To help break down the prophetic books—they are daunting—try applying these questions to what we’re reading. Next week in the Wednesday night group we’ll test them out on Amos 1-3.  - E.

Roles
To what task is the prophet called in this passage?
For whom and to whom is he speaking?

Social location
What is the prophet’s social location? (geography, status, power, etc.)
What are the societal conditions? (war, government, $$, recent history, cultural practices)

Literary qualities
In what genre/form is the text?
Poetry: judgment, lament, hymn, allegory, etc.
Prose: symbolic action, commission/call, vision, biography, divine chronicle, etc.

Theology & ethics
What does this text suggest about God?
Is the prophet making a universal or contextual statement?
Is the prophet speaking to individuals or society?
What concrete actions does the prophet want people to perform in response?
Is there hope in this passage?

Name: Elizabeth

Occupation: I play with concrete. It’s pretty awesome, except when it gets in your nose. (I’m a Civil Engineering grad student at Georgia Tech.)

Where are you originally from?
Lake Mary, Florida, home to Dwight Howard, Matt Kuchar, and 90’s pop star Mandy Moore. It’s about halfway between Daytona Beach and Disney World, and yes, I have been to both. A lot.

How did you find your way to NAPC?
This is one of those small-world stories. When I found out I was going to be in Atlanta, I looked up Presbyterian churches near Tech’s campus that had young adult ministries. First website I pulled up was NAPC’s. I made my way over to Jeff’s bio, saw that he had gone to Princeton Theological Seminary, and since I was in Princeton at the time and sitting on a couch with another PTS seminarian, I thought “Hey, what a neat coincidence! I’ll send him an email to get an idea about the area.” So here I am! (More small-worldiness: I later discovered that Jeff had interned many years earlier with the campus ministry group I was part of.)

What is playing on your ipod/computer right now (and I mean RIGHT NOW)?
Right now I’ve got my super-awesome Pandora station going. At the moment it’s playing “Paint or Pollen” by Blind Pilot, but it’s got a nice mix of folksy indie music and southern rock. I’ve really been enjoying the Avett Brothers lately.

What’s your favorite animal?
So when I was little - and I mean really little, like 3 years old or so - my family had a bunch of dogs. And you know how dogs eat a lot of things they probably shouldn’t eat? Well, I sort of followed their example one day and… ate a lizard… Ever since then, my parents have affectionately called me “E-lizard-breath” and they became my favorite animals. My bedroom back home in Florida is still decorated with lizards. So I suppose they’re my favorite animals, except I don’t like real live lizards because real lizards are crawly and crawly things are creepy.

How are you involved in the Young Adult ministry?
I’ve been going to the Wednesday night Bible studies. I’m really excited to start learning about the Prophets this week!

What are you looking forward to this summer?
The Young Adult Retreat! (I promise Jeff didn’t make me say that….) My family used to vacation in Blue Ridge, right next to Ellijay, so I’m pretty excited to go back. And this time it’ll be with a bunch of really cool people who I’m excited to get to know, too.

Here’s a live version of Sufjan Stevens singing his song, The Transfiguration. This is the same song Josh transfigured himself last Sunday at the evening service. Many people asked where they can find the song. The original recording can be found on Stevens’ album, Seven Swans. However, Josh is up for private concerts whenever you ask…

-JM

This summer in the Wednesday night group we’re reading Old Testament prophets. But before we dive in, we’ll spend some time this week asking, “What is a prophet?”

Does a prophet tell the future, like a nation’s official horoscope writer?
Did prophets wander out of the desert and just start shouting at people?
Did prophets bring good news, bad news, or both?
Is a prophet more like a poet, a preacher, a politician, or a performance artist?
Do we have prophets now? Was MLK a prophet? Is Pat Robertson?
How do the O.T. prophets call us to act today—what specific, concrete actions?

Anyone is welcome. We meet Wednesday night, 7pm, Room 316.  - E.

I still want names. -JM

As Jonathan wrote earlier this week, “our generation” still commits to serving their neighbors. NAPC young adult Ellie Hamalian is currently working in Cambodia with YWAM. Below she describes two experiences that illustrate the challenge and the gifts that come with self-sacrificial serving.

