This month’s spotlight article on local Christian charitable organizations is about Young Life.

No longer children though not yet adults, they stand at the edge between yesterday and tomorrow, between their parents and their friends, between their hopes and their fears, between truth and consequence. They stand at the moment of vital uncertainty in their lives — excitement and confusion, conviction and doubt, hope and worry. This moment will shape the rest of their lives. And the moment is right now.

High school and Middle school have been called the “wet cement years,” the vital time when children emerge from under their parents’ wings, when decisions carry a heavier weight and today’s casual choice becomes tomorrow’s lifelong pattern. Just as young people are developing a separate identity from their parents, the issues they face become more serious — much more than they’ve ever faced, and often more than their parents faced at the same age. For any youth, these years pose big questions — who am I? why am I here? — and the answers can shape a lifetime.

Young Life’s mission is to introduce adolescents to Jesus Christ and help them grow in their faith. It is founded on reaching middle school and high school students in their own environment — at school, football games, among friends. Locally, Young Life has a team of 45 volunteer youth leaders that work among students from eleven schools in Charlottesville, Albemarle, Greene, Madison, and Orange counties. Supporting the effort is a Central Committee and a network of Boosters for each school, parents that commit to help facilitate ministry as well as pray for the work of Young Life in their school. But the volunteer leaders, provide the backbone for Young Life’s one-on-one ministry to students.

Young Life is woven into the fabric of a student’s life with leaders continuing to show up in kid’s lives day in and day out. Leaders run high-energy meetings call Club to engage kids and proclaim the good news about Jesus Christ. Through weekly Campaigner meetings and special Camp experiences, Young Life seeks to invest deeply into the lives of students. While Club meetings reach out through high-energy fun, Campaigner meetings reach in, offering consistent Bible study to help the student learn “to love God completely, love yourself correctly and love the world compassionately.”

Camp experiences are aimed at getting the student away for a special time — para sailing or rope climbing during the day, followed by a gospel presentation at night. Billed as “the best week of your life,” they often are just that: a truly life-changing experience. Each of the last seven years over 200 kids have gone away to a week of summer camp with Young Life.

This summer we will be taking kids to Saranac Lake and Lake Champion. Details can be found at our website.

For more information about Young Life visit www.charlottesville.younglife.org

This Friday Expeditions of the Heart will be hosting “The Mystery of Marriage Retreat” at Hope Builders - the old Oak Leigh home. The meeting will begin at 7 pm and end at 9 pm.  The guest speakers are Michael and Robin Thompson of Durham, NC.

Contact Jeff Andrechyn at adrechyns@embarqmail.com with any questions.

Click here to access directions for Hope Builders.

Click here to see Michael and Robin’s bio.

We are starting a new monthly spotlight on local Christian charitable organizations. Last month we posted about Expeditions of the Heart. This month’s post is about “The Business of Prayer”.

The Business of Prayer is all about encouraging busy marketplace Christians to slow down and be introduced to or reminded about the love of God, the real purpose for their lives and helping them realign their day-to-day activities, time and resources to match God’s kingdom priorities for this time in history.

True transformation can only (and will only) take place if God’s Spirit does the work. Deep in our hearts we are changed more and more into His likeness by the move of His Spirit. As Jesus becomes more and we become less, our lives are marked more by Him than our plans, our agenda or our human strategy. This transformation takes place through the power of prayer and meditating on God’s Word. Feeding our soul with the reality of His love for us and then sharing this love with those around us is life-changing. Yes, we can be truly changed!

By daily encountering Jesus through prayer and interceding with the Holy Spirit, we will get to know more of God’s heart for our lives and for those around us.

Having God infiltrate us more and more with His presence is a true gift and a miracle from the Lord. The understanding of God’s intimate love for YOU has the power to transform your life … your home, your neighborhood, your business or workplace, your city, your state … our country, our continent and all the nations of the world!

Join us for our weekly marketplace prayer meetings on Wednesdays from 7 am to 8:30 am and 12 noon to 1pm. You are also invited to our Regional Marketplace Christianity Summit, hosted by The Business of Prayer, The Joseph Company and The Richmond International House of Prayer. The event will be held March 14 and 15 at the Richmond Convention Center. Click here to get more information.

