It's time. I've moved the blog to http://www.blog.steadwald.com/ to facilitate the startings of the Stead Halstead School of Biblical Literacy. And to use WordPress, which is pretty awesome.
Update your bookmarks, notepads, address books, and RSS feeds!
Monday, September 7, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
On Campus
I'm on campus again. Feels great. Today I'm spending two hours up here to brainstorm some ideas, passages, and thoughts on heaven for my talk next week at the INN.
Campus is quiet, but it's nice. Sitting in the skybridge, open to distractions. This is one of my favorite spots. Not really the skybridge, but the library in general. A combination of quiet, productive, and lots of free space. On top of all that, it puts me in the middle of those I'm attempting to serve.
Updates soon. And probably a blog move to a new spot because of my templating woes with blogspot. Besides that, steadwald.com has plenty of free space.
Campus is quiet, but it's nice. Sitting in the skybridge, open to distractions. This is one of my favorite spots. Not really the skybridge, but the library in general. A combination of quiet, productive, and lots of free space. On top of all that, it puts me in the middle of those I'm attempting to serve.
Updates soon. And probably a blog move to a new spot because of my templating woes with blogspot. Besides that, steadwald.com has plenty of free space.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Messy Faith
This is something similar to my talk I gave at the Summer INN two weeks ago. It's not totally the same though due to different audiences, and a fair amount of additions during the talk. For more details on the INN, check out our website at www.theinnministries.org or find us on twitter at twitter.com/theINN
I've been moving for the last few weeks. I’ve moved out of where I lived during the year, and into a new spot that I’m subletting for the summer. In late august or early September, I’ll be moving again to a more permanent location here in Bellingham. All this means a whole lot of cardboard, piles of stuff, and missing important things. On top of all of this mess in my room, I decided to go down to my parent’s house in maple Valley to fetch a few of those boxes that I haven’t really thought about for the last few years. They’re the things that we’ve all got, like gifts from the last few years, yearbooks, and all sorts of things.
I care about these things, of course, and they have some good sentimental value, but on the other hand, they’ve been in a box at my parent’s house for the last four years and I haven’t thought about them once. I can’t bring myself to get rid of them, but I also can’t figure out how to keep them.
The goal in having all this stuff up here is to be able to work through it, figure out what I do need, what I don’t need, and simplify a bit. I’m really getting bogged down though being in the midst of the mess in my room. I’m tired of waking up and jumping out of bed only to step on several layers of clothes, puzzles and who knows what else. Even though I’m tired of all of the stuff, I’m in the midst of this mess because I know that next year I’ll be much better off having sorted through things.
In a lot of the same ways, stuff piles up in our lives. Not all of it is bad, some is, but all of it makes life a little trickier. It's worth looking into these messes in our lives, and possibly even realizing that God could be working in the midst of them.
We live messy lives. We’re messy people. As much as we’d like to portray an image that we’ve got it all together, we get things wrong, let others down, and fail to love.
I think the summer is a cool time to be around the INN because of a lot of reasons, but I especially love that there are people here that have been going to school at western as well as people who grew up around Bellingham and are back fro the summer, and people with stories that we haven’t heard. We’ve all been in hard, messy places before and this summer is an incredible time to share this with others in the community. Things go differently than we planned, and we run into hurt and pain in our lives, sometimes that we don’t even know about.
Everything seems to get messy in our lives as some point. Relationships with our parents get messy when we don’t call or visit often enough, relationships with our roommates get tough when we don’t do our dishes or can’t pay rent, and relationships with other people get messy when we don’t love them like we should. As simple as loving God with all our heart and loving our neighbors as ourself is by itself, when we apply it to our lives, things seem to get a little bit trickier, messier, mudier.
With all this terrible realization of how messy our lives get, where does God come into all of this? What could a good, perfect, loving God have to do with people who trip and fall in their life, continuously turning to and from God? Despite the fact that we can’t get it right, God still loves and cares for us. In Romans 5, verses 6-8 Paul says this:
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
We don’t have to get it all right, and we won’t get it all right. Even though I have a long history of turning away from God and forgetting to love my neighbors, he died for me. For all of us, He died. Not because we had cleaned up the messes in our lives, but because he loved us. God died for us knowing fully how we have separated ourselves from Him.
