JCX 9/14/10

The JCX review …

-Tonight was a celebration of our freshmen. We love ‘em even though they climb trees and get stuck. (that happened at the high school Tuesday afternoon). Troy Pyle welcomed everyone and led a prayer over the frosh. Great to see them involved and encouraged.

-We have two specific projects that we’re working on as a group right now: raising money through Active Water (builds water wells in Zambia) by putting on a marathon and gathering 500 meals for families this Thanksgiving. Amanda Nightingale and Marc Quesada are in charge the Active Water campaign and Lacey Namoa is in charge of the Thanksgiving campaign. They shared a bit about what they hope to do and ask for support last night. Both projects are now fully supported with a big group of youth on each team.

-We worshipped through song but right in the middle we read from the scriptures about the reality of sin and the truth that Jesus Christ has defeated sin and is reconciling us to the Father. During the teaching we talked about how reconciliation is about an exchange of something valuable for something valuable. We exchange our sin (valuables) for life in Jesus Christ (has greatest value). During this time we wrote the word “SIN” on our hand. We displayed this reconciliation by using the communion elements; bread and wine. We used grapes to represent the wine. Each youth tore the bread slowly to understand what our sin did to Jesus and then we smashed the grapes in our hands to represent the blood of Jesus and how it covers over our sin. As the grape was smashed it started to erase the sin that was on our hands. So cool!

-Our d-groups focused on the story of Philemon and each person in the group had a choice of who they wanted to identify with from the story:
---Paul – who is encouraging another person of faith to participate in reconciliation
---Philemon – who is proclaiming Jesus as Lord and now must live that out in the most difficult areas of his life
---Onesimus – who is beginning his journey with Jesus and is understanding what surrender looks like, even when it is most difficult.
Each person took a slip of paper home with one the previous phrases on it.

-We are planning a “after party” after Homecoming. Details coming soon.

-Praying for all of you …

Mike