My church

I've been attending a gospel Catholic church in my neighborhood. I really enjoy the service, the music is great and the message often has some kind of tie-in or application to issues facing the area. Once the priest actually asked people to raise hands to attend a meeting on development affecting the neighborhood!

This week I met people for the first time--and got invited to join the young adult choir!

Here are some pictures from the church.

It's called St Teresa's of Avila. My mother especially liked the picture of the black Jesus above the altar.

Gracism: inclusion and love

I often write in someway inspired by a book I've read. It helps me summarize and think through the book.

This book I'm still thinking through, this may just be a way for me to remember key points to myself...so bear with me if it's therefore boring.

Gracism: the Art of Inclusion by Anderson
This book says what if we combined the terms grace and racism--we'd get gracism. When trying to combat racism in society, as Christians we bring the grace of Christ into a situation, looking to include the person who might otherwise be left out.

Sometimes this has to do with race--sometimes it's martial status (like when I'm the only single person at the IV christmas party....) or gender or some other factor that might leave an individual feeling left out in any given situation.

I was excited by the book's emphasis on how we can give people places of honor and concern in many situations--to me if parallels some of the themes of "Love is the Killer App"--saying that rather than erring on the side of giving/loving/sharing less we as Christ lovers should err on the side of giving/loving/sharing more, even when it's uncomfortable--and sometimes when it can be controversial. Choosing to operate on the abundancy, gracious side of God is something I'm learning to do daily.

Seven Sayings of a Gracist:
1. "Special Honor"--lifting up the humble among us. I will lift you up.
2. "Special Modesty"--protecting the most vulnerable among us from embarrassment. I will cover you.
3. "No special treatment"--refusing to accept special treatment if is is at the detriment of others who need it. I will share with you.
4. "Greater Honor"--God, as a gracist, has given greater honor to the humble. I will honor you. 5. "No division"--when the majority helps the minority and the stronger helps the weaker (gracism), it keeps us from division within the body (an opposite view than normal). I will stand with you.
6. "Equal Concern"--having a heart as big for our neighbors as we do for oursleves. I will consider you.
7. "Rejoices with it"--when the humble, or less honorable, are helped, we are to rejoice with them. (It's easier to weep with those who weep than to rejoice with those who rejoice). I will celebrate with you.

Some quotes I liked:
"wouldn't it be great if our natural reaction and impulse was to include rather than exclude?"

instead of an "us versus them" mentality--choosing an "us" mentality--us, we're in this together.

It's ok

This is a short thought.

But recently I've been thinking alot about how we phrase forgiveness.

Often we have a tendency to say to those around you "it's ok" or "don't worry about it"....hoping to forget the wrong.

Why don't we say "will you forgive me?" or "I forgive you" as the response. To me that seems to take much more commitment--it's a little riskier and scary to me to actually say the word forgiveness---it acknowledges that there was a sin, a wrong done.

When we go on just saying it's ok all the time we tend to start to forget that wrong has been done, that we do live in a world of sin where we wrong others all the time.

I'm going to try to challenge myself to use the language of sin and forgiveness more--willing to acknowledge the wrongs I do rather than just hope myself and others can forget about them.

Noon on Tuesday

I realize some of my reader-ship may be a bit scandelized by this post--but bear with me.

As I visited many of you in Texas I talked about how one of my greatest personal needs right now is friendship. And to some I probably related that I had by chance (and you know I don't believe in chance per-se) run into and befriended a member of my old 3rd grade elementary class from Princeton, NJ.
This friend is a a bartender in Eastern Market, a "hip" section of town that's actually close to where I live! We've begun to spend time together quite frequently.

I joke that with the hours in my job I need friends that are "free at noon on a Tuesday,"--only we odd-job types, the ministers and restaurant folk seem to fit the bill. Working nights and weekends can do a toll on your social life.
Little did I remember that this "noon on a Tuesday" is a friendly reference to a Sheryl Crow song "I just wanna have some Fun"--"We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday," where she talks about watching the working folk wash their cars and do socially acceptable things while she and her friend sit by. I sometimes feel that way about the scheduling and off-nature of my life.

But back to this friend. I'm very thankful for having him in my life. I think we both can suffer from a little loneliness--so it's nice to have someone who lives close--and is likely free. Even this weekend, I went with one of my girlfriends from college to his bar Friday night--and this afternoon I skated at the Sculpture Garden where his second job is a rink guard.
Most of my friends live in suburban Virginia--this aftenoon I took all of 2 hours out to see him and back--whereas getting out to my other friends might take that time alone.

I've been thinking about this friend also in relation to my ministry at Georgetown. We encourage the students we spend time with to think about how they can share Jesus with their friends and love their friends who aren't Christians (some call it evangelism, touchy subject and I have a hard time articulating--so hope I don't offend with my language).

