XXX Church

I first met Craig Gross in 2000 when he was part of the comedy/drama/teaching duo called “Craig and Jake”. We had them out for an event we were doing and had an awesome time! Then I saw him again in 2002 (I think) in the hallway of my hotel at a Youth Specialties convention. He was just getting things going with his new ministry XXXChurch, and was going around sliding some interesting reading under the hotel room doors. We chatted for awhile, and I haven’t seen or talked with him since. Then today I saw a link to this story on ABC news talking about his ministry at the porn convention.

I know a lot of people are really upset about his ministry and the way that they’re packaging the Bible, but I think they are absolutely being a light in a dark place, and I am so excited about what they are doing. Check out the video by clicking on the link below.

ABC News story on XXXchurch

(ht to Mark Riddle for the link)

What would it look like?

Tonight I was watching some of the raw footage from our Stuck in the Middle event last March. I’ve been really struggling with our financial burdens, and needed to watch some of this to remind me why I am doing this and to give me the energy to press on. I also needed to push through some of the footage so that I could get some sense of direction for our new promo/donor video that is being produced.

As I watched the video, I was struck by a comment from a middle school girl. She stated that “A lot of us don’t look for comfort. We don’t reach out our hand to God and ask Him to take it. We want God to love us, but we just don’t understand how…we just don’t know how to reach out to Him.”

Wow… what a gut-level honest statement. I wonder sometimes if we adults truly know how to let God love us, how to reach out and take His hand? Several months ago I was involved in a rather heated debate regarding God’s grace, and whether we can ever truly comprehend what it is. Honestly, I’m not sure. I do know that, as I’ve walked through a hard valley of my own making over the past several years, God’s grace, comfort and provision have never been more real or carried more weight in my life than they do now. But does that mean that I really understand it all… I doubt that. Personally, I love the mystery of something that is so powerful it changes my life and leads me to fall facedown in tears before my Savior. The mystery isn’t so much why God would love me, but rather how He could love me with the purity and depth that He does. How could this Creator understand me at my innermost being, and having understood me on that level, how could He still desire the most intimate of intimate relationships with me? That is the mystery and the beauty that I find in God and in His grace.

So, back to this little girl who questions how to reach out to God. I can’t help but wonder what it would like for her and all her middle school brothers and sisters if, just for a few hours or even a day, we could wash away the doubt, the fears, the guilt, the pressures, the shame, the fear that they all harbor. What would it look like if we could take away their hurt for just a small period of time? If we could bathe them in God’s grace and love, if we could allow them to experience the fullness of forgiveness, what would that look like? For too long these students have been marginalized and their hurts have been negated as the impulses and urges of a teenage mind. The hurt is real, and our response should be as well. What would it look like if we could take that away for a few hours? What would it look like if, during our weekly youth group gatherings, students could experience a place free from condemnation and judgementalism? I know it may be a pipe dream, but for as long as I have breath and God wills Stuck in the Middle to continue to operate, my hope and prayer is that we would be constantly be showing these young people how to connect with our mysterious and awesome God, and that we would constantly be guiding youth leaders to create an environment of grace and mercy within their youth groups.

Not my first choice, but oh well…

Not my first choice, but this is pretty interesting:

You scored as Anselm. Anselm is the outstanding theologian of the medieval period.He sees man’s primary problem as having failed to render unto God what we owe him, so God becomes man in Christ and gives God what he is due. You should read ‘Cur Deus Homo?’ Anselm 93% Martin Luther 73% John Calvin 67% Jonathan Edwards 67% Charles Finney 60% Friedrich Schleiermacher 53% Karl Barth 40% Augustine 40% Paul Tillich 27% J?Moltmann 27%

Which theologian are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

(ht to Mark Riddle)

Calling

Andy Jack sent out an email to the Jr. High Summit Group this morning which raised some interesting questions about calling. Here are a few lines from his email:

How would you describe your calling and why?
A. Are called to junior high ministry?
B. Are you called to serve the organization (and junior high is the right group at the right time)?
C. Are you called to serve youth (and the organization is just the right place at the right time)?
D. Are you called to youth ministry (junior high and the organization are the right group and right organization at the right time)?
E. Fill-In-The-Blank

The main question he raised is whether or not we can say that we are called (theologically) to be junior high youth pastors or workers. Like him, I would very much believe that we are…but it would be interesting to hear what others think. I know that we don’t typically do “conversation” comments on here, but I was wondering if any of you had any thoughts on this? Oh, and this isn’t just limited to youth/middle school ministry. If you’re serving God in what you do, then post your response to this question! Thanks!

