Ok, so my views have very, very slightly changed about "relevantism." I still hold strong to my views as stated on part 1, but this weekend I was shown the other side of things. This weekend, I had the very awesome honor and privilege to join my youth minister, Garry Mooney, in going to Nashville to a youth conference (YEC: Youth Evangelism Conference).

However, we weren't there to just attend, we were there to be security, which was a pretty sweet experience, but I'm trying to stay humble about it. Anyways, we were on the floor the entire time up close and personal with the stage which held artists such as BARLOW GIRL, CHARLIE HALL, and CLEAR VISION. I even got the pleasure of meeting CHARLIE HALL and the live DJ, RILEY ARMSTRONG; the whole weekend was just one awesome experience after another, from the excellent worship music praising GOD, to the motor cycle and skateboarding stunts, to seeing tons of people receiving CHRIST as their Lord and Savior for the first time.

Well, out of all of that, I even received a message myself as I was watching the floor, keeping an eye on things. The speaker, which I feel bad for not remembering his name, started to preach on Micah, starting in Micah 6:6 and moving forward. One thing that stuck out in my mind was how we as Christians often tend to separate our lives; we are christian and act christian on Sundays, but every other day of the week, we live like the world. We do this in such a way that we have started to think that GOD is only in a building that we call church, and that we can just leave him there after we leave. No, that's not how it works; Christ is with us always; when we are on our dates, when we work, when we sleep, when we are at home looking on the internet at stuff that we shouldn't be looking at. Christ is with us ALWAYS. And, we as Christians need to let our lives outside as well as inside of the church represent who and who's we really are. When we accepted Christ into our lives, we were permanently changed, and so our lives should reflect Him at ALL TIMES. I mean, why else would people see us as hypocrites..? It's because we do our spirit and holy thing inside the walls of church, and then feel free and guilt-less on the remainder of the week to go and do the things that we know we shouldn't be doing.

The other thing he talked about, and the part that most leads to the subject of this blog, was about how the Christian youth ministry was the hardest social group to enter, due to the sub-groups that form within in the whole. He states that as a teenager, he could never go to church and like it because he was always the "new" guy and never got accepted into, or felt accepted into the group. The people were all nice, but in their own cliques. Until one day he went to sunday school and actually had a guy who decided to "attach" himself, and started to introduce him to all the people in the church, at which point, he started to feel welcome. That didn't save him that day, but the love that people had shown for him gave him the desire to want to continue to come back week after week, until finally one day he learned about how he was a sinner, and about how Christ had died for his sins. The point he was making is that we, as Christians, have come to a point were we seclude ourselves from secular society; we have christian music, christian book, christian movies, christian dating services, etc., etc. and we have some how "removed" ourselves from the world, thinking that this was the best move, seeing how we are not to be "like" the world. He states that none of these Christian things are bad, but the problem, he says, is that we, instead of INSULATING ourselves, ISOLATE ourselves from the world. At some point, we as Christians forgot what it meant to have mercy, to have compassion. We were sinners too, and we were still loved even though we refused to be with Christ, He STILL LOVED US. Therefore, we should love someone else as Christ first loved us. That doesn't mean that we should neglect what they are doing, but we do need to be more merciful and not point our fingers in thinking that we are any better.

You see this is were my thought of relevantism comes in... My opinion or feeling lies somewhere between giving in too much, and being too relevant; and on the other side, being too high up on our "holy stool" to remember that we too were sinners. There is that fine line. However, if I had to decide which was more prominent, I would stick with the opinion that we are "giving in" too much, but remember, we have to be out in the world, in order to reach the world; we can't reach the world if we are in our "safe place." But, be warned, I'm not saying that that means we should go out into the world and be like the world; no, we should take Christ with us, or know that He is with us always, and be firm in our belief around the world, and when they aren't nice to us back, or love us back, or make us feel all warm and cozy inside, to STILL love them, just as Christ loved us, even when we didn't love Him. (Finally, the love in Micah was not an emotional love, it was a love that a woman/man has for a man/woman in which when the two are married, they still stick with each other, even when they aren't emotionally loved in return.)

-ok, my fingers are worn out from typing, and I'm sure you all our tired of reading (thanks, for not quitting), but leave comments if you want and know that I'm not a great speaker, so I'm sure I just obliterated his original message in all of the "paraphrasing" I just did. Words can not adequately express how I feel now, after returning from such a conference, but I hope this blog in some way helped in showing the power and the spirit that was with all of us through the weekend.

Thanks everyone, love Cookie :)