God
Mission Trip 2010
Each year our church sponsors a mission trip for the high schoolers. It's an opportunity for them to experience, if only for a week, some of the missional lifestyle: living in a foreign land, serving others, giving up many of the comforts of home. It exposes them to the real world beyond high school football games, drama classes, part-time jobs in retail, and life in the suburbs in general.
I've gone as an adult leader for two of the past three years. (Last year was a no-go because we had a still fairly new little one in the house.) We've been working with Amor Ministries to build houses in Juarez, Mexico, but the violence there the past couple of years, and notably the perception of said violence, has led us to explore other avenues.
Last year the group went to serve those on the Mississippi Gulf Coast still recovering from Katrina.
This year, June 19-26, we'll be going to Arizona, to the reservation of the San Carlos Apache Tribe. Amor has partnered with Arizona Reservation Ministries, where the need for standard housing is great.
Thirty-nine percent of the tribal families live in substandard housing, and of those that live in standard houses, 40% are in overcrowded conditions. Some of the homes have 1,300 square feet of living space, and have 20 people living in them. Three bedroom homes with four families living therein.
There is a need for 2,400 homes. ARM has committed to building 1,600, and they are currently well short of their goal.
The cost of the trip is $650 per person. We generally ask the students to provide around half, and this year they're expected to provide $300 through fundraising. This is used to pay for the transportation, meals, and lodging while on the road. (It's a long drive from the Flowerplex to the reservation in Arizona.) The church, through its mission program, provides the rest, which pays for building supplies, any camp fees, etc.
So using that as a baseline, I'm looking to raise $300 from folks who believe this to be a worthy endeavor, likely providing the rest myself. Obviously, anything over $300 is greatly appreciated, but that's the goal to reach.
So how can you donate?
Unfortunately, there's not an easy, online way to donate (that wouldn't eat into your donation; pesky credit card processing fees), so let's go the snail mail route.
Please make your check out to "Crossroads Bible Church" and mail it to me at:
Chris Turner
1079 W Round Grove Rd
Suite 300-327
Lewisville, TX 75067
Full disclosure: that's a UPS Store box I've had for...gosh, a decade now. It was originally used as a business address, and we've kept it as kind of an insurance policy for most of our shipping needs. Keeps expensive stuff from sitting on our front porch or things like checks from nice people from sitting in our mail box.
Funds are to be turned in to the church by June 13.
So that's it. I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone might have. Leave them in the comments below, or feel free to contact me privately at "retrophisch AT retrophisch DOT COM".
Thanks!
UPDATE, 9 May 2010:
I decided to pull the trigger on using PayPal to acquire donations, even if they take a cut for processing and profit. I figure something is better than nothing, and if having this makes it easier for folks to donate, so be it.
Any amount is greatly appreciated!
Jesus vs JESUS™
Matthew Paul Turner: Today, America's Jesus is more of a brand name than anything else, a money-making commodity that churches and large "non-profits" manage using basic business-type practices like strategy development, viral marketing, and publicity and public relations.
In the book, one of the chapter titles was called "JESUS is a Registered Trademark." In that chapter, I discussed the differences between the JESUS™ people have created and the Jesus we read about in the gospels. JESUS™ can be manipulated or branded into almost anything we want him to be, from a wealth-and-prosperity-providing genie to a hateful Messiah who will one day return with an eternal axe to grind. It's difficult to do that with the Jesus of the four gospels.
Does conservatism give Christianity a bad name?
This has been sitting in my NetNewsWire sidebar for two and a half years. So better late than never, I suppose. Tony Woodlief:
The best inoculation, I think, to a wrong perception that Christianity is equivalent to conservatism is the mercy work of many good churches. For every politico a non-Christian sees claiming the Christian label, we want him to see a hundred Christians in his community, quietly, humbly doing the work of our Father. The more we can accomplish that, the harder it will be for people to identify Christianity with whatever happens to be popular among politicians who claim to act on Christ’s behalf. "You will know them," Christ said of the good and the bad, "by their fruits." My prayer, in the current political season and the decades to follow, is that more non-Christians will come to know us in that way, by lifechanging encounters with loving Christians.
