Hello friends!

I would like to go over some of the things we discussed during the October Winter Weekend so that those who were not in attendance can still learn and those who were there can be reminded. Today I shall look at our chat on:

Participation

You know how at school the same thing is taught year after year to each group of a particular grade? It’s like how you began to learn multiplication in grade three and so did all of your siblings? Yeah, CLTD is not like that. Your leaders get together each week in the winter to pray and chat about what to teach for the next Winter Weekend. In the spring we do the same thing for the summer sessions. Sometimes we teach what has been taught before but not before praying and revamping it as needed.

You may ask, “What do I care?” but did you know the time and effort it takes to do this? The first session we taught on the last weekend took a combined effort of 10 hours between Emma and myself. One session (that ended up being two because of the great discussions!). Yes, it is my job, but I am the only one on the team that actually gets paid to do this outside of summer. Everyone else is either working full time elsewhere or in full time school. I sit down at a coffee shop and tell the Leadership Team (we call it Ute Comm in the winter), “Our job is to prepare a banquet, making it the most enticing possible and invite others to partake in the celebration of it.”

Again you may wonder why I want you to know this; why I think it is so important? We are here to share faith with you, which we believe is the most potentially fulfilling endeavor one can seek after. But perhaps we have a bias. We know Jesus.

However we cannot instill this in you. We can only prepare it and present it to you, making it look the most inviting we can. Take for example if Emma and I (who are know for motorcycle riding ;) rather than for our domestic traits) lovingly baked you delicious cookies. We can buy the ingredients, take the time to bake them and lay them out for you. We can welcome you to come and take one, but we cannot feed them to you. You need to choose to come and take one. Once you have one you need to choose whether to put it in your mouth and chew it. You can also decide to take a cookie and only eat the M&M’s. (Too bad for those of you who missed the weekend! We actually brought in home-baked cookie that we made!)

Seriously though, we are encouraging and challenging you to take in our banquet; to engage fully; to open up and be willing to be changed, to challenge yourselves and seriously consider what is being taught. It is easy to sit and listen to what we are saying, but much more of a difficult task to actually let what we are saying (and more importantly what Christ is saying) to shape you – to change you for the best.

You have something to offer the group that is special and unique that no one else can give. 
What you have to suggest or question can help me to grow and question too! We build sessions in a way that asks you to participate. We want to hear from you! CLTD is a safe place to put in your two cents. Please! Partake in sessions! The more you’re willing to join in the more you’ll grow!

BTW, CLTD is about growth, not perfection. The starting point is where you are. You can’t start a journey a mile down the road – you have to start where YOU are now. Anticipate potholes, and falling on your face – this is not something anyone will do without scrapped knees, so to speak. This journey is yours, unique, and different than anyone else’s. Don’t expect it to be like mine or Emma’s or Jeremy’s. We all experience God and faith uniquely with different ups, downs and struggles. But... TOTALLY WORTH IT!

Come, be who you are, where you are in your journey and life and share what God has given you to share. Together we can build something magical! Be a part of it! And remember what I told you the first day of your CLTD session: You will get out of CLTD only what you put in.

"To risk nothing, 

is to risk everything." - Plato

“Only the person who risks is free.” – Leo Buscagalia.

For those of you who were at the September get-together, here is the link for one of the videos Emma and I were telling you about where someone took an old Jesus movie and dubbed over it: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfBR8nV4e8Q&feature=related

Please know this - some people feel these videos are insulting to Christianity.  I believe that Jesus has a sense of humor and smile at Himself. I, by no means, have any intention of being insulting - just silly.

Blessings all!

- shelley

PS - The offer always stands guys - it you need prayer or support in something, let us know! We also like to go for coffee!!

;)

Faith is stinkin' hard - even for non-believers!

I had a friend who used to say how hard it must be for atheists to believe in nothing. This morning in my quiet time I found this:

The believer can only perfect his faith on the ocean of nihilism, temptation and doubt; he has been assigned the ocean of uncertainty as the only possible state for his faith. On the other hand the believer is not to be without faith.

Just as we have already recognized that the believer does not live immune to doubt but is always threatened by the plunge into the void, so now we can discern the entangled nature of human destinies and say that even the non-believer does not represent a rounded and closed existence. However vigorously he may assert that he has long left behind him supernatural temptations and weaknesses and now accepts only what is immediately certain, he will never be free of secret uncertainty.

