This whole week I’ve been gearing up for the Nebraska game. It’s the national game on ABC at 5pm Saturday. If you want my honest opinion, I think Nebraska will lose by 20, but I’ll still be rooting hard for a win!
1. Adam’s blog is one of the first blogs I ever read consistently. He recently wrote about how numbers should count for something in youth ministry. I’ve always had the opinion that numbers as a statement of validation for ministry is awful, but that numbers are people so they can’t be overlooked either. I liked Adam’s take on how numbers show what we’ve been entrusted with. We are so quick to overlook stewardship because it means we’re on the hook to be involved.
“After hearing Mark DeVries talk about numbers a couple years ago, I’ve recently been changing my mind. Now I’m very concerned about numbers, but not in the way I used to be. Mark talked about numbers actually being pretty important, but the number that was important was the number of youth that have been entrusted to you.”
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2. This is a blog that is newer to my reading list but what I’ve read so far has been great. Stephanie wrote last week about her time living just outside the red light district in Amsterdam. I really hope Ashton Kutcher took the time to read her post. The world needs better men who value women as children of God, not commodities to control.
“We are on the edge of disaster if we claim a moral line between women who were coerced to sell sex in a dirty basement brothel in a third world country, and women who are coerced to sell sex in Empowered America by more sophisticated means. To say that a woman who sells her body is disqualified from the pain of her profession, from victimization, and from meriting human compassion is a lethal mistake.”
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3. One of the things I’ve struggled with most at my church is our multiple service formats. For a long time I loved it but in recent years I’ve come to despise it as the antithesis to true community. Ed Stetzer wrote with a different perspective this week that has helped me despise it a little less:
“When multiple worship services with different styles are created because a church has a desire is to create opportunities where people can worship God in spirit and in truth, their motivation is much better than simply creating consumer room. If their desire is to create a new place from which they can reach out to people in a certain cultural context, that seems a better– even an appropriate– motivation.”
Enjoy the first weekend of October, the best month of the year!
