Have You Ever Been Lost?

Monday was a crazy day... between the class work, sending out a newsletter, and meetings for ministry, it was pretty tiring.  After lunch that day, I went to the library for a quiet place to read before two back to back meetings I would be having starting an hour later.  After I had finished reading and was leaving to go to the first meeting, a random stranger who was walking down the street approached me.  He was lost.  He knew he was looking for a park in the area near West Oak, but was a good bit off course.  I briefly tried to explain how to get there, but wasn't sure what was the quickest way on foot because I always drive there and I never go directly from the library to the park.  Once I gave him directions, and hoping that despite my terrible directions he would find it, I got in my truck and started on my way.  As I put it into drive, I got an idea… the park really wasn't that far out of the way from where I was heading, so why not offer him a ride?  I pulled up beside him and asked if he'd like a ride. He said he would and hopped in.  Once we got to the park, he got out in a hurry and by the time I asked his name and told him mine, he was off. I went to my meeting feeling kind of bad about the missed opportunity I had just had to talk to him about Christ, so I prayed for him hoping maybe we would cross paths again.  

Later in the day after my meeting, I headed home.  When I pulled into my parking spot at my apartment I noticed someone else pulling in right next to me.  It was a woman in an SUV and she got out and started walking towards me.  As she approached, she said something along the lines of "I am hopelessly lost, could you tell me how to get back to Raleigh?"  Finding it odd that she had somehow got lost in my neighborhood, I started to explain where we were and how to get back to Capitol Blvd, which would take her back to Raleigh.  Once I started explaining it, I saw that she really was hopelessly lost, with absolutely no idea how she ended up where she was!  She didn't know any of the landmarks I referenced, so I slowed down and tried to explain it in more detail and finally gave up and got a piece of paper to draw her a map.  After explaining the map, she thanked me and was on her way.  

Once I got in my apartment, I started thinking… I don't even remember the last time someone asked me for directions, but this time I got asked twice in one day!  Lately I have been praying for God to give me more opportunities to share his love with people... could it be that God brought these people into my life for a purpose? I then started to realize that God was teaching me something.  There are people all around me daily that are lost and don't know where they are going.  By this, I am not just talking about being lost geographically, I am talking about being lost spiritually.  In other words, there are people all around who need to hear about Jesus and how he died on the cross for their sins, but many of them do not even know they are lost because no one has ever told them.  When talking to the lady who came to my apartment, one of the landmarks I referenced was Southeastern.  When she asked what it was, I told her it was a Bible college, and she said she wouldn't be very interested in that sort of thing and had never heard of it.  Looking back at it now, when she said she was "hopelessly lost," she meant geographically, but it was quite likely that she was also lost spiritually.  This really convicted me… am I willing to help give directions to Raleigh and to the park, but not willing to give directions to the way of eternal life and forgiveness of sin?  Its hard for me to go up to random strangers and initiate conversations about the gospel (It's hard for me to go up to random strangers and initiate about anything!) but here were two times that God in his grace brought people to me and I missed it… I just wanted to share this lesson that God is teaching me, and I hope that it will remind you as it has me that there are people all around us who are lost and looking for the right path.  The question is, will we show them the way? 

Cru RDU Winter Conference

For the past three years I have been at the college Cru conference called Radiate in Baltimore, MD for New Years, then Philly had FastBreak our high school conference usually around Feburary or March.  This year I had a very different experience as Cru Raleigh-Durham had our high school Winter Conference in the same hotel and at the same time as the mid-south regional college conference called Encounter.  Our conference was in Greensboro, NC at the Koury Convention Center which was a much easier drive traveling back from Christmas in VA.  The college conference had around 1,000 students from schools in NC, SC, KY, and TN.  The high school conference had around 200 students in attendance.  Most of them came from Cru ministries in Raleigh-Durham, but some came from churches in Raleigh-Durham, Winston-Salem, Statesville, and even a few from our Cru High School ministry in Chattanooga, TN.   It turned out to be a great event!

