For my grad school class this semester we are charged with doing a research project on a movement, person, or group of people in church history. I have been formulating a hypothesis which I think could be quite interesting.

Part 1
What is the causal relationship between the “Burned Over District” of the northeast after the 1st & 2nd Great Awakenings and the birthing of many Christian cults? (Same timeframe, same area. Christian Science and Mormonism especially.)

Part 2
If there is a correlation between those, what can present church leadership glean from that experience to prevent the same from happening in the present.

Where I want it to go
As I think of this project, I think there is a strong tie between the “burned over district” and the weird happenings in the Northeast in the mid-late 19th century. If my understanding is true, the people in this area were so confused by all the revivalists that they weren’t sure what to believe. The result was that the people were confused and mislead.

I feel the same way today with relation to the Model-based ministry that is so “important” to church leaders. I feel models are not as important as the current popular church leadership says they are. (Just get in a room with a group of pastors and you’ll be sickened by their chatter of models… What about Jesus?) My fear is that all of these church growth models are frustrating and confusing people today. As a result of this frustration good people are choosing to not fellowship with local churches anymore. This leaves the door wide open for a new religious movement. It is this thought that I’d like to explore.

this is the sign that will soon be adourning the home of our interrim pastor. somehow, this is a “service project.”  

Every student in my ministry is off from school today. This is the result of the nasty snow/ice storm we had last night.

The big question for me is… should I go to work today or not? Technically, the church is closed since the schools are closed. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have lots to do. Here are some things that need attention.

1. Mission trips. Story of 2005! I need to get in contact with the Chicago team to schedule our next meeting, get the bulletin board put together, etc. The Northern Ireland team had a great meeting last night but there are a lot of follow-up items for me to work today.
2. “Vote for Bob” As part of our team meeting last night, we created a massive “Vote for Bob” sign that we intend on magically attaching to his house later tonight. This is done exactly like the popular “Vote for Pedro” shirts that are popular thanks to Napoleon Dynamite.
3. ND Night. Speaking of Napoleon Dynamite. We are going to have a “Dynamite Party” in March. ND viewing, themed games, costumes, etc. It’s as cliche` as having a Passion of the Christ Q&A in 2004… But still worth doing.
4. Lots of employment stuff. I need to do some things to keep the ball rolling for Bob’s transition. I’m working on health insurance quotes as well as a press release.

Also, there are lots of little things for me to do not worth mentioning. Come to think of it… I just can’t see how I can take the day off.

yep, it’s snowing again the the detroit area. It snows each time we have a northern ireland team meeting! We all hope this doesn’t mean anything significant. 

I was reading one of my students blogs about our recent college visits… And I just had to respond.

She wrote:

last nite my dad was talking about college stuff. i don’t like to tell my dad what i want to study when i get into college because he always says stuff like you’ll never make a living off of that, that’s stupid, so on and so forth. So i have never told my dad about going into psychology. Last nite my dad ended our conversation with “just don’t tell me you’re going into psychology because only people with no plan for their life major in that.” i could not believe it!i got so upset (ending my happiness streak) and cried because my dad never supports me and he’s trying to guide me but all he does is hurt me! None of my friend’s dads do that and it’s not fair. What does he kno? he can’t get promoted in his stupid ass engingeering job bcuz he has a horrible eq!! he is so frustrating. my mom and i talked later on and she encouraged me to prove him wrong. (b4 that my dad did attempt to apologize and pretty much he sed the same thing but totally played it down!! how insensitive)

She is right. I try to encourage my students to do a couple of things when looking at a college. Specifically, I want them to walk around asking themselves these questions….

• Can I chase my dreams here?
• Can I see myself chasing God here?
• Is this a place I will be proud to graduate from?

To be honest… those things are more important than the question every parent wants to know, “Will my kid get rich when they leave this place? That is so annoying because it is an instant clash of culture. On the one hand there are naive kids who have big dreams and they really want to change the world. The flip side of that is a broken parent who’s only dream seems to be paying off a mortgage.

The happiest people I know are those who are still chasing their dreams. I want to churn out students who are “stupid enough” to think they can change the world. Why? Because Paul told us we were to be “world changers.” Religious people don’t change the world… But passionate followers of the risen Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit will change the world.

This is part 2 of our college visit weekend.

Romeo has a strong history of sending students to Cornerstone University. So it is no wonder that they were so ecstatic about our visit. I dropped the students off there on Thursday and they spent the evening with a student, I picked them back up on Friday morning for chapel, the tour, and the typical Q & A session.

We already have 1 senior committed to CU, with another applying.

Things I like about Cornerstone. The reputation within the evangelical community of Michigan is really high. CU has a lot of social things going for it with Christian students. It isn’t as strict as a lot of Christian colleges, but it definitely has tons of believers on campus. My students like that. They also are impressed with the laptop program where each student get’s one as a freshmen and a fresh one as a junior. (Tech is always good for college students) They also like the campus feel, as it is a relaxed and friendly environment. They seem to like that there are lots of ministry opportunities for students. They like the dorms… They are co-ed buildings, but gender specific wings. Students like the diverse offerings. (We sat in on a great small business class) They like that the faculty is really close to the students, almost too close in my opinion.

