Just Normal

As far as ministry goes these days it seems that there are no major highlights and no major discouragements.  Just carrying on as per usual.

Tonight is GIFT again.  Each of the teams have been doing really well.  It’s always exciting to see the musicians grow in ability and confidence as individuals and a blended whole as a team.  Next week I’ll be leading another workshop so I’m thinking about what topic to discuss now.  We’ve already covered playing as a team, playing with skill and becoming more physically expressive.

This month for our FYG event we did a progressive supper visiting each of our four supporting churches.  It was great to eat a lot of food, chat with different teens and leaders at each stop and hear the four pastors share about creation, fall, redemption and restoration.

For Deeper we just covered Judges.  Talk about some crazy stories!  I’ve probably said it before but going through this series (The Bible in 20) I keep thinking about how dysfunctional the ‘heroes’ and ‘Fathers of the faith’ and their families were!  Since we’re heading into the kings I know it’s not changing anytime soon!

For ISCF I did lead a discussion (or lecture?) about Homosexuality earlier this month.  Which went well from my perspective, mostly thanks to people praying about that I think. We talked about what the Bible says, what if you have a same sex attraction and what if your friend does.  I hope it was helpful.

One thing that’s been fun about ISCF is that before we get into a formal discussion or game there seems to be good conversation and connection which sometimes leads us into serious things we may not have talked about otherwise.

I continue to connect with different teen girls over coffee from time to time and with one girl in particular.  You can read about her blog here.   These visits are often encouraging.  And I know they must be meaningful for the girls too because twice in the last bit I got a call or text from a couple girls wanting to share exciting news they had.

Other than that I sometimes have camp on my mind, especially thinking about speaking for this summer.  We’ll see where that goes!

Not Just Logic

I remember that one of our lecturers in Bible school said something like, “We need to interpret the world based on the Bible rather than the Bible based on the world.”  A simple but profound statement.

I’ve thought about that statement in the last couple weeks as I was reading about, thinking about and teaching about homosexuality.  It’s a hot topic with strong opinions on all possible sides.  I realized that although there is still controversy among those who uphold the Bible as the source of truth, without it there is no concrete guide for behaviour.  Without the Bible’s direction deciding what is appropriate and ‘normal’ is subject to logic and perspective, which very quickly becomes twisted.

For example, there are those who believe we need to be liberated sexually; be free without any restrictions.  This would mean getting rid of marriage and removing cultural taboos (ie. incest is wrong).

To me this seems absolutely ridiculous and yet I can see that if the Bible was removed with all of its wisdom and guidance for life, such thinking could start to make sense.  This is exactly what Paul talks about in Romans 1 where people replace God for creation and so, thinking themselves wise, actually become fools.

On this issue (homosexuality) specifically it seems really obvious to me that we need to use the Bible as our standard and source of truth.  But as I said to the students, no matter what the issue, whenever we come to the Bible and read something that disagrees with what we’ve thought before we have to make a decision.  Will we hold to our beliefs (even beliefs we really like) or will we choose to trust God and His word even though we don’t like it?  Are we going to hold tight to our experience or ask God to show us how our experience fits into His truth, trusting it to be true even if He doesn’t resolve that tension for us?

As I’ve been working through all kinds of thoughts and opinions I am so thankful that we don’t just have logic to rely on.  I’m thankful that we have a source of objective truth to speak into issues of life.