Belated Italian Lunch

So, I've never blogged at work before (don't worry I'm on lunch). Actually for lunch I'm having some an Amazing concoction of pasta goodness. Anna Marie, 1st generation Brooklyn raised American-Italian, made me some pasta with beef and turkey sauce with marinara and fresh mozzarella cheese melted on top. Ahhhhh...... It's a happy belated birthday present (it's still in the same month, so it's all good).
I can't believe that the summer is on the downswing! I think of June and July as the summer. However, all the kids up here were still in school until like the middle of June and don't go back until after Labor Day! So, I guess my thinking is a little different. I know that it will continue to be hot for a while.

Summer is Here

So this Sunday at Forefront, the AC wasn't on when we got there. It was like 75 degrees at 6am when I left my apartment to be there for setup, and a heat advisory was in affect for the day. So we turned on the AC, and it did not much. Remember, we meet in a theater with a tall ceiling. We were pretty hot doing setup, but got it all done earlier than usual. Yes! we thought, now we can get breakfast sandwiches in the nice cool corner deli. But no, their AC was not on either (but the breakfast sandwiches as always wonderful). So back the the warm Blender Theater.
I think everyone had in the back of their minds the idea that it would be cool by the time the first service started. Wrong. The programs were thicker because of life group info, so they made pretty good fans. At the end of 1st service, Jacob and a few others went to Walgreens, bought up some bottled water and ice and passed them out as people left and came in for the 2nd service. I must have drank at least 3 as well as a bit of OJ.
Usually when there's a heat wave, you hear about fights breaking out. The atmosphere at Forefront was different. People joked about it, dealt with it, and kept going.
After church, we had some reorganizing to do of all our supplies, so a bunch of people stayed after in the heat to reorganize and eat hot pizza. It was great. By the time I left for the train, I was completely drained. When I got off the train in Brooklyn, I had to get yet another drink - Gatorade. I took a wonderful cold shower and relaxed. Ahh, what fun! God is good!
Ya know, millions of Christians worship every week with no AC at all and they're fine. So I guess we got a glimpse of what it's like for them, as well as what it was like for Christians in New York 1900.

Static vs. Dynamic

So I was thinking about my life lately. Over the past two years, it's been filled with transition. During my senior year at Ozark, I started in preaching at a church in Commerce, OK. Shortly after, I moved off campus into my first apartment (and what an apartment it was...that's another story). I graduated and a week later I came to Forefront to do a Summer internship. Then God led to move to NYC and do stuff with Dave Smith. For a few months I was in limbo, and then I started my first full time job with Jews for Jesus. After a few months of a "stable" situation at J4J, Brian talks to me about a possible Leadership Residency at Forefront! It's seems ironic. During my 5 years at Ozark, I often longed for the "stability" of ministering in one place to one people, pouring all my energy into a church.
Maybe transition is a part of life, an essential tension. When we're kids we want to grow up, but when we're older we want to be kids again. I wonder if the danger is to put too much weight on either side of the tension. Too much focus on stability can stunt growth, but rapid and frequent change can suck the life out of you. Not too profound I guess. But it's true.
I wonder if this tension will be the same in the New Heaven and New Earth? We will be with the Lord, and that will be a stable thing, right? But I like to think that we'll have transition and growth. It's part of how we're created. Heaven won't be singing all the time. What will we discover, invent, change, or create? Life both now and then is dynamic vs. static.
What about God? At first I would think that God is static. Ya know, Alpha and Omega, beginning and the end, always the same yesterday and today. Gracious and compassionate; slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. But God is also dynamic. When there was nothing but God, He created! He changed the status quo. He created man, who is dynamic. What a gamble! He spoke to man, did miracles in space and time, he gave the Law to the Hebrews. he spoke to the prophets. He even became a man himself, Jesus. God died on a cross. God defeated death by rising again. God now fills his people with his Spirit. He continues to perform miracles, reveal, speak, and guide us. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. Static yes, but also dynamic.
So in the midst of everyday static life, we serve a Dynamic God, who is reconciling the world to himself through Christ Jesus. During the mundane, the Holy Spirit empowers us to bring his Kingdom to this earth. While there is nothing new under the sun, God is doing a new thing.
And when life is falling out of control, God is the same yesterday and today. When we are faithless, he is faithful. He is an ever-present help in time of trouble. When the weight of sin hangs on our shoulders, we know that he alone is Holy. Whatever our present circumstances, Jesus came, died in our place for our sins, and rose again to bring us life.
So...if life is mundane, maybe you need to embrace some change that God will bring into your life. And if your life is in transition, trust that God is the same that he always has been and always will be.

Only in New York

• The Wendy's Dollar Menu is $1.19.
• Standing 1/2 inch away from total strangers, while avoiding eye contact for more than 2 seconds, trying not to fall on someone, for up to 10 minutes.
  
