Biblical Perspective on Human Trafficking

Crossroads is hosting an ant-human trafficking event in the month of May. Some representatives from Oasis USA will be there to help us understand the issues and we'll also look at what the Bible has to say to us about this. We'll start at 11am on each Sunday in May and go until 12:15 or so. We'll be in the Rose Room on Lake Avenue Church's campus (that's Family Life room 202). Even if you aren't a part of Lake Ave we'd love to have you come and learn about this important issue!

Here's the link to the facebook event we created for this: https://www.facebook.com/events/523184667727474/

Holy Week

This week we'll join with Christians around the world as we commemorate Holy Week.

My challenge is short and sweet -- spend some time this week reading about Jesus' last week.  What did he do?  What did he talk about?  What do these things tell us about him and what he was all about?  What does any of this mean for us?

See all of you soon!  Some at our Maundy Thursday service, some at the Good Friday service, and hopefully most of you at our Easter Service (don't forget to meet at 10:30 at the kiosk!).

Matt<><

What's Up With Faith?

It's been a long, long, long time since we've updated this blog.  Sorry!  Better late than never, right?  Well, that remains to be seen...but thanks for reading this anyway!

In Crossroads we are in the beginning of a new series about the word "faith" in the New Testament.  We have seen that the English words "faith," "belief," and "trust" all come from the same Greek word.  And, in my opinion at least, "trust" is almost always the best option.

We're going to see that the faith that is found in the New Testament has more to do with following Jesus than it does with things that we merely affirm in our heads.  Faith is proactive.  Faith requires intentionality.  Faith doesn't require good works but it always inspires them.  Real faith is always lived out.

So, as we go through this series together, our prayer will be like the words found in Mark 9.24 -- "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"

See you soon!

Matt<><

Suffering -- Personal Spiritual Growth

Here's a version of my notes from Sunday. Enjoy!

We are continuing our series on personal spiritual growth. Last week Morgan lead our discussion about following Jesus, specifically with regard to how others affected how you followed Jesus. This week we’ll be talking about the road bumps that are bound to happen when following Jesus, namely suffering. When we suffer it tends to get in the way of our personal spiritual growth…why do you think this is? What about suffering knocks us off the path of following Jesus? Hopefully today we will learn about suffering and how to respond to it as Christians.

Why are we surprised? 1 Peter 4.12-13 “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” The point seems to be that suffering and being a Christian go hand in hand. Why do you think it is that being a Christian and suffering seem to always go together? Because the world hates us… John 15.18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” 1 John 3.13 “Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you.” How can the world hating us lead to suffering? What about in the West where Christianity is much more accepted? Because God uses suffering and pain to discipline us… Hebrews 12.7 “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?” (Reminds me of C.S. Lewis quote (From [Problem of Pain] – “Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”) Have you found this to be true in your life? Why do you think God has to communicate to us in this way? Because we learn and grow through suffering… Romans 5.3-4 “Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” Do you think that we can get in the way of this learning process when we suffer?

So how can we cope with suffering? 1. We can rest assured in the fact that we aren’t alone…Jesus suffered, every other human has suffered too, and Christians in particular suffer. Does it really make it easier to know that you aren’t being singled out? Why? 2. We can remember that our suffering is temporary. Romans 8.18 “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” Can this idea of future glory really help us cope now? 3. We can comfort one another when we suffer. 2 Corinthians 1.3-5 “Give praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He is the Father who gives tender love. All comfort comes from him. He comforts us in all our troubles. Now we can comfort others when they are in trouble. We ourselves have received comfort from God. We share the sufferings of Christ. We also share his comfort.” What will it take for this kind of shared comfort and suffering to become a reality in a community like ours? Any other ways that we can cope with suffering?

Here’s the big point: Suffering is a normal part of following Jesus. We have a choice when we suffer: we can let it get in the way of our personal spiritual growth or we can allow God to use it for its designed purpose. And if we keep things in perspective and help one another, we can better cope with suffering! (Note: no one is saying that we should go out looking for new ways to suffer!)