Just as the believer is choked by the salt water of doubt constantly washed into his mouth by the ocean of uncertainty, so the non-believer is troubled by doubts about his unbelief, about the real totality of the world which he has made up his mind to explain a self-contained whole. He can never be absolutely certain of autonomy of what he has seen and interpreted as a whole; he remains threatened by the question whether the belief is not after all the reality which it claims to be.

Just as the believer knows himself to be constantly threatened by unbelief which he must experience as a continual temptation, so for the unbeliever faith remains a temptation and so a threat to his apparently permanently closed world.

- Joseph Ratzinger Introduction to Christianity

Make a Difference - Operation Backpack

Hello friends!

Last weekend we had the first CLTD Winter Weekend of the 2010/2011 season and it was great! Thank you to all of you who came out! There were three groups that came together and everyone seemed to get along and have a great time together. I appreciate everyone’s willingness to get involved. You guys rock!!

Let me share with you a little about a ministry we serve: StreetLight. According to Maria, who heads up the ministry, “StreetLight is a mobile drop-in centre in the form of a fifth-wheel trailer and it reaches out to the homeless youth in the downtown Calgary core.”

It is a sad but true fact that there are kids who live on the streets in Calgary that are safer there than at home. It is a nightmare that few of us can even comprehend.

Every Christmas StreetLight runs Operation Backpack. “StreetLight has designed Operation BackPack as a way in which the community can get involved in meeting a survival need. We ask the community to buy backpacks and fill them with items in which homeless youth need in order to survive. At Christmas time, StreetLight goes out and hosts a big open-air party for all the homeless in Calgary and we hand out backpacks, a hot meal, coffee, and most importantly, HOPE for a better day.” Says Maria.

Last year CLTDs, staff and friends of Camp Chestermere collected over 50 backpacks for this cause. I am encouraging you to pray about participating in this cause this year. It can cost a bit to collect everything for these backpacks so you might want to get family and friends involved. These packs can make a difference in the lives of young people in huge ways. It is easy for us to confuse need and want in our day-to-day lives. We might think we ‘need’ a new ipod but anyone who goes without the basic needs of food and shelter on a continuing basis would beg to differ.

Backpacks are due at the Youth for Christ office the first Friday of December. However, I would be more than happy to help you get them there. You can bring packs with you to the November Winter Weekend, drop them at the camp by December 1^st or get in touch with me to come and pick them up.  For a brochure, drop me a line and I can email one to you.

We can make a difference in this world, friends. We just have to choose to do so!

Check out the StreetLight Blog: http://streetlightcalgary.blogspot.com/

A Quick Word...

Before I blog today I want to just say that you can choose to read what is written here or not. Some prefer to pass it off because they think it is too much to read. Perhaps you’ll read it and consider it a waste of time but maybe there is something written here that might make a difference in your world. Either way it is written here for you. The time and effort put in to write it was out of in act of devotion for Christ and out of love for you. If there is something you'd like to share here just send it to me and posted it shall be!

So... I encourage you - please read on...

Being in Right Relationship with Christ

I feel as though God has been teaching me much in the past few months on being right with Him. I have preached to my team for over a year about being in ‘right relationship’ with God. As teachers of young minds we need to be sure that we are teaching the Word of God and not straying from it as well as living the principles out in our lives outside of camp. It says in the Bible that teachers will be judged harsher than others.  James 3:1-2 says:

“Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged more strictly. Indeed, we all make many mistakes. For if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way.” (NLT)

I think there are two ways we are judged harsher. One is by God. We teach because we believe that God has called us into the role of teacher and lead others to Christ. However if we do not make sure that we are teaching the truths of the Bible we could be giving out false information that people take as truth and be lead from God without even knowing it instead of to the truth of Christ. The other way that we are judged harsher is by those around us – those we lead and those who are watching us to see if we are achieving our goals (like the head of the camp, parents, other staff) or who are looking to us for inspiration. People are quick to point out iniquities of leaders whether they mean it harshly or not. If I tell the CLTDs to put on their coats every time they go outside and I forget to myself it is not uncommon for me to be mocked or made fun of by one of those I lead for not being perfect in living what I teach. We are being closely watched to see if we are being people of integrity, people who can be trusted. I know that if I am seen living in sin and not making efforts to repent and recover I can negatively influence your view of the church as Christ meant it to be and your faith life in general. That is a huge responsibility!! (And please do remember that we leaders are far from perfect. We are sinners and do fail and fall sometimes. Please remember that we need grace from you as much as you need it from us!) Jesus, Himself, said,

“But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matt 18:6 NLT)

Yeah, that is a little terrifying! I am not interested in that and so I need to make sure that I am doing everything I can to not lead you astray. The Bible talks often about what is called ‘false teachers’. That is someone who teaches untruths about God. It is called blaspheming to do so. The thing is I believe that few set out to be false teachers. People rarely intend to teach these untruths. I have little doubt that satan wants me to fall on my face so that you have no intention to believe me when I am teaching about Christ. The devil doesn’t want you to have a relationship with Christ because Christ is his enemy. If I allow satan a place to slip in and influence what I believe and what I teach I can become a false teacher.

