DISQUS

Ha. Yeah, Denny's is no good.
See you tomorrow though! We should all hang out after/before the show. Grab some food or something.
~Makella

Hello, this is wonderful. Do you mind if I quote this on my blog and credit you?

At Hope Ridge UMC, there was a couple of separate services on Christmas eve, but the service on the Sunday after Christmas was also a Christmas service. The Christmas eve service was mostly just singing hymns by candle-light, and scripture reading.

Once gain Justin, thank you for eloquently stating something that has been a bit of a frustration of mine for a while now.
I have a few Christian friends at the moment who do not feel like they fit into this particularly predominant ministry on my campus because they feel as though they relate to God and experience the Holy Spirit in different ways then the majority of the people involved in that particular ministry do. It can get uncomfortable for both parties and people end up feeling a bit judged at the end of it. If someone responds to a particular tradition while the 'majority' (or at least what seemed like the majority at the time) does not respond the same way, there is no reason why that person should be made to feel inadequate or wrong in any way, or even worse, that they do not experience God as fully.
I am guilty of being on the judging end of things because I respond so strongly to certain traditions, so I know that I need to get the plank out before I complain; I suppose this is something I have noticed recently so I figured this post rendered a comment of agreement from me.
Thank you for being so open Justin.

This kind of reminds me of post secret, have you heard of it?
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Hey Justin.

Mostly the people who I talk to understand that they are twisting things around, but they don't really know the truth behind it all, so mostly they just listen when I try my best to explain.

Last year, one of my friends tried to talk to him on his break while his wife spoke. I stood by and overheard and my friend was basically trying to gently point out some verses in the Bible about God's Love and about how it says that there is only one judge (one of their main points was that they are allowed to judge others because they are Christians), and he basically ignored her and started asking her if she watched movies, listened to music, ever told a lie, etc. trying to find ways to bring her down. It was almost like there was something blocking him from really hearing what she had to say; it was basically impossible to have a real conversation.

I still get a little frustrated, but honestly, the week that they are here is one of the easiest weeks to have a spiritual conversation with someone. Last year my friends and I planned a discussion for a couple of the nights they were here to get some dialogue going about what the real truth was. We tried to look at some of their main myths about Christianity.. We also showed the nooma 'Bullhorn.' It was pretty successful. I kind of feel like God brings them to our campus to, in a way, remind us that we need to live lives of His love.