July 22-24 (Thought the above image was awesome)

Where :: Beverly Beach Newport Oregon

Cost :: 37.00 This includes meals and camping cost!

Come hang out for a fantastic weekend as we hang out at the coast. Be ready for fun times in Newport!

-Please follow the link that will sign you up. I also need a medical release form which is below as well.

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YAC Medical Release

It has been way too long! Instead of writing a post about a specific subject, I want to highlight a few articles I have been reading latley. I read alot of articles and different blogs regularly; so here you go!

• It was Father’s Day yesterday and for many people it isn’t the most celebrated day of the year. Relevant posted a article on a documentary by Justin Hunt called Absent. After watching the preview, I really want to see this documentary.
• I enjoy reading The Resurgence. This blog is through Mars Hill Church in Seattle. One of the things I appreciate about Mark Driscoll is his passion to see men be men. Here is a post on How To Honor Your Wife. Ladies, would you agree with what he is saying?
• I am a highly organized person. One program I use is evernote. I am not sure what I would do without it. Michael Hyatt is the chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers and he loves evernote just like me. If you really want to get organized read his thoughts. Follow the links at the top of the post for the most relevant posts.
• Do you enjoy reading on your smart phone? This article was featured on CNN, I feel it raises a lot of great questions for the next generation of the church.
• I have really been enjoying some older authors books that were written years ago. As a staff, we read this book and there is so much good stuff to take away from it. Andrew Murray was a pastor and wrote many books. This short read is called Humility.

Well that’s all I will post right now. I could post a lot more, but for your sake I will wait and save it for next time!

I recently finished the book ‘Radical’ by David Platt. This is a book I wish the church in America would read. If you go to Grace Chapel, many of the things brought up in the book won’t be anything new or shocking. In fact, while reading through this book I thought the content and arguments were great, but either I was personally doing them or Grace Chapel as a church is already doing those things.

Here is an excerpt from the book that really has made me ask questions and reflect about not only myself but the church as well. “Do we really believe He is worth abandoning everything for? Do you and I really believe that Jesus is so good, so satisfying, and so rewarding that we will leave all we have and all we own and all we are in order to find our fullness in Him? Do you and I believe Him enough to obey Him and follow Him wherever He leads, even when the crowds in our culture and maybe in our churches turn the other way?”

From here, Platt gets rolling. One of the things I really enjoyed about this book was the question asking. This book made me think, it made me ask questions of myself and the way I am living. Is having a church service with a bunch of flashy lights really what the church should be about? When Paul wrote his letters to the church, he was telling them to live in such a way that was so radical and so different from the people in their culture. If Paul were to write a letter to the American church, what would he say? What things would he want us not to do? Would there be certain movies he would not want us to watch? TV shows? Lifestyle choices?

Some of the statements in the book could side track readers, but the purpose and the heart of the book shouldn’t. In no way do I feel that Platt is trying to frustrate believers; he is just trying to get people to think beyond themselves, their wants and desires.

Platt calls to the church to ask questions, to live differently. The church has a lot to learn, grow in and continue to learn from. I look forward to the day when the church lives in such a way that is so radical from culture and so different that people will want to be apart of it.

We have all probably been in the presence of someone who has cried. Maybe you witnessed someone crying and they apologized to you, maybe you were crying and you felt bad for crying. Why do people feel guilty for crying in front of other people?

I feel most people probably feel guilty about crying in front of someone because it is awkward. What if instead of letting someone try to hide their tears, we allowed them to just let it out.

Yet there is something in tears that holds us back from fully expressing this emotion. It would seem that as a society we should be more used to tears then ever before. Look at most reality shows on television today, they are full of emotional people in very different circumstances expressing their emotions in tears. Are we more ok watching others cry then ourselves? Have we become so used to others tears that we hide our own?

There is something beautiful in tears because it expresses so much. Think about your tears and it will bring back memories; we can remember the times we have been in tears over something. It’s like a past road map to the things that have really affected us both positive and negative.

There is…

…beauty in tears

…passion in tears

…love in tears

…pain in tears

…emotion in tears

Let the tears flow don’t be ashamed!

I was watching TV the other night and a commercial came on…I think I was doing something on my phone but the words that were said caught my attention. It was a Neutrogena makeup commercial starring Jennifer Garner. Here is what it said;

“There’s a lot of beautiful makeup out there to cover up flaws and make skin look pretty. But there is one so clever it looks better even after you take it off.”

The phrase that caught me was “makeup to cover up flaws.” How much of our life do we go along looking for things to cover up our flaws? Maybe its makeup, maybe its plastic surgery, maybe its weight loss; it could be a flaw in our personality that causes us to act differently or we act out to cover up our flaw. Addictions are another thing that people use to deal with flaws.

Seriously, think about it though; how much do we really try to cover up our flaws?? What if we took those flaws and imperfections and gave them to Jesus? After all, we are supposed to lay down all of ourselves to Him, I’m pretty sure this includes our flaws. There’s grace in Him, there is love.