I did a quick search in the bible for mess when I started preparing. I was a little shocked at first, when 780 results came up. I was a little disappointed though when I saw that almost all the results were not just the word mess, but usually message or messiah. I scrolled through the list anyway, but as my eyes crossed all of these “mess” words, I started thinking that maybe it wasn’t such a coincidence. Now, of course if you go look at some background, or the greek and Hebrew, I’m sure there is actually no connection, but, I found it interesting anyway that God’s message kept coming up, and perhaps the phrasing God’s message has something to do with God entering into our mess, and Messiah has something to do with Christ walking with us and helping us through our messy lives.
The ways that we are challenged to interact with others often causes some messiness in our lives. Loving God and loving our neighbors are concepts foreign to a lot of people around us. Living these things out is challenging. Loving our enemies includes loving those around us that maybe we wouldn’t associate with otherwise. It can mean uncomfortable conversations with people that you don’t know. It can mean stretching ourselves to do something for others without looking for credit. It can mean forgiving others that for largely offensive things when our culture tells us to disassociate with the person. Not only do the actions make our life more difficult or messier, but living the words of Christ gets people talking and most likely questioning what you’re doing.
My room is still full of boxes, piles of clothes and memories from the last 23 years, but I’m working through it. I have to admit though, I haven’t done it all by myself. People have helped me pack, transport boxes, move furniture and more. We shouldn’t be in our spiritual/emotional/relational messiness alone either. We know that God is with us, and it’s important to connect with others in community.
I've been moving for the last few weeks. I’ve moved out of where I lived during the year, and into a new spot that I’m subletting for the summer. In late august or early September, I’ll be moving again to a more permanent location here in Bellingham. All this means a whole lot of cardboard, piles of stuff, and missing important things. On top of all of this mess in my room, I decided to go down to my parent’s house in maple Valley to fetch a few of those boxes that I haven’t really thought about for the last few years. They’re the things that we’ve all got, like gifts from the last few years, yearbooks, and all sorts of things.
I care about these things, of course, and they have some good sentimental value, but on the other hand, they’ve been in a box at my parent’s house for the last four years and I haven’t thought about them once. I can’t bring myself to get rid of them, but I also can’t figure out how to keep them.
The goal in having all this stuff up here is to be able to work through it, figure out what I do need, what I don’t need, and simplify a bit. I’m really getting bogged down though being in the midst of the mess in my room. I’m tired of waking up and jumping out of bed only to step on several layers of clothes, puzzles and who knows what else. Even though I’m tired of all of the stuff, I’m in the midst of this mess because I know that next year I’ll be much better off having sorted through things.
In a lot of the same ways, stuff piles up in our lives. Not all of it is bad, some is, but all of it makes life a little trickier. It's worth looking into these messes in our lives, and possibly even realizing that God could be working in the midst of them.
We live messy lives. We’re messy people. As much as we’d like to portray an image that we’ve got it all together, we get things wrong, let others down, and fail to love.
I think the summer is a cool time to be around the INN because of a lot of reasons, but I especially love that there are people here that have been going to school at western as well as people who grew up around Bellingham and are back fro the summer, and people with stories that we haven’t heard. We’ve all been in hard, messy places before and this summer is an incredible time to share this with others in the community. Things go differently than we planned, and we run into hurt and pain in our lives, sometimes that we don’t even know about.
Everything seems to get messy in our lives as some point. Relationships with our parents get messy when we don’t call or visit often enough, relationships with our roommates get tough when we don’t do our dishes or can’t pay rent, and relationships with other people get messy when we don’t love them like we should. As simple as loving God with all our heart and loving our neighbors as ourself is by itself, when we apply it to our lives, things seem to get a little bit trickier, messier, mudier.
With all this terrible realization of how messy our lives get, where does God come into all of this? What could a good, perfect, loving God have to do with people who trip and fall in their life, continuously turning to and from God? Despite the fact that we can’t get it right, God still loves and cares for us. In Romans 5, verses 6-8 Paul says this:
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
We don’t have to get it all right, and we won’t get it all right. Even though I have a long history of turning away from God and forgetting to love my neighbors, he died for me. For all of us, He died. Not because we had cleaned up the messes in our lives, but because he loved us. God died for us knowing fully how we have separated ourselves from Him.
I did a quick search in the bible for mess when I started preparing. I was a little shocked at first, when 780 results came up. I was a little disappointed though when I saw that almost all the results were not just the word mess, but usually message or messiah. I scrolled through the list anyway, but as my eyes crossed all of these “mess” words, I started thinking that maybe it wasn’t such a coincidence. Now, of course if you go look at some background, or the greek and Hebrew, I’m sure there is actually no connection, but, I found it interesting anyway that God’s message kept coming up, and perhaps the phrasing God’s message has something to do with God entering into our mess, and Messiah has something to do with Christ walking with us and helping us through our messy lives.
The ways that we are challenged to interact with others often causes some messiness in our lives. Loving God and loving our neighbors are concepts foreign to a lot of people around us. Living these things out is challenging. Loving our enemies includes loving those around us that maybe we wouldn’t associate with otherwise. It can mean uncomfortable conversations with people that you don’t know. It can mean stretching ourselves to do something for others without looking for credit. It can mean forgiving others that for largely offensive things when our culture tells us to disassociate with the person. Not only do the actions make our life more difficult or messier, but living the words of Christ gets people talking and most likely questioning what you’re doing.
My room is still full of boxes, piles of clothes and memories from the last 23 years, but I’m working through it. I have to admit though, I haven’t done it all by myself. People have helped me pack, transport boxes, move furniture and more. We shouldn’t be in our spiritual/emotional/relational messiness alone either. We know that God is with us, and it’s important to connect with others in community.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
End of Season
Well, the internship has ended! This week is a week off, and then the following week we start up the Summer INN. As sad as I am that the internship is over, I know that some really great things are coming up. The summer INN feels like an experiment in community that is very fluid and student driven. It should be awesome.
As much as I want to write here about the end of the internship, I wouldn't be able to give a full perspective of our team. For that, you'll have to check out http://www.theinnministries.org/category/interns/ and read everyone's final blog posts.
Perhaps more blogging this summer. Woo hoo!
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Few and Far Between
Too much has happened since my last post. Sorry. It would take too many words to tell about everything that's happened between now and then, so here are some pictures of a few of the awesome things I've taken part in:
We went packpacking to Lizzard and Lilly Lakes in the Chuckanut mountains. We look 35 or so students. it was awesome. This picture is me throwing my backpack over my head and catching it on my back.
I've continued making a lot of videos, frequently. I still love it. My camera has been getting some good use this year. It's about time! Check out www.theinnministries.org/videos for some of our work this year!
The next weekend after backpacking we went to do a local service project in Acme, WA. The area flooded earlier this year and there's still a lot of work to be done. We mainly raked, shoveled, and moved lots of gravel.
Some of the girl interns put our office items in jello. I found this on my desk after getting back from a meeting. This is a picture of my wooden carved name tag that I made in high school. Luckily, they put it in a ziplog bag before jelloing it so that the orange jello didn't stain the wood. Seth found his mug in jello. Jim found jello in his mug.
The INN's video editing iMac toasted. It's Christine's fault. Just kidding. We squeezed a good 4 or so year stint out of that refurbished iMac. Considering that it was used to produce the videos each week, I'm pretty impressed!
Well, that's the quick update to get me current. In other news, I applied to be the Summer INN co-director and got the job! I'm really excited. I'm still on and off sad about not going back to Alaska, but I think this summer is going to be a really good experience. On top of that, it will be a much warmer experience!
I've continued making a lot of videos, frequently. I still love it. My camera has been getting some good use this year. It's about time! Check out www.theinnministries.org/videos for some of our work this year!
The next weekend after backpacking we went to do a local service project in Acme, WA. The area flooded earlier this year and there's still a lot of work to be done. We mainly raked, shoveled, and moved lots of gravel.
Some of the girl interns put our office items in jello. I found this on my desk after getting back from a meeting. This is a picture of my wooden carved name tag that I made in high school. Luckily, they put it in a ziplog bag before jelloing it so that the orange jello didn't stain the wood. Seth found his mug in jello. Jim found jello in his mug.
