Crossfire has just kicked off.  Uber-exciting. Pray for Sam and the team.

On the way to scripture today I reflected on an answer that I’ve heard many times from young teens (or late primary students). In answer to a question like: “Why did Jesus have to die?”, they answer “If he didn’t we wouldn’t be here today.”

What’s that mean?? It may have some truth in it based on how history and culture has worked itself out over the past 2000 years, but is there any theological basis? I don’t think so. The world would look different… but I think they’ve misunderstood something of what Jesus’ death achieves.

Funnily enough there was one boy today who wrote the above answer almost verbatim!!!

Have you ever heard this response?
How do you respond to it?

I caught up with Tim Baldwin yesterday afternoon for a coffee and too many Krispy Kremes! Tim is a great encouragement and I enjoy talking with him about Jesus, ministry and culture. We were talking about the dominant culture on the Central Coast. His reflection is that there is an idolatry of the lifestyle. Coasties LOVE the lifestyle. Coasties boast in the lifestyle. Coasties scorn Sydney-siders who must deal with traffic, pollution and people. One idea that Tim had was to tap into that culture by acknowledging how good a place the Central Coast truly is. But to help move people on from that and see that what matters is not where you live, but Jesus.

We then talked about the teenagers on the Central Coast. He came up with 2 things:

• Teenagers want to fit in
• Teenagers want to be where the action is

1) TEENAGERS WANT TO FIT IN
This is one of the most fundamental desires of a typical teenager. The desire to fit in with the crowd. Teenagers want to be cool. Teenagers want to be accepted. One of the ways to tap into this desire to be accepted is to acknowledge that the teenagers you are ministering to are thinking like that… “I know that you’re desire in life is to be accepted and to fit in at school…” (in the context of a talk) One way to challenge this would be to encourage teenagers to actually stand out for Jesus. Stand out and be different from their classmates… because of Jesus. This doesn’t mean they have to tuck their shirt into their undies or wear socks with sandals etc… but to live radically different from their peers when it comes to what they value, what they believe and how they live.

2) TEENAGERS WANT TO BE WHERE THE ACTION IS
This 2nd point goes hand in hand with the first one. Teenagers want to fit in… and be at the right place doing the right things. The right parties. The right beach. The right shopping centre. We need to show teenagers that JESUS is where the action is at! Meeting with Jesus’ people around Jesus’ word for Jesus’ glory on a Friday night is far more profound than hanging out at Erina Fair! Ephesians 3 helps to show us just how BIG the gathering of church is in the cosmos. We need to show teenagers that if they want to truly be where the action is at – they need to be with Jesus.

I really like these two points.

What do you think?
Is that true in your context?
How do we tap into this culture?

Would love to hear your comments…

Tim Keller at Resurgence 06 conference: listen here and leave comments…

What do you think?

Our brand new monthly magazine for CCECYOUTH has just landed!! We launched it last night. There has been some good feedback already… Shout out to Alex, Jackson, Josh and Nicole – they are part of team J-walk – and have done a fantastic job! Thanks also to Aaron, Andrew, Andrew and Kelly for their contributions.

Go check it out here

What do you think? Would love to hear your feedback…

Funny feature on Jono’s new phone. He looks like Mr. Incredible!!

Busy finishing what I blogged about yesterday.  No time for longer than 30 second post.  Here it is: Monergism.com has a new design.  This is good.  Check it out – it's got great content.

J-Walk is the name of a new magazine that we are launching on Friday night at CCECYOUTH. The magazine will have both web and print content.

J-Walk has been a long time coming! In 2003 on a youth group camp a number of teenagers were flicking through some girly magazine (Girlfriend? maybe?). It was reasonably innocent at the time… but it got me thinking that there isn’t really anything available for the teenagers in my youth group to read that will help them make sense of the world around them (that’s what those girly magazines are doing) and also what it means to be a Christian living in that world. When I was a teenager there was a youth magazine that matthiasmedia had running for a year called Zed – it almost sent them bankrupt – so they canned it! But at the time I wasn’t at a great church and it was actually Zed that helped me to keep going as a Christian for that year!

I had plans at one stage to do a larger-scale project (ie Nation-wide)- but thought that I’d rather launch something specific to our context and our group – that other teenagers would be more than welcome to download and read as well. So each month we plan on putting out a printed edition of J-walk (glossy cover – with simple black and white pages), having a pdf downloadable from www.ccecyouth.com + a number of interactive articles online.

Basically the aim of J-walk is to help teenagers understand the Bible and the World. The key to understanding the world is understanding what God says about it in the Bible… my prayer is that our teenagers would be able to understand the world through the Bible’s grid.

In the first edition I have an article that explains the title and what it means… so stay tuned! (I might even post it here)

A month ago I made this post on the youth site. And this guy found it and linked to it. It lead to 1000 hits of traffic – he has a very popular blog! They all said they liked the graphic in the comments section…

Do you like the logo? Do you think this whole J-Walk thing will be effective? Time will tell…

Guthers wants some ideas on bible study leading.  Go help him…

This pic is from here. This lady does these cool index card sketches on her blog each week. Often very clever. She just got a book deal too.
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Thinking that we are at the centre of the universe is taught in schools. I think it is at the root of sin – thinking we are at the centre rather than the Son (not sun) in his rightful place at the centre of the universe. Pray that 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 would be worked out in your life.

This is an exciting story.  One of my favourite parables.
This is even more exciting.  It's not a parable.

‘For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.  I can hear the angels in heaven now!

Last week I spoke about saying sorry.  Here is a great example of an apology.  I appreciate his willingness to take responsibility and there are some helpful reflections on racism that apply to our context as well.  (We spoke about racism in Australia on The Poddy this week… with particular reference to the Cronulla riots.)  I'll repeat what I said last week: Sometimes we are slow to apologise. I need to be quick to apologise.  Maybe you do too…

Here is the latest episode of On the Poddy. Good times.