Take Away: If you find yourself suffering in anyway, try to view it as an opportunity to grow in your relationship with Christ!

New Study

On October 18th we'll be beginning a new study on 1 John. This is exciting to me because I love 1 John! It covers the "Christianity 101" stuff while also delving deeply into what it means to be a follower of Christ. I hope you can be a part of our study!

Come check us out at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, California. We are on Lake's campus in the building called Ortland Hall and we are in room 205. For a map of the church's campus, click here.

God bless!

More Studying the Bible

Before I post a rundown from last Sunday I would just like to say a few things about the purpose of this series. You may have been in attendance last week and thought, "There's no way in the world that I have time, energy, or interest to do what Matt is talking about!" You're right! I don't either! This method of studying the Bible that we have been talking about isn't something that you have to do everyday or even every week (unless you teach a class of interested people like you all!). Also, this method isn't intended to demean or replace reading your Bible devotionally. Instead, studying the Bible in this way is useful for us to know whenever we are curious about something that we read in our quiet times or heard in a sermon. If you are leading a Bible study sometime, following these steps could be helpful for you. And while it may seem time consuming, in practice this won't take you very long if you have the resources at hand (which I assume you do since you are reading this on the internet right now and some of the sources we talked about are online!). So while some of you might have found the last two Sundays a bit daunting, don't worry. No one is asking you to do this all the time! Nope, instead it's just another tool to have in your Batman utility belt so that you can know Scripture better!

Okay, so here's the quick rundown:

After completing the quick and slow readings, you would start by thinking about concentric circles. First, how does your passage fit with those around it? How does it fit in the book that its in? How does it fit with the rest of the NT or OT? How does it fit with the Bible as a whole? These are questions that you can answer on your own. You don't have to read all of John if you are interested in the Miracle at Cana, but you can skim it! The same goes for the NT/OT and the Bible circles. The idea here is to get a hold on how your passage fits with the rest of Scripture.

Next you will whip out your helps (study Bible notes, one-volume commentary, online commentaries, etc). But before starting to read, re-read your notes that you have made so far. This will help you remember what to be on the lookout for when you peruse your helps. Here are some common things that your helps will show you: historical context (who wrote your text, when, why, to whom, what the cultural situation was like, etc), the definitions of important words in your passage, connections with the immediate and wider contexts, how non-biblical stuff might shed some light on your passage, other points of view, and, if your interest has been piqued, other places to find more information.

Here are a few sources that might help you out in this process: How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (introduction into studying the Bible by two excellent believing scholars), HarperCollins Bible Commentary (a little left of center), Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible (centrist), Baker Commentary on the Bible (right of center), Oxford Annotated Bible (left of center), NIV Study Bible (right of center, NASB Study Bible has the same notes), SonicLight.org study notes (really conservative), NTGateway.com (collection of links), OTGateway.com (collection of links), iTanakh.org (collection of links for OT), BibleMap.org (helps with geography), BibleGateway.com (concordance and loads of other stuff too), Google Books, Fuller's bookstore, and Archives Bookshop.

I hope this is helpful!

Studying the Bible

As requested, here is an overview of what we talked about on Sunday regarding studying Scripture:

Materials needed: 1) A Bible translated into your "heart" language; regarding English translations, I prefer the NIV or the NRSV but the NKJV, NLT, NASB, and ESV are all good too (as are many others); the question to ask yourself is this: Do I prefer translation that are word-for-word, thought-for-thought, or some combination of the two?; Don't just buy the one that looks cool, do a bit of research first!; 2) pen and paper (or your computer); 3) a concordance (or and internet connection hooked up to biblegateway.com); and 4) a one-volume commentary of the Bible (or an internet connection that will give you access to solid information [more on this in the coming weeks]) and/or a Bible with study notes

First Step - Pray: Ask the Holy Spirit to be with you as you study God's Word.

