Summer Part 2

www.myspace.com/joliebritt

First song: Written after a tough end to the year, I'm writing about my support system at school, but also about a hope for something better. A song about decisions, with a promise of support no matter how things go.

Second song: Written last year for a best friends 20th birthday. It's probably going to be rerecorded and rewritten for a more universal story.

Hope you enjoy. New songs, including the one in the previous post to be posted as soon as my computer stops being stupid.

My Spring and Summer Part 1

We are climbing Jacob's stairway
Where the angels of God are arranging,
While at the top that touches heaven,
Stands a God who is I AM and always,
And as He looks down He will tell us
Of a promise that will move us
To compassion, to repentence,
Where His loving presence and joy abounds.

Here we stand at the gate of heaven
So unworthy of His call.
He is sending us so broken
To reveal His covenant to all.

We are sitting by Jacob's river
Wrestling with a Man whose glory
Cripples us as a reminder
That only by His grace we stand.
As we wrestle He will change our
Name from liar into fighter,
And in the struggle, He reveals His
Face to us who wander on.

Here we stand at the gate of heaven
So unworthy of His call.
He is sending us so broken
To reveal His covenant to all.

We have laid our alters down.

What do you want to do with your life? (that's funnier if you have seen the You-Tube video shoes)

So after months of being busy with school, I'm back to the world of blog. I haven't done this for a while, but bear with me. I will try to make my return an enjoyable one.

The Prologue: So much has happened in this first semester of my sophomore year. But one specific conversation comes to mind. I sat in the office with my Paul and The Early Church professor Dr. Thompson, and we were trying to figure out what I could do to fulfill my honors contract in this course. Fresh off my reading from the summer, I tried to sound smart as I threw out words like postmodernism and the emerging church. I came in to him thinking I could write a research paper about the writings of Paul and how it relates to the "emerging church" and the thoughts of authors like John Piper, Mark Driscoll, and Brian McLaren. However, my professor could see right through me. He asked me to journal throughout the semester about how I would start a minstry or church right now. Where would I start it? What would I do with it? How would I contribute to the community around me? How would I involve some of my own interests in the ministry? I smiled, because I have thought about this before. While the journaling has not worked out as well as it should have, I have been thinking about it all semester. So here are a few of my ideas.

The Idea: When I grow up, (I'm nineteen years old, so hopefully that won't be happening for a while) I want to be a doctor. I have known this for years. I like science and math, and I want to help people. I want to be financially stable and be in a professional position where I can have influence within the community that I live. I have known this for a while. I have had quarter-life crises where I have thought maybe I'll go into the music business, or maybe I'll be a lawyer, or maybe I'll be a missionary, or maybe I'll be a teacher, yet I always arrive back at Nah, I want to be a doctor. I'm going to be a doctor.

I have had the opportunity to grow up around sports. I love the competition and the wonderful life lessons they teach. During my high school career it seemed as if the place that I was able to invest in people most was on my sports teams. We practiced together, traveled together, and trusted each other. I was able to help people through their struggles and see them mature along the way. Paul uses athletic imagery often when he writes letters to his churches telling them to train and run the race marked out for them. It helped me to have a better understanding of the Christian walk. Discipline is important, but so is creativity. Sport is the perfect melding of rules and art. You have to learn the proper technique to shoot a basketball, but the way you use this skill in a game is a creative spontaneous experssion of that skill. Most good coaches also teach that character is built through discipline and competion. I want to be around athletes, so I have decided to pursue a carreer in orthopedic surgery specializing in sports medicine. Hopefully, I will be able to help young athletes pursue their potential despite injury and adversity.

Now, I also have a third passion that makes all of this worthwhile to me. The summer before I came to school, I worked at my church's recreational facility The CUBE. I worked a concession stand, hung out with people, and got to watch people play basketball a lot. Council Road Baptist Church is interesting in that it is a large church that attracts people from many different socioeconomic backgrounds. Some of the richest people in Oklahoma City attend CRBC while some of the poorest attend there as well. A lot of the people who came into The CUBE's doors while I worked, were from a completely different background. They were mostly inner-city urban teenagers or men. Being the most suburban upper middle class girl around, I thought I would have trouble relating. It turns out, I loved every minute of it. I was able to relate to people from a totally different background. A 16-year-old yound man cried on my last day. Part of my job during the summer was to pick this boy up from the gym where he worked out: Athletes in Progress. I would pick him up around lunch time. We would listen to music on the way back to The CUBE. We would talk about basketball, college, and his dreams, and then he would play for the rest of the afternoon. It was my favorite part of the job. He was an onery guy. If a grown man told him what to do, he might have an attitude, but if I ever said anything, he would stop breaking the particular rule he was breaking that day.

