Elbows in... Elbows in..... Elbows in (I gotta remember that)

That drop to the left is the Class IV drop called Soc 'Em Dog on Chattooga. It's about an eight foot drop off of what's called the launch pad over the foam pile hydraulic at the bottom. I've had some good runs of this drop in the past and last Saturday sitting in the eddy up top I was really looking forward to dropping off this puppy.

The current tries to push you way to the left (way off line) as you approach the edge. So you have to fight to keep your boat right so you can line up to drop. On this particular day I had some decent runs through the Five Falls above (Corkscrew upside down, rolled before the middle hole, it was sweet).

So I'm approaching the launch pad for Soc 'Em Dog and I'm getting pushed left but fighting the current to stay on line. When I finally get to the edge, I have a severe right angle as I go off the drop. I drop eight feet into the foam pile on my left side; left elbow too far up as I'm landing with the current pushing up on the paddle.

Suffice it to say that landing from eight feet with all your weight on your left paddle blade and your elbow and shoulder exposed too far out is not a good thing. The "POP" I heard as my shoulder gave way told the whole story. Upside down at the bottom, I heard it get somewhat quiet so I knew I had washed out of the hole. It was really difficult setting up to roll so I reached over and felt my shoulder in the wrong place. I reached back over and grabbed my paddle with my good arm and immediately felt my left shoulder move again (back into place). Oxygen was getting at a premium by this time, so I tried to set up my roll again and was able to come up finally.

When I made it over to the eddy at the bottom I knew exactly what I had done and now that time was catching back up with me, the pain was finally setting in. I just sat there for a good long while waiting for the rest of my crew to make it off the drop. They all had good runs. We ran the last two rapids (ironically the next rapid is called Shoulderbone). The we had the two mile lake paddle to get to the take-out. It's been a week now and it still really hurts. I think at the beginning of the week a referral to a physical therapist may be a good idea.

What We Say: Part II

Trees, or what we are aiming for, play a huge part in accomplishing what we need to accomplish in Summit. The trees for the steps through our process of discipleship act like a funnel in which we attempt to move students through. There are three steps in our strategy. Here they are with the corresponding trees.

Wednesday Night Community Groups (The top of the funnel) (Gathering)

Students meet in smaller groups called Community Groups on the second and third Wednesdays of every month. These groups discuss the important stuff that is being taught on the worship rally nights that meet the other Wednesday nights of the month. But even those nights are focused towards getting the students in the CGs to hit the tree. Here's the Tree for Summit CG:

Involve students in open and honest discussion about the important stuff and what it means in their lives.

Everything we do on Wednesday night in Summit is focused towards that goal because we feel like that tree is what undergirds "gathering" for students.

Summit Sunday School (The funnel is getting smaller) (Equipping)

Students are challenged in smaller groups on Sunday mornings with the intent of building them into disciples. Students funnel into Sunday School from Wednesday night. To do this, several things need to happen; better communication with CG leadership and SS leadership, the feel of the program being more of a deeper continuation of CG? We're working on that. With that in mind here's the tree for Summit Sunday School:

Insure that students have heard the important stuff loudly, creatively and repeatedly.

Everything we do on Sunday mornings should aim for that goal and that tree!

Summit Student Leader Community (The opening) (Sending)

What is going to be the "community" will probably start meeting once a month beginning in April. These are students that "get" the strategy, show influence and involvement, and want to "Be an Involver" by involving other students in this process of discipleship by pulling them along the funnel. The tree is developing for this community but at this point, it may sound something like this:

Be an involver of other students in the process of spiritual growth.

These students will use this strategy and image of the funnel to be leaders of their friends, those that they know, and others in being disciples.

The Important Stuff (In Process)

Jesus as It! (John 14:1-6, 3:1-17, Colossians 1:15-2:17, Ephesians 2:1-10)

• His life, His divine and human nature
• Surrender
• By grace through faith
• The Church as His bride
• Your identity in Christ

Spritual Disciplines: These are in the toolbox for your relationship with God. (Mark 1:26, Psalms 119, I Timothy 4:19)

• Navigating and Understanding the whole of God's Word
• Mediatating on God's Word
• Memorizing God's Word
• Prayer: Open communication with God
• Silence and listening
• Church and worship
• Accountability and fellowship

Family: Being a Godly son or daughter mirrors being a follower of Christ (Deuteronomy 6, Ephesians 6, Proverbs)

• Not dependent on your parent's faith, but yours
• Understanding discipline

Friends: Who you hang with is who you'll become (Psalms 1, Proverbs, I Corinthians 6)

• Friends = Who influences you
• Can encourage or discourage your faith. There is rarely a neutral firend!
• Compromise is a progression that begins with compromised relationships which leads to compromised behaviors and finally culminates in compromised beliefs.

Choices: Be wise with them because they chart your future (Ephesians 5, James 1, I Corinthians 6)

• Wisdom is God's view of any particular situation
• Asking "What's wise?" instead of "What's right or wrong?"
• Purity is a picture of who you belong to
• Temptation

Serving like Christ: Giving yourself away for Christ is Spiritual Maturity (Phillipians 2, I Timothy)

• Love has more to do with conviction and giving than emotion.
• Loving others for Jesus has nothing to do with you
• Leading others to faith in Jesus
• Removing I and focusing your life to loving others

Where to go from here and a couple observations

The important stuff is a work in progress. Please feel free to comment. Look for some upcoming articles devoted to different pieces of the important stuff.

Something to notice is that the content itself (the important stuff) is primary at all levels, but it also funnels in depth and application throughout the process. It's also not an accident that the six important things themselves are a picture of the funnel. We begin with Jesus, move through the primary relationships in our lives, and finally end up serving and giving.

I hope to see ya'll soon!

Dennis

Amazing Message for Dads

Matt Chandler is the Lead Pastor at the Village Church in Texas. Check out this AMAZING content in a message from him. I'm going to try to get some copies of this to give to our dads. Maybe we can dig up something for moms too.

http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/resource_files/audio/20070826BA01S_MattChandler_TheRoleOfMenPt3-MenAsFathers.mp3

Here is the address for other messages from Matt Chandler if you're interested.


http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/sermons

You can also download the above content for dads to your ipod or mp3 from the sermon page. The date of that sermon is 8/26/07

What we say

Just want to jot down a few thoughts and come back to this post as they develop.
Here's the important stuff we need to say LOUDLY, CREATIVELY, AND REPEATEDLY in Summit.

1. IT, Jesus as it
2. FAMILY, How to be a Godly son or daughter
3. HANG, Who you hang with is who you're going to look like
4. CHOICES, Decisions and wisdom in making them
5. GIVE, Serving and giving away to others in the name of Christ is spiritual maturity
6. DISCIPLINES, Developing the relationship with God

In Summit youth, at the end of the journey, these are the things that we want students to walk away with. Please comment, I would love to hear your input.

Dennis

Purity and Bungee Cords

Below we talked about compromise and that compromised relationships are the first step in the process of compromise. Well if any relationship opens the door to connection to someone else it's a sexual relationship. We've got two major truths we are dealing with when it comes to sexual purity.

When you connect with someone sexually, you are instantaneously connected to them emotionally, mentally and spiritually!

Rubber bands are cool! They can move and bend and stretch in all sorts of weird cool ways, but they always will return to their original length. Bungee cords are basically just hundreds of rubber bands bound together. When you connect with someone sexually it's as if you have tied a bungee cord around each of your waists and then tried to go on your merry way, after the sexual act. But all of a sudden your emotions, some of your mental capacity, and your spirit are tied to that person.

Let's illustrate this! It could be years since you connected with someone sexually. Maybe it was high school, maybe it was college. But years later you are driving down the road and that certain song comes on the radio. Out of no where those emotions of connection that were established come flooding back. Or let's say you thumbing through an old yearbook and you see the picture of that person. Now out of no where, you have some mental images invading your brain of things you've engaged in with that person. It's like the bungee of your emotions and mental images have been snapped back into place because of the sexual connection.

Spiritual connection with a person is even more complex and really only makes sense in terms of understanding that you as a believer in Christ are tied with a spiritual bungee cord to Jesus. If you connect sexually with someone outside of a marriage relationship, in a weird way even if that other person is a believer too, they are spiritually pulling you away from Christ.

The cool thing about being tied sexually and then emotionally, mentally and spiritually to a person is when their is a life long commitment. This truth that sexual connection instantaneous connects two people emotionally, mentally, and spiritually all of a sudden is an awesome thing, because now instead of guilt and doubt and disrespect, there's security and interdependence.

This truth about sexuality is why Paul wrote this in First Corinthians 6:18: "Flee sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside the body, but he who sins sexually, sins against his own body." Sexual sins cuts deep and forever.

Yes there's forgiveness, yes there's grace. But anybody that has compromised sexually will tell you that this truth about sexual connection stands even in the midst of their forgiveness.

Sexual purity or sexual compromise is a physical picture of the spiritual truth that you belong to someone!