Second Step - Choose a Passage: We talked about how this can happen organically, that is, during your devotional Bible reading you may find a passage that you find interesting or confusing; make a note of it so that you can study it later; and by "passage" I mean a paragraph or a story, not (necessarily) one verse or one word

Third Step - Read the Passage Quickly: Read your text quickly out loud and ask yourself this: What is this passage about? Write down your answer(s). Don't use any helps yet.

Fourth Step - Read the Passage Slowly: Now look at your text in more detail (which may meant that you need to read many times) and ask yourself these questions: Is there anything that I find confusing?, What transition words (therefore, thus, moreover, etc) are being used in this passage?, What are the keywords (words that are used a lot or that are especially meaningful to your passage)?, Does this text bring up any questions for me?, and What genre (poetry, narrative, letter, etc) is this text? Write down your questions and any possible answers that you can think of during this step. Don't use any helps yet.

Next week we'll talk about the next steps, some of which will may require the use of outside helps. I'll also be providing some book suggestions and internet links to things that might prove to be helpful.

God bless!

Oh, I almost forgot. Next week (9/13) is not the last week that we'll be talking about this. We'll also discuss it the following week (9/20) and we'll practice on a few passages. The last Sunday in September, the 27th, we'll have the "State of Crossroads" meeting where we'll hopefully introduce our new leadership team, talk about the past year, and discuss plans going forward. Thanks!

One of the Most Famous Speeches in US History

Here it is! Enjoy!

Friends

This week we will talk about honoring God in our relationships with our friends.

Here are a few things that may get your mental wheels turning this week:

1. Who is your best friend(s)? What makes them so great?

2. Think of someone that became your friend very quickly. What about them allowed that to happen? What about you helped that process?

3. What do you think it means to be a good friend?

4. What sort of things hurt friendships? I'm sure we've all had friendships that have soured - why? What happened?

5. How can God use our friendships? How can he use our friends in our lives and how can he use us in our friends' lives?

Hopefully that is enough to get you thinking. I guess we'll see on Sunday!

Family

This past week we talked about how we relate to our families. We covered a whole bunch of ground and did so way too quickly. So first of all, apologies to those who wanted to share but were unable to due to us having to move along. But that is the purpose of this blog - for us to share the things that we didn't or were unable to on Sunday.

Second, I realized after the fact (thanks in part to a discussion with Alida) that our relationships with our parents (or guardian figures) and our siblings are very different from one another and that we did a disservice to both by squishing them together. So since we couldn't cover all the ground we wanted to and since we dealt primarily with two kinds of very different relationships, a few questions/comments remain.

1. How does power play into our relationship with our parents? What happens when that power that our parents have over us lessens as we get older?

2. We didn't get to talk about the middle/oldest/youngest dynamic with regard to siblings and parents. How does birth order affect our relationship with our siblings and our parents? How did you view your siblings in reference to birth order?

3. What about the few that may be only children - what is that dynamic like? Is leaving the nest harder for only children than for others?

4. This is the most important question that we left undone: How much sway should your family hold over you as an adult? How much is too much and how much is too little? How can you tell?

5. A few people noted that we didn't talk about relating to family members who don't believe in the Lord. I purposefully left that issue to one side since I plan on speaking about it in a future lesson.

So what do you think about these questions/comments? Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

Co-Workers and Family

Hey guys and gals,

Last week we talked about honoring God in our relationships at work. In class it was mentioned that not everyone is equally valuable, specifically that some people do and say things that are not of value. What should we do then? Well I think a starting place might be that everyone is valuable in a certain respect, namely that they are a person. God created them and made them in his image, even if they are distorting that image with their actions and words. However, we don't have to value the things that people do. I want to get at this problem from a different angle though and to do so I have to ask a question: How do we value people as human beings when we don't value their words and actions?

