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A Dangerous Follower

March 17, 2008 in Church, features, Personal Growth with 0 Comments

It’s interesting that there was nothing said at our church last Sunday about it being Palm Sunday, but I still thought a lot about the arrival of Christ in Jerusalem the week before his crucifixion. I was reading John 12, and I came across something that I had probably seen but never noticed before.

In short, I want to be like Lazarus. Read these verses: “So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus” (John 12:10-11, NIV).

Imagine that your testimony or ministry were so strong that people wanted to kill you. Imagine that your teaching were so effective and your testimony so bold that so many people were believing in Jesus that people wanted to murder you for it. What a testimony! What a ministry!

Lazarus wasn’t just enjoying the blessings that Jesus had to offer him; he was living life full on for Jesus. He had every right to live like that. Jesus had saved him from death. He had called him out of the grave. He was no longer dead, but alive through Jesus Christ.

Isn’t that the same thing that we claim as Christians? Don’t we claim that Christ has rescued us from death? The life that we now live we no longer live in the flesh. We live it by the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us.

But we choose to live in mediocrity, timidly accepting life as it comes. Or we oppose everyone and repel them. The people wanted to see and be with Lazarus.

Think about the show that Lazarus was. He was once dead. I mean, people would come from miles away to see him. And he was drawing all sorts of people to Christ because of his testimony.

What about us? What are we doing to cause a stir like Lazarus?

Image by: dtcch

St. Patrick the Missionary

March 17, 2008 in Church, Missions with 2 Comments

Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland. He lived from 415 to the 470s (his death date is disputed), and he was a missionary who often referred to himself as a sinner. He had an enormous impact on both Ireland and the rest of Europe.

He was an evangelist who also worked to abolish slavery. In Patrick’s lifetime, the Irish slave trade ended.

An interesting fact about Patrick is that he never thought of himself as worthy or intelligent enough to minister. He was a humble man who was used by God.

The legend that is St. Patrick and the facts about his life have become mixed over the years, but there is no doubt about his missionary influence on Ireland. He was also an inspiration to many missionaries who followed him.

For more information, check out this article. Here’s an excerpt.

Patrick also became the model for later Celtic Christians. He engaged in continuous prayer. He was enraptured by God and loved sacred Scripture. He also had a rich poetic imagination with the openness to hear God in dreams and visions and a love of nature. Hundreds of Celtic monks, in emulation of Patrick, left their homeland to spread the gospel to Scotland, England, and continental Europe.

Free Easter Images

March 15, 2008 in Church, resources, Youth Ministry with 1 Comment

I took some time to search for some images on Flickr that could be used for powerpoint backgrounds for Easter. If you like them, click the picture, and it will take you to the page on flickr where you can download the image in a variety of sizes.

Photos by: Paper by design; JolieNY; Melolou; dtcchc; bbaltimore

3 Responsibilities in the Shema

March 5, 2008 in Center for YM, Church, features, Seminary with 0 Comments

Today, I started teaching Youth and Family Ministry to my first year students at the Mexican Baptist Theological Seminary. There are a few basic theological principles behind the class, and none is more important than the mandate that God gave Israel in Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

The Shema (click here to hear it sung), as it is known, is one of the most important Jewish prayers. It declares that there is one God, and then it goes on to talk about 3 responsibilities.

Personal Responsibility: Each person is to love God with all their heart, soul, and strength. It is a personal responsibility to have this command on our hearts. We cannot fulfill the other two responsibilities without first fulfilling this one.
Family Responsibility: We are to “impress” it on our children. It is the responsibility of the parents to teach their children about God. Interestingly enough, the responsibility does not fall on the church (although I believe the church helps the parents with their responsibility).
Social Responsibility: Writing them on the gates of the city is about the responsibility we have to share with the community about God.

I believe these responsibilities are in the order they are in for a reason. We cannot expect our children to love God if we do not love him. We cannot “preach” to the community if our families are not examples of loving God. There’s a lot more to be said, but it’s the basis of Youth and Family Ministry. We had a good discussion about this in class this morning.