• Seeing homeless people every single day.
• Real. Good. Breakfast Sandwiches.
  
• Riding a train with Chinese, Hasidic Jews, Hispanics, Whites, Blacks, and whoever else you can think of.
• Real. Good. Bagels.
  
• Nearly being run over by a taxi and having people close to you laugh and say "welcome to New York."
  

Gross things in NYC in no particular order

• Grabbing the warm part of the pole in the subway.
• Humans picking up dog excrement.
• Pigeons.
• Rats.
• Walking into an invisible stench of garbage, sewer, BO, or something you just can't put your finger on...and you wouldn't want to.
• Crowded subway car with no AC in the middle of July.
• Dried throw-up on the sidewalk, particularly prevalent on early Sunday mornings.
• Being caught in a sudden downpour with no umbrella...in Central Park (yes it's happened to me, and it was gross).
• 59th St and 5th Ave where the carriage horses are...it's a mix of manure, hay, and horse food all smashed together (I wonder if they sample it now and then...that's gross!).
• 85% of public bathrooms (it's a great thing when you find a clean one!).

Life Group

So Forefront has life groups three times a year. Out spring one just finished. We were looking at the gospel of John. It was pretty different since we did the entire book in about 9 weeks. We were having to do like 3 chapters at a time to get all the way through at times. But we got to see the big themes in John, like Life, Divinity, Love, Truth, stuff like that. Anyway, for our last meeting we did some artistic reflection. We had paints, playdoh, and I played a song I had written on my guitar the week earlier. It was all pretty awesome. Kevin, who is a music connoisseur played some sweet "artistic" music he had on his ipod as we created our art.
Here is Katie and her fish. This is one of the fist caught by the boy to feed the 5000.
Here is Carrie's pic reflecting the Life that Jesus gives.

Here we kind of took a picture too late and Kevin was taking his playdo masterpiece apart...

Here's my picture. I just wanted to paint, so I started splattering and dripping paint on the paper. It looked cool, so I ran with it. I decided that it's the blood of Christ on the road to the cross.

Afterward, we went to a bar close by to hang out and eat hushpuppies! Yeah!

All in all, it was a great group. Some are moving away :( but the rest of us will hopefully stick together during the Summer as we look at the book of Proverbs.

The Mets

So it's either the Mets or the Yankees. You've got to pick one right? I'm not sure it's the same as Chicago with the Cubs and the White Sox where you must pick one and be against the other. It's definitely not real heated in New York. But at this point, when people ask, I always say I'm a Mets fan more than a Yankees fan. Why you ask? Well, it all goes back to my childhood.....not. A few experiences. Comparing the fan base, Mets fans were much more excited and supportive of their team at the first game I went to (granted I sat in pretty bad bleachers at the Yankees game I went to). Then there's the sense of just jumping on the bandwagon of the Yankees, since they are iconic of New York City. Then there's ARod and his fickleness (will he stay with the Yankees or not? How many more millions does he need?).
If you know me well, you know that I've never been a hard-core fan of any team anywhere. So who knows if being a Mets fan will stick? And yes, I did have to do some wikipedia searches to make sure that some info in the post was correct if that tells you anything.
So a few weeks ago, Forefront had a volunteer appreciation and Caren got a bunch of us decent tickets to the Mets Braves game (Mets won by 1, yes!). So here's my boyish picture at Shea Stadium. It was so cold that day!

Stolen Computer

My computer was stolen last Friday.  I was sitting in Chipotle (fast food restaurant) and while my roommate and I were talking, it disappeared.

We had gone to a Good Friday service earlier that night at Redeemer Presbyterian.  Man, it was powerful.  I don't know if you're a fan of liturgy, but it can sure focus one's mind well.  I was really confronted with my own sin.  It's been a while.  And it made talk of the cross so much more penetrating.  I had met God.

So after meeting with God, we went to Chipotle.  From the moment we left the church, Tim and I began to discuss church and worship and community - good stuff that you don't get to talk about at length often enough.  I decided the get tacos instead of a burrito this time.  It was alright.  We kept talking for at least 30 minutes after we were done eating.  I thought of something and got a pen out of my backpack that was right by my leg on the floor.  About 10 minutes later, we decided to leave and discovered that my backpack was gone.   From then on, lots of emotions flooded through me.  I sure am glad that Tim was there, because I could hardly think straight enough to think of anything I should do.  We called the police, scoped out the place, talk to the management, sent out text messages for prayer, etc.  It was rough.  No one saw anything.  There were 4 people sitting right by us, and they saw nothing.  There were no security cameras by us (I checked the others later and found nothing).  So, today it's 5 days later, and I'm pretty sure that my computer has a new memory and is in the hands of someone else.  Though there's always hope that it will get back to me with the memory still in tact.

