On to the next…

This is probably the hardest blog post I have written thus far. I know some subjects that I briefly touched on this semester have seemed difficult to address, however the subject of this blog post forces me to face the facts and reality. That reality is life.

It seems surreal that my college career is finally wrapping up, and life is coming at me like a speeding train. As much as I would like to hang on to every moment of the last four years, it is time for me to pick up and move on to the next chapter. What does that mean for me?

• May 12: Graduation
• May 14: Start my career at Enterprise
• June 16: Get married to the love of my life

Yes, that is right. It is just as hard to swallow as it is to read it on my computer screen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m more than excited, but the reality is that my life is going from 0-60 in the blink of an eye.

I was talking with a fellow future graduate the other day about how big of a change it really is. We had been going to school for as long as we can remember. At this point, it seems like it is all we know. That is all quickly going to be taken away from us. I mean, I actually cried after my last class yesterday because I wanted to go back to school.

But, with change comes great things: growth, learning, and maturity. I feel like I keep replaying in my head the scene from The Lion King where Rafiki tells Simba, “It is time,” in regards to him going back to Pride Rock. Granted, my situation is a little bit different from an animated lion, but you get the idea.

Simply put, it is time for change. Purdue and the people I have come into contact with over the last four years have had a huge impact on who I am, but now it is time to move on. So as hard as this is for me to say, this will be my last post. EVER. It’s been a great ride figuring out how to blog and even getting to know some of you.

So, as trite as this may seem, I’m going to let Green Day take this one out with a bang.

 

Rock the Quad 2012

It’s that time of the year again. The weather is warm, the birds are chirping, and red solo cups are littered across West Lafayette. Yes, you guessed it. Grand Prix, which means the end of the year is quickly approaching.

Most Boilermakers recognize Grand Prix week as a time to get drunk, go to breakfast club for one last time, and watch go-karts drive around in a circle. However, for those who weren’t entirely into that scene, there is always the option of Purdue Grand Alternative.

That’s exactly what it is too: an alternative to drinking. Purdue Grand Alternative is actually a week long event that consists of multiple smaller events sponsored by student organizations. Many of those events include free food, non-alcoholic drinks, and sometimes a concert or two.

One of my absolute favorite Grand Alternative events is Rock the Quad, which is sponsored by the Cary Club, WCCR Radio Station, and Purdue Student Government. It’s my favorite because:

• It’s FREE
• It’s closed to Purdue Students only
• I can enjoy my love for live music
• It’s an entertaining and creative alternative to drinking

Even though it was a little chillier than in years past, it was definitely worth making the chilly trek out the the Ross-Ade Stadium parking lot for the concert. This year, Flatfoot 56 opened up for Anberlin, which are both fairly well-known bands.

Here’s what you missed at Rock the Quad 2012 for a soundslides summary!

Honestly, I think I enjoyed Flatfoot 56 a lot more than Anberlin, despite Anberlin being a more popular band. I think that Flatfoot 56 was a lot more engaging with the audience and had a better quality sound overall.

Being part Scottish, I may be a little more biased toward Flatfoot 56′s sound as opposed to Anberlin’s, because of their creative use of bagpipes and their celtic sound. However, I did get a little nervous when they kept encouraging audience members to mosh or do a circle pit.

All in all, Rock the Quad is the pennacle of Purdue Grand Alternative week because they provide a fun, entertaining atmosphere for students to enjoy not being pressured to have a drink. Not to mention they usually get some pretty good names and headliners to perform.

Right now, the date for next year’s Rock the Quad show has not been announce, but I encourage you all to keep an eye on Cary Club‘s website for any further announcements or Tweet using the hashtag #rockthequad.

The no-name network of churches’ Summer Conference!

I dare you to say that title 10 times fast! If you are looking for something to do, I recommend checking out Clear River Church‘s network Summer Conference at Vine Church. This is honestly usually one of the highlights of my summer, so I encourage you all to at least check out the website.

Summer Conference is a time for all of the churches in our network to make the trek down to Carbondale, Illinois for three days of worship, community, teaching, and prayer. This year, the conference will be from June 27-29, and my fiancée and I even took extra time off for an extended honeymoon just so we could go.

Yes, I know that the dates are a Monday-Friday, which will require people to take off work, but trust me. It’s worth it. The schedule for the conference is pretty easy-going too, with a lot of time to relax or just hang out:

Wednesday, June 27

•  7:45-8:45am  Continental Breakfast at Vine Church
• 9am-noon  Session 1
• noon-7pm  Free time
• 7-10pm  Session 2

Thursday, June 28

• 7:45-8:45am  Continental Breakfast at Vine Church
• 9am-noon  Session 3
• 2-4pm  Training Break-out Sessions
• 7-10pm  Session 4

Friday, June 29

• 7:45-8:45am  Continental Breakfast at Vine Church
• 9am-noon  Session 5
• noon-7pm  Free time
• 7-10pm  Session 6

As you can see there is plenty of time during the day to grab a bite to eat, take a nap, play outdoor games, or even go cliff jumping at the nearby lake. One unique thing that is happening this year is that Terry Virgo, the founder of Newfrontiers, will be a guest speaker. His network consists of over 800 churches across 60 nations. That and that fact that he has an awesome British accent make me pretty excited to hear him speak!

