I’ll be there at 5:00pm tomorrow night to eat dinner!  If you’d like to join me, come grab a booth with me!

Click here to download the flier.

Johnny Rocket’s Location: 10505 Fairway Drive, Roseville, CA

As an English Major at WJU, an opportunity has arisen that may allow me to travel to Greece for 12 days.  While there I will study the places where some of my favorite literature was written, including the Odyssey and the Iliad.  It will be an amazing opportunity to study in the locations where these great works were written.

As I sign up though, I have no clue how I am going to pay my way.  I was teaching in my freshman comp class and I was telling the students how I do not know how I am going to put gas in my car or buy toothpaste this week but I managed to find a few pennies and I drove somewhere yesterday and brushed my teeth this morning.  Also, I was reminded of this summer of how God provided for me every week money for lunch and transportation in Southern California.

I prayed about the trip and I did not feel like God was telling me no.  In fact, I sensed God tell to test him.  So here we go.  I am planning on going on this trip and I have no clue how to pay for it but I believe that God will provide.

With God’s provision, I also know I am going to have to pick up some extra work in order to pay for this trip.  So if you are in need of some seasonal work (like house hold chores, seasonal decoration setup, or web/video productions) please shoot me an email or call.  I’d love to help you out and make you an addition to this trip!

What would it look like to live in one house with 5 other people in Old Roseville?  Men and women?
What if we committed to each other to work through our differences and live together with intentional love?
What if we broke bread together and drank together?
What if we forgot about laws and rules and lived by forgiveness and love?

What would it look like if we put a sign on the door that invited others in saying, “Come and See”?
What would it look like if we invited our neighbors and ate in the front yard every night?
What if we contributed money and resources each month to meet the needs of our neighborhood?
What if we knew our neighbors?  What if we had real relationships with them?
What if our neighbors knew us as a family who loved each other and loved the world?
What if our neighbors recognized us not as Christians, but as lovers?
What if we invited our neighbors to join us in this way of living?
What if we could literally be the tangible expression of Jesus on Earth?
What if we participated Jesus’ reconciliation of the world?
What if, through living together, we learned what it means to be the church?  To be Jesus to a lost world?

Does anyone feel like God has been calling us to live life together more than just once a week at a small group?  Does anyone feel like they can not see Jesus unless they are in the four walls of the church?  Does anyone else long for a deeper understand and experience of Jesus?  Are there any Christians who feel like they haven’t seen the full expression of Jesus?

I desperately want this.  I desperately need this.  I am not living a life that shows a tangible Jesus.

What does community even mean?  Why do I feel like I have never really lived it?

Does anyone else feel my discomfort?  Does anyone else feel my desire?  Or maybe… this is Jesus’ desire pouring out of me.  Maybe… this is Jesus speaking to me.  Maybe… this is Jesus speaking to you.

I thought it was interesting (and excited) that the only result that was the same as last time was Connectedness. My last results were
1. Connectedness
2. Harmony
3. Developer
4. Relator
5. Learner

At first I did not think I should have had Responsibility and Input because they didn’t seem to sound like me, but when I read their descriptions, I was won over.
Responsibility says, “Your Responsibility theme forces you to take psychological ownership for anything you commit to, and whether large or small, you feel emotionally bound to follow it through to completion.”
Input says, “You are inquisitive. You collect things…Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting… t’s interesting. It keeps your mind fresh. And perhaps one day some of it will prove valuable.”

It has been very exciting to live life with Rock Harbor for the last three weeks and the reoccurring theme of mission has made me aware of the need to live missionally daily.  I have looked back on the past three years and I have felt convicted about how little I know my neighbors.  We are called to be Christ’s ambassadors to the world and I have never had a conversation with anyone I live next door to about Him.  I rarely reach out to my community unless it is something that is with my church or something that comes easy.  I have started to think about how I can begin to live missionally and share the Gospel with my neighbors and some of the ideas I have come up with is park parties and neighborhood gatherings.  It isn’t much, however, it is a welcoming and genuine expression of caring for a neighborhood.

