todays striving

Without self-control, we become the slaves of all our enemies (the world, the flesh, and the devil) and become incapacitated, unable to serve God and one another or even our own best interests.  We end up not only serving ourselves, but we become slaves to our appetites.  Keathley

I'm the one that always puts ridiculous goals and strivings on my plate daily, when all the Lord asks for is obedience and walking away from anything that hinders me growing closer to Him

I want my everyday, ordinary life to point people toward Jesus.  Both the things I do as well as the things I choose to avoid in order not to cause the stumbling of others. 

Our lives lived for Him can actually 'make the gospel believable' for the next generation.  That's a weighty responsibility, but a worthy striving.

Will you join me in this being today's striving for Him?  Self-control, a step toward becoming what He needs us to be in order to fulfill our calling?

Final good-byes

The time has come - the most difficult part of the trip for sure, good-bye... Made more difficult of course by Ron and my personal goodbyes to our own daughter and son-in-law.

Surrounded by prayer of precious friends we are ready.  Ready to release our children to these children.  There is no sadness in the leaving because of why they stay.  Yet still it is a huge release the likes of which I've never known.

My own children being used by ,God to raise up the next generation - Jocelyn and Aaron in Cambodia, and Eric and Alyssa with the youth of Crossroads back home.   This makes me eternally grateful!  The tears that fill my eyes are tears of thankfulness and worship, not sadness!

As I look around the campus I remember one of the things I see here that I love is the willingness that the kids have to help in any way they can.  And now our kids get to help them.  They pick up trash when they see it, help cook, do laundry and hang it and help those younger without being asked.  Things that make me thankful to the house parents raising and training them.  

And so we say good-bye for now, with wonderful memories, experiences, and praises to our God!  Here are today's sites.

Finally - I took a walk all alone (which is hard to do) back to see the future BB10 now under construction and prayed for the precious souls The Lord will rescue and fill the house with.  Takes my breath away to understand there are tiny ones being hand chosen by The Lord to be saved...

Thanks be to God for the privilege of being born into freedom allowing me to serve those less fortunate...and now I leave them in your hands...amen

my day off

A touch of Christmas!

Cookies baked and iced, decorations up, Christmas dinner finished and the programming team is officially launched for this Christmas at Crossroads!

New blood is always a good thing. Those of us who have been at this for some time are weary and it is time indeed to tap into the next generation at Crossroads.

I have never worked anywhere in the secular workplace or in ministry where such intentional focus has been aimed at the next generation. I could not be more encouraged or excited about our future. Equipping and developing new leaders has become my passion! So exciting!

always something new

A new era has truly begun at Crossroads. I've been talking about the fact that our worship staff is going to begin intensely mentoring and developing the next generation of worship leaders at Crossroads. It began officially tonight!

Dan our senior worship guy described his feelings prior to going into the youth area to both teach on worship tonight and lead our youth. He looked at me and said, "Why have we not done this before, I am so excited!"

Crossroads has adopted a view for the first time in a long time of all being on one big team! Dan is pictured here practicing prior to the service with two of the youth worship team members. How cool!


Meanwhile on the main stage we had some of our youngest musicians on the team. I love our ministry, and I love when the generations all come together! These are new - very intentional beginnings and I am so thankful to be a part of it! God is good and the ministry is becoming more mature - and I love this new era!

bittersweet

The end to nearly anything is bittersweet. This is an ending that has come all too soon. New friends, new lessons, newly discovered artists all about to be left behind. Rumors of conferences becoming a thing of the past...maybe the end of an era - who knows. I always wonder if this will be the last time that I will ever see acquaintances this side of heaven.

But what I take back to our ministry with me is probably not what I expected. I take back new awareness of this generation and the desperate need to connect them to our ministry. It burned in me previous to this conference, it consumes me now. Jesus made real to the next generation...the only legacy we should worry about leaving.

connecting generations

Last night was amazing. I have mentioned in previous articles that we created a college student group in our data base. Well, the group became real last night.

We packed our first shipment of care packages intending to encourage our Crossroads students as they prepare for finals, what happened instead ? The moms were encouraged! We introduced ourselves to one another and talked about where our kids were in college, and connection happened. We traded stories and all were blessed.

One mom shared with me the week before, (a lady I only know because of this group), that her son has wandered far from God. I told her, "he won't know what hit him, we are going after him!"

After our conversation took place this dear mom attended a training at Crossroads this weekend where she just happened to sit by a mom who has a wonderful Christian son 2 floors above the wayward son. Wow, what a coincidence! NOT! The plan coming out of that encounter: the Christian son is contacting the wayward son inviting him to study with him because just by chance, NOT, they found they are in the same class!! COOL!

To end the stuffing of the care packages, we laid hands on all the boxes and prayed for our Crossroads kids. We are going after the next generation!

Connection is so easy if we just identify needs that are already natural areas of focus in our everyday lives. It isn't Rocket Science!

road trip

I am siting in the coffee shop at Indiana Wesleyan University with my Mother-In-Law. I love to people watch and nothing is more fascinating than a college campus. At 9:00 p.m. there are still tons of students working out at the Wellness building ( I just came from watching rousing games of racket ball that involved my kids). I watch students making their way to an evening chapel, students eating, talking and drinking coffee and Mac computers everywhere!

This is the next generation, tomorrows leaders preparing. These are the people I want on my teams, but how to get them... they are not ready to commit fully to the local church, home in the summer, back to school in the fall. But I need them, I need our congregation to see the next generation, to value our next generation.

I have come to the conclusion that they will not come to us. We have to go after them. What would attract them to serving at the local church? What would keep them connected to the church during the school year? These are questions I am trying to answer by creating MOCK - Mothers of College kids. Some like minded moms and I are going to meet once a month to send cards, care packages and ask for prayer requests from our college students. We will see...I had one student as a result of our communication this week ask to receive our Pulpit Study Guides that support the weekend teachings each weekend. A small victory, a step in the right direction! We will see!