STUDENT MINISTRY VOLUNTEERS, YOU ARE LEAVING A LEGACY

My Leader Left a Legacy in My Life

The small group leader that survived all through high school with me was Dale Durbin. Scott Sandahl started as a co-leader but had to drop. And Bill Wadsworth was there when I graduated high school. Both Scott and Bill were huge in my life. But Dale survived my entire journey through high school, and what an impact that long term investment made in my life.

I remember thinking Dale was probably the coolest dad in the world. I remember during small groups Dale picked me up and threw me into a corner and sat on me when I wouldn’t shut up (it’s a guys small group thing). I remember thinking he was a really good husband and genuinely loved his wife.  I remember reading Purpose Driven Life and discussing it at his house (I’m not sure if we ever actually did the reading). I remember Dale challenging me when I had some jacked up theology. I remember Dale talking openly with us about his flaws. I remember us students scheming to get into a little bit of trouble pretty regularly and Dale never squashed the fun.

Most importantly, Dale was a part of my life when I became a Christian. I grew up in the church, prayed to receive Jesus as Savior as a child, but it wasn’t genuine. Dale built a relationship with me and gave me a picture of what it looked like to follow Jesus. Dale helped build genuine community that I was a part of and it changed everything for me as a 16 year old kid. Dale left a legacy in my life.

Dale Durbin on the far left during my senior graduation.
I'm to the right of him.

You are leaving a legacy.

Student Ministry volunteers, you are leaving a legacy. As you build relationships, teach, lead small groups, mentor, encourage, laugh, fight, cry and spend time together with students, you are a part of Jesus building his church. You are a part of seeing students come to know Jesus. You are a part of Jesus changing lives. You are leaving a legacy.

You are leaving a life-long legacy.

You are a part of seeing a transformation that is going to shape the rest of student’s lives. They will transition into college marked by your investment. They will become parents that reflect your parenting. They will have marriages that reflect your marriage. Students will serve, love, and live reflecting much of what their leaders have imparted to them.

You are leaving a generational legacy.

Some of the students you disciple will become volunteers investing in students. Your investment may not only impact your students, but students for years to come.  Most of the those you disciple will marry. That means your investment will not only impact them, but their spouse as well. Most of those you disciple will have kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. Your investment in students will affect the trajectory of countless lives. Volunteer with a vision that you get to impact generations.

Use the opportunity you have to invest in students.

It's easy to miss the fact that leading a small group with students is a big part of building a legacy. Be strategic with this time. Pray continually for your students. See God-centered conversations as an opportunity to refocus their lives around Jesus. Allow time for connection and laughing, as students don't just want to know information, but want to know you.

I'd encourage you to connect with students as you can outside of programming. It’s easy for the tyranny of the urgent to make you miss the opportunities you have to invest in students. As you care for your relationship with God, spouse, and kids first, bring students alongside your life for an investment.

Bring students along with you when you are:

• Watching a sports game
• Eating family dinners
• Working on house projects
• Going grocery shopping
• Working on your car
• Watching your kids

Student Ministry volunteers, as you invest in students, be encouraged! You are building a legacy.

The “One Another’s” of the New Testament

1. “Be at peace with each other” – Mark 9:50

2. “Wash one another’s feet” – John 13:14

3. “Love one another” – John 13:34

4. “Love one another” – John 13:34

5. “Love one another” – John 13:35

6. “Love each other…” – John 15:12

7. “Love each other” – John 15:17

8. “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love…” – Romans 12:10

9. “Honor one another above yourselves” – Romans 12:10

10. “Live in harmony with one another…” – Romans 12:16

11. “Love one another…” – Romans 13:8

12. “Stop passing judgment on one another” – Romans 14:13

13. “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you…” Romans 15:17

14. “Instruct one another” – Romans 15:14

15. “Greet one another with a holy kiss…” Romans 16:16

16. “When you come together to eat, wait for each other…” I Corinthians 11:33

17. “…Have equal concern for each other”  - I Corinthians 12:25

18. “…Greet one another with a holy kiss” – I Corinthians 16:20

19. “Greet one another with a holy kiss” – II Corinthians 13:12

20. “…Serve one another in love” – Galatians 5:13

21. “If you keep on biting and devouring each other…. you will be destroyed by each other” – Galatians 5:15

