Other events from October
October was a packed month, apart from Meta Conference, many
things were happening all around.
City to City
I had the privilege to attend the “City to City Pastor and
Ministry Leaders Gathering” for the city of Miami. Although this was my first
time attending this event, these meetings are held twice a year with this being
the second year. It was held in the beautiful site of Crossbridge Church in
Key Biscayne. As I stood in line for registration, I was overwhelmed by the number
of pastors and ministry leaders coming together for such a gathering. It was
great to talk with those around the table and learn from different ministry
backgrounds as well as meeting leaders from various denominations here in
Miami.
The event had received a lot of attention mainly because Tim
Keller was the guest speaker. What a blessing it was to learn from him! Among
the many things he mentioned was the overarching idea of the need in unifying
churches and denominations for the sake of the gospel. Although as churches we don’t agree
on everything, we can unify among the basic things we do agree on and together
share the love of Jesus in our city.
He cited “The Great Opportunity”, an independent report
which found that every year approximately 4000 churches are planted in the US. Sadly,
3700 churches close every year. That's a small 300 churches leftover for one year. Keller also quoted a popular verse, John
17:21
“that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
I’m including the link to his talk at the bottom of this
post if you want to see more. Even today I continue to meditate on his words, his challenge to
Christians to celebrate the planting of churches near us, even if they aren’t
of our own denomination. He did a quick recap on the history of Christianity, how
it was the first religion based on faith, not culture. Division comes from the
world because it mirrors its power structures, yet unity is a direct attack to
human nature and points to a divine God.
I believe that as a collective church, we have highlighted
our differences instead of our commonalities. That was one of the
things I appreciated of my time as a student in InterVarsity, not all of us
agreed or came from the same denominations. But we held on to the things we did
agree and learned to listen to one another. With time, I came to cherish the diversity
of backgrounds each student brought to the table and see God in the
picture of us working together.
Harvest Festival
Taking a more creative turn, at my church (Riverside Baptist) we hold an annual Harvest Festival as an
alternative to Halloween. It’s always a time of great celebration, games, and
food when families around our neighborhood come and enjoy the event with us. Apart from hot dogs and fair games, the puppet show is one of the evening's highlights. This is my 3rd year as one of the puppet directors (my sister Rayen
being the other director), and I’m proud to say the puppet team nailed it!
If you’ve never seen a live puppet show before, let me tell
you, you are missing out! I joined the puppet team back when I was in 8th
grade after seeing all the fun my sister was having in each performance. Like
many teenagers, I was in an awkward stage of still developing my personality
and found myself to be quite shy. Although I really wanted to
participate, I was nervous that I would mess up or embarrass myself so I decided to volunteer for all things backstage. Soon enough I realized that the majority of puppetry
was backstage and that my identity was completed hidden from the audience. They
would never know who was talking or who was moving the puppet. I was safe.
10 years later and I still love it! I’ve seen many kids come
and go from our team, but one thing is for sure, they all overcome “stage
fright”. You might wonder, how is that possible, wouldn’t you still be afraid
if you had to act in front stage? But that’s the beauty of being in the puppet
team, we don’t just do puppets we also do drama, dance, miming, etc.
Puppets are not just fun to watch, they’re also a wonderful
outreach tool. We’ve gone to many senior homes and orphanages to show some
songs and a little dialogue. In places where “Jesus” or “Christ” cannot be
mentioned, our puppets have opened the space and shared the gospel with skits
not requiring words.
I’m leaving the link for our puppet show in the bottom if
you would like to watch. We based our show on the passage from Ezekiel when the
Spirit took him to a valley of dry bones. As we studied the passage with the team,
we tried to visualize the scene and to see ourselves in that valley. We saw ourselves
as those bones, dead and lifeless, until we hear the word of God over us. Yet
even then, we are missing life, we need God’s Spirit to live. As directors, we
encouraged the team to pray for their non-Christian friends and to invite them
to the show, because in the same way we live, we pray they too might live.
We started prepping for the show in August and would have practice
twice a week, each around 3 hours long. Although it can be hard to manage 10-year-olds
and teens, this show was the best we’ve had so far! We had a lot of drama, but
God was manifested and two of our teens decided to get baptized, praise God!
Overall, we give thanks for another opportunity to reach our community and the
team members with the gospel.
You're great writer! And I love to known how happy you are serving the Lord , with kids and youth! You have a lot of gifts!! God bless you!!
ReplyDeleteAlthough it takes some time to write all of this, I'm glad to share with others a few of my passions :)
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