Community involves unity

Word of advice from me to you: Don’t stop blogging for a long period of time because there is so much stuff to catch up on it’s easy to fall behind. I had the opportunity to preach on Sunday morning three weeks ago. So I did. I guess it shouldn’t come as a shock when God does something that makes everything fit together, but I can’t help being amazed by it. This past few weeks Doug Burr has been trying to build a closer community within the corps family. He wants to stop this surface level knowledge of who everyone is and get deep into each other’s lives (who knows where he comes up with these crazy ideas ba ha ha ha). When God spoke to me what I was to be speaking on it went right along with what Doug has been pushing for. God spoke to me about bridging the Gap between the youth of TSA and the elders. In order to progress and keep pressing on in the fight against the enemy we need to be standing along side each other working together. We can’t fight as a divided army. The elders have knowledge and wisdom that they youth don’t have, but the youth are the ones that will be taking over as leaders, and if we don’t build a foundation for them to base their faith on then when they got to places where they face huge temptation they could easily be torn away from the church and dragged into some other religion, or they may just give up on religion all together, that’s never good. We need to be working to build up the youth in a corps so they take over the leadership and be effective in a corps. We can’t have disunity and still be effective. We can’t fight a battle on our own and expect to succeed when an entire army is needed. TSA will fail if we aren’t raising up effective warriors. A spiritual foundation is not only built by what we do ourselves, but it also comes from interaction with other Christians. I’m not talking about just sitting by someone on Sunday morning. It comes from deep conversation and having a meaningful impact on each others lives. We need to be helping each other through problems and we need to know that there are people that will stand beside us when attacks from the enemy come up. People being brought together in a church setting doesn’t happen by accident, people that look up to you doesn’t happen by accident, and corps officers aren’t sent somewhere by accident. It is spirit led and God ordained. The youth that will be following each generation is not an accident. God has a plan and a role for each person to play in the future in the church. We need to recognize that and set them up for success. It takes cooperation from both sides. If we don’t set up a precedent then the next generation will follow suit, and there will be generation after generation of surface level relationships and that is a scary thought. It’s not something I would want to be a part of. It’s not easy, it does take work but we can create community.

That’s basically my sermon. I thought everything went by really fast. It felt like I started and was done in four minutes. The recording had fourteen minutes of space used up, but it sure didn't seem like it. Fourteen minutes still seems really short but at least I know I probably kept everyone’s attention. I did a much better job of starting this time as well. I didn’t have to leave to find a lapel microphone like I did over the summer. After it was all said and done I felt like my sermon was almost JAC worthy. I know that I’m no Stephen Court, but I have my moments.