Business of Prayer Contact Info:

Email: Chauncey@businessofprayer.com

Website: www.businessofprayer.com

Phone: (434)220-3734

Address: 525 Meade Avenue, Charlottesville, VA 22902

“Weekend to Remember” is a marriage conference hosted by Family Life Ministry for couples.  At this conference, you will:

• Explore God’s purpose for bringing you together in the first place
• Understand the role hardship plays in making every marriage stronger
• Make meaningful progress toward resolving past hurts
• Learn to recognize hidden strengths of your marriage that disguise themselves as obstacles
• Discover a brand new appreciation for your spouse
• Create an individualized plan for a lasting, healthy marriage
• Develop an exciting new outlook for your life together

Trinity is recommending the conference in Reston, VA on March 7-9, 2008.  For more information go to www.familylife.com/conferences.  If you plan to attend contact Ellen Foster - 977-3700 or ellen.foster@trinitycville.org - for Trinity’s group code.

Trinity has a small counseling library located in the counseling waiting area in room 232A.  There are books on a variety of topics some of which include marriage, relationships, sex, addictions and families.  Men are encouraged to check out books from the library but are asked to be mindful that many of the books in the library are personal books of John and Susan Cunningham.  Please return the books after two weeks.  For questions contact Ellen Foster – 977-3700 or ellen.foster@trinitycville.org.

Trinity also has helpful resource booklets on a large array of subjects.  These booklets are located in the Link room on the way to the upstairs nurseries and also in the counseling waiting room.  They may be purchased for $3.00 each.

Update - 2/25/08 This class has been canceled

For those of you interested in an introduction to the basics of Reformed theology, Trinity’s Todd DeLong will be leading a class on the Essential Truths of the Christian Faith. Below Todd gives details about the course.

Purpose: The purpose of the course is to provide a forum for those who have had very little, if any, education and instruction, both formal and informal, in Reformed theology. Any instruction provided during the course will be akin to the Socratic method, where participants will be engaged with questions related to the various topics of Reformed theology, and will be encouraged to develop answers to the questions based on Scripture. As such, the hope is that a majority of each meeting time will be devoted to the discussion of the questions and answers so that participants will be able to wrestle with these issues.

Resources: Essential Truths of the Christian Faith by R.C. Sproul. Please note that while the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) will be used as supporting and supplemental material, this class will not focus on the WCF (like the Theological Foundations class that officer candidates are required to take). That is, this course is intended to be an introduction to Reformed theology in its most basic (i.e. essential) form, and will not necessarily delve into topics to the depth of the WCF (or, for that matter, cover all the topics covered by the WCF).

Course Outline: The book contains ten major subject headings, and as such the outline of the book will be used as the basis for the outline of the course, more or less. I add this caveat because I would like for the course outline to contain a certain “flexibility”, depending on the subject and the engagement of the participants. For instance, I do not
anticipate being able to cover a major topic such as Salvation in one meeting session. If more than one meeting session is required to sufficiently address the comments, questions, or concerns of the participants, then another topic (e.g. End Times) may not be covered. But, the presentation and discussion of the topics will follow the order of the book.

Course Length: The length of the course will be comparable to an academic semester, meeting for 13-weeks. The course begins February 4th and concludes April 28th.

Meeting Time: The class will meet Mondays from 7 PM to 8:30 PM.

Location: Trinity - Teaching Fellowship Room “C”.

For men who want to bring their heart, life and situations to other brothers and to Scripture. We’re typically but not exclusively mid-age range ( 35-55) and enjoy prayer, sharing and study around a different book of Scripture (each semester usually.) This semester, we will be praying and studying the Book of Psalms. We meet off the lobby in “the parlor” from 7:00 - 8:00 a.m. each Friday. Any questions should be directed to Doug Woodside:  dwoodside@curtis1000.com or 960-3000 (Cell).

