New Stuff....

It's coming soon, I've been bogged down with school, and the other three are being apathetic losers.

Some stuff I want to talk about:

Service Projects
A Halo Tournament We're Hosting
and Some Baptist Theology...I even have a book for this one.

A life that won't cash out...

Alright, the past few posts I've made have hit the older generation in the church relatively hard, so it's time for one that hits my generation where it hurts, our craving for worldly things. My generation has lost all hope in the church, or at least the church they know. What they've grown up with was a group of people who come together on Sunday and are nice and polite, and then talk garbage about each other the rest of the time. So, if the shining bastion of hope isn't so golden anymore, where do you turn? Obviously somewhere else, my generation has turned to sex, drugs, and fame. The only one that is really new to my generation is fame. Never before has fame been so attainable, or at least that's what people think. We crave things of the world because, we see no difference between the fake crap coming from the church and the fake crap coming from the world. 


Even kids in the youth group have lost their true passion for impacting the world for Christ, or else they never had it. We yearn for entertainment at every thing we do. So, if the youth pastor talks for too long about something important...it's texting time. Unless someone is eating a disgusting food or a funny story is being told....I'm outta here. As someone who's interacted with students in another country, my peers make me sad...I make myself sad. I lose focus, I'm saturated in Christ at minimum 3 times a day and I still slip...the kids in Vietnam...may have never heard of Jesus before...I can't read my Bible because I need to watch Chuck...they've never seen a Bible. My generation has turned our face on God, part of the blame needs to fall on our shoulders, but the church is partially to blame. In a generation that cries out for something real in the darkness, the church responds with party games and camps.


Short and sweet, how can we fix it...once again, these are my flawed human ideas...even more flawed as a teen. So, leave a comment if you think of another one.


# 1: The church has to get real - Telling us what we want to hear is not always the best option. The hard truth is what my generation needs to hear. We may scoff and think you're an idiot, but I guarantee I'll be thinking about what you said when I'm trying to sleep tonight.


# 2: Youth Group needs to be less of a spectacle and more of EPIC LIFE CHANGER - To much to ask? Maybe, but God calls us no matter our age to make a difference in the world. We need to spend less time at camps and more time in the mission field. I'm not saying camps and retreats are a bad thing, they're great for building unity and teaching important lessons, but when they become the focus, there's a problem.


# 3: Build real relationships with Youth - OMG NO WAY! Talk to them, albeit we look weird, talk weird, and will probably be completely weirded out by you talking to us. Building a relationship is the first step in solidifying a youth's trust...obviously...that was a dumb statement.


# 4: Some people don't need to be youth ministers, they need to be DJs - I get that you want to have a huge youth group and the quickest way to do that is to have an entertainer, but that's not how you turn your kids into disciples. Get someone who is willing to invest in the youth and is dedicated to preaching the real deal, not fluff n' stuff. The rest of you, go get a job as a morning radio host or a clown...your call.


# 5: Show us how fake what we pursue is - Pretty simple, tell us how our worldly garbage is just that, garbage. Then show us how God has called us to something higher, something that may be harder, but is so worth it.


# 6: Do work son - Again with the do work stuff. It's a big deal, faith without works is pretty lame. Getting into the nitty gritty will change a youth's perspective. It did mine.




Wow, I only misspelled like 13 words in this whole thing...I'm impressed.


- David

Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the door and...wait where's the people?

  O.K. so that was probably a really lame title, but don't hate, appreciate. So, what I want to discuss is the church, or for those of you who don't get the definition, the people (i.e. the church = people who are involved with said group). Casey recently wrote about him attending a mega church here in town. Where he said that 30 people were saved in a night. 30 people being saved is an amazing victory for God's kingdom. I figured I'd put that in bold in case someone misunderstands what I'm about to say, out of those 30 people how many truly become disciples of Christ and make an impact on the world around them? In a church like that, not many in my opinion. There is a great disconnect in larger churches between mentors and the young christians...or at least that's how I felt when I attended.

  As a child of 7 I was annoyed to be seperated from my mother in a strange place with unnaturally kind people. Albeit I'd attended church most of my life. When I was born my Dad was a part time music minister at a local church, then when I turned 5 we moved to Kansas so he could pursue his calling of being a youth minister. That lasted around a year and a half until my parents divorced, mostly it was communication issues between them. However, the lack of abuse or scandal involved was not enough for the church to be easy on my Dad and they fired him and pretty much kiboshed him from leading a Baptist church ever again. Needless to say it put a damper on my joy to be at church. Alright, now that the rabbit is fully chased back to 7 year old David. I'm attending the same church Casey mentioned in the previous post...I hate it....there's like 70 kids in one room and the 3 teachers are completely overwhelmed....I spend the whole class coloring Jesus green and then eating that crayon...it was tasty. I felt absolutely nothing for the church, or at that time, God. It didn't mean anything to me, the only human connotation I had was a church killing my Dad's joy (or at least that's how I saw it then).

  A few years later I started attending my current church. It began to reignite my joy at church, one of the reasons was that I had life long friends who attended the church. I began attending AWANA meetings and learned more and more about God, I had accepted Christ as a young child, but this really laid the ground work for His rule in my life. Later on I moved up to youth. All the while I'd been worked on by God at school and church with connections between people.

