Our high school winter retreat is designed to be just that… a retreat. no heavy program, no obligatory games – just a weekend carved out of life and designated for hanging out with Jesus and with friends.

Jesus uses that word a handful of times throughout the gospels.  Interested to know what sorts of things Jesus warns his followers about?  Don’t these sound about right:

Christian, BEWARE of angry rock music!

Christian, BEWARE of MTV!

Christian, BEWARE of losing the moral high ground!

That’s what we seem to be most worried about these days.  Those aren’t found int he Bible.  The actual list is very telling of what creeps into our minds when we are following Jesus.  Here’s what Jesus actually warned his disciples with -

BEWARE not to perform righteous acts in front of people (<– Tells of latent hypocrisy)

BEWARE of false prophets (<– Calls them sheep in wolves clothing // definition of hypocrisy)

BEWARE of the yeast of religious leaders (<– that yeast is hypocrisy)

BEWARE of how you treat a brother in sin

BEWARE of teachers of the law(<– because of their showiness)

BEWARE of being overtaken by anxieties of life (<– the product of trying to be something you’re not)

When Jesus tells his disciples to BEWARE in the new testament, He is warning them not to fall into that trap of hypocrisy.  It is an easy, easy trap to fall into.  Jesus seems to be very concerned that our interior matches our exterior; that we don’t just do what Jesus tells us to do, but we are who Jesus has made us to be.

Read through Matt 6:1-18.  Jesus lays it all out there: his disciples seek Heaven’s approval, and hypocrites seek the approval of their peers.

Who’s approval are you after?

BEWARE.

you can determine so much about a person by what they do. It reveals what someone is passionate about, where their loyalties are, what they value, etc. We ascribe so much of our identity to our professional life. I don’t think a person should be pigeonholed by what they do – but my point is that what someone DOES can reveal a lot who that person IS.

Isn’t it the same with God? Couldn’t it be that if we want to know more about who God IS, we could study what God DOES? From The Red Sea to The Sea of Galilee and from Mt. Siani to the Mount of Olives – if we pay attention to what God does, we can learn so much about who he is: it’s impossible to separate the actions of God from the character of God.

Lets ask God the question, “So, what do you do?”  and see what we can learn from his answer.

REACH WEEKEND is a high school weekend retreat that is designed to give students a chance to draw near to God and reflect him out into the community.  From Friday night until Sunday afternoon – we will, together, participate in 3 main ways to do that:  worship – serve – party.

This year, REACH WEEKEND highlights 2 main elements of the Christian Faith – <i>the fasting</i> and<i> the feast.</i>  Both are so evident and so necessary in Jesus’ own life and relationship with the Father.  It is easy (especially during the Lenten season) to focus on either fast or feast, but we forget that without one it is impossible to fully enjoy and engage the other.  Some people lean too far to one side – they portray Jesus as a man who was always solemn and somber, like he walked around scolding people for having too much fun.  Others fall in a category on the other extreme:  they picture Jesus as a warm, fuzzy guy that never gets real with people; they make him a ‘seeker sensitive’ type who doesn’t call his followers to hard stuff like fasting.  The problem, then, is that the Church becomes either overwhelmingly judgmental and exclusive or overwhelmingly permissive.

Jesus fasted.  Jesus feasted.  Jesus drew near to his Father in both, and if our lives are supposed to be lived in response to Jesus’, then we should fast and feast.  Jesus is the king on both Friday and Sunday – we have to live in the light of both.  We’ll explore this truth during REACH WEEKEND by living it.  We will worship, serve and party all in light of this truth:  in Jesus there is time for fasting and for feasting.

[Click on the image above to register for REACH WEEKEND]

i’d like to go on record saying I LOVE DANCING WITH MY WIFE.  it helps that she is an incredible dancer.  she is the type of dancer that makes her partner look really good.  she could probably dance with a lobster (if she didn’t have a crippling fear of crustaceans) and make the lobster look like a fantastic dancer too.

she makes me look good on the dance floor.  but regardless, i love to dance with her.  honestly, its probably on my list of top 10 things i enjoy.

in high school – i had a friend who had a poster in his room that read “God danced the day you were born.”  i always loved that poster – its one of those “warm fuzzy” posters that make you smile and think happy thoughts.  as “warm n fuzzy” as it is though – i love that idea:  the idea that God loves me so much that he danced when i was born.  i’d like to think that his ‘dance’ on the day i was born was in anticipation of the day when we would dance together.  he knew that one day he and i would dance together in heaven – celebrating the glory of God – together with my savior.

i think dancing with my wife is so fun – because God wants me to anticipate that one day i’ll dance in heaven.  i think he wanted to give us a glimpse of that joy – so he lets us dance with our spouses, our children and our friends.  the joy we have here on earth is but a glimpse and an anticipation of the joy of an eternity with our creator.

until then, though, i love dancing with my wife.

wow!  i thought an aggie brainwashing was bad!  you win, bama fan.  you win.

i think what Mark Driscoll says about “outreach” in the Radical Reformation is perfect; he says the term “outreach” “implies we will not embrace lost people but will keep them at least an arms length away.”  we have to make sure we keep non-believers at a distance – we wouldn’t want them close enough to get our clothes dirty.

i have to refuse to let my cynicism get the best of me; because while it may seem that the word evangelism has become trite – the idea and the practice of LOVING OTHERS INTO A RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS will never be old or unimpressive.  so lets figure out what a practical, daily life definition of evangelism is.

