I have been going through some major struggle in the past couple months. The big thing that I am struggling with is church involvement on the part of God's people. Thanks to some words from Doug Fields' book Your First Two Years In Youth Ministry I have found some comfort.
When I examine the Christians of today, I see the Pharisees. I see people who are outwardly Christian and say they are Christian but there is no involvement in the Church at large. Now do not get me wrong, I am not intending to be judgmental because I am in the same vein. There are times when I feel like I'm putting in my time and doing the things that people can see in order to proclaim the Good News of Jesus. Doug admits in his book that Christianity and spirituality is an inward thing.
Faith is a heart thing. We cannot look into other people's hearts. But does that mean when we see lack of involvement in Church activities and service that are produced by good faith that we should just ignore it because we cannot see their hearts? By no means! The Church needs God's people! The Spirit works through God's people and if God's people do not have time for Church are they being Spiritually fed?
So here is my dilemma: How do we as God's called servants who work for the Church instill this faith in action to God's loved children?
What if we weren't afraid to show the satisfaction and joy that God gives us when we serve Him in love? There is another book that I have started reading called The Pleasure of God written by John Piper. He calls this feeling of satisfaction and joy, Christian Hedonism. Hedonism is traditionally the concept that happiness is the sole good in life. When there is a Christian spin on it, Jesus and our salvation found in Him is the sole good in our life. Let's live by it!
Glitter In My Hair...
You better hope that you get invited to the wedding so that you can see the wonderful work that Kristi and I slaved over this past week. Over 30 hours of work to produce 250 wedding invitations. And as we winded down we kept thinking about when our kids grow up and get married how we will look back and give them the best advice ever: do not bother trying to make your own wedding invitations just order them.
But seriously, I had a good time making our wedding invitations this week. It gave Kristi and I lots of time to talk and dream about future endeavors. The more we made invitations the more I thought about how many people we were going to invite and quite possibly how many left over invitations we will have. And then the big news came about the end of the world and that took the invitations into a metaphorical spiral. Was I invited to heaven? Well, at the time it was in question, but after that I felt stupid. Of course I'm invited to heaven. Jesus Christ gave me the invitation and RSVP'd for me!
Sometimes we get so caught up in who we're inviting rather than who will come. Let me try and break this down. Rather than inviting a few family and friends, what if we invited everyone we knew and then whoever came came. It's kind of like God's Kingdom in my eyes. God has invited everyone into the Kingdom, it is now down to who will accept the invitation and believe in the Way.
Anyway, back to the concrete. I had so much glitter everywhere. The invitations that we made were a wet emboss so we stamped a clear "glue" and then poured glitter on it and then heated it with a tool and it was embossed. Well, Kristi is not a huge fan of glitter so I had the job of stamper and glitterer while she ran the heating gun. So the entire week I had glitter all over my face and in my hair. To this day, I probably have glitter in my hair...
Oh the things we do for love. :)
But seriously, I had a good time making our wedding invitations this week. It gave Kristi and I lots of time to talk and dream about future endeavors. The more we made invitations the more I thought about how many people we were going to invite and quite possibly how many left over invitations we will have. And then the big news came about the end of the world and that took the invitations into a metaphorical spiral. Was I invited to heaven? Well, at the time it was in question, but after that I felt stupid. Of course I'm invited to heaven. Jesus Christ gave me the invitation and RSVP'd for me!
Sometimes we get so caught up in who we're inviting rather than who will come. Let me try and break this down. Rather than inviting a few family and friends, what if we invited everyone we knew and then whoever came came. It's kind of like God's Kingdom in my eyes. God has invited everyone into the Kingdom, it is now down to who will accept the invitation and believe in the Way.
Anyway, back to the concrete. I had so much glitter everywhere. The invitations that we made were a wet emboss so we stamped a clear "glue" and then poured glitter on it and then heated it with a tool and it was embossed. Well, Kristi is not a huge fan of glitter so I had the job of stamper and glitterer while she ran the heating gun. So the entire week I had glitter all over my face and in my hair. To this day, I probably have glitter in my hair...
Oh the things we do for love. :)
Technological Analogies to Life
This is how I feel lately...
I'm all full up and am running slower than usual. If only I could use the "disk cleanup" on my life. So now the analogies* come.
I can "compress" my life by creating a to do list and organizing what needs to be done.
I can "defragment" my life by taking the to do list and prioritizing it and knock things out one by one.
I can "delete" parts of the things on my to do list, but then again what if I need to do them again and now their gone...
I can "archive" some of the items, put them on other peoples' disks.
