(First written on 12/03/09, late post)

Greetings Lovers and Friends!

First, please forgive me for not blogging more regularly!  I really need to get on top of that!  Pray for me!   My redemption may be Facebook.  I update my Facebook more regularly.

In this blog, I will only discuss Mondays, today.  I will write another blog and catch you up on all the haps.  Please stay tuned.

Mondays, how I love thee… let me count the ways:

Today, my morning started early!  As you know, I am a night owl.  Putting that aside, my priority is to serve and love on teens.  I have two teens who live in Lemon Grove, which is way outside of City Heights- roughly 6 miles and a 20+ minute drive, depending on route.  They live the furthest and are wonderful girls!  Their family has one car and it broke, through my AAA we got it towed, but that’s another story.  So today, I picked up my two teen girls and their little brother.  We dropped the little brother off at school then I proceeded to take the girls to Hoover High.  Although getting up is a drag, I love serving the teens and hopefully sending them off to school in a blessed way.  Tomorrow morning, I am picking them up at the crack of dawn and taking them back to my place, where I will serve them breakfast and share the Word with them.  Good times!

After dropping the girls off at Hoover, I sent out some thank you cards to financial supporters and mailed out some support requests.  Then I got home and had breakfast and spent time with my Wonderful Maker.  My devotional definitely hit a hot spot.  God’s been speaking directly to me daily, in regards to the very exact things that are going on in my life.  I love God, He’s a trip and all knowing!  The passage was:
He called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”  Mark 8:34-36

This paragraph, which is also my FB status, stuck out the most:

To be a disciple of Jesus means to pursue Him like the pursuit of a lover and the passion of a romance. Christ is worth your every thought and breath. In Him you will find your reason for living. Remember that He gives you His Spirit but wants you to give Him your body, mind, and soul.  -Jim Burns

I wasn’t pursuing Christ like a lover.  I wasn’t googling him, trying to get to know him, trying to get face time with him.  Nope.  What a good reminder to focus on Christ, especially as I was eye’ing this super dope guy!  (wow, I am putting my business out there!)

After my devotional time, it was time for out weekly Harbor and World Impact staff meeting.  This week, I was responsible for taking the minutes!  After the mtg, I had lunch and typed up the minutes and sent it out.  I tried to do a thorough job and received good feedback:)  I wonder if Jesus was a detail note taker…?

Next, I went to Hoover for my 2 separate one on one mentor appointments.  I love one on one interaction with teens!  My mentees and I are off to a wonderful start!  Mentee A loves me!  I think she’s swell too!  Mentee B is great too!  I’ve been trying to create a safe place for them to share their days/lives with me.  Mentee B interviewed for a job and as soon as she said that, my old Target executive head came on.  I gave her tips on the best way to handle a post interview and she did what I suggested and got the job!  WOOO!  Praise God.  We talked today about the job and I gave her more suggestions.  She’s gonna be the ideal employee and further mgr!  I am bonding well with both teens.  Mentee A goes to a protestant church with her family but speaks of religion versus relationship.  Please pray that I will be blessed with wisdom and the words to know when to share more to Mentee A.  Mentee B is just a motion riding Catholic.  Please pray I can use Christmas to share the significance of Christ.

After the mentorships, I did 4 miles uphill level 20 and resistance level 7 on the elliptical!  I must lose the fatty SD weight.  I blame SD, not my lack of self-control and discipline:)

Post-gym, I went home to shower then headed to Young Life.  On Mondays, we pretty much do outreach…..

“Austin” (not his real name) was the first person I interviewed for this series. I couldn’t have found a better person to write about.

I began working on this series two months ago, searching for people whose stories would inspire regardless of how I made them sound. I searched for people who’d experienced hell on earth. I never even thought that some of these people would have at some point created that hell on earth for others.

Austin was a hell-bringer. He was one of those people that my mom worried I’d run into when I started hanging out in downtown Greenville, North Carolina. Sometimes he’d get robbed, yeah, but other times he was the one with the gun. In this world revolving around drugs, guns were like ATM cards and their victims the ATM.

Austin put it this way: “If I had no money, you had money in your pocket and I had a gun in my pocket, and we met, when we went our separate ways, I’d have your money and my gun in my pocket.”

Today, Austin’s been clean and sober for over a year. He loves Jesus Christ. And he’s helping other addicts and alcoholics recover along with him. Twice our interviews were postponed. The first time, he had to meet with someone he was sponsoring. The second, he was driving a guy to Greenville to check him into rehab.

This is his story, and the first epic published here at The Evidence Project. As I’ll do with future epics, I’m breaking Austin up into several mini-chapters, which I’ll publish over the next week.

~

Chapter I

~

Austin’s life changed the morning after the last time he was robbed.

Like he’d done a million times before, Austin drove downtown – hammered drunk – in search of some dope. Like a million times before, he rolled down a window next to a guy standing on a corner. Like a million times before, he asked, “Watchu got? I want some dope.”

It often went three ways. One, the guy would pull out some drugs – Austin was looking for crack tonight – then Austin would make an offer. Two, the guy wouldn’t have anything but could tell him somebody who did. Or three, the guy would have some dope but instead pull out of his pocket a gun or knife, ordering Austin hand over the money he’d planned to spend.

“No,” the guy on the corner replied. Pulled out a gun. Pressed it to Austin’s head. “Give me your money.”

Tonight, it was number three.

~

The first sip of that beer. The first buzz from that bong.

These aren’t moments in which you’d imagine yourself in rehab, or facing a dozen felonies, over the next two decades of your life. Not when you’re twelve. When you’re twelve, all you’re thinking about is the people in the room. Or, if you’re lucky, what your parents might say about this sipping of beer and taking of hits off bongs.

Austin wasn’t lucky. He began drinking and smoking, yes, at twelve years old.

“I don’t think there’s ever been anything that’s been introduced to me that I said, ‘No’,” he says.

Austin grew up in Greensboro, NC. The smoking and drinking came naturally as anything else to fit in. Like wearing jeans with holes all over them. “It was the cool thing to do, I thought,” Austin says. “I really don’t know why, because I grew up in an awesome family. Very well-off.

His father owned a vending machine company, a coffee service and a bottled water company. That family didn’t hurt for money. Austin’s every need or want went met.

“I was spoiled,” he says.

He was popular, too. An athlete, even, starring for his high school football team for two years at nose tackle and right guard. “I did it all,” he says.

