Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Let's Be Radical

God has really been afflicting my heart with so much passion for the ministries I'm in and the ministries that I see around me...not only at RiverTree, but at churches across the area...and I just want to proclaim out to the Church..."let's be radical!!" I'm not saying there's a formula or a specific programatic way that this needs to be done...but God's been showing me that He needs to be the center of a ministry, no matter its size or stated "importance" within a church, and that will in turn reflect upon our approach to the ministry...so...

So let's be radical--
Let's be centered in You...
Let's lead them to You through worship...
Let's show them Your truth...
Let's give them something to talk about...
Let's show them something better than what the world thas to offer...
Let's be genuine...
Let's be loving...
Let's be deep...
Let's be a community...
Let's be transparent...
Let's be different...
Let's be real...
Let them see You...
Let them experience You...
Let them be in love with You...
Let them be filled with Your Spirit...
And let them know You.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

What's Subscribing?

Just fyi--in case you didn't notice...not the last time I changed a bunch of stuff, but the time before when I added a bunch of stuff to the right side of the screen, I also added a "subscribe" option. This makes it very convenient for you, the more deticated readers, to be notified of a new update on my blog. Just put in your e-mail and you'll get a nice reminder e-mail everytime I add a new post. So no more checking my blog to see if there are updates; let the computer do the checking for you! You should do it! Be a subscriber folks!

Thursday, November 24, 2005

A Cool New Look

Well, I kind of got tired of the old template (and some stuff was majorly screwed up) so I decided to go ahead and find a new one....so welcome to my *new and improved* blog! So tomorrow is thanksgiving, or rather, today is thanksgiving. I can't believe this year has flown by so quickly. I've only got two more weeks and then exams and I'm done for the semester! For those of you who aren't currently residing in Ohio, the first big snow was today. The Holidays are here...I love this season. It comes in a close second with fall and all the changing colors. Life is good....God is good. Honestly, who would have thought to make the leaves turn an amazing color or to have water freeze into intricately made flakes (while sometimes annoying when you have to scrape them off you car) which glisten in the sun and coat the grass? I know I'm definitly not that creative, haha. He is amazing. Well it's getting rather late, so I'll probably update more thoroughly later when I'm not so tired. Have a good night!

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Lovely Ohio


Alright, this is a picutre for all of you who are always complaining about how Ohio sucks so bad. I took this picture a while ago out in my backyard and am just now finally getting around to posting it up here. Anyways, that's not my point. This semester is quickly coming to a close. I've got 2 days next week and then thanksgiving break...then only 2 weeks left! So needless to say, the end-of-the-semester madness is almost in full swing. Luckily I think I've been keeping up pretty well. Andrew and Rebekah move into their house tomorrow, which is exciting. We've been over there constantly helping them paint and get things ready. I probably should have gone over today so that I could help out clean or something since I can't be there tomorrow, but I'm getting a head start on some of these papers due within the next few weeks. Tomorrow should be a fun day though. We've got church in the morning, then we're having worship team practice so that we can go to Ryan and Josh's show on Tuesday, then "the gathering" is tomorrow night.

The gathering is the tri-church event that's happening with Rivertree, First Friends, and First Christian. I think it's awesome that, even though there have been some struggles putting these together, that these three churches are making and effort to connect with eachother. It really saddens me that so many churches are at war with eachother instead of realizing that they are all part of the body of Christ. How awesome would it be if everyone could for once forget about their "church" and truly become the Church? No church wars, no feelings of superiority, no hatred, and no divisions. What if, for once, we saw churches combine instead of divide, and work together instead of against eachother? Then people could really see the unity and love talked about in the Bible coming from the Church.

Monday, November 14, 2005

The Health and Wealth Gospel

Well, sorry it's been so long. I was house/kid-sitting last week so I didn't really get a chance to update or anything. Really nothing different has been going on, I can't believe semester is over in only 4 more weeks!

So, I went to Faith Family Church (formerly known as CCF) a couple weeks ago just to check it out. It seems that a lot of people don't really like it a lot, so I figured that I would just have to go see it myself before I was to go around bashing the thing. It was a perfect example of a church that has all of the resources in the world, but doctrinally is terribly unsound. I still want to go check out their college service sometime, just to see if it's the same way...and Josh insisted that I must see the youth room all set up. I glanced in, but didn't get a good look or anything.

Well, I'm going to get going...Crowder put up some chords/tabs on his site, so I think I'm going to dig into them. Man, he has the best job ever...touring the country and leading worship...amazing!

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Christmas

I know it's not really Christmas time yet (not that that means we can't listen to some specific songs just because they've become associated with Christmas) But anyways, I was just in the mood to listen to this song tonight. I think I forgot how much I love the words and the lyrics and the sweetness of David Crowder*. I'm even going to go out on a limb here and say that this is probably my favorite song of all time. I've seriously just been hitting "refresh" on my browser for the past 40 minutes listening to the same song over and over again. You've got to listen to the whole thing, because it gets awesome at the end...just saying it over and over. It get's intense in a David Crowder kind of way.



*In case you didn't know Crowder released it online in 2003 after the release of illuminate that year.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Sorry It's Been So Long

Well, it's been quite the week...or I guess it's been more than a week since I've updated. It's been pretty crazy with tests and papers galore. I'm still managing to do pretty well in most of my classes though, which is good. I need some chai or something, I'm so exausted tonight. (and it's only 7:45!) I was up pretty late last night writing an Old Testament paper on the Domumentary Hypothesis and then studying fo accounting. Old Testament is surprisingly interesting. It just gives you such a more complete understanding (not that your understanding of the Bible is ever truly complete) of the New Testament when you can see how all these things are so inter-connected.

So, I've been having a hard time understanding how that thing at David Crowder's church could have happened on sunday. Moreover, what in the world would I have done if I were there. I didn't even know him, and I was somehow overwhelmingly saddened and affected by the news. It just doens't add up.