For the most part, I've been a little surprised at how OK I am.  It's a big deal and a major inconvenience, but God is faithful.  I lost some stuff, yeah, but I've got a job so I'll be able to get replacement stuff again.

Last night in my Life Group, we talked about Jesus when he said, "I am the resurrection and the life."  Death was in the air, and I couldn't help seeing that before we can have the life that is truly life that Jesus offers, we have to face death.  We have to face our own sin and the consequences.  And when we accept Jesus' death on our behalf, we can experience resurrection.  And what does that resurrected life look like?  It's: exciting, a new lease on life, part of a bigger story, giving love to others as we've been given, running through a field, loving people unconditionally, and so much more.

So I think about this guy who lifted my bag.

I've been reading Genesis lately and before God flooded the earth, Genesis 6:5-6 says:

"Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart." (NASB)

"His heart was filled with pain." (NIV)

"It broke his heart." (NLT)

My sin is a part of that.  The man who robbed me (God's creation in His own image) broke God's heart.  If God's heart is broken, then so if mine.  This man does not know the love of God that I have experienced - the kind of love that voluntarily sacrifices itself for another despite full knowledge of their complete sin.  I pray that God would reveal himself to this man, that he would crash into his life.  I pray that I would meet him one day... as a brother.

Presuppositions

So it's been a little weird telling people that I work at Jews for Jesus. I seem to often an "OH" response. It's like I just told them, "and oh yeah, I'm an expert on all things Jewish." It's funny. It's like telling someone you work for a hedge fund and immediately being asked financial questions. Well, I'll tell you now that I don't know a lot of things about Jews in NYC. I'm learning here and there, but my main job is to support the staff who does know so they can reach out to Jews.
Here's the reason I'm writing about this. I don't want to be defined by what I do for a living. I want people to known me for me.
If I tell someone that I'm a "Christian," they immediately have a stereotype in their minds of what that person believes, looks, and acts like. For the most part in New York City, it's negative. We've got to live a life so that people can be surprised when they hear we're followers of Jesus. Am I defined by following Jesus? Yes. However, people have extremely different and diverse definitions to draw from. In this context, I am forced to follow the real Jesus or fall into one of many false definitions.
There's you're fun fact for the day.

The Past Month

As you can see below (previous post), it's been a while. February was a pretty eventful month I guess. I started a new job for one thing. This past week was three weeks. I'm an administrative assistant at the Jews for Jesus office in Manhattan. Josh, the branch director was one of the speakers for two of the Ozark classes. After he taught the second class, we got to talk a little, and he half-jokingly asked if I wanted to do some "administrative grunt work" when he heard I was in search of work. I answered a quick Yes! A few weeks later I had an interview. I learned later that he was not seriously considering hiring someone until that conversation. So, I'm learning the ropes of the office and eventually I'll be his assistant. It's definitely not what I envisioned myself doing, but it's where God has led me. I thought I would get a job where I could be around lots of unChristian people, but I guess I get to share the gospel in a different way to people when they call the J4J office. So, I'm thankful for work and a paycheck.
Last weekend, an Ozark class also came out. They were here just from Friday to Monday. It was an "Introduction to Church Planting" class, and I got to be with them all weekend. They were a great group, and we had some great teachers. I am so thankful that God led me to be involved with this. I've been learning stuff and have had church planting on my mind more and more. Pretty sweet.
Life Groups also started this month. I'm leading one that's studying the Gospel of John. The three meetings we've had have been great so far. There's about 11 of us altogether (though not everyone has shown up at the same time). Though we're meeting in the Forefront office, everyone has felt comfortable. I've tried to make it as homey as possible. The group is kind of backwards from what I thought it would be though. I kind of envisioned having some people who weren't Christians, but everyone is. I also thought it would be super focused on study and not so much on relationships, but people have been staying after group for a whole hour just talking. That's OK with me.

Wow, so it's been like a whole month since I've posted! Oh my! The fan mail has just been piling up, so I haven't had the time! Rest assured, blogging will return.

So last week on the way home from work I saw a guy who obviously was either coming from or going to the airport. He had a large thin case, and I asked him if it was a snowboard. We started talking, and he told me that he had just come from Colorado from a snowboarding week. He got to see The X Games and showed me a video on his camera. It was pretty cool, cause I had watched a few minutes of the X Games on Sunday. It was just a random conversation with a random person, but I really felt like I should keep talking to him. It was weird, but it was like the Spirit was prompting me. So I asked him questions about whatever I could think of, and he was pretty talkative. Now the amazing thing was that this had been going on for about 30 minutes and he and I were both not home yet. In the back of my mind I kept thinking how awesome it would be if he lived in Bensonhurst and how much more awesome it would be if he was at my stop! Well, we kept talking, he wants to go to Colorado and live on the slopes. Not a bad life if I say so. Anyway it turns out that, wonder of wonders, he got off at the same stop as me. He lives like a block and half away from me! We exchanged numbers and hopefully will be a drink this weekend or something.
I question all the time why God led me to live in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. It's kinda far from Manhattan, and there's only a few people from Forefront here. I dream all the time of being a part of a group of Christians that can live close together and radically effect the neighborhood where they live. I guess God works all the time when the circumstances aren't perfectly like we've planned.