22. “Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other” – Galatians 5:26

23. “Carry each other’s burdens…” – Galatians 6:2

24. “Be… patient, bearing with one another in love”  - Ephesians 4:2

25. “Be kind and compassionate to one another…”  - Ephesians 4:32

26. “…Forgiving each other…”  - Ephesians 4:32

27. “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” – Ephesians 5:19

28. “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” – Ephesians 5:21

29. “…In humility consider others better than yourselves” – Philippians 2:3

30. “Do not lie to each other…” - Colossians 3:9

31. “Bear with each other…” - Colossians 3:13

32. “…Forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another” – Colossians 3:16

33. “Teach one another” – Colossians 3:16

34. “…Admonish one another” – Colossians 3:16

35. “Make your love increase and overflow for each other” – I Thessalonians 3:12

36. “…Love each other” – I Thessalonians 4:9

37. “…Encourage one another…” – I Thessalonians 4:18

38. “…Encourage one another…” – I Thessalonians 5:11

39. “...Build each other up…” – I Thessalonians 5:11

40. “Encourage one another daily…” – Hebrews 3:13

41. “…Spur one another on toward love and good deeds” – Hebrews 10:24

42. “…Encourage one another” – Hebrews 10:25

43. “…Do not slander one another” – James 4:11

44. “Don’t grumble against each other…” – James 5:9

45. “Confess your sins to each other…” James 5:16

46. “…Pray for each other” – James 5:16

47. “…Love one another deeply, from the heart” – I Peter 1:22

48. “…Live in harmony with one another…” I Peter 3:8

49. “…Love each other deeply…”  - I Peter 4:8

50. “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling” – I Peter 4:9

51. “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others…” – I Peter 4:10

52. “Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another…” – I Peter 5:5

53. “Greet one another with a kiss of love” – I Peter 5:14

54. “…Love one another” – I John 3:11

55. “…Love one another” – I John 3:23

56. “…Love one another” – I John 4:11

57. “…Love one another” – I John 4:12

58. “…Love one another” – II John 5¹

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1 From a handout given in the class The Synoptic Gospels. Composed by Dr. Grant Osborne^↩

Agnosticism and Pascal's Wager (Slides from Bob Mueller)

Bob Mueller taught this past Sunday when I was out of town in Chicago. Check out his slides!

7 iOS Organizational Apps I Love

Organizationally I'm at best mediocre. But getting an iPhone has been a huge step in getting my act together.

Here's 7 organizational apps I've been loving:

1. Google Drive

I love Google Drive... eat it Dropbox!

With it you can store any files on the cloud (basically a hard drive on the internet); videos, PDF’s, .exe files, Microsoft Word docs, etc… 15 gigs are free, you can access it with internet, it can sync with multiple computers, and there are free memory upgrades at times. Currently, I can access my high school senior project from 2005 anywhere I have an Internet connection with my phone. Is this necessary? Nope. But there are also a number of random files I can access if necessary, such as insurance info, notes I might need to share, etc.

Cost: 15 gigs free. 100 GB for $4.99/month (about half the cost of competitor Dropbox).

2. Turbo Scan

TurboScan interface, super easy!

Use this app to scan in printed documents with your iPhone camera, then it turns them into a PDF.

What’s best is that you can upload it to your Google Drive app so that you never have to keep a hard file ever again! I’m terrible about keeping a physical file, but with this app I’m storing all of my files digitally. The best part? Paired with Google Drive this syncs to my computer desktop automatically!

I’ve tried a number of these scanners with my iPhone, this one is by far the best.

Cost: $2.99, well worth it!

3. Audio Memos

I’ve used this app super regularly to record any audio stuff I might need to access later. This is especially helpful if you don’t have anything you can easily take notes on. College students, this works great for lectures. You can easily upload this to Google Drive from your phone, and share it with a friend, boss, or coworker.

Cost: There’s a free version, the .99 cent version is well worth it!

4. Go Tasks

This is a simple task list, which can sync up with Google Tasks. Google Tasks is a little known and used feature, which pops up in your Gmail online interface. To access a simple task interface in your Gmail you need to click on the Gmail icon in the top left corner in your Gmail account, this drops down and you can click on Tasks and up pops a task list!

If I don’t have an actual task list, things run through my head all day on my day off, making it hard to relax. As soon as I put work tasks on my task list, I can easily put off thinking about it until the next day.