He quit sports his sophomore year when his coach found out about the pot and alcohol. The coach advised Austin to quit; Austin’s response was, “Screw you” followed by turning in his jersey. He never played a down of football again, and went from using to selling. Yet somehow, Austin remained immensely popular.

“I had a lot of friends who were good kids,” Austin says. “Athletes, people who went to church. And then I had the other friends that were the totally opposite, that I’d get in trouble with. Somehow I lived like a chameleon. I could fit in anywhere.”

He might not have been the life of every party, or anything like that, but Austin was at every party held. Even as a sophomore, he could drink anyone under the table, and was up for any drug passed around.

On the flip side, when he’d spend Saturday nights at one of his friends’ houses, he’d go to church with his family the next morning.

“I could be whoever you wanted me to be,” Austin says. “But I was never me. I was trying to always be whoever I thought you wanted me to be, depending on who I was hanging out with at that point.” He pauses, looks at his sandwich – we’re eating at a popular restaurant in Wilmington – as if asking it if he should say what he’s about to say. Then he speaks. “I didn’t know who I was.”

The church was Presbyterian, and the only contact Austin ever really had with any sort of religion outside of Young Life. “My family didn’t go to church,” Austin says. “That’s as simple as it gets. There weren’t any Bibles in the house that I knew of.”

Whatever that preacher preached, Austin heard none of it. The sermons came off as completely irrelevant. He snored more often than he listened. “They were talking about stuff I had no clue about,” Austin recalls.

When Austin was fifteen, he was arrested for the first time. It happened in the school parking lot, when a security guard caught him with a half-pound of pot as he was making a deal. He went to court, got slapped on the wrist, and didn’t miss a day of school. His parents, naturally, were furious. Some of his friends were shocked. But if Austin noticed, he certainly didn’t change.

“I was so selfish I guess I didn’t really care,” he says. “It didn’t seem to affect me at all. There were no consequences.”

The next day he smoked with a few friends and all was forgotten, lost in the haze of the smoke and the high. That sensation – that ability to instantly forget, that numbness to the thoughts and opinions of anyone else – would become as addicting as the drug. That sensation was such a blissful escape. Even when brought on by wild nights of drinking the numbness always came, and with it, comfort.

“I partied all the time,” Austin says. “I mean, all the time. To where I was drinking almost every day after school, and all weekends.”

Ironically, Austin stayed involved with Young Life. Not for the Christian message – he didn’t care a bit about God – “Just because some of my friends went,” Austin says. “And I really liked the scene. And I knew they were doing the right thing. And I liked it.” He chuckles. “You’d think that might have been a hint to me, but nothing to stick.”

By age sixteen, Austin started doing cocaine. “I was just with some people that were doing it, so I said, well, let me do it,” Austin says. He had an older brother – who we’ll call Travis – who went to East Carolina University in Greenville, NC (about two-and-a-half hours from Greensboro). Austin visited whenever he could. He loved partying, and loved doing it with the college crowd.

“I could always drink everybody under the table,” Austin recalls. “I wasn’t the guy that passed out. Everyone else would quit, and I wanted to do more. Of anything. There was no stopping point for me.”

Somehow, Austin made it through to graduation, then enrolled at ECU, where he joined a frat. Until then, Austin’s security rested in how he managed to maintain friendships with people despite his wild habits. Once he joined that frat, wild as he was, he became just one of a crowd. And he loved it.

“It was cool,” he says. “Because when I got there, I could hang out with people who could drink like I did. I didn’t look as different any more.”

Austin, Chapter II, coming soon.

Guest Blogger, Sue Moye

Women’s Ministry Director at McLean Bible Church

Sue is a frequent speaker and has faithfully served women in ministry for years. She also comes from a long heritage of women serving other women. Sue’s devotional today is such a wonderful picture of who she is… a woman who loves God and others from the depths of her heart.

The Greatest Commandment

Matthew 22:34-40
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

“Her recipe for Godliness”

That was the topic I was asked to speak on at a going away party for a woman who had faithfully served MBC for twelve years. As I pondered what creative words I might say, I realized that some recipes cannot be improved upon and that the secret is simply in doing the basics well.

What I knew was this, my life has been forever changed as a result of watching this friend live out the two greatest commandments.

My friend is in love with Jesus Christ and wakes up each morning to spend time alone with Him. For her, “loving the Lord your God” is not a ritual, or methodology, it is eagerness to be in His presence. As a result, she always offers the freshest of spiritual ingredients to those of us around her because she gathers them daily.

Another characteristic of her loving God is her constant testimony to God’s goodness.

My friend knows hard places in life, yet she consistently chooses to see evidence of God’s faithfulness and celebrate it. Her gratitude is contagious and it causes those of us around her to get our eyes off of ourselves and on to the God we love.

As I interviewed the women touched by my dear friend’s ministry, they each echoed the same theme. They felt like they were uniquely special to her. She listened to, prayed for, and rejoiced in the journeys of each of “her girls.”

Loving her neighbor didn’t stop with those she knew.

Like the “tomb of the unknown soldier” at Arlington Cemetery, this servant of God had a constant eye open for the “unknown woman” at church.

My friend lived in anticipation of what God was going to do in the life of new women attending our church. She worked to with the team to remove every barrier possible for women who showed any interest in the women’s conference.

The greatest commandment invites you to fall in love.

We can all understand the ingredients and steps, but until you see the real thing, smell the aroma, taste the goodness, and crave more, do you become committed.

I pray that you have, or will find your own living demonstration of this truth, and be drawn to experiencing it for yourself.

Ok, I have been really bad the past few weeks about updating my blog but I promise to update it more frequently.

I can’t believe we’re already into November! This month we’ve started having snow camp on the weekends, which means we actually have Young Life groups on property. During October our guests consisted of different church groups that used camp to host retreats. All of the interns have been involved with YL in the past so its really awesome to have YL groups in camp to hang out with and serve. Last weekend we started in the job rotation that we will stay in through January. My job is Guest Services and it involves everthing from shoveling snow to maintaining camp when the groups are in and making sure the program staff has what they need. Last weekend the high schoolers competed in a crud war; which was fun to watch b/c they were throwing water balloons, flour bombs and yuck at each other. This weekend should be a little quieter- we have a little less that 300 middle school kids coming in.

Yesterday we were all off for Veterans Day, so the interns went skiing and snowboarding at Copper Mtn. It was so fun and I am so sore today!! It’s still early to skiing this season so they only had one main run open. The Winter Park resort opens on Wed and its only 20 min from us so we will be there a ton on our days off!

So funny story about our days off last week. The town that we live in is Fraser and we’re in a valley so to get here from Denver you have to go over a pass- Berthoud Pass. Well Grace, Casey and I decided that we wanted to bike up the pass on our day off. We parked at the bottom and headed up about 2pm. Grace took off on her own because she was on a road bike which allowed her to go faster than Casey and I on mountain bikes. Casey and I stay together and head up the pass which overall wasn’t that bad. The shoulder of the road was very narro but fortunately there wasn’t much traffic. As we get higher up the temperature starts to drop and since the sun was getting lower we we in the shade for a good bit of the ride. Finally we pass Grace, on her way down, who tells us that we have about a 20 min ride left to the top (at that point we had been riding for an hour and a half). We made it about 10 min more and decide that it’s too cold to keep going so turned around to head back down the pass. As soon as we headed down we became icicles…I thought my hands were going to freeze to the handle bars! We got so cold that we ended up getting off our bikes to walk them down! About 40 min into our trip down a car stops to see if we wanted a ride. We took it after deciding the guy seemed safe. I know that probably sounds really shady but he was an older man who seemed fine and I had my phone with us. It all turned out well. I definitely learned my lesson about planning for the weather here
Check out these pics from the ride:

Almost at the top taking pictures (of course we had to document it)

Check out how long and windy the road is our to the right:

Being under the weather has its perks when you have a Sony eReader and a great library. Here are some of the books I’ve read recently:

Olive Kitteridge is Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitizer-prize-winning story of a retired schoolteacher’s reflections on her life in coastal Maine. This is an exquisite gem of a book, its prose never jarring but always True.

Dark Mirror is Barry Maitland’s latest offering in the Brock and Kolla mystery series. In this installment, a London student, Marion Summers, is researching the use of arsenic among the Pre-Raphaelites (Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and others), until she herself falls victim to arsenic poisoning. Brock and Kolla investigate, keeping us guessing right up to the end.

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power is a well-written expose by Jeff Sharlet. The book explores the activities of Ivanwald, a Washington-based fundamentalist group which sponsors the National Prayer Breakfast. Most frightening to this former campus minister is the Family’s ties to Young Life and Campus Crusade. Frankly, I tried to read this book three times and couldn’t. It’s an amazing piece of journalism and highly readable, but it’s too scary for me. Maybe it’s just a little too close to home.

On the To Be Read pile is Barbara Kingsolver’s latest, The Lacuna. According to reviewers, this is Kingsolver’s masterpiece, and it features two of my favorite people from history, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

We’ve spent the past week hosting people and my awesome wife is the grand dame of all hostesses! I offer personality and a capacity to move furniture around and Bethany does the rest! We’ve had one of our financial supporters from America staying with us and now we have a group of young ladies from World Race staying for a few days. So it has been a busy week but enjoyable. Seeing where we live and what we do through the eyes of outsiders gives us a fresh perspective of why it is God called us here.

We went on a prayer walk on Monday around the University area and as always God had a lot to say to those who participated. When groups or individuals come through Munich and ask if they can do anything for our ministry we almost inevitably ask them to participate in a prayer walk. It shows them clearly what God has in mind for the city and its’ students, but also confirms in our hearts what it is God has already said to us. Prayer truly is the work.

I also had a very unexpected ghost from Christmas past as it were in the person of a 25-year-old American student who is studying here for six months from Utah University. He was part of a team of young men who were doing their two-year mission with the Mormon Church and spent a portion of it trying to share their believes with the people of Munich. They also managed to find the time to come to my house every Monday for three to four hours of Bible study and discussion about the differences in our believes.

Elder ***** (I want to protect his privacy) was a passionate and frequent visitor for the months he lived in Munich until his Church moved him on to new fields in Regensburg.  Last weekend Bethany received an email from a friend who lived next door to me at the Men’s House telling how a young American man arrived at her door looking for Robert and asking if I still did Bible studies and could he attend one! She passed on our contact details and he sent us an email. Yesterday I met him, and we spent almost three hours walking in the park and talking about the past five years.

 One of the ladies from World race asked if our aim was to reach Christians at the University. We responded by saying our goal was to reach the furthest out students and that if we helped our young brothers and sisters along the way then we would be delighted. But our goal is to reach out to the kids who are furthest away from Christ. The young man I walked with in the park yesterday is one of those furthest out kids. I’m so excited to be a part of the effort of reaching kids like my mormon friend. Yesterday reminded me that this is what I’ve been made to do. God has seen fit to make me good at one specific thing and that is talking to people who appear to have no interest in meeting or knowing my God. I feel like Eric Liddell ( Chariots of Fire) when he says that he feels God’s pleasure when he runs. I feel God’s pleasure when I talk ; Liddell was made to run, I was made to talk!

New people have looked into our world and seen it with new eyes helping us see again where it is God has placed us and why.

One of Young Life’s slogans is “You were made for this!” I’ve been reminded very forcibly this week that Bethany and I have indeed been made for this!

I have only been to California twice in my life for a total of 2 weeks. But both those weeks are intensely ingrained in my memory as times of physical exuberance and spiritual exploration. The two trips were at a small camp of 20 or so people and each day had a different adventure in store. Whether it was climbing mountains, kayaking or mountain boarding the camp kept us moving. In the midst of all this action there was time for deep conversation, questioning, frustrations and tears.

Before the trip even began I was excited to go to California because it was the place my father and my aunt spent a good part of their young adult years. I know there are many stories my father never had a chance to tell me and I wish more than anything I could have heard. My aunt does her best to relay the stories she remembers and she was a part of but, she’ll never be able to tell me what it was like to hike in the sierra mountain range for weeks at a time. So in a small way journeying to California was a way to reconnect with my father’s past as if somehow it still lingered out there in the mountains or on the streets of San Francisco.

I remember that on the day we hiked a moutain (whose name I can’t recall) on the way back down the mountain I was separated from everybody in my group. Initially I thought nothing of it but as the way back down took longer and longer I became increasingly nervous. It was the most alone I have ever been in my life, no one near me, no sounds of vehicles or “the world”. In the middle of wondering whether I had gone back down the right way a butterfly appeared and landed on my shirt. I remember freezing and just staring at this creature, who just as quickly as it landed took off again. It was the first time in my life that I felt there was something out there that was bigger than me on this planet. I nearly fell to my knees I was so overwhelmed with emotions and to this day I can’t accurately explain what happened in that brief moment.

“Give us this day our daily faith, but deliver us from beliefs.”

