Where In The World Is…..?

Dan Jensen has been a part of the Cornerstone community for the last few years.  Helping out in student and music ministry areas (and the best

Pepsi driver around), Dan left last fall to head to Briercrest College in Caronport.

Right now though, Dan is on his way to Africa.  Kenya, to be specific, with a group of Briercrest students from across North America.  As a representative of Cornerstone Church while he’s there, we thought it might be cool to give you a heads up on where he’s going, what he’ll be up to, and how you can be praying for him and the team.  Here’s the main gist of what they schedule is in Dan’s words:

“The opportunities we have are amazing and the schedule is full.  We will be doing a number of campaigns in four or five communities (preaching, speaking, singing, praying – basically being ready to do whatever we are asked to do).  We will be visiting and ministering in 2 AIDs orphanages, and we will be ministering to widows and orphans in the village.  We’ll also be helping to lay a foundation for an orphanage home in Kisumu that will give up to 32 kids a home, and help establish a poultry farm to help the locals.  We will be helping to build 10 water springs and 2 wells in strategic locations in remote villages.  We also have the privilege of leading meetings at the University of Kisumu.  All of this is done with the local church, and all of it in just under four weeks.”

Busy schedule for sure, and part of Dan’s spiritual family, we want to invite you to be praying alongside and for Dan and the team.  Not totally sure who Dan is?  No problem!  God will make sure the dots get connected

Here’s the longform itinerary in case you’re curious what they will be up to each day:

July 24-26: Travel

July 28: University Event in Kisumu

July 29-Aug 1: Bunyore Campaign

Aug 2: Building fresh water springs/wells

Aug 3: Ministry to Operation Joseph kids and familes (AIDS ministry)

Aug 4: Orphanage ministry in Kakamega

Aug 6-8: Maseno and Kisumu Campaigns

Aug 9-11: Boyani Revival Service

Aug 12-13: Laying foundation for orphanage ministry

Aug 16-19: Wrap up and return home.

Well, at least the Canucks showed me SOMETHING in Game 4…

Fair warning.  This blog is about the Vancouver Canucks.  Sort of.

My “playoff beard” is just starting to get it’s legs, and this past week it has been pushed to edge of elimination/shaving, one game away from being banished for another year (Melissa can hardly wait.)

As I sat on a tour bus watching game 4 between Chicago and Vancouver instead of singing along with Michael W. Smith inside (I much prefer the early 90s concert memories I have of Smitty to today anyway), I found myself muttering the same thing over and over.

“What the heck happened!?!”

See, I could show you the newspaper articles, and the video clips, and TSN reports, and all the notes from before the game (trust me, I read them. All of them.)  To a man, every player on my beloved Canuck team spoke of how they knew what they needed to do.  How they needed to have more discipline.  Make smarter plays.  Be tougher during the play, and not between the whistles.  The said all the right things.  They sounded united. Focused.  They used the right words with the right inflections, and said it with enough conviction to have you believe that they understood what was at stake, and we’re prepared to go do whatever it took to make sure that what they knew they needed to do happened.

Then they went and laid a giant collective egg.

That was definitely not how this was supposed to go.

And yet, hours later while I was laying awake in bed replaying the sobering game in my head, an even more sobering thought hit me:

Am I the same way?  Are Melissa and I, as a couple the same way?  How about as a church?  As Christians?

Now I really didn’t like the outcome of the game.

I’ve wrestled with this over the last few days.  All I can do is speak for myself, and from what I see in our culture around me, but far too often, I wonder if we as Christians know the right things to say.  We sound sincere, like we get it.  We sound repentant, even passionate about being “missional”, and “community-focused”.  We say the right things, have the right slogans, and, even, perhaps even most disheartening, the right intentions.  We actually want to do the right thing.

But then we take a hit.  We discover that it’s gonna cost.  That there is work involved.  And so we back off.

I’m so passionately frustrated when I see this pattern in my hockey team, and so quick to judge others for the same thing, but just as quick to rationalise and create excuses when it happens in my own life.  It a trait I’ve been working hard to change.

So my question is this:  What if we, as Cornerstone Church, were a place where when Christians said something, they followed through?  Where when we say we believe in the grace, faithfulness, and goodness of God, our lived reflected that trust? Or when we say we believe that mentoring and coming alongside young adults, or serving the poor, or giving our time is important, we actually DID exactly those things? Or when we said that everything we have belongs to God, and then reflected that when we set our own budgets?  What if we were a place that DID what we SAID? (wait, that sounds familiar…).

I want to be a part of that kind of Church.  I think we’re moving in that direction.  But we’ve got some more ground to cover.  We’re we jump to action, and where we have an abundance of people who just simply want to follow through on what God is calling them to.

Because this is so much more important than a hockey game, or a shiny tin cup we can dance around with.  It’s about eternity, and faithfulness, and fully grasping and joining the Adventure Jesus invites us to be a part of.  It’s about obedience, and follow through, and Jesus doesn’t just ask politely for that, like a “good idea, but only if you really feel like it”.  He commands it if we want to follow him (James 4:17).

I know some of you may already be great at doing this.  Awesome!  Please, continue to show us and teach us how.  But for the rest of us, we need to show up.  After Watoto last Sunday, I leaned over to Melissa and said “We can do more.  We HAVE to do more.”

Let’s just start with doing what we say.  (for a good example, google Vancouver Canucks, game 5.)

My Perogative?

Everybody’s talking all this stuff about me //
Now now why don’t they just let me live //
Oh oh oh i don’t need permission  //
Make my own decisions oh //
That’s my prerogative

-Bobby Brown, “My Perogative”, released 1988

I love road trips.

