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Anyone for Golf?

This is awesome!

Undercover at Liberty

Picked up this great book, The Unlikely Disciple, when I was in Boston last week. It is written by a student at Brown named Kevin Roose . He is a student at Brown, an ultra-liberal Ivy League university, who wanted to do a cross-cultural semester so instead of going overseas he went to Liberty University the Baptist College Mecca in Lynchburg, Virginia. This as you can imagine is a cross-cultural experience to a student who goes to Brown. Kevin is not a Christian and has nominal church background with the Quakers and parents who are both pretty much agnostics.

It is a fascinating read. It will stir you in so many ways to consider certain things about how we as Christians often come off to those who aren't believers in both good and bad ways. Kevin makes the point that many of the people he is friends with have never met an evangelical Christian.

So far what I have read in the book is pretty fair and balanced. Kevin encounters many things about Liberty that are strange and pretty extreme but he also encounters some amazing people who really love Jesus and love people. I can't wait to see what his final conclusions are.

Here is an excerpt from the book, some funny stuff in here about fines students get:

Like a West Point drill sergeant, Reverend Falwell prides himself on discipline. His field manual, a 46-page code of conduct called “The Liberty Way,” governs every aspect of our lives and dispenses concrete punishments when we veer off-course. Such as:

• Possession and/or use of tobacco: 6 reprimands + $25 fine
• Improper personal contact (anything beyond hand-holding): 4 reprimands + $10 fine
• Attendance at, possession or viewing of, an R-rated movie: 12 reprimands + $50 fine
• Spending the night with a person of the opposite sex: 30 reprimands + $500 fine + 30 hours community service

Reverend Falwell envisioned Liberty as a Christian safe haven where young evangelicals could get a college education without being exposed to binge-drinking, pot-smoking, sexual experimentation, and all the other trappings of secular co-ed culture. His plan was to make it the evangelical equivalent of Notre Dame or Brigham Young, a university where every student would be trained in the liberal arts, fortified in the evangelical faith, and sent out into the world as a “Champion for Christ.”

A recent article shows that Roose's time at Liberty had an effect on him.

"Once ambivalent about faith, Roose now prays to God regularly — for his own well-being and on behalf of others. He said he owns several translations of the Bible and has recently been rereading meditations from the letters of John on using love and compassion to solve cultural conflicts.

He's even considering joining a church"

Love to hear from you if your reading this book.

see ya,

Mark

Oh Praise the One...

The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified. So the community of the cross is a community of celebration, a eucharistic community, ceaselessly offering to God through Christ the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving. The Christian life is an unending festival. And the festival we keep, now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us, is a joyful celebration of his sacrifice, together with a spiritual feasting upon it. 

John R. W. Stott

James Street

Our new worship service kicks off next Sunday and I am so excited to finally see this vision become a reality. If you live in the Pittsburgh area you may have caught the billboards around town, heard the radio spots or seen the newspaper ads. This is going to be great.

Our first series is called James Street: Traveling the Road of Faith and walks through the first couple of chapters in James.

If you are in the area I hope you can come, I would be honored. It starts at 11:15am.

Go HERE to get more info.

Hope to see you on the 19th.

A New Bible

I have been a long time reader of the NIV version of the bible, it is the language I learned the scripture in so it has been my preference since day one, but I think there is a new contender.

I recently got an ESV Study Bible and it is impressive! This thing is a great ministry resource filled with all kinds of useful notes, charts, maps and etc. I think it blows the NIV study bible away.

It also comes with a free subscription to its online version.

I think you should check this sweet Bible out. 

P.S. Nobody tell Zondervan because they kinda sign my YS paychecks!!

Friendship is Unnecessary

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” -C.S. Lewis

I love how Lewis starts this quote. Friendship is one of those things that God has set apart for humans to enjoy, it is one of the things that make us unique from the animals and all other things. Friendship makes life rich, and rewarding.

I have been blessed with a lot of friends in my life, people who I have been privileged to share life with.I have known people who haven't had the same blessing and I don't know how they make it. I have seen people who travel through this life alone and my heart breaks for them. It must be a lonely existence.

There is a dark side to friendship at times, I know that it has been the source of much pain in my life. Friends who turned their back on me, disappeared from my life, or who used me to get ahead. Oh the stories I could tell but I wont, it is not really worth going down those roads.

Right now as I sit in an airport by myself flying home from another YS ONE DAY I am thinking of friends old, new and friends who have faded away. All of them definitely made the journey interesting.

Thanks to all of you who have befriended me, I love ya and I hope you know how much I appreciate your friendship.