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Tales of Adventure Blog

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.

 

What I wish.....

Matthew Overton

"Happy Graduation!!! May God bless you and keep you and..."

"Happy Graduation!!! May God bless you and keep you and..."

A few months back while I was working on this new ministry venture that I have been neck deep in.  I had finished a job with a particular set of students and I was explaining to one of them what the whole jobs based youth ministry program was all about. This particular student was loads of credits short of graduating with just a few months left to go in school.  What makes him interesting is that he has a brother who is deaf and tends our regional school for the deaf here in Vancouver, Wa.

As we pulled up to his house thinking about graduation and worried about life after that he said, "You know sometimes I wish I was deaf like my brother. If I could go to his school I might actually be prepared. At his school they actually teach you about real stuff...about life. They have classes for how to open a bank account and shopping in a grocery store and stuff like that. They even help you get a job.  My high school doesn't do anything like that."

How many kids leave our churches with the same need and feeling? Namely that they are totally scared and unprepared. I wonder if they also leave with the sense that their faith doesn't really save them from anything real.  That it doesn't actually connect with real life.  We sort of sail them on the U.S.S. church for four years to seven years and then tell them to walk the plank. At our curent best some of our churches have tried to offer them some classes on transitioning to college, but that mostly has had to do with making sure they don't "lose their faith". That is of course important, but to the students it probably seems pretty self-serving.  As thought the church only cares about the churchy parts of their life.  "We are sending you out amongst the sharks of life, just don't drop your Bible!"  This sounds a little bit trite.  I think God is concerned with them thriving in faith and in life, and I think both are inextricably intertwined with the other. I wish we had youth ministries that did more of that...

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