Needless to say I have developed a passion for inner city kids because of experiences like these. So how can I combine my passion for medicine, athletics, and the inner city and make it into something that will help the communtiy I am in and have some sort of ministry potential?

After I set up practice in Oklahoma City, I would like to start up a sports-specific training facility in the inner city. I would like to offer low-cost quality athletic training with a purpose. I would also have rehab facilities, and would offer to help any member with surgeries they might need. Using this facility I would be able to reach kids who have a passion for athletics but don't often get to see their talent capitalized because of lack of discipline or lack of equipment and funds. At this facility I would teach character values every week, and along with physical workouts, the athletes would have character workouts as well. They would have to complete certain tasks to remain a member of the facility. Once the staff got to know the kids better, we would start giving the specific responsibilities within the facility itself. They would have to realize that in order for their community to keep going each individual would have to contribute or the community would fall apart. This would mirror how Paul hoped the church would work: as a community pursuing the purpose of glorifying God and enjoying him forever.

I would also have Bible Studies to target specific ages and genders throughout the week. These Bible Studies would really function as small groups where these athletes could start living life together, and hopefully where they would really start caring for each other. Athletes from rival schools would be in the same small group and forced to care about each other. Hopefully, these small groups would be places where the gospel could be shared in a way that is relatable and relevant to these inner-city athletes. I would encourage them to live a life worthy of the calling of God. I would encourage them to get involved in a local body of believers.

Now obviously, I realize that all of this sounds kind of optimistic, but it's my dream, so I can be as optimistic as I want. But really it is the best I can do. While I realize that nothing runs as smoothly as we dream it will, I hope to be able to work through the problems that will eventually arise, and pursue the goal of loving these athletes and helping them in their training for following Christ and for their athletic pursuits. Let me know what you think. Any problems or suggestions you might have, etc.

"I want to know one thing, the way to heaven: how to land safe on that happy shore."

"I meditate theron [Scripture], with all the attention and earnestness of which my mind is capable. If any doubt sill remains, I consult those who are experienced in the things of God; and then, the writings whereby, being dead, they yet speak. And what I thus learn, that I teach."
-John Wesley

I have come to love this man. Over the past few months I have been reading selections of Wesley as a pre-quiet time ritual if you will. It has been incredible. His writing is very lyrical and God-centered, so of course, I like it. I cannot pretend to know everything about him, but I do know that Wesley was the father of the Methodist Church movement. From his writings, he seems to be an incredible man of God, so I'll just let him speak for himself.

"If we consider boundless space, or boudless duration, we shrink inot nothing before it. But God is not a man. A day, and millions of ages, are the same with him. Therefore, there si the same disproportion between him and any finite being, as between him and the creature of a day. Therefore, whenever that thought recurs, whenever you are tempted to fear lest you should be forgotten before the immense, the eternal GOd, remember that nothing is little or great, that no duration is long or short, before him. "

"Surely you did not imagine that Christianity was no more than such a system of opinions as is vulgarly called faith; or a strict and regular attendance on any kind of external worship. O no! Were this all that it implied, Christianity were indeed a poor, empty, shallow thing; such as none but half-thinkers could admire, and all who think freely and generously must despise."

"Let your religion be the religion of the heart."

"So that the end of your praying is not to inform God, as though he knew not your wants already; but rather to inform yourselvs; to fix the sense of those wants more deeply in your hearts, and the sense of your continual dependence on him, who only is able to supply all your wants. It is not so much to move God, who is always more ready to give than you ask, as to move yourselves, that you may be willing and ready to receive the good things he has prepared for you."

"In love over all things--of the dead and the absent speaking nothing but good; believe all things which may any way tend to clear you neighbor's character; hope all things, in his favor; and endure all things triumphing over all opposition: for true love never faileth, in time or in eternity."

"Let but the eye of the sould be constantly fixed, not on the things which are temporal, but on those which are eternal, and our affections are more and more loosened from earth, and fixed on things above."

"Let love not visit you as a transient guest, but be the constant temper of your soul. See that your heart be filled at all times, and on al ocasions, with real, undissembled benevolence; not to those only that love you, but to every soul of man. Let it pant in your heart; let it sparkle in your eyes; let it shine on all your actions. Whenever you open your lips, let it be with love; and let there be in your tongue the law of kindness. Your word will then distill as the rain, and as the dew upon the tender herb. Be not straitened or limited in your affection, but let it embrace every child of man. Everyone born of a woman has a claim to your goodwill. You owe this, not to some, but to all. And let all men know that you desire both their temporal and eternal happiness, as sincerely as you do your own."

