Thanksgiving break

Hey everyone, sorry I missed last week. I was in Nashville TN for the national youth workers conference. I was pretty busy during the conference, plus the hotel had junky internet access so I didn't update. I'll talk about NYWC then thanksgiving.

national youth workers convention was an excellent experience. I learned a ton, met up an old friend I hadn't seen in about 5 years, and honed my discernment skills. I also got to hear David Crowder live and I have to say that it was phenomenal! He is such a great performer, yet his music has strong theology behind it. I even heard that he was a calvinist. I have no evidence to prove this, so I'll just leave it with "I heard". There are many seminars that I could have gone to during this conference, but I focused on the intro to youth ministry stuff. I went to seminars like "how to minister to jr high girls" (cause we have a lot of them), "recruiting and empowering your volunteers" and other similar intro classes. I also was able to run into an old friend from my home town: Adam Coleman. He and I were good friends from 5th grade till 8th. We went to the same small christian school until high school. Adam decided to goto a public school, but I stayed in private school. After that, we only saw each other in youth group and didn't hang out much through high school. When we both went off to college, we were pretty distant. So at NYWC, I was talking with my old youth pastor, Pete Eicher, and Adam came up out of no where and completely surprised me. The thought hadn't even occurred to me that he might be at NYWC too. So, we went out to dinner with some other c-bus people. I found out that he too is in in youth ministry and is running the high school youth group for my old church, CCC. It was great to see him as I wanted to contact him once I got back to columbus anyway.

As for the content of NYWC, I had to wade through the sea of postmodernism to find the good teaching techniques. I am very much NOT postmodern, so I had to be discerning. My philosophy is to chew up the meat and spit out the bones. This manifest especially in a lunch conversation I had with the people I was staying with. Somehow, the topic of Joel Osteen came up and someone asked me what I thought. Well, I figured they wanted to know since they asked me, so I said "I think he's a false teacher preaching a false gospel." To which they immediately replies with "harsh". So then I tried to explain myself.

"There are certain beliefs that you MUST hold in order to be a christian. If you don't believe in salvation by grace through Jesus death on the cross, you are not a Christian and will goto hell."
To which they replied
"Well, that's according to your interpretation of the gospel"

I immediately realized I was in for a big argument, but they had already pulled me in. I explained that I was referring to the beliefs concerning Jesus death on the cross and his substituionary atonement, but they kept repeating that that was just my personal interpretation of the gospel. We went back and forth, but I distinctly remember telling them that they were on the slippery slope of relativism and blasphemy. They disagreed, obviously.

I'm gonna get theological on you now. I think (i'm not entirely sure) that these beliefs they held stemmed from their broad definition of the gospel. To them (and many speakers at NYWC), it seemed that their gospel definition included every aspect and belief within Christianity. So, in their mind, Jesus saying "go and preach the gospel" would take a VERY long amount of time, since they would lump all of the christian life in with the gospel. Let me explain. I believe the gospel AFFECTS all of the christian life, but the gospel is not complicated. It is Jesus died on the cross to bear your sins. If you believe that Jesus bore your sins on the cross, you are a Christian (the elect, for my fellow calvinists). Then, that fact changes every area of your life. But to my postmodern friends, the gospel is almost undefinable since they through in basically every belief and good work possible into the gospel. Thus, since no one could possibly agree on all the issues of things like baptism, the charismata, eschatology, and creationism, preaching the gospel is a vague, time consuming process. I felt outnumbered at that lunch conversation, but I said at once point "I will defend to the death the gospel of salvation by grace through Jesus death on the cross." It was intense and I was amazed that this sort of argument was coming from people who's job is to tell others about Jesus. When I said there was only one to the Father, their first response was "well, that's your interpretation". Yikes!


As for Thanksgiving break, it was a good time. Family and friends came over, which is nice. I bought some new clothes, since I've gained a lot of weight lately. I went off roading with some friends on my parents property, and got to shoot a pump action shotgun. I'll tell ya, you feel like a man when you shoot a pump action shotgun. I also found out that I am a pretty good shot.

I'm running out of things to talk about, so I'll sign off here. Hope I wasn't too theological for ya