Pulling teams of high school kids together in disturbia is hard enough. Right now, I've got three leaders spread across multiple time zones. I haven't seen one of them since January. But they are doing it - living life while dropping in to culture after culture, blessing and serving those close and far away from home. Technology now allows us to stay in touch, even when we have sent them to where they need to be.I think youth pastors are sometimes afraid and unable to recognize that there needs to be structural change in order for there to be social justice. It's not enough to work on the micro level. When youth ministers go to a third-world country, it is important for them to see the ways the political, social and economic structures on the macro level create and maintain poverty.And
I find most youth workers haven't a clue as to what macro economics are all about, and how macro economic factors create the poverty in third-world countries. They don't understand why third-world peoples are angry with Americans.And
Point blank, I'm not impressed with youth workers. I find that just like teenagers, they don't know what is going on in the world. Youth ministry is far too often a matter of fun and games. When I go to youth ministry conferences, I sometimes get depressed because I find that youth workers are primarily interested in techniques. They seldom want to deal with the issues. They often evade the hard-nosed facts of what's going on in the world.+ Reading The End of Poverty [notes] was the first thing that ever exposed me to economic structures and how they impact poverty.
As a matter of fact, I think MTV may do more to help kids become sensitive to the needs of the world than youth workers. If you're asking me who is who is more likely turning young people on to poverty issues, I'll have to say it's Bono of U2 rather than youth workers. Youth workers are pressurized into maximizing big turn outs at the youth gatherings at their churches, and that doesn't usually come by making kids sensitive to the needs of the poor and the oppressed. That's a very sad thing, indeed.
300 million sleeping sites in Africa that need protection from malariaTwo ways to make a difference right now:
anti-malaria bed net costs $5 and last five years - $1 a year
multiple kids sleep under one
total investment - $1.5B for 5 years
the most amazing bargain of our time
::: A persistent undercurrent of spirituality remains among old-stock Europeans, expressed in 'surprisingly medieval forms of devotion' such as pilgrimage, which is enjoying widespread revival as a spiritual exercise. Devotion among youth is evidenced by the 100,000 youth visiting Taizé each summer, the one million attending World Youth Day in Cologne in 2005, and engagement in many new movements both Catholic and Protestant including Focolare, the Alpha movement, ProChrist, the Thomas Mass for contemporary 'doubters', Soul Survivor... and on the list goes.For more [although this issue isn't online yet] see http://www.ywam.eu/weeklyword/2008/
::: Immigration into Europe is usually associated with Islam, but many immigrants are Christians, a major factor in the shape of tomorrow's Christianity. Not only will the high birth rate among the rapidly-expanding immigrant churches boost the Christian figures, but these new Europeans are turning Catholic, protestant and charismatic-Pentecostal churches into centres of vibrant and colourful worship and witness. Of Britain's ten largest churches, four are pastored by Africans. Europe's largest church, in Kiev, is pastored by a Nigerian.
::: In short, Islam's encounter with Europe is likely to create an ever-more adaptable form of faith that can cope with social change without compromising basic beliefs. At the same time, and contrary to expectation, Christianity is surviving amid 'Eurosecularity' and could well emerge stronger for the challenge.
::: [Phillip] Jenkins suggest that perhaps the best indicator that Christianity is
about to revive is a widespread conviction that the religion is doomed or in its closing days. After all, he reminds his readers, the Christian faith is all about death and resurrection. The quote heading the last chapter reads: "If you are the type of person who buys stocks and bonds, I'd buy Christianity. The price now is very low... it has to go up."
We had another fun meeting with the 2008 Hungary team this afternoon. Really amazing team - so talented, energetic and ready to serve. Here are a few highlights of where this team is at currently:
The second way is to give via our the electronic giving vendor that our church uses. Click the icon to give to one of our SPACE teams, which will take you to eGive's page for donations to Grace Community Church. After entering the appropriate donor and bank information, fill in the amount for "Short Term Missions" and specify for "SPACE Hungary - Shengs". Or you can give to any of our other teams :
::: John Eldredge's blog+ The Grace OF the City -From the Q conference, via Scott Hodge
God says that the city is a gift of God for humanity
+ The Grace IN the City -
4 orders in humanity - Economic, Cultural, Residential, Political/Legal
Cities - all together
Suburbs - all segregated
+ Grace FOR the City....
NYC - it's expensive... Across the Hudson River, you keep 12% more of your income. Most people are here to USE the city... Which means REVOLVING door....
You have to have the grace to care about the city instead of your name. Default of your heart is to make a name....
In Brilliant's view, what the planet needs today is not simply the invention of a cleaner way to generate energy or better schools in developing nations but a transformation of human consciousness. "It's a matter of human will," he says. "And that's where my optimism comes from, because I've seen awful things that were solved by the projection of a positive, and I would say loving, human will."Link
Mega-regions are integrated sets of cities and their surrounding suburban hinterlands across which labor and capital can be reallocated at very low cost. The 40 that we will identify here all have economies on the scale of $100 billion or more. Similarly, the 40th largest nation in terms of GDP also has an economy of about $100 billion.- Richard Florida, Who's Your City? : How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life
The mega-regions of today perform functions that are somewhat similar to those of the great cities of the past - massing together talent, productive capability, innovation and markets. But they do this on a far larger scale. Furthermore, while cities in the past were part of national systems, globalization has exposed them to world-wide competition. As the distribution of economic activity has gone global, the city-system has also become global - meaning that cities compete now on a global terrain. Urban mega-regions are coming to relate to the global economy in much the same way that metropolitan regions relate to national economies.
Unlike mega-cities, which are termed as such simply for the size of their populations, mega-regions are by definition places that claim large populations, large markets, significant economic capacity, substantial innovative activity, and highly skilled talent.
If we take the largest mega-regions in terms of population, the world's 10 biggest are home to roughly 666 million people or 10.5 percent of world population; the top 20 comprise close to 1.1 billion people, 17 percent of the world total; while the top 40 are home to 1.5 billion people, 23 percent of global population.
While driving to CT for the SPACE Winter Expedition this past January, we watched the film "The Guardian." If you've seen the movie, you know it's a modern day paradigm for rescuing the lost [So Others May Live.] Sacrifice is also one of the themes in the movie and as we drove over The Tappan Zee bridge, we discussed the question, "how much would you sacrifice for someone else? " I mentioned the story of Daniel Santos, who jumped off the bridge after a woman who tried to commit suicide, jumping 140 feet into the Hudson River. [When I told the story, I got the height of the bridge wrong.]
"I tell my staff if they are not praying for an hour a day about their ministries to let me know and I will hire someone who will." – Francis Chan