By the way… I am totally bummed out that I had to miss The Creel Institute’s Thursday lunch training yesterday. I totally thought I could make it, up until about the time that I didn’t. Anyway, if you’re in the Wichita area and want to attend next Thursday, let me know…if you go as my “friend”, you get 1/2 off your lunch! (disclaimer: I wasn’t there this week, so if that deal isn’t good anymore, you’ll have to pony up the full amount!)

What I really learned…

These past few days at the Jr. High Summit I was challenged to refine the way that I view the gospel and the method by which I communicate its message to students. In preparation for the Summit, everyone was asked to read Scot McKnight’s book “Embracing Grace”. On the second day of the Summit, Scot joined us and walked us through some deeper processing of the topics in his book.

I believe that Marko is going to post some version of the notes from our time together, so I won’t bore you with a rehashing of everything that Scot and everyone else said. Instead I’m just going to share a few of my own thoughts and gleanings, and I will share with you the areas that I was challenged to more thoroughly examine. Those areas center on the Gospel, Sin, Evangelism and Atonement. (Though for now I will just comment on the first three). Please also note that this is simply my interpretations and observations from reading “Embracing Grace” and from listening to everyone talk these past few days. Any direct quotes from Scot or anyone else will be clearly indicated.

On the Gospel:
One of the biggest problems with the gospel is that we have convinced ourselves that it is simple. Scot shared three stereotypical responses to what people think the gospel is. The first is that the gospel is “joining the church”, the second is that the gospel is “being missional” (helping fight social injustice, etc.) and the third is that the gospel is a personal decision to accept Christ (ie. The “raise a hand, say a prayer” method or the bridge illustration). The problem with those thee answers is that none of them really acknowledge or address the complexity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Especially bothersome to me is the third idea of the gospel. I have long been a propitiator of the “win everyone to Christ by having them make a one time decision” model. The problem with it is not that someone chooses to accept Christ, but rather the implication that this is all there is to the gospel. In the bridge illustration, Jesus’ death is the bridge to cross the chasm created by our sins, but after that bridge is crossed we don’t seem to have much to offer. There is no talk about the resurrection, and little talk about walking with Christ in a daily lifestyle. We have made the gospel to be all about how to get to Heaven, but really it is about more than that, it’s about Heaven, but also about how we should live our lives here and now on Earth.

Scot described the gospel as “The work of a triune God to create a community to restore cracked eikons for union with God and communion with others with a missional direction”. The word eikon refers to us, and to our being created in the image and likeness of God (it’s Greek, and the last time I checked I failed Greek in college…). When we say that we are cracked eikons, there are four basic areas that we are cracked within.

We are cracked in our relationship with God, in our relationship with ourselves, in our relationship with one another (social justice), and in our relationship with the world (God’s creation). The Gospel is God’s work to restore us to full relationship in each of those areas, thus taking us from being cracked eikons to ultimately morphing us into celestial eikons.

On Sin:
Scot challenged us to quit thinking of sin as simply a judicial offence, and instead to look at it in the context of the four cracked areas of our eikons. By Scot’s definition, sin is “hyperrelational distortion in all four areas”. Our definition of sin is important because it has a direct impact on our understanding of the gospel, which is what determines our view and understanding of evangelism.

On Evangelism:
Based on what we’ve discussed so far, evangelism is an invitation from God to come and restore our relationship within all four areas of the cracked eikon. It’s more than just a one time decision or a raised hand at a summer camp. It’s an invitation into a lifelong community of authentic Christ-followers. More than ever, people are skeptical of a church that has too long participated in number counting and mass emotional manipulation. People don’t want to hear about the moral or ethical benefits of Christianity, they want to experience the grace and love of a God that exists not only in Heaven, but also in the here and now. People want something real, and we need to allow for a gospel that is big enough and powerful enough to embrace that. Evangelism has got to be about more than just the end result (Heaven), it must also embrace the journey along the way.

For me, there are direct implications in regards to how we run our Stuck in the Middle events and how we address alter calls and decision times. I personally still believe that it is honoring and wise to give students a chance to raise their spiritual ebenezers, but I want to always be very conscious of the lengths we go to encourage that. I want to give students the opportunity to respond to the work that God is doing in their lives, while at the same time steering very clear of emotional manipulation. In an encapsulated environment like a retreat or summer camp, that is often hard to do, but I will commit to doing my best to always maintain the utmost integrity in that area.

So…if you’re still reading this, you deserve one of David Crowder’s highly coveted “good readership awards”. Thanks for listening to the things that I’ve learned and am really chewing on right now. If you’ve read this far, please take a second more and post any thoughts that you might have. Remember, it’s not that Jesus changes (I believe He NEVER changes), it is instead that our understanding of His Word and His Gospel that can change and morph as we learn and grow into a deeper relationship with Him.