Cost: Free!

5. Freaky Alarm

Here's what the alarm interface looks like.
My wife hates it when I use this, but it's
effective in waking you up!

I love sleep. I love sleep like the chubby kid loves chocolate cake. Also, I’m the chubby kid. Do you HAVE to wake up at a certain time but have a really hard time waking up? Get this app! Basically, the alarm is a series of terrible noises, and there are a series of complicated problems you must solve to turn the alarm off. There are also a number of levels you can set for this alarm; level one is fairly easy to turn off and level five will make you want to punch someone by the time you turn it off (but you are most definitely awake!).

Cost:$1.99.

6. Google Voice

I hate listening to voicemail messages. Many times I refuse to listen to voicemail messages and just call someone back (and leave them a long complicated voicemail message to return the favor!). You can setup Google Voice to be your voicemail client and it will transcribe voicemails so that you never have to listen to one ever again! It’s not always super accurate, but it’s easy to get the big idea for voicemail messages.

Also, you can utilize this account as a work voicemail, so that potential clients aren’t calling your personal cell number, but the free one that Google provides.

Cost: Free!

7. Apple Calendar

If someone isn’t reminding me about events, I basically just don’t show up. The calendar app has been a butt saver. A smart way to utilize this is as soon as a potential calendar item is proposed, instead of letting it run through your mind all day, just put it on the calendar so that you can easily forget about it and come back to the event later. What’s also great is that you can set multiple reminders up to a week in advance so that you don’t forget.

What’s also great about this, is that you can utilize a Google Calendar, which I think is way better, and sync it with the Apple Calendar on your iPhone.

Cost: It’s already on your iPhone. Just stinking use it!!!

What's your organizational apps of choice? Let me know!

Does God Exist? 4 Videos to Introduce You to This Important Question!

The first video is quite brief, and the following are long. It's easy to not be willing to do the work in watching these videos, but this topic is incredibly important, don't be lazy in dealing with this issue!

1. A brief breakdown of the Kalam Cosmological Argument for God's existence.

2. William Lane Craig and the late Christopher Hitchens debate on God's existence.

3. Tim Keller lectures on his book Reason for God at Google and then responds to questions.

4. Hasn't Stephen Hawking buried the need for God's existence in his book The Grand Design? See William Lane Craig respond to this book.

Aren't All Religions Equal?

The Christian faith presents a big problem when it comes to other religions, as the Christian faith claims to know the exclusive truth about God. Central to the problem is that the Christian faith holds to what is called “correspondence truth.”

Correspondence Truth

This means that truth always corresponds to reality.

Therefore, truth for a Christian isn’t just our version of truth or merely comforting thoughts, but the way things actually are. It also means that when other religions or worldviews teach competing claims, we believe that they are stating things that don’t correspond with reality, they aren’t the way things actually are, they are false.

We see this reaffirmed in John 14:6 when Jesus states that, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Jesus is saying that he reveals the truth about God.  This would have been understood as an exclusive claim about God, which Jesus would have believed to be corresponding to reality. Jesus was declaring any other competing claims to be false.

We also see this reaffirmed in Acts 4:12 where Peters says that “There is salvation in no one else [besides Jesus], for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Peter is speaking of the reality of sin being a problem for all people, which we need salvation from, and that Jesus’ death and resurrection are the sole hope we have for the forgiveness of our sins.  Jesus is put forward as the exclusive hope for humanity, and Peter is saying that any other option falls short.

The Problem

Here’s the problem, as life continues on you’ll meet many good and decent people who hold to other truth claims that they say corresponds to reality.

The Solution???

Religious pluralism is the most common response to the problem of good people holding competing truth claims. There are two types of religious pluralism.

1. Unsophisticated Pluralism
This states that all religions are true and teach essentially the same thing. However, this is clearly wildly false when we compare different religions. Islam teaches there is one personal God who created the world. Man is sinful and needs forgiveness and has one of two destinies, eternal heaven or eternal hell. Classical Buddhism on the other hand teaches nothing about sin or salvation. There is no personal God in Buddhism, and man doesn’t even have an eternal soul.

The idea that all religions essentially teach the same thing is clearly wrong.

