Ministry Week

So about a week ago I went with Jonas, Kelsey, Adam, Robert, Colin, Jordan, Sheryl and Dale to Dunedin for a ministry week. It was a lovely week we had a lot of fun together and got to help some people out. The night we arrived in Dunedin all of us put on a service at a church called St. Matthews. I shared my testimony (how I came to God and his work in my life), some of us shared something God that had been teaching them personally, we put on a skit and then Jordan did the main message of the night. Jordan did his message on Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I live in the flesh I now live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”. It was a good message and apparently the church put it up on facebook haha. Oh the wonders, we now hold facebook fame!

For our accommodation in Dunedin we were billeted out to various members of the church. Kelsey and I stayed together with two university students. We had the youngest billets who were quite lovely to have because we got along with them quite well and had some good conversations with them. Throughout the week we helped out various people who were in need of assistance. We did some maintenance at an elementary school, helped an elderly couple move homes, worked on the home of a man who has been struggling with disease and did landscaping at St. Matthews. It was some good practical work.

Throughout the week we also visited numerous different faiths: Muslim, Buddhist, Universalist and Baha’i. At first I thought somehow this could cause me to doubt my faith because of course those questions come to mind. What makes Christianity the truth? But the thing is as we talked to these different faiths it rather made me so much sure more than anything. The way that Jesus has been working in my life and the lives of those around me is so undeniable. He is the way, the truth, the life; the only way to God, the only truth amidst all these other messages, the only place we can find life meaning every other path ultimately leads to death. As much as I wish every path led to God, I can’t. It is a much more comfortable belief, but if I compromise that portion of scripture then scripture begins to lose its integrity in my life. It is wrong if I just choose pieces to believe and others to disregard.

One thing that didn’t make sense at all is that in most of these religions they would quote scripture to back up their beliefs than disregard other parts of scripture as a metaphor or not accurate. It seems to me that one should either accept all of scripture as truth or else it is all lies because it is ultimately all about Christ. Everyone kept saying “Oh Jesus is a great moral teacher” but nothing else.

As C.S. Lewis said “A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn’t be a great moral teacher. He’d either be a lunatic – on the level with a man who says he’s a poached egg – or else he’d be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse…. But don’t let us come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He hadn’t left that open to us. He didn’t intend to”.