TREVOR'S WRITING

Mark Oestreicher posted a really great part of a book that he is writing about Middle Schoolers. He and I must be a similar age, because I really identify with this stuff. Makes me feel old when I think about all that has happened in my lifetime. Enjoy the list... scott rubin and i need a little help from you for our middle school ministry book. in the “middle school culture” chapter, we have a list of things that didn’t exist when we were in middle school (well, at least when i was in middle school, in the mid-70s). here’s what we have: - Cell phones - The internet (meaning, websites and buying stuff online and everything else that is so completely normal today) - Text Messages - IM - Hybrid Cars - Social Networking - “Friends with benefits” - “Bi-Curious” - Cable TV - Digital Video Recording (or TiVo) - Mp3s and downloadable music - DVDs - Hi-Def - Satellite Radio - Xboxes and Wiis and other amazing gaming systems (“Pong” was introduced when I, Marko, was a young teen, and “Space ...

Over the last few years I have been really thinking about the church, is it what God wants it to be? What is it that should change? What is it that should not change? As I have done this I have explored the concepts that emergent village explores, reading books by Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, and others. A lot of what they have to say, really connects with me, but I have always been left with a feeling of uneasiness in many ways. I have kept reading them and enjoying their thoughts, but lately I have become more and more int erested in the church/christian concept that is called Missional. Over the last few years I have heard missional talked about quite a bit, and have often wondered what it meant, but never took the time to really look into it. A few months back I decided to check out some definitions. When I clicked on friends of missional I was really blown away! The definition of a missional community fit so well with the thoughts that I have had about the church lately. Thi...

About a year ago, I read Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne and I remember being so overwhelmed with all the things I felt I needed to change in my life. At that point I made a decision to take one thing from each book that I read. I couldn't handle more than that. A few weeks back I finished reading Ronald Sider's book, Rich Christians in an Age of Poverty . I once again could have been overwhelmed, but I decided to take one thing, (I might cheat and take a few) here is the thing I am taking from this book. Sider talks a lot about living more simply and giving more to help the poor (especially giving to micro loan organizations), he mentions in his book that he thinks that most of the people reading the book could go 2 years without buying new clothes. I have decided to take the challenge (many people I know, especially the youth from my church, are thinking - hasn't he done that the last 15 years already?). Regardless, here are the items in my closet that I a...

Our oldest son, Ben (Grade 2) has been doing spelling tests every Friday for the past few months. He is really great at spelling and always gets 6 out of 6, or at worst 5 out of 6. It is fun to see him do so well at it. His teacher always gives the class 5 words that are 2 to 4 letters long and then the 6th word is a longer word like "surprise" or "spectacular." One Friday Ben came home without his test, so we asked him how he did, he said he got 5 out of 6. Nicky said, "that's great!" and asked which one he got wrong, "did you mess up on beautiful?" "Nope," he says, "I spelled 'us' wrong." "Oh...how did you spell it?" "I spelled it a-s-s." True story.

I posted a few weeks ago about Rob Bell and Don Golden's book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians. I really appreciated Jearim's comments (on my Facebook ) about confession and the scripture that he used was very inspiring to me. I finished reading the book a while ago and really appreciated it. I realized that the whole idea of confession and repentance are extremely important to Rob, and that in fact may be one of the main points of the book. The whole book is about how followers of God throughout Biblical history have fallen into exile because they choose not to cry out to him, and when they do, God rescues them from that exile. This is near the end of the book: ...in exile we can slip into despair, or we can reimagine everything. Confession. Repentance. A fresh start. A clean slate. We cry out in our exile and God hears us and we experience rebirth. (p. 174) According to my understing of the book the difference is that compared to what I have learned there is a deeper understan...