Easter's Coming

I have had the opportunity to go to Café Caturra here in Midlothian for lunch today with some great people. We have been discussing Easter and this has really made me think about Easter. We are still almost two months away from this time of year, but as believers we need to start preparing ourselves.

What exactly do we need to prepare ourselves for? I believe that we need to prepare ourselves to be real. I started thinking about Easter and what we think as believers will happen on Easter. This is the way I see it, we get to Easter and we think about all the people who do not typically go to church and the fact that they will be in our seats on this very important day when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Here is what I think goes on in the mind of a lot of Christians about Easter and the loads of unchurched people that don our doors.

I think that too many times we think that because we are going to talk about the resurrection and tell about what Jesus did for us, that we will see multitudes get saved and start coming to church. I believe that this is a myth. I believe that we really would never even know if those people that said they gave their lives to God really did. Sure we will know by their fruit, but at the same time that decision is a very personal one between them and God.

Here is what I think about Easter and how as a church we should be. We should be real, we should talk about the resurrection and what it means, don’t get me wrong there, but we should also try to show people who we truly are. Instead of trying to go for the salvations and possibly never see those people again, maybe, just maybe we should try to find ways to invite people into our communities so that then we may get the opportunity to see their lives transformed.

Too many times we are so concerned with the salvations in the church, when we really need to be looking for the transformations in people’s lives. In essence we are not inviting people into salvation during this time of year, we are inviting them into our community of people who are trying to live their lives for Christ. Because of that, maybe people will see the realness in us and want to be a part of that community, then given time we will see the transformation that we long for to make us look good for a weekend.

I am not trying to say that we do not need Easter or the message that is contained within, what I am saying is that we need to rethink how we package it in order to see more people get involved in the local community we call a church. If we do that, we will see growth and transformation. This year, let’s be real and show people that visit our churches what it truly means to be a part of our community. Don’t dilute the message, but make it come across in a way that shows them what we are all about.

Lent

For those of you that read my blog, first let me say thank you! I would love to hear from some of you. You can always email me at ashort01@me.com or leave a comment here.

I wanted everyone to know that I will be doing a series on this blog about the lent season. I will be following the 40 days toward justice series for lent offered by actingonaids.org. I encourage you to take that journey with me as we look at the 7 weeks of lent. I will be posting thoughts on the study and hope that you can follow along with me. If you need to order the study, go to actingonaids.org and request it.

Thanks for reading . . .

Be:Interested

I am doing a series at church right now called "Popularity Contest." This week is called Be:Interested. As I was researching and doing some writing on this particular week I came across something interesting. As I go through the next three weeks of this series, I plan on making some extra notes here, so be sure to check back each week to keep the discussion going.

I read on a website about a 12 year old boy named Craig who saw a news story about another 12 year old boy in Pakistan who was murdered for speaking out against child labor in his country. This boy Craig decided to do something about it and started an organization called "Free the Children," which is an organization dedicated to ending child labor and poverty in other countries. It started with this 12 year old boy and now has branches in 35 countries (source: www.idealist.org).

After reading this I started thinking about this whole concept of being interested. See this little boy was interested in making a difference in our world, making a change with child labor and poverty. It seems to me that there really wasn't anyone standing in his way. Here I am also thinking to myself that with branches in 35 countries and being started by a little kid, wow is the only word I can even begin to think of. So now to the point of what I am getting at. . .

If this kid can get interested in something and make such a huge impact on our world, what would it be like if all of us started being more interested in others more than ourselves? I look at our culture and see how self focused we are and how our need and want of things has taken over our thought of being interested in anyone else. Even the little things like stopping to help someone on the side of the road, becomes a chore because we are talking on our cell phone to people we know, in our car, most likely late for something and just don't have time to stop.

What if so many people stopped to help that person on the side of the road that it caused a traffic jam?

What if we all just started being interested in others and maybe even what's going on in the world around us? How would our culture be different? What kind of movements would we see?

What happens too much is that we try so hard to be interesting, that we can't be interested in others. I am probably one of the most guilty people here, but I want to change. I want to help you be interested and I want to be interested in others.

I would love to hear some thoughts out there on how to be:interested. We are called by the great commandment to Love God and Love People. We need to really start living this out. I just think of all the things we could do together if we would start being interested. We could change the world. . .

A challenge

It's been a few days since I've posted anything on my blog and I have been doing a lot of thinking and preparing mentally for some change in my life and in the life of the people around me. Do you ever look at your life and everything that you have and feel guilty? I do . . . I mean I have so much that I am very thankful for and the things that I don't have that I want are so minor in the grand scheme of things.

Over the past several months I have been making an effort to change some things in my life, including what I eat, how I shop, and trying my best to be a little more "green." There has been another thought in my mind that I have been wrestling with over the last couple months. If you know me well, you know that I have a fetish for shoes. I have about 90 pairs of shoes in my closet right now. This shoe thing has controlled my shopping habits (literally, like today I was at target and I went straight to the shoes, which were on sale, but I resisted :) and a lot of my life.

