Underground ReLOVEution

Here are some links about fasting as we start this Lent season. Read if you want.

Spiritual Disciplines: Fasting (TheResurgence)
The Art of Fasting (Neue Ministry)

Love you guys.

I've been listening to these songs recently and I really like them. We should do them for Tuesday night. I'll talk to the worship leader about that.

Your Name High


Run


Desert Song

OK, so I'm gonna try this. I hope it doesn't crash and burn. If at the end of this post you think I'm a super nerd, well, you're probably right.

I love baseball. Like I'm a weird fanatic. Besides reading my Bible and learning about Jesus, most of my time consists of reading about the Mariners and baseball in general. Some people geek out over video games, other people about movies, I'm a geek when it comes to baseball. This doesn't mean a thing except I wanted to bring the two together, Jesus and Baseball. This may not make sense to some of you, but let me give it a shot.

Over the last few years there has been a lot of controversy about steroids in baseball. Different studies and investigations have come to light that show that a good portion of players over the last 10+ years have been using steroids heavily and there has been a bunch of reactions. Some people shrug their shoulders and continue to watch, others berate the players for their bad behavior, and still others look at the commissioner, the owners, and the media and get angry at them. I won't get into my full opinion because most of you just don't care, but I want to talk about something else.

If the IRS sent out a letter to all American citizens and told them that they weren't going to be auditing anyone on their taxes and that they just expected people to pay their taxes honestly, how many people would do it? How many people do you think would actually pay their taxes if they knew that no one was watching and that there was no punishment if they fudged the numbers or didn't pay at all. This is the exact situation that the commissioner created and the owners created by not testing players for banned substance. Everyone had their hands in the steroid scandal and everyone inside the game knew about what was going on but let it happen because they were making money off of the players hitting lots of homeruns. Now the facts come to light and the owners and commissioner act self-righteous and point fingers at the players and say how bad they are.

Back to our original question. How many would be honest if there was no repercussions? This was the situation that baseball found itself in for the last ten years. No one was checking in on it and so the players did everything they could to perform at a higher level and make a bigger paycheck.

So, what does this have to do with Jesus? Well, my point is that this is what to expect for people who don't know Jesus.

Romans 1 talks about how sin is where people exchange the truth of God for a lie and worship and serve the creature (created things) rather than the Creator. So sin is a worship issue. What happens is people have a "functional hell" this is something that people feel would be their hell if it happened. For some it would be to lonely, for others it is to be unvaluable, for others it is to be poor or without status and for others it is to be ignored. Essentially it is something that we make a hell for us. Then what we do is find a functional savior to save us from our hell. For people who don't want to be lonely, they will worship a relationship or a friendship. They figure that this boyfriend will save them from loneliness or will make them feel valued. Others will make money their functional savior. They will try and get the biggest salary or the biggest house to make them feel valuable and so they worship at the feet of money so they can be saved from their functional hell.

For these baseball players, I'm assuming their functional savior was money or fame. They wanted to feel valuable and so they worshiped at the feet of their athletic ability so that they could be saved from their hell of being poor and being unimportant. Instead of worshiping Jesus, they took steroids. Now their sin wasn't the action, but rather was their wrong worship.

In Romans 1, Paul goes on to explain that because people sinned in not worshiping Jesus, then all of these other things came out. Because of their wrong worship, "they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them." (Romans 1:29-32 ESV). You see, our tendency is to view sin as bad things you do. So if you smoke, drink, sleep around, lie, cheat or murder, you are a bad person, but if you don't do those things, you are a good person.
For you students, people will look at you and say "they are good kids, they don't drink, smoke, or sleep around and they go to youth group every week. Yeah, maybe they are overly competative or very extroverted, but that's not a bad thing." What they aren't seeing is that within your heart, you are sinning by not worshiping Jesus. Your competativeness isn't a sin, but the fact that it comes out of a heart that is competative because it wants to be valuable and worships at winning instead of worshiping Jesus. Being extroverted isn't a sin, but it comes from a heart that wants to be loved by and finding value in people rather than trusting in Jesus. The person who rapes because he wants to be loved and the person who is just overly flirty becasue she wants to be loved and noticed both have the same sin. They both worship something other than Jesus to fulfill their functinal savior role.

