Service/Discipleship

I have been struggling lately about what true discipleship means and could look like. I'm not saying I have any answers yet, but one piece that keeps coming up is service. It needs to be something that allows students to find/explore their gifts buy doing. I just thought it was really interesting that yesterday Katharine and I were talking more about what this could look like and how to involve service with a purpose then in the afternoon I received an email with this info in it:

"The best scenario is involvement in worship and prayer, living out faith through service, followed by time committed to study and reflection," he said. "The ideal is preaching the gospel and doing the gospel together."


If mature Christian adults work alongside teenagers and help them process what they learn through service, those teachable moments can make a profound impact on teens, he noted. "Their faith is developing, and they don’t have to be in pews to do it," Sherr said.
The greater the interaction between teenagers and the people who receive ministry -- and the deeper the relationship between the teens and adult Christian mentors -- the more profound the impact on faith development, Garland added. "It’s a continuum," she noted.


"In the depth of relationships, young people learn to find God in one another," Garland said. "It’s the interaction that matters. We learn faith not only by acquiring knowledge, but -- more significantly -- through relationships."


Moreover, this approach to ministry treats teenagers as partners in ministry rather than objects of ministry, an important and empowering distinction for developing new generations of spiritual leaders for today as well as tomorrow."


I guess this email was an answer to prayer. Now it comes down to figuring out how this can begin to happen.
The reason I have been thinking about discipleship/service is because I began to see some holes in what we were offering students. We give them information on Sunday mornings through Sunday School classes, they get worship at church, and they get to hang with friends and talk about life in Youth group, but there was just something missing. I guess I have an answer to what was missing; now it is just a matter of figuring out how to make it all come together.
Another interesting piece that fits into all of this is the training I went to over the weekend. It was provided by the mission organization we are working with this summer. It really got me thinking about the reason we are serving and how to best prepare everyone going for the experience we are hoping to have.

This isn't just something I need to provide for students, as much as something I also need to be involved in. I have felt at times recetnly like I was just going through life. Probably because I have been too focused on self, not others. I need to keep processing this to figure out what it means for me, so I can share it with others.

V-day

Just composing some of my thoughts for our upcoming talk about V-day/love/relationships. I'm amazed at how often I sell myself short of all that God really desires for me. I settle for the easy, quick, self-pleasing thoughts the world is throwing at me instead of striving for all that God designed for me. I don't love my wife the way I should, I look for the quickest, easiest way to apease her, instead of truly fulfilling her desires (which are ussually the oposite of mine). As I'm reading through material about Love and God's desire for it I once again realize how His plan is truly the best. To think about a love abaised on internal, more stable factors compared to external, quickly changing sure makes a lot of sense. It is almost like he knows what he is talking about, LOL.