-Aldous Huxley, Island

Opening his last chapter of The Future of Faith, Harvey Cox offers this eccentric quote from Huxley’s sketch on the future of religion in a science world.  It is overstated to be sure, but the quote captures something that, like it or not, we are seeing in the world of religions today.  The growing emphases on Spirit and Justice are disrupting the preeminence which dogmatic belief has held on the religious landscape, especially in the last century.

—-

Part 1: Creeds crafting orthodoxy and the Gospel of Thomas

Part 2: 20th Century American Fundamentalism

Globalization: Humility, or pluralism and fundamentalism

Globalization breeds crisis of faith as contact with the Other suggests we may not understand as much as we previously thought.  A mature reaction is humility and a desire to dialogue and learn.  But more commonly a reaction of ambiguous syncretism or reactionary dogmatic fundamentalism is taken instead.  This is the history of the late 20^th century, as earlier 20^th century trends of theological liberalism and fundamentalism reached a crux to the point that people took sides without realizing they were even doing so..

To explain this, Cox highlights the remarkable resurgence in Islam over the last century.  There are a variety of explanations for this trend: the rise of education and low job market in the middle east, the world’s oil addiction, the failure of either socialism or free market capitalism to satisfy needs.  But the most likely reason, Cox argues, is the way in which change (i.e. globalization) breeds in people a need for stability (i.e. tradition, religion).  To take it a step further, Islam has always had a care for the poor as a central pillar, and so the growing humanitarian obsession merged well with a religio-political system that required the poor to to be taken care of in order to reach paradise.

The rise of lay leadership, to the hierarchy’s chagrin

On top of this, we see a phenomenon in Islam that has congruent strains in every major religion: the rise of the lay semi-clergy.  Notably, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism are showing trends toward less ordination, less officiation, and more work outside the bounds of the dominant system.  In American Christianity, we see this in para-church ministries such as Young Life, the Passion conferences, the Salvation Army, or churches planted without denominational support or seminary-schooled clergy.  There is no longer an assumed need for official sanction.  The reaction from the religious systems of the world loosing control is violent.  A brand new Buddhist temple, beautifully constructed into the side of Mt. Fugi is destroyed because it houses a lay sect.  Christian priests are excommunicated.  Muslim’s have been killed for stepping outside the watch of the imams.

Education breeds doubt and atheism

Cox goes on to describe a far more hidden fact, a truth that philosophers and theologians have known since Plato but that few choose to articulate: people want a solid, unquestionable narrative with which to frame life and ethics.  Faith does not do well if its subscribers do not feel absolutely sure of their fundamentals.  Even in the highly functional societies of northern Europe need a common, almost religious, framing ethic regardless of the success of atheism.  In the Bible churches of the US south, we see an example of this in the way that pastors are reluctant to teach their congregations of the contradictions and problems with Biblical inerrancy that they learned in seminary.  People hate that sense of not being sure.

History inarguably shows that a society’s rise of education corresponds to a rise in atheism.  Even when atheism does not dominate, a rise in intellect still threatens the clergy-class because the lay become aware of problems in the faith.  People learn, and then they doubt.  There doubts can no longer be assuaged with pompous assurances from a cleric, because the doubter can google the question on his mind and know more about it in a short 10 minutes than the cleric learned in 5 years of grad school.  So at best, education threatens the religious establishment, if not religion itself.

Crisis point: liberalism leads to fundamentalism leads to emergence

The last trend Cox sees in the future of faith is the sharpening and marginalization of fundamentalism.  To look at this, Cox highlights al Qaida, a group that emerged in response to what it saw as the secularization of governments founded in Islam.  Intelligence analysts tell us that al Qaida’s goal is not first and foremost to hurt America and non-Muslim states.  Al Qaida wants Islamic renewal, and after witnessing the trend of impassioned young Muslims rising whenever a foreign state intervenes in domestic affairs, al Qaida saw an opportunity to coax America to attack.  Hence 9/11; we each needed the other to attack.  For a few years, their desire for the US to attack worked well and surged their ranks.  Fundamentalist movements are well equipped to draw true believers.  But the plan backfired, as fundamentalist tactics warped by a good guys vs. bad guys worldview tend to do, and by 2005, we saw al Qaida’s plummeting esteem in the Muslim world.  The became the laughable sideliners, angrily fighting a loosing battle.  An American national intelligence agency reported in 2008 that al Qaida was being alienated from the broader Muslim world due to its “indiscriminate killing and inattention to the practical problems of poverty, unemployment, and education.”

Cox makes a startling comparison to Islam’s extremist wing to what he says is the American Christian version: the Religious Right’s desire for a “Christian nation.”  In Africa, it comes in the form of bishops splitting communions over women and gay clergy.  In Israel, it is the formation of a religious “Torah State.”  In India, the Barata Janata party wants to “Hinduize” India.  It is a consistent fundamentalist reaction we see in every major religion to discomfort with globalization.  At some point, globalization and growing literacy/education forces a community to a crisis point at which they will choose either mechanistic and reactionary fundamentalism, or a rupture into faith beyond the traditional bounds of beliefs they have known.  My fear for the Church is that so many choose fundamentalism because they mistakenly feel doing so is loyal to Jesus and the Bible.  It is a very deceptive myth that shrouds fear and misinformation as loyalty.

Jedi Prophet Yoda

The great sage Yoda once said, “Fear is the path to the Dark Side.  Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate… leads to suffering. “

There is much fear disguising itself as loyalty in all the fundamentalist movements.  It thrives on misinformation and an unwillingness to learn from anyone outside its own camp.  And it is a losing battle.  Fundamentalism will never die, but it will continue to be marginalized, screaming from the sidelines that somebody else stole their things and they want them back.

The Future of Faith

In the end Cox is very hopeful for the future of faith, as am I.  A growing emphasis on Spirit and Justice is on the rise, and fundamentalism is on the decline.  Faith, with its loyal prophets of education and atheism, are growing strong.  Just as creeds emerged from the spheres of authority over a vast body that could have cared less, we see less emphasis on lists of beliefs for inclusion (and theologians like myself are far more interested in a wider sphere of learning).  There is less hierarchy, patriarchy, and dogmatism.  Faiths are rediscovering their founder’s philosophies.  The Church is rediscovering “Gospel” as Jesus defined it (“the Kingdom of God is at hand”) rather than the way 20^th century fundamentalism defined it (“believe these things and you will get to heaven”).  As Rabbi Gamaliel once urged the Sanhedrin to cease oppressing an emerging Jewish sect called “the Way of Jesus” because if it was from God it could not be stopped, I am convinced this new turn of the Spirit and Justice will not be stopped.  It will be excommunicated, slandered, oppressed, and martyred, but it will not be stopped.

