Velvet Elvis

For the last couple months I have been reading the book, "Velvet Elvis" by Rob Bell. I just finished and have so many things running through my head... good things... hard things... questions.. here is what I have to share about it tonight...

You all know that I have been accepted into a DTS (discipleship training school) program with YWAM (youth with a mission) in Australia. I've had a passion to serve for many years.. the least and lost have always been at the center of my soul. Youth have also been a big passion as well, and the place I have served for almost 10 years. But, another passion that has been simmering in me for the last couple years is serving in the community. I say "simmering" because since the first spark, I haven't done a whole lot about it.

A few years ago I lived in an apartment in Brooklyn Park in a semi-sketchy neighborhood.. Zane and 65th. It was a complex of many buildings, ours was shaped like a "U" and in the middle was a large parking lot. We had a ground level apartment with a patio that went out to the parking . The area was always a swarm with children of all ages... sometimes getting into trouble, other times just playing in the small yards near the patios.
My roomates and I often kept the patio door open in the warm months and the kids seemed to swarm to our patio slab. I decided at some point to buy bubbles and another time a bucket of chalk. It wasn't something I had an agenda for, just a place for the kids to play and have fun.

Why am I sharing this? Well, it's the place where that simmering began, and I've often missed those days... also because "Velvet Elvis" answered a question I always had at those times... and that was... "should I be doing more?" meaning, the doctrine from my counselor days in the summer after my senior year came flooding back. I never felt "good enough" because I rarely sat down with each of my girls to get them to "convert" or "re-dedicate"... I hated that part. I always had this guilty feeling turning in my papers at the end of the week.
Here is a great quote that I always felt in my spirit, that speaks to this situation....

"Oftentimes the Christian community has sent the message that we love people and build relationships in order to convert them to the Christian faith. So there is an agenda. And when there is an agenda, it isn't really love, is it? We have to rediscover love, period. Love that loves because it is what Jesus teaches us to do. We have to surrender our agendas. Because some people aren't going to become Christians like us no matter how hard we push. They just aren't. And at some point we have to commit them to God, trusting that God loves them more than we ever could."
-Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis

I'm not saying here that we shouldn't share our faith, but I want to learn how to do it so that it doesn't have an agenda. That it's me sharing this love that I cannot explain... without asking the person at the end if they want to become a christian, and can you repeat this prayer after me. If the person desires that, I'm trusting that God will speak to their heart. I don't have to be the one to help them say a prayer... I don't have to be there at all.