Jay and Laurie Lorenzen

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Here’s a report from Christianity Today about our work in “Good News-Good Deeds”

Source: Christianity Today

Campus Crusade launches HIV/AIDS outreach with campus gay-lesbian group.

Amy Green, Religion News Service | posted 1/13/2009 08:14AM

Josh Spavin knows the stereotypes about evangelical Christians: judgmental, sanctimonious, narrow-minded. He may not buy into the image, but at the same time, he knows how real — and damaging — it can be.

So that’s why Spavin, a recent graduate of the University of Central Florida and an intern with the UCF chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ International, wants to launch an HIV/AIDS outreach with a campus gay-lesbian group.

“Because of the way they perceive us,” said Spavin, 25. “What we wanted to do is find common ground where we can serve along side with them. … We don’t necessarily agree with their choices, because that’s not part of our faith, but we still love them.”

Campus Crusade — an organization that once denounced rock music only to later embrace it — is once again changing with the times, engaging potential new Christians through social issues that perhaps seemed taboo in the past. Unofficially nicknamed “Good News, Good Deeds,” the initiative at UCF, and others like it, is a ground-up effort by one of the nation’s largest evangelical groups.

It also provides a peek at what issues young evangelicals see as important, and how they are changing a faith they inherited from their parents, but sometimes chafe against.

“Young evangelicals in particular are very conscious about poverty and the environment, and they tend to be more tolerant on issues such as gay rights and homosexuality,” said John Turner, assistant professor of history at the University of South Alabama and author of the new book, Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America.

“Evangelicals and evangelical organizations, they do have a big public relations problem of being known for intolerance or homophobia or not being concerned enough about social issues, and I think their desire is to correct that image,” he said.

Campus Crusade was founded in 1951 by the late Bill Bright and his wife, Vonette. Today, the Orlando-based megaministry counts 55,000 student members at nearly 1,100 U.S. campuses, and is active in 191 countries.

Campus Crusade officials say they detect a new desire among young evangelicals to live out Christian concepts such as compassion and understanding, and to imitate Jesus’ welcome be engaging in broad-based social issues.

“Students today realize that connecting to other people, that just to tell the story or talk about Christianity doesn’t seem to completely connect,” said Chip Scivicque, a 30-year Campus Crusade veteran who’s now based at Auburn University in Alabama. “There’s this desire to live out the Christian life and live out gospel truth so that when those truths are explained they make more sense.”

Last year at Michigan State University, Campus Crusade partnered with other organizations on several events to draw attention to the international sex slave trade. The biggest event drew about 1,000 for a mock “Price-is-Right”-themed game show in which contestants bid not on prizes but people.

Paul Hardaloupas, a 25-year-old Michigan State graduate who’s now on staff for Campus Crusade, is planning more events for the spring semester, including one focused on rape.

At Stanford University, Campus Crusade has partnered with a local nonprofit group on nearly a dozen construction and renovation projects in recent years, including elementary schools, a center for at-risk youth and a home for unwed teen mothers.

“I think a lot of it has to do with just getting into the Word more,” said Trent Wiesen, 27, who belonged to Campus Crusade as a student at Stanford and now works with the local nonprofit group, 2nd Mile. “There’s just a hunger for the Word, and they’re kind of looking at the way of the church in those early years and kind of seeing the ways in which it doesn’t exactly match up with the church a lot of us have been growing up with.”

Back at UCF, Spavin attributes the new interest in social justice issues to a more global world. Internet-savvy young adults read about AIDS and poverty afflicting the world — and they want to do something, Spavin said. Just before Christmas, Spavin’s group joined with a gay student group, a pro-marijuana group and fraternities and sororities to gather gifts for underprivileged children. Some 400 shoeboxes of gifts were collected for Samaritan’s Purse for distribution worldwide.

“It’s not just Christians but young people now — it’s almost like they’re waking up to the world,” Spavin said. “In general, Christianity has, like, a negative connotation to it. People feel like we are putting ourselves on a pedestal and condescending to people, and that’s not the love of Christ.”

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

(Take some time to read the comments at the end of the article.–Jay)

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In these summaries, I’m heavily dependent upon the The Spiritual Legacy of C.S. Lewis by Terry Glaspey.  For more info, I encourage you to read it.

C.S. Lewis and the Inklings

Leadership

A Baptized Imagination

The Power of Myth

Longing

Pain

Friendship

Man as Sub-Creator

Read Old Books

The Spiritual Formation of C.S. Lewis

Christology: No Tame Lion!

Defending the Faith

The Burden of Prayer

The Telling of Stories

The Theology of Narnia

A Joyous Cosmology

The Lion and The Lamb

Aslan is on the Move

The Dictatorship of Pride

C.S. Lewis on Writing Well

Some Old Friends Worth Knowing

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Malcolm Gladwell tells us in Outliers that when it comes to success, context is everything. Only by asking where a person comes from can we understand who succeeds and who doesn’t. Geoff Colvin would agree but there’s more.

In Talent is Overrated, Colvin rightly asserts that “great performance is in our hands far more than most of us ever suspected.”

When many people never become outstandingly good at what they do, no matter how many years they spend doing it, why do some people become excellent at what they do?

Colvin convincingly argues that in general, it’s not innate gifts or intelligence, but what researchers call deliberate practice that creates world-class performers.

A study by Anders Ericsson and his associates concluded that “the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.”

Deliberate practice is not your normal practice.

It contains several important elements:

• it’s designed specifically to improve performance (usually with a teacher or coach),
• it can be repeated ad nauseam,
• feedback on results are continuously available,
• it’s highly demanding mentally (focus and concentration),
• and it isn’t much fun.

Add passion and the good news is that great performance is not reserved for a preordained few.

It is available to everyone.

If such deliberate practice produces great performance, how does this apply to leadership development—specifically to developing movement leaders? Is this how leaders are developed?

Colvin writes that organizations that apply the principles of great performance follow several major rules:

   1. Understand that each person in the organization is not just doing a job, but is also being stretched and grown. The best organizations assign people to jobs to push them just beyond their current capabilities and build the skills that are most important. Organizations tend to assign people based on what they’re already good at, not what they need to work on.

   2. Find ways to develop leaders within their jobs. One technique: short-term work assignments in which leaders take on an additional assignment outside their field of expertise.

   3. Encourage their leaders to be active in their communities. Community leadership roles are opportunities for employees to practice skills that will be valuable at work.

   4. Understand the critical roles of teachers and of feedback. At most organizations, nobody is in the role of teacher or coach. Employees aren’t told which skills will be most helpful to them and certainly aren’t told how to best develop them.

   5. Identify promising performers early. A telling indicator is how interns get others to work with them when they have absolutely no authority.

6. Understand that people development works best through inspiration not authority.

   7. Invest significant time, money, and energy in developing people. You don’t develop people on the cheap, and you don’t just bolt a development program onto existing HR procedures.

   8. Make leadership development part of the culture. Developing leaders isn’t a program, it’s a way of living.

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I’m a little nervous about the title of this article. Life has convinced me of late that the way God works is always a mystery. His ways are above our ways—far beyond our understanding.

Yet, in reading Ezra/Nehemiah this past month, I was struck by the marriage of the spiritual and the practical. In these books, Ezra compiled a post-exilic history of the rebuilding in Jerusalem of the temple and its worship and of the city walls. In doing so, he captures what I will call “mirror images” of the way God works.

On the one side, we see the work of God as if God alone is working—driving events to a conclusion. On the other side, Ezra highlights the efforts of Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Ezra, and Nehemiah as if everything depended on them and their faithfulness.

Nehemiah 4:9 states this age-old tension between “the sovereignty of God and the free-will of man” in a classic statement. Threatened by enemies, this verse records: “But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat.” Who was it, God or the guard, who preserved them from the threat?

We might simply answer “well, it’s both” and overlook one of the main lessons from Ezra/Nehemiah. As we attempt to “build works of multiplying discipleship,” this book teaches us to hold both the “sovereignty of God and the free will of man” in dynamic tension.

Though intellectually incompatible— representing opposite ends of the spectrum on how things happen—God’s sovereignty and man’s free will are practically and spiritually compatible. Indeed, holding both in tension are essential to our efforts. God’s work is always hindered when we opt for one image of reality while ignoring the other.

Let me offer several lessons from Ezra/Nehemiah on the way God works:

1. God “stirs the hearts” of key leaders to fulfill his word and accomplish his work (Ezra 1:1; 5; Neh. 1:2-4). Key leaders “rise up and choose to do a work” they think needs doing (Ezra 3:2-4; 5:2; Neh. 2:18; 4:6). In other words, if you perceive something that needs doing at your location, then perhaps God is stirring your heart. Rise up and do it.

2. God puts “his gracious hand upon the work” (Ezra 5:5; 7:6,9,28; 8:18, 31; Neh. 1:11; 2:8,18; 6:18). Key leaders and people use their position and influence and strengthen their hands to do the work (Ezra 7:11-28; 8; 16-17; Neh. 3:1-32; 4:6). In other words, use your position and influence and strengthen your hands to do the work that needs doing. God will put his hand in yours.

3. God raises up people and gives them a heart to work (Ezra 1:5; 5:1-2; 7:6-10; 8:18; Neh. 1:4; 6:9; 6:16 ). Key leaders “find, recruit, and empower the right people to do the work.” (Ezra 2:1-70; 3:8-10; 6:14; 8:1- 20; Neh. 3:1-32; 7:1-4; 10:1-27). In other words, God uses your efforts to challenge and empower the right people to do the His work.

