Author: Ben Meredith

Ben is a recovering pharisee, a web guy, a passable guitar player (as long as you're not near Nashville), and the type of guy you'd want on your team in a game of Mad Gab. Follow him on twitter.
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Picking a fight, for God’s Sake.

“Dude, [Anonymous Student] snores like an injured rhino.”

This past week has meant the official end of the honeymoon.  Students are coming to grips with the fact that they have over a month and a half left to live with each other, and that (contrary to first impressions) they don’t actually like everyone here.

The guy that leaves his socks on your bed is tolerable, for the first week.  By the second week, you are daydreaming about creative ways to get on his nerves.  The girl that has that “unique” laugh the first week is the girl with the “annoying” laugh the third week.

And this is precisely why I like summer projects.  We get to build into students in a “real-life” environment here in ways that you just can’t simulate anywhere else.  Nothing highlights our need for growth like exploding at a roommate because they left their dirty dishes on your beach towel, again.

Pray for this week, as we begin to teach students an option somewhere between fist-fighting and passive-aggressive facebook messages.  Resolving conflict (and learning how to resolve conflict) now will literally change the family tree of these students, as they set patterns of Biblical relationships.

If you are wondering where we take students to learn this, Check out Matthew 18:15-20.

Until then, we’ll just keep waking up the rhino, or just go ahead and put it out of it’s misery.

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…So admit you’re the worst sinner you know. Admit you’re unworthy and deserve to be condemned. But don’t stop there! Move on to rejoicing in the Savior who came to save the worst of sinners. Lay down the luggage of condemnation and kneel down in worship at the feet of Him who bore your sins. Cry tears of amazement (Luke 7:37-38).

C. J. Mahaney, The Cross Centered Life (I added the scripture reference)

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On Michael Jackson

“Did you hear about Michael Jackson?”  she said as she opened the door for me.

Nobody asked about Ed McMahon.  Nobody will remember where they were when they heard about Farrah Fawcett.

But the king of pop died.  And that meant a perfect stranger on the street in San Francisco felt compelled to ask if I’d heard.

Who is going to ask about you when you die?  Will perfect strangers share their favorite memories of you?

Say what you want to about Michael.  But when I traveled to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, the village children who knew three words of English also knew to yell out “Michael Jackson” as I walked along the road.  He impacted every corner of the globe.

So yes, there has been media hype over his death.  But it’s only overly hyped when the media is talking about something that everyone else isn’t.  And in this case, we are all talking about it, too.

Don’t drive past the significance.  The world is reeling from a loss.  We’ve lost something of value.  The church, however, should be careful not to chastise folks for worshipping Michael Jackson.  Instead, we should show them a Jesus who is more worthy of worship.

See, in a year there will be a few people who celebrate the anniversary of Michael’s death.  In 5 years he’ll get a made-for-TV documentary, or a mention on late-night television.  In 30 years he’ll be something that everyone’s parents talk about.  But every single Sunday between now and then, over a billion people will gather in homes, dorm rooms, condos, elementary school gyms, bars, and auditoriums around the world to remember the death and ressurection of Jesus.

Michael is a big deal, sure.  But Jesus ought to be a bigger one.  Just not one that TMZ is going to break the story on.

And you just might hear talk of it from a perfect stranger on the street.  But that’s pretty normal.

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Finding God at Work. At Work.

“I’m just trying to figure out why God has me here, working at the Boardwalk this summer…”

Pretty typical line to hear from one of our students.  But it didn’t come out of the mouth of one of our students.  It came out of Audrey’s mouth.

Audrey is an international student from Singapore who is involved with Campus Crusade for Christ back on her campus.  She’s here for the summer with an international exchange program that brings in students to work at the Boardwalk.  Her friend Pei-Yi is here with her.  Audrey was invited to dinner here at the Peter Pan Motel by one of our students, to meet some other Christians.  That’s when Rachel met her.

“I wasn’t expecting it, but God just dropped her right in my lap,” says Rachel, a rising sophomore at Texas A&M.

Over the course of dinner, Audrey asked Rachel if she could be in her “Action Group” Bible study this summer.  Since that’s not really an option (our studies have specific material that is geared toward summer project participants), Rachel suggested that Audrey bring some friends and they do their own study once per week.  Later that week, when Rachel and Audrey invited Pei-Yi, she was quick to respond “…but I’m not a Christian…” expecting to be told it was a believers-only party.

It wasn’t.

Rachel, Audrey, Pei-Yi, and Yi (a young believer from Malaysia) are meeting each week as an unlikely and cross-cultural Action Group.  They are going through a study called “Creation, Fall, Redemption” that clearly explains the storyline of the Bible, and points them to Jesus.  They’ve already been through week one (creation) and Rachel was pleasantly surprised that even Pei-Yi has been participating and contributing interesting points to the discussion.

“It’s not that she’s a non-Christian because she’s rejected the message of Christ—she’s simply never heard the message of Christ clearly presented,” says Rachel, adding with a smile, “I’m so sure she’s going to trust Christ this summer.”

For Audrey, hopefully it’s becoming clear why God has her here for a summer working at the Boardwalk.

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