Chapter 2. Jesus - the most human of us all.

I really loved this chapter! This chapter embodies who we as Young Life leaders are. My favorite thing about this chapter is that it says this, "It is Jesus then who provides for us the model of what it means to be human"(pg.29)

It is Jesus who is the model of what it means to be human! I feel like we've talked about what it looks like to live like Jesus and to love like Jesus! But I love knowing that we have this life to live that is should be patterned after Jesus!

Another thing that I loved in this chapter is this "We must open our lives enough to let people see that we too laugh and hurt and cry!"(pg.30)

Wow.... is it safe to let high school students in to see us laugh hurt and cry? FORSURE...100% ok... it says that Jesus didn't preach and then leave... Our high school kids deserve to see that we are real, that we hurt and cry and laugh. That is our heart and ya'll Jesus shared his life and his heart and here we are living our lives like Jesus, sharing our hearts and lives with our high school friends! This just gets me soo excited, because this is why we are here in this ministry! to love and to share our lives with high schoolers, the same as Jesus did!

What, I guess, I'm trying to say is that, we have this life of Jesus that we are created to pattern ours after. How cool is that! I was super encouraged by this chapter and I hope that you all were too!

What were some things that stuck out to you!? post your comments!!!
Sorry if my blog was a bit scattered!!

lovelovemary

Chapter One

I appreciate Pippert’s honesty about her approach to sharing Jesus in her early journey with Christ. I think she faced similar circumstances and experiences that I have too. There we’re a handful of things that stuck out to me:

Ministry isn’t a compartment- I think that Pippert would say that she was trying to “do” ministry and treat it as a separate thing. I think what she is getting as is the need for ministry to be natural…obvious, not having to take on some certain criteria for it to be classified as ministry. I don’t set apart time to enhale and exhale each day…its natural, a part of who I am, and I think that ministry is the same way. We don’t share Christ with just kids or just share Christ when we update a status on facebook, but rather it’s a way of life.

You’re not a project- on page 16 Pippert talks about how offended she was when people were pushing religion on her with out even bothering to get to know her. She describes feeling like a project…is that our motive for developing relationships with people? Is that our motive for hanging out with kids? Are we hoping to point them toward Jesus, YES, but is our only aim to have them regurgitate a prayer . On another scale are we only going to the school to get kids to come to our events? What are our motives?? She talks about realizing that unless she really cares for her friends then they would never see Jesus.

It ain’t easy- on page 18 Pippert describes her feelings about God wanting to give her all the hard-core cases and that her and God had “drastically” different ideas about who was spiritually open. It’s easy to gravitate toward kids and people in general who seem to have it all together. I think we need to be careful in defining what makes people “all together?” Its easy to use the same standards the world does and think that if it looks okay on the outside it must be okay on the inside. I also think that there is a clear call, especially on our mission, to go after the furthest out. The kids who don’t care and that, it ain’t easy!

I’m not the only one- Pippert shares the story of her friend Mary who she was skeptical about, wether or not her faith was genuine and she came to see that she was steadily growing in Christ. She says that she realized that she isn’t the only one who has shared or revealed Gods heart. We have to understand that we are called to be like John the Baptist and point kids to Jesus…this doesn’t mean getting from point A to point Z in a 5 minute conversation at a basketball game, or one 12 minute club talk, it’s a process. While God is fully able and definitely does give us the opportunity for us to be a part of kids trusting Christ for the first time we have to know that it is Jesus who does this and He has been revealing himself since the beginning of time!

Being yourself- This is a BIG one. I think we (I) feel pressure to have it all together in general. We miss out on the true reality of community when we hide our needs. I agree that a lot of this comes from our fear of approval, or lack of rather than seeing ourselves as God does (pg. 24)

Step up to the plate- “Girl Scouts smile too, so that can’t be all there is to witnessing for Christ.” Well said…I think this applies to Contact Work too. We can’t just expect kids to come to us, we have to go. When we go, we can’t expect kids to be like “oh, hey I don’t know you, but my name is ____ and I really need Jesus will you tell me how to make that happen.” We’ve got to initiate.

Great chapter that begins to take me out of my box that I have put ministry into and given me the freedom to be myself and the challenge to pursue people with genuine intentions.

How this works!

Hey ya'll.

This is my hope for this thing. My hope is that we will all be able to make posts about what we are reading, and in that, we will be able to respond to others posts...

I hope this is the best way to do this, and if not, we will definitely find another way to have great conversations about our book!!

lovelove
hope you all had a great day yesterday with your families!!:)

the first blog!

hey
Here it is!
OUR BLOG!!!!