We will collect the following items in Clingman Commons on Sunday, May 19:

•Instant oatmeal
•Soups, fruits, and vegetables in cans with poptops
•Small jars of peanut butter
•Canned pasta (ravioli, etc.)

All items will be distributed by Grace Pantry, a ministry of Grace Episcopal Church in Woodlawn.

Why a Food Drive Now?

by Becky Rothrock

For many of us, summer is a time of fellowship with family and friends. We daydream about vacations, cookouts, and longer, sunny days. But for many children in Birmingham who are out of school, summer is a time with no access to free or reduced-cost breakfast and lunch programs.

To help address this need, Advent will host a Food Drive on Sunday, May 19, in Clingman Commons. We are asking for specific, easy-to-prepare items that are geared toward children (see list above). I encourage you to add these students to your prayer list, and to talk about them with your family as you shop for your donation.

Jesus, said, “Let the children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” – St. Matthew 19:14

Within the last decade a new and very public expression of atheism has captivated our society.  Though it uses various old and long examined arguments against religion, it has a new quality to it—a deep disdain and mistrust of religion in general and Christianity in particular.   It is important for people of faith to know about these challenges, what to learn from them, and how to respond to them.

For four Sundays Dr. Dennis Sansom will look at various representatives of the New Atheists — [the late] Christopher Hitchens [above and below], Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and David Lewis & Sam Harris, to see in what way we can better express our faith to a disbelieving culture.

April 14th—Responding to Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

April 21st—Responding to Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

May 12th—Responding to Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

May 19th—Responding to David Lewis, “Divine Evil” Harper Magazine and Sam Harris, The End of Faith

It’s the most exciting trip any junior high kid ever will take!

Where you are going in life? It’s a mystery. 

Learn how to trust God with the uncertainty you face in life and to walk with Him day by day.

Where are we going? It’s a mystery too. 

In the past we have gone to Chicago and Dallas and Orlando and DC and St. Louis. Where this year?

You’ll just have to have some faith…

Click here to register.

Dates are July 27 – July 30

Cost: $300 (scholarships and payment plans available and welcomed)

Vacation Bible School at the Advent this year is Kingdom Rock, June 3 – 6, 9am to noon.

For more info and to register [or to volunteer!...], click here.

UPDATE: Youth Musicians (6th grade and older) are needed for the VBS Band!  Drummers, acoustic & electric guitarists, and vocalists are warmly invited to join us from 8:45-12 noon on Monday June 3rd -Thursday, June 6th.  Please contact Sharon Benefield if you are interested, Sharon@CathedralAdvent.com .

The Women’s Retreat will be held Friday – Sunday, August 23-25, at Children’s Harbor on Lake Martin, with speaker Dr. Erika Moore,  Associate Professor of Biblical Studies and Hebrew at Trinity School for Ministry. She and her husband Jim live on a farm north of Pittsburgh with their 15-year-old son and Erika’s mom, along with six horses and numerous cats.

Here’s a link to her on the faculty page of the Trinity website.

And here’s audio of a talk by her on Ruth (58 mins.)

REGISTER ONLINE HERE.

Ms. Sarah Seibels joins our staff May 27 as Associate Youth Director. Sarah was born and raised here in Birmingham and grew up attending the Advent.

For the last few years she has been in Charlottesville where she graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Art History and Economics.  Feeling unexpectedly drawn towards ministry, she received the amazing opportunity to spend the last year as a fellow at Christ Episcopal Church. There her love for the Word and an overwhelming appreciation for God’s grace grew exponentially.

Sarah loves downtown Birmingham, corny jokes, and great BBQ.

 
by Cameron Cole at TheGospelCoalition.org
April 23, 2013

I have ministered to adolescents for eleven years, eight of them as a youth minister. Based on my conversations with kids and observations in the culture, I consider these five theological tools essential for parents, pastors, and youth ministers hoping to minister effectively to today’s teens.

1. Knowledge about the canonization of Scripture.

Perhaps it is a result of The DaVinci Code or maybe the effects of deconstructionism and revisionism in historical studies, but one of the primary apologetic questions I receive from students involves the formation of the canon of Scripture. In no subject area have I observed more misinformation. Students have told me that their high school English teacher taught that the Gospel of Mary Magdalene was not included in the Bible because Christianity is misogynistic. A kid told me that the Gospels were actually written in fourth century.

If a student does not trust the Bible as God’s Word, ministries will have a hard time giving them any confidence in the truths of Christianity; the Bible serves as the authority and foundation for all Christian doctrine. Those ministering to youth must possess a strong understanding of the history and system by which the early church discerned certain books as authoritative and rejected other books as either uninspired or heretical.

