Book Review #2 - When Necessary Use Words

In reading and looking into the book, When Necessary Use Words by Mike Pilavachi, I never really thought of life that way.  Mike Pilavachi with Liza Hoeksma gives us this view of When Necessary Use Words.  We can change lives through worship, justice and evangelism but it is up to us to do so.  

I feel that the best way we can worship God is by how we live our lives and what we do.  It is always good to read our Bibles and sing him but it’s more about that lifestyle of worship that is important.  It says all throughout the book of Psalms to worship the Lord with joyful hearts and any time we need him.  The thing is that we should need him all the time.  As we follow God we must also be following his commands, his laws, clearly his word.  His word, The Bible should be one of the biggest parts of our lives.  It is from that that we know how to live a life like Jesus Christ did.  We need to be living, giving God all the honor and glory for everything good in our lives.

Something about worshiping God in everything we do may not always be a new thing but it’s a refreshing time to have.  Worship is a lifestyle.  Worshiping God means putting him first and remembering that he is more important than anything or anyone else (pg. 23).  Worship isn’t just the music during a church service.  The music is only part of worship.  I was always confused with that until this year because I always thought when someone said worship, it was music.  A team who play music is called a worship team at church.  “The rest of the service and indeed how we live can be worship too (pg. 31).  It’s in true worship that we can get closer and to the heart of God.  “Our worship must go far beyond the music, it must infuse our lives” (pg. 52).  If you think about it, another way of worship is through making a covenant to God, taking communion and praying.  In following God, we worship by following His Ten Commandments.  What you can always conclude from talking about worship is that it isn’t about receiving all the time but it’s about what we can be offering to God.  We can offer ourselves to God in any good or bad situation.  What we need to do is follow and trust in Him.

Something about evangelism is that we really need to pay attention.  It’s crazy to think that when I took my spiritual gifts survey 2 times in the past year or 2, my top gift is evangelism.  I haven’t seen that come out yet.  I’m very confused to that because I thought it would be hospitality or something else.  I was very surprised that that was my top gift.  Pilavachi communicates to us that Jesus’ life was through evangelism.  “Jesus…showed us a very different way.  When He chose his disciples, He called them to follow Him way before their behavior changed….They didn’t even understand who Jesus was for a long time; but right from the start, Jesus let them know that they belonged with Him, believing and behaving, or not” (pg 80).  Evangelism to me, is now reaching out to the lost.  Reaching out to people who do not know Christ and speaking out, proclaiming his greatness.  Evangelism to me now is going out and preaching the word of God and sharing it with anyone who needs/wants to hear it.

Something about justice that I’ve learned is that you only do what is said in the Bible.  We should be preaching the gospel at all times.  When we speak of and share God’s love to those around us, we are one step closer to helping a hurting/broken world.  When we as believers of Christ, who have a relationship with him show love, worship, and a desire to go all out for God, people will eventually want that too.  Our world needs to see this all happen before they believe it.  Let’s now follow God, go out and worship as well as evangelize to the world for the Kingdom of God!

Read about half of the book.  It was very enjoyable but I was sadly starting to run out of time.

Class Response - Lee Rodgers (Youth Alive Ministries)

This week we had the pleasure to hear from Lee Rodgers!
Lee, is on Youth Alive Ministries Director for PennDel.  He currently resides in Mt. Holly Springs, PA right near Carlisle.  He was assistant pastor at Bethel AG in Carlisle from 2004-2011 and then became the director for YAM.  He and his wife travel here and there together and they've loved working with this ministry.  He graduated from Big Springs High School, went on to Valley Forge Christian College and is working on his Master's degree through Regeant University.
Big Springs is where he had/learned his foundations on faith and following Christ at the age of 14.  He talked about how culture, church and school has changed but how can we change it for the glory of God?  "We are Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their difference and enter into God's work of making things right between them (2 Corinthians 5:20).  He gave us some statistics that are interesting for me to see because I never really look enough at statistics.  He shared with us that 99.5% of the U.S. population go through the public school system.  About 8 out of 10 Christians make their decision to follow Christ before graduation from high school.  1,125,000 middle and high school students in Pennsylvania and Delaware.  I like how he reminded us of two things we are instructed to do to show our faith.  We are to be baptized and partake in communion.  These are the foundations of faith.
I never knew that in there Merge Leadership Network they run SYATP, Train, Organize, Baccalaureate, and School Assemblies they are involved in.  They are fully engaged in campus ministries.  Youth Alive started in 1979 as a way to engage the school system within our churches.  Four tasks evolve in this ministry.  The logo for Youth Alive have different colors and they each mean an important task.  The blue represents campus missionaries.  The green represents campus clubs.  The red stands for 7 project/ outreach.  Finally the yellow stands for PrayerZone Partner.  I love what each color and part of the logo means.  It's very unique and makes me empowered to help reach other schools no matter what.  Nothing stops God, so therefore what he works in me, he works into the students who I can lead.
Mr. Rodgers seemed very enthusiastic of this ministry and I pray to one day be as hard-working as successful as he seems to have been.  I really enjoyed his time with us and just love the idea of campus missionaries.