I was on the program team and very involved in set up, tear down, and overall effect of the main meeting room.  I was specifically in charge of running lights for the main sessions.  Here are a few pictures from the main meeting room as we set up.  

On the first night of the conference, as with many Cru conferences the gospel was shared.  Mike Donehey from Tenth Avenue North shared a clear presentation of what Christ did for us and it was a great kick off to the conference.  After our session was over, Tenth Avenue North had a concert in the college conference ballroom that we joined in on.  Unfortunately I was still working on stuff as we needed to finish and fix a few things, so I didn't get to go to the concert but I heard it was awesome!

Hanging out with the program team and running lights in the back was fun, but a lot of work!  It was just cool to see how our hard work paid off as things came together and we could see students starting to open up and worship God freely!

On the second day of the conference we had free time and different activities for students to choose from.  I was in charge of organizing a trip to Celebration Station.  God taught me a lot of patience as Celebration Station forgot to put our reservation on the books and I didn't find out until about an hour before taking a group of almost 40 students.  Thankfully it all worked out and everyone seemed to have a blast!

The third day of the conference was our community outreach day.  Cru conferences generally incorporate some sort of outreach element in them.  Similarly to the way we did it in Philly, we mobilized students to go into the community to knock on doors and ask people to give canned foods for a food drive.  Students then asked if they would go through a short spiritual survey that lead into the gospel if the person was receptive and interested.  They then left a bag for them to put food in and a local church came back to pick the bags up and follow up with people we talked too.  I unfortunately didn't get to go because I injured my foot, but I heard it went really well from the students as many of them were sharing their faith for the first time.  Each night we had "chat rooms" which were small discussion groups to end the night.  I led a group and one of my students said he felt so much more comfortable sharing with his friends back home after going out and sharing with people in the community that day!  The church also gathered 160 bags of food as a result!

One of the most powerful things that we did in the main sessions was the way we used the chalkboards we made for the conference.  On the second day we asked students to write down their struggles and sins on an index card and leave it after the session.  We gathered the index cards without knowing who wrote what and we wrote their struggles on the chalkboards.  When the students came back in, they saw what everyone had wrote on the boards.

The next day our main speaker Jason Gaston spoke about how Christ had freed us and cleansed us from all of these things and that all we need is Jesus.  Then, as our band Civil Parish played, we washed the boards clean and wrote FREE!

Finally on the last night of the conference during worship, we let the students go to the boards and write something that they felt freed from while at the conference.   It was powerful to see how God had worked in these students lives during their time there!

Finally it came to an end as we came together with the college students for prayer and praise and worship as we brought in the New Year!  Afterwards we had our separate New Year's after party in what was an old dance club that the hotel rented out to us as it is no longer in use.  The students really enjoyed dancing and hanging out with their friends as a way to close out the conference!

It was so great to have our college volunteers who put in a lot of hard work to help us pull the conference off!  Below is a picture of them and then a picture of the whole group that came from Raleigh-Durham, NC.