And my favorite:

"Religion does not consist in negatives, in bare harmlessness of any kind; nor merely in externals, in doing good, or using the means of grace, in works of piety (so-called) or of charity. It is nothing short of, or different from "the mind that was in Christ"; the image of God stamped upon the heart; inward righteousness, atteneded with the peace of God; and "joy in the Holy Ghost."

I think he sounds a lot like Piper.

My sister is playing high school summer basketball now. I'm a little sad that I can't play with her. But I'm pretty freaking proud. I wanted the blogging community to know.

The most girly things that will ever come out of my computer

So, I finished two books last week. The first was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the second The John Wesley Reader. It was enjoyable, and I suppose I will reflect on the former now.

I loved reading Pride and Prejudice. It is beautifully written, and makes me want to talk in a British accent all of the time. Beyond that, I think that it is a beautiful story. A man, Mr. Darcy, too blinded by his pride to think anything of lower society, and a woman, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, too blinded by prejudice to give higher society a chance. She is independent, lively, and fun; he is docile, impolite, but loyal. It is interesting to me that this woman makes him fall apart. He falls for her, works for her, becomes aggresive for her. And when this happens, her prejudices are proven wrong. It is a classic. That's really all I can say about it. I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages.

"Pride," said Mary , who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, "is a very common failing I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or the other, real or imaginary. vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A peron may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."

Elizabeth speaking:
"There are few people whom I really love, and fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, th emore am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense"

Elisabeth when she realizes that she loves Mr. Darcy:
For herself, she was humbled; but she was proud of him. Proud that in a cause of compassion and honour he had been able to get the better of himself.

Here's to the most girly post I will ever write. Next time I'll write about Wesley. Don't worry.

Internet Church: "Clicking onto God"

Ok, so I'll admit it. I love the internet. It is a wonderful invention (though I doubt it can be accredited to our former Vice President...cough...), that has opened the whole world to communication and exchange of ideas. It has improved our lives enormously with respect to the amount of time it takes to get information. However, there are disadvantages. So many people spend so much time on it (I am guilty), that normal relationships with family and friends are hindered. So here's my question: how far is too far?

The Internet is easily used to communicate the gospel to people across the nation. Websites for pastors, youth minsters, and young Christians have helped to communiate ideas about ministry, doctrinal study, and programming ideas. More personally, it has helped pastors of their churches to communicate with their churches about their own spiritual journeys. It has helped IMF trustees to communicate with their churches over their thoughts over the latest debate over private prayer languages and baptism (I'm not actually an expert on the debate. My dad just tries to explain it to me.) Blogs like this one help to communicate where the Church might be going. But, when do we cross the line?

Recently (Mom's Day at Oklahoma State) I went to church at a Stillwater campus of a regional megachurch. Upon their first announcement, my mother and I were informed that the church had just started their first internet campus last week and "24 people came to Christ over the internet". Hmmm. I was trying to figure this out. I wondered: does God have a screenname? A computer in the sky that allows us to shoot Him an instant message over AIM to let Him know what is going on in our lives? Then I asked rather ridiculous questions like: Does God ever have a power surge when lightning strikes His computer? Does He get viruses too? I'm sorry, that's bordering on sacrilegious. But most of you that read this know that I am a very ornery person, so you will forgive me.

I just watched a news story on the internet campus. I was impressed with how they did it. The lights they used, the clothes and the fashion of the twenty something pastor were good looking, and the technology they used was impressive. All in all, a great production. I don't know who wouldn't want to come to Christ after watching a show like that.

Here's the deal. I don't want to diminish any of the work that this church has done. It is an incredible church, that I think really does try to serve God. They reach people that regular church finds it hard to reach. They are passionate about spreading the gospel. Sometimes, however, I feel they extend grace so much that they cheapen the spiritual community that comes with being a part of the CHURCH. I attended the church whenever I was in Stillwater on Sundays and let me tell you the reasons why:
1) The music is excellent and well produced as compared to those surrounding Stillwater churches.
2) The videos were visually appealing.
3) The speaking was good, sometimes challenging, but nothing I hadn't yet heard before.
4) I could get out by 11 so I could get a quick bight to eat before doing my laundry and studying.

I see the advantages of this internet "church". Missionaries an be involved with a church in the states (although, most would be serving in their own churches which would relate to the people group they are trying to reach). Soldiers overseas can listen to messages. Business people could log on from anywhere in the world while they travel. Lazy college students that don't want to get up and get dressed can watch from their dorm rooms. College students leaving for the summer can stay involved in their chruch where they go to school. By some miracle of God (seriously), someone could google it who has never heard the gospel before and end up giving their life to Christ. We have a big God, and there is no doubt He could use the internet to communicate the gospel in a relevant way to someone who needed to hear it. However, how do we judge (not that we really can) if these conversions are true life changing conversions?