Then a challenging part of my summer has been through self examination of my life, particularly in how I perceive myself.  I struggle with insecurities about who I am and I have noticed in the past that I have always been too hard on myself and not allowing myself to experience grace in failure, and I think that has finally caught up to me.  Through many conversations, as I open my eyes, I am seeing how ugly this lie really is.  I realized that I have been defining myself by what others think of me, but there are two problems wrong with this method of perceiving myself.  One, I really have no clue what others think of me.  I have been projecting what I think about myself through other people, back to myself… kinda like a U-Turn.  Basically, I fall into believing that people don’t think I am good enough because I don’t think I am good enough.  Secondly, my self-worth should not be coming from what others think of me or what my accomplishes and failures are.  I should draw my self-worth from Christ and what He thinks of me.

I could tell you what He thinks of me and I know that it would be true, but sometimes I still don’t believe it.  I know that He thinks of me as a holy priest and that I have the ability to proclaim His name, but I don’t always believe it.  I think He thinks I can represent His love to any community, but I am not always confident in this.  I know that He thinks of me as forgiven and I do not have to live to earn his grace, but sometimes I still live to earn it.  I know that He does not call me to be “successful,” in my definitions, but I struggle with that more than anything else.

I was talking with my girlfriend the other night and she was asking me what I get passionate about and I listed off several things and I mentioned Identity.  I get very excited and passionate about a Christian’s identity in Christ.  I have had countless conversations with students and peers about how they are defined by Christ’s forgiveness and grace.  I have even broken down in tears explaining this to two students in particular, but it hit me like a ton of bricks when I was talking to my girlfriend that I have never internalized that.  I never get excited or passionate about my identity in Christ, I only feel excited for others.  This is a major reason why I struggle with my self-worth.  I never take the time to become passionate and alive in my relationship and identity with Christ.

I have been in SoCal for three and a half weeks so far and I have been introduced to so many opportunities for growth in that short amount of time, and I am excited for this growth along with the next three weeks of eye opening revelations!

You are not here,
You once walked these halls.
I am not where you are,
You once studied these walls.

The weathered brick tells me it is old enough,
But renovation has tried to hide the past.

Did you read this book?
Did you sit in this bench?
Did you drink from this fountain?
Did you leave your prints?

Your prints might be here.
They may not be lost, only hiding.

(I wrote this on Father’s Day at Fullerton College.  My dad went to school there.)

I was sitting in a living room surrounded with the leaders of my internship, my peers in the internship, and John Jackson and we had just eaten some BBQ from a restaurant I had never tasted before.  It was good to say the least.  After getting comfortable and putting my feet up on the table, John began to teach us some different things and while I don’t remember many things from that night, I remember this clearly.

He said something like, “Some people are blessed with a lazer vision from God and others are blessed with a ray beam.”  Essentially what he was saying was that some people get a clear, concise picture of what God wants from their life; this is the lazer.  Others (like me) get this ray, or field, to travel that is not completely defined.  For the first person, God wants you on a specific path that leads to a certain destination.  The second person gets more freedom in his path because it is much broader and has multiple destinations.

For me, I believe I am in the right place in life.  I am attending William Jessup University and earning my degree in English Literature.  I have volunteered and worked for Bayside Church for the past three years.  I am about to move to SoCal for the summer to begin an internship at a church, called Rock Harbor, in Costa Mesa.  Next semester I will be continuing my schooling at Jessup taking 18-21 units.  Additionally, next semester I will continue an internship at Bayside in Youth Ministries along with working for Jessup’s Campus Ministries as Evening Chapel Coordinator.  And along side all of this, I am dating an amazing woman who supports me in these endeavors.

All of this is so exciting and I am thrilled to be apart of so much, but I still have no clue where I will be at the end of Spring ’11.  My future could hold pastoring a church or becoming a professor, campus ministries director, or student life director at a university.  I believe the commonality between these options are they all involve relationships, teaching, and youth.  Despite all of this though, the only thing I know is that I am working in the field God has put me in.  The hard part is trusting God as to where He is leading me.

The reason why I was in such a funk during those closing fall and winter months was because I wanted the lazer beam.  I wanted a clear picture of where God was leading me because I did not fully trust God.  I partially feared that God was leading me to a place I did not want to be.  I feared God was going to lead me to a place that I would consider less than where my peers were being taken.  I was afraid of God’s leadership in my life.