So far we have talked about strangers and then about co-workers. My intention was to continue each week by discussing a more intimate relationship than the last. This week I was stuck with a bit of a conundrum - should we talk about our relationship with our friends or our families? One person may be closer to their friends than their family and the next person vice versa. So I flipped a coin and family won. Therefore this week we will discuss honoring God in our families. I want to explore honoring our parents as adults (what about dishonorable parents?), our relationships with our siblings (if we have them), the patterns in which we are often stuck in our families, etc. So be thinking about your relationships to your family members. How can you honor God in those relationships?

Hospitality

Last week in Crossroads we talked about our relationships with strangers or people whom we don't know very well. A major part of our discussion focused on the notion of hospitality, so I wanted to clarify what exactly I meant during class.

Often in today's Church when we think of hospitality we think of people, usually women, who like and are good at hosting events, providing food for Church activities, etc. These things are part of being hospitable, but they do not exhaust all of what it means to exhibit hospitality.

Two quick things: 1) Every Christian is called to be hospitable. "Hospitality" does not appear in any of the lists of spiritual gifts (Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4) and all Christians are commanded to practice hospitality (Romans 12.13). I only say this because I fear that some of us, myself included, try to get out of things by saying "I'm not gifted that way." Well, we certainly can't say that about hospitality - it is not considered a spiritual gift in the New Testament and we are all commanded to be hospitable. We are not off the hook! 2) The word for hospitality in the New Testament is philoxenia, which is a combination of of two Greek root words - philos and xenos. Philos means love (as in Philadelphia - city of brotherly love) and xenos means strangers or others (as in xenophobia - fear of others). In other words, we are to have love for others around us. Let me be clear that Scripture teaches that this does not just apply to those whom we host at our homes or at a party or for whom we provide food at Church. No, we are instructed to love others, all of them, no matter where or when. That is a challenging message if I ever heard one!

This next week we'll be talking about our relationships at work and/or school. So it is my hope that you'll spend some time thinking about how these sorts of relationships faired for you this week. Were there any tensions? Were there some opportunities in which you honored God? Please be prepared to share as you feel comfortable.

I look forward to seeing all of you Sunday morning at 9:15!

Follow-Up from Sunday

By popular demand I am writing a short blog to ask a few simple questions.

Can you think of more TV shows, movies, books, etc that focus on human relationships? How are these relationships portrayed? Are parts of their portrayals redeemable?

The Real Jesus

Hello all. It's been awhile since we've had a new post here so I thought I would put something forward and see if I got any bites. Something I've been thinking about lately is "The Real Jesus". I have been reading in John and looking at exactly who Jesus said he is, what his disciples experience of Jesus was and what the people's experience was who came into contact with him. It has made me think of my personal experience of who Jesus is and think of the Jesus that has been presented to me throughout my upbringing and the Jesus that my past churches and our current church talks about. My thought and main question has become whether or not the Jesus I know is the Jesus that his disciples experienced, that those in the house churches in China experience, that the poor experienced, that the blind man in Jerusalem experienced. The things I'm discovering some exciting truths, and some difficult truths. It's a real challenge though. I'd like to hear the thoughts of anyone who reads this. Let it out!

--ADam--

Spiritual Gifts

This week we discussed 1 Corinthians 12-13 in class. Next week we'll be talking about 1 Corinthians 14. These three chapters deal with the issue of spiritual gifts in the life of the church...yes, even 1 Corinthians 13, the "love chapter"! Here is a quick rundown of what we talked about last week: Spiritual gifts are given by God to use for the benefit of the body of Christ and the motivation for the use of spiritual gifts should always be love.

However, we also talked quite a bit about how to determine the spiritual gifts God has given us. We admitted that spiritual gift inventories, while helpful in some ways, are not the best way of figuring out how God wants to use us in the church. Instead, a better way might be to simply start serving the church in whatever ways that we can and God will show us what our gifting is.

So what do you think about that? Is going and doing a good way of determining your gift(s)? What are yours, at least as you see them now, and how did you determine that?

See you guys Sunday!