In his book, A New Kind of Youth Ministry, Chris Folmsbee does a really good job of illustrating why an over-emphasis on “event evangelism” just doesn’t work (in a student ministry setting).  by “event evangelism” i mean using a costly, program-driven event to draw people into the church and to Jesus.  could look like a concert, a bmx show, a comedy night or a big name guest speaker.  whatever form it takes, the “event evangelism,” according to Folmsbee, is not effective in revealing the Kingdom of God.  having said that, Coleman reminds us in The Master Plan of Evangelism that Jesus spoke to large crowds on occasion.  Just keep in mind that it was not his only medium to reveal the kingdom of God.  i love the “big event.”  its fun and it gets people in the doors of a church who would normally have zero interest.  it just can not be our only attempt to “evangelize.”

for those of us who do not have a personal budget to bring in a professional football player to speak and a christian recording artist to play a show to a couple hundred people- how do we do show people who Jesus is? how do we evangelize – or “proclaim good news?”  what does that look like?

flat out, here’s what i think evangelism should look like in everyday life.  it starts with two things:  1.  a desperate, reckless love for Jesus.  2.  a genuine, unconditional love for the people around you.  evangelism is how you bring those two together.  evangelism is how we make those two things meet.  if i love Jesus as much as i say i do, then i want everyone – EVERYONE – i know to experience God’s redemption in their own life.

obviously there is a pretty significant range of how to make that happen – from “silent servant” on one pole and “bullhorn guy” on the other.  and part of that spectrum is an obedience to cultural context – what works in one city may be a flop somewhere else; or what is super effective in one ministry situation may be out right offensive in a different one.

however played out the word ‘evangelism’ may be in sunday morning settings or friday night events, it should be a natural response to being impacted by the gospel; like how in matt 11 Jesus tells disciples that if they spend enough time with him, they’ll learn ‘the unforced rhythms of grace’ [the message].  i think sharing Jesus’ love is just one of those rhythms.  evangelism will become less and less about what my t-shirt says or how well i can navigate ‘Romans Road,’ and more about radical love finding its way into everything i do.

Jesus (check out what Paul says about him in Colossians)-

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

we’re starting a brand new SHIFT series that’s (surprise, surprise) all about Jesus.  He makes 7 I AM statements in the book of John; he says things about himself that let us in on who he is and what his kingdom is all about.  each week, we’ll look at a different I AM statement from John and look at what it really says about who Jesus is and why we should care.

Jesus calls himself:

bread of life

light of the world

door for the sheep

good shepherd

resurrection and life

way, truth, and life

true vine

At the end of the day, Jesus just wants us to know him and to love him, and that’s what SHIFT (and the rest of life) is all about:  know him, make him known.  So come worship, celebrate in community and read the word with us every wednesday @ 8pm.

worship.  word.   community.  shift.

Sitting in the backyard garden of a women’s outreach center, a woman recounts a life that seems to belie her young age of 20 and her name, Joy.

First I was made to take drugs. Then I was made to service as many as 20 men a day. If I refused they threatened to put me in jail without food,” she said.

“Mate,” an overweight, chain-smoking Australian growls in between gulps of a San Miguel beer as he teeters on a bar stool. “This place (The Philippines) is heaven — the girls are young, the beer’s cheap, and it’s never cold. What’s there not to like?”

Back at the bar, the chain-smoking Aussie is informed of Joy’s harrowing experience in Angeles. He shrugs his shoulders half heartedly, weighing his reply as a bunch of Harleys driven by riders adorned in Swedish flags rumble past.

“I don’t know, I mean it’s just all a bit of fun. Those girls have a free will, right?” he asks. “Live and let live, I say.”

its so easy to snarl and be sickened by “Mate’s” response – its just all a bit of fun – but if we stand idle, if we do nothing to stop human trafficking and child prostitution … are we any better?  our silence enforces Mate’s exploitation.

The article goes on to talk about The Renew Foundation – how they are redeeming young women by giving them an education, a place to stay and a livelihood outside of prostitution.  They are creating a way for young Philippine women to escape the trap of forced prostitution.  the provide a glimmering light of hope in a dark, dark city.

i posted the link, and encourage you to read the CNN article.  but if we’re not going to do anything about human trafficking, I’m pretty sure we are encouraging it.