Take two sheets of construction paper and glue them together. Let them sit for a minute. We'll talk about the construction paper in a bit.

Paul keeps going in verse 19 and says this: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your body."

Now let's skip down into chapter 7 and say something pretty significant. Verse 3-4 of chapter 7 says, "The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.

You belong in a very real sense to Christ (if you are a believer) and to your husband or wife. And how you compromise sexually speaks volumes about how much you value Christ and your future or present spouse. Because in a very real sense when you connect with someone sexually you are giving away a part of your self that now belongs to that person. If you don't believe me take the construction paper now and try to pull them apart.

Little bits of each piece of paper have bonded to the other one and torn away. When you connect sexually, you are meant to stay together because it's just too stinking hard to pull you apart without leaving little pieces of yourself behind.

If you hear this message, I'll end it with a story that'll drive these two points home.

Compromise: Giving Away What's Not Yours

Just an overview! If you want all the sermon notes then feel free to email me.

Definition of Compromise
Compromise is when two parties that have different agendas needs or wants each give up a part agendas, agendas, needs or wants so that they can meet in the middle in the middle and find common ground. This is awesome when you are teaching kids to share their toys. But it is a huge deal for students faced with compromising their faith, spirituality, or morals.

Here's why for the believer in Christ compromise is a hug deal; because when a believer compromises, he's giving away something that is not his. He's giving away, exchanging and compromising the truth of God. Let's diagram this so it makes more sense. We'll show the two parties that are at issue here and actually what the believer is giving away.

The World ---(Compromise to meet in the middle)- --Believer in Jesus

Giving Away God's Truth

What we have to compromise to meet in the middle is at the heart of the issue. We have to give away the truth that we verbalize and live out, that Jesus is the one true God in flesh and that he is it for us. And that truth of God is not ours to give away as a bargaining chip.

Do you see what compromise in the life of a believer in Jesus really means?

Romans One

Everybody pounces on Romans one as a condemnation of homosexuality. It's really about compromise. It's just of this particular group of people, when they compromised the truth of God, it lead to homosexuality. Check out these verses below and the use of the word "exchanged". You could just as easily throw "compromise" in these verses in place of "exchanged".

Verses 18-21 describes a group of people that were opposed to God. I'm not going to get into particulars about these folks, Let's check out the next few verses though to see their real issue.
22 "Although they claimed to be wise they became fools 23 and exchanged (compromised) the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man..." ...25 "They exchanged (compromised) the truth of God for a lie..." And then again in verse 26 we see the word exchanged. Three times we see that this group of people exchanged or compromised the truth for a lie.

Let's check out the process of compromise that probably happened with these guys and definitely happens with us today.

The Process or Progression of Compromise

Remember that compromise is giving away something that doesn't belong to us; the truth of God in Jesus. And that doesn't happen all at once. It's a process or progression. It usually happens in three steps.

Compromised Relationships: In the lives of student's I've always see it start with who they hang with. I've said it till I'm blue in the face; who you hang with, is who you'll look like.

Compromised Behaviors:Behaviors are born out of relationships. That's why you can take a kid that grew up in church, get the cool kids to invite him to a drinking party, and even though he doesn't drink and believes it's wrong, he's going to be trashed by the end of the night.

Compromised Beliefs: In spite of what would seem logical this really is the last step. Over time the kid that keeps getting invited to the drinking party is going to have to deal with the conflict between his behaviors and beliefs. Psychologists call this adaptation. There's a vs. (verses but versus) situation between that kids behaviors and beliefs that's got to be rectified.

The further you get in the progression the harder it is to back out of the progression. By the time you get the compromised beliefs, it takes some major divine intervention to reverse the progression.

Then to end the message (for those that are interested) we talked about my friend stuck in the doorway halfway through the progression. Put yourself in the doorway and be aware of where you are in the progression.

I hope this little tool helps our Community Group Leaders and some of our parent's as you guys do some home devotionals.

Dennis

Summit Resource

I'm going to give using this blog as a resource to our youth ministry a go. And here's how I'm going to do it. I'm going to produce a series of articles here that will match up with this semester's Wednesday night teachings. The point of these articles is to provide in one place a teaching resource for our Community Group Leaders, parents and student leadership.

When this blog is updated for CG leaders and others I'll notify you guys with a general email to Summit youth and parents.

All the teachings this semester are based on "Compromise". Here's the overview in case you've missed it.

• Compromise: Giving Away What's not yours
  
• Purity and Bungee Cords
  
• Modesty Reflects
• Reputation: Video, Not Picture
• Christ Heart, My Hands

Dennis