Hours in the car with friends or family can* be a wonderful thing.  Miles of road (err, kilometres?) can lead to all kinds of wonderful converstation, and insights.  Waaay to many nibs and chips, bladders that are ready to explode hours from the nearest bathroom, uncomfortable sleeping positions, license plate and headlight games, jokes that get funnier and and funnier the longer you’re in the vehicle together, and music.  Lots and lots of tunes…

… unless of course your ipod cable doesn’t work.

And you’re literally in the middle of nowhere.

Over the school winter break Melissa and I took a bunch of students to Invermere, BC to go snowboarding at Panorama Mountain (eat your heart out, Table.)  And it was just after rosetown that our radio signal faded away, and my vehicle was stuck with nothing.  Just the dial numbers screaming by as the seek button did absolutely nothing.  Of course, no one carries CDs anymore.  I offered to sing, but that didn’t get much response, so we chatted as we meandered our way through the fog towards Calgary.

By the time we we’re rolling in to Kindersly, the discussion of whether to just bite the bullet and pay gas station prices for a CD no one would agree on had started.  And was then forgotten after we left Tim Horton’s.  Shoot.

By Hanna we we’re desperate. WE. NEED. MUSIC.  After much discussion, and a thorough mathmatical evaluation of CD length we settled on two choices: Classic Rock GOLD dual album, and to their eternal credit as wise, musically savvy adolescents, Classic 80’s HITS GOLD.

Axel F may never be this popular again.

A few hours of (finally!) tunes later, we came across the Bobby Brown song, My Perogative.  First came the shock that it wasn’t an original Britney Spears song.  Then came the discussion around the lyrics.

We’ve been talking and teaching on relationships, sex, temptation, and a biblical understanding of purity, and holiness at SNR HI for the last month and the song captured the polarity of the hearts attitudes we can have.  Who makes the calls?  Can we really do whatever we want? Should we have the right to do whatever we want, regardless of what other people think?

And then came the really tough questions… I wonder if too often, we take the Bobby Brown approach

to our relationship with Christ?  Jesus, I want to follow you, but I also want to keep living my life the way I want, and I want control of who makes the decisions, and I have veto power.  Jesus, I want you to lead, but not if I don’t like the direction you’re leading.  Jesus I want to follow, but not if it’s going to cost something I want to hang on to.  Living a personal theology of “My Perogative” goes far beyond just choices of sex and dating.  Do we try and regulate God that way?

I once read that we tend to live as though we are giving God control of our own little kingdoms, but that there are still our kingdoms, whereas God’s desire is that we give up our little independent states and join him as a servants in HIS Kingdom.  He’s not interested in a shared power partnership.  He call us to give him complete control.

1 Cor 6 flies in the face of Bobby’s classic tune:

“Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. … You are not your own; ²⁰you were bought at a price. (v.2, 19b and 20).

And so, with Bobby Brown turned down so we could talk, in the middle of the badlands of Alberta, high on licorice and energy drinks, a bunch of high school students wrestled honestly with the authority of God in their lives.  How a submission to THE King flies counter-intuitive to our cultures self-sufficient, independent mentality.

I love road trips.

________________________

* I say “can” because I am fully aware that too many hours in the vehicle with a brother or little sister who is annoying you is excruciating, and behind forced to walk a kilometre down the highway with the family vehicle trailing behind with the flashers on like some bizzare

Terry Fox run is not super fun, and neither is having to do laps around the gas station because I won’t stop pestering my brothers.  So road trips weren’t always fun.  But hey, they are what you make of them!

Plan to Protect

Thank you so much to those volunteers that have made Plan to Protect a priority this year!

It is important for the church body to understand that this is a legal document, passed by church leadership to be implemented to ALL volunteers working with Youth and Children.  The process and the documents accumulated for each volunteer are for the safety of the children, as well as protecting the volunteers.

If you still have not completed your application package please take the few moments needed to fill out the forms and make this a priority.

We understand that if you have been volunteering at Cornerstone for years it seems strange and frustrating to have to fill out these forms.  Asking you to fill out these forms does NOT mean we don’t trust you as a volunteer.  It is simply the reality of our world today, the reality of running a public facility with children & youth and we are legally responsible for the children placed in our care.

This process does not need to be difficult if we all work together to complete the necessary paperwork!

Thanks again to the majority of our volunteers who have made this a priority!

Operation WalMart

Last Thursday CSM (Cornerstone Student Ministry) high school students teamed up with students from Lakeview Church, Elim Tabernacle, and Corner to launch a full assault on the Stonebridge Wal-Mart and Dollarama.  Over 100 students showed up with cash in hand to partner up in groups in order to build shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child.  Acting as a jump off point from the Hope Lives series that we’ve been working through, the night provided students with an immediate and tangible way to impact the lives of others, offering hope to those in need.

After cramming into vehicles and driving across town, CSM split up into teams and cruised through the aisles.  It’s alway fun to see the confused looks on the faces of store employees when an army of 16year old walk in and start filling shopping carts (especially when it’s 16 year old boys buying supplies for a 3 year old girl).

Once the shopping was done, students met up with Lakeview and Elim at Lakeview to put boxes together, and then spend some time breaking into groups–2 students from each church–to spend time praying over the boxes, and for the young kids who would be pening them up in the next few months.

One of the great gifts of student ministry is watching students live beyond themselves, and be led by the Holy Spirit in what they do.  The excitement, energy, and joy that explodes out of young adults when they buy in to doing something for others is a contagious reminder that we too should have the same joy of heart when we have opportunity to reach beyond our day to day grind.

At the end of the night, 66 shoeboxes we’re shipped off with love and care, from students who are actively working out what it means to Love God, Love People, and Change the World.