97%

     That's the statistic. 97% of people in Great Britain don't attend a church and don't have a relationship with God. This is the country from which we get our cultural and religious heritage. This number breaks me. And I wonder, is the United States on a very slippery slope to the same place? Maybe the reasons for emptying churches will be different. Sure, we're not suffering due to lack of relevance in our quickly moving culture. But so often we build our churches around entertainment, what we can offer our congregation. Like the phrase goes, "what you win them with, you win them to." America, please be careful to pour truth into the lives of our youth. I know, it's harder and scarier to be honest and real with students; they usually pretend they hate it at first. But I'm learning not to be discouraged by that; you'd be surprised that after much digging, kids actually want to go deeper and ask the tough questions. I'm reading an amazing book right now called Red Moon Rising, by Pete Greig, about the global church (mainly Britain) and how prayer has significant impact on the younger generation. Pete asks, "will Jesus Christ be famous and favored in the coming age, or will He be a peripheral choice on the menu of social preference? You can call the culture 'progressive,' 'emerging,' or postmodern." The challenge is the same: To reinvent the Church without changing the message, to reach this generation for the sake of the age to come." England preferred to keep their message and lose the relevancy, and therefore eventually lost the message itself. Please America, be aware of placing too much priority on relevancy and consequently losing the message of Christ.

St. Mary's Church Entrance

     This Friday at EQ (high school) we played the Freedom Films from Passion 2012, which deals with human trafficking, an issue that's been on my heart and mind a lot recently. It was incredibly moving to watch the kids as they watched the video; most had never heard the unbelievable statistics - there are 27 million slaves around the world today, more than entire African slave trade. They were pretty stunned to hear it and watch the horrific stories from real victims. I can see their hearts softening, maybe not for the Gospel quite yet, but for the world...and that is what breaks God's heart. It's interesting to me: most of the time in America we push the Gospel first and then add things like social justice as an action after they "pray the prayer." And I would hate to give these students a drive for "world peace" without being firmly rooted in Christ's heart for the poor and oppressed. But if we can get these kids to burn with passion for what God cares about, maybe they'll begin to see God in a whole new, non-religious, justice-seeking light. And maybe they'll want a relationship with that God, not tainted by their previous misconceptions about Him. In my opinion this is the type of people we need to re-ignite a fire in England - a people broken for God's heart.

     Friday the 25th begins half-term, the kids get a week off from school and consequently I get a week off from youth groups. So for Halloween I'll be going to Amsterdam for the day. So excited about seeing a lot of historic places and possibly visiting a human trafficking organization, Not For Sale, in the Red Light District. Friday was also the first day of SNOW! It wasn't much, but enough to be exciting! Can't wait for more, it'll be a cold winter.

     Sunday was the vicar's last day; he is retiring and moving his family to the next village over. He gave his last sermon, trying to sum up his last 2 years as vicar of St Mary's. I appreciated his honesty, as he told us that he still doesn't understand why God brought him and his family to Nunthorpe. The last 2 years have been tough for him; he's tried to reignite the church's passion for Christ and their community to a very set-in-their-ways congregation. I completely relate to this; often God calls us somewhere to do something, for a reason we will never understand. But that's ok. It's tough, but God wants to pull us out of comfort, and we have the opportunity to follow him even if we will never see the fruit of our labor in this life on earth. As much as I want to the work I do here to be perfect, complete, thorough and life-changing, it's not up to me. My job is to plant seeds and leave it up to the Grace of God. This is a quote from Oscar Romero, former Archbishop of San Salvador (in El Savador) before he was assassinated  The vicar told Romero's story and used this quote in his sermon and it was really helpful for me in remembering this concept.   

"It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything. This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own."
-Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador 

     And shout out to Taylor Swift. Thanks for your new album, Red, and especially the song "22." I've enjoyed it. Gracias.