Terry Virgo will be a featured guest speaker at this year's Summer Conference.

If you are wondering where you are going to stay, you don’t need to worry. The last two summers that I went, my friends and I stayed with families that were generous enough to open their homes to us. If that option makes you feel a little uncomfortable, there are plenty of affordable hotel options that are close to the church. Childcare is also provided for families that have little ones!

This year’s theme is the Wonder of Grace, which is always a challenging subject for me to understand, grasp, and put into practice. I can’t even begin to describe how excited I get for Summer Conference because it is always life changing. If you have any questions about the event, please don’t hesitate to ask!

The Passion of the Christ

Alright, I don’t care what you personally think of Mel Gibson, but that guy can direct a film. Over the past weekend, I revisited the vivid reenactment of Jesus’ crucifixion that is “The Passion of the Christ.” The last time I watched this movie was back in middle school, long before I was even a Christian.

To sum this movie up in one word: . That’s it. I can’t even put words to it. I can say this though, it’s the closest to Biblically accurate interpretation of the Crucifixion that has been created thus far.

However, a caution to potential audiences, this movie is not for the faint of heart. There are a lot of gory and graphic scenes when Jesus is being tortured. There were a lot of times when I had to close my eyes because I couldn’t handle watching him being tortured.

One thing that I did forget about since I had watched it the first time was the appearance that the Devil makes in the film. It is clearly an interpretation of him, but I think it is represented fairly well.

It isn’t stated in the actual Bible whether or not Satan was present. However, I think Gibson does a great job using his artistic judgement in putting him there to show the spiritual battle that was going on over the course of the last three days of Jesus’ life.

In reference to Satan’s role in the film, I think a very crucial part that he played comes at the very end when Jesus takes His dying breath. You see Satan, in hell, screaming out in anger because he realizes that he has lost the spiritual battle. He lost because Jesus, innocent and pure, died on the cross to save everyone.

This entire film was beautifully put together, and the entire time that I watched it I was in complete awe. It is so moving because it is the best visual that we have to put to the words in the Bible regarding Jesus’ crucifixion. I would give this movie four stars!

What’s cheesier than a bumper sticker?

The other day when I was driving to the grocery store, I saw a car completely covered in bumper stickers. You know the kind of car I’m talking about. The one that has the “Coexist” sticker right next to the “Barack the vote” or recycling stickers.

It got me wondering what would a Christian bumper sticker say. I must tell you that I’m pretty happy that I looked some ideas up because some of them are absolutely hilarious. Well I think so at least.

Beliefenet.com had some of the best and most original ideas for bumper stickers. A lot of the other candidate had mostly cheesy or, surprisingly, even slightly offensive bumper sticker slogans.

Some of the winning stickers are:

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Some of those were clearly just very, for a lack of a better word, “punny” but some were also pretty clever. The one about Jesus loving children whether or not they were an honor student was pretty great, because I see the generic honor roll student bumper sticker on parent’s cars all over the place.

Another personal favorite was probably the one about fishing. I think my fiancé would totally have it on his car because he is an avid fisherman. The whole reference to “You catch ‘em, He’ll clean ‘em” was absolutely priceless.

Maybe next time you see my driving around Purdue’s campus, you’ll see my car decked out in bumper stickers after seeing some of these clever one-liners. Which ones were some of your favorites? Can you see yourself driving around with any of these?

God’s Roadmap to Life

In lieu of the upcoming graduation here at Purdue, a lot of students, including me are in freak out mode because of upcoming uncertainty. We have been going to school for as long as we can remember, and for the first time in our life we have no idea what is in front of us. So many decisions. So many choices. It gets overwhelming, doesn’t it?

For a Christian, these anxieties are just as existent. What’s more is that we have the added luxury of trying to interpret what God wants for our life. An article I read on relevantmagazine.com addresses just this issue.

I find myself often wanting to essentially know the future and exactly where God wants me to be at exactly what times. I assume I’m not alone in that? The fact is, we never get that and Alastair Bryan Sterne explains it so eloquently in his article.

He brings up a great point at the very beginning of the article that becomes a driving force for the rest of his writing. That is that the reason why God never just blatantly put neon, blinking arrows for the direction that we want to go to show us exactly how dependent we are on Him.

