chewywong

To the Visitor: What you’re about to witness is a long-standing tradition steeped in history and purpose. For those who are about to be baptized, they have already and will forever renounce the ideologies and discipleship of this world (however charming it may seem). They now give their allegiance to the one true King, Jesus Christ. They stand before you as a testament that Jesus is truly better and invite you to join them. 

Please members…this is not a game that we’re playing here. We don’t just “do whatever we want” and then in the end go, “alright…I’ve done all that I wanted to do, now I’ll give you whatever time I have left”. That’s a foolish, sinful way to abuse the grace of God. And what’s worse is that you sacrifice all the joy that could have been yours had you truly trusted and followed Jesus to lead you. 

And this is why I’m begging God for…that you might see and experience this reality-that Christ is better. than _____. I’m begging you to quit making excuses for yourself and that 1) you kill your pride and confess your weakness and inability to actually change; 2) you begin to search all of scripture and live out what it commands of you and that you would be obedient and that you risk. 

methodological and analytical assumptions about religion:

There is a fundamental difference between the devotional expression of a religious worldview as normative and the study of religion which recognizes the factual existence of diverse devotional assertions;

Religions are internally diverse;

Religions evolve and change;

Religious influences are embedded in all aspects of human experience;

All knowledge claims (including religious ones) are socially constructed and represent particular “situated” perspectives;

At our last youth camp planning meeting, the board was trying to remember the themes of previous camps. So here’s the challenge, can you match them up? Name the Camp (Discovery/Impact) and Year

1. Game Over

2. Rise Up

3. Glow

4. Return of my Superhero

5. Identity

6. Thrive

7. Love is

8. Unseen

9. Get Real

The phone rings and a voice on the other end says, “Hey man...can you tell me how to get saved?” I’m a bit confused. And I have no idea what’s going on. At first i thought this was a test from a random person but as we continue to talk, he keeps asking me random questions about “What is faith? Why are Christians all into money? Do you like caviar?” At the very beginning I knew that this guy didn’t want to really know how to get saved, he just wanted to talk. Now how he got my number and ended up talking with me is a mystery but here’s something I got out of this: 

1. Ministry happens at any given moment. I was in the middle of studying and I have a ton of things to do today and all of the sudden there’s this random guy calling me “David” asking me about who knows what and all i want to do is hang up on him and go back to my “real” work. Thankfully, I let my initial reactions subside and heard this guy out. We ended up talking for a good 45 minutes about everything and yet, it wasn’t wasteful.

2. It’s called your testimony for a reason. Somewhere in the midst of talking about Lakewood and Spam, I actually shared with him my testimony of what God did, is doing, and what he will do. I had just shared with a random dude about my fears, my struggles, and the grace of God. My testimony isn’t some one time experience that is only used during formal sharing time or counselor training. It’s a part of who I am and as God continues to shape me my testimony continues to mature. 

1. Why serve (or pastor) at an ethnic-specific church? 

2. The 7-year Cycle: Lessons learned from 7 years of consecutive youth ministry. 

I’ve been asked by some to explain and to write down something about “senior seminar”. So here it goes. 

Senior seminar is currently a part of our overall Sunday school catalog and system. Every Spring semester we offer a special class just for our graduating seniors called senior seminar. It’s typically a 4 month class that goes from January to the end of April. 

You can find our 2016 syllabus here:

 http://cbchouston.org/youthdocs/Calendar%20Spring%202016%20(SS).pdf

Our hopes for this class was that our seniors would get a final semester with their own class before graduation and before they exit the youth group. (Side note: i’ll post another blog about our structure of SS if you’re interested). But as for the curriculum, we try to cover everything that be believe a senior needs to be familiar with prior to entering college. So the first half of the class is basic and fundamental theology and doctrine such as: biblical hermeneutics, worldview training, and ecclesiology. The back half of the semester is more practical things such as: love, sex, and marriage, money and work, and college and christianity. 

Also, integrated in the course we go off-campus about 4 times to different churches in the area. We try to choose churches that are fairly different than our church here at CBC just so they can get a different view of culture and liturgy. Prior to attending these churches, each senior is responsible for completing a pre-project that directs students to do some research of the churches. They look at their doctrine, system of government, ecclesiology, denomination, history, etc. And on the day of, students are given an observation sheet to record their findings. It covers things like atmosphere, the church culture there, sermon, liturgy, and people. 

Our hopes were to get the seniors to seriously consider what church attendance and membership actually looked like. Once in college and even out of college, do they know how to faithfully and fairly find a church? My prayer for these youth today is life-long discipleship within the proper context of a healthy church and right doctrine. It is why we want to prep them for the next step...senior seminar is just one of the many ways that we prep here.

This past weekend I was able to partner with New Life at their Shepherd’s Retreat. Loved watching students and adults learn, laugh, worship, and pray together...all for the sake of the kingdom. I’m extremely grateful to have built a relationship with Pastor Sam all these years and then finally be able to see his leaders and just the amazing work he has done with them. 

“and you were dead in the trespasses and sins”

It seems obvious what Paul is trying to get here but I think if you spend some time really meditating on these 9 words, there’s a ton of things you can draw out of this. I’d just like to mention a few things:

1. “You”: Paul reminds the Christian that this was them. Nobody escapes this reality. No matter how “far along” you are in your faith, we must always remember this sobering truth that yes, we were once dead in our sins. 

2. “Dead”: Without life, unable to do anything, no movement. In essence we were completely hopeless and helpless when it came to trying to “get out” of sin. However, we weren’t just dead IN our sins, we were alive in chasing sin and swimming around in it. Jonathan Edwards said that the problem is not with the will itself, since the will is simply the mind choosing what the mind deems best. The problem is with man’s moral nature, which is opposed to God, and with the sinful motives that flow from that corrupt nature. 

I asked a pastor friend of mine Joe Thorn how to go about reading this. This is how he responded: