Leadership meetings / a sense of Urgency

Hey guys, hope everybody had a great weekend.

Kaleah, Sam, Della, and I worked our butts off for Christ this weekend washing about 5 trillion dishes and making approximately 5 gazillion quesadillas. It was a great time and 200 people from all over the East Coast were in attendance for the Leadership conference.

Leadership this Friday @ 6pm at Tennlytown Starbucks followed by Wilson Home Football Game

Please let me know if you will not be able to attend.

Also I have attached a link to Wilson's calendar of all sporting events. Between JV and Varsity there is almost something going on every day so please take a look at it if you're still trying to figure out some creative things to do for Contact Work.
http://www.wilsonathletics.org/index.cfm?action=main.calendar

Also as mentioned at our last Leadership mtg. Kaleah and I will be contacting you guys in the next week if we haven't already to do kind of a mini- evaluation on your experience with YL so far and a time to check in with how your are doing personally and spiritually. We will also hopefully kill two birds with one stone and hit up some Contact Work after our meetings.

Last but not least my thought for the week (one thing I took away from this weekend) is that I need more of a sense of urgency in the work I'm doing at Wilson. Sometimes I get bogged down in the administrative details and basically details in general of my job and have strayed some what from what got me hooked with Young Life in the first place, that is being available as the love of Christ to kids who desparately need Jesus.
I think sometimes we focus so much on the tedious details of our work and things that need to get done and forget about the things that give us life and motivate us to put in those extra hours.
I pray that Contact work is that for me and for you. That it wouldn't be one more task to check off on a long list of things to do but that it would be something that gives you life to get through the week.

Looking forward to seeing you guys Friday
Chris

" We are not trying to trick you, and we are not trying to flatter you"

These are the very direct words of Paul to the church in Thessalonica in 1 Thess: chapter 2.

Paul is sending encouragement to a group of very young believers who are being tempted and confused by the local " pagans" .

Sounds alot like our Campaigner group huh.
Let's imagine that they were on a 3 week camping trip w/ Paul and he has to leave suddenly only to find out that shortly there after many are falling away from the faith and being torn in what they believe and don't believe.

Last weeks Campaigners meeting right on the nose!

Well Paul's response among other things is to say (Girardi paraphrase), "You know what I didn't fail when I was with you" . I know God is at work and I am to please God not man. I didn't come to bother you, to trick you, I didn't wear a mask, I didn't come with a hidden agenda. "

So the Thessalonians may have responded something like this, " So why should we believe you over the scientist I just saw on Nova? "

and Paul would have responded a bit like this in 1 Thess 2: 8 " Well you don't have to believe me it's your choice but know this that I love you guys so much that I didn't just share Bible stories with you, I shared my life with you. (Paul thinks to himself but doesn't say out loud, is the scientist on Nova doing that?) "

To summ it up: In the end , love wins.

Friday presents an opportunity.

So again, just a quick update from my side of the world at Coolidge. I couldn't go to the leadership meeting because our Parent-Teacher conferences didn't end until 7:00pm. But, that day provided a wonderful opportunity for the gospel. Sometimes I forget about my co-workers and how much they need Jesus. Friday, a co-worker of mine who I worked with last year, came up to me and quite blankly said "I need help." Now it is important to understand this man is not a person I was close to last year. In fact, we did not get along for a variety of reasons. Not just personality differences, but my opinion of him because of the way he treated women, children, authority and his job in general has been very low.
This year, he works across the hall from me. And while I was fine with it, I never thought anything about it one way or another.
So you can imagine my surprise when he asks me to preach to him. He considers himself a Christian, which is one of the reasons I can't say I have a lot of respect for him, honestly. So I told him, "You are not going to like what I have to say to you. You should ask someone else." But he persisted. So, I told him the honest hard truth about Jesus and what it actually means to be a Christian and persist in living a life of truth. He listened! He actually sat there considering what I said. Unfortunately, before he could give me more comments, we were interrupted by a very angry father who told us all were all &%$*%$'s (if you get my meaning). He was escorted out eventually.
So, just to let you know, in my world, I have realized my ministry is more than my kids. And we'll see where that conversation takes us.

Taking it to the streets Jesus style

One thing I tend to often forget is that with Jesus ministry was not so complicated.

He went to where people were, he talked with them, walked with them, got his party on with them.

I think we do the same with Contact Work sometimes and I was reminded this week that some times the best Contact work isn't done with our fancy shmancy tutoring or coaching gigs but when we just walk around right after school when a gazillion kids are hanging out at the metro/ bus stop , or getting a two dollar slice of pizza (which you can get at Dominoes from 2-4 weekdays).

Bottom line, let's keep it simple and just get out there the way Jesus did showing up at boats to fish or Dominoes to eat pizza.