When It's Ok To Be A Little Late

Friday morning was a crazy morning!  I got up extra early to be at one of the local high school FCA meetings at 7am to promote our winter conference.  Unfortunately however, that didn't end up happening and we will have to try again another week.  Leaving there rather frustrated because I had basically got up early for nothing, I headed down to Raleigh for our Cru staff meeting which started at 9.  I had a whole hour to kill, so I started looking for a place to park and read my Bible for a little while before going on down to the meeting.  I was looking for something like a Sheetz gas station, but just randomly saw a secluded parking lot off the main road and decided to park there and read.  As I read, there was a guy that walked by with headphones in and a hood over his head.  I prayed for him after he passed my truck.  I specifically prayed that God would place someone in his path who would share the Gospel with him that day.  As I continued to read and after five or ten minutes, the guy walked past me again.  I thought, maybe I should share with him, but then I thought "I've had a bad morning and I'm not really in the mood" and to put it off I thought, "If he walks by a third time, I'll talk to him." After about fifteen more minutes I saw him from a distance coming my way again for the third time.  I looked at the clock and thought "well... it's almost time for staff meeting, so I better head out!" I turned on my truck and headed out feeling extremely convicted.  Once I got up the road a couple of minutes, I couldn't take it and I turned around.  I said, "God, if you want me to talk to this guy show him to me one more time." When I got back to the parking lot, he was no where in sight.  I thought, "Oh well, I guess he's gone..." Then something in me told me to take the long way to staff meeting, I fought it for a minute thinking that would be a waste of time, but then decided to take the long way."  Once I turned the corner, there he was!  I pulled into the parking lot that he was heading towards, grabbed a Knowing God Personally booklet and approached him.  I was just straight up honest with him and told him I had seen him walking around while I was reading my Bible in the parking lot and I felt like God wanted me to come talk to him.  (He probably thought I was nuts! Lol) I asked him what his name was and then asked if there was anything I could pray for him about.  He didn't really have any requests, so I asked if anyone ever shared with him how to have a personal relationship with God.  He seemed like he sort of knew what I was talking about, but maybe not too sure, so I asked if he had a few minutes for me to show him the booklet.  He said yes and we went through the booklet!  I read some pages and he read some pages until we got to the prayer on page ten.  I asked him if he wanted to pray to receive Christ.  He said he had heard some of that growing up and felt like he may have made a decision when he was younger, but wasn't living it out at all.  We talked a little bit more and he said he did want to pray with me.  I told him it wasn't about the words in the book, but about his heart's intent and so he prayed his own prayer and then I prayed for him.  Whether he was making the decision for the first time, or if it was a re-dedication I'm not entirely sure, but whatever the case God was determined to send me to one of his lost sheep!  Afterwards, I gave him my contact info because he didn't have a phone and I invited him to get together one day to follow up.  He hasn't called yet, but I'm hoping he will!  Little did I know when I prayed for God to put someone in this guy's path to share the Gospel with him that I was going to be that person!  Afterwards I was about twenty minutes late for staff meeting, but I'm reminded that it can be easy to get so caught up in what we think we should be doing sometimes that we miss the things that God is really calling us to do!

Restless Wanderings

After being extremely active in ministry the past two years in Philly, it has been a bit of a shock moving to a new place and starting up from scratch again.  Cru High School RDU has plenty of ministry going on in the city, but not so much going on up near the seminary where I am.  However, because God has planted three of our staff members at Southeastern and from that three other seminary students have expressed interest in volunteering, we have been working on launching in the Wake Forest area.  I feel like we are finally beginning to get some traction as we have had some connections with a couple of local youth pastors and with Fellowship of Christian Athletes in one of the schools. Tomorrow I'm excited that we are looking to finally get on campus for prayer at See You at the Pole.  Because of all the waiting, I've found myself getting restless, yet seeing how God has been using it to build my patience as I rely on Him and my team members to get things moving.

Today, I decided to use this wait time in a productive way.  One of my roommates and I went out to do evangelism at a local community college and had some really cool conversations with people!  We used Soularium which is a spiritual picture questionnaire that I've mentioned before in a previous post here: West Virginia / Virginia Trip.  When we arrived we knew absolutely nothing about the campus, so as we explored we prayed for the school, our time there, and for any Christians / Christian organizations that might meet there. As we scoped out the campus, we found a high traffic area where students hang out and eat lunch.  We then sat down at a table and after showing my roommate how to do it, we initiated with a group of students at the table next to us.  Out of the group of 4 or 5 students, one guy came over.  After going through the first couple of questions, it was quite apparent he was a believer as one of the things he wanted in his life was to be a missionary!  He then shared part of his testimony with us and I asked if they had any Christian clubs there.  He then proceeded to tell me that they had just started up Cru and he was in the worship band!  He even invited us to the Cru meeting later tonight!

