Back in high school our youth group would go on week long trips to big cities like Salt Lake City and New York. There were two goals when we went on these trips, the first was to learn to have fun, and the other was to offend and turn non-Christians off to Christianity altogether. That’s right we went into the streets and got in peoples faces and offended them. We would tell them things like, “You’re going to hell if you don’t listen to what I say right now”, and “What you believe is ridiculous, ha ha!” OK, maybe we didn’t laugh… while we were in front of them, but this is what they heard. We were taught that this urban guerrilla style evangelism was not only good but the most biblical way to “convert” the un-believers. I now say that’s a load of horse droppings.

I have been reading a lot of what my pastor likes to call, “dangerous books”. The most recent of these books is one written by Don Evererts and Doug Schaupp called I Once Was Lost. One of the concepts they touch on in this book is the fact that non-Christians need to trust Christians before they can make any progress toward having a relationship with Christ. Not to long ago Christianity was the norm, you were expected to be a Christian. If you were a Christian it meant you were a trustworthy person, you were respected. Things have changed an awful lot since then. Now when you hear about Christianity it is mainly in regards to the Catholic Priest scandals, Jimmy Swaggart, and those crazy street preachers. What is there left to trust now? This is a huge obstacle for us, how can we ever gain their trust?

To build trust is a very difficult thing to do. When a husband lies to to his wife, the wife will not easily trust the husband again, there is a lot of work the husband must do. At one point in time the church was trusted, and now society feels like the church has lied to them. There is a lot that we as the church have to now do. To be honest I don’t know what that really looks like as a whole, but I think there are small things that we can start to do.

Don Evererts and Doug Schaupp go on in their book to discuss some mistakes we make when talking with non-Christians and their distrust in us. They call them “the five knee-jerk reactions to distrust”.

1. We become defensive. We defend ourselves by saying we’re not like the other Christians. We even start defending the other Christians, “look if you really understood the crusades…”
2. We become bruised. We become so offended and we just shut down.
3. We avoid the subject altogether. We just figure that if they don’t trust us, why even talk about it. It would just be easier if we avoid the topic completely.
4. We judge them. How dare this lying, cheating, drug addict not trust me
5. We just plain argue with them. We just want to prove them wrong. We look at it more as a challenge than anything else.

If we can just get beyond these reactions I believe we could see so much more progress. We are so quick to speak and throw out our opinions, but this just might not be the right thing to do. I truly believe that we need to learn to listen, and to try to understand. We have to get out of their face.

I am officially enrolled in College Of DuPage. Today I learned quite a bit about the history of the school including the fact that it has had a few celebrities graduate from there including John and Jim Belushi and Marisol Nichols of the TV show “24″ and National Lampoons: Vegas Vacation. Aside from that I am very excited about going back to school, my major is Graphic design (of course). I am starting out with 12 credit hours (four classes), which include:

They are all basic classes so I can get back into the whole “school thing”. All that is left is to get all my books and school supplies.

When you guys get a chance, say a little prayer for me. Just pray that I stay motivated with this and I don’t get overwhelmed, I have a tendency to do both of those things.

Oh and I found a school supply list of things I will need.

I am very shy when it comes to worship, maybe you are the same way. I am am still having problems with this. I know I wrote a while back about those invisible ropes that keep me from raising my hands, and I thought that would help me. I thought that acknowledging the fear would help me change, but it continues. I get the urge, or I feel like I should, but I get scared and ignore the impulse. I get so close and then fear sets in. This has been bugging me a lot recently and I have tried something new, I have tried something radical… for me.

I didn’t go to my church this Sunday, that’s right I was a traitor. I went to a very charismatic church, yep, tongues speakin’, prophecy seein’, dance in the aisle charismatic church. It was different… very different. It wasn’t bad though, it was good. It showed me an awful lot about worship. Their worship was pure, that’s the only way I can put it. They loved the Lord and you could see it, they fell to their knees and prayed, they jumped and clapped. Sure there where those who you had your doubts about whether they were sincere or not, but over all I went away knowing they loved God and loved to worship him. I hoped that this experience would help me. I hoped that it would give me that nudge I needed, maybe if “everyone else was doin’ it” I would do it to. That hope died. I learned something very important while I was there. I learned that worship is not about what everyone else is doing, it’s not even about what I am doing. It is all about what God is doing. God wants to meet me right there in the middle of worship. He may not want me to raise my hands or fall on my knees, maybe he doesn’t want me to dance in the aisle. He wants me to be real with him. If I feel that I should raise my hands I should, not because of me but because of God. I can’t focus on me or anyone else during worship… then it’s not worship. I may not ever raise my hands and that is ok.

I don’t know why it took so long for all this to finally click but I am glad it did.

Lord, I want to worship you purely. I don’t want to focus on anything but you. Help me to worship you like I have never worshiped you before. Thank you for opening my eyes, thank you for working in my heart.