I still have moments of fear when I think about where God is leading me.  But I just have to remember that God has led me to where I am now and I am excited for where I am now.  I will not be idle in my pursuit of understanding and foreseeing my future, but I will trust God to open the right doors and close the wrong ones.

On Mondays and Wednesday I am taking a course that studies the major works of Oscar Wilde and a Literature & Culture class.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I am taking a class that surveys the New Testament, British Literature from 1800, and a Science Fiction & Fantasy class!

Additionally, one of my English professors told me she and the editor of the news paper told me they put me in the class!  So without signing up for it, I am not on the News Paper staff as well

I am really excited for this semester and a little bit nervous because I have the opportunity to write on many different subjects and topics, especially in my British Lit class and for the News Paper!

Phyllis Tickle wrote a book titled, “The Great Emergence.”  She revised and popularized what Bishop Mark Dyer observed as a pattern in Christianity.  For more information on Bishop Dyer, click here.

As for the timeline of 500 years, I would like to put in this section from Tickle’s book,

“In dealing with our times of re-formation, we have a tendency to assign a specific date to them, a particular time to which we can point and say, ‘Aha! Here is where and when this thing happened.’ For the Great Reformation, that date is October 31, 1517, and Luther’s alleged nailing of his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg.  For reasons we shall see shortly, the Great Reformation no more began in 1517 than it ended in 1518.  Assigning a date to it is more a matter of convenience than of accuracy.  A date allows us to feel that we have some grip upon the thing, whether we do or not.”

With that stated…

The Great Emergence – (Whatever date history gives shall be decided lated.)

The Great Reformation – October 31, 1517

The Great Schism – 1054 – “The Great Schism is for most of us more a faintly familiar combination of words than a sharply defined event in history… Like 1517, 1054 is assigned to the Great Schism because it was the date of a particular and a pivotal events.  In 1054, the Patriarch of Greek or Eastern Orthodox Christianity had his anathemas and Leo IX had his bulls of excommunication.  The Patriarch had Constantinople and the Pope had Rome.  One had Greek and used leavened bread for the mass and believed that the Holy Spirit descended from God the Father.  The other called Latin the language of God and God’s uses, used only unleavened bread in the communion meal, and argued that the Holy Spirit descends equally from God the Father and God the Son.” (page 20)

Gregory the Great – 540-590 (however you want to look at it) – “Born ca. 540 CE, Gregory came to the papacy sometime around 590 CE, which means that he did indeed preside over the closing decade of the tumultuous sixth century and the first four years of the new century. Far more important, however, and unique to this re-formation is the fact that Gregory I did not become Gregory the Great because  of what he did to lead a revolution.  He became ‘the Great’ because of his brilliance in cleaning one up.  Popular or lay recognition of Gregory’s greatness – he was canonized immediately after his death in response to public demand, in fact – rests, instead, upon his having led a continent that was in total upheaval into some kind of ecclesio-political coherence and, building on the work of St. Benedict, upon his having guided Christianity firmly into the monasticism that would protect, preserve, and characterize it during the next five centuries.” (page 22)

She then goes into further detail about Rome and how Gregory the Great and Monastics saved Civilization. (page 25)

Jesus’ Birth/Resurrection – 6-39 CE – It is a duh that Jesus’ birth, public ministry, teachings, crucifixion, and resurrection would mark the beginning of the first century.  In fact, his birth supposedly marked the beginning of the Roman calendar.  But additionally to this, in 70 CE, the Temple was destroyed and in 130 CE, the Holy City was permanently barred against Jewish blood. (page 26)

This takes us to the Old Testament and the BC era of time.  Tickle doesn’t go into this portion in her book, however it is interesting to note that the end of the Babylonian Captivity was in 527 BC and King David’s estimated ruled was somewhere in the ballpark of 1010 BC.

I never thought I’d say it but the classes I am most excited for are my Organization Behavior class and of course my American Lit class. I am double majoring in Business and English because I believe it will best prepare me to go through life no matter what profession I choose.

Please continue to pray for me and wish me luck as I walk through school and ministry. I am very excited for the future! We recently launched our Sunday mornings again at Bayside and our first week we had 325 people there! 285 students! God is up to some AMAZING things and I am so excited and blessed to be apart of it!