every adult who wants to volunteer needs to be a volunteer
• not every adult who wants to volunteer will be very committed
• God is definitely behind 704 because He wants EVERYBODY in Stanly County to know and experience His love!
• We’re not stopping anywhere short of this!
• 704, here we come!!!

Home Sweet Home

Well we’re back, and as sweet of a trip as this was, as sweet as a facility the Bridge was, NOTHING is sweeter than being home with my wife!

The trip was awesome and I can’t wait to share pictures and notes with you on here.  Also I will get to work on the video I took ASAP so you can get a real feel of their facilities.

Thanks for keeping us with us and praying for us while we were gone!