But at a leadership meeting on Saturday I asked each member of the team to think of one friend in their life who didn't know God--who they'd like to see know God. We did this exercise then called "Glimpses of the Gospel" where we thought about our friend, prayed for them and considered how God was already working in their lives---considering what kind of gospel values and pieces of Jesus we saw in them.
As the staff person, of course I participated and talked about my elementary school friend. I talked about his generosity and inclusivity--he's very friendly, of course and sharing as a bartender. He's befriended a local homeless man---who now I've met as well who comes in during happy hour. He listens to his stories and treats him with dignity and respect. Christ did that---he treated the poor as people worthy of love and consideration.
We finished by praying for each other's friends--and considering how we can continue to be praying for each other's friends.

It was exciting for me even today, skating around the Mall on a Sunday afternoon, watching my friend then attending someone who'd fallen and had a serious injury on the ice, to be able to pray for him and watch God work in his life. Pray for my friend!

Waiting to Live your Life?

I work with college students. College is supposed to be a time of learning and training--for our future careers right?

But what if we also looked at this time our lives as a time for living....not just preparing to live later? I think many people--over all of their lives fall into the "next thing" trap--I remember a poem I got from my high school senior year english teacher called "the odyssey" expressing this idea. It challenged us to not live waiting for life to come--the next job, when we had kids, when we took a vacation--because then life would pass us by! Such a simple concept--but how I see myself and those around me falling into this trap of living in the future.

It's similar to a parable in he bible--the one with the "talents" where a master leaves servants to care for his money--each receiving 1,5, and 10 talents. The one who receives one talent buries it--at least it will be there with the master gets back! The others take a risk and bring back multiples of what was given to them. I'd usually use this as an example of "blessed to be a blessing"--but I think it has some lessons about wasted potential.

I see the same thing often on Georgetown's campus. Some of the world's best and brightest come to spend four years there--for many, thinking they're preparing for a lifetime of service--service in health, in politics, in education. But a challenge I always want to pose to them--what about if they started trying to serve now? Not just wait until after graduation to think about serving the poor, or changing their spending habits. If they plan to one day be able to wake up and selflessly attend to the needs of those around them--in a slum, a hospital, or the political arena---what kind of practices are they developing now?

We all know we can't just one day wake up and be able to pray intimately to God for hours on end if we haven't been developing spiritual disciples of praying, reading our bibles and knowing God for time before that (hard example--know there could be exceptions!).

Similarly--if we want to be living as Christian people, loving the poor and lame--how are we doing loving our neighbor--in a dorm? a worker at the cafeteria? Our friend who is depressed? The needy are not always this "other" far away on the other side of the globe.

He who is faithful with the little will be faithful with the big.
Let's start practicing with the little bit in front of us now---rather than dreaming of the big that we will encounter "someday."

InterVarsity Staff Conference 2008

I just got back from a 5 day all-InterVarsity staff conference in St Louis Missouri.

There are about 1,200 people on InterVarsity staff--from people working at the national service center in Wisconsin, people working for InterVarsity press and people working at the more than 550 campuses where InterVarsity exists in the United States and Internationally with the ministry called LINK.

Every 3 years all InterVarsity staff gather for encouragement, prayer and teaching.

Some highlights:
-hearing again the history of InterVarsity as a movement, entering the US about 1940 until now where our ministry is at more US campuses than any other.
-hearing the "field intiatives" for 2004: growth, evangelism, leadership development, fund development, alumni, and multiethnicity. These 6 commitments are a good eye into the core values of InterVarsity.

-seminars on recapturing student-led ministry where the leader challenged us to think is our ministry more about seeing InterVarsity be programatically perfect or about being good stewards of the leadership development of our students?
He challenged us saying are you living as more: chapter program keeper-together?
loose end tier-upper?
Large group coordinator? Small group coordinator?
Fire fighter?
Keeper of the secret vision?
Or would we rather be: discipler, counselor, scripture teacher, shepherd, minister to campus, vision-caster, model to students for witness, leader builder, empowerer.
***In this model, our end goal is to strengthen churches, Christian communities and turn out graduates who know how to lead!

*Another Seminar on "recruiting male students" that went well with the seminar I went on experiential learning.
--A challenging question here: Is InterVarsity's understanding of the gospel big enough to love Alpha males? we talked alot about the alpha male personality, how to create space for and empower these natural leaders who can sometimes be arrogant and pushy.
--We also talked alot about visual and kinestetic learning styles and how men responded better to visual aides or getting up and doing something--especially in response to a message. This is something I want to be thinking about more!
--suggested taking any opportunity to create competition, make spirituality fun

Other things:
-getting to meet IV gurus on urban and international mission
-meeting someone who will be moving to DC to help expand our urban missions there next year
-the single staff gathering!--actually was done pretty well, basically mixer games.

Good time of renewal and refocusing.