Jill Briscoe calms the nerves and stirs the spirit

Hey everyone...
well, it's Saturday night, the calm after the storm.

It's been quite a hectic week.

Last night and today, I attended a Jill Briscoe conference at Riverlakes entitled "Return to be Encouraged." It was indeed mucho encouraging. I think one of the wonderful aspects of meetings like that is how they nudge you toward confronting in your heart of hearts how much (or little) EVERY part of your life is submitted to God...this has got me thinking.

I'm including some quotes from Jill below. For those who don't know, here's a quick rundown. she's from Liverpool, England, got saved in a hospital bed when she was 18, is in her 70s (I think) and is on fire for youth ministry, has ministered to women seeking Christ in an attic in a communist country, (among other things), goes all over the world doing Bible studies with women and has a wonderful, gentle British accent.

Now, the quotes/paraphrases:

(Reading Luke Chapter 5)
*"God knows where the fish are...He'll take you there if you're willing."
*We all have just the right boat for God to use.
*Spiritual gifts don't age.
*Our primary call in life is to have a relationship with God. "You're not called to be successful; you're called to be faithful."

Ministry must be: Incarnational: "God was an embryo" in Mary's womb...

relational: "People matter more than schedules..."

devotional: While making this point, she told a story of a church her husband visited in an Albanian village that was started by three nine-year-old girls and pastored by a 12-year-old boy. TRIP OUT. The point being He uses whoever answers the call.

transformational: The more you are transformed, the more they (those with whom you share Christ) will be transformed.

sacrificial: "You can only take people as far as you've gone yourself. You can't take people ahead of yourself." She also told a story of a guy who was worshipping Satan in his basement, turned on Billy Graham on the TV, got saved, and now pastors a church.

This made me (Julia) think: we make things so complicated when we evangelize, don't we?

"When you can't pray, say to God, I'm a prayer. Read me."

"As the pain comes, go with it and the baby of faith will be born."

radical: They won't come to you. Go to them. "We expect the fish to swim into church and look for the bait. I see ourselves nurturing ourselves to death in America."

"If Jesus was a member of your church, where would he be Monday through Sunday?
Where are the unreached people groups? (single moms, divorced, hairdressers)

and generational: Psalm 71: 18-19

Hope that is encouraging to you too!
Much love,
Jules

Riding the bus to God
BY JULIA KENNEDY, Special to The Californian Friday, Jun 16 2006 6:05 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Jun 16 2006 6:09 PM
The white school bus rumbles through quiet south Bakersfield neighborhoods each Sunday morning.
It doesn't take summer vacation, even when the kids do.
Its total passenger load is about 50 young people -- a far cry from the thousands of children collected by fleets of church buses in similar, big-city ministries.
But the white school bus keeps going.
It travels the short distance to Harvest Free Will Baptist Church on McKee Road for a few hours of wholesome talk, Bible study, games, snacks and hugs. Afterward, it takes the kids back home.
To young men like 18-year-old Robert Bough, that bus means friendship. For girls like Beverly Venegas, 13, it has brought forth a puzzling yet solid relationship with her creator. To boys like Braxton Fitts, who is 11, it represents something his mother makes him do.
However, Braxton says it's not a bad way to spend a morning -- especially when he gets to play games with other kids.
Harvest Pastor Kurt Lindgren, who joined the church staff six years ago, wasn't sure how long Harvest's bus ministry has been happening. The bus captain, Jesse Rodriguez, has driven the bus for 13 years -- so the answer is, at least that long.
During that time, Rodriguez has seen plenty of new faces step on board. The hardest part of his ministry, he said, isn't getting up early or dealing with feisty children who are hungry for food and love.
It's seeing the kids lose interest.
"You're just like family with them and you're kidding around a lot ... you wish they'd make better choices," he said.
Lindgren said about 80 to 90 percent of the children stop coming as they get older, sometimes moving on to less spiritually fulfilling activities.
But while it can be hard to keep track of the kids, there are two things that keep the staff going. The first is a call to ministry. The second is hope.
"We pray and hope that someday, down the road, we've made some sort of impact," Lindgren said.
Sometimes, a bus rider will resurface to affirm that hope. Danyell McKee, 23, sat in Harvest's nursery on Sunday, cradling her 5-month-old daughter, Alidia. When she was 13, McKee remembers riding a bus to First Free Will Baptist Church on East California.
"At first, I was embarrassed to ride the bus," McKee recalled. "You don't want your friends to know you're going to church." She would duck out of sight as the bus pulled through her neighborhood.
"In a month or two, I started crouching not so far down," she said.
What made it fun? They sang songs. The adults were always happy to see the children. And it actually looked like someone cared.
"The church was my family," said McKee, who now attends Harvest. Having lost her mother at 13, McKee rode the bus for years and ended up being a bus captain in North Carolina while attending college. Sonya Fox, who drove the bus when McKee was a teen, later adopted McKee.
Rodriguez observes a few other church buses driving around at this time of morning. However, First Free Will Baptist is the only other one Lindgren knows of that is aimed specifically at children.
Lindgren said he used to hear more about other bus ministries in Bakersfield as he visited homes, but that they seem to have dissipated.
"It's a lot of work," he noted.
Churches must carry sufficient insurance for their bus programs, keep buses up to inspection codes and earn enough trust from parents -- something increasingly difficult in today's society.
Harvest establishes initial relationships with families by going door to door and handing out flyers each Saturday in neighborhoods that appear to have a lot of children.
The potential to win prizes keeps the kids motivated to attend those first few sessions.
On a recent Sunday, they got raffle tickets toward winning a Super Soaker water gun if they came to church, brought a Bible or brought a new friend.
Although the bus ministry focuses on children, there is no age limit for riding the bus, Lindgren said. There is no minimum age either, although kids must be potty trained.
"I'm going to wait for my little niece to get potty trained and then bring her," said Beverly, who has been riding the bus for a few years.
Ti-yante Patterson, 9, also had something to bring to church. He clutched four quarters in his hand.
"It's God's money," Ti-yante said. "I'm going to give it to him."
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What A Freakin' Lie!

