The Good News in Cleveland

MLK said "There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love." Julia and I got to take fourteen teens to the Banished retreat at Camp Patmos, seven guys and seven girls. The truth is that most of them have no relationship with Jesus, even after we’ve walked and talked Jesus with them for more than a year! Saturday night, I took the guys deep into the woods at night, lit a torch I had hidden out there, and told them a story. “On a dark night in Lake Erie, two ships collided. Some heard the cries ‘To the life boat! The life boat!’ but believed that they were safer in the ship. They perished. Others heard and even believed the life boat could save, but they were afraid to jump out into the darkness. They, too, perished. Lastly, there were a few who heard, believed, and jumped. Only they were saved by the life boat. Which group would you say believed?” Obviously those on the ship, torn and unwilling to move, did not have saving faith in the life boat. I am disa...

The Saturday service in Detroit-Shoreway has been going well! Especially after some culturally-sensitive tweaks and a whole lot of prayer. We put a prayer time an hour and a half before the service so that our leaders, myself included, would go into the evening with a Spirit of unity and worship. Going through name by name, we pray knowing that only the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead can raise spiritually dead up to follow Jesus. I think about the Fellas who passively come around, but Zeke, Chris, Tyler, and Ronald are alive and hungry. Fonzo is one of those guys that I never would have expected to still be with the ministry. He came to us about a year ago, ardent atheist. He's one of the nicest kids, smart, rough home life though. I have to believe the Spirit is working in him, or why else would he be hanging out with us? I could go on and on with snapshots like this. We reach them the best we can though church, Man Time or Girl's Night, and discipleship, but it's...