This is why God can say that all sin is equal. In reality, if a white lie and murder are both sins, there is no way that God can see them the same, but if Jesus sees our hearts and our wrong worship, he can say that.

Another way to look at it is that bad action is a symptom of the disease of sin. If you have a cold, you know because of the symptoms. You have a cough, a runny nose, a sore throat, always tired, etc. These symptoms tell you something is wrong inside of you. In the same way, if you had a cancer and you were always tired and had headaches and got nautious, the real disease is the cancer, not the symptoms. If you spent all your time dealing with the symptoms and never dealt with the disease, you wouldn't get very far. In the same way, if you keep trying to change your behaviours and don't deal with the underlying worship issues, you're wasting your time. That's why we call ourselves the Underground, because we want to deal with heart issues, and not surfacy behaviour issues.

Back to steroids. This is what we should expect. I'm not trying to make a claim that these baseball players aren't saved, I don't know. All I know is that if people don't have Jesus, their only hope is to worship created things to fill in the void and to solve their problems. Even Christians struggle with wrong worship and so what we need to remember is that our hope doesn't come from a girlfriend, a paycheck, our athletic ability, or our jobs, but rather our hope is in Jesus, that he is the only Savior that will last.

Jesus wins.

*note, if you are not an Office fan, please disregard the first bajillion sentences.

I have a challenge for you guys...

Here is your mission, if you choose to accept it.

I'm excited to reveal to you something I've been thinking about.

Gooooood morning Vietnaaaaaaaam!!!!!

Welcome to the Bothell Outreach Massacre! *chain saw noises*

Outweach. Outweach is what bwings us togethah, today.

I like to try out different openings when I know that time is not a factor.

Okay, now I'm serious.

Here is my challenge: Next time you have a project, paper, or research assignment for school, make something useful out of it. Do you have to write a paper about a health issue? Find out about the cholera crisis in Zimbabwe, AIDS in Africa, or the effects of working in the mines of central Africa! Even if the topic is a bit of a reach, teachers will most likely be willing to let you bend the rules if your topic is something you genuinely care about.

For example:

• I had to present about a song, I presented about Invisible Children, and talked about the use of music in their campaign.
• I needed to talk about a health issue, so I talked about AIDS and child prostitution in Thailand.
• I needed to present a poem, so I read from Victor Hugo's Les Chatiments, about social justice.

There are numerous benefits to this:

• You can inform your classmates about something that is important to you.
• You can represent Jesus by showing that you care about others.
• You can get a better grade; if you are motivated, you WILL do better in school!
• You won't need to fake your way through your paper and presentation.
• You can spend time learning about something you care about.

And last but not least, my favorite...

You can inform the youth group by leading an intercession!

Just throwing it out there, guys, but I'd love to see what happened if you took this idea and ran with it.

So again I wanted to start a discussion to see what you guys think. Something I've been thinking about is how attractional should church be? Let me explain.

I used to think that worship and church shouldn't change the way they do things to get more people in. I saw "seeker sensitive" churches that lacked depth and just tried to be attractive and not really do anything and I got turned off. So every time I led worship I wanted it to be crazy spiritual and weird and if people didn't like it, than screw them. In essence.

What I've noticed is that being attractional and being shallow don't have to be connected. What I mean is (and I could totally be wrong on this), what if a church had really good music and the music was more "showy" than other churches, but the preaching was really focused on Jesus and very biblical and people were getting saved, repenting of their sin, and living like mature Christians? Is this any worse than really emotional, spirit-led worship that doesn't attract a lot of people but gives people the Jesus high for a few hours? Of course I want the Holy Spirit to give me the "Jesus shivers" but when I think about what is longer lasting, biblical preaching that causes me to repent is higher on the list.

I don't know, I'm ranting, but I figured it would be a good conversation starter.

So, how attractional should our church/youth group be?