 All this janky background story to say, at it's most basic level, the church is all about people. In my opinion human connection and desire to work on God's mission is what makes a church. Obviously, mega-churches have their appeal, otherwise they wouldn't be mega-churches, but I never got it. Church to me is a group of people banding together to shine a light to the world and hopefully live a life filled with impact. Unfortunately, most churches are the complete opposite. Many churches have become places of comfort and normalcy, a hide away for christians to fill themselves up on sunshine and roses before they face the daunting task of living a lie at work, school, whatever. 


How is it that people have a good connotation with Jesus, but not his people? Churches have been built up into obelisks to themselves. People who know Christ in America are so, weak. We want to live the the American dream of Red, White, Blue, and Green (yes, a Switchfoot omage) which is contradictory to the gospel. We can't live both...we measure our churches success in numbers...attendance, baptisms, etc. We get so wrapped up in income, new paint, worship styles, pulpit .v. no pulpit...we forget the reason we meet together, for the glory and worship of Christ Jesus. 


  How do we fix a mentality? It's something I think about quite a bit actually, our churches have lost all impact on their communities. First of all we have to start making disciples and not just sheep, people who don't have any interest on changing someones life....they're just are there because going to church is what good people are supposed to do.. Here are my thoughts, they probably suck, but let's give it a shot...


Numero uno: Keep yourself in check, live with impact- If you're going to convince other people that our Christian culture is getting it twisted you have to live it. Be a disciple of Christ and share your love with other people, through words and actions.


Numero dos: Get comfortable being uncomfortable - If church is your refuge, check yo-self. Ask questions, don't be afraid to look dumb. If you don't know someone, introduce yourself. Talk to people of different generations and ask them actual questions.


Numero tres: Be real - If we all continue to say "I'm fine" when we're dying on the inside, it's a recipe for fakeness and disaster...and if we're really all that apathetic we're in for a world of hurt, but that's another post.


Numero cuatro: Get involved in your community and your world - Look for opportunities to help local families, schools, businesses, etc. And then try to get other people involved in your endeavors. Obviously, you need to check yourself for cockiness here. Also, there are tons of ways to get involved with your world...the simplest being prayer. Pretty soon I'll put together a list of ways to get involved in the world.


Numero cinco: Lovingly correct people, or at least start the conversation - If someone draws an extra-biblical standard for you or someone other than themselves ask them about it. If someone complains about not enough hymns or too many hymns...ask them where in the bible it gives a hymn to CCM ratio. Obviously not like that. To be honest I'm really bad at this one, I have a tendency to include sarcasm or just jump straight to rudeness. Just start the conversation, "why do you think we need more hymns?" , "O.K. well is that in the Bible?", "If not, why do you think it's right?"


Numero seis: "Do work son" - Like the three teachers I mentioned at the mega church, most church workers are completely overwhelmed. Be willing to work, whether that be at church, school, or along the road as someone gets stuck in a snow storm. Actually, don't just be willing to work...be looking for opportunities. Crazy? I know right.


So, that's what I've got for now, it's 1:30 a.m. and I should be asleep. If this is completely wrong, let me know. I think this should be a running list of how to change our church and the perception of christians nation wide. Or not...your call.

I need to shave, the beard is beginning to curl....
     -David

Failures of the Modern Church

This Saturday night I attended Victory Christian Church, a local mega-church, and noticed how many lives they changed in just one night. It was a saturday evening service, their smallest congregation of about 500. My home church has an average congregation size of 130ish, and all of us are homefolk. Atleast thirty people were saved this evening, and my home church hasn't saved a life in a year. When a church is that successful it makes you wonder what they are doing differently. Victory Christian Center is just one of those places that you feel GOD is there. Skelly, my home church, has not had a "GOD moment" in years...What are they doing different?
I have decided that the difference is prayer. prayer. Prayer is a word that is tossed around an awful lot. When I personally pray I usually don't feel the connection between me and GOD. But tonight I truely talked to GOD. I actually felt that weird tingly feeling that exist only when GOD is there. After tonight I have decided that in the success of our church we need GOD. Without Him we are saying we can do it alone. And I dont know about you. but I can not do anything without GOD.

--casey

The Start...

So, who are we, what are we about, and what is this site for? 


To start, there are four of us that will start out writing on here, later on more people may tag on or make guest appearances, but nothing immediately. If you want to know more abouts us personally check out the "About Us" section in the left portion of the page, but this is going to be more about our thoughts. Casey, Jesse, Jimmy and I started to talk about the idea of a blog one afternoon sitting in our youth building. It came about as a way to express our frustration with, well...the crap that had been going on in our church. We felt like we were wasting our time doing nothing because people were scared to move on. Or at least, that's the way I see it. We felt compelled to share our opinions on life, church, Christ, and whatever else.
 I think that pretty well meshes it up, but for those of you with ADD here it is summed up. We're four christian guys looking to make an impact in the world, these are our ideas and reports from successes and failures in the field of life.


It wants me to capitalize christian...not gonna happen,
-David