Unbridled
God doesn’t give us solutions, he gives us a savior.
A lot of the time, I wish it was the other way around. To be honest with you, sometimes a solution feels more manageable. I can control and understand a solution. I can bend and tweak a formula to my own needs. Christ on the other hand, our savior, isn’t like that at all.
He’s messy. And counterintuitive and uncontrollable. Grace and mercy are two of the most puzzling things on the planet. They’re raw and unbridled and out of control and intertwined with love we can’t possibly understand or earn.
Waste of time
So my question to you is, are you a slave to a jury of your peers? Do you always have to explain why you are right? How much do you care what religious people think of you? When somebody else is wrong, do you jump in quickly to tell them so, making yourself feel righteous? My answer to these questions is yes, I do. Doesn’t that stink?
I think we would be a bit more emotionally stable to understand self-righteousness gets us nowhere, and the jury of our peers is neither an accurate or authoritative judge. It really is a waste of your time to defend yourself to anybody but God Himself. And it’s even more of a waste of time to claim any defense other than Christ crucified. Really good read. [Wave of the phin to Brent for the link.]
More satisfying
"The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man." --G.K. Chesterton
Hey, everyone, it's Brent's birthday...
...so let's all celebrate by: + jamming out to Social Distortion, Pennywise, Son Volt, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana + having a good laugh while watching stupid-funny movies + diving into a good book + passionately teach a group of high schoolers how much God loves them, and how they can love Him + show off our family through Proud Dad & Uncle Alerts + fill up a journal with our innermost thoughts and secrets, even if we never share them with anyone else + do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God Happy birthday, bro. Love ya.
On the narrow path
I remind him to watch the cars, to look the drivers in the eye and make sure they see him. His brothers and I sit in the minivan while he goes to the curb and waits for a chance to walk out to the girl. Finally a car stops to let him pass. The girl’s face is turned down; she sees nothing but the ground. I watch my son’s narrow shoulders as he crosses the drive, and I am praying that no harm will come to him, not now or ever, that someone who is this loving will be spared the pain of the world, which is when I remember that it is Christmas, the time when we celebrate precisely the opposite, the coming of pure love to suffer for all we who sit with faces turned down, not even knowing what to ask for, knowing only in our crusted-over hearts that anything will help.
Thanksgiving Proclamation
Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to "recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:" Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us. And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best. Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3d day of October, A.D. 1789. --George Washington
Dangerous wine
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC:
Unfermented grape juice is a bland and pleasant drink, especially on a warm afternoon mixed half-and-half with ginger ale. It is a ghastly symbol of the life blood of Jesus Christ, especially when served in individual antiseptic, thimble-sized glasses.
Wine is booze, which means it is dangerous and drunk-making. It makes the timid brave and the reserved amorous. It loosens the tongue and breaks the ice, especially when served in a loving cup. It kills germs. As symbols go, it is a rather splendid one. [Totally ripped off from Michael Hyatt.]
It's Time To See Religion Die
Brian "Head" Welch, Save Me From Myself:
All of the man-made religion crap in this world has to die. Whether it's Christian man-made religion crap or some other man-made religion crap, it all has to die. It must grieve God's heart when he sees Christians fighting about whose doctrine is right; he doesn't see denominations, he sees one big glorious bride. When Christians argue about doctrinal issues, all he sees is carnal people acting like children. All that prideful, controlling religious crap is what drives young people away from churches, and it has to go. Much of the world's population is under the age of eighteen, and we have to bring the love of Christ to them without all this controlling crap going on. Because, where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."
Burning them up
Forgiveness is the thing I ask for the most. In my head maybe I know that God’s forgiveness is eternal and inexhaustible but in my heart I feel like he’s going to run out of them. That he’s got a limited supply. And I’m burning them up, one by one, sin by sin. Boy, have I felt this way, too. (Yes, I know the blog post is over a year old, but I just put the feed into my RSS reader and am reading the old entries still in the feed.)