The INN's video editing iMac toasted. It's Christine's fault. Just kidding. We squeezed a good 4 or so year stint out of that refurbished iMac. Considering that it was used to produce the videos each week, I'm pretty impressed! Well, that's the quick update to get me current. In other news, I applied to be the Summer INN co-director and got the job! I'm really excited. I'm still on and off sad about not going back to Alaska, but I think this summer is going to be a really good experience. On top of that, it will be a much warmer experience!
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Campus Ministry: Crazy Adventure
Campus ministry has been a huge part of my time in school. When I started my education at a local community college, I didn't have much direction in my life or a strong understanding of what it meant to be a young adult of faith. Out on my own, I was without the guidance of my parents or high school friends to encourage my spiritual growth and connection with a local church. I spent the year lonely, confused, and frustrated about the ways my life had changed.
Eventually, a call from a friend invited me to move away from the community college and continue my education at Western Washington University. I agreed to join him, although this move didn't seem reasonable or a good way to move forward with my academic career. Within a week of moving two hours from where I was, another good friend invited me to the INN, a large campus ministry in Bellingham.
Through the INN, I reconnected with my faith and began learning and growing more through participation in weekly gatherings, small groups, and a mission trip to rural Maine. My eyes were opened to what it means to make this faith my own and make it a priority in my life. My time at the INN as a student ended last year, as I transitioned into being an intern at the INN and realizing that I have a passion for working with students and helping them discover faith.
Through my growth this year as an intern in a campus ministry setting, I am committed to supporting campus ministry with my time. This year's ministry experience has been fantastic. I love the way I have been able to see God move in a large group of students, as well as how God works through small details. I will be supporting college ministry the rest of my life. Either directly, as a campus minister, or indirectly, through financial and other giving.
Campus ministry faces huge challenges in the future. Campus ministry will continued to be challenged in funding. Students don't have the funds necessary to support large ministry organizations, supporting churches don't gain members or funds from college students, and parents are already struggling to keep up with the raising costs of higher education.
Campus ministry will also be challenged in how it reaches out to students. In a world where we are terrified to offending one another over religious beliefs, Campus ministries will need to continue proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. At times, this will bring challenge, offense, hurt, love, care and joy. Within a campus ministry community, we walk together, causing another challenge of supporting students through changing times. We are challenged to be tollerant, without watering down the Truth.
Campus ministry is an exciting place to be. We live in a changing world, which is amplified in campus ministry, where participants turnover every 4-5 years as they finish their education and move out into the world. Despite the challenges, it's a great adventure that has been worth every dollar and every hour of time. There is no greater adventure than following Christ, and campus ministry is no exception.
Eventually, a call from a friend invited me to move away from the community college and continue my education at Western Washington University. I agreed to join him, although this move didn't seem reasonable or a good way to move forward with my academic career. Within a week of moving two hours from where I was, another good friend invited me to the INN, a large campus ministry in Bellingham.
Through the INN, I reconnected with my faith and began learning and growing more through participation in weekly gatherings, small groups, and a mission trip to rural Maine. My eyes were opened to what it means to make this faith my own and make it a priority in my life. My time at the INN as a student ended last year, as I transitioned into being an intern at the INN and realizing that I have a passion for working with students and helping them discover faith.
Through my growth this year as an intern in a campus ministry setting, I am committed to supporting campus ministry with my time. This year's ministry experience has been fantastic. I love the way I have been able to see God move in a large group of students, as well as how God works through small details. I will be supporting college ministry the rest of my life. Either directly, as a campus minister, or indirectly, through financial and other giving.
Campus ministry faces huge challenges in the future. Campus ministry will continued to be challenged in funding. Students don't have the funds necessary to support large ministry organizations, supporting churches don't gain members or funds from college students, and parents are already struggling to keep up with the raising costs of higher education.
Campus ministry will also be challenged in how it reaches out to students. In a world where we are terrified to offending one another over religious beliefs, Campus ministries will need to continue proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. At times, this will bring challenge, offense, hurt, love, care and joy. Within a campus ministry community, we walk together, causing another challenge of supporting students through changing times. We are challenged to be tollerant, without watering down the Truth.
Campus ministry is an exciting place to be. We live in a changing world, which is amplified in campus ministry, where participants turnover every 4-5 years as they finish their education and move out into the world. Despite the challenges, it's a great adventure that has been worth every dollar and every hour of time. There is no greater adventure than following Christ, and campus ministry is no exception.
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