Tag Archives: Christian Ed

The Jolt of James: Reading ‘Rich’ as a Rich Person

24 Oct

I have been ‘doing’ the Book of James recently for my quiet times. Parts of this little book are frighteningly surprising to me. Get this: I can remember teaching from James at least 4 times during high school and possibly my first year of college.  I should know what it says.

I didn’t spend much time studying James as a part of my courses at Taylor (I can only remember one time, and that was really about the controversy involving Martin Luther and sola fide).  When I started to spend time in it recently I really wasn’t expecting to find (that much) new content.  wrong.

That words of the book have not changed (in fact the notes I took in the margins during high school are still in my Bible). So why does it seem so….new?

Never before did I truly consider myself rich and when I read the Bible. I thought that this term referred to people like Oprah, Donald Trump, or Bill Gates.  FACT: If you have means of reading this post, you are probably rich too.

Isn’t it crazy how I am have read those 5 chapters probably 100+ times and have still missed so much of what it actually says?

May the Lord’s will be done,

CWillZ

Libronix For Mac

19 Aug

Have a mac, love to study the Bible and depressed about the options available to you?

Libronix, a great scholarly tool for studying the Bible and theology, is going cool. I used Libronix quite a bit over the last few years and really wish I had it for myself.

Logos Bible Software for the Mac

Thought I would spread the word.
If you want to buy it for me, that would be good too ;)

May the Lord’s will be done,
CWillZ

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Developing Adult Volunteers for Youth Ministry

5 Aug

I wrote my senior paper on it. It was alot of work. I haven’t read it since, and neither has anyone else, so I published it:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgrh9s8b_47cv2gvphf

Tell your friends

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Kum Bay Ya

4 Aug

Everything they said about us came true. At Taylor we Christian Educational Ministry majors caught a fair amount of friendly joking about our lives being all about asking people how they feel, the appropriate answer to 60% of questions being “Jesus”, and the like. We took it in stride and returning the favor and calling business majors “the man” or thinking that they just loved money.

As I said, everything they said came true. During our time in Jamaica we worked for and with New Hope Moravian Church in Montego Bay. At the end of the week the youth from the church had us come over for some games, singing, dancing, and time together. At the end of the night we all held hands and prayed. As were praying we sang “Kum Bay Ya”, which is a normal thing for the Jamaicans. It was for real, and great.

Yesterday I was teaching Sunday School and for the first time asked a question that’s appropriate answer was “Jesus”. It’s happening.

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Confession

15 May

I feel ripped off. By this Saturday at noon I will be a college graduate. It has taken four years for me to realize what that means. It means that I am more educated than 98% of the world. It means that I have enough debt to keep me and my future family in the the same system. It means that I am bound by privilege.

Here at Taylor I have been given a very good, Christ-centered education. My practicum for a degree in Christian Educational Ministries took me to Juarez, Mexico where I facilitated high school mission trips in basically a squatter colony. There I learned what it looked like to not have enough resources to feed your baby properly, and to watch across a fence as another bank building goes up, waving Old Glory. As those people shared Christ and many gifts with me, I felt like I learned much more about the reality of God during my first few weeks there then I did as I was writing research papers at length for my Bible or Christian Ed classes.

My frustration is not against Taylor, but that I feel trapped. It takes a lot of effort to break myself of consuming, wasting, entitlement, and just plain ignorance. Oversimplified but not nearly as expressive as it is within me it is this that I am frustrated at: It cost me over $100,000 to realize that I don’t want this kind of life– and I have to retain my privileged place in society just to pay (a good portion) of it back.

I hope that I can find someone who can show me what it truly means to become like Christ.

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Reason or Experience????

10 Apr

“The Judeo-Christian tradition is profoundly experiential, not to the exclusion of reason, but as the precondition of it.  That is, the material upon which reason exerts itself is precisely those experiences of ours which need ordering and coherence.”

F. Earle Fox.  “The Spiritual Core of Experiential Educations” The Theory of Experiential Education. 

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Alarm Clock at 5:30 Feeling

3 Mar

Tonight I watched Lord of War starring Nicholas Cage. I would highly recommend this movie because of the moral choices that it presents. I won’t ruin the plot, but one of the biggest ideas of the movie is honesty and the difference between legal and right.

I am disturbed by the movie, because I know that it represents something true. Arms dealers or traffickers exist, but only because of war. Why does war exist?

I came back to my room and started praying. Something like this is what came out of me:

“I have seen innocent blood shed, even though it is a movie, this is my world. Why, God? Jesus, is this the “year of the Lord’s favor?”

Over the weekend I talked at our Spring Christian Ed retreat about the Exodus and the movement of God in the life of the individual and in societies. During that talk I presented the way Jesus began his ministry, which was by reading this in a synagogue in Capernum:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
Because He has anointed me
To Preach the Good News to the poor
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,
To release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Over the summer, I was praying about hunger. I asked God why it existed, I dared to ask God why He would let it happen

It is hard to describe, but the answer to that prayer was sorrowful.
“My children go hungry because my other children let them.”
Mother Theresa must have listened to the same voice for she said, “As long as there are empty mouths in the world, the Eucharist is incomplete.”

God has and will give his family more than enough. We just wont share. We have our own peace, but will not share.

Why do I go through a day and not ask where the clothes that cover my flesh come from, who worked to make them? How can I drink my coffee without thinking of who picked it, and whether or not they can live off the wages they earned? Why do I believe the lie that it is not my responsibility to make sure those people are getting what they deserve?

When have we given enough? When can we feel good about ourselves? When we all have enough, when we all have peace, when God is feared.

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