I can "format" my life, but that would be baaaaaad.....
I can "scan" my life with anti-virus but that just wouldn't do anything.
But then again, I could just move some things in my life to another area like I would move some items to an external hard drive.
Or... I could get rid of my 20 gigabyte partition of Ubuntu that I still have installed and haven't used for ages. But that's just crazy talk!
*Remember as you read this that all analogies tend to fall short of what is actually meant.
I'm all full up and am running slower than usual. If only I could use the "disk cleanup" on my life. So now the analogies* come.
I can "compress" my life by creating a to do list and organizing what needs to be done.
I can "defragment" my life by taking the to do list and prioritizing it and knock things out one by one.
I can "delete" parts of the things on my to do list, but then again what if I need to do them again and now their gone...
I can "archive" some of the items, put them on other peoples' disks.
I can "format" my life, but that would be baaaaaad.....
I can "scan" my life with anti-virus but that just wouldn't do anything.
But then again, I could just move some things in my life to another area like I would move some items to an external hard drive.
Or... I could get rid of my 20 gigabyte partition of Ubuntu that I still have installed and haven't used for ages. But that's just crazy talk!
*Remember as you read this that all analogies tend to fall short of what is actually meant.
Back in the Races!
It has been a very very busy few months. As things wind down to the spring break mission trip to Tennessee, and the possibility of a summer trip for high school students; things are gearing up!
I have not made a blog post in a number of months and it makes me quite sad. (Among other folks) I like the way that writing a blog post calms a person down. It provides a release of some pressure from the day in and day out of leading two very prominent ministry groups.
I thought I would make this a little personal and share some of the joys and sorrows thus far being on internship.
I will start with the sorrows because it is always good to end on a joyful note :)
The single most difficult sorrow that I have had for the past several months is the long distance relationship that I have with my fiancée Kristi. We connect briefly every day but there seems to be a need for more. She provides a sense of balance in my chaotic world in Marquette, MI and that is the joyful side of things.
The other sorrow that I have is the lingering question of am I providing an effective and active ministry on both campus and high school fronts for the congregation? This sense of insecurity has followed me for my entire life. But I continue to study God's Word and practice the Spiritual Disciplines and things tend to look up. I may not have a large following, but that isn't really what it is all about now is it? The quality of the relationships that I have with folks is evidence that God is still working through me.
Joys. There is nothing greater than hearing from a high school students mother that her kid really looks forward to youth nights. All the stressful planning sort of pays off when you realize that the students really like it and have a good time.
One of the other biggest joys that I have is the campus ministry crew. These are college students who aren't being forced to do something. Nobody is putting a gun to their head saying they must attend a weekly bible study. And yet. They do! To see people so passionate about their faith and learning more about God has been the light in the dark alley for me.
Overall, internship has been a joyous experience thus far. Even the sorrows that I have listed were overcome with joys. The Lord has blessed me greatly with a supportive staff and a great number of members in the congregation who love me dearly.
Back to the races!
I have not made a blog post in a number of months and it makes me quite sad. (Among other folks) I like the way that writing a blog post calms a person down. It provides a release of some pressure from the day in and day out of leading two very prominent ministry groups.
I thought I would make this a little personal and share some of the joys and sorrows thus far being on internship.
I will start with the sorrows because it is always good to end on a joyful note :)
The single most difficult sorrow that I have had for the past several months is the long distance relationship that I have with my fiancée Kristi. We connect briefly every day but there seems to be a need for more. She provides a sense of balance in my chaotic world in Marquette, MI and that is the joyful side of things.
The other sorrow that I have is the lingering question of am I providing an effective and active ministry on both campus and high school fronts for the congregation? This sense of insecurity has followed me for my entire life. But I continue to study God's Word and practice the Spiritual Disciplines and things tend to look up. I may not have a large following, but that isn't really what it is all about now is it? The quality of the relationships that I have with folks is evidence that God is still working through me.
Joys. There is nothing greater than hearing from a high school students mother that her kid really looks forward to youth nights. All the stressful planning sort of pays off when you realize that the students really like it and have a good time.
One of the other biggest joys that I have is the campus ministry crew. These are college students who aren't being forced to do something. Nobody is putting a gun to their head saying they must attend a weekly bible study. And yet. They do! To see people so passionate about their faith and learning more about God has been the light in the dark alley for me.
Overall, internship has been a joyous experience thus far. Even the sorrows that I have listed were overcome with joys. The Lord has blessed me greatly with a supportive staff and a great number of members in the congregation who love me dearly.
Back to the races!
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