At the Poipet Garbage Dump

One morning we had the opportunity to visit the community living at the Poipet Garbage Dump. There were about 20 families. I have never seen a place so dirty in my life, it was kind of hard to see. The men, women, and children living here rummage through trash looking for things like plastic bottles. If they get a bag of plastic bottles they can exchange it for a dollar. There are other similar materials they look for. The land at the dump is free so families that live here have lost property and have no other choice. They live off of one or two dollars a day. There is no running water or electricity so after a day of rummaging through garbage, it is hard to find water to wash with. As a result there are flies everywhere. We handed out hygiene bags of toothbrushes, soap and shampoo. As we interacted with these people, I literally had to force myself to not get bothered by the flies. If I were to swat every fly that got on me, I’d be swatting the whole time. There was one lady in particular that was just covered from head to toe with flies. When we handed out bags with balloons, crayons, and toys for the kids, they were so glad to recieve them. And when we played games, for those short moments, they were kids again before going back to work. The organization that brought us here have been coming for a while, so most of the people in this community are already Christians. The people have witnessed many healings and ways in which God has provided for them, however they have no way of being discipled. That was part of our purpose. I prayed for a young man who was sick. It’s a mystery to me how so many of them stay healthy enough to keep working. Right before we went in, one of our leaders reminded us to be careful with our facial expressions and body language, to not show disgust. She said, “I’m pretty sure that if Jesus was walking on Earth now, he’d be here.” And I think that is so true. When we are with the kids in the other villages, they jump all over us. But the kids here did not do that at all, as if they were thinking I am so dirty and these people are so clean and they don’t want me to touch them. When we were praying at one point, I went to grab a child’s hand, and he seemed shocked that I would cross that line. So what do I think about this? First of all, I’m getting deeper revelation to how blessed I am. I also pray that my eyes would not be numb to the need in this world. That God would continue to show me how much the world needs both physically and spiritually and that I would do something about it. My second thought is, “Is there any hope?” Job went through some tough times. After all his suffering God says he is always in control, always sovereign, and I need to lean into that truth in this situation.

Freedom in submission

Discipleship was this week’s topic. It was very difficult to understand this week’s speaker because his first language wasn’t English. There was one phrase that I was able to understand and caught my attention. Freedom comes through submission. The world says freedom comes through getting your way and what you want. But freedom really comes though humility and laying down rights. I was thinking about this in any sort of relationship. For example in a friendship, whenever there is tension, rather than being bitter or resentful, submission and forgiveness will lead to freedom. Otherwise, that bitterness holds you.

Name: Xiaxi (or Li X by academic convention)

Occupation:
PhD student in Materials Science

Where are you originally from?
It depends on how much you know about China and how much I want to share my personal history with you. I usually say Beijing, where I spent 4 years in college. I actually grew up in Shenzhen, a southern city right next to Hong Kong, where my parents and their cat are living now. The city I was born is called Zigong, located in Szechuan, western China, famous for the dinosaur fossils.

Who or what brought you to Atlanta and to NAPC?
I came to NAPC because Neale and Carol offer free shuttle from GT dormitory to the NAPC morning service. Then I met Jonathan West who invited me to the 3rd service. He managed to anchor me in this service by providing me ride back to my dorm every Sunday night until I got a car.

What is your favorite Atlanta area restaurant?
The dim sum restaurants in Chinatown. Seriously, their dim sums are better than what I had in Beijing.

What’s your favorite animal?
Absolutely cats. I LOVE cats, particularly the ones have shorter hair. My parents have one of this kind and are training her to call me brother. I used to think of having one in Atlanta until I host one for my friend for 10 days and found out I don’t like to clean her litters. A friend suggested me have a stuffed robot cat instead, and I think it is a good idea.

What do you do for fun and relaxation?
It’s really a good question. Micheal Payne once said, Georgia Tech is the graveyard of social life, and I think it is quite true. (But you still have to do something for relaxation, right?) OK, I take jogs in the morning and swim before the dinner break. When I really get frustrated and want to destroy something, I will watch an episode of TBBT.

Where’s your preferred spot to sit in the sanctuary?
I aggregate with the Chinese/Asian folks.

What are you looking forward to this summer?
Get some inner peace in the middle of this PhD limbo.

Here’s the bad news, I only have 5 4 3 2 tickets left to this Thursday’s Braves game vs. the Marlins at Turner Field. The good news? Tickets are only $7! Email me at jeff@napc.org if you would like me to reserve one for you. We have a great group of twenty-five folks going and hope you can join us.

Keep swinging for the fences,

JM

For some time now, I’ve felt like our generation has been getting a pretty bad rap. If you were born in the 1980s, you’re generally considered to be part of what’s called the Millennial generation (Generation Y is another name…creativity is obviously not a strength of sociologists). Some sociologists have also