Recommended Reading: F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture

2. Developed theology of sexuality, particularly homosexuality.

Questions about premarital sex, gender, and sexuality are increasingly common in youth ministry. For many kids the make-or-break issue about Christianity is homosexuality. Many kids think the actions of anti-gay fanatics, such as Westboro Baptist Church, represent Christian theology regarding homosexuality, and, needless to say, they hold reservations about the faith. Meanwhile, other kids espouse the secular portrayal of homosexuality as a civil rights issue akin to racial segregation.

Youth ministers need a balanced, scriptural theology that neither amplifies homosexuality as worse than other forms of sexual sin nor permits it any more than we condone pornography or adultery. Equally important, they need a humble, gentle, and compassionate tone in dealing with the issue.

Recommended Reading: Wesley Hill, Washed And Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality

3. Ability to teach the Bible in the greater context of redemptive history.

Earlier in my career, people said that postmodern kids had rejected metanarratives and only listened to the micro-narratives of personal storytelling. Some of my colleagues and I now agree that the fatalism of denying a defined metanarrative for life and the world seems to have bottomed out. Kids are more likely today to want to believe there is reason and design behind everything that happens in the world. Students greatly benefit from knowing salvation history.

As a way of taking students through all of redemptive history, I teach each one of my small groups a study on “Top 25 Events from the Bible” that travels from Genesis to Revelation. When teaching Scripture, I make a point to connect the content to the broader context of biblical narrative. It reinforces for kids the belief that a good, sovereign God rules the course of human history, as well as the events of their individual life, at a time when they desire it.

Recommended Reading: Vaughan Roberts, God’s Big Picture

4. Theological, not only moral, understanding of sin.

Most students—Christian and secular alike—believe morality is individually relative. Therefore, explaining sin simply in moral terms will not resonate with most teenagers. You may say that all people judge, lust, envy, and lie, but your teenage audience likely can justify any of those sins at the personal level, believing they have ultimate authority over morality.

Consequently, those ministering to teens need a theological understanding of how sin originates from the human desire to live independently from God and to be the “god” of our own lives. Most students will accept that they do not depend on God for all matters of their life, if at all, or that they do not have a relationship with him. (In truth, these matters represent our deeper issue as sinners and the source of our immorality.) Students will accept the theological argument for human sinfulness far more readily than a moral explanation.

Recommended Reading: Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods

5. Understand adoption as an element of salvation.

I charge myself as guilty for neglecting this element of salvation, and it cost me big time. The church often exclusively preaches salvation as an individual matter. In a sense, we camp out on regeneration and justification and stop there. I know I did. The persistent teaching of my colleague, Mark Howard, and the talks from Ray Ortlund and Mary Willson at the 2012 Rooted Conference (recordings from all three can be found here) opened my eyes to this blind spot.

Far more than previous generations, today’s teenagers value community. If they do not see how groups or beliefs yield corporate fellowship, they are less likely to embrace it. Adoption represents the aspect of salvation whereby God adopts sinners as his sons and daughters. Our salvation does not simply save us individually but also makes us a part of a greater body of intimate connection. Having a fuller understanding of salvation in both individual and corporate terms will help a person ministering to teens offer the gospel in a way that appeals to their high view of fellowship and need for loving acceptance.

Recommended Reading: Trevor Burke, Adopted into God’s Family (in the NSBT series edited by D. A. Carson)

Cameron Cole is the director of youth ministries at Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama, and the chairman of Rooted: Advancing Grace-Driven Youth Ministry, which holds its next conference, Hope in a Time of Suffering, in Atlanta from October 10 to 12, 2013.

It struck me the other day that one of the reasons I have returned to mainline religion is because it’s so, well, adult.

Contrary to what I hear around me so often, I want my grandfather’s church.

I know, I know… there are characteristics of that old, traditional church that are not desirable: many had a narrow, parochial spirit, many were characterized by pervasive judgmental attitudes. They could be exclusive, racist, uncreative, and stuck in their ways. This I readily admit and abhor. A congregation that replaces a living, thriving, growing tradition with anemic or dead traditionalism is of no interest to me.

But I want a church where I know and feel that the adults are in charge, where wisdom trumps enthusiasm, where historical perspective is considered, where depth is valued as much as breadth, where stories have shaped us for generations.

I want a church building made of stone and wood, quality materials, with natural light and symbolic significance and a certain level of aesthetic excellence upheld in architecture, art, furnishings, music, liturgy, and preaching and teaching. I don’t want to be snobbish about it, as though these things are there to represent and satisfy my good taste. That is not the point. Rather, they should communicate weightiness, solidity, permanence. Those who come among us should think: “This is a place where life and love and God and people are taken seriously.”

Read the whole thing…