"God Of This City"

Tonight our student service was awesome! Our praise band sang a song I had never heard before called "God Of This City". It was absolutely amazing! If it's at all possible, I plan on owning this cd. The lyrics are so powerful, so encouraging, a battle-cry of sorts to not be satisfied with where you are or discouraged because things don't seem to be going the right way for you. I wanted to post the lyrics so that you can be encouraged like I was. God's not done with you yet. He still has a plan for your life and He still is the God of your city.

"You're the God of this city, You're the King of these people
You're the Lord of this nation, You are
You're the Light in this darkness, You're the Hope to the hopeless
You're the Peace to the restless, You are

There is no one like our God, there is no one like our God

For greater things have yet to come,
and greater things are still to be done in this city
Greater things have yet to come,
and greater things are still to be done in this city

Greater things have yet to come,
and greater things are still to be done here"

Just in case you're wondering, this song is on the new Passion cd called "God Of This City".

Shelter In The Shadow

Psalm 91 1-4 "1 Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty. 2 This I declare about the Lord: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; He is my God, and I trust him. 3 For He will rescue you from every trap and protect you from deadly disease. 4 He will cover you with His feathers. He will shelter you with His wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection."

Shadows don't normally evoke warm and fuzzy feelings in people. If you've ever watched any of those super predictable horror flicks from the late eighties and early nineties, you know what shadows being cast on the wall means: someone's about to get wacked and it's not going to be pretty. I have to admit that I've been scared by shadows a time or two in my life. But after this Sunday at church, I have a new view about the awesomeness of shadows. We had an amazing service Sunday morning and God was definitely doing something wonderful as people were flooding the altars. After several minutes of corporate prayer, one of the senior adults asked to share something with the church that God revealed to her in a vision. She said that she was standing in our church looking at the stage and there was an enormous shadow covering the church. She said she knew it was Jesus and that His shadow covered the entire church. Then she said that God spoke to her and told her that His Presence is with the church and His hand is on the church to do great things. As she finished speaking, Pastor Wayne (our Student Pastor) read Psalm 91. It was so powerful! Essentially God was telling us individually and as a church body that He was taking care of us. If we stay in the "secret place", in a true, active relationship with God, He promises us that He will overshadow us. In other words, He promises that He will be with us, protect us, and lead us in the paths we need to take. He promises shelter in the shadow, His shadow. No matter what I'm facing or where my path may lead, I know that as long as I stay in relationship with God, true relationship, His shadow is covering me, His truth is protecting me, and His hand is leading me. Thank you God for your Shadow!

A New Look At Ministry

This morning started the final day of the Shift 08 conference at Willow Creek. The early morning session was good. We talked in small groups about staying in one place for the long haul in ministry (which is kind of ironic considering all the moving we've done in the last 15 months). It was really insightful to talk with other Student Pastors about their ability to last at one church and continue to be effective. One guy had been at his church for 12 years! That's practically unheard of in any ministry, particularly Student Ministry. The first main session this morning was about having a deep ministry in a shallow world. Dr. Kara Powell spoke and her insight was extremely eye-opening. She shared many statistics about the drop-off of youth group graduates in their relationship with God once they started college. According to her research, only about 50% of youth group graduates remain committed Christ followers after they begin college. She brought up four questions that we as Student Pastors need to ask of ourselves: 1. What Gospel am I feeding my students (guilt only, grace only, etc.)? 2. Are students' doubts welcome at my table (the concept that we present a table for the students to eat from had been previously established with the question, "We have a feast of resources available to us as leaders today, so why are our students leaving the table of our Student Ministries undernourished?")? 3. How can we connect student's to the church body as a whole and avoid creating a "Kid's Table" scenario (a scenario where the adults eat a nice meal at the "big table" and the kids eat the same nice meal but they have to sit at the kids table and never experience how nice the meal could actually be)? 4. How can I train students to feed themselves (and others) after they graduate from our Student Ministries? She definitely opened my eyes to several areas in need of improvement in Student Ministry cultures, particularly my own way of "doing ministry". More later.

Confused and Overwhelmed

Two words that accurately define me right now are confused and overwhelmed. I find myself at a place in my life where things seem to be turning in many different directions. For the past few months, I've struggled with who I really am in God, what my purpose and calling are, what God wants me to do. In addition to the ministry side of me, much of my secular job situations are changing as well. I've been offered two different positions in the company over the past three months, both of which would change the course of my family financially. One position would be a drop in pay for a year and then a major pay increase would occur and the other would be an instant pay increase (fairly sizable at that). What to do? I'm ready to move forward and do what it is that God has planned. Right now its just a waiting on God time in our lives. Whatever the outcome, I'm waiting on God. So for the moment, being confused and overwhelmed is where I am at. But even still, God is leading me into something deeper, something more than I've ever known before. It's a heavy feeling, an uncomfortable position, but beautiful. The title of a song comes to mind, Broken and Beautiful. I understand it more and more as the time goes on. I don't know what will happen, but I'm trusting God to do what it is He wants with me. I'm empty God, come fill me.