Past the words
I spent a good portion of my time in a small chapel, learning prayers that preceded the Roman Catholic Church. I came with a great weight on my bones, a weight that overwhelmed me in that tiny chapel. I fell to my knees there, and prayed with quivering shoulders and trembling hands, done in by grief over the past, fear of the future, the knowing that this present ground is sand, that my feet must soon move forward or backward. Each way bears a cost; one of the great lies of men is that the path can be traveled without suffering. Another great lie is that we can stand still and read books and let our paltry knowledge carry us into the arms of God. We have to walk, with heavy, stumbling feet.
[...]
It’s easy to see why so many of us -- Christians and pagans alike -- spend lifetimes running from the living God, our hands stopping our ears, our mouths babbling prayers or blasphemies, all in an effort to avoid the great silence where God speaks to man. That silence is a fearful place, but there is love there, the great love of a parent. There is mercy too, and strength for the uncompleted race.
"Do not lean on your own understanding"
Andrée Seu, "Alice's battle":
You have never seen a struggle like Alice's struggle against joy. The doubting Narnian dwarfs were preemptively miserable, and so is Alice. The girlfriends' counsel of lowered expectations mounts a new offensive in her mind. (There is no force so powerful as error in a godly person's mouth.) But just as Alice starts to sink again, the Spirit counters with this coup de grace:
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5).
Alice perceives in a hot instant that this is not only where the present battle is joined, but where every battle is joined—against the counsel of one's saintliest friend, against the received wisdom of one's generation, against the carnal instinct to protect oneself. There are only ever these two—the Word of the Lord; your own understanding.
It dawns on Alice that at any given moment of the day she has a choice of which thoughts she may entertain—those of her friends and "her own understanding," or the word of the Lord. All that is not the latter is the former, no matter how sweetly wrapped.
Don't keep it in the closet
Glenn Beck, in the epilogue of The Christmas Sweater:
My mom gave me the sweater, but the greatest gift was given to all of us by a loving Father in Heaven. It is the only true gift ever given to all and yet opened or appreciated by so few. It is the gift of redemption and atonement, and it sits on the top shelf, largely untouched, in the closets of our soul.
At Christmas we celebrate the birth of the Christ child, but by doing so, sometimes we miss the real meaning of the season. It is what that infant, boy, and then perfect man did at the end of His ministry that makes the birth so special.
Without His death, the birth is meaningless.
Wow
I had read somewhere a brief bit of Brian Welch's acceptance of Christ, but his testimony for I Am Second is powerful stuff.
[Wave of the phin to Evan Courtney.]
The future
"Praying about the future? Take heart! God is already there. He's standing at the end of our lives looking back on all our days."
A message from God
"Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man." --Rabindranath Tagore [Via A Child Chosen.]
In praise of single-issue voting
Those other issues certainly affect a country's safety, prosperity, and greatness. But I've come to believe that a nation that tolerates destruction of innocents deserves neither safety nor prosperity nor greatness. We've descended into barbarism, and it poisons how we treat the elderly, the incapacitated, even ourselves. We shouldn't be surprised, having made life a utilitarian calculation, that more and more humans become inconvenient.
It's certainly true that there are other issues that ought to concern Christians, like the sanctity of marriage, and how we treat the mentally ill, the elderly, and children who have been born. But abortion is, in my view, the touchstone. Get this one wrong and your moral compass can guide you in nothing else.
What does it mean to be a Christian voter?
Tony Woodlief, with words I need to take heed of:
Cast aside what you think you know is right, the church marquee urges, and consider the God-breathed Word. Give yourself over to it and these seemingly large things--tax rates, economic growth, wars, and rumors of wars--will diminish. Meanwhile, those seemingly small things--the anger in our hearts when we, say, confront someone whose ideology we dislike or the fact that we find it so much easier to spend time with those we like rather than those who need us--will become grievous to our spirits.
This is the Word that cuts through every heart, through the very heart of darkness, illuminating the world as it is and will be. Beside it every politician ever born is remarkably inconsequential. Our business on Election Day is brief, and regardless of who wins our work remains the same--seeking and serving the lost, losing our own lives in the doing, and clinging to the Cross that shatters nations, tribes, and creeds.