After we finished talking to him, we saw another group of students hanging out, so we initiated with them and three of them wanted to go through the questions.  As we talked, I could tell one girl was a believer, the guy didn't seem sure, and the other girl didn't know what to believe.  Once we finished the questions in Soularium, I asked if they had a few more minutes for me to share the Connecting with God booklet, which is the Gospel in four points.  They agreed, and we dived in!  The girl who I think was a believer had to leave about half way through, but asked if she could take the booklet with her (I said yes of course!). That left the guy who didn't seem sure, and the girl who didn't know what to think.  Once we made it though the booklet, the guy felt like he had already made that decision and I think he really just needed assurance.  When I asked the girl if she wanted to receive Christ, she said she wasn't ready to make that decision yet, but said it had cleared up what she had heard previously about it from family members.  After they left, my roommate and I sat there a few minutes and debriefed and talked about our conversations.  As we sat there, the girl who wasn't ready to make a decision came back and asked if she could have our contact info in case she had more questions.  I said yes of course and told her about the Cru meeting tonight that the first guy had told me about.  After that, we left with the reminder that God does the work when we share the message.  All we have to do is go, and He is faithful. "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few..." too often we believe the lie that people don't want to hear, but the reality is people do want to hear and will listen if we just take the time to share. 

Summer Travels: IYPC & U.S. Staff Conference

Every summer during the first week of July there is a camp in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania called the Interdenominational Young People's Conference (IYPC).  As a junior in high school I was invited to go to the camp and during that week I realized I was missing something in my life… I was missing a relationship with Jesus Christ.  That year on July 7, 2005 at the Thursday night consecration service, I made the decision to accept Christ into my life and began my Christian walk.  I continued to attend the camp the following three summers until I was getting to old to go.  After two years away, I was asked back as faculty in 2011.  Last year I couldn't go because I was in Hungary, but this year I was happy to get the opportunity to go back as faculty again! 

On Saturday June 29th, I left with 12 students and 3 adults from Hillcrest Baptist Church in Galax, VA and the conference began on the 30th.  At camp, there are tons of fun activities like sports, games, choir, talent night, and free time, but there is also a lot of time to focus on growing in a relationship with God.  Each day we had three 50min classes to discuss the Bible and how to apply it to your life.  I was in charge of two classes this year.  One was an introductory class for first year boys and the other was on evangelism.  Our theme was "Born to be Bold" and our theme verse was Joshua 1:9 - "This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”  For the class with the first year boys, I wanted to talk about Jesus' boldness in the Gospel of John, so I focused on Jesus' "I AM" statements.  I used these statements to show Jesus' bold claims, but also to point the students to the Gospel and their need for a relationship with Christ.  For my class on evangelism, I took a lot of the training that I have learned with Cru and developed the class to train the students on how to share their faith.  A lot of the material I used is the same material we used in Hungary last summer.  On the second day, I taught them how to share their personal testimonies and the next day I had several students open up about their lives to the class and share their testimonies.  I feel like this really helped bond the group. Overall I feel like both classes went very well!

In addition to the classes, I also was in charge of a prayer group with six boys and helped plan the talent show.  The first night at prayer group a couple of the boys really opened up about a history of drugs and abuse.  This kind of set the atmosphere for an openness in this group also.   On Thursday night there is always an altar call at the consecration service.  Three of the boys from my prayer group accepted Christ!  Several others who had been involved in my classes also made decisions.  It was an awesome night, and so cool to see these students start the same journey I started there years ago.  It was such a blessing to be part of it and to be used by God there, and I hope to continue to have to opportunity to go back in the future.

Games!

Get the bubble gum at the bottom of the bowl of flour... no hands!!!

The aftermath of what turned into a fog of flour!

Pass the wet sponge over your head to the back of the line to fill the bucket on the other side!

Talent Night! 
So the idea for talent night was a Disco Ball theme!  The idea was to feed off of last years idea of using the band as the hosts.  Karl (red shirt below) and I were in charge of planning the talent night. 

 Me, Karl, and Ben were part of the band and the hosts for the evening.

For killing time between set changes we used humor to keep the kids interested.  Here we have David, one of the other faculty auditioning to join the band.  He is holding a blow up guitar, but there was a wicked guitar solo playing through the speakers behind him! It was hilarious!

We let David in the band and also recruited back up singers and dancers as we did our surprise faculty talent act in which we altered the song "Born to be Wild" and made it "Born to be Bold" to fit the conference theme!

Last Night Western Party!

The kids doing games with the DJ in between songs

Male faculty dressed up western

Goodbyes...

Saying goodbye to my prayer group before heading home...

U.S. Staff Conference @ CSU
Just a few days after leaving IYPC, I flew out of Philadelphia to Colorado for a week.  While there we stayed at Colorado State University and we got to hear from our ministry leadership and other speakers.  It was great to have time of fellowship, prayer, and worship with about 6,000 Cru missionaries from around the U.S.

Opening night County Fair

Praise and Worship with the Keynote band

Tenth Avenue North concert!!!

Hearing from Alistair Begg, one of our main guest speakers

Hearing from our national leadership

It was a crazy couple of weeks, but it was great to have the opportunity to be at both of these events! Now to finish up summer and then off to seminary in a couple weeks!

West Virginia / Virginia Trip

At Radiate back in December, we met a guy from Radford University named Austin.  Austin came by the Cru High School table and wanted to learn more about what we do and how he could get involved, so Josh and I took him out to breakfast one morning while at the conference.  Three months later at the college spring break Cru conference called Big Break, our HR director from Orlando met with two girls, Amanda and Chelsey who were also from Radford.  They talked to him about wanting to reach out to Radford High School and mentioned Austin as he was also interested.  Philadelphia is the only Cru High School team in our region, so their names were passed on to us.  I called them and after some delays was able to schedule a day to talk to them about launching a high school ministry.  By this time, I had already made plans the same week to go down to my alma mater Concord University, to speak at their Thursday night Cru meeting and do an evangelism training with them the following day.

Last week, my coworker Josh and I took the trip down.  It turned out to be a very productive trip!  We took the 9hr drive on Wednesday and stopped for dinner with one of my old college roommates in Beckley, WV.  Once we got in, we stayed in Princeton, WV with the pastor of my college church, which was good to catch up with him and his wife!  Thursday morning, Josh and I had to be at Radford by 10am.  When we got there we met with the students and helped them think through how to network a high school campus.  Launching a high school ministry is all about knowing teachers, coaches, parents, administrators, students, etc... so we helped them think through the people they knew and helped them think about the first steps they need to take.  Pray for them as they start doing this; I am super excited that this group of college students sees the need to reach out to high schoolers!  Also pray we will be able to keep contact and I'll be able to coach them from a distance as they move forward with things there.

After our morning at Radford, we headed back to Princeton because I was scheduled to speak at Concord's Cru meeting that night.  Cru there usually meets at a stage right next to the Subway on campus which is really cool because people who are just getting food often get to see and hear what we are doing.  Every time I have ever spoken there however, Cru always seems to get moved to another room called the State Room (I guess I'm not good enough for the main stage).  I had thought jokingly that might happen again... and sure enough it did... until I found out that we couldn't have it in the state room either.  So we had Cru on the lawn between the administration building and music building, which actually turned out to be really awesome!  I spoke from Luke 5:1-11, and I challenged the students to follow Jesus even when it's not comfortable and specifically related that to the opportunity they had to do outreach at Concord while they are there as students.  At the end, I invited them to join us the following day as we planned to do evangelism using a tool called Soularium from 11am-3pm in the student center.

Soularium

1. What three images describe your life right now? Why? 
2. What three images describe what you wish were part of your life right now? Why?
3. Which image would you use to describe God (or lack of God for atheist)? Why?
4. Think about your life so far, which image describes what you've experienced spiritually? Why?
5. When you think about your spiritual journey so far, which image would you use to describe what you wish were true? Why?


The next day, we went to Concord for the evangelism training and really thought if we had 2 or 3 Cru students show up that it would be a good turnout... but to our surprise we probably had at least 8 that showed up throughout the time we were doing it!  We set up two tables and had a lot of really good conversations with people.  I lost count of how many people we talked to because there were so many of us and two tables, but I wouldn't doubt if we did Soularium with 50 or more people!  We were also able to share the Gospel with several students and one guy accepted Christ!  It was a really exciting and encouraging day of ministry!  Pray that the Concord students with take what we taught them and run with it as they seek to reach their campus!

Some students at the first table 

Me and a Cru student talking to a guy at the second table

After our day at Concord, Josh and I headed down the my hometown in Galax, VA and spent the weekend with my family and friends there.  Then we went to church there on Sunday and made the 9hr trip back up.  It was a great trip and I'm thankful for how God used us and opened the doors for us to go!

Though the fig tree should not blossom...

Ministry (especially high school campus ministry) always seems to have its ups and downs.  During January and February I was so busy I could hardly get to everything that I needed to do.  The basketball guys at Truman kept me busy as we had chapels every Thursday.  We also tried to get together with a small group of them each week for pizza to get to know them, explain Cru, and share the Gospel diagram.  We attended several of their games also.  Then, during February we had our winter retreat called FastBreak, which I helped lead the outreach day so there was a lot of planning involved with that.  On top of those things, we also had Cru meetings, Bible club, Bible studies, Youth Center, and other events that really kept us busy.  Lately however, I feel like I'm in an odd place as things have dramatically slowed down...

Despite several attempts at having a post season Bible study with the basketball team at Truman, it never really took off.  We had good interest, but not availability... almost all the guys were doing track, baseball, football weight lifting, or AAU basketball after school all the days we could do anything...  We are still working on possibly doing something with the ones doing weight lifting, but nothing is for sure yet.  This has been disappointing for us, but we know God will still use our time with them from the season as we have already seen God working in some of their lives.  With the basketball chapel over, I have had extra free time in my schedule.  Not only that, but the Bible study I do with some guys from Cru on Fridays has ended too.  One guy is playing baseball, one is too busy to be involved right now, and another was acting in his school play.  That only left me and one student... these things have been a bit depressing for me because I feel like a lot of things that I was planning on have come to a halt for the time being.  There have also been some things the past month or so that have had me down in my own personal life, so its just been a difficult month for ministry and hard to get motivated to keep moving forward here.

Though things have been difficult in ministry lately, I feel like God has really been growing me in my own personal walk with Him the past month or so... I think so often I have had good foundational faith that God exists and saves and all of that... but often doubt His work in my life on a day to day basis.  I think God has really been teaching me about faith lately especially as I've been studying the book of Hebrews and specifically in seeing all the imperfect people God used in chapter 11.  I've also learned a lot about how to have faith even when everything seems to be falling apart or when nothing seems to be happening or when prayers don't get answered the way I want.  Recently I heard a sermon on Habakkuk that was uplifting.  As you look at that short book of the Bible, you can see that Habakkuk is frustrated with God because God is letting evil men overtake Isreal.  He cries out to God, but God chooses not to deliver them.  He is reminded of God's goodness throughout the book, and at the end of the book in Habakkuk 3:17-18 it says, "Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation." That has brought me comfort, and knowing that God is sovereign and even if I don't know what He is doing and things aren't going the way I want... I know He is working all things together for my good (Rom 8:28).  It has been a good experience for me though...  In the past, often times I was so busy with ministry that I didn't stop enough to learn from God, but lately He has had me in a place where I have had no choice but to stop and learn... and I am thankful for that. 

A few things are starting to move again though, so I'll ask for prayer for them.  We have started a Bible study with some guys from the local technical high school and the one student I had left from the other Bible study is helping lead it.  So far it has been hard to get all the guys together every time, so pray we will be able to get them all to really plug in.  Also, we have an opportunity at Truman with the soccer team.  The coach I spent so much time getting to know last year resigned, but right now they are suppose to be having spring training.  Because of this I called the athletic director and offered to bring some soccer guys from Cairn University to help lead practices.  The athletic director was very positive and appreciative.  He said we couldn't do it on campus if we didn't have the right background checks, but suggested a field nearby that we could use.  This week I will hopefully be meeting with some guys from the team to talk about it.  Please pray this comes together because it could be a great way to meet more soccer guys and maybe do a chapel with them in the fall.  Thank you for your prayers... they mean a lot, especially in times like these.