It’s interesting how no one uses this way of thinking with math or banking. If I were to walk into a bank and tell them “all statement amounts are true and say essentially the same thing” and then hand them a napkin on which I’ve written “I have $1 million in my bank account,” they are always going to maintain a correspondence view of truth and tell me that I’m broke as a joke, and then proceed to laugh me out of the bank. The bank wouldn’t ever operate in a pluralistic way, why would we apply this thinking in reference to God?

2. Sophisticated Pluralism

This teaches that all religions are false, but somehow reflect truth. With this way of thinking, it’s impossible to say that one religion is true, and others are false.

This way of thinking loves the illustration of the blind men and the elephant. The illustration goes something like this: Imagine you are in a room with an elephant and several blind men are trying to describe that elephant. One man grabs the tail and states “the elephant is like a snake,” another grabs the leg and states “the elephant is like a tree,” one grabs the tusk and states “the elephant is like a spear.” In this illustration they are all equally false, but reflect some truth about the elephant. Sophisticated pluralists would say this is how religion works, we are all false, but reflect a bit of truth about God.

The Response

Pluralists make several statements about religion and truth I want to respond to.

1.  “All religions reflect truth, but not the whole truth”

This is essentially what the elephant and blind men illustration is trying to communicate. Each religion is reflecting truth, but not the whole truth. But here’s the problem, the only one who knows it’s an elephant is the outside perspective, and the pluralist is claiming to be the outside perspective. Basically, the pluralist is saying that everyone is wrong, while they alone are exclusively right. While trying to combat against exclusive religious claims, the pluralist is making an exclusive religious claim and claiming to have the whole truth.

Or to put it more simply, in trying to let every religious view be right, they are saying all others are wrong, and claiming to be the only true religious view.

2. “It’s arrogant to say that Christianity is exclusively true, and all other faiths are wrong”

As we’ve seen, pluralism is teaching that it is exclusively right and all other religions wrong. If exclusivity is arrogant, then pluralism has to be arrogant as they are making exclusive statements. Once again, with the blind men and the elephant, all the men were wrong in their descriptions about the elephant. The only truth about the elephant was the outside perspective, which pluralism claims to be. Pluralism claims to be the one who claims to see, while all other religions are blind! Therefore, if the Christian faith is arrogant, pluralism is as well!

3. “Your exclusive religious claims create wars and violence, it hinders peace.”

Pluralists are stating their views are the best answer to the problems of war and violence which religion creates. However, in the 20^th century some of the most violent and intolerant have been those who believed that religion caused intolerance and violence. 

The atheist Joseph Stalin is said to have murdered up to 61 million people during his reign in the Soviet Union. The atheist Mao Zedong is said to have caused the deaths of up to 70 million people in communist China. Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge banned all religious groups and murdered 3 million people, or about 25% of Cambodia. Hitler is thought by many historians to have been an atheist or a deist, and desired to eradicate the Christian faith. He was responsible for the deaths of at least 11 million people.

When Christians cause violence and wars, the need isn’t for a rejection of Christianity. The heart of the Christian faith is God dying for the good and forgiveness of His enemies. Instead, people need to take the exclusive claims of the Christian faith more seriously as this is going to lead to peace, love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. This way will change everything.

4. “Your religious view is only based off of where you were born”

The argument is all religions are culturally conditioned, and therefore equally false. For example, if you were born in India you’d be a Hindu, if you were born in China you’d be a Buddhist, if you were born in Iran you’d be a Muslim, and since you were born in America you are a Christian.

But here’s the problem, pluralism is itself a religious view! This means that if we follow the logic, it’s culturally conditioned and equally false. As the argument goes, the only reason why a pluralist is a pluralist is based upon where they were born. If the pluralist was born in India they’d be a Hindu, or the pluralist was born in Iran they’d be a Muslim. This argument doesn’t disprove pluralism, just as much as it doesn’t disprove any religious faith.

Conclusion

If the Christian faith corresponds to reality, if it is exclusively true, then it’s exclusively true that we have an incredible hope. It’s exclusively true that the sovereign God who is ruling and reigning over all died for his enemies.

This beautiful truth changes everything for the person who anchors their lives in it.

"How Could God Allow Evil and Suffering?" Slides From Kipp Schwarz

Here are the slides from Kipp Schwarz when he taught on the problem of evil on August 22, 2013: