Core Training 3 – Passions, Holy Discontent

At the Core Training (by Youth Specialties), we learned about Bite Back, which is an operation put together by Compassion International. I posted about this recently.

Today’s post, I wanted to share a few other topics that we learned about at Core. The reason I bring up BITE BACK Campaign again, is because it is built on some great truths.

Today’s youth, Gen Y, are very passionate. They are not too concerned with what older generations have said about “the way it is supposed to be” or “how it always has been, always will be.” It is a generation ready for change. And they want to bring this change.

In the past (for about 100 years or so), Christian camps have divided on theology. Conservative theology v. liberal theology. Conservative theology was founded around saving lost souls. While liberal theology was based on “helping people, showing God’s love.”

The beauty of Gen Y, is that they are not concerned with in-church fighting/debating. they see that both “saving souls” and “showing God’s love to everyone worldwide” as both being equally important. For the most part, Gen Y, does not take a side or fight about it. These young, Christians want it all. They want both. They are passionate enough to take it on and do the work too! There are countless stories across the country of young Christians taking on large -scale projects in to fight for their “holy discontents.”

They stand up for the things that really get them frustrated, fired up, and ready to take action for CHANGE. They feel discontentment about certain issues. And this discontentment is a holy one, because it is frustration and love for teenagers who are worlds away, in unfortunate situations. Bite Back is just one campaign where we are looking not only to save souls, but help defeat Malaria.

We met a young girl who puts on “fashion shows” to fight cancer. All of the models were cancer patients. 🙂 Her passion was administrating this event. Her heart was for the cancer patients. her love was Jesus Christ.

My youth group is working a few strategies to fight Malaria.
First we are going to put on a worship event. At this event, there will be a cover donation. We will explain the Bite Back campaign. We will rock out for God in worship, it’s our passion. The attendees will donate for the Bite Back campaign.

Second we are going to run a fund raiser in the school system. Yes, even people in the secular school will be on board to give money to fight these social issues. And by offering the community an opportunity to fight for this we will have a chance to seek local relationships and see people come to Christ!

Anyways the idea is that our generation is ready for CHANGE. We have Passions and talents. We want to use them not only to save souls (which is of the utmost importance) but also to help the change the world, fighting our holy discontents, and social issues that are not fair.

Core Training #2 – Bite Back

Bite Back campaign is mobilizing youth around the country to purchase mosquito nets to protect African children from malaria. Many people don’t know but malaria is killing more children in Africa than AIDS. Malaria is extremely preventable and not very expensive to remedy.

This campaign gives us all a social issue to fight for. It gives us hope. It gives us a chance to be responsible as God’s blessed children and share these blessings with others.

Bite Back is easy and anyone can do it. For just $10, you can provide a bed net to protect a child for about three years. But you are also paying for insecticide, and medications. That is a lot for just $10. I would encourage everyone to fight for this! You can make a donation today here. Or you can become an activist and spread the word about this campaign with the resources at this website.

To learn more about Malaria – here are a few more informative websites.

Here is a video from Youtube about Bite Back:

CORE Training #1

Recently I took my youth group adult and student leaders to Core Training, put on by Youth Specialties. Every year Youth Specialties does an awesome job. I have been there for the past four years. The training was great! We all learned a lot. The title of the day’s training was “Generation Change.” And this was the first time Core Training invited both student and adult leaders together. It was really cool having student leaders there.

I want to do a few posts on the topics that we learned in the Training. Today’s post is about compartmentalization.

Many times in life, we compartmentalize areas of our life. We have our life organized into parts or categories. Imagine a large square cut into equally sized, smaller squares. Each of the small squares represent a different category or section of our life. Many people try to balance each part of life. Compartmentalization is a way of the world.

Instead of following the world, furiously trying to balance all parts of our life, we should have have an eternal perspective. The Christian way is to put God first in all of life. Giving ALL areas to God. NOT holding back areas from God. And NOT having any double standards. Or living double lives.

When we have compartments in our life, we tend to live double lives. One area of life, maybe, we choose not to let God have. We let one of these compartments (or more) be filled with sin, evil, struggles of ugly passions. God does not want us to live that way. We need to remain pure and give God all of our life.

Living a double life is just wrong and sinful. I have convictions about this a lot, but it was a great refreshing topic at CORE. And that is only tip of the iceberg. I highly recommend CORE training. I recently posted about an inconsistency in my own life relating to this topic.