However, is spiritual community sustainable in an online church? Is accountability possible? Is growth sustainable? I don't know. I have mixed feelings.

Part of me wants to say this is a revolutionary way to do church. However the conservative critic in me says, ehhh I don't think so. I feel as if church has been cheapened by paying too much attention to our consumer culture. A conversion doesn't get much quicker or easier or cheaper than over a cable internet modem. The onery part of me wants to click and tell them that I accepted Christ for the first time, just to give them a little boost in numbers.

I've talked to a lot of people about this. I realize that using any means to reach your culture is important, and engaging culture is a pivotal part of ministry. But here's what it comes down to. When did attracting people to church become about the music, the clothes, the lights, the preaching, the free doughnuts, the free sprite and dr. pepper and the worship notes with scriptures so you didn't even have to break open God's word and taste of the true spiritual food? When did it stop being about loving and accepting people as they are, sinners broken like us? As an artist, I do believe that presentation and production are important if you are going to do that sort of thing. But presentation and production does not equal CHURCH. It is part of glorifying God with all we have, but is not the root of our attractiveness as a body. I'm convinced that people will want to stay in a church even if the music is horrible and the preacher studders, if they feel loved by someone. I feel sometimes all of this production makes members of our churches lazy. They sit and say "FEED ME. Give me your good stuff. I'll tell you what I think about it after the service." Shouldn't we be challenging members to attract people by our love instead of how easy this Christian life is? That is not my gospel. That is not my faith. My faith says to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose" (Phlippians 2:12b-13) It does not say click a mouse, and everything will be okie dokie.

The fact is God brings people to Him for His glory. I wish we would just get out of the way.

Home

I am home. I have left the magnificent Stillwater, and I am in my house with my family. I have finished my first year of college, and I feel old. I feel like my life has flown by at about a million miles per minute. My room is a pit, because apparantly, when you go to college you come back with three times the stuff that you left with. I am going stir crazy already because I have been in my room trying to clean, and I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. However, I am home, so it is ok.

Yesterday, I got to pick Josh (my little brother) up from school. We went to wait on my sister, and I watched him play tag with his friends. Have you ever noticed how quickly little games like this evolve? Each second there is something new going on. The "base" changed at least three times, and when fights arose about who was it, everyone screamed "not it". I wish I had realized then how beautiful life is. I think life would have been more full, vibrant, and dynamic. It hurts that only now am I looking back to see how much I took for granted. It is funny how being home gives you a longing for going back to when you took home for granted.

Tonight I went to the first graduation party of this busy year. The young man who we honored is a very special young man to all who have come in contact with him. His life screams kindness and compassion. He is loved by all and respected by many. I can only hope that one day, if God chooses to make it a part of His plan, that can marry a man like the boy we honored. However, while he is an amazing person, honoring him did not make the night for me.

I looked around the room at the people who had made an impact on his life. Most of them were the same people I would have wanted to thank. I can't find the words to express the gravity of the debt I owe to these people. They have formed the way I think. They have loved me in my darkest moments. They have kissed me and rejoiced with me in my brightest days. They have put up with me even though often times I am very difficult to get along with. They have led me. I am so underserving to have these people.

At one point in the night, the men in the room got up and prayed for this young man. While watching these incredible warriors of God stride to pray for one of the godly men of the future, I was struck by the amount of annointing that God had placed on the men in the room. But even more than that, as I prayed with the men and looked around the room, I could not help but look at all of the beautiful, pure, precious women that were there. Their countenaces give them all a sort of peace that comes with living within the role that God has placed for them.

Sometimes I act like I have it all figured out. I struggle with pride every day of my life. I say things, and I wish that I hadn't said them. It is as if I am struggling to prove myself: to show that I am worth listening to. Humility is the hardest virtue for me. I feel as though I have gotten it wrong. I am bossy, self-centered, self-serving, and far to self-righteous. I am not gentle, I am not kind, and I am not submissive. I have such a long way to go before I become like one of these women.

I think that God has mercifully witheld some things that I have desired to help me realize these things. He has given me the grace to have the desire to change. I want to learn gentleness, patience, humility, and peace. He wants me to see that I have nothing to prove, because He has finished everything already. I hope that at some point along the way, these women that I so admire have had to deal with feelings like these.

Seeing all of these amazing people who have poured out their lives for me, makes me feel at home. How wonderful the day will be when we are all in our true home worshipping the eternal King, Father, and Friend with each other.