Grace and peace

For Your Pondering...

This past week we talked about 1 Cor 10-11.16. We focused primarily on two things: 1) We need to be wary of how we are entangled with the world because being improperly connected to the "idols" out there can make us look bad in non-Christians' eyes and can hurt the unity that we share with one another; and 2) When we worship we should do so in ways which are appropriate (especially when leading) because we don't want to hinder the Gospel.

So what do you think?

Are there still idols in our world and are they empowered by evil forces as Paul says the ones in his world were? So what are some of these idols and how can we avoid them?

And (this one can just be rhetorical if you'd like!) are there ways in which you have distracted attention away from the Gospel? I'm sure that we all have at some point. So the question remains: what can we do as a faith community to help one another ensure that the Gospel is unhindered?

Don't forget that this Sunday Andrew will be leading us in a fun review of what we have talked about so far. So if you'd like read (or skim!) 1 Corinthians 1-11.16.

Grace and peace.

Crossroads Halloween Party!

We here at Crossroads had a great Halloween party on the 31st and so we thought that we should share some of the pics from the party. So, here are the pictures!



Alyssa (as a substitute teacher), Ginger (as a Hershey's kiss), and Alida (as a crayon) pretending to be scared of Amy W. (as a devil)!









Matt (as a crayon), Andrew (as an 80's tennis player...nice legs!), and Joe D. (as Babe Ruth) striking a pose!







Joe S. and Sarah (as boxers) getting ready to settle things like men!











And the real star or the party, the Sarah Palin pumpkin, carved in tag-team fashion by Joe D. and Ginger! Great job guys!























Aren't we a great looking group?!?

Thanks to everyone for coming to this event! Thanks to everyone for dressing up and making it a blast for all of us! Thanks to you for checking out this post! And a very special thanks to our beloved Cereal Killer, Hai, for hosting!

Amy's first post

Hi~ Happy Monday.
This is my first post...kind of intimidating because I feel like it should be something extra special. BUT rather than wait for something extra special to pop into my head (at the risk of having that never happen), I figured I'd just pop in and at least write something!!
If you are wondering what we do at Crossroads, its quite simple. We meet every Sunday (like Matt below said) and usually go through part of a series. Its great because its like a sermon, except you can have input and ask questions! Currently we are studying 1 Corinthians. Can I just say how great it is to have a PhD student going through that with us because it is one tough book!
Another one of the Crossroad's favorites is snack/social time. After worship, prayer, and announcements...we all run over to the back where there are snacks (usually some delectable high calorie dish), coffee, tea, and lemonade. We try to briefly catch up on each others' work week.

Overall its a good group...you should come try! (oh and if you already go to Crossroads, this may have been a boring post...so now its your turn to write something more interesting!! ).
What did you all think about the sermon on Sunday? Any lifestyle changes you are going to be trying to make?

OH I thought also, if someone has a prayer request that you feel comfortable writing on the blog, this could be a good place to share it and if we check it midweek we can all be praying for you during the week.

Welcome to the Crossroads Blog!

Hi and welcome!

This is the "official" blog for the Crossroads class at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, CA. Crossroads is community of young adults who focus on personal spiritual growth - through social and service events, small groups, and in-depth Bible study. One way that we hope to live into that description of our class is by remaining in contact with one another throughout our hectic weeks. Our hope is that by building community -- even online community -- we can better live out the Gospel of Jesus Christ with one another and with those outside our community.

So here on this blog we hope to post follow-up questions from the previous Sunday's lesson in Crossroads (which just so happens to meet at 11:00 AM on Sundays in Ortland Hall, room 205), pictures from our events, announcements of things that are coming up on the calendar, and whatever else comes to mind.  We also have mid-week Bible studies as well.

So if you are a member of Crossroads, thanks for stopping by! Let us know you were here by leaving a comment! But if you are not a member of Crossroads, thanks for checking us out! We'd be happy to dialogue with you too!

Grace and peace.