Hey y'all...
Just recovering from a crazy week. I love back in the day when I used to worry that following Christ would be boring...WHAT A FREAKIN' LIE!

Anyhow, the most excitement for this week was finishing up the Horizons missions training that is part of Global Teams. The more I get to know people affiliated with GT and the more I become familiar with the philosophy and Spirit behind the way they do missions, the happier I am to be involved. The thing I like is that GT is not an "organization," as leader Kevin Higgins said. It's a "movement." He asked us to stop him if in correspondence he referred to GT as an organization.

The reason I love this is because I think it speaks to something new, confusing, magical yet unifying that God is doing among His people: raising up MOVEMENTS rather than MONUMENTS (I'm borrowing terminology from a GT lesson here). Just like 24-7 Prayer is a movement and not a foundation, company, organization, etc., just as DCF is so often a movement that is not (although we would like to be) attached to a church building, just as we are searching for how to express ourselves in this culture, so GT can't be defined by any ONE group of leaders or even set of ideas.

BUT...it is obedient to the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus and the Holy Spirit and God's call to bring the Good News to the Nations! That's about it! We need simplicity in our postmodern, confusing age. We need to remember God is bigger than our culture, our way of doing things, our expectations and assumptions. And it's wonderful to always strive to get out of the way and let Him move!

More on Horizons later and all my new friends from there...that's it for now.
Y'all are in my prayers...God has especially laid on my heart Matt and Chrissy, Jill and Ryan and Dee this week.

love ya,
Jules

Here's an article I wrote...

Hey y'all.
This was published in the Californian on Saturday. I had fun writing it. Please pray for this guy. I'm still working on learning how to publish photos. Please be patient. Thanks!

Also, another piece of mine comes out next Saturday, on a bus ministry around town! It's fun to write this stuff to know what people are doing.

Okay, here it is:
Walking with the cross


BY JULIA KENNEDY, Special to The Californian Friday, Jun 9 2006 7:55 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Jun 9 2006 8:16 PM

