Video of the Week: John Piper, Matt Chandler, and David Platt on Social Justice and Young Evangelicals

Really, really interesting conversation among John Piper, Matt Chandler, and David Platt on social justice and younger evangelical Christians. Definitely worth ten minutes of your time, especially since teenagers (to me, at least) seem geared towards projects and movements that involve social justice.

Some questions to think about as you watch the video:

• Do you agree that social justice needs to be tied to personal evangelism?
• How can we help teenagers "be where they are" and serve, love, and share about Jesus where God has planted them?
• What role do you think social justice issues ought to play in youth ministry teaching and programming?

Social Justice and Young Evangelicals: Encouragements and Concerns from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Video of the Week: Serve Morgan Highlights

Every year or two, people from our church spend a week in a town or community near us to do as much work as possible on some homes (with some other projects thrown in) with no strings attached. This year, we hung out in Morgan, UT for a week, and over 400 people from our church spent their vacation time serving others. It's definitely one of those times that makes me super proud of The Heights Community. Here's a recap:

Serve Morgan Impact from The Heights Community on Vimeo.

You can also check out a cool time-lapse of some of the homes here and a 30-minute video on the project here.

Serve Morgan - A Weeklong Church-wide Service Project

Last week things were kind of quiet on the blog and here's why: Our church spent the week up in Morgan, UT, a town about 20 minutes away from our church. We've been doing these projects for a few years now, and every year I'm blown away at the response from our church and the relationships that are built in the communities where we serve. (You can check out posts from previous years' projects here and here.)

We'll have a highlight video ready soon, but here's a news story that a local TV station did on "Serve Morgan" last week (there's a great video of the news story that I can't embed if you follow the link):

Hundreds of volunteers from Washington Heights Church in South Ogden are giving their time and energy to bless the city of Morgan for a service project this week.

The volunteers are showing up in the truckloads. They're working on construction and demolition projects as well as painting, cleaning and helping people move.

A Very Dangerous Question

If you're like me, you like questions. And ministry leaders should be great at asking questions. When we stop asking questions--or if we stop letting others ask questions--then we and the ministries and churches we lead will become stagnant. However, there is one question that is very, very dangerous. Chances are, someone has recently asked you this questions in one form or another in the past month. On the surface, it's an innocent enough question. In fact, it's usually asked by someone in your church or ministry who has a great heart. However, this question has the ability to quietly but systematically swallow up your impact as an organization.

So, what's the question I'm talking about? Here it is: "Why don't we...?"

Yep, that's it. I bet I can guess what you're thinking. Benjer, what in the world is wrong with that question? It's harmless. It's cute. It's not even a complete sentence--you left part of it out!

Sure, it seems harmless enough, but let me show you why it's so dangerous by using an example. Imagine you're getting ready to plan your summer calendar, and someone asks you, "Why don't we take our high school students on a trip to Kenya to serve impoverished orphans next summer?" In all likelihood, the person who poses this question to you has a big heart for orphans in Kenya. This person probably even believes that such a trip is the best thing for the high schoolers in your church to do next summer. But unless this is a huge Holy Spirit moment, you probably already can come up with several legitimate answers to this person's question--reasons why you shouldn't take your high schoolers to Kenya next summer. We already have a trip in the planning stages. It would be too expensive for all but a few of our high school students. I don't think your group is ready for such a trip. Of course, the person who really wants your high school students to go to Kenya next summer will have an answer to each of your objections. And if you run out of additional objections, you just might find yourself planning a short-term mission trip to Kenya, even though you don't think it's what God is leading your high school students to do.

Infographic: The Facts on Human Trafficking

A cause that teenagers in our church have gotten behind recently is the fight against slavery and human trafficking. Unfortunately, some people have dismissed the recent interest in fighting modern-day slavery as the "cause du jour." Personally, I think a big reason human trafficking and sex trafficking have gotten so much air time recently is because for so long, we've ignored the issue, and abolitionists have opened our eyes with cold, hard facts to what we haven't wanted to see. Here's a great infographic from the Dream Center on some of the facts about modern-day slavery:

Video of the Week: END IT Movement Gives Glimpse into Sex Trafficking

This is a raw and difficult-to-watch video about an effort by END IT at the Final Four this year in Atlanta to shine a light on the reality of slavery and sex trafficking. Check it out:

Video of the Week: First World Problems (Spoken by Third World People)

This is a really clever video that reveals that most of the problems we complain about are anything but:



Hat Tip: Allison Martin

Video of the Week: Kenyan Man Uses the Internet for the First Time

Though I'm sure that Google (who produced the video) dramatized the content a bit, I still think it's a really cool story. This video tells the story of a Kenyan man who discovered how useful and valuable the Internet can be. Not only is it a cool story, but I think it could be used to illustrate two points: 1) That things we use for fun or entertainment, others in the world could use for their livelihood and well-being; and 2) Some things we just take for granted, because it's always been available at our fingertips. Here it is:

Video of the Week: Carter's Idea

A Compassion International speaker on our summer "Servant Leadership Experience" showed this video to cast a vision of helping disabled kids through Compassion International. Definitely an amazing kid and an amazing video:

Video of the Week: The Epik Project (Fighting Sex Trafficking in the U.S.)