Blood:Water Mission and Young Life have a fantastic event going on right now!!! By going to TheFallCampaign you and your friends can start your own, customized campaign to raise funds and awareness for what Blood:Water Mission is doing in Africa! Funds from The Fall Campaign will benefit people in Marsabit, Africa specifically.

By Starting A Campaign you get your own micro-site. Put up posts, photos, videos…anything you want to tell other people what you are doing and why. Follow @FallCampaign on Twitter. Become a Fan of TheFallCampaign page on Facebook. Connect, engage, raise funds…build wells and save lives!

Still wondering why? Here’s what Pat Goodman has to say about why he cares…

Life here is rolling along at a tremendous pace and we can hardly believe the year is in its last quarter. We’re still busy studying language and completing Young Life’s leadership training, alongside building the team and preparing the way for ministry to take-off next year.

Probably the most substantial thing to have happened in the past few weeks is that we formally asked a German couple to pray about becoming our first official volunteer leaders. They are both medical doctors; Stephie is a children’s doctor, while Roger specializes in internal medicine. While their substantial educational and professional status will be valuable to our team, our main reason for asking them to join us is their gift in prayer and their passion for reaching the city with The Gospel.  Bethany and I have known the Vogelmanns for three years, and have prayed with them for almost that entire time.  They are already part of our team prayer meetings and plan to continue praying with us even if they are not called to join us in reaching the students here in Munich. Please pray that they have a clear answer from God for what they should do. Better to have a pair of passionate prayer warriors on our side than an uncertain pair of leaders.

My back continues to slowly heal and I had my latest (and hopefully last)set of injections last week, and won’t need to see the doctor again for five weeks. God willing by then the pain will have completely gone and I will be able to resume a normal life again. Bethany continues to see the doctor concerning stomach problems, and while thankfully all of the tests have come back clear we are no closer to discovering exactly what the problem is beyond the general diagnosis of acid reflex. I’d really value prayer for our health.

We just finished our first full fiscal year with Young Life and are awed to discover we ended the year in the black! Considering the global recession and the increase our budget has undergone  in the past 18 months it is nothing less than a miracle that the ministry’s fiscal needs were met. I’d also appreciate your prayers for our endeavors at raising this year’s budget.

All in all it has been a pretty normal week. The fiscal year has begun and I’m looking at a budget of $130,000 to be raised in dollars and euros! Our team will be traveling in America and Spain for most of December and January. (We have a seminary class and training followed by our European conference.) So in the next seven weeks we need to finish up our assignments from the last leadership training; complete the pre-assignments for the seminary class and finish our language commitments which for the Sandefurs includes passing a language test on December 4th! Bethany and I have a support trip in December to plan and a banquet information evening in St. Louis just before Christmas.

Just an ordinary week in the life of the Millars!

LES meets UES in matrimony; image courtesy of gossipgirlinsider.com

So, I finally saw last week’s episode of Gossip Girl. For my money, there is nothing surprising about Sonic Youth performing “Starpower” and bassist/guitarist Kim Gordon marrying Rufus Humphrey and Lily van der Woodsen-Bass-etc. The reason, as I will outline chronologically below, is that flirtations with mainstream popular culture is completely in keeping with their career. This cameo isn’t an isolated incident. If anything this network-savvy band pioneered how indie does synergy.

March 1, 1988: Ciccone Youth, a side project formed in 1986 between the band and Minutemen bassist/co-founder Mike Watt releases The Whitey Album. In this configuration, they took part of their name from Madonna’s surname. They also covered some of her songs, including “Into the Groovey” and “Burnin’ Up.” For good measure, they also covered Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love.” Were they taking the piss or celebrating 80s blockbuster pop? Maybe both? You decide.

June 26, 1990: Goo is released on DGC, marking their major label debut. 

In 1991, the Goo video album is released, a clip accompanying each song on the album. Among them are “Mildred Pierce” which features Sofia Coppola dressed as Joan Crawford, who starred in the 1945 film noir of same name, “Disappearer,” which was directed by Todd Haynes, and a few clips directed by Tamra Davis, including “Dirty Boots” and “Kool Thing,” which also featured Public Enemy’s Chuck D.

September 17, 1991: Kim Gordon co-produces Pretty on the Inside, Hole’s debut album, released on Caroline, a subsidiary of Virgin.

July 21, 1992: Dirty is released. Two noteworthy music videos come along with it. Actor Jason Lee, then unknown, is featured as a tragic skateboarder in ”100%. The clip was co-directed by Davis and Spike Jonze, who just made some movie about kids and monsters based on a children’s book. Chloë Sevigny, once a Sassy intern, stars in “Sugar Kane,” which also showcases Marc Jacobs’ Perry Ellis grunge collection.

August 9, 1993: “Cannonball” is released as the lead single to The Breeders way-ruling Last Splash. Kim Gordon co-directs the music video with Jonze.

September 14, 1993: Judgment Night is released, along with a successful soundtrack from Epic that pairs alternative/metal acts with rap groups. Sonic Youth and Cypress Hill collaborate on ”I Love You Mary Jane.”

Cover to Judgment Night (Epic, 1993); image courtesy of brianorndorf.com

1994: Kim Gordon creates X-Girl with Daisy von Furth, a sister clothing line to Beastie Boys Mike D’s X-Large collection. I see DJ Tanner wear an X-Girl blue jumper on Full House and want one.

August 25, 1994: Sonic Youth contributes “Genetic” to the My So-Called Life soundtrack. Released on Atlantic, the compilation features other Juliana Hatfield, Afghan Whigs, Daniel Johnston, and (of course) Buffalo Tom, who every fan remembers played a show on Pike Street.

Track list to the My So-Called Life soundtrack (Atlantic, 1994); image courtesy of mscl.com

September 13, 1994: If I Were A Carpenter, a Carpenters tribute album, is released on A&M. An alternafest, acts like American Music Club, Shonen Knife, Babes and Toyland, and Matthew Sweet share time with SY, who cover “Superstar.” In late 2007, the song would make an appearance in the movie Juno.

Cover to If I Were a Carpenter (Rhino, 1994); image courtesy of whizzo.ca

October 27, 1995: CBS airs “The State’s 43rd Annual All-Star Halloween Special,” marking the MTV sketch comedy troupe’s network television debut. Sonic Youth is the musical guest. Few people watch (I am one of them), and CBS decides to pull the plug. 

