Not a bad person
Posted by Nick the Geek in All, Jesus Freak, Youth Pastor on 05. Feb, 2010 | 12 Comments
I want to share a story about one of the kids. Being raised in the Air Force I moved a lot, but we got stationed in Oklahoma from 3rd grade through 6th grade and then I was back in the same school system from 9th through graduation. The first time we were there I moved from one school in 3rd and 4th grade to a new school for 5th and 6th grade because of redistricting. Shortly into the year I saw a kid getting picked on in the cafeteria and I used sarcasm and insults to defend him. I became the target after that. It was a typical grade school bully gang with one very large kid and 3 or 4 lackeys.
Churches, we don't need no stinking churches
Posted by Nick the Geek in All, Jesus Freak, Youth Pastor on 02. Feb, 2010 | 21 Comments
The problem is this, if you invest in moving Christians from one church to another you will lose people along the way. You will get Christians that are always looking for the next big thing. “Come to my church we have a better worship experience” and then someone finds a church with an even more dynamic worship and people will leave. We create Christians that seek the sensational and avoid anything that requires effort. Does this sound familiar? It sure does to me. So we are making Christians that are more easily picked off by satan and then cull a few off ourselves for good measure. We teach that we don’t need to reach the lost and set the Church up for failure.
10 easy steps to identify a false prophecy
Posted by Nick the Geek in All, Jesus Freak on 22. Jan, 2010 | 33 Comments
If you attend a church that is even slightly charismatic you are likely to hear someone say something to the effect of “thus sayeth the Lord.” Of course if God is talking then we better listen, but how can we tell if the message is from God? This can be a tricky proposal because if we aren’t particularly close to God then we won’t have that “I can feel God talking” sensation, and let’s face it, if God is telling us something there is a good chance that it involves us being a bit too distant. Now I can’t guarantee a message is from God, but I can usually identify the ones that are not from God. So here’s the top ten list.
The lies we tell
Posted by Nick the Geek in All, Jesus Freak, Youth Pastor on 11. Jan, 2010 | 6 Comments
I cannot blame the population at large for believing and spreading lies. We judge truth by the authority that spoke it. If you pastor says something is true then you are likely to believe him unless something of greater authority (in your mind) contradicts that truth. Some call this laziness, but in all honesty it is the human state. If a teacher proclaims a truth that you cannot verify on your own you will believe it even if it isn’t true.
No wonder people don't trust Christians
Posted by Nick the Geek in All, Jesus Freak, Youth Pastor on 28. Dec, 2009 | 20 Comments
I’m not sure if it was because I had started to distrust my education from the Christian school or if my ability to comprehend logic had grown enough to see through the multiple logical flaws, but I no longer believed that NASA had proven the Bible true via a complex computer program. I think this might have been my first experience with Snopes. I do know that I learned that this was yet another lie I was taught by Christian education.
The Day After
Posted by Nick the Geek in All, Jesus Freak on 26. Dec, 2009 | 8 Comments
Imagine what it would be like being a baby. You have no control over where you go. Even after you start crawling and walking bigger people can just pick you up and move you around. You might fall to sleep being held and wake up in a crib or many other freaky things that are beyond your control. You might fall asleep surrounded by people and wake up in front of a giant TV with weird sounds and puffs of smoke, air, water going off in your face.
Merry Christmas: the most expensive gift
Posted by Nick the Geek in All, Jesus Freak, Youth Pastor on 25. Dec, 2009 | 1 Comment
I just want to send a quick greeting to everyone this Christmas. I have shared in the past that Christmas isn’t Jesus’ likely date of birth, but I celebrate the most wonderful and amazing event in all of history on this day anyways. I don’t think it is wrong to celebrate on this date do long as we know the truth of Jesus’ nativity and more importantly why it is so important.
Sex is amazing
Posted by Nick the Geek in All, Blog Carnival, Jesus Freak, Youth Pastor on 15. Dec, 2009 | 48 Comments
So I was going to write about this shirt that I love for the blog carnival on “Church” today but I was making a comment at Stuff Christians Like and I realized something about Sex and the Church.
We tend to think that inviting people to church is the solution, and what’s worse we end up spending most of our time inviting people from other churches to our church so our church will grow. Think about it. It is much easier to invite a Christian to your church than a non-Christian. It is also easier to invite a non-Christian than to lead them to Christ yourself. This is the way the church acts as if it is growing when it is really full of cancer and is wasting away … at least in America.
Now what does this have to do with sex? (Click through to find out)
Living life in the fast lane
Posted by Nick the Geek in All, Jesus Freak, Youth Pastor on 09. Dec, 2009 | 11 Comments
I have been going through the book I Became a Christian and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt by Vince Antonucci with my young adults’ class. We didn’t meet this week because of weather but last week we covered a chapter that focused on slowing down. The short version is many of us live [...]
One complaint at a time
Posted by Nick the Geek in All, Jesus Freak, Youth Pastor on 02. Dec, 2009 | 6 Comments
The thing is, grumbling and complaining doesn’t usually start big. I’m betting that they didn’t go from “Yeah, God is giving us food from Heaven” to “Manna again!?!?!? I’d rather eat me shoes than eat mana one more time” overnight. No it started small. Someone woke up and said “manna is nice, but I gotta say I’d like some meat to go with it.” He said that to himself a few times before he said it to someone else. Now he could have gone to Moses or whoever was setup over him in the system Moses setup but he started talking to someone else. That person was pretty happy to be eating food God setup for him every morning but he politely listened and maybe even tried to offer some words of advice and encouragement. After a few days of hearing the complaints he got tired of it but also started thinking that the manna was starting to taste a bit bland. Suddenly a virus of complaints took over and everyone was infected with dissatisfaction.