The Apple Tree

On Wednesday night at the PDYM conference (See the previous post, Saddleback, for details!) a woman named Becky Terabassi spoke. I was not familiar with her, and had no idea what to expect. As she was taking the stage, Lucas turned to me and said “Buckle your seatbelt…she goes FAST.” …Great.

So, she takes the stage and she starts talking about issuing a call for purity and for prayer in this generation. It was all stuff that I agreed with, but for some reason I just couldn’t connect with this speaker, and I had a really hard time accepting what she was saying. Something inside of my spirit was really battling with listening to her, and I really wasn’t sure why. Then, towards the end of her message I believe, she prayed and asked God’s Holy Spirit to fall on the place and to move and work in the room. I’m not a charismatic person, but something in that prayer moved me, and I felt overwhelmingly that God’s Spirit was there and was working. I started to pray, and kept praying, and kept praying. I prayed through her invitation, kept praying as hundreds of youth workers ran to the front of the room to pray and confess sin, and then kept praying through most of the worship. At some point, as I sat on my chair praying, I felt God telling me that I needed to get on my knees. I know this may sound stupid, but I REALLY messed up my knees goofing off at Stuck in the Middle, and I thought there was no way that I could get down on my knees. Not to mention the fact that there as very little room in the aisle, and it was cramped, and excuse excuse excuse…you get the idea.

So finally I went to my knees and continued to pray. I started to pray about the usual things, and felt a sense of God telling me to just be silent and listen, and as I did I was overwhelmed. Now, let me preface this by saying that I am a natural born, full on skeptic, and normally when I hear people say what I am about to, I dismiss it as an overactive imagination and move on. But on this night I found myself praying that God would diminish me, and that He would use me to build His Kingdom, but in a way that I was not only never glorified, but also not tempted to claim His glory for myself. Then, without realizing it, I found myself praying that God would give me a vision. I asked that he would give me something that I could hold onto and come back to when the time is right. In the past I’ve felt like God has birthed plans and dreams in my heart, and I’ve felt like He’s led me to and from certain things, but I have certainly never had a real “vision” from God or heard Him speak in an audible voice.

Well, in my mind I saw a picture of an old apple tree that was in the backyard of our first home. I had an overwhelming sense of God walking me past the tree, and explaining how it is used. I saw that the tree produced much fruit, and that the fruit was sweet and pleasing to eat. The fruit was used in many ways, pies, cakes, etc., and all of them were good. I watched though, and noticed that as the fruit came from the tree, very little attention was paid to that tree. The only attention it saw, in fact, was that of the man who came out to prune it. In order for a fruit tree to have a good crop, the tree must be pruned back, WAY back, at least once a year. That means that most often the tree itself is a very ugly thing. It’s only purpose in life is to produce fruit, and very rarely if ever does it receive any credit for the fruit it has produced.

I realized that I am supposed to be like that apple tree, producing fruit in my life, but never stopping to try and claim the credit for it. Ultimately, it’s not the tree that can take credit for it anyway, it’s the man who comes and prunes the tree, and cares for the tree, and directs it to grow strong and plant deep roots.

I know it may sound crazy, but I believe that God gave me that vision, and I am so overwhelming giddy to think that God might use me to produce any fruit for His Kingdom. I don’t look forward to the pruning, but I relish the chance to spend time with the One who cares for me, directs me to grow and helps me to plant deep roots.

Busy day and a guy singing in tongues…

So, all day I’ve been sitting in my cozy little office just plugging along. There’s a ton of stuff that needs to be done before our conference next week, and I’m just trying to get it all finished without any kind of big “push” at the end. Now, it’s important you know that our walls in this office building are pretty thin, so I often hear people talking in the halls, or even in their offices. Because there is a counselor next door, I typically keep some low level music playing so that I don’t accidently hear anything that I shouldn’t. Anyway, thin walls here…you get the point.

So… you can imagine the fun that everyone else in the building must have had when a man decided to drop into my office to talk about gifts of the spirit, particularly speaking in tongues. Not wanting to really “get into it” with him, I just sat and smiled and listened as he explained why I should be speaking in tongues. Now, let me say this…he was a really nice guy. No complaints at all about him, except that I was really busy. I may disagree with him on a couple of things, but a really nice guy.

Still, nothing could have prepared me for this. While discussing the virtues of speaking in tongues, and comparing singing to “singing in the spirit”, he started singing this loud old hymn that bellowed out from the bottom to the top of his lungs. Then immediately switched from singing it in English to singing it in tongues…loudly in tongues. Anyway, it was a really odd experience, and I thought I would blog about it real quick.