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I ordered this t-shirt. I can’t wait to get it and wear it. I’m buying it as a reminder to pursue the things that matter to God and ought to matter to us.

Seek justice,

defend the orphan

Of course, wearing a t-shirt with a bible verse on it doesn’t make it happen. And I swore a long time ago not to be a slogan-only Christian. No fish eating Darwin for me.

As Dallas Willard reminds us, “We don’t believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.”

The challenge comes, however, in this question of “injustice” and the despair it brings to my mind and heart and will. As I’ve visited Africa, seen first hand the blatant injustice–where the “good guys often turn out to be the bad guys”, experienced the widespread and total abuse of power by the strong over the weak, I’ve wanted to give up.

To seek justice is, as Gary Haugen warns, seems hopeless, scary and hard.

So I need a reminder that “to despair” is a greater sin than the sins that cause it. I need to wear the command to “seek justice ” for a time–in hopes that it might awaken hope in me. God doesn’t command and not promise to empower. And leadership is needed exactly in those places where things are hopeless, scary and hard.

As Gary Haugen reminds me in his newest challenge to “despair,” Just Courage: God’s Great Expedition for the Restless Christian,” the struggle for justice always stands or falls on the battlefield of hope. God’s commands to “seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” imply that God is not only passionate about these issues, he is also responsible. So hope.

As far as the “scary” aspect of justice, Jesus didn’t come to make us safe, but to make us brave. And deep within me is a yearning to be brave. In this world, do I want to be safe or brave? I simply can’t be both.

Will the t-shirt change that reality? I don’t know. But it will be my reminder — in a funny reverse logic — that bravery not clothing defines the Christ-follower.

And, as to justice being hard, I’m finding that the devil doesn’t give back territory easily. It’s a deadly dangerous fight. The jaws of the oppressor are not easily broken.

So, I’ve got maybe a third of my life left.

Why not go out swinging?

God make it so.

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The following were recorded during Jay’s teaching on the Psalms at Tri-Lakes Chapel, Adult Bible Fellowship:

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Peter Scazzero’s book, The Emotionally Healthy Church, offers a new vision of discipleship— an approach that really changes people. Scazzero argues most churches and ministries separate emotional health, relational depth, and spiritual maturity.

Our understanding of spirituality often exults the spirit over the other critical aspects that make us human—those physical, social, intellectual and emotional aspects. True discipleship, on the other hand, integrates all the components of our person.

At the heart of his argument, Scazzero argues that emotional health and spiritual health are inseparable. In other words, “it is not possible for a Christian to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.”

Scazzero offers the following six principles to help you begin to integrate emotional health and spiritual health—first in yourself and then with your disciples.

1. Look Beneath The Surface. Emotionally healthy people take a deep, hard look inside their hearts, asking, “What is going on that Jesus Christ is trying to change?” They know that a person’s life is like an iceberg, with the vast majority of who we are lying deep beneath the surface. Emotionally healthy people invite God to transform those beneath the surface layer that keep us from becoming more like Jesus Christ.

2. Break the Power of the Past. Healthy people understand how their past affects their present ability to love Christ and others. Numerous external forces may shape us, but the family we have grown up in is the primary force that shapes and influences us. Discipleship includes an honest reflection on the positive and negative impact of my family of origin. Scazzero suggests using a simple family genogram to help you gain awareness of the critical issues of your past. (See Scazzero’s book for more details and to ensure a biblical balance to this.)

3. Live in Brokenness and Vulnerability. Emotionally healthy people live and lead out of brokenness and vulnerability. They understand that leadership in the Kingdom of God is from the bottom up, not a grasping, controlling, or lording over others. It is leading out of failure and pain, questions and struggles—a serving that lets go.

4. Receive the Gift of Limits. Emotionally healthy people understand, according to Scazzero, the limits God has given them. They joyfully receive the one, two, seven, or ten talents God has so graciously distributed to them. They don’t try to live a life God never intended. As a result, they are marked by contentment and joy.

5. Embrace Grieving and Loss. Emotionally healthy people embrace grief as a way to become more like God. As Scazzero argues, they understand what a critical component of discipleship grieving our losses is. Why? It is the only pathway to becoming a more compassionate person. To grow, we must pay attention to pain.

6. Make Incarnation Your Model for Loving Well. Emotionally healthy people intentionally follow the model of Jesus. They have learned to follow the three dynamics of incarnation found in the life of Jesus— enter into another’s world, hold on to yourself, and hang between two worlds. As Scazzero realizes, “my most effective discipleship is to be an incarnational presence to another person. It was for Jesus. It is for all his followers.”

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