I caught this last week from Tim Schmoyer. It's a video with an important message about the problem and causes of sex trafficking of minors in the United States, as well as something practical that can be done to help:

Video of the Week: Dan's Coffee Run

This is a really cool story of Dan Dewey (done by Starbucks and their "Everylove" campaign), who buys Starbucks for cancer patients getting treatment at a Detroit hospital every Thursday. They call it "Dan's Coffee Run" and the video is well worth your time:




Hat tip: Chad McDaniel

KONY 2012, Invisible Children's Detractors, and Loving, Christ-Centered Discernment and Disagreement

Update (3/9/12): Probably the best roundup of links I've found anywhere on KONY 2012 is at Rachel Held Evans' website, so I thought I'd point you there right at the top of this post. I'd also encourage you to read this post from missionaries who lived in Uganda for 17 years (they now serve in Kenya). I've updated the list below accordingly.

I don't usually write on this blog about issues or controversies that aren't related pretty strongly to Discipleship, or Family, or Ministry (hence the blog's name). But, I've found myself trying to catch up on this issue (The controversy surrounding Invisible Children's film about Joseph Kony, KONY 2012), and since we as a youth ministry (and probably many readers) have hosted Invisible Children at our church, I thought I'd try to help by providing a small resource page linking to pertinent news stories and sites.

Before we get to that, let me first say that I'm posting this before I've come to any sort of a conclusion about KONY 2012 or Invisible Children. I wasn't really aware of the amount of concern that some have regarding the current KONY 2012 campaign or Invisible Children until very recently, and I haven't read or digested as much as I would like to on the issue. A friend pointed to a Facebook discussion about this "discussion" from her Twitter account, and I wasn't really too surprised about the content of the arguments. Whether western aid really helps political and social issues on the African continent are really not a new issue, and neither is the question of whether certain non-profit organizations spend their money wisely on the causes they seek to support.

What concerned me was the tenor of other Facebook conversations I perused after reading that first one. I don't spend much time on Facebook, so I saw pretty quickly that I'm a bit late to the game regarding KONY 2012, since many people were promoting the film by posting links on their wall or by changing their profile pictures. I also saw there are a small, but vocal number of people concerned about the film. And I was disappointed that a couple of the conversations have simply deteriorated into an online shouting match. Searching a few blogs, I found the same result.

News Story from West Virginia: Local Youth Group Participates in "30 Hour Famine"

I don't remember how I came across this, but I thought I'd share it, because I never get tired of seeing teenagers and youth ministries make the news for this sort of thing:

Martin Luther King Jr. I have a Dream Speech (Video)

In honor of today's holiday:



"But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." -Amos 5:24

Video of the Week: CNN Story on the Passion Conference and Ending Slavery

Pretty amazing this made it on CNN:

Great Post By a Missionary Friend: "The One Percent and Me"

Please head over to Aspen Leaves to Acacia Trees to read a great, thought-provoking post from my friend Jim, a missionary in Kenya. He's got a great perspective on the "Occupy" movement here in the U.S. and wealth distribution. While you're there, I recommend you poke around their blog for a few minutes, and perhaps even consider supporting them financially; they're looking to make up about $250 a month in support.

Here's an excerpt:

My parents visited last month and we celebrated an early Christmas with them - ham, cranberry sauce and all. After eating, I took some of the traditional meal to our yard-worker, Edward. He had a great time trying all the foods. He really liked cranberry sauce, enjoyed the ham. His favorite part was the stuffing; he didn't care for the olives. NONE of it was familiar to him. After he'd eaten it and had seconds of the stuffing and that precious cranberry sauce he asked, "You eat like this every Christmas?"

"Yep." I couldn't admit to him that I would have normally eaten twice the amount he'd just had OR that we'd had a meal like that only a month ago when we celebrated Thanksgiving or that we'd probably do it all over again when Easter came around.

Sermon: Do For the Least of These

Our senior pastor Roy gave a great sermon yesterday on Matthew 25:31-46, "Do For the Least of These." Take about 25 minutes and watch it all:



One cool opportunity Roy gave at the end of the sermon was for people to purchase tickets for homeless folks and others in need in our area to attend our annual Christmas Theater program this week. After all, how silly is it to have a great theater program and a nice dinner, but only let people come who can afford it?

Video of the Week: Advent Conspiracy

During Advent, our junior and senior high group is doing the Advent Conspiracy. I'm pretty excited about it and encourage you to check it out. Here's a great promo video that's from a couple of years ago, but very powerful:

Video of the Week: Two High School Students Make a Difference

We showed this video last Sunday as part of our One Meal One Day wrap-up:

Ten Things You Can Do Without A Building

1) Gather in a park for worship (unless you are a Christian in one of several countries where that's illegal, in which case having a building is probably pretty low on your list of priorities).

2) Support a missionary as a church. Or two. Or several.

3) Pray daily for the missionaries you support.

4) Sponsor a Compassion child. Ask the children and teenagers in your church to help sponsor the child and write letters.

5) Host a Bible study in your home.