I just watched Jesus Camps for the first time tonight.............How do I explain my feelings. First off nothing they did in the film shocked me at all, which scared me. I was watching my childhood unfold in this film. Words cannot explain the outrage I feel at this moment from the indoctrination I grew up in. Don't get me wrong the topics discussed in the film are somewhat legit, but the motivation of guilt and fear not so much. And what really pissed me off the most is the burdens placed on these children. These children sobbing and downtrodden because of issues such as abortion or whether or not Bush's pick for supreme court justice will go through or not. I remember growing up in that. Of feeling the weight of this "horrible horrible" liberal and ungodly world we live in. I remember being scared while I held up anti abortion signs in the ghetto with my family as the ungodly people with purple hair and piercings walked by and told us we were stupid, which is something as an adult I would do in a heartbeat......but as a child? I had such a tender heart as a kid and would cry over anything. What about God's love? I wish I had learned more about that as a kid. What about all the issues that were going on in my home that nobody in my church knew about or even "discerned' about. Never was there a sermon preached on the anxiety I felt as a child. Never did a youth leader really ask me how I was doing, if I was really happy. No, everything was about did I really know I was saved? Had I told all my friends about Jesus because if not then obviously I really didn't have him in my heart. I pledged to the Christian flag and did the pledges to the Bible. I sang songs about being in the Lord's army. Most of the kids that I grew up in the south with who were homeschooled with me or went to church with me, they don't know Jesus. Why? Because the real Jesus was never actually introduced or shown to them. After numerous summer camps of just sessions and no recreation allowed except for a game of dodgeball after dinner to stay active. These years were the hardest of my life. Because I was so depressed on the inside and didn't even know it, because Christians don't get depressed. My best friend growing up has become a stripper and is now an alcoholic and she doesn't even care. Another lives on the street and is a crack whore. I didn't meet a christian who was against war until i did YWAM when I was 17. I was shocked and thought them a blasphemer.

Yes, this world is a horrible place. Yes, our country does need Jesus. But guess what thats been the story of the world since day one. Our world has not gotten progressively worse....its always been "worse". I love this world. Why? Because I see God all around me in this world and I find it absolutely gorgeous. Yes, I pray for my government and yes I hate abortion. But guess what, putting that burden on your innocent tenderhearted children is wrong. How different would my life have been if it had been founded on the love of God and appreciating a beautiful world around me. I'm not ready to leave. I don't wake up every morning praying that Jesus would come back. Because by doing that I've missed everything.

I praise God that I eventually found him in my later teenage years. That I was able to disregard indoctrination. It wasn't until that point in my life that I was able to fall completely in love with my savior because I could be just His daughter now and not a soldier in his army.

The February 4 devotional from Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest) reminded me of Jon's message from Tuesday night about evangelism. It's a tough and holy challenge but one I would spend my entire life to seek.

VERSE: "For the love of Christ controls us..." (2 Corinthians 5:14).

And the OzC says this: "Paul says he is overruled, overmastered, held as in a vice, by the love of Christ. Very few of us know what it means to be held in a grip by the love of God...Paul says he is gripped by the love of God, that is why he acts as he does. Men may call him mad or sober, but he does not care; there is only one thing he is living for, and that is to persuade men of the judgment seat of God, and of the love of Christ. This abandon to the love of Christ is the one thing that bears fruit in the life, and it will always leave the impression of the holiness and of the power of God, never of our personal holiness."

Okay, my version might be more confusing than yours because mine is an old edition I found at a garage sale. But I hope the point was clear.

The love of Christ - his love for us or ours for him? - is worth everything. My goal is to be motivated by this in every area of my life.

Also, MY SELF-OBSESSION IS OUT OF CONTROL! I am usually far more concerned about my own personal holiness (and wanting everyone else to recognize it) than I am sincerely concerned about other people's souls and lives. Yep, you can say it now - I'm a big joke.

Well, let's be honest - so are you :)

So, can we get real? Let's take an brutally honest look at our motivations, our relationship with God, the lies we tell ourselves and the games we try to play. The ways we aren't being upfront with God or other people. The moments when we care more about looking Christian than about actually letting Jesus get the glory.

