The Good News in Cleveland

Tuesday night turned to taxing conflict resolution. It was “he said she said” among teens; two girls accused JP of saying profoundly unkind things. Her reply? “You are a fucking faggot,” which she rehearsed multiple times in front of me. You can only imagine how the rest of the night went. Later, a parent would be become involved with a similar level of grace and coolness. I never heard JP say anything unsavory throughout the night and for that, the girls were angry with me as well. Regardless, I sat down with JP, one of whom I am discipling. He is believer, but the other girls are not. Though he is admittedly rough around the edges, we had a markedly different conversation than I ever could have with the two girls. Because of our mutual faith in Jesus, we reasoned on the basis of the gospel. “These girls don’t really believe in Jesus yet, but they get to see Jesus in you if you can be good to them even if you did nothing wrong. We gotta always come back to Jesus. He died an r...

Jesus came to seek and save that which was lost (Luke 19:10). Everything He did was part of a discipling process that led to life in Him. He preached to masses, equipped 72, trained up 12, took aside 3, and still spent time alone with the Father. Everything we do in Cleveland should be intentionally done in that same vein. We are on God’s mission for this city, and it is encouraging (and easier to process CityView's building-less essence) when we see how all the ministry spokes coalesce into Jesus-following discipleship. The big push coming out of this must be more prayer for more mentors. There are plenty of people that need that 2-on-2 level of discipleship. (Being in like in two units myself, I can speak to the meaningfulness of this for the mentor and the mentored.)  Having heard that the harvest is plenty and the laborers are few, we must pray earnestly for laborers (Luke 10:2). However, training willing people to be effective mentors is just not something that ch...

Teen 1: “Before I get in the car and get mad at you, you owe me $5.” Caleb: “No I don’t, and you can just stay here.” I am getting better at dealing with a comical level of ridiculousness. Teen 2: “Take me with you to Minneapolis.” Caleb: “You have already missed forty days of school this year.” It’s getting easier to say “no.” Teen 3: “I am never coming back to church again because I didn’t see my girlfriend when I came to Man Time.” Caleb: “Okay, that is your decision.” He changed his mind later. Church is not about “snacks”; Jesus is the Bread of Life, real food for eternity. And that’s real easy to say. These are fun and true interactions from the past week, but it’s harder to find my bearing when a fourteen-year-old kid gets kicked out of his own house or when a college student is having crisis-level anxiety. Sometimes it feels suffocating. I drove up to speak near Minneapolis and in that time I stepped back enough to realize some of the draining fe...