Sterne beautifully puts it in saying, “In other words, embracing our finitude and limited understanding is exactly where God wants us to be so that our strength is in Him and not ourselves.” That’s it. We are finite. God is infinite.

God knows how long we are going to live, what we are going to eat for breakfast 10 years from now, and everything in between. That’s why He knows better than to get caught up in what we are doing because He cares more about who we are becoming.

For example, if we have two people doing the exact same thing but have two completely different motivations in doing them, it’s the heart and motivation behind it that God cares about. What’s more important to God is who we are in 10, 20, even 50 years from now, not necessarily what we are specifically doing. Does that make sense?

Be Relevant

One of my new favorite websites is Relevantmagazine.com. As you can see from the top of the page, their slogan is “God. Life. Progressive Culture,” and they are all about just that. It’s a great resource for me to find relevant (no pun intended) topics to blog about when it comes to Christianity.

Some of the reasons why I love Relevant are:

• There’s something for everyone
• Many of the topics are issues surrounding or within Christianity
• They maintain a relevancy among a young, progressive culture (like college students)
• The cover a broad spectrum of media including music, TV, and more
• Great articles that really make you think

Sometimes it’s really hard to find a solid website that has topics that are geared to a younger culture. Trust me. I’ve done my fair share of research. I love this website because it is all about what a young, Christian generation is interested in.

Oh, and did I mention that they have a magazine too? Well, actually the website was sort of “birthed” from the magazine being such a hit (hence the “magazine” part of the domain name). My fiancé has a subscription to the magazine, but I usually just get the same information from the website.

If it’s your first time to the website, some recent articles that I recommend taking a look at are:

• Where People Get Scripture Wrong
• Fat, Ghetto, Slut & Other Words to Quit Using
• Hurt By the Church

I wonder it that last article will hit home with a lot of people. I know it did with me, for sure. If none of those articles suited your fancy or if they left you begging for more, I definitely suggest checking out the rest of the website. You might be surprised with what you find!

Crossing the “God gulf”: Atheists respecting religion

First off, I just want to state how much I hate the word “religion.” I think it’s a really “churchy” term that kind of gets tossed around a lot by people saying, “Yeah, I’m religious,” or other things like that. What Christianity is to me is faith. Not religion.

So often people (myself included) get caught up in the methodology of it, which I think turns it into a religion. Rather than an authentic faith. Either way, I was researching articles on “religion,” and found a pretty interesting one from the New York Times website called “Learning to Respect Religion.”

Instantly I was intrigued, because one of the most difficult aspects of being a Christian is dealing with all those ‘haters.’ I was walking on campus the other day, and I saw a table with signs that said “Ask an Atheist” and “Turn your religious texts in for non-fiction ones” or something along those lines.

One thing that struck me about this article, was the evidence of proclaimed atheists not necessarily coming out and agreeing with faith, but acknowledging it for the positive impact it has had on society. I mean, there was even factual support about the health benefits that faith has had on people as opposed to atheism.

However, I think the part that got me thinking the most was the second-to-last paragraph. The author, Nicholas D. Kristof, has written about the best and worst of “religion.” Unfortunately, the ‘worst’ parts are what people tend to remember most. It’s the ‘worst’ parts that leave a bad taste in people’s mouths.

That’s the part that makes me sad, when atheists, as Kristof puts it, “answer religious fundamentalism with secular fundamentalism, religious intolerance with irreligious intolerance.” I’m not saying that I agree with religious intolerance and that I disagree with irreligious intolerance. What I DO believe, is that a better understanding needs to be reached by both parties.

As a Christian, we believe in forgiveness, grace, love, and even sin. These are fundamental topics in the Bible. What irks me is when some religious sects get caught up in the ways non-Christians sin and condemn them for that. It’s this exact reason why a lot of people have a bad taste in the mouth and think Christians are hypocrites.

Well, I’ll tell you right now, that that is an incorrect way of thinking, which comes from an un-Biblical view of sin. Yes sin exists. But no, there is no condemnation in Christ. That is what those religious sects need to remember!

On the other hand, those that aren’t Christians need to remember that you can’t fight fire with fire. Understand that you can’t hold one church’s (meaning one individual church), pastor’s, or Christian’s mistakes against the rest of the Church (meaning the entire Christian Church), pastors, or Christians in this world.

Bible Fun Facts!

There is an interesting website I found that a quite a few fun facts about the Bible. There is really nothing substantial to get from this, but I just thought some of these will make you go, “Huh. That’s interesting!”

There is a really easy way to remember how many books are in the Bible. In fact, you only need to remember two numbers in order to do so:

The numbers are 3 and 9

• There are 39 books in the Old Testament.
• multiply 3 X 9 and the answer is 27
• There are 27 Books in the New Testament.
• If you add 39 and 27 and the answer is 66
• There are 66 books in the entire Bible.

