How He answers (part 2) (see here for part 1)

Well I probably should not have indicated a day that the audio lesson would be up.  You know how life goes, you can not always do what you think you can.  So it is Thursday and not Tuesday

I enjoyed teaching and hope it is an encouragement to those who listen.

To download, click here, to listen streaming just click on the play button below.

In the winter and spring Study & Share will be going through Colossians and I will be teaching a few times.  I look forward to learning personally from this book as I dive in

Tomorrow I will be teaching my final lesson on prayer at Study & Share. I hope to be able to put up the audio file tomorrow evening. So check back tomorrow if you would like to listen.

The topic of the lesson is: How He Answers

On Saturday I had the priviledge to spend the morning with a group of young ladies, Franklin & Marshall students, at their JCrew retreat. JCrew is a Christian club that began seven years ago on the F&M campus. This group strives to provide an opportunity for small group Bible Studies, a place where the ladies can grow deeper in their relationships with friends, sisters in Christ and the Lord. I enjoyed being with them and hearing about their current studies and life dreams, wishing I could have spent longer with them. I am sure there were many amazing stories of God’s work in each of the ladies lives all over the room!!

I shared with the ladies the encouragement and challenge I find in Psalm 63. David talks about his soul three times in this Psalm and describes it in this way: “My soul thirsts for God,” “My soul is satisfied in God,” and “My soul clings to God.” 1. Thirst 2. Satisfaction and 3. Cling. Our souls are made with a thirst for God, we do not have to work one up!! It is just there, by God’s design!! Our souls will only find true satisfaction in God, nothing else satisfies!! And when your soul knows that satisfaction is in God alone, then your soul will want to cling to God!!

I told the ladies I would put up on my blog a list of books that I have read over the last several years that have encouraged my soul in finding satisfaction in God and in clinging to Him. So ladies here it is:

Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow
I first did not think this book was for me, I would not consider myself an anxious person. But I started reading it anyway, because I respect Linda Dillow and have been challenged by other books she has written. Then as I read the book I saw how very needed it was for my life and walk! It is a good one!!

Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
This is an enjoyable and thought provoking read!! I laughed out loud several times and sat pondering my Christian faith and actions after several chapters. You will enjoy it, and it will make ya think!

The Organic God by Margaret Feinberg
I recently wrote another blog on this book and author, click here to read that

The Epic by John Eldredge
I love to look at the entire story of the Bible instead of just its parts. (That is something I could go on and on about!! - but some other time!) This book does a great job of opening our eyes to God’s overall work and story; His epic!  (you can listen to it live on the author’s web site!)

The Hour That Changes The World by Dick Eastman
In this book you will learn and be challenged to pray an hour a day that will touch not just your life but the world! It breaks the 60 minutes into 12 five minute sections with a chapter on each. I was really challenged in my prayer life and grew in how to pray for not just myself but the needs of the world as well.

The last one is out of print, but worth trying to find in my opinion!!

God Up Close by Doug McIntosh
This is a book on how to meditate on God’s word. It includes tools for how to study the Bible, but moves beyond studying to meditating. I found it refreshing and it literally changed the way I spend my personal time with God. After many years of being a “got to read two chapters (or so ) of the Bible a day” and then all is good, kinda girl. This book challenged me to be more concerned with how I was meditating on God’s Word and not so much how much did I read. After reading this book is when I decided to spend a year in Psalm 63 taking it one verse a month. It was a great encouragement.

Ladies, I hope this is an encouragement to you and that the Lord will help you to thirst for Him like no other, to find your satisfaction in Him alone and to cling to the almighty - because He is so much more than worthy.

Thanks for letting me join you!!

I just read a great article from Willow Creek Association about 5 shifts that need to take place in Student Ministry because of the greatly different culture that students are growing up in from when youth ministry began to be common. Like the term or not, I believe that these changes are necessary because of the postmodern ethos that surrounds us. Postmodernity is not simply a cool trendy term to throw around in philosophy or theology circles, it is transitioning to be the prevailing world view to and in which we must minister.