We are ridiculous and lame and beloved of God. Amen.

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Here are some songs I was patrolling through YouTube and found. Some new, some old.

So that last few posts have sparked some inspiration on what to write. As I was reading through these ideas, I wanted to flesh them out a little bit more and see where they go. First I need to give you guys some background. Since I've been going to youth group, I've loved this place. I feel like this youth group is an amazing place to be deep, honest about who you are, and feel loved. A lot of other people I've talked to agree with me and love coming to the youth group because there is love and Jesus and depth there. I pretty much started coming to youth group since Steve started being youth pastor and so I've grown up under Steve's leadership for a long time. When I was going through high school, there was a great group of students in the youth group. Molly, Holly, Ruthann, Bekah, Callie, Charlie, Lacey, Auston, Jacob, Jason... the list goes on. What amazes me about the youth group is that a LOT of people who come out of the youth group go onto to live devoted lives to Jesus. Most youth groups have their students leave and then when there is no youth group, they fall apart and leave Jesus. That doesn't happen as much as normal in this youth group and you can see it in how many youth group graduates go on to do DTS, Bible School, College, and other stuff (like youth staff). People continue to live for Jesus even when they get out of youth group, which is awesome and rare.

This last year a lot of the students who graduated through youth group came back on staff and so the youth staff has been going through changes. Steve had an awesome idea and he divided the youth group into different ministries (outreach, inreach, sound, worship, arts team, food team, girls team, boys team, etc.) Each of us leaders took over a team with the goal of getting students involved and creating a really good ministry. Holly took outreach team and has assembled a team to go out and work with different local ministries and serve the broken. More importantly, or just as importantly, we had the goal of developing leaders who could take over for us if any of us left (go to another state, die, normal stuff like that). Steve realized that if more people were able to grab onto a ministry and run with it, it would grow much bigger than Steve could do by himself.

This has gotten me so excited. I've seen a whole bunch of youth leaders really grow in maturity and become good leaders because of their role on these teams. I've also seen a lot of students grow in leadership as they've become part of these teams and start taking responsibilities. It's caused the youth group to grow up a whole lot more and mature a whole lot more.

Still, why do I write all that?

I write it because the dreaming is not done. The reason I wrote down the dreams I did a couple of posts ago is because I want you guys to not stop dreaming. It is my hope that everyone of you becomes a part of a team and runs with your own idea. Some of these ideas are not going to happen, but maybe God is pressing on your heart to start one of these things. Maybe he wants to grow you in ways you couldn't imagine. So many churches have a few paid pastors and then a whole bunch of followers. Most church-goers are spiritual gluttons, relying on the pastor to teach them, to lead them, to serve them, to feed them. They come to church expecting one stop shopping for their spiritual appetite. God has called all of us to be a part of this, not just Steve or the leaders. We want you guys to get involved and star becoming a part of the youth group bigger than you could have imagined.

As I go forward I'm going to flesh out some of the dreams I wrote about, but I want you guys to continue dreaming, and maybe some of the ideas will spark you to run with them or come up with your own. Steve always says that you can change the world. He doesn't mean you can change the world when you graduate, but rather that you can change the world now. Become a part of what God is doing and dream.

Adding on to what Jon said, here are the things I pray will happen!

Training for staff and students

-Dealing with substance abuse
-Dealing with eating disorders
-Dealing with psychiatric disorders
- Evangelism
-Cross cultural ministries
-Spanish class!
-Ending injustice!!!!

Church wide intercession

Inductive Bible

Work at a soup kitchen regularly-until we have our own!

All of Steve’s leadership positions filled and more!

Outreach team leading their own ministries!

More information on the website

Let’s build a well in Africa.

Let’s get people over to hook up Candice’s solar panels!

Let’s get to South America, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe.

Let’s get to know our beautiful state and how to help people in every nook and cranny.

I dream about a church where everybody knows about people like Joseph Kony. I dream about a church where newcomers don’t need to even know that the LRA exists, because the war WILL END! We will see that day…Amen.