A Lot from Charles Kelly on Vimeo.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
5 Realities of Experiencing God
Hey everyone here is the note card from the last teaching on the 5 realities of experiencing God.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Fasting Experience
This last week we talked about fasting. Jesus said "when you fast." Not if you want or when you get around to it. The tone seemed to be that it would become a spiritual practice for us. Fasting is a great reminder to us that we are dependent on God for life - it bring humility, clarity, and focus to our lives. Here is the fasting experience cards.
7 day reading list
Here is the 7 day reading list that we came up with. Get in the word my friends and it will get in you.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
INTERACTIVE CHRISTMAS
Interactive Christmas is a way for us to reflect and think upon this time for us as Christ followers. How do we interact with the story of God coming to Earth? Do you spend time reflecting on how God has pursued us - took on flesh - the ultimate gift of love and redemption or do we just look for what is in it for us and get caught up in the busy times and fly through this time.
Let us pause and reflect today.
Grace and Peace
Monday, December 1, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Reflections Of A White Boy
For the last month I have been reflecting, and wrapping my mind around the hate that can stem from the human heart toward another. How does one get to the point where they would be willing to kill someone else based on race? What does that process look like? Did it just happen overnight? Did they wake up one morning and decide I am going to hate a race of people with every fiber in me?
My heart and mind have been on this journey. I have been exploring parts of my own heart concerning race and as I have engaged this issue I have come to some conclusions but to be honest I have a lot more questions than I do answers concerning the matter of racism.
This is my story and my learning experiences. I encourage everyone to enter their own journey of exploration. This is just my story - what is yours?
The first time I started asking questions about race was in Englewood, Chicago. The year was 01' I was in college and moved into a mission that was working in the neighborhood of Englewood. I was undergoing an urban studies program for the summer. So here I am this small town white boy in a big city and nothing is familiar - it was safe to say I was out of my comfort zone. Englewood was notorious for being a rough neighborhood with the highest homicide rate. The neighborhood was a low income neighborhood and around 95% of the people in the area were African-American.
The first day of my internship at a local after school program I got a first hand education on life. I got on a bus feeling a little out of place. The neighborhood had a lot of gang activity, the school system was run down, their weren't a lot of high paying jobs but their were a lot of liquor stores. Over the next few months I asked a lot of questions: Where is the hope for the people living in Englewood? How can one get off welfare if they have a poor education if any and no real paying jobs? I started to see things a little different.
My perspective went from a THEM mentality to a WE mentality. I started to feel that if they don't succeed than I don't succeed.
See this is opposite of everything I ever heard growing up. I heard that the people in the "ghetto" were lazy that's why they couldn't get out of their situation.
It is easy to make generalizations and point fingers when you have never lived in the situations the people in Englewood face daily. I started to realize I had racist tendencies and stereotypes that had been built up over the years.
My views started to shift when THEY became people with names, people with stories.
Fast forward to present day. I spent an afternoon in downtown Birmingham at the civil rights museum. As I walked through the institute I was broken by how much hatred, ignorance, and oppression there was. How can someone hate someone so much?
As I walked through the park across the street I saw a statue of two teens getting sprayed by fire hoses. I wondered what was racing through their mind that day. I also thought about how these young teens were probably still alive today and what would they have to say now.
In world war 2 the nazis setup concentration camps to eliminate Jews, Gypsy's, and many other minorities. I was watching this clip from Band of Brothers where the soldiers are liberating one of these camps. They thought the men were prisoners of some kind and soon discovered that they were musicians, teachers, tailors who were Jewish.
So how did this happen. It started with jokes. Blame. Discrimination. It was a process of hate.
The sad thing as I watched the clip I realized that some of those soldiers would go back to the states and see the same thing happening here and not make the connection. African-Americans were being treated in a similar way but we justified it.
We have come a long way. There is still a long way to go though.
Just after the election I heard someone say they were going to throw an assassination party. We still have a long way to go.
Hate is harder when the race becomes a name and the name becomes a story, and the story relates to ours.
Grace and Peace to you all.
The big idea: What kind of world do you want to live in? What does the end product look like? Now, how can you be part of the solution?
My heart and mind have been on this journey. I have been exploring parts of my own heart concerning race and as I have engaged this issue I have come to some conclusions but to be honest I have a lot more questions than I do answers concerning the matter of racism.
This is my story and my learning experiences. I encourage everyone to enter their own journey of exploration. This is just my story - what is yours?
The first time I started asking questions about race was in Englewood, Chicago. The year was 01' I was in college and moved into a mission that was working in the neighborhood of Englewood. I was undergoing an urban studies program for the summer. So here I am this small town white boy in a big city and nothing is familiar - it was safe to say I was out of my comfort zone. Englewood was notorious for being a rough neighborhood with the highest homicide rate. The neighborhood was a low income neighborhood and around 95% of the people in the area were African-American.
The first day of my internship at a local after school program I got a first hand education on life. I got on a bus feeling a little out of place. The neighborhood had a lot of gang activity, the school system was run down, their weren't a lot of high paying jobs but their were a lot of liquor stores. Over the next few months I asked a lot of questions: Where is the hope for the people living in Englewood? How can one get off welfare if they have a poor education if any and no real paying jobs? I started to see things a little different.
My perspective went from a THEM mentality to a WE mentality. I started to feel that if they don't succeed than I don't succeed.
See this is opposite of everything I ever heard growing up. I heard that the people in the "ghetto" were lazy that's why they couldn't get out of their situation.
It is easy to make generalizations and point fingers when you have never lived in the situations the people in Englewood face daily. I started to realize I had racist tendencies and stereotypes that had been built up over the years.
My views started to shift when THEY became people with names, people with stories.
Fast forward to present day. I spent an afternoon in downtown Birmingham at the civil rights museum. As I walked through the institute I was broken by how much hatred, ignorance, and oppression there was. How can someone hate someone so much?
As I walked through the park across the street I saw a statue of two teens getting sprayed by fire hoses. I wondered what was racing through their mind that day. I also thought about how these young teens were probably still alive today and what would they have to say now.
In world war 2 the nazis setup concentration camps to eliminate Jews, Gypsy's, and many other minorities. I was watching this clip from Band of Brothers where the soldiers are liberating one of these camps. They thought the men were prisoners of some kind and soon discovered that they were musicians, teachers, tailors who were Jewish.
So how did this happen. It started with jokes. Blame. Discrimination. It was a process of hate.
The sad thing as I watched the clip I realized that some of those soldiers would go back to the states and see the same thing happening here and not make the connection. African-Americans were being treated in a similar way but we justified it.
We have come a long way. There is still a long way to go though.
Just after the election I heard someone say they were going to throw an assassination party. We still have a long way to go.
Hate is harder when the race becomes a name and the name becomes a story, and the story relates to ours.
Grace and Peace to you all.
The big idea: What kind of world do you want to live in? What does the end product look like? Now, how can you be part of the solution?
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