To avoid this I need to do everything I can to crush satan. I need to make sure that I am continuing to choose Christ daily. I need to be working on my relationship even when it is hard or God feels far away. So, how do I live in right relationship with Christ? There are a few parts to it:

1. I need to be learning about who I am in relationship with. I need to read His stories and see His love and how He responds to His people. The way I see it, the less I want to read my Bible, the more I need to. I need to know the truths within it if I am going to live it and if I am going to teach it. Going to church (and listening), reading books and devotional materials or listening to podcasts can help us to understand the Bible and how to apply it to our lives as Christians. (Participating in CLTD helps here to!!)
2. I need to confess my sins and work to conquer them. Yes, God knows your sins – He is within you always and knows even how many cells are in your body! You can’t tell Him anything He doesn’t already know. Confessing to Him is agreeing that what you did was wrong. Confessing to another person helps as well. Once it is out in the open I am more likely to actually work on living without that sin and another person can help to keep me accountable to working on it. When we don’t work on something it tends to fester, grow deeper and do more damage. Often we don’t want to deal with it but the longer we don’t deal with it, the longer we have to deal with it!
3. We need to pray. The thing is we often see prayer as us sitting down and bringing a list to God and then closing our time with Him. Prayer has three important parts to it. We need to talk to God, yes, but we also need to be willing to listen to what He places on our hearts (I will blog about this another day, so stay tuned!!). Finally we need to be willing to respond. He is going to use us to make a difference. He is going to teach us and not just instill something within us. If we pray for the world to change, guess who He is going to train to change the world?
4. I need to be willing to live right. I have to take it all and put it into action. We need to be living by the laws Christ calls us to. We need to be willing to love someone when we don’t want to. We need to be willing to put in the effort to make things right with someone we are fighting with. We need to act as His hands and feet. We need to do what Christ called us to:

“‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” (Matt 22:37-40 NLT)

If you want to live as a follower of Christ you need to daily pick up the challenge of living right. Is this hard? You bet!! It is hard for me, it is hard for Frank, it is hard for all of us. Our primal nature is to live selfishly and seek to care for our selves. We are lead into temptation all the time and it is hard to choose to not – sometimes it takes everything we have to say no and turn away. But if I don’t choose to turn away I am allowing satan to plant seeds within me that I have to work to get rid of so I can be the best me I can be. Only then can I be the best teacher and leader I can be. I see it like a spider crawling into my ear and building a nest and laying eggs. Um… gross!!

I am going to let Paul close today’s writing (think of a well-known camp song;)

“And now I make one more appeal, my dear brothers and sisters. Watch out for people who cause divisions and upset people’s faith by teaching things contrary to what you have been taught. Stay away from them. Such people are not serving Christ our Lord; they are serving their own personal interests. By smooth talk and glowing words they deceive innocent people. But everyone knows that you are obedient to the Lord. This makes me very happy. I want you to be wise in doing right and to stay innocent of any wrong. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. May the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.” (Romans 16:19-20 NLT)

Much love and many blessings to all!!

- Shelley belley sky

It's September!

Hey ya'll! I hope your return to school has been... well... as good as it can be! I started back yesterday - it is odd not being the oldest in my class any more, in fact, I appear to be right in the middle. In seminary there are people from everywhere!! There are so many accents in my class - it's really cool!

Anyways... I am writing to let you know that I will be mailing out Winter CLTD brochures to those of you that didn't get them at camp soon. Hopefully you'll have them in your hot little hands by next week! The dates for Winter CLTD are: 

• October 22-24
• November 12-14
• January 28-30
• February 25-27
• March 25-27
• April 29 - May 1

For the month of September we are planning a get together with all three groups on September 19th 3pm - 7:30 for a hot dog roast. Let me know if you'll be joining us by Sept. 15th.

If you have thoughts or pictures you'd like to post here for all to read pop me an email and I'll get it on here for you. 

Stay in touch and I'll see you real soon!!

Blessings all,

- shelley