Visiting Imago Dei :-)

So, I am getting an awesome opportunity. Tomorrow my work partner, Michelle, and I are going to go to church at the Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon. This is the community that Donald Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What, Through Painted Deserts, etc) wrote about and attends. And it is the same church that Rick McKinley (author of This Beautiful Mess and Jesus in the Margins,) is a pastor for.

I am really excited about this opportunity, especially after reading This Beautiful Mess where Rick McKinley talks about the church body and the Kingdom of God.

I don't want to visit this community for the sake of visiting it. I want it to be a learning process. I want to see how the Kingdom of God is lived out by the people who make up Imago Dei. I want to be challenged, and I want to be inspired.

Light and Darkness

This weekends agenda:

• Camping with House Church
• Homework (Holy Spirit study/prayers of the NT/tons of reading)
• Young Life Training

It's going to be a very active weekend.

Spiritual Emphasis week has been a very (dare I say it?) BUSY (oh, I dared) week. But I wonder if all the activity was really beneficial. Even in the midst of everything going on, I still can't seem to keep myself 'busy' enough keep me from remembering that it's lonely here.

God is good to me. I should take more time to remember that.

You know, I'm thinking about what John Vermilya has been speaking about this week. One of the topics he addressed was about being the light of the world, and how America is a very Spiritually wealthy place. We really don't know how good we actually have it spiritually. I'm at a Christian College, where I'm studying ministry, I can read my Bible, there are other Christians around me, we sing hymns and spiritual songs, we commune with one another as believers... I truly live in the light. It's strange because I percieve darkness, and I believe that darkness is real, but truly, being here at Bethel is living in the light.

But if the light I'm living in is darkness, how truly dark is the darkness of this world!

I want to go to the dark places and let my light shine. Imagine that... going to the places where there are not a lot of Christians, but rather there are even people openly opposed to the whole Christian thing. I think of Donald Miller and his experience at Reed College in Oregon. Wow, what an incredible opportunity he had to be Jesus to the opposed and jaded.

Hooray for weekends?

Well, it was a pretty relaxed weekend... sort of. I spent the better part of it being annoyed at everyone. I'm not usually in a very good mood when I don't feel well. I just hope my roommates didn't experience too much hostility from me (well, I don't think they experienced any hostility, but I hope I wasn't rude).

I started reading Blue Like Jazz... Donald Miller does not hold back, Ive only read two chapters, but I think it's a good book. I look forward to seeing what else he has to say.
I'm still progressing through The Pilgrims Progress. It's a good book too.
I have to start reading Letters Across the Divide by David Anderson and Brent Zuercher. It's for my Multicultural Youth Ministry Class.

I have to admit that I'm a little overwhelmed with the reading. By no means is it a lot to read yet, but I keep wanting to finish one book before I start another, so I'm having a little trouble getting started on the third book. I think I'll just sit down and read a little tonight, and since I don't have any classes tomorrow because of MLKJ Day, I'll read the rest of what I'm supposed to read tomorrow.

I'm sure these journals of me talking about my school work aren't very fascinating; are they? But maybe you would like to read about the content of some of the books I'm reading, such as Blue Like Jazz.

WARNING: May contain spoilers. If you have not read the book, do not read this:

So Chapter one pretty much consisted of Donald Miller giving us background into his life. But what is amazing is the reality in his experience. You can relate to him, you can read about his experiences and know that he's talking from a perspective that shouts honesty. In chapter two we begin to see his journey and the realizations he has about God and himself.

Short, I know. I think one of the things that hit me the most in chapter two is when he was talking about going to a protest with a friend of his wanting to change the world, but realizing that the world wasn't the problem, he was. It resonated with me because I see what he was talking about very much in my own life. You know... I want to change the world, it's so messed up, there's so much wrong, nobody cares... This is what he said in the book that I thought was so profound:

"When we were done, I started wondering if we had accomplished anything. I started wondering whether we could actually change the world. I mean, of course we could-we could change our buying haabits, elect socially conscious representatives and that sort of things, but I honestly don't believe we will be solving the greater human conflict with our efforts. the problem is not a certain type of legislation or even a certain politician. The problem is the same problem that is has always been. I am the problem. ... The thing I realized onthe day we protested... was that it did me no good to protest America's responsiblity in global poverty when I wasn't even giving money to my church, which has a terrific homelss ministry. I started feeling very much like a hypocrite. " (pgs 19-20)

To go with the old saying: To change the world, you must first change yourself.

Updates

Well, I completed my first week of classes for the new semester. Things are pretty laid back right now even though we jumped right into the semester. I'm taking Multicultural Youth Ministry, Basic Probability and Statistics, Astronomy, British Literature, and Senior Experience. I have two other classes, a Saturday Seminar for youth ministry, and Spiritual Formation Experience, but they don't meet the same way the other classes do, so yeah. I'm having trouble deciding whether I like Senior Experience or Multicultural Youth Ministry better.

Im sleeping better. I mean, I'm not getting into bed until 2 am because I spend too much time messing around, then spend 2 hours doing homework right before I go to bed; but I'm sleeping through the night with out waking up now and Ive been waking up because my alarm clock wakes me up.

I felt really nauseous again today. It was worse than it was a few days ago. Today I was actually afraid I might vomit. It took half the day to get over it. I don't think it's the stomach flu, but I guess I don't know what else it could be.

So right now I'm in the process of reading the Pilgrims Progress for my British Literature book, and Im really liking it so far. I also picked up a few books from the book store. yeah, I applied them to my account, but it's okay because they're the same books on the reading list for Senior Experience, but they were ones I was already wanting to read anyway. I picked up Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller and Searching for God Knows What by ... Donald Miller. Okay, so I guess they're both the same author. Perhaps that's why I was captivated by both of them. Okay, actually it was probably the chapter titles. For example, Blue Like Jazz
Chapter 5- Faith: Penguin Sex;
Chapter 6- Redemption: The Sexy Carrots;
Chapter 15-Community; Living with Freaks

And then... some of the titles in Searching For God Knows What
Chapter 2-Imposters: Santa Takes a Leak
Chapter 8-LifeBoat Theory: How to Kill Your Neighbor
Chapter 11-A Circus of Redemption: Why a three-legged man is better than a bearded woman
Chapter 12-Morality: Why I am better than you
Chapter 14-The Gospel of Jesus: Why William Shakespeare was a Prophet

How can chapter titles like these not make you curious?