May 19, 1996: Fox airs ”Homerpalooza,” The Simpsons‘ penultimate episode of its seventh season. In it, Homer goes on tour with Hullabalooza (re: Lollapalooza), taking canons to the gut to the bemusement of thousands of jaded slackers. Several acts made guests appearances, including Smashing Pumpkins, Cypress Hill, Peter Frampton, and Sonic Youth. The band also provides an “alternative” version to Danny Elfman’s iconic theme song, perhaps getting closer in tone to what creator Matt Groening had originally envisioned when suggesting that avant-jazz composer John Zorn write the show’s theme song. The song is later featured on Rhino’s Go Simpsonic With The Simpsons: Original Music From The Television Series compilation.

"I'm so disillusioned!"; image courtesy of taringa.net

June 5, 1996: James Mangold’s debut feature, Heavy, is released in the states. Moore composes the score.

June 1998: I watch the “Kool Thing” video at a Gadzooks in the Mall of America during a trip to Young Life camp in Minnesota.

July 13, 2001: Larry Clark’s Bully is released in theaters. Moore composes the score.

July 25, 2005: Gus Van Sant’s Last Days, the director’s take on Kurt Cobain’s final days, is released in the states. Gordon appears as a record executive based on Danny Goldberg trying to turn the main character’s life around. Moore also served as a music consultant.

May 2006: Former Pavement bassist Mark Ibold joins the band. This has nothing to do with matters of synergy or cross-promotion; I just happen to think he’s kinda cute. He was also featured in a comic strip, but the name escapes me. His catchphrase is something to the effect of “I’m Mark, the bassist from Pavement” but I’m butchering it. My friend Susan told me about it, so maybe she’ll share in the comments section.

Mark Ibold, perhaps around the time he was dating Oksana Baiul and before the Pavement reunion tour; image courtesy of amazon.com

May 9, 2006: Moore and Gordon appear with daughter Coco in “Partings,” the Gilmore Girls‘ season six finale. 

June 15, 2007: Pitchfork reports that SY will be contributing a track to a Starbucks compilation.

November 21, 2007: Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There is released. Gordon’s makes a cameo as folkie Carla Hendricks, who is based on Judy Collins. The casting furthers my suspicion that SY friend Todd Haynes must have been influenced by the band’s fandom of The Carpenters and preoccupation with Karen Carpenter’s tragic struggle with anorexia. They cover “Superstar.” He makes a biopic about Carpenter called Superstar. Coincidence?

September 8, 2008: Choosing not to renew their contract with Geffen, SY sign with indie stalwart Matador.

November 3, 2008: Moore and former Be Your Own Pet frontwoman Jemina Pearl cover The Ramones’ “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” specifically for “There Might Be Blood,” a season two episode of Gossip Girl. 

February 16, 2009: Gordon debuts a clothing collection called Mirror/Dash for Urban Outfitters.

Is this bad? Hmm, maybe. I suppose it depends on your outlook. I’d say it’s no worse than The Flaming Lips performing on Beverly Hills, 90210 (although, maybe for it to be equal, Wayne Coyne would have to play a short-order cook at the Peach Pit). Beyond paying the bills and circulating their brand, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a fair amount of post-modern, art-school, post-Warholian why-the-hell-not? factoring into all of Sonic Youth’s above-ground forays. Or perhaps they (gasp!) like many of these texts and ventures. 

Perhaps the band knows that dabbling with the mainstream is tricky business. Maybe this explains why Moore (and, to a lesser extent Gordon and guitarist Lee Ranaldo, though not media-shy drummer Steve Shelley) cultivated an authoritative presence in recent music documentaries like Punk: Attitude, Kill Yr Idols, and I Need That Record! It may also have fueled a need for an outlet through which to channel more experimental projects, resulting in the band forming Sonic Youth Recordings in 1996, along with Shelley’s Smells Like label and Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label. In addition, Ranaldo has done a considerable amount of writing, creates installation projects with his wife Leah Singer, has an extensive solo career, and has performed improvisatory film scores as a member of Text of Light.

And, you know. The band is still really good. Even as folks mine their discography or weave them into above-ground mainstream corporate media culture enterprising, they’re still challenging themselves and making great music. Earlier this year, the band released The Eternal, their 16th album. Peaking at #18 on the Billboard charts, it also boasts a consistently great set of songs and a painting by late guitarist John Fahey for its cover. This blurring of art and commerce, for good or for bad, is in keeping with the band and their contributions to music culture.

Two weeks ago we attended the latest staff introduction training week; which is a two year training program that includes leadership training; teaching on Young Life’s ministry methods and seminary classes. We did Leadership 1 and New Staff Training last year and will complete Leadership 2 and Winter Training by April 2010. The whole course is called “Certificate in Youth Ministry” and is six accredited seminary classes or 18 credit hours (if I’ve understood the American educational system correctly) towards a Graduate degree of our choosing. Which for me will almost certainly be a “Masters in Global Leadership” from Fuller Seminary. The primary goal of all of this training is for Bethany and I to gain a thorough understanding of the principles and practices of Young Life’s ministry model so that we are personally well trained, but also capable of contexualizing those principles and practices in our college ministry and developing the skills necessary to train future staff and volunteer leaders in YL College Munich.

So Leadership 2 training was two weeks ago; and this week was spent at our region’s advanced training session and I confess there are times it feels as if we are drinking water through a fire hose. All of it is hugely valuable and immensely needful but it is a lot to absorb in such a short amount of time.

I’m constantly amazed at how much I don’t know! Everything we learn is of immeasurable value which then beggars the question of how on earth we did ministry without it! We both love the level of professionalism and practicality Young Life brings to its’ training sessions and are immensely blessed by everything we’ve been exposed to in the past 18 months since we began the journey with Young Life.

Alongside the training and langauge classes we’ve started a weekly team prayer meeting and have our first Young Life College volunteers. Roger and Stephie Vogelman are a German couple we’ve known for three years who came to faith when they lived in California. They moved back to Germany three years ago and have been a constant blessing to us ever since. They are both medical doctors and they have two wonderful daughters. Roger and Stephie bring a beautiful spirit of worship and intercession to our team times of prayer and worship which is an awesome blessing for all involved. While we’re no where near ready to launch active contact work with students we are praying for the volunteers and open doors we need for when that day arrives. To create and sustain a vibrant ministry in such a spiritually impoverished place as Munich means building the necessary frame to support that edifice. Developing a weekly prayer meeting is one of the essential cornerstones of the entire structure. It is where our future volunteers will be first introduced to our vision and passion for reaching adolescents in Munich. It is where we all will receive the power and insight to be effective in reaching those same adolescents. And it is where we all will meet with God who is the entire reason for having a college ministry in the first place! So having that weekly prayer meeting up and running is a huge step in the right direction.