So Willow Creek is using the term “Youth Ministry 2.0″ signifying that the program needs an update. Here are their 5 areas in brief:

From PASSIVE to INTERACTIVE

The quintessence of Youth Ministry 2.0 is user-generated content. Thanks to YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and Wikipedia, students are no longer content to just consume … they now want to participate. We have moved from simply presenting the “answers” to students, to allowing them to co-create the content. We recently featured three short films in our youth service that were written, edited and produced by students. We also launched a brand new Web site to be the central information source of our community. Students can interact and create content with polls,blogs, photos, and videos…

From RESOLVED to UNRESOLVED

We recently taught a four-week series called “Hot Topics.” We covered homosexuality, war, MySpace and drugs and alcohol. Instead of offering simple, trite answers to these weighty subjects, we created environments to wrestle with these issues together. With leaders helping to guide them, students were encouraged to search the Scriptures to learn what the Bible says about these topics.

From IMITATION to IMAGINATION

We have been encouraging our students to imagine new ways of expressing their faith. Students have been living out their faith on their school campuses in extraordinary ways. Recently a group of students decided to raise awareness and money for children in Uganda. They held a huge event at their school and promoted it by wearing white ripped T-shirts with black writing across them. They had hundreds of students show up to this event. It was all planned, organized, and implemented by students.

From INFORMATIONAL to EXPERIENTIAL

We continue to try and think of new ways to engage the senses. We want to include visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. We recently cooked a steak on stage to teach about the aroma of Christ. We gave out 3-D glasses and taught about the power of vision coming to life. Because the overwhelming majority of teenagers now own a cell phone, we use mass text messaging as a primary means of communication for our ministry.

From CONFESSION to COMPASSION

We have discovered that students are no longer satisfied with just confessing what they believe — they want to live it out. With James 1:27 as our inspiration (Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you). Our student ministry has now partnered with a high school in Zambia, Africa, to serve HIV/AIDS orphans and has established a partnership with a local transitional housing ministry for homeless single moms.

It seems that in the DRINK AND FLOW ministry at Calvary Church we have made some of these shifts, but I see areas of growth still needed. Leave a comment on how you think we can successfully make these shifts to call more worshipers to know God through Jesus Christ and make an impact in this world!

Big thanks to Steve Kilgore for a heads up on the article!

Last May Brian got to go to a conference in Washington DC called Lead Now. Now in all honesty I was rather jealous of the fact that he was going and I was staying home, so I asked him to get me a book while he was there. He came home with Margaret Feinberg’s The Organic God and I read it I enjoyed the book and found it encouraging. Margaret’s approach is to describe the attributes of God that we often lose sight of with all the other stuff of life and Christianity. Each chapter of the book looks at a different characteristic of God such as his generosity, his wisdom and his mysterious ways. The chapter I enjoyed the most was chapter nine on God’s abundant kindness. I guess I do not sit and ponder His simple and yet magnificent kindness enough! It is an attribute I long to have in my life!

Last night I had the privilege of meeting Margaret and hearing her speak at our church. She shared with us her passion for reaching people in their 20s and helped us to peel back the layers in their lives to understand them better. One thing that really stuck out to me was the need to be careful when asking them questions about life; such as “are you dating anyone, what are you doing in life, where are you headed…” Many of them are trying to figure life out and being asked about it can bring stress. They need people to befriend them, love them, walk along with them in life and be good listeners.

The night made me think of many students we have worked with who are now 20 somethings. I love getting to see them when they return home for the holidays. I love to hear what they have learned about at school and are being stretched with. I love finding old friends from past church ministries on facebook!! Just this week I was found by a girl who we knew in Columbia, SC (that would be over ten years ago) on facebook and it was fun to look through her pictures! People are amazing and God’s work in their lives is even more amazing!!

So if you are one of those students who is coming home to Lancaster for Thanksgiving you better give me a call and I will take you out for a cup of coffee, just so I can hear how life is. I won’t ask you who you are dating. I won’t ask if you have figured out your entire life I will just ask “how are you?” and listen And if you are one of those students from Texas or South Carolina and I don’t have the opportunity to sit down with you then feel free to send me an email, leave a comment on the blog or write on my wall - I would love to hear how you are as well!!

This week I read an interesting verse in I Chronicles 22.  In this chapter David is charging his son, Solomon, who is becoming King with instructions for building the temple.  David had an idea to build God a permanent place of worship and set out to do so, only to be stopped by the Lord and told that his son was to do the task and not him.  So David obeyed and left the building to Solomon, but he provided the motivation, insight, casting of the vision and gathering of the supplies.   David was serious about this task and wanted to see his dream followed through.

