keeping you up to date

It's been difficult to keep posting this week first of all because I don't have an internet conection in my dorm room. I've also been very busy.

Here at the YLI team conference we've been having alot of good experiences. The students in my small group are amazed at what they've been learning. I've had several tell me that this has been the greatest "camp" expereince of their life. One told me that what he's learned here has challenged everything he's been told in the past and now he wants to stop agreeing with everything he's told because he's seen another perspective and wants to study it himself.

I've had alot on my mind this week so far which will fuel blogs to come I'm sure. Mike Devries has once again freaked me out and challenged my thinking. The first night he showed a nooma (www.nooma.com) called bullhorn and then spoke on how the "good news" the gospel has somehow been twisted into bad news. I've expressed some of his concerns before, recently infact, In my recent blog "missing th point?"

Mike said:"if this whole thing is just about depopulating hell and populating heaven... is that really good enough?" "Jesus talked more about the poor than heaven." "Jesus never waved heaven in front of anyone's face like a carrot."

isn't it interesting that so many of the things we listen to a pastor say in church are not the things Jesus talked about? The story of mankind is not a story of a failed project by God, it's the redemptive story of the Hope of messiah. It's the story of an ill world being healed.

so as Mike said, "is it just, like, saving my soul?" or is it about a much bigger picture. If we view the world as a big broken pot we must ask what kind of God we think God is. who is God? What would God do with a broken pot? When something breaks you have two options, throw it in the trash or fix it. which is God's story?