If our goal was just to tell half a dozen kids about Jesus and be content then Bethany and I would be sufficient with God’s help for the task.

But our goal is to reach 44,000 students with the glorious good news of Jesus Christ! Then help launch a Europe-wide movement that reaches every adolescent in Europe! That is beyond six human beings, it is perhaps beyond any number of human beings. But it is not beyond God; nor those He will bring to join us in such a huge undertaking!

We shall have many more training days and praying days ahead of us as we stretch towards that incredible goal. But when i think of all of those kids living out their lives in the darkness with Christ I get motivated to ensure our team is the best equiped it can possibly be to be part of leading them to The Light.

Made by Brett Kunkle of Stand to Reason, and posted by the Pugnacious Irishman, Rich Bordner.

And Rich writes:

I know what you might be thinking: “this guy is a bit over the top.  C’mon!  ‘Who’s waiting for our kids.’  This is just scare tactics.”

Don’t write Brett off.  He works with youth and has a circumspect angle that gives him a lot of insight into the state of youth in the church.  Also, I can vouch for the atmosphere of the college campus.  Lastly and most importantly, take a look at the stats (some of which he references).  If that doesn’t convince you he’s not hyping things up, nothing can; he has sociology research backing him up.

The first link takes to you to another post by Rich which details Brett Kunkle’s activities, and features a letter from a 17-year-old student that Brett trained, before taking him to the University of California at Berkeley to test out his skills.

Here’s the letter:

It’s a beautiful thing when two high school clubs of opposing viewpoints can come together and debate issues in a public setting and in a friendly manner.  It is also quite rare.  However, this is exactly what happened just three and a half weeks ago at Capistrano Valley Christian Schools.  It all started with a trip to U.C Berkeley.

In the fall of 2008, twenty-four students from Capistrano Valley Christian Schools began training with CVCS’s Sean McDowell and STR’s Brett Kunkle.  These training sessions were vigorous and challenging but worth more in each of our lives than any words could express.  On March 10, 2009, we embarked on an intellectual and spiritual journey that totally “rocked our worlds.”  After debating atheists and interviewing Berkeley students on topics all over the board, we returned as different people.  This spiritual and intellectual roller coaster was the best time of my life, as it was for many other students.  I saw my friends gain confidence and stability in their faith but most importantly, I saw high school kids gain a passion for what they believed.

After Berkeley many kids wanted to keep making a difference in the world.  I began a club that was simply known as the “Berkeley Group,” for anyone who had attended the trip and wanted to keep being involved in apologetics.  One night I was on the phone with another club member, Suzie, attempting to plan things for our group to do.  We wanted to put on an event to get high school kids excited about apologetics.  We decided that a student debate would be an amazing draw for a young audience.  We partnered with the Free-thinking Atheist and Agnostic Kinship (FAAK) student club from Capistrano Valley High School and decided to charge admission for the event, which we would donate to charity.  We began to plan.

After many meetings with Mr. McDowell and much communication with FAAK, we decided to discuss three topics related to God’s existence: intelligent design, morality, and  the resurrection of Jesus.  With the stage set for an intense spectacle, publicizing began in earnest.

From our Berkeley club, Steve took Intelligent Design, I took morality and Christie took the resurrection of Jesus.  After a few weeks of additional preparation for each category, we were ready for the debate!  The format of the debate was a five-minute opening statement for each side, a five-minute cross examination and 20 minutes of question and answer time with the audience.  Lastly, there was a final three-minute closing statement from each side.  The auditorium was packed as more than 300 students and adults attended the event.  The feedback from the debate was overwhelmingly good and our Apologetics Club is looking forward to similar events next year!  I guess the final point I can make on this subject is that Berkeley prepared us and began a movement in our school’s students that will last for years to come.  As Brett told us on the trip: “The Berkeley Mission is normal Christianity.”

Berkeley is one of the most left wing campuses in the world, in probably the most left wing city in the the world. It’s Hell on Earth. But these kids had trained and they were prepared to face the worst. That’s Christianity in action. So often today I see older Christians acting like there are no intellectual problems that need to be addressed, or focusing on minor theological issues or ineffective insular legalism. Instead, we should be preparing to engage the culture like this 17-year-old student. And we should be hiring youth pastors like Brett Kunkle – not like Brian MacLaren!

Anyway, Rich is himself is a public school teacher who is very familiar with these issues! I’m so glad that he knows about the need for apologetics to prepare children before they go off to university. If you like stories like this, you should definitely bookmark Rich’s blog.

Tonight 3 adult leaders and 6 student leaders from John Jay High School visited a Young Life Club in Ridgefield, CT.

Young Life \”Club\”- Ridgefield, CT

We were expecting to see a large group of students, but when we arrived we were shocked by the huge crowd that had already gathered, waiting for the doors to open.  When the doors finally opened, the students poured into a room that could barely contain everyone.  There was no mistaking the excitement and enthusiasm in the students, despite this being the first meeting of the year.  Loud pop music played as everyone found a seat on the floor.  Then the band began playing and singing popular songs by The All American Rejects, Journey, Neil Diamond, etc and the students sang along without hesitation.

In between songs, the leaders called several teens forward and played a variation of musical chairs called, “Girls Fight For Guys.”  When Tim got up to speak, he made it very clear that everyone was welcome, you didn’t have to be a member or a certain type of person to come to Young Life.  Then he shared from his own experience a little bit of what God is not, and of what God is.  After the meeting, the students crammed into their cars and drove down the street to a diner called Dimitri’s to hang out some more.  

So what can we learn from Young Life’s ministry?

As I mentioned, there was definitely great excitement among the students.  They were obviously very comfortable in the environment.  Young Life certainly seems to understand how to make the unchurched or “nonChristian” students feel like they belong.  The music, the games, and the language used was familiar to the students.  It was fun and upbeat, and the message was basic enough for anyone to understand.

As I attempt to relate to and influence students in our youth group who may or may not attend church, I can definitely take some tips from this experience that will help me to do that better.

~~Alyssa Glick- Director of Children’s Ministry and volunteer Middle school youth leader.