Fun facts about the Bible in general:

There is only one verse in the entire Bible that’s repeated twice: “The fool saith there is no God!” Psalms 14:1 and Psalms 53:1

• This is really interesting, because so many people throughout history and even today doubt the existence of God. Unfortunately, it is so common to hear people say there is not God. I think it’s a reflection of the doubt in the world as to why it’s the only verse repeated twice.

The Bible was written over a 1500 year period!

There are over 40 authors

Psalm 118 is the middle chapter of the entire Bible

The chapter before Psalm 118 is the shortest in the Bible: Psalm 117

The chapter after Psalm 118 is the longest chapter in the Bible: Psalm 119

The Bible has 594 chapters before Psalm 118 and it also has 594 chapters after Psalm 118

The largest Book in the Bible is: Psalms (which has 150 chapters.)

• The Book of Psalms all contain essentially love poems to God. They are all about how great God is and just pure worship of Him. Many of the Psalms were written by King David, who had one of the closest relationships with God (besides Jesus, of course). He understood so well the character of God, that even when he felt God was far, he still wrote Psalms in worship.

The largest chapter in the Bible is: Psalms 119 (which has 176 verses.)

The shortest Book in the Bible is: 2 John (one chapter with 13 verse’s)

The shortest verse in the Bible is: John 11:35 (“Tears came to Jesus’ eyes.”)

• I think this is such a powerful verse, because the context of it is his sorrow over a man’s death. Mary came to Jesus sobbing, because her brother Lazarus died. Jesus was so moved by her sorrow that he wept himself. I think there is a reason why this is its own verse. I think it’s a great representation of God’s love, because it is so great and deep and true. It deserves a verse all its own.

The Bible can be read in about 70 hours

• Talk about a long book! That takes dedication! I definitely don’t recommend trying to read the book in one sitting or even from front to back. It’s important to follow a schedule, because I have found that I won’t read it as much as I should without one.

If you add up all the chapters in the Bible except chapter 118 in the Book of Psalms, you would get a total of 1188 chapters.

It’s a fun fact to know that Psalm 118:8 is the middle verse of the whole Bible. Which reads: “It is better to trust the Lord than to put confidence in men.”

• All I can really say to this is Amen.

The Bible is the most purchased book in history.

Fun facts using the King James version:

There are 180,552 words in the Bible.

There are 3,566,480 letters in the Bible.

There are 31,102 Verses in the Bible.

There are 1,189 Chapters in the Bible.

There are 66 books in the entire Bible.

Like I said, there is not a whole lot to take away from this other than it’s just something fun and interesting. I decided to switch things up a bit, from talking about serious matters to something with a lighthearted feel to it. Some of those that I commented on, were really interesting to me because there is probably some significance as to why the verses are in their specific places. What do you think?

What comes before part B? PART-TAY!!!!

Last week, all of the small groups that meet on Wednesday nights decided to take advantage of the nice weather and have a cookout. However, groups getting together just to hang out with no agenda, isn’t a rare happening. In fact, it happens once a month at Clear River. They are a beautiful thing call small group parties.

A typical month in a small group at Clear River looks like this:

• Week 1: Discipleship Community
• Week 2: Small group discussion
• Week 3: Small group discussion
• Week 4: Small group party!

Discipleship Communities are when all of the small groups meet at the church on the night that they normally have small group, and one of the pastors introduces the topic of the month with a brief teaching followed by worship and prayer. The next weeks are what everyone normally thinks of when they hear the word “small group” or “Bible study.”

Small group parties are not only a way for the members in the small group to grow closer together, but a less threatening way to introduce new people to the group. Last week, we all went to Happy Hollow Park for a nice big cookout, corn hole, beerbee, a few rounds of toss, and just standing around chatting.

As you can see from the clip, we know how to do small group parties right! Some of the food that was there was pork chops, teriyaki chicken, apple nachos, pasta salad, chocolate chip cookies with Oreos inside, and much more. The best thing is that most of that stuff was homemade so you know it was amazing. It was great to have the playground right next to the shelter we were at so the parents to let their kids run around and play. Not to mention, it was a ton of fun for us big kids too.

Normally parties consist of game nights, bowling, or other cheap ways to have a good time and socialize. Last week was quite a treat for us, because there was great weather, phenomenal food, and incredible conversation. Cait Mann, a member from one of the small groups, loves party weeks because of the more social aspect of the gathering and gives more of an in depth look into small group parties.

It’s great when new people are invited to small group parties, because I love letting people see that we don’t have an agenda. Small group parties are a great way for people to be authentic and just simply enjoy being around each other. Our next small group party will be at the end of April, but what we will be doing has yet to be determined.

I know that everyone had a blast during the last party, so if any of you are around the Lafayette, Indiana area, I encourage you all to check out Clear River Church and come to one of our parties. No agenda. Just fun!