Baptism

Last night was one of the more memorable nights in the almost nine years that I have been doing youth ministry full time at Calvary Christian Church. It was my first water baptism service... one where I did all the water baptisms and everyone baptized was a student. Going into the night I did not have this huge super spiritual idea of what was going to happen. I did not glamorize, in my head or to anyone else, this event. I was really focused on all the details leading up to the dunking. I was so caught up in being sure that everyone knew what they were doing, why they were doing it, how they were going to do it, I really had not thought too much about how the night would impact me, or how it should impact me.

It did not start to hit me until I put that first kid under. In slow motion I could see the water rush over their face. I could see them - their eyes closed and holding their breath, and in that very moment they are practicing obedience and they are identifying with Christ and I get to hold them in that moment. I get to be with them as they so closely identify with Christ.

I did not get goose bumps, I did not fall out in the Spirit, I did not have a vision of the cross or see God's plan for my life mapped out in front of me. I simply smiled. When it was over, I smiled because I felt a deep sense of satisfaction. I felt a deep sense of contentment. I was with these students as they came up out of the water into new life. A symbolic declaration of their new life in Christ.
It was one of the most rewarding experiences I have had in ministry. Performing baptisms for the first time was not what I was expecting it to be. It was better.

Culture

I had a conversation with a pastor recently talking about the role of the church in culture and society. The point he was making was that if the culture that the church is in is not a biblical culture then part of the church's responsibility is to counteract and change the culture. Mind you that this conversation was had in the context of using elements of culture like T.V shows, movies and video clips from the internet and other things in a message to help illustrate or make a point. His perspective was that in using clips and video's from the media we are endorsing the t.v. show or movie and supporting the depravity of the culture.
I was thinking about this conversation recently and wondering how does a church go about changing culture, for that matter, how does any organization or initiative go about changing culture? For hundreds of years the church was the center of culture. Some how the culture drifted away from the church and the church rather than try to reinvent culture, or impact it somehow, decided to simply become critical of culture, and for the much of the 20th century was content to criticize culture. Since the seventies and eighties the church has done a lot of copying culture (just take a look at Christian t-shirts and hats and even some music) but the church has not quite stepped back into the role of creating culture. In the last five to ten years there has been conversations about creating culture.
So for better or worse the culture is what it is. The church has not played a part in creating it, we left that to MTV, MySpace, Facebook and Abercrombie, therefore the church has three options, criticize it, copy it, or assimilate it and use the current culture to speak to the people who live in it. The only other option is to create its own culture in the hopes that there will be some component of that culture that would appeal to those outside of it, which would in turn draw them in and begin transformation of the culture.
I really don't know which way is best. It just seems to me that the church at large does not have the best track record with creating culture or being the center of culture. We would rather sit back and warn people of the evils of culture, and what happens to your faith if you get too close to it, rather than rather than hold it in our hands and see it as a tool for relevance and life application.
Just a meandering thought...

Beauty

Have you ever looked at something and thought that it was beautiful, only to see someone else observe the same thing and think is was just okay? Like... why does one guy look at a girl and think that she is gorgeous and another guy see her and think she is "just okay"? Have you ever seen a sunset and thought it was beautiful, or stood on top of a mountain and thought this view is beautiful? or the beach, or an open field on a clear night? Have you ever wondered what makes something beautiful and something else, just okay? You have heard of the phrase beauty is in the eye of the beholder right? What about someone who is blind? How do they perceive beauty? If beauty is just in the eye of the beholder then someone who is blind would never be able to experience beauty. What a tragedy...
So I was thinking about beauty the other day and wondering what makes something beautiful. It seems that beauty has to be more than just what is seen. Maybe the sound of the birds chirping on a spring morning, the smell of herbs from the herb garden in the evening, the taste of fresh strawberry's in the summer, the feel of warm beach sand beneath your feet, the sound of a mountain stream, the smell of chimney smoke in the Fall, the way a snow flake feels when it lands on your face. I could go on but you get the point. True beauty is experienced by all of your physical senses. When your physical senses perceive something that resonates with your soul you experience true beauty. When that place in your soul is attracted to or longs to be near, what your senses take in, you experience beauty.
This is how we can say that even though the cross of Christ was gruesome and horrific, it was also at the same time beautiful. The display of love, the compassion for a lost thief, the strength it took to stay on the cross. These are things that resonate with us. So beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder, true beauty is perceived by the soul - by the heart of a person. You think something is beautiful when your eyes (or any of your other four) senses experience something your heart already knows.
Find something that is beautiful today and take in the full experience...