England Update No.2

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been living in a different country now for almost 3 months. Some days it feels like I just landed a couple days ago but most days it’s starting to feel like home. I used to wake up with the first thought of my day being “Wow I’m in England.” I would crave tea that was a tad sweeter or colder and I would ask people to repeat every sentence. Now I drink hot tea like a champ, understand the local lingo and I don’t have to remind myself where I’m waking up every morning. It’s crazy how normal it all feels after just a couple months. It’s different, very different, but it’s starting to feel normal. So I thought I would be a good time to update everyone and give you an idea of what I’ve been up to.

So where I’m living is in the North East of England in a small city called Thornaby-on-Tees where the River Tees runs along our western border, which happens to be just outside my backyard. A lot of the North East of England, sometimes called Britain’s Detroit, has suffered from a significant loss of jobs over the past decade or so. Most of the area where I live and work has been effected, meaning unemployment along with broken families and broken homes. As a result, most of the work we do in Thornaby is meeting practical needs for kids and families. We help kids with homework, feed them lunch on school holidays, and just try and give them a safe place to hang out and thrive. Before they can even comprehend that there is a God who loves them unconditionally, they need to grasp that there is such a thing as unconditional love. That’s where my team and I come in. We work on the streets, in parks and in youth clubs with hopes to ultimately instill in them that they are of great intrinsic worth. 

Another part of my job is working with the youth group in the Vine Church where I attend. Most of these kids at the youth group regularly attend church compared to the other kids I work with, who would probably say they would never set foot in a church. Both groups are very different and it’s been interesting to see how different families and neighborhoods shape the minds and lives of these kids.

The church I go to, The Vine Church, is currently meeting within a local university campus in Stockton-on-Tees but we will be moving into a permanent church home hopefully within the next 3 months. This new church home is going to be in Thornaby!!! This holds numerous challenges and hurdles as we move into a new church building but I know it also holds huge potential for helping the work I am already do here in Thornaby so I am super excited. 

Going forward I hope you will pray specifically for:

• The Vine Church as we begin to move into our new church building in Thornaby. (For a smooth transition, and for God to work through us in the city)
• The Vine Youth group and the kids we work with in Thornaby as my two places of ministry begin to overlap. (For the students to learn more about God and desire a relationship with Jesus wherever they are)
• The families in Thornaby as I continue to work in the city and as our church begins to have more of a presence in Thornaby. (That people will be open to the message that God is real and that He really does love them)

To catch you up on what a normal week looks like for me here’s a glimpse at a typical week’s schedule

Sunday

9:00-12:00 Church at the Vine in Stockton-on-Tees with about 100 people on a Sunday morning.

6:00-8:00 Refresh- an event once a month for local youth groups to come together to worship and hear from a guest speaker.

Monday

9:30-12:00 Youth For Christ(YFC) Meeting – Weekly meeting to hear from other YFC workers like me to talk about each of our ministries, worship together and also to hear a sermon.

12:00- 2:00 Thornaby Lunch Meeting –  I work in a team of four and we try to meet once a week to plan our events, talks and clubs for the week.

6:00-7:30 Vine Youth- About 20 students get together from the Vine Church for a Bible Study.

7:30-9:00 Young Adults Bible Study- Bible study in Stockton for local Christians and gap year workers like me.

Tuesday

8:30-3:30 Church of England Primary School- We help out in Year 6 classes, helping teachers and students and occasionally we get to teach a lesson on Christianity.

4:00-6:00 Homework Club in Thornaby- We help kids with homework in Thornaby

6:00-8:00 Cafe Church- We have church directed towards youth inside local Coffee shops.

Wednesday

Free Morning 

12:00-1:30 Christian Union in Yarm- Equivalent to a First Priority in America where about a dozen high school students choose to come to a meeting with fellow Christians in their school to talk and hang out.

4:00-6:00 Sports Club in Thornaby- We put on sports events for kids in Thornaby while working with the Middlesbrough football club and a local non profit called Five Lamps.

Thursday

Free Morning

11:30-2:30 Food Bank with Thornaby Baptist Church- We work with Thornaby baptist church that receives donations from the community to give back to those in the community by providing meals and basic household necessities 

5:00-6:00 Kid’s Club in Thornaby- We prepare lessons, games and activities to for kids in Thornaby

6:30-9:00 Anti Social Behavior Club- We work in Thornaby with Five Lamps to encourage good ethics and attitudes, which includes everything from games of ping pong to discussions about masculinity

Friday

Free Morning

6:30-8:30 Anti Social Behavior Club club- same type of event as on Thursdays but at a different location in Thornaby.