In the above noted verse David moves from listing his provisions for Solomon to addressing the leaders of Israel and says “Now devote your heart and soul to seeking the Lord your God.  Begin to build the sanctuary of the Lord God, so that you may bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord and the sacred articles belonging to God into the temple that will be built for the Name of the Lord.”  Here is what I found interesting:

Beth Moore explains in her book David that the “Hebrew word for devote is nathan.  It means “to give, place, add, send forth.  Nathan indicates fastening something in place” (she is quoting Warren Baker’s The Complete Word Study Old Testament here) She then explains that David tells Solomon and the leaders of Israel to fasten their hearts to seeking the Lord.

So I started thinking about what it means to fasten something in.

The first thought that came to my mind was the way I fasten my younger kids into their car seats!  I take time to make sure it is done well, they are important people to me and I want them riding in that car safely!!  I even take extra pains to making sure the car-seat itself is fastened in the car well (I do the knee in the seat-push real hard -pull on the seat belt forever thing - we do not have the newer car restraint system that changes this ritual)   And it is this picture that David says we should do with our hearts - fastening it in like a child in a car seat.

Now the second thing that came to mind was being fastened into a harness to repel or other rock climbing.  I once jumped off a bridge in Switzerland only because I felt sure I was fastened in well to the life line that was going to pendulum “catch” me   and swing me for a ride.  (I have to admit I was pretty nervous about this jump and made sure I did not look down before jumping!)  And here again we find David’s word - fasten that heart in like you would a rock climbing harness to your life line - as if your very life depended on it.

And I guess that is what is similar with both pictures the car seat and the rock climbing harness, it is life and death and therefore we consider the fastening very important.  It is true with my heart and soul as well!!  I should fasten my heart to seeking the Lord, strap it into the car seat, set the car on the course to God and enjoy the ride.  I should fasten my soul into seeking the Lord, harness it in with the best equipment so that I can take that leap of faith diving after the Lord :)  How great is that, and what a challenge!

I think I have some fastening to go do!

I would like to begin a new blogging series here…dedicated to considering how Christian theology works out in our lives and culture.
This is one of the things that I like to do…theology. I firmly believe, as do many, that theology isn’t theology if it is simply in the academic world. In fact, I think something that is very pastoral and life-on-life has been pushed off to those who read about it, have well sounding theories, or a systemitized box to hold it all in. It’s kinda like asking the former football player, turned commentator, about the game of football. He will have a lot of good information and necessary angles to look at things, but can he get out there and run the play or teach the team how to run it…will he see the struggles or simply demand that his ideas get done??

I am taking a theology class in seminary right now and our staff is reading a book about 5 emerging church leaders, so there is more than usual thoughts on my mind in this area. Let me share my professor, John Franke’s, definition of theology first (I did it from memory on the mid-term, but I’ll consult the notes just to make sure I get it):

“Theology is an ongoing, second-order, contextual discipline that engages in the task of critical and constructive reflection on the beliefs and practices of the Christian church for the purpose of assisting the community of Christ followers in their missional vocation to live as the people of God in the particular social-historical context in which they are situated.” (you can also find this in his book The Character of Theology)

With that as an introduction, my first theological post is going to be on something that has received much attention to date and will continue to receive more… The Emergent Church, Emerging Church, Emerging Conversation, Emergent Village, etc.

Wikipedia actually has a pretty good description, here is the beginning:

“…is a controversial 21st-century Protestant Christian movement whose participants seek to engage postmodern people, especially the unchurched and post-churched. To accomplish this, “emerging Christians” (also known as “emergents”) deconstruct and reconstruct Christian beliefs, standards, and methods to accommodate postmodern culture.” (you can read the rest here)

I have been following some of these discussions of “deconstructing and reconstructing” for at least 4 years here and like much of what I see! Surely there are some caution flags as with anything that we go into, but I believe that we in the North American Churches are going to need to be more like the missionaries that we send out to other countries… studying the culture, understanding how the truth of the gospel impacts that culture and communicating the good news in relevant 21st century ways!

Well, the definition said it was “controversial” and IT IS! Wow, is it ever, which is good to help process theology! But I do hope that we can be more characterized by what we stand for and support rather than what we are against. I came across some well done anti-emergent posters, themed like the traditional motivational posters, but jabbing fun at some of the perceived or real weaknesses or differences with those who are emergent minded. Below is one I enjoyed and a link to a whole lot more!

by Phil Johnson and the PyroManiacs

I’ll probably be using some more of these as I bring up other topics in Theology Thursdays!