Amazing Grace movie trailer

If you don't know the story of William Wilberforce...

CBS News called the series Wired for Faith. It aired Thursday, December 14 at 6:30 p.m. EST.
The two-minute segment was titled "Praying Not Partying." Watch the video on the right side of the screen or read the transcript in the main column.Also, you can watch staff member Tony Arnold's interview with Kelly Cobiella, the correspondent. Watch the seven-minute Web-only video interview.

MediaPost
Publications - For Teens, IM Beats E-Mail - 12/11/2006: "The report, based
on a survey of 1,513 IM users, also found that 72% of teen respondents send IMs
more than e-mails. In addition, 20% of teens who use instant messaging say they
can't imagine doing without the service. What do teens use IM for? More than
half (56%) of teen respondents use IM services to share photos, while 33% share
music and video via IM."

These are the college students of next year.

Study finds volunteering at 30-year high - Yahoo! News: "The number of Americans who volunteer to mentor students, beautify neighborhoods and pitch in after disasters is at a 30-year high, fueled in part by a boom in teen participation, a new study says.
ADVERTISEMENT

The report by the Corporation for National and Community Service tracked volunteer rates since 1974. It found that more than 1 in 4 adults — or 27 percent — currently give time to their communities, a jump from a low of 20.4 percent recorded in 1989.
Teens aged 16 to 19 saw the biggest jump, with 28.4 percent volunteering compared to just 13.4 percent in 1989"

Hopefully you had a great Staff Conference - I did. I was particularly challenged by Eric's messages, and we have been talking about much of what he said, looking for different ways to apply his principles. Pat McLeod and team have been working on a new kind of International Project and I wanted to post the proposal they have submitted here. Though there is still much to work through it is an excellent example of bringing feet to what we were exposed to at the Conference.


Project Overview

We would like to take a pioneering trip this Christmas (3 interns 6 students) and another this summer (~12 students, 4 staff, 4 staff kids and 2 interns). We are calling this summer project “Good News/Good Deeds South African Summer Project”

We will also be partnering with a mission agency called African Enterprise (AE) in Pretoria (AE works directly with indigenous evangelists, orphanages, medical clinics, impoverished communities, and prisoners). They have agreed to arrange our lodging, in-county transportation and service projects. One of AE’s staff members, Dana Mahan, graduated from Harvard Divinity School and worked for two years as an hourly operations leader for our Metro ministry and administrative assistant for me as a Harvard chaplain and Metro director. We have a great working relationship and friendship. He is an organizational guru, understands CCC and understands South Africa—he is married to a South African woman and lives in Pretoria.

Background of the Project

For four years God has been giving our family, several of our Boston staff and Harvard and MIT students a burden for Africa—particularly the portions of Africa that have been devastated by the AIDS epidemic. We have also been exploring more holistic approaches to evangelism that brings Good Words and Good Deeds together.

We have always marveled, since the day we first arrived in Boston, at the way in which God has made this city a magnet for some of the world’s brightest minds (students and professors). Boston, with its ¼ million college students, 43 colleges (including five of the nations top 40 Universities), has become a hub of astounding intellectual, technological, and economic resources. As a result, we have become more and more comfortable these past seven years with “feeling stupid” here in Boston. But, at the same time, we have become more and more uncomfortable with a growing trend that we have observed. We have witnessed nearly all of our graduates going from this hub to even greater hubs of skill, knowledge, power, and affluence—e.g., to graduate school, Wall Street, Washington DC, Silicon Valley, etc..

Now certainly this is one of our hopes—that the students we send will go on to lead the world and reach the world for Christ from within the strategic positions of leadership and influence God places them. But, in as much as these hubs simply maintain the status quo and represent being just one more step removed from the most needy, under-resourced, unreached, under-developed, impoverished hubs of the world, something needs to be done.

Project/Partnership Objectives

In the face of this unsettling reality we intend by the grace of God to forge a dynamic partnership that will upset this disconcerting trend by linking the enormous material, economic, intellectual and technological resources and reserves of Boston (especially Harvard & MIT) with one of the most impoverished, undeveloped, under-resourced and marginalized parts of the world (by which I mean not just the impoverished sections of South Africa but some of the central African countries in which African enterprise operates).

Objectives of this project include: 1) redirecting some of the talent, skills and resources of our graduates and these universities toward some of the most needy and least reached parts of the world, 2) transferring technology and skills to nationals so that they can empower others, 3) enlarging the radius of students that we can recruit to go on a summer mission projects—e.g., Harvard and MIT students that will not consider a mission project that involves just doing evangelism and discipleship, but one that will enable them to use their training in engineering, medicine or economics, 4) strengthening our partnership with MIT & Harvard (MIT is helping to fund each student that will be going over winter break), 5) sharing the gospel daily with words and deeds, 6) giving these student leaders a life changing experience that will forever alter the way they live their lives, share their faith, relate to others, employ their talents, and spend their money.

Specific Proposal

We would be delighted to help out in any way with what our national Impact staff are doing in and around Pretoria. For example, if the Impact ministry would welcome it, we would love to be able to do evangelism at least once a week on one of the campuses in and around Pretoria or Johannesburg. Let us know if this is something that you would like for us to do or if there is some other way that you can make use of our team.

If you would rather that we just work with AE and stay off the campuses we are fine with that, but we want to make ourselves available in whatever we can make work for you.

Sincerely,

Pat McLeod
Boston Metro Real Life Director

Eric Swanson: kingdom Assignments and Crawford Lorrits:

"During a Sunday service last month, Jessica Gilbert opened a sky-blue envelope emblazoned with the words 'Kingdom Assignment.' Inside was a $10 bill.

Gilbert and about 1,450
worshippers at the Fellowship Bible Church in Roswell received money that
October morning; every person 10 or older randomly received $10, $20, $50 or
$100. Some tore into the envelopes on the way home, but the church's pastor,
Crawford Loritts, watched several open them in the pews in stunned silence.


BrantSanderlin/Staff
(ENLARGE)
Marilyn Stafford of Roswell
used her $20 to buy enough material to knit about 60 hats and make several
blankets for preemies. She got enough donations to make many more.

The
congregation received $30,000 with instructions to use the money for good."

Looks like Crawford is riding the wave that Eric talked about.

New York Daily News - News & Views - Wild sex 101: "New York's Smartest still dream of winning a Nobel Prize. And bookworms still pull all-nighters in the Butler Library. But the 2 million-volume monument to the mind, which stays open 24 hours a day, doubles as a temple of earthier desires.

'Having sex in the stacks of Butler Library is one of the ultimate Columbia experiences,' said Miriam Datskovsky, the sex columnist for The Spectator, the student newspaper.

'There's very little dating. It's predominately a hookup scene,' said the 21-year-old, a senior from an Orthodox Jewish background who writes the 'Sexplorations' column.

'Everything is so much easier and so much quicker - you go to dinner and then have sex,' she added.

Consider the party scene. But it's no reason to get dressed up. In fact, there's no reason to get dressed at all: The merrymakers of Morningside Heights host naked parties, lingerie-only parties - and the more bourgeois 'clothing-optional parties with naked rooms.'

And taxpayers indirectly foot a chunk of the tab because bond offerings and loans from the state Dormitory Authority and federal Department of Education partially fund the renovation of dorms where naked frolickers muster."