As commuters fume in traffic or whiz through neighborhoods they'd never want to visit, Tom Alexander walks the streets of Bakersfield, five days a week, three hours a day, towing a large wooden cross.
If you've passed by him in your car or seen him tread by your house, he's prayed for you.
Alexander faces oncoming traffic as he hauls the 5-by-10-foot cross along sidewalks, smiling and waving at drivers while he prays out loud. He is always ready for a conversation and a "God bless you."
The No. 1 question people ask him, naturally, is why?
His answer is threefold: To honor Jesus for his salvation, to share with as many as possible that "the cross of Jesus Christ is God's plus sign" and to pray for Bakersfield, "asking God to pour out his spirit of revival on the entire city."
Some of his prayers have been answered -- most recently, for Rockin' Rodeo to close after a May 7 shooting death at the nightclub.
Crosswalk 2006, as Alexander has dubbed it, is the realization of a dream from more than 30 years ago. He began on March 1, intending to continue until April 30.
God had other plans, Alexander said. He now hopes to keep walking until the end of August -- or longer. Although the cross weighs 56 pounds and he is 58 years old, the former surfer and weightlifter says a little Ibuprofen is all he needs to keep going after each day's eight-mile trek.
Alexander's regular circuit includes all sectors of the city where he can safely trundle the cross and obey traffic laws. He's been to the northwest, the southwest, east, Rosedale and Cottonwood.
Many different people -- from white Bakersfield College students in a Jeep, to a group of African-American men outside a store in southeast Bakersfield -- hail him with cries of "Hey, brother!" Fridays, he walks downtown and prays for city government, police and courts.
While he walks, Alexander greets people and hands out tracts explaining his journey. Occasionally, he will set the cross upright and give a mini-testimony.
The Crosswalk is typical of Alexander's style of street evangelism.
His longtime friend Kerry Bulls, a substance abuse counselor and former correctional officer whom Alexander met after he turned to Jesus in prison, was thrilled -- but not surprised -- when he heard about Crosswalk 2006.
"I knew it was going to be a successful thing as a witness for Christ," Bulls said, "because Tom has quite selflessly done this type of ministry right out in the street, where people live."
Alexander founded Teen Scene/Soul Wars Inc., a nonprofit youth program that provides children and young adults with alternatives to gangs and drugs.
His testimony to people facing hard times comes from his own experience: He had been serving a five-years-to-life sentence at Tehachapi State Prison for armed robbery when he gave his life to Jesus. He often shares his past with others to illustrate that if Jesus can change him, Jesus can change them, too.
Donations from individuals, churches (including his own congregation at First Assembly of God), and Christian foundations support Alexander financially in his full-time ministry efforts for Crosswalk and Teen Scene. His wife, Jeanette, works as a teacher's aide.
Long before the Crosswalk, he regularly strolled through neighborhoods and prayed.
He intends to pray over every school in Bakersfield by the end of summer, and has already interceded for many -- including East Bakersfield High School on the day of the rally against the proposed immigration bill.
With security and school administration officials standing warily by, Alexander prayed for God to bless and protect all the students and adults at the school.
Soon afterward, a group of approaching student marchers invited him to walk with them. He declined, not wanting to confuse any political cause with his own.
With so many Christians in Bakersfield, one might expect a positive reaction to Alexander's efforts.
Indeed, the honks, smiles and waves overwhelm the "one and a half" obscene gestures directed toward him. The "half" was a man who started to flip him off but added more fingers in response to Alexander's friendly wave.
Less welcoming territory would be fine, too, however.
"I would feel just as comfortable walking in Saudi Arabia as I would in Haggin Oaks," Alexander said.
Many times, he gets more than a smile and a wave. In East Bakersfield -- which he said is one of the friendliest, most interactive portions of town -- people come out of their homes to talk.
Along Ashe Road, one woman made an illegal U-turn and pulled up near the sidewalk. She got out of her truck and, in tears, asked Alexander to pray for her broken marriage.
On a recent Friday, a gaunt woman in a sweater and jeans first asked for money, then asked if she could touch the cross and pray.
"Jesus sent you to tell me that it's all right," she told Alexander.
Crosswalk is as much to rouse Christians to ask God for revival as it is to witness to nonbelievers, Alexander said. Eventually, he would like to see others walk with him, or take shifts carrying the cross and praying.
"I'm trying to get people to start praying for the city," he said, "because we're facing some problems."

I'm new at this

Hey lovely people, from DCF and maybe beyond???

I haven't really done a lot of blog stuff. This is my first blog.

The haps are: it's a beautiful summer night in Bakersfield, I am sitting at home regrouping from a crazy week. Waiting for a pastor to call me so I can interview him for a story I'm writing about a children's ministry here in town.

The sunsets over the past few nights have been rocking my world...mostly for the sounds: faraway ice cream truck music, birds, swaying leaves in the breeze, a lock turning in a key, cars whooshing by on New Stine.

At times like these, I feel like that guy in "American Beauty," who said he wants to cry because there is so much beauty in the world. Times like these make me want to worship the Lord! I'm glad I know who made all this crazy beauty and I know when I feel like this and can't express it, God knows exactly what I mean!