Saturday

My day off that I try to use to travel or just relax in Thornaby.

My latest place to visit was Whitby which is where Dracula originated.

It’s on the east coast of Engand, facing the North Sea and has some great fish and chips

What If God Really Does Love You…

That question literally blows my mind and haunts me at the same time. The implications of an infinite God existing with enough power to create the entire known universe is rightfully crippling. The implications seem profound but that is drastically magnified if that infinite God loves us, if He even knows us, or just acknowledges us. Please don’t get caught up in the ambiguous Sunday morning jargon that “God loves the world” or “God loves us.” Yes and amen God loves us but He most definitely loves you. Like you specifically, not just by default from loving everyone. No, God loves you. HE LOVES YOU.

So what if God really does love you?

I often pose this question in my head as if I were talking to someone who doesn’t believe in God. As if I could just take that bit of faith I have in an infinite God who loves me infinitely and somehow copy and paste it into their head, then their whole world would open up. Life would literally explode with lasting significance, throw sparks of joy and burn with everlasting hope.                              

I want to tell you a story I love to tell but one that I rarely tell outside a circle of close friends. Not just because it’s personal but honestly because it is just a weird story. Nevertheless, I think it will paint the picture well.

I had a friend whom I had been spending the day with and we ended up being at my house around the time my family started to go to bed. I was living with my parents and my younger teenage brother at the time and as my dad was heading to bed, he kissed my brother goodnight. Not that big of a deal to me right, my family is extremely close and as a result love is often expressed. But as my friend later expressed to me, this to him was crazy to witness. Just that a father would do that, and that he would do that past the age where it’s common, such as when fathers kiss babies or toddlers. For a father and son to kiss on into teens was just flat out weird, but he didn’t seem to care about that. He was mesmerized by the love that he suddenly realized he had never experienced and it floored him. He turned the conversation to how he had never known a love like that and especially from his dad. I could feel the sadness in his voice that had a hint of jealousy.

So then I started jealously thinking, well my dad doesn’t do that to me either… But why not? Well it’s not because he doesn’t love me, he has shown me that he loves me just as much as my brother and the older I get the more I realize how deep that love runs for both of us individually but somehow equally.

So as I began to think of a time I could remember where I was kissed by both my parents each day and often more than once a day. But because I grew older to the age where culture said it wasn’t cool to give kisses to your mom and dad in public or even in private, I pulled away and the kisses stopped. So their love never faded but it was my fear and selfishness so to speak that caused me to pull from their love and lose that expression and experience of love through a kiss.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a heavenly Father who I can assure you is better than the shortcomings of your earthly father or even the strengths of mine. He loves you with an everlasting love that knows no bounds and the only limits of God’s love are the ones we put on it. Could it be that God would love to lavish on us bedtime kisses if we just weren’t so afraid of how it would look in front of our friends? Maybe we are too afraid to experience all that God has to offer and we are actually missing out. You can say all you want that a father wouldn’t do that because it sounds ridiculous. You can say that God no longer loves you just like I tried to argue, and you can even say that God may do that to His other children but never would He do that to you. But I’m here to tell you that He most certainly would and He most certainly did when He died on the cross, for you.

“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all–how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” -Romans 8:32

I am confident that there is more to be had in a relationship with God than the pictures that are painted for us on an average Sunday morning. If we just had the faith and weren’t so afraid of being labeled a Jesus freak then maybe we would actually experience Jesus. Lose your life to find it. Sure that sounds crazy but you passed the line for sounding crazy when you started believing the Bible. The fact that a ball of hydrogen over 100 times the size of the Earth that we call the Sun will rise tomorrow morning and even give heat and light to our planet from over 92 million miles away may sound crazy as well but that doesn’t make it any less true.

So please, quit selling yourself short and settling for a God who you think just wants to save you and help you live your comfortable American Dream. Follow the God who is the only well that won’t run dry and offer your life to Him as a blank check.

Here’s a song of God being a good and loving Father.