What do Seminaries and Middle Schools have in common?

February 29, 2008 in Church, features, Seminary with 0 Comments

Middle school is a period of most of our lives that we would love to forget. Our legs and arms grow too big for our bodies; our voices sound like we swallowed a frog, we begin to notice how bad we smell, and many other embarrassing things. Middle school is a self-esteem nightmare. The irony of middle school is we are happy when finally we “graduate” and become freshmen in high school.

Unfortunately, seminaries are not too much different than middle schools. They are full of academic competition, intellectual arguments, and ministry comparisons. A person with low self-esteem will probably not last more than a week in either a seminary or a middle school.

Even the faculty members at seminaries have problems with this. The degree that you have, and where you earned it, play into our competitive nature, causing us to intimidate others or be intimidated by others.

Shouldn’t the opposite be true? Shouldn’t seminaries be places to encourage and engage people in a loving manner without judging their intellectual ability or their ministry competency? Instead of chewing people up and spitting them out, shouldn’t we be “spurring one another on to love and good deeds?”

I’d love to see my seminary as a place where people feel welcomed and are seen as part of the same team, regardless of if they are studying theology, youth ministry, music, or Christian education. I’d love to see the professors that have been around forever and have their Ph.D look at the others as equals and respect them as experts in their field with something valuable to contribute to the school. I’d also love to see the new professors be less intimidated by the others, and it would be great if we weren’t all always trying to impress each other. We are, after all, part of the same body.

Hope

December 24, 2007 in Church, Personal Growth with 1 Comment

During this time of the year, a key word I think about often is “hope.” I can see it in my little boy’s eyes as he talks about what he wants for Christmas. I see it as he looks at Santa. I was taught that the definition of hope is, “confident expectation in the future,” and I can see it in both the secular and sacred aspects of my family’s Christmas celebration.

The Christmas story is about hope. Christianity should be about hope. Not just hope for an eternal future with God in heaven, but hope for this life that is often miserable. We should be about bringing hope to those around us. Jesus brought hope with Him to a world in darkness. Much like today’s world, it was a world wrecked with war, oppression, and injustice.

Christianity should fill the world with hope. We should be the bearers of hope to a world that is, often times, hopeless. I’m thinking about what it looks like for the church to give people hope. I want to be a part of something that is hope-giving to those around me. Not in a “trust Jesus and everything will be swell” kind of way. I’ve come to realize that it’s not always like that. There’s a lot of junk in the world. I believe that people are looking for hope in the middle of all that.

What are our expectations for the church? What do we hope for from those who call themselves the church? I would expect people to offer a confident expectation in the future. I would expect that the church offer hope to the hopeless in a tangible way. I believe that is what Jesus did while He walked the earth. He was the epitome of hope for many who otherwise were living in dire circumstances. When Jesus showed up, hope arrived. I want to offer hope in the same way Jesus did.

Merry Christmas.

What can we do to offer hope in 2008?

Guadalupe

December 12, 2007 in Church, Culture, Mexico City with 0 Comments

Today is one of the most important religious holidays in Mexico City. As of right now, more than 5 million “pilgrims” have arrived to the Basilica de Guadalupe, the second most visited catholic site in the world.

They have arrived to celebrate the day when Guadalupe allegedly appeared to Juan Diego in 1531. They say that to be Mexican is to be a follower of Guadalupe, and it really shows on December 12. Banks are closed, and tons of people have arrived to the already overcrowded metropolitan area.

This morning, as I was driving to the airport around 5, we saw huge processionals of people who were finishing their pilgrimage to the Basilica. They come on foot, on bike, and even on their knees. They were carrying gigantic images of the Virgin, and we even saw some trucks decorated.

Days like today cause me to reflect a lot about faith, religion, culture, what I believe, and what others believe. It’s a difficult day for me. I’ll write more, but right now, I need to reflect.

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