I was the speaker at a middle school camp all last week. It’s a pretty sweet gig because my family gets to tag along.  During one of the days we had some time and took the kids to a beach near Tacoma.  While the kids hunted for crabs, Miriam and I spent the afternoon searching for sea glass. As we were collecting it, I felt I needed to use it during my message that evening.  The message was about the sinful woman (Luke 7: 36-50) who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears, dries them with her hair and breaks open a bottle of perfume to anoint his feet. It was a message calling for these students to lay their own brokenness, wounds,  and pain at the Lord’s feet.

As I was talking that night, I brought out the glass and began to form it into the shape of the cross on the ground. Then, what happened next was all of the Lords doing. I offered an opportunity for the students to come up and to simply kneel at the broken cross, offering their own brokenness to the Lord.  It was quiet for a moment, then something in the room broke open.  Not something out loud, it was something breaking within the hearts many of these students. Tears began to come.

I’ve been through emotional services before, but this was something completely different. It was a real, raw, painful hurt that just came gushing out. I’ve never been around something so filled with agony and yet so healing at the same time. The The Lord made his presence known and touched many of those students that night. When you open yourself up to the Lord and experience Him you always walk away changed.

Ministry is always a series of ups and downs while following after the Lord. Recently, I’ll have to tell you that I’ve been riding up and down, wave after wave. For those of you who do not know this; I am a support based missionary. This means that amazing people, financially support me and my ministry to teens on a monthly basis. Without regular support, I can’t be here, doing what I do. But with life and the economy always in flux, some people support you for long periods of time and others just for a season. It’s that ebb and flow of support based ministry.

So every once in a while I like to extend the offer to you, dear blog readers, the opportunity to join my support team.

So what exactly do I do? My job is to reach out to unchurched teens in Washington, journey with them, and offer them a hope and life in Christ. I am the director of Arlington Youth Dynamics a ministry located in Arlington, WA (www.yd.org). We deal with mainly broken, at-risk kids. I love being apart of what the Lord is doing in the lives of these amazing kids.

If you’re interested, go here to join and all gifts/support is tax deductible. If you have more questions shoot me an email (sdelony@yd.org) and we can chat.

Here’s a testimony of what God is doing in the lives of students.

I read an email from a friend this morning and my heart was broken. He didn’t say much, but he didn’t have to. He shared with me latest chapter of his struggle at a church he’s been pastoring. He was called to pastor an older church and all he’s met over the past few years was grief, abuse and struggle. I sat in my office praying for him and crying for the pain he was experiencing. I’ve watched this happen to him over the past few years at a few different churches. My heart breaks for him and his family. He’s honored me by sharing his journey with me and I’m continually amazed at his heart and his steadfast faith over these years.

I wish this was the only story I’ve heard from people I’ve befriended. What has the church become? I have seen little grace, love and compassion within it’s walls. It has simply become an institutionalized building. A grave reminder of what it was once meant to be.

I’ve also been burned by churches (and one quite significantly). But like my friend, I never saw this abuse as coming from God’s hand. I’ve only seen the Lord shower me in love and grace through the hard these times. This awareness has been key for me. Has the church left a bad taste in my mouth? Absolutely. Has the Lord? Never. And I’ve begun to hate church because of what it has become.
I hate church because of what we’ve made it. BUT, I love the church because of what God created it to be. My passion is to see the church restored to a vibrant, organic body that it once was. I have hope in that. The church is meant to be a glorious thing that changes the world, but we’ve made it something else. It’s become a corporation with four walls to keep some in and the other out. It has become confining, safe and tame.

If you pay attention to Jesus in the gospels, he never treated it as a job, or a career. It was always a passion; a calling. There was no point where his ministry ended and Jesus began. It was his whole being. It was his purpose for existence. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t clean, but it was good and completely Godly fueled.

The early church was the same. It wasn’t a club to join. It was a way of life. It transformed lives. It reached out to the poor and needy. It brought God’s love to a broken and hurting world. It was a remedy.

Now, we are people pleasing and program driven business. We are safe and tame. We are no longer faith driven, God fueled, and Christ centered.

I sit alone in my office and weep as I pray for my friend and the church. We have walked so far away from where we were supposed to be. I am grieved. But I am also hopeful that there is a way back.