This blog post is being sent in from my email account.  It means that it's a lot quicker to update your blog.  I'm not planning on using it all the time – I don't think it will allow posting pictures – and I like having pictures.  So this is a bit of a test.  Some stuff:

• My brother has some reflections on infant baptism
• Dan is back on the blog for 2007
• Joshua Harris has a much better looking blog
• On the Poddy is making an assault on iTunes – click here to subscribe

Hope you've had a good weekend…

I’m not sure if you have followed this story in the last week. There have been stacks of great responses from Christians. Click here for a summary (h/t JT).

I just listened to John Piper give a brief blurb on his response. Listen here.

Eight Reasons Why I Believe That Jesus Rose from the Dead
By John Piper
A summary:

1. Jesus himself testified to his coming resurrection from the dead.
2. The tomb was empty on Easter.
3. The disciples were almost immediately transformed from men who were hopeless and fearful after the crucifixion (Luke 24:21, John 20:19) into men who were confident and bold witnesses of the resurrection (Acts 2:24, 3:15, 4:2).
4. Paul claimed that, not only had he seen the risen Christ, but that 500 others had seen him also, and many were still alive when he made this public claim.
5. The sheer existence of a thriving, empire-conquering early Christian church supports the truth of the resurrection claim.
6. The Apostle Paul’s conversion supports the truth of the resurrection.
7. The New Testament witnesses do not bear the stamp of dupes or deceivers.
8. There is a self-authenticating glory in the gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection as narrated by the biblical witnesses.

Read the full article here

Aaron “Plankton” Plunkett is back from his month long boot-camp with the army. It sounds like it was a good time for him… but it will be good to have him back. (He might be able to use his new skills to keep rowdy punks quiet at youth group!) I can’t believe he has a gun!! Guns don’t kill people – Aaron kills people! Go check out his site for some more pics.

Yesterday he posted on some thoughts on teamwork. He has some great reflections on teamwork in the army and for Christians. Here is a snippet:

It’s amazing how closely I bonded with the recruits of 16 platoon. We all had a common goal and learnt to work together on any given task and to rely on each other when times were tough… I reflected on this and how we as Christians have a common goal much more profound than that of the Australian Army. We are one in Christ with a common goal to glorify Him and further His kingdom. How much more should we as Christians be sticking together and working as a team!?!

Go read the rest here…

Over the last couple of months I have been spending time with a friend from university: Desmond. Desmond is not his real name, but it will be his name for the sake of this post. When changing names articles often use boring names – Desmond isn’t a boring name, a bit ol’ school perhaps, but not boring. Desmond didn’t ever finish uni – his life has become pretty messed up since I saw him last in AD2000.

Recently, I “just happened” (read: God in his providence) to cross paths again with Desmond. I was sitting down in a local cafe at the start of January doing some work in preparation for summerfest07. A man grabbed my attention out of the corner of my left eye as he offered to sell me a wetsuit. As our eyes made contact we both knew that we knew each other from somewhere. He looked different, but I could still tell that it was Desmond. I could tell by his appearance that he’d had a rough couple of years. He had. All sorts of different addictions to different drugs. He told me that he was trying to get his life back together – and without any prompting by me – he said how much he thought of me because I was a Christian. We were able to speak briefly about Jesus and I was able to answer some questions that he had. I needed to get home – but we arranged to catch up and talk more and read the Bible together in a week’s time.

During that week Desmond became homeless after being ripped-off by some tough nuts. He was in a bad way – life wasn’t going too well – and he had become more vulnerable now that he was living on the streets. I just sat and listened to him, found out what had gone on over the past couple of years and talked to him about Jesus. I went with him to Vinnies to get some clothes because he had none. It was a good time – so we arranged to do it again.

On the next visit I gave him a Bible with a photo laminated to the back of Desmond, 2 other class mates and me. He was in good Spirits but during that 1st week out on the streets he was exposed to the darker side of our town. As his anxieties increased so did his intake of random pills to get him high. As well as methadone he was popping a whole bunch of pills at once.

For a couple of weeks it became less and less possible to communicate with him – he was that stacked up on pills. Those weeks didn’t lead to super-fruitful conversations but it was good to be there and he has appreciated the time that I have spent with him. He has a lot of time for Christians. He knows they are different. He knows that they are the main people staffing the Soup Kitchen.

Desmond has lost the Bible that I gave him… but I’m going to give him another one next week. He’s keen to come to church as well.

I’ve had a bunch of friends praying for him – and would love you to as well. Praise God that Desmond recently received a Housing Commission house. Praise God for the time that Desmond spent in detox last week. Ask God to give Desmond strength to decrease his methadone. Ask God that Desmond would understand who Jesus is – and that he would put his trust in Jesus.

The last couple of months has been a helpful time for me to think through how it is that we as Christians are to care for those who are poor and helpless… and how the only hope for the world is found in the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection. I believe that gospel – and believe that God can radically change people.

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This is my 200 post on eternal weight of glory!! Congratulations Dave!! You’re incredible!

PS – this post was written in the middle of the night – I was falling asleep at my computer – so the English isn’t the best! But you’ll get the idea…

(h/t to TooseHooseOnline)

Today a friend spoke to me to apologise for a comment that they made to me on the weekend. I said I took no offence to the comment and that the apology wasn’t necessary (I knew that the comment was in jest). I did, however, say that I thought that it was a good thing to receive the call and that it showed great character.

Sometimes we are slow to apologise. I need to be quick to apologise.
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The above picture is from Episode 43 of On the Poddy