Things I don’t like. I don’t like that CU is trying to become bigger. Rather, I don’t like how t hey have decided to get bigger. They are doing a lot of advertising in Detroit and have a satellite campus there. For my taste, this makes the school seem cheap. I like a little “exclusivity” in my college choices. The buildings are well-worn… Some are downright old. The location makes it look like a commuter college. My biggest fear is that the school is growing too fast and it’s at the cost of it’s reputation.

Overall, I still recommend my students to CU. But I’ve got my eye on them.

I just got back from our winter college tour with our upperclassmen students. This is a special time for PA and his students to go look at schools, and spend “ubertime” investing in our relationship. I think the tour is a huge reason we’ve retained almost all of our upperclassmen in the youth group.

With that in mind, he is what I thought of one the school we visited.

Calvin College: Calvin was about 100% cooler than I thought it would be. I could tell that my students didn’t like it because it was a little too free for them. They were polite and impressed at times, but they didn’t like it at all.

Some things I did like. I liked the quality and size of the campus. It is a sizeable school. There are 4200 undergrad students and the campus is very nice. I liked the obvious girth and quality of the buildings. There weren’t any buildings that were run down or unattractive. It was clear academics reign supreme on campus. They don’t pump it up, you can feel it. It was clear that this was a place of academic excellence, and you don’t always feel that on the campuses we visit.

I loved the communications building and the cool little bridge to get over there. That whole thing was incredible. If I wanted to study that… I would go there. I also loved the engineering building. The studio-like space of the building just made you feel creative. As the tour guide said, “these guys do a lot more with engineering than just blow stuff up… But they do a lot of that too.”

Some things I didn’t like. They do something really stupid that our waitress at a nearby restaurant pointed out, (Proud alumni not using her degree!) they have “racial diversity as a core value” but then they segregate the campus. They allow students to choose to live on a multicultural floor in the dorms… But isn’t this just a cute way to segregate all the diversity in the name of multiculturalism? As our waitress pointed out “it’s obvious that they keep the blacks on certain floors.” Oops. Looks like that backfired! I don’t like that they advertise themselves as a Christian college but don’t require that students are Christians. I recognize the philosophy, but it has failed. Calvin is largely a secular college in the same way Notre Dame is.

Other things my students pointed out as huge negatives. Smoking! There were ample students smoking all over the place, usually around the doors to buildings. They said, if it’s like this when it is 13 degrees, imagine how nasty it is when it’s 63!

Another big bad thing, My students didn’t like the sexually charged/lax dorms. As we walked through my girls were very turned off that girls had written on the boys dorms doors stuff like “Ryan, I want to lay ya” or “got some sex in here.” One of my junior girls, who was huge on Calvin before visiting, said “I wouldn’t want to live in dorms where I didn’t feel safe. I’d feel better living in dorms where guys weren’t allowed.” A good and valid point from a girl who is trying to stay pure before marriage. Who wants to feel broken down on a “Christian campus?” If the dorms are like that then you might as well save $15k a year and go to Michigan State.

Overall, Calvin was much cooler than I thought it was. I could see myself there. But it was clear that the students of Light Force were unimpressed.

You can view my talk for tonight online. Purity

All of my talks are available for download on the Light Force website. Just click on the “PA Talks” link on the sidebar.

Tonight I am challenging my students to chose to be pure sexually.

For the last 3 weeks we have been talking about our relationships with the opposite sex and how we can have relationships that are pleasing to God. (For more on B-5 relationships, check out my talk area) Sounds pretty simple, but when you are talking about people’s “personal choice” this series has been a little annoying to some.

The Rash
I look at this series as a rash for a lot of my students. As we talk about their relationships, the typical adolescent creation has been to look at someone else. “He couldn’t be talking to me!” I expected this since it is a proper developmental response for middle adolescents.

But this series is like a rash because many students are coming to realize that they cannot escape truth with mere adolescent fantasy. They can deny outwardly by putting on a front but cannot deny the inward reality. Like a rash, they’ve tried to not itch it… But it is so annoying that they know they simply have to do something.

The Cure: Flee!
The cure is simple. Chose to live a life sexually pure. It sounds so simple, but I read this statement from a Resident Supervisor at Queens College in Belfast, “If I come across a student who is still a virgin at 20-21 years old, I know something is wrong with them.” This is the world we live in. My own father accused me of being gay because I was a virgin when I was 15! The lies that we tell ourselves.

By remaining sexually pure until marriage, you are choosing to avoid all kinds of calamities. Of course the obvious ones are… Unplanned pregnancy, STDs, and a skewed self-image. But the bigger reality is that choosing to be sexually impure is displeasing to God. As 1 Corinthians 6 teaches, “Do you not know that all other sins a man commits are outside of the body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.”

One question gets asked of me more than any other when it comes to relationships. “How far is too far?” Or it’s big sister, “What is OK to do before you are married and what isn’t OK.” Isn’t that human nature? We want to know how close to the line between sin and not sinning we can get when the answer we are given is simple… Flee sexual immorality. So “how far is too far?” If you aren’t fleeing sexual immorality, you have gone too far.

With all of the letters now in the mail, I am getting really excited to see what will happen. As of 2 days ago, we were up to a total of 27% of the total funds raised. If we can continue to add 5-10% for the next few weeks I will feel pretty confident about the trip. But as of right now I am looking at the funding coming in and it is a bit scary. To hit the bear minimum we will need we need an additional $9800.

Wow. Seems like a lot! With the average giver contributing about $40, we will need almost 250 more people on board!