England: Week 2

I am excited to be writing you from my new home in Thornaby located in the North-East corner of England. I just completed my first week of training and I have a little break before I start my second and final week of training so I thought I would write and touch base with everyone.

Our first week of training was great just getting to know the different people God has brought to serve in the Tees Valley. There’s something to be said about worshiping in a room full of people you know are in the same boat as you when it comes to being crazy enough to move some 5,000 miles away from home because of the God you serve.

One particular story that I would like to share with you is a conversation I had with another American who is in his second year here in England. He and his wife got married and soon after moved to England to work with the youth in a local church where he functions as their youth pastor. One thing that surprised me about him was that he and his wife had a car compared to most of the people who didn’t. So when the conversation shifted to how everyone was doing fundraising I asked him if he just bought the car himself or if it was given to them.  His response wasn’t what I expected.

“Well we have some money in savings but we didn’t want to spend that because that defeats the purpose of fundraising and its purpose of bringing people with you on your journey.”

Before I had time to question his motives about not wanting to spend their savings I knew he was right. Not that I should make other people pay for my life but that it was a way to serve God with people instead of just on my own. Somehow amidst of the fundraising and applying for a VISA I had made fundraising into another barrier I was trying to get past instead of an opportunity. And that’s what it is, an opportunity to connect Churches in the UK with Churches in the US and Christians in Thornaby with Christians in Texarkana and everywhere in between.

So with that clarified vision I feel excited to serve in England with you. Yes because of your prayers and financial support but truly because of you and with you. Not many people have the freedom I currently am allowed. With no kids, no wife, no debt and literally no plans, I can pick up and go to England when many people can’t for good reasons of ministry elsewhere, such as in your homes and in your places of work. I firmly believe God is calling us all to be His hands and feet. To love those who are hurting, to love those who are broken and to love those He deeply loves. Please continue to pray for me as if you were here and I will continue to pray for you as if I were there. I pray that the love of God will ooze out of us and heal this beautiful and broken world wherever we spend our days.

What if God is Real?

I’ve jumped on a plane and flown over the Atlantic believing just that. In fact, I have staked my whole life or at least the next year of my life on the fact that God does exist and not only that He exists but that He came to mankind 2000 years ago and died on a cross to put out the fire that we started.

I think many of us Christians are so focused on believing in a God who would go so far as to die for us that we are sometimes closed off from the sense of wonder that an infinite God could exist and would even care about something so finite as mankind.

If God exists then He is infinitely more holy than we are.

We live maybe about 80 years but no matter how high up the ladder we ascend we will all descend 6 feet below and return to the dust we came from. As much as we try to avoid the thought, we are finite and fragile.

Psalms 103 says it quite honestly:

           15 The life of mortals is like grass,
                they flourish like a flower of the field;
           16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
                and its place remembers it no more.

To an infinite uncreated being that knows no beginning and no end, we are like grass, like a vapor that is here for a moment and then gone as quick as it came.

If God created us then our lives have meaning and purpose.

Everything I create has a purpose. If I build a chair it has purpose just as the doodle on my accounting homework has purpose. One to serve me and give me a place to rest and one to entertain me when I was bored. I would go so far to say that I can’t create something that doesn’t have purpose. In so creating, I reveal the need or purpose for something. Why should God be any less efficient.

If God created us then we owe Him everything.

So if we were created by God we not only have purpose but we must submit to that design whether we like it or not. We may want to be a chair but if He created us to be a doodle then there’s nothing we can do to change it. We can either submit to the purpose He has for us or turn from God and in so losing God we lose any hope of purpose and meaning.

If God didn’t create us then our lives have no meaning and no purpose.

This may sound harsh but if there is a God that created everything then He also rules everything and holds the only authority over it all, leaving no authority higher than Himself. So you may very well create the idea of a universe without God but it must start with either an uncreated God or uncreated matter that just so happened to create you. At which point the only logical meaning and purpose you can serve is to reproduce to help the human race evolve. Love, morality, and the desire for significance are forced to fall to the insignificant wayside.

What is our purpose?