Service Learning Componant

The Plan:
a. Who did we serve? (Our target population)
         We aimed to serve families, specifically children, who will be in the hospital over the Christmas holidays.


b. How did we serve them? 
(Was there a style of service or specific act of service that most effectively ministered to our target population?)
        We served them by using our creativity in making fun cards with notes that will hopefully encourage them to have a wonderful Christmas and New Years.  We want them to know that owe love and care for them.  We are still going to pray over and give them the children, but we have to wait for an ok.  It would be wonderful to do that really soon so they don't loose the holiday spirit.
What level of evangelism is this on the E-scale of evangelism?
          This probably was an E-1 Evangelism being that it was outside of our church but still in our home area.
         

c. Where did you serve them? Was there a location or a specific event where our target population gathers that is more effective for us in serving them there than any other location?
          We made cards and did much planning at church.  Since we are still waiting to hear back from Gettysburg and Hanover hospital, we plan to deliver the cards as soon as possible and hopefully some candy while being able to share God's love to them.  We really believe this will bring hope to them though they might not see it yet.

        
d. When did you serve them? Was there a particular day and/or time that was better than others?
         Monday, is when we made the cards.  We weren't able to deliver the cards yet but plan to do it next week before Christmas break.

500-700 word report on the outreach as well as a critique of our planning and execution that will include 3 things that were planned or executed well and three things that could be improved.

My Report:
          So, the girls and I have had a tough time in figuring out what to do with our Community Outreach.  We thought of doing an outreach event in Biglerville or surrounding areas.  None of those plans worked.  We then thought about doing it at the church but didn't think that would really work.  We wanted to go out from the church, not exactly in it.
Eventually, Bonnie came up with making cards for kids in the hospital.  We have been working on a date to take them in.  We have Christmas, New Years holiday cards made up for little kids.  One afternoon, Kimmy, Kriston, Bonnie and I sat down and made the cards.  We did about 5 cards each, that's how many I've done.  I'm also trying think up and research where we can drop the cards off at.  My part in this was making the cards and having an idea of writing encouragement and inspirational verses or quotes.  We aren't sure if we can do that yet, however it's a wonderful idea.  Kriston brought markers, crayons, and colored pencils.  I believe Kimmy may have called the hospital or brought things but not sure.  We all made at least 5 cards and planned on taking them in together.
What I've learned from this assignment, is that we do want to reach our church with hope and faith and love.  One of the most important things is going out into the community reaching those who may have never heard the gospel, may have given up hope in church, God, or even themselves.  Where these cards go, it will make a young kid happy and hopefully they can have a wonderful holiday season as well as a blessed New Year.  Hopefully they can pray and thank God for all they do have.  If not, at least that they can be happy through the holidays, because we know also how hard holidays can be.

         Three things that were executed well:
             1. I think the overall idea was great!  I loved being able to get creative and work with my best friends on reaching out to families before break.  I enjoy making cards, and hopefully being able to get them and their families to come to church.
               2. The actual cards were a great idea.  In that we were able to create our own ideas in how to make the cards and see the cards in a powerful way to reach little kids.
                3. The last thing is probably just the quality time spent with my 2nd year/staff girls.  I love our whole GMC team but I feel it's nice when we sometimes split and have small group time.  It's truly a blessing to me that I was able to make cards, to reach out to kids, families, with my best friends in the world.  This is the way we share the Gospel of Jesus.
         Three Things that could be improved:
             1. Probably better communication with places we wanted to reach out to.  We should have called a lot sooner as well as continue to try and get a hold of them.
              2. I know I was sort of unclear in what each of our jobs were.  We all did something but we could have planned better.
               3. Last thing is timing.  I think with us up in the air about one outreach and changing to the next, it didn't help my brain personally.  I already had much to think about, without this.  Next time hopefully we can start planning and grasping what we want to do within the first week we get the assignment.  That is where the brainstorming power comes in!

Class Response - Peter Almqvist (Mission SOS)

On Thursday, we were able to skype with Peter Almqvist!

I always love when we can skype/talk to people we already know.  Peter is such a great man of God following what God has called him to do with Mission SOS.  Mission SOS is a ministry that was started by Johannes Amritzer back in 1996.  Peter became the US and Festival Coordinator at Mission SOS International a while back and currently works at Allison Park Church in Pittsburg, PA lead by Pastor Jeff Leake.  Peter is married to his wife Martina and they have four adorable little kids.  This is what he said about the ministry he's involved with.

He says that following Matthew 25 and all of Acts is a great fundamental way we should be sharing the gospel.  What I love about Peter and people in Missions SOS is that they want to establish a training school, church panters and missionaries.  He was asked how to measure a win in his ministry and he said its by bring lost souls to Christ.  They want to do more advertising in countries for their festivals.  What kind of help do they need to do the work they do?  It seems like its like every other ministry I've heard.  They need prayer, finances, willing people and working hard leaders.  I know what he means in that.  I think some of the most important aspects you need in a ministry is prayer and willing people.  You also need balance.  One of the difficult aspects of his ministry is balancing ministry and family.  He said it's hard but essential to do.  I believe him in that and somewhat relate.  I have a hard time balancing right now but it is do-able.  I feel we need to read more up on evangelists and just the ministry of Jesus to realize that the best thing we can do is save people one person at a time.  I can also definitely relate to how he loves working behind the scenes.  I know how that is and I enjoy it.  We just need to always remember we may be serving under or with someone but we ultimately are serving our God.

I really enjoyed listening to what he had to say and I can't wait to see them all again.  It was a great learning experience during this class time.  It doesn't matter if you have the most glorious or dirtiest job.  If you are doing it for God, he will make you shine, especially when you give him all the glory!