Shift 08, Day 2

So today starts all the breakout sessions at the conference. It started really early this morning at 7:45 with "Cups of Coffee", which was a discussion on starting Student Ministry from Scratch. It was really good this morning. The leader at our table was named Mark and he and his wife are Middle School Pastors at a 3 year old church plant in Georgia. He had some really good stuff to say about where he is at and what he is doing to develop the Middle School Ministry at his church. They started with 7-8 students and are running two services with a total of 50 now. Pretty cool, huh? Anyway, I believe that I'm getting some insight and encouragement that I've needed for a long time this week. It's going to be awesome and I'm excited about what God has next for me. More later.

Shift Conference 2008

First off, I know its been a long, long time since I last posted. Sorry to all of my adoring fans waiting for some new word of wisdom. I hate to disappoint you if you are truly waiting for wise words because you probably have stumbled onto the wrong blog. Anyway, I wanted to post today about my experience so far at the Shift Conference at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL (thanks Hayley for encouraging me to come because it is worth it already). First off can you say enormous! This church is ridiculously huge. I'm so glad that I didn't have to go very far on campus today or else I may have been lost for quite a while. The first session started off with Brian McClaren talking about world-wide crises that we as the church need to engage. It was a good way to kick off the conference. I forgot to mention that Charlie Hall led worship at each of the three sessions today. That was awesome! Can we say massive goatee? He almost looked Jewish, a la David Crowder. The second session was led by Mark Yaconelli. I really, really enjoyed this. He talked about getting away from all of the processes, the forms, and the schedules that we get so tied down to and allowing God to empty us so He can use us. He used the passage of Scripture from Luke 5 where a crowd pressed Jesus and He went into an empty fishing boat and taught the crowd. Then he told the fishermen who worked and toiled all night to go back out and let down there nets again and they caught so many fish that both boats began to sink. Then Peter uttered these words, "Oh, Lord, please leave me—I’m too much of a sinner to be around You." He was essentially saying, "Jesus I can't do this. I'm not good enough or gifted enough. I'm empty, just like my boat was." Mike said that it is this type of person God wants to use right now to speak into the lives of students and lead them into a genuine relationship with God, a relationship that leads them to do more than just exist but rather to live out their faith. Amazing stuff! The last session was led by Shane Claiborne, a native of Tennessee (so at least I was able to hear another southern accent than my own). He talked about moving from a condemning, condescending Christianity where we exclude people to being led by grace and love, seeing with new eyes. Everything seemed to go hand-in-hand today. I pray the rest of the week is as good as today, if not better. I'll be back with more info later.

When Heaven Is Silent

Have you ever had one of those times when it seemed like all of Heaven was silent? It's usually in these times that you really needed to hear from God isn't it? What do you do when nothing seems to be happening, when the Word of God seems to be quiet and the Holy Spirit seems miles away? I wish I could tell you that these times never happen to true believers, but I would be lying. Some of the darkest, most difficult moments as a Christ follower come when you seem to hear, see, or feel nothing at all. Where is God in all of this? Why the haunting silence from the One you need to hear from the most. While I don't have all of the answers (and I even question sometimes whether I have any answers at all), I do know that God promises that He will never leave us or forsake us. That's comforting to know in these times. It doesn't erase the fact that we question and agonize over these times though. I think it's safe to say that we've all been there, crying out to God only to hear nothing in return. Why would a God who loves us so much be so silent when we need Him the most? These questions aren't random thoughts from someone untouched by the quietness of a great God in difficult moments. These questions are born out of experience (past, present, and I'm sure future), out of a heart longing to know, longing to hear from the One who spoke everything into existence, the voice of the One who spoke and the mountains trembled. I long to hear and know Him, truly know Him. In my moments of frustrated silence I've discovered that it is in these times that God shouts the loudest. Many times we can't hear Him because we don't want to hear what He has to say or because we've convinced ourselves that we've slid so far past where God is and where He is moving and speaking that we miss the times He is speaking directly in our situations. C.S. Lewis says, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." That puts a whole new perspective on the trying times. Maybe I'm glutton for punishment, but if it means going through these times of silence for someone to see God and come to know Him, then I'll sing along with Mercy Me as they declare, "Bring me joy, bring me peace, bring the chance to be free. Bring me anything that brings You glory. And I know there'll be days when this life brings me pain, but if that's what it takes to praise You, Jesus, bring the rain."