Impact 2009

For me, going to Impact in Des Moines, IA has always been a highlight. Since I was a High School student, I enjoyed going to downtown Des Moines, spending a couple days recalibrating my relationship with God and then coming home ready to hit the hard the running hard after Christ thing. I am excited that I now have the opportunity and privilege to take High School students to Impact this year. I'm excited to see what God will do in and through their lives as they are asked to think deeply about where they are with God and with each other. I have been taking Student Leadership teams for a few years now and it has always been something that helps us grow together in our relationship with each other and unify us as a group.

I am completely convinced that student leadership is imperative for student ministry to occur well. The dangers of having student leadership being invovled scare me for sure. Having students lead breeds a concept of exclusivity and I have to work very hard to fight against that. I have seen great student leaders leave our student ministry and do some great things for God in the contexts that they find themselves in. When I came to West E. Free, there was someone doing what I had always thought was a way to breed and develop leaders. She was working with a team to build team concept and leadership qualities and principles. Becky Lutes was finding ways to creatively build leaders.

One of my big rocks this year in student ministry is to develop leaders, both male and female, throughout student ministry. And I believe that as we continue to offer programs such as "basic training" (a beginning conceptual course on leadership) and "Servant Team" (A group of High School students that are committed to serving their youth group) we will have accomplished or at least moved more toward the goal of developing leaders throughout student ministries.

Man. I love what God is allowing me to do as I work with students. I met with a student leader this morning and to see what God is doing in his life is incredibly exciting. I pray for our students daily, that they would seek God first and that they would fall more and more in love with him all the time.

Anyway, I am looking forward to Impact 2009 in Des Moines, IA. God is working now as we prepare for this event!

New Year's and Such.

This week is "New Year's" yet again. It happens every year. And every year, I get somewhat nostalgic. I enjoy my life. I enjoy my family. I enjoy my church. God has given me an incredible place to serve him with incredible people to serve with.

But there is a feeling that I feel yearly at the New Year that I wish that I didn't feel. And I believe that this feeling is really where "new year's resolutions" come from. It is the feeling of regret. It is the feeling of not doing what you had intended to do in the past year. So, to not feel regretfully nostalgic, people tend to make New Year's resolutions. And I have refused to do so for a LONG time. I refuse to wallow in my regret and misery and then make some comittment based on the feeling that is currently pervading my heart. I make comittments through the rest of the year, to God, to my wife, to my son, to my church, and to friends. I am not sure why I need to force a comittment right here and right now simply because it is a new year. Instead of being regretfully nostalgic, I want to instead be joyfully thankful for all that God has given me and be content where he has me right now!

With all of that being said, regret is not wrong, often it forces us to change the pattern of behavior that we are engaged in. But it can become wrong the more I dwell on it and beat myself up over it. My biggest regret the past year is that there were times where I didn't allow God to use me as his tool. There were times when I should have submitted to who HE is and allowed him to drain me of who he is.

Have a great week everyone and Have a great "thankful" New Year!

-PC.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Have a great day!

My Current Read.

I should finish it over Christmas time when we are in Alleman at mom and dad's house. It's a good read that is messing with me.

Basically, Jim Henderson takes an atheist to church and asks him to comment on what he hears, sees, smells, tastes, and experiences. It's interesting stuff! The heart of the book is an outcry to our local churches across America to take into account that people walk into our buildings week after week and simply put, have never ever been in anything like what they are experiencing on a Sunday morning. We often don't do a great job of making them feel welcome or helping them understanding why we do what we do or even what we do on a Sunday morning. The assimilation process is fairly poor in most churches across America. I love what Bill Hybels and WillowCreek Church has done by developing a "seeker sensitive" model of a Sunday morning but in this book, the atheist reacts very differently than I expected him to as he experiences worship at one of the biggest churches in the midwest. He is fairly harsh. I must remember that the point of the excercise was for him to comment on the models of ministry that he experiences.

I have often dreamed of a local church that would be focused on a believer and yet reach out wholeheartedly to the missing. Those that are not part of the local body should be those that we greet and love on and help to understand why we do what we do.

God, that you would help West E. Free to develop into this local group of people that overflows with your amazing love for those that don't know you yet! Give us ears to hear and eyes to see those that need your touch through us on a Sunday morning and through every other day in the week!

By the way, if you are looking for an easy, intriguing read, I recommend this book. :)

Courage to be a Truth Seeking Christian.

The following is a compilation of thoughts that I have thought for years as I experienced college and then being in a local church. There seems to be question within the structure of evangelicalism as to whether or not we hold to the bible as "THE authority" or "AN authority." I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that my life needs to be modeled within the confines and structures of God's word and his word only. This is the genesis of this discussion.

I have been thinking recently about the structure of the local church. I went to college with guys part of "Gen X" who were thinking in this paradigm of "emergent church structure." Let me attempt to define what I mean by that statement. Emergent Church structure would be a networked church, intertwined with relationships, small, focused on each other and the community that the people have missed for years with large church structure. It is a church that seeks to be "different" and has begun to redefine (or at least tried) the face of Christianity. Emergent Church structures recognize that we are living in a very different world today than was 25 years ago. We are working with different types of people that have very different experiences than the "tradition" church often understands to be the general audience.

