Thursday, November 15, 2007

OUTREACH UPDATE

So we're not going to Spain and Morocco anymore. It is virtually impossible to get VISA's for 2 of our leaders and one student, so the leaders decided to go for South America, and we will most likely be headed to Argentina now. Good stuff.

This week we were up at Eagle Rock again and had Dean Sherman speak to us on spiritual warfare. He had lots of good stuff, and I learned a lot. He based every single point he had on Scripture, none of his own opinion, so I really respected that. Some of his teachings were that Satan has two major agendas: to discredit God and to divide people. But, as believers (and ALL believers) have the power and authority to push back the darkness. We have the power to silence the enemy, and he knows that... but do we know that? "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds" (2 Corinthians 10:3-4). Dean told us that we don't ever fight physical people, but in reality it is always the enemy and his demons we fight against. (Ephesians 6:12). How do we fight you ask? Simple. Pray. (Eph. 6:18). And God does stuff through us and our prayers, because we have the authority, we have the keys. (Matthew 16:18-19). Alright.

I'll be home in a week at this time for a few days. See some of you then.

Chris

Friday, November 9, 2007

small groups / Red Rocks

We have official small groups here at YWAM. My group has been dubbed the "extra small group" because one guy went home because of a health issue a couple weeks in, so now it's just three of us including our leader. It's myself, Garth from North Dakota, and our leader is Darren from, ya you betcha, Minnesota. We have official small group time on Thursday mornings and we also hang out sometimes on weekends and whenever besides that time. Small group time is actually one of my favorite times. It's just fun to hang out with those guys, but I also love the discussion, which gets quite deep and fruitful sometimes. I've always been sort of class-shy and don't interact a ton, but small group discussions are different. They are just basically conversations and it's good stuff.

Anyways, yesterday for small group we went to Red Rocks amphitheater, which is a famous outdoor concert venue about 15 minutes away from our base. Bands like The Beatles, U2, Coldplay and so many more have played there, and it's, from what I've heard and read, one of the best places to see someone play live. It actually won an award for greatest concert venue by some magazine (forget which one) so many times that they pulled it from the competition and just named the award the "Red Rocks Award." And U2 played there in 1983, and have not played there since because they said it was such an amazing experience that they don't want to go back and ruin it.

So yesterday I walked around on the same stage that John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Bono, Chris Martin, and (insert rock star here) performed on at some time. Sweet.


Red Rocks amphitheater from the top


Darren, me, Garth on stage


There were no bands playing yesterday, but they leave the amphitheater open to the public basically all the time, so we just went there and walked around.

Yeah, Red Rocks is cool. And I decided I'm going to play there someday.

Friday, November 2, 2007

Today we just got back from the GO! Conference in Estes Park. We were there all this week at the YMCA of the Rockies. DTS's from all over the U.S. came together to worship and learn about missions. There were about 350 students I think and about 600 people total. We had lots of worship and speakers every day, so it was always a full schedule.

Jim Stier, Dan Bauman, Fred Markert, and Darlene Cunningham (co-founder of YWAM) were the main speakers. Not gonna lie, it was a little long sometimes, but there was also some pretty good stuff. Dan Bauman and Fred Markert were my favorite speakers.

Fred talked about missions in general, and where we're headed with them as Christians. He was a crazy, hyper, funny guy and it was really interesting to see how God is working through missions today and the potential we have now. He showed how from about 2001 to 2005 or so we (Christians as a whole) were doing so much to support and send out missionaries and how it was really thriving, and then how since then we have held back with support and stuff (sending, praying, supporting) and therefore missions has not been flourishing as much. He talked about how this made him wrestle with the idea of letting God do His work through missions, or whether it's up to us to do everything, or both. After throwing plenty of statistics and strategy at us, he said he came to the current theology that.... "we must do stuff." Good observation, Fred.

We're back here at the base for this week, then back up to Eagle Rock for another week. It seems like we're always all over the place. Probably because we are...

Anyways, it's crazy our lecture phase is already almost halfway done. Time is going fast. I'm excited to come home for Thanksgiving too to see family and friends.

I guess that's all for now. Later.

Chris