There’s this song by Gungor called Beautiful Things; it simply says “you make beautiful things out of dust.” It’s not easy to just wake up one morning, look at our imperfections and say, yeah God…

God makes beautiful things; maybe there are more beautiful things out there that we see. I’m pretty sure if you asked People magazines hottest person of the year if they had flaws and imperfections, I’m sure they would give you a list. For them, Photoshop has helped cover those but at the end of the day they are still flawed and imperfect.

No matter what we do, we are all flawed and have imperfections, but we have a God who wants to cover those imperfections. Just remember there is still beauty in the imperfect.

Mark your calendars with these dates. You can always find the details by going through the google calendar. Event details we be posted as we get closer to events.

January

Sunday 2 Worship Night at Rolling Hills 5:00PM

Tuesday 11 YAC//Coffee House 7:00PM

Sunday 23 YAC//Sunday Morning Connect 12:30PM

Thursday 27 YAC//Worship & Prayer 7:00PM

Sunday 30 Life Group Launch

February

Thursday 10 Heart Talk 6:30PM

Saturday 12 YAC//Breakfast 10:00AM

March

Wednesday 2 YAC//Coffee House 7:00PM

Saturday 19 YAC//Breakfast 10:00AM

April

Thursday 14 Heart Talk 6:30PM

Saturday 16 YAC//Breakfast 10:00AM

Friday 22 Good Friday Service

May

Tuesday 3 YAC// Coffee House 7:00PM

Sunday 15 YAC//Sunday Morning Connect 12:30PM

Thursday 19 YAC//Worship & Prayer 7:00PM

Mark Driscoll recently wrote a great blog post on christians and culture. I feel that his response is great and the wisdom he shares is worth thinking through. Check it out!

I love learning. I love being able to think through a subject and try to understand it. Even if that subject is impossible to understand I still enjoy thinking through it.

Lately I have been learning more about sin. I believe that through our lives we learn more and more about sin as we experience victory and failure. What I have been learning in this is…

How we look at sin

We often look at sin as the problem and we want to fix the problem by managing it. When we are doing this we are only dealing with the symptom. Deep down inside of us there is something that is affecting us that is causing us to sin. Yes, there is the aspect that we all have a sinful nature, but we all have hurts and pains that we try to cope with. We cope with it by acting sin out whether that would be sex, drugs, shopping, money, porn. If you find yourself stuck in a rut of sin ask yourself if there is something deeper that is leading you to do what you are doing. If you start to figure out what the problem is you can better treat the symptom which will in the end lead to victory!

What has God been teaching you lately?

Last blog post I talked about being on mission. I hope you read it and understood a little more of what it means to be on mission! This post will specifically talk about serving.

As the church, I think service is something we really need to move towards more and more. This past weekend, instead of having church inside , we had church inside out. We met, sang, prayed and worshiped through serving the community. It was weird!  Instead of our traditional Sunday morning experience listening to a message, we were the message being lived out in a community. As odd as this was, it was refreshing to start to think through what is the church? Is church just a Sunday morning activity or is it more than that?

If we were to take a snapshot of Jesus’ ministry, I think one thing that would stand out is serving. Jesus served, and he taught others to serve as well. He served with an attitude of love. What an example we as the church can look to! More than ever I feel the church is taking a turn. As a whole, we are seeing that serving is the new street preachers of the past. People have been hurt and affected by the way the church has acted in the past; no longer will a seeker friendly service work to draw people in.

People want to see Christians not just talk about love, but living that love out. This is a huge calling, but I feel the church is ready to rise up to the occasion to show love in the communities around us.

From the church that leaves us, what are we to do as individuals who are the church?

Serve, serve, serve!

I’m sure many would disagree with me that there should be a number of things before this. But, if we are not serving, how are we meeting people? If we are not serving, how are we spreading the Gospel? I think serving is the gateway to greater conversations. If someone were to ask, why are you serving? We would be able to answer, “Because Christ calls us to love and to live out that love. We serve because Jesus loves you and He wants you to know that.” And just like that, the gospel message is opened.

Individually, take a moment and find something that is close to your heart. I heard a message once about a man who was wondering what God had for him. Through a circumstance, we saw what God called him to. God called him to minister to people in a slum out in the middle of nowhere. He brought heaven to earth for these people; a clash of two kingdoms to minister to these people. He ended his talk with asking everyone these questions

What is your Slum?

What has God called you to?

Where is the area he wants you to serve?

God has called each and every one of us to serve in some capacity. It might take work, it might change over time, but find something to plug into and serve! Through serving, I feel we eventually become less in our own eyes and Christ shines in us more.

Ascent the Hill quite possibly might have just released one of the best Hymns albums I have heard. Click the album cover to head over to the download.

Standout Track: Take the World, But Give Me Jesus, Hallelujah! What A Savior, The Love of God