Weather Policy:  No meeting if either Charlottesville City or Albemarle County Public Schools are closed or delayed.

Class Full - 3/19/08

Every Man’s Battle first launched last fall as the Men’s Purity Group. Our second series will be ten weeks, starting February 8, but you can join anytime. Our goal is holiness. We are trusting God to purify our eyes, mind and heart. Sure, it’s a lifelong process - but unless you’ve got something better going on in this vital area, this is a good place to start.

We will be meeting on Mondays, from 7:30 - 8:30 pm in room 251 (Update as of 2/0/08 - Room 151-153 (the prayer room)) at Trinity Presbyterian Church. If you are interested email Bob Arms at bob@emarotta.com. If you have any questions, call Bob Arms (434)973-0988 or Bill Seibert (434)296-2135.

Expeditions of the Heart is a ministry to men in Charlottesville VA. We have put together “A Year in Your Life” around a retreat we will be having in September in WV on “The Calling” with some members of the Ransomed Heart team. You can see what the year will look like for us by going to http://www.expeditionsoftheheart.org/2008VisionQuest.cfm

The year will focus on discipleship and the stages of the masculine journey, Cowboy, Warrior, Lover, King, and Sage. We are firm believers that God has called us in to an adventure to live and it’s during the 2, 3, or 4 day events that we see the most work being done amongst the men. While we have weekly meetings it’s the weekend adventures where the men are built together and establish the relationships need for the journey.

The weekly meetings are an open forum where prior to the meeting you are encouraged to dialog with God on certain questions we give you that relate to the text we will be discussing during the meetings. While these meetings are a lot of fun they also carry the weight of a very deep message to your soul as a man.

Please contact Jeff Andrechyn at andrechyns@embarqmail.com or cell phone (434)825-0604.

This is why I love stories, because they help shape our lives. So, as a pastor and a dad, I look for good stories in films, plays, books and poems, in conversation and in music. Good stories form and train the imagination and, you could say, shape the way we live, the way we see the world and the way we treat others. Perhaps best of all, stories are a great way to reach the mind and hearts of children.

That is why many within the Christian community and beyond have expressed concern about a movie called The Golden Compass, which is to open December 7. This movie is the first of three planned films based on a trilogy of children’s novels called His Dark Materials (a reference to Milton’s Paradise Lost) by avowed atheist Philip Pullman. The trouble with Mr. Pullman’s books (which have sold 15 million copies), and the film, is that the story presents the Church as evil, which is not so original, but the twist is that in the end the books are, as one reviewer quoted Pullman saying, “about killing God.” The books and the movie are intended for children.

I must say that I have not seen the film nor read the books. In this instance I haven’t had to in order to get the full concept of what Mr. Pullman intends. There has been enough written about both that readers and moviegoers can be well informed. Some have wondered, and rightfully so, how the church should respond? There are all sorts of ideas ranging from boycotting to simply ignoring all of Mr. Pullman’s materials. Personally, as a pastor and a dad, I think this is too good an opportunity to pass up.

What I mean is that the sort of thing Mr. Pullman writes about actually opens up opportunities for the truth to be made clearer in many respects. It also provides a great opportunity for me to talk to my own children about how some people view God and try to dismiss the biblical worldview. It can open up opportunities for us to have conversations with our neighbors and coworkers. It requires us as Christ’s followers to be well informed as well as equipped.

In light of these considerations, Trinity’s Family Ministry is working alongside of Dr. Drew Trotter to think of ways we could help inform and equip the students and parents of our church. We believe that stories impact and shape us as well as our culture. It is often in film that the stories of our time are told, and the worldviews behind those stories can be subtle but nonetheless forming. In order to help our students and parents navigate this better, we are in the planning stages of a retreat (for students) and a lecture (for parents) that we hope will help them.

If you would like to be a part of this retreat or the lecture please let us know by contacting us at family@trinitycville.org. 

Other Resources

• http://www.highspringsherald.com/articles/2007/11/01/editorial/editorial02.txt
• http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200712/religious-movies
• http://mhadigital.org/

By:  Mark A. Hutton
Pastor for Families