I have been asked to present the vision of yamia to the national leaders of the Anglican Mission. This will take place early next week. Please pray. Here are a few nuggets of what I will be sharing:

-the Anglican Mission has been called by God to reach the 150 million lost non Christian folks in North America
-study after study shows that the VAST MAJORITY of people who come to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ do so before they ever step foot on a college campus
-in addition, adolescence is the main time we make the most life directing decisions
-study after study is now showing adolsecence is no longer 11-16 years old but 11-25 or so!
-therefore, the PRIMARY mission field of the Anglican Mission is adolescence aged youth
-our primary goals must be reflected in our time, talent and treasure

I will also be sharing our Soul in the City video and inviting all the clergy to send their youth leaders to Winter Conference etc...

Please be in prayer.

Chris

Labels: AMiA, Miscellaneous

It is that time of year again!

Our team of yamia youth ministers will be coming into Destin, FL for the week. It is a great group who really love the Lord and love kids. We will encourage, plan and dream together in an effort to help AMiA be known for exceptional youth ministry.

What is really cool is that we all like each other. We have a really fun time whenever we get together. With that said, that is not the coolest part. The coolest part is that when we meet we do things a lot different than most groups. We actually "press in" to God together. In fact, the whole first day we do not do much business at all, instead we pray, worship and get into the Word together.

Please pray for our time together. That we would encourage one another and that God would show us the "next steps" to help AMiA have exceptional youth ministry.

Labels: AMiA

<----------------Another Church in Circle, Montana






The Lambeth Quadrilateral....(big words...what the heck does THAT mean?)

While engaging in ecumenical dialogue the Anglican Church came up with the following four points as distinctive of Anglicanism. Here they are:

1) Nicene Creed. We are down with it. So is the Church universal. She has been down with it for a long, long time. Are you?

2) Sacraments. We believe in two. Baptism and Communion. Baptism is not a "magic wand" and Communion is not "transubstantiation" to the Anglican. More on those in another post. Are you ok with God using matter to convey grace? I really do need to do a whole separate post for this topic don't I:)

3) Episcopacy. We follow an Episcopal form of Church government. Meaning, we have bishops. We do not have a pope though. We have what is called a Collegial Episcopacy. That is, they are all equal. This is a very ancient form of government and the most widely used form (episcopacy that is).

4) Word. God's Word in Scripture is it. It is the highest level of authority. Things like tradition and reason etc are subservient to it. God's Word is God-breathed and contains everything we need for a life of faith and morals.

There you have it...the Lambeth Quadri...whatever.

I will begin to address these sort of things with a more specific light on Youth Ministry in another installment.

Are you down with these? Or at least possibly down with these? Then we need to talk....I am serious...email me.

Labels: AMiA

One of many Churches in Circle, Montana------------------>






Or more specifically, why AMiA Youth Ministry?

I think, from time to time, I will discuss this issue. But I want to hit it from a more personal side. Meaning, from my perspective instead of a lecture AT folks as to why AMiA (or YAMiA in this case). I also want to hit this thing in snippets. I do not like long treatises and I suspect you don't either.

So let's start this off right...with some Scripture.


One of the reasons for unity is witness/evangelism/etc... I am not so sure it is a good thing that there are 30,000 protestant denominations. I have a feeling this hurts the witness (the above Scripture seems to paint that picture). What does it look like to a random person to drive down a local street and see 1st Baptist Church on the right, the Presby Church on the left, the AG church on the corner, the Bible Church on the other corner, the UMC Church behind that and so on and so forth? Is there a need for all of these churches? Is there a need for all these denominations? Why are they still split? Are the reasons they started still valid?

AMiA holds some answers for us. You can be reformed, Arminian, Anglo-Catholic, evangelical or even charismatic and you are still in the fold. Yes we have our foundational things one must assent to but most people in the churches I have listed above would have very little problem with any of them. Seriously....I have asked.

Do we desire to be a part of the answer? Do we desire to make a difference? Then we all need to honestly ask ourselves, in light of the current situation in protestantism, do we want to add another denomination or do we want to shrink the number? Do we want to embrace an ecclessiology (church government) that enables us to move forward towards a solution yet keep orthodoxy?

Let me share the Anglican Basics when it comes to this sort of ecumenical dialogue in my next post.

Labels: AMiA