Earl Creps - 4th Message

His 4th message was on opportunity - "The Discipline of Making Room" the discipline of making room for God, so that the people in our communities can experience an environment where the Holy Spirit can invite them into a relationship with Christ. He is talking about taking the off-road discipline of witness to the group level. He suggests that there are no formulas, yet we live with the pressure to "reduce mission to evangelism, and then reduce evangelism to either strategy or experience alone."

Two things stick out to me today from this message that I heard last week. One, Earl said, "Jesus isn't a speed bump, he's a stumbling block." Two, he quoted Eric Swanson, "Lives are most likely to be changed when people engage with other people...Good deeds can be done from afar, but good news can only be shared up close."

When we get "up close" with students, do we present Jesus as a stumbling block or a speed bump? When we meet as a large group are we "making room" for students to engage in relationships with each other or engage in our outreach program?