While my emergent church "Gen X" friends wouldn't like that I defined what there church is about, I have my questions with the emergent church and the questions come back to the very basic belief of the authority of God's word. I am a believer in this idea of deep intimate community where we share things together. Where there is authenticity, where there is powerful connections and believe that God's word says this is important for the believer to be a part of. My question comes with the straying from God's word. My emergent friends would say that God's word is certainly "an" authority. I believe that God's word is "the" authority. And if we are going to engage in a game of symantics, I would say that God can work through any structure that truth from his word is foundational in! God's word is powerful, it is sharper than any double edge sword and will penetrate the depths of our heart.

Maybe the following is what i respond negatively too...

It's a thought about truth and instead of truth being already defined, all of a sudden the truth is being defined now. God's word has already defined truth! It's already there for us!

This discussion of emerging church (changing the face of Christianity) has become more about change than looking at God's word and really understanding the roots of our faith, the foundations that God has given us to work with. No doubt that church structures in America need to be evaluated. No doubt that we need to be biblically sound in the way that we "do church" and instead of doing church, we need to "Be the church." No doubt that we need community, intimacy, accountability, but we also need truth to inundate and capture our hearts and that truth must be gleaned from God's word.

I love West E. Free Church. I love what happens here week in and week out. One of the "programs" that West E. Free has put into place is "life groups." This is a small group of people that get together for the sole purpose of accountability and community. And that is exactly what I have experienced. We experience the biblical element of community with God's people weekly. But we don't water down truth at West E. Free. There is a comittment from leadership to establish God's word as "The Authority." It is what we look to for direction and decision making.

I also love the fact that West E. Free is focused not just on one age group but on all age groups. If you look at our church, we have someone or a group of people from age 0 to age 90! One of the marks of emergent church structure that I have seen is reaching the "Gen X'er" and while I think that it is the dream of the emergent church to reach out to all age groups, the focus, target audience is the Gen X'er and so that is who this structure will reach. God's word reaches across boundaries of Generation, it reaches across boundaries of experience and penetrates deeply! I am reminded of Psalm 145 that says that "one generation will commend your works to another!" We will tell stories of God's faithfulness to the next generation as we seek to teach and admonish them in the faith.

J.D. Grear posted an article back in July that I began to process and think through which was the catalyst for this discussion in my head.

I'm excited about where the "Church" the body of Christ is going in its' quest for truth. I am shocked at the lack of authority that churches (local churches) have put on God's word as they make decisions within their communities. I am shocked at the focus on community rather than focus on truth first.

I do not mean to be harsh in this statement with the emergent church. There are some focuses of those that would call themselves part of this movement that are very biblical. I would love to see someone hold to the authority of scripture and yet bring scripture to light in some of the areas that the emergent church has brought it to light.

This is a conversation that I have had with myself for a few years. It's an ambiguous definition-less excercise that is often fairly frustrating for me to sort through.

God, give me the wisdom and understanding to follow your word completely and understand what your law and definition of following YOU is. I desire to seek your word and your truth and base everything that I do from those seekings and findings.

Amen.

Facebook? Is it gone?

At the top of my internet explorer browser, I have a quicklink to my facebook account. Every time that I want to log in to my facebook account, I simply click on the tab and it takes me there. Today, this afternoon, at 4:20 to be exact, I clicked on that link and it didn't work. Every other page that I attempted to go to worked, but my facebook account would not open. The internet browser kept saying that I wasn't connected to the internet or something crazy like that...

I was baffled, broken, confused. Me without a facebook account? Goodness. What was I to do? Then I began to remember the days before facebook. The days when I would open a browser and not click on the facebook tab to see if anyone had thrown a sheep at me or asked me to be part of their world changing scheme. I didn't check to see if a long lost friend had sent me a message or to see if one of my students had posted something on my wall. What did I do before facebook? As I reflected on that question, I realized that facebook has simply added one more thing into my day. It has added a "social network" to my day of social networks. The downside is that often, it is a false social network. We can send all kinds of messages and wall posts, but nothing beats the face to face interaction where relationships are forged.

I sometimes fear that we are creating a culture with subtle disconnects of people. In a culture that screams for depth of relationship, we do away with any chance of depth that we might have in the name of facebook, or email, or myspace.

I will continue to use facebook (If I can ever log back in) but there is certainly an awareness that I must see it as a tool and not a social network. It certainly can be used for communication but it is not a relationship forging utility. Nothing beats the good old face to face meeting and discussing something to forge a relationship!

Thanksgiving Vacation.

We had a good time in Orange City and South Dakota during thanksgiving. Here are some pictures! One is of me and Isaiah playing my brother in law with the wii and one is of my wife Cassie after she recieved her camera...(which I enjoy using too. :) )