Urban Ministry Part Du

The Urban Ministry class from Ozark was a great week! The students got here alright and on time on Saturday, so we promptly enjoyed a few hours going to Rockefeller Center to see the tree and the whole city from the top floor of the building. On Sunday, I led the students to 4 churches. That's right, 4 churches in one day, and all of them were extremely different in how they are reaching people. First @ 9:15 we went to Redeemer Presbyterian's traditional liturgical service where the quartet played a Mozart number for the prelude and postlude.
Then we went to Forefront Church @ 11:30 which targets 20-30 somethings with a band. Church is in a concert venue for rock bands. After lunch, we went to Times Square Church at 3:00 which bought and meets in a theater on Broadway! The service was spirited and had a more traditional African-American heritage, though there were all kinds of people there. After the 2-hour service, we went down to Brooklyn for Church! of Park Slope a young plant that is highly relational and highly focused to reach their neighborhood. Each church is so different! It makes you realize that you need more than one kind of church to reach the many cultures of a city.
During the week, Gordon Venturella taught classes in the Empire State Building. You may remember that with earlier classes, we met in a classroom in the basement, but this week we were on the 15th floor with a great view! Gordon is on staff at Lincoln Christian College and Seminary and used to be on staff at Ozark. He did a great job of raising good questions for students to ask about the city, about themselves, and about what God thinks of it all.
In between times of teaching, the class visited several organizations in the city:
NYC Rescue Mission - reaches the homeless; those at the bottom
Teen Challenge - Started as a youth discipleship program for gang members, but today also reaches many with substance abuse.
Jews for Jesus - reaches the 2 million Jews in the NYC metro area; 1 million in the city.
The students also heard from several pastors in the city - from Forefront Church (Midtown Manhattan), Church! of Park Slope (Brooklyn), Community Christian Church (Upper East Side/Harlem), and Crossroads Christian Church (Brooklyn).

Because of some generous supporters, we were able to see Phantom of the Opera of Broadway! Trae, Mom, and I have been huge fans since we saw it in Tulsa with Trae's junior high literature class. It was a great show, and it reminds the students of what kind of people they may reach in NYC - those who enjoy the best of the arts and culture all the time.
All in all, it was a wonderful week. We enjoyed temperatures in the 50's and 60's (NOT the norm) and only had rain as the class was heading to the airport to go back to Joplin. Once again, I am so glad that God has blessed me with such an opportunity to be a part of building the future leaders of His church. Hopefully more and more will have the cities of the world on their radar screen as they seek to spread the gospel of Christ.

Urban Ministry

Tomorrow at 5:45 (hopefully!) a plane will land with 16 students from Ozark Christian College ready to learn about doing ministry in an urban context. They'll be here a whole week for the Urban Ministry class. Gordan Venturella will also be with us to lead most of the teaching times. Dave and I will be more of facilitators this time around, arranging travel, guest speakers, and events. The class will be visiting various churches, ministries, and non-profits in the city to learn and evaluate how they minister in an urban context. It will be a challenging and enlightening experience I'm sure. Would you please pray for the 16 students that they would be sensitive to God's Spirit this week? Would you pray that they would be stretched? And also that they would be safe.
Would you also pray for Dave, Gordan, and I? This will be our first week-long class to come out, so it'll be a little different. Pray that we would lead well and be sensitive to God's Spirit ourselves. I'm really excited about what God is going to do in some students' lives to effect his kingdom for years to come!

December

Wow, so most of december passed without a post. That's the holidays for ya. I got to go home for Christmas. It was great! It was nice just to be home with family and hang out. Many of you heard about the ice storm, and lots of you experienced it. I was overwhelmed! I'd say that 95% of every tree had some kind of battle injury, and every driveway had a huge pile of branches stacked in front. It looked like a bomb went off 20 feet in the air. It was crazy.
So the big gift I got for Christmas was from my parents: an iphone. Yes, I got an iphone. Everyone seems to go gaga over it. Well, that's apple technology, culture, and advertising for you. It is pretty great, especially having the internet and google maps anywhere in the city. And thankfully, it's a great phone.
I got back to New York on new years eve, and much to my dad's chagrin, I did not go to times square to watch the ball drop. Instead, I enjoyed time with my roommate and another friend in a more quiet celebration.
While I was home, I got to go to my home church, Cedar Ridge CC, twice - which was great! It's always good to see familiar faces and have everyone ask me if it's cold here (actually this week it's been the coldest yet with highs in the 20's!).