Here is another perspective from one of our youth leaders:

On Tuesday night, we visited the Ridgefield, CT chapter of Club Young Life for High Schoolers.  A similar program is being contemplated for implementation in Westchester County with Katonah-Lewisboro (John Jay) being the first targeted school district. I was amazed to see the excitement of all these teenagers arriving at the site.  The clubbers start arriving at 7:45 and have some time to hangout.  The hour long event starts at 8.  This was their first club meet for the new school year.  Therefore, I do not know if it was a typical day or if things change as the school year progresses.

Here are some of my observations:

*They started the meeting with songs, but all songs were secular songs, kinda classic, hand ‘clappable,’ decently ‘lyricized,’ ‘kareokeable,’ band or solo artists hits.

*They seem to be well staffed with very energetic leaders

*They know their kids by name, as demonstrated during their game/skit time.

*The lesson was delivered with acknowledgement of the fact that the audience includes a wide-spectrum of kids from earnest searcher to indifferent unbelievers, to blatant agnostic.

*At no time, the audience acceptance of God was taken for granted.  Nonetheless, I feel that the “God of the Bible” was presented to them clearly, with clear reference from the Bible and with no compromise.

*This ministry seems to be a ministry of relationship, patient seed planting and perfect reliance on God’s providence and the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of these materially privileged and otherwise under evangelized demographic segment.

~~Ralph Adrien, middle school youth leader

For more info about Young Life in Fairfield County contact Tim Vickers at 417-4186 or ylridgefield@aol.com

To learn more about Young Life, click on the link below

Young Life

…but it’s true! We can’t wait to celebrate all that God has done over the past 40 years. Save the date for Saturday, March 6, 2010. We’re celebrating BIG – Young Life style with an incredibly fun night of food, entertainment, and the one and only coach Jim Tressel at the Buckeye Hall of Fame Cafe. Details to come!

Don’t miss out! Sign up today by clicking HERE! Email questions to julieg@ylcolumbus.com. Hope to see you there!

Our ministry year is coming to a close and that from my perspective demands a little reflection.

Having seen God provide 100% of our budget; bring us the ideal team mates, walk us through the first year of Young Life training, allowing us both to be accepted at Fuller Seminary and faithfully granting us gains in learning the language I’m reluctant to bring up what might appear to be the giant cloud in the midst of all of this silver lining.

My back has been an almost constant drain during the past 14 months. Even when not in acute pain I was aware of just how limited my capacity was and since July I’ve been living through a repeat of last August through October’s intense muscle spasms and sleeplessness. Last Friday I received another bout of injections and some new medicines after a rather disappointing relapse. I’m now taking muscle relaxant and a different painkiller. The combination is giving me 5 solid hours of uninterrupted sleep for the past three nights which weirdly helped me grasp just how little sleep I’ve been getting for the past two months! The specialist I’m now seeing wants a new MRI taken along with some X-rays so perhaps they will shed some light on why I’m still in so much pain.

We have Young Life training next week; a trip back to Ireland the weekend after and then a brief rest before another four days of advanced training in October,  so my two months of not having to travel is coming to an end. We’ve managed to book the best bed we can find for both training sessions and my doctor is going to give me another set of injections this Friday before we leave so that my back has the best chance of surviving the trips.

But despite the back pain I feel like everything is running smoothly. I had the opportunity to preach for the entire summer at our local church and last Sunday was my last sermon in the series. Our ministry rarely offers me an opportunity to preach from a traditional pulpit so spending at least ten hours every week during the summer preparing a 25 minute sermon was an unusual experience. I do confess it is the only part of a Pastor’s job I envy!

So our new year is blooming with everything in the ministry going smoothly and my own particularly painful personal journey through life this past year is helping Bethany and I comprehend a deeper sense of what it means to have patience!

Back to reality, sort off, at the casa. Today is work day for me. Not work in the sense that I’ll be performing my usual avocation today, I just a have a bunch of stuff I gotta do the clear my plate. Ironically they all involve writing in some way shape or form, and more ironically, instead of doing them.. I’m sitting here writing at you people. What the hell.

So, assignments today, in order of dread, or what things i DON’T want to do….

- Newsletter article for the Lodge Newspaper. As the second banana I gotta write a column about something or another. This is going to be difficult because there’s not all that much going at the moment.

- Lodge Calendar for 2010. This is pretty easy, just plan what we’re going to do

- Update my “executive profile”, internal resume. I hate working on my resume. I routinely discount everything I’ve ever done. When I gotta promote myself, I can’t. Well I can, but it sucks. When I can I get that house in a small college town somewhere and officially drop off the grid?

- An Ethical Will. I’m supposed to write an ethical will for my 15 year old’s confirmation class at the Temple. The directions are, well you read them-

AN ETHICAL WILL TO YOUR CHILD

We are asking you to participate in this weekend in a unique fashion by preparing for your child what is called an Ethical Will.  This should be a brief statement (2-3 pages) of your hopes, dreams, and spiritual aspirations for your child as they emerge into adulthood.  An ethical will bequeaths a spiritual legacy to the next generation and has its origins in the Bible and Talmud.  As a helpmate, we have enclosed the Introduction from the book, So That Your Values Live On — Ethical Wills and How to Prepare Them, edited by Jack Riemer and Nathaniel Stampfer.  Your ethical will will be read only by your child and is private.

 

OMG.. First of short and 2-3 pages don’t exactly go together. Second, I hate thinking about this stuff, I prefer to complain about it after the fact. But, really I guess I was thinking about this weekend at Tech with Nate. Thinking about what I did and didn’t want him to get involved with at school. To sum it up-

DO:
- Get involved with campus stuff.
- Join things that matter. Academic groups matter, opportunities to grow and experience different things matter, ski, bike, skate, get outdoors.
- Try to grow out of our sterotypes, meet and interact people who are different than you.
- Work hard and play hard
- Call home about once a week or so.

DONT:

- Number one fear for me, please don’t get involved with any religious groups. They prey on young people who are away from home and outside their normal support systems. Be yourself and you’ll be fine, you know who you are and you don’t need anyone else to define you. And, just to be safe, walk away from the Mormons, Baptists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Campus Crusade and Young Life folks. Let them do their thing and be respectful but stay out their stuff. Most of all stay away from Chabad, they specifically prey on young Jews trying to make them black hat Jewish cultists. Not that Michigan Tech will be a problem with them.
- Remember what doesn’t matter- Greek Life is fun, if you like that sort of thing do it. But don’t buy into lifelong brotherhood, it’s bullshit, but it is fun. See above and do what you want to do.
- Go to jail, my roommate in school did that. Wasn’t fun for anyone.
- Waste time with kids who don’t care about what they’re doing,are more concerned about partying or screwing around, if you hang with the smart crowd it wears off on you.