So what are we? Are we like a chair to be used when God needs us or a doodle to be used for a short period in time and then worthless. In the Bible it is clear that we are neither an object to be used or a just something to entertain God when He was bored. It reveals that we were not only created by God and for God but that we are created to be the children of God. We were created to experience and enjoy God the same way a father is meant to enjoy his child and a child his father, but this only makes sense with an unconditionally loving father. So all of a sudden we are not just an object to be used but a son or daughter to be embraced. This is the greatest scandal you will ever hear. That an infinitely Holy God, The Alpha and The Omega infinitely loves you and me. Why, I will never know but for now I know that if God does exist and He has created me then I have meaning, significance and my life has a purpose. He is the only hope we have and in Him we find life and life abundantly. For that reason I will jump on a plane and follow Jesus anywhere.

What People Need Most From Christians

What if I told you that on this past Sunday I met with a Christian mentor of mine at Starbucks and on the way to church I took some time to stop and talk to a homeless guy walking down the street with groceries in his hands to see if he wanted a ride. Sounds super-Christian right…The Starbucks, church on Sunday mornings, and talking to homeless people. Basic Christian.

But is that even what a Christian should look like? I’m starting to think not.

I did a quick U-turn, rehearsed what I would say and I did it. I asked if I could give him a ride. All to his easy reply:

“No, I’m just going up the street.”

What? He doesn’t want a ride, that’s the only way I had prepared for the conversation to go as I psyched myself up for this conversation 5 minutes ago when I passed him the first time.

My only reaction was to ask him again.

“You don’t want a ride?”

“No, it’s really not that far up the road.”

Feeling defeated I proceeded to smile and tell him to have a good day. Completely genuine and wanting to help yet completely perplexed.

Maybe he didn’t want to climb up into my jeep and he really was just going down the street, maybe he didn’t want me to know where he stayed, maybe he didn’t want me to see that there was alcohol in his sack making me think what he knows most people already think about him. Or maybe he didn’t need a ride. But that would mean I was wrong. That would mean that what I thought he needed from me and the help I was offering him was actually no help to him at all.

We assume we know what’s best for people but a lot of the time we don’t even know what people really need or if we do know what they need we don’t know how to get it to them. We know starving children in Africa need food but we can’t just place an order for Papa John’s. We know people need to know that there is a God who loves them but we have no idea how to get them to see that. Or maybe we just see someone crying and wish we could help but don’t even know where to begin.

That’s the reality we live in. That as good as people try to be, as good as Christians try to be, even on our good days we usually don’t look quite as good as the Jesus we read about.

So what are left to do?

We start to look like the disciples who couldn’t cast out the demon and Jesus had to do it for them. It says they came to Him in private and asked why they couldn’t do it. He then starts talking to them about faith. They had seen Jesus cast out demons before, He stayed calm and commanded the demons. So that’s likely what they tried. They tried to stay calm at first, as they confidently commanded the demons in Jesus name to get out of the person they were trying to help. They either didn’t know what that person needed or they didn’t know how to get it to them or in this case, get it out of them. So they go to Jesus and He explains faith to show His disciples that they were completely missing it. He tries to show them that if they really knew what they were doing then they could tap into the faith and power He offers and they could do anything, even move mountains.

Maybe we are completely missing it. Maybe we can try so hard to do the right things that it becomes about doing things and not about loving people.

There’s another version of that story in the Bible and in it Jesus says that those demons can’t be cast out without prayer and fasting. Were they ready to hear that? I know I wasn’t after I realized I was no help to that man walking down the street. I was willing to turn the car around because I had some time to spare before church but what if I would’ve been in a hurry or not yet had my cup of coffee and wasn’t in a good mood. Looking back I think what that man needed from me was equivalent to prayer and fasting. Maybe I should’ve killed the engine, got out of my car and walked up and introduced myself. But that’s not as simple as we would like it. It’s more uncomfortable than staying in our comfort zone.

We are called to love God and love others. Love always comes at a cost or a sacrifice. So are we willing to sacrifice? When you wake up in the morning you are called to sacrifice time, plans and your comfort zone; you are called to sacrifice everything. To take yourself off the priority list for your day is the only way God and others have a shot at becoming your priority.

So what do people need? People need Jesus. Jesus Himself said that He was here to sacrifice and to be a sacrifice for others. That meant His plans, His relationships, His “me time”, His vacations, even His future.

“The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” – Matthew 20:28

So maybe that’s where we start, by not trying to do stuff that we know Christians should do but instead by trying to be like Christ and sacrifice whatever it takes to get people what we know they need, the saving grace of Jesus Christ. And when we don’t know what they need, we try to get to know them and really love them, not just love being the person that helped them.