“Strength” 

I Love you, O Lord, my strength.  -Psalm 18:1

Yes, I know there’s a crisis in The Church.  I know young people are staying away in droves.  

But can I tell you about Strength?

That’s the name of the Young Adult class we started at University Church in Topeka, about four years ago.  It began with just me and one college student, and now more than 30 have participated, with an average of 8-12 most weeks.

What a group of people!   Young professionals and undergrads.   Nursing students, law students, single moms, and single dads.  Shy people and anything-but-shy people, all with just one thing in common:  Struggling to make their way in the world–looking to God and each other for strength.

We studied the Bible, jumping around from passage to passage.  We talked about issues, and current events.  We spent weeks investigating varieties of spirituality.   You name it, we talked about it.  

Every week we checked in with each other without ever calling it “checking in”.   We joked and teased and laughed with each other.   On a few occasions we got really motivated and accomplished some great things, too, like a new worship service that grew out of the class’s efforts.

I’d love to write a how-to book based on the Strength class, but I don’t think it would make any sense.  We never followed a set curriculum, never pushed ourselves too hard, and never took ourselves too seriously, but we always came away with something new to think about, and we always had fun.

I’m writing about the class in the past tense here, but I assure you it’s alive and well.  Feel free to visit it some Sunday morning at 10am. The class isn’t leaving…I am.  This Sunday was my last at University Church in Topeka, and I had to say goodbye to the class.  Come July I’ll be starting in over at First Church in Lawrence.  

I’ll miss a lot of things about University Church, but perhaps I’ll miss the Strength class the most.   I look to those amazing people and I find myself not so worried about the future of the church.

You see, these young adults have become a strong force at University Church.  From this group has come church staff members, chairs of committees, members of the choir, liturgists, candidates for ordained ministry, and all around active participants in the life of the congregation and the community.  

Yes, Church, we may have some weaknesses we still have to overcome…

But let’s be sure to celebrate our Strengths.

Have a Good Week,

Mitch

“Cheesy Devotion” 

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.  -1 Corinthians 12:4-6

Say Cheese!

No, really.   Take a minute and see how many different kinds of cheese you can name.   (I was able to come up with 16 or so.)

Yesterday I spent a little time in an international store, looking at cheeses from foreign countries.   I didn’t recognize any of them!  That got me thinking, so I checked out the website cheese.com, and here’s what I discovered:  There are more than 650 kinds of cheese on this planet, just waiting to be tasted.  

Isn’t that amazing?   From the same source (the milk of various mammals) comes Russian Daralagjazsky cheese and Greece’s Myzithra cheese, and Great Britain’s Sage Derby cheese, and Afghanistan’s Kadchgall cheese, and on and on and on.  There’s literally a world of cheese out there to explore.

And so far…I’ve sampled about 2.5% of them.  

Hmm.  That’s enough to make me take a closer look, next time I’m in the deli section of the supermarket.   How can I say I’ve fully lived if I don’t try at least 10% of Planet Earth’s cheeses?

Okay, that may sound funny, but let’s apply the same train of thought to Paul’s writing (above) in 1 Corinthians 12.   Off the top of your head, what percentage of the available spiritual gifts, services, and activities have you sampled in your life? 10%?  2.5%?   Less?  

The New Testament offers up 20 different spiritual gifts, and there may well be more.   How do you know which gifts the spirit has granted you if you haven’t tried them out? 

And as for “services” and “activities” in God’s name, well my goodness, there’s certainly more than 650 of them. How many have you tried? How many ways have you responded to God in your life?  Are there new ways out there waiting to be discovered?

The love of God is like milk to us.  Nourishing us, and helping us to manifest that love in an infinite number of ways. God supplies the raw materials, and offers us unlimited ways to use them.   The only limit comes with how many ways we’re willing to try.

If you’d like to learn more about your spiritual gifts, I invite you to visit (http://www.umc.org/site/c.lwL4KnN1LtH/b.1355371/k.9501/Spiritual_Gifts.htm)  where you can take a short spiritual gifts inventory.  As for discovering activities and services to God…you can uncover new and exciting ways to live out your life as a disciple just about anywhere there’s a need–in church, at work…even in the deli section of the supermarket.  So keep on the lookout!

The more you’re looking for new ways to respond to God, the more you’ll be able to say you’ve fully lived.  I guarantee it.   And I’m betting that the next time someone says, “Say Cheese!”…

You’ll have no trouble smiling.

Have a great week,

Mitch

P.S.  Speaking of smiling, check out Monty Python’s brilliant cheese shop sketch here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3KBuQHHKx0)