Seeds of Youth Ministry

Here is a sermon that I wrote after doing some work in my Matthew class.  It has never been preached publically, but I thought I would share it here.   

Matthew 13:1-9      

  That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. ²Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. ³And he told them many things in parables, saying: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. ⁴And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. ⁵Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. ⁶But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. ⁷Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. ⁸Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. ⁹Let anyone with ears  listen!’

    I was in youth ministry.  You hear that a lot “was in youth ministry.”  I heard it from members of my congregation, and I hear it now from seminary students.  There is something about youth ministry that makes many of us “past tensers.”  It was something that we did, but we moved on to “bigger and brighter things.”  But I think to really understand this parable you have to understand youth ministry.           

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The Joy of Catching Up with Old Friends

I had an opportunity this afternoon to talk with a high school friend of mine from back in Oklahoma.  He is recently engaged and newly graduated, so we talked about our changing lives.  It was such a joy to hear from him and hear that he is having a great life.  Now, obviously in this 15 minute talk, we weren’t going to bring up all the negative stuff in our life, that’s normally not what you do, but it is refreshing to hear that he has Life and not just a breathing kinda life, but the kind of Life that you hope for and pray for. 

Lessons on Forgiveness

Strange and wonderful things happen at seminary, especially in Dr. Mulholland’s class.  (As I heard J.D. Walt say about the professors here: they are human wikipedia, I concur about Dr. Mulholland.)  I am sitting in my New Testament Intro class and we are talking about the Lord’s Prayer and the statement forgive us as we forgive others.

Now we could have a problem with this thinking that God won’t forgive us, if we are unforgiving towards others, but the reality is that when we are unforgiving, we are not open to be forgiving because we are holding on tightly to our own bitterness.  Forgiving is not as much about freeing another person from the guilt of their actions, but it is more about the freeing of ourselves from the bitterness in our hearts that we hold on to.  It is only after we release that bitterness and anger that we can be the Way we were made to be.   Now this is not an easy experience because we all like to see justice being done.  We want others to feel the pain that we felt, but through forgiveness we release ourselves from that bondage and allow God to flow through us again.   

Why I wanted to start a Blog

I thought that a blog would be a great place to share my thoughts with the world.  I have enjoyed reading others blogs, and I thought that I can do that, so here I am.  My blog is going to have a variety of thoughts on it.  Some major themes that you will see: Life Lessons, Thoughts on Life with God, Seminary Ponderings, Sports Rants, The Office Recaps, and any other random thought.  Feel free to comment at anytime, and I will reply to you as soon as I can.