Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Let God Arise

Tomorrow (aka today since I can't seem to get my butt to bed) is going to mark a milestone in my life....I'm leading a possibly large group of people in prayer. I've given presentations a million times and been on stage in dramas, but this is scary for me. I know that God has called me to preach to the prodigals, but this is the first time I've had the chance to put it into practice. I'm afraid of doing something wrong--somehow not honoring God as He deserves to be honored....but maybe that's the wrong focus. Maybe, just maybe, the act of humbling myself to get up there and chance that possibility of imperfection is how God wants to be honored. Maybe it's poetic justice that the prayer supports a lesson about getting in line with becoming who God desires to use for His glory.

Let God arise.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Download Festival 2007


Bang Camaro (20 guys on stage)







Band of Horses











Lap steel goodness (check the video)
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Saturday, August 18, 2007

I'm going to bed...

...but be prepared for another post tomorrow, regaling you with photos and videos from the Download Festival. It was nothing short of awesome.

Now I must ignore the neighbors being loud on their back porch (a downside of attempting to sleep on a city summer weekend night) and go to bed. I am completely freaking exhausted.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

I Was A Church Drop-out

Hi. My name is Jen and I was a church drop-out. (Everybody now: "Hi Jen.")

I never recognized this fact until today. I was on the tail end of a 2-day collegiate fall planning meeting and we were talking about a recent study concerning the reasons why people 18-22 drop out of church. In the middle of that data fest (that I truly enjoyed, I might add), I discovered that I once met the criteria to be defined as a church dropout. And here I am, now ministering through an institution I once eschewed. Is that ironic?

Once I got over the initial shock of it all, I began to press into processing the richness of what God might want to teach me in this. Some big questions rose to the surface: what differentiates the church from on-campus/parachurch ministries; do college students really desire to seek community from the church (is that a motivating factor for them to attend); and, essentially, what is church?

These are questions that will not be answered in a matter of minutes or days. There's a lot of prayer and reading that will be put into these first things. But seriously, isn't this something that must be done before moving forward? This is the beginnings of a philosophy of ministry.

Dang. That's scary.