Ok, so now you know about how much I love shoes and wearing different shoes and having lots of shoes. Well, the thing that I've been wrestling with over the last couple of months is giving away most of my shoes. This is a big struggle for me as a person, because I love my shoes!!! So here is what conclusion I have come to and what I plan to do. I am going to keep my flip flops and only a couple pairs of my shoes that I need, and I am giving the rest away. This is something that is very difficult for me and something that I don't necessarily want to do, but know that I need to. So that's what I'm going to do . . .

Now to the challenge part. I want each person who reads this to think about their "stuff" and find out what you have a hold on like I did with my shoes. Then I want you to give it up, to give it away to make a difference in the world. There is so much stuff going on out there that you may think that my shoes might not make a difference, but I assure you that my shoes and whatever you have will make a difference. It's the little things that we do that make a difference. So find what you are holding on to and give it away!!!

Winter Retreat thoughts part II

Since my last post, I have been doing some thinking about Winter Retreat and what happened there. Yes the music was amazing and yes the messages were great and Saturday night was amazing. There was freedom in the room on Saturday night and believe me I don’t discount that one bit. In fact, I had the most amazing time being in the presence of God that night!!

The thing that I have been thinking about most since we got back is how to take what happened at Winter Retreat and incorporate it into my everyday life and for you out there how you can incorporate it into your everyday life. Therefore I was thinking about the church and what it really means for us to be the church.

For you students out there, it is time for you to stop going to the church and start becoming the church. I don’t mean stop going to your worship service all together, I mean stop looking at the church as a place you go and start looking at it as a place for transformation of your life so that you can go out into your world and make a difference.

It’s time for us to start living our lives outside of the church walls, making a difference in our communities. What does that look like? That is volunteering at a local charity or the food bank, or habitat for humanity. It means getting involved in the One organization and maybe the effort in Darfur and maybe volunteering on your local board for Nothing But Nets.

It is time for this generation to stand up and say no more. Saying no more to surface Christianity that does nothing but make people think we are a bunch of kooks. It’s time to say no more to staying in the church and having an event just to get together and say “yay we had an event.” It’s time to say no more to the violence in our schools, to the injustice in the world.

It is time for our generation to stand up and make a difference, and if you think that you can not do that, then you need to start realizing that you can. There are so many little things that you can do in your community, you just have to look out for them. At the end of this post, I will give some websites for you to check out with little things you can do to make a difference.

So, coming back from retreat what are you going to do? Are you going to continue to sit there in your church doing nothing and remaining stagnant? Or are you going to start doing something to be the example for your generation? At retreat you got rid of and free from some secrets that have been stopping you from being the difference. Now you have the opportunity to do something different. Something that will make this world look at you.

What will you choose?


Websites to visit:

www.tomsshoes.com
www.twloha.com
www.nothingbutnets.net
www.one.org
www.savedarfur.org
www.cvfb.org
www.habitat.org

Winter Retreat Thoughts

It's amazing to me how you can be in the middle of one of the hardest most tiring days and weeks you have ever had, yet still be blown away by the power of God. Tonight was the main service, the big daddy of services for Winter Retreat '09 and it was totally tubular. Why do I say totally tubular? Because it was 80's night.

Here's the skinny on what happened. Three words: God showed up! I am sitting here at the hotel after the service and it is almost 2am and I have only had like 16 hours of sleep in the last 5 days, but that really didn't matter tonight. God showed up!

I have not felt so free to really praise God like we did tonight in a long time. I haven't felt as free to pray for students in the way that I feel God wants me to in a long time, but tonight I had that opportunity. The prayer time one on one with students was probably the single highlight for me for this entire retreat.

I want students to go back to their cities and schools and church buildings and start being the church. I hope that students will go back and not just go back to normalcy because we had another retreat, but go back to a changed heart. I pray that these students left their heart on the altars and left with God's heart. That is the heart that they need, if they are going to change the world. The calling is not to just change their lives or have a program at a church, the goal is to go and make a difference in the world. In the next couple of days I will post more about how we as the church need to be making a difference in the world and our cities and schools. We have too many issues in our culture to just go back and be the same. We need to make a difference . . .

Be looking for my next post . . .

Winter Retreat prep: Day 2

So we have now been in Harrisonburg for a whole day and got a lot done. The greatest thing about this trip so far has been the opportunity to stop and just talk with people. We have met some new friends from Maine and it has been wonderful to hear their story. The wild thing about it is that sitting with these guys since last night and sharing stories of life, etc. has truly made me realize how close we are as the family of God. We may have just met yesterday, but it feels like we have known each other forever. My hope is that these friendships will continue as strong as they have begun and even grow stronger as we leave Sunday and go our separate ways. It will be difficult to leave these new friends, knowing they live so far away, but I know that the time we shared together will be valuable to us in the future.

Now onto what is going on with winter retreat. We have unloaded the box truck and await the trailer that is coming in tomorrow. In the morning we will be arriving at the church to set up all the equipment that right now looks like just a big pile of a lot of stuff. It is a little bittersweet having retreat be here, as this is the last one we are putting together for the district. This is great, because next year we can just come and enjoy the time to minister to students, but at the same time kinda sucks because we have so much fun this week, as much as we complain and as little sleep as we get.

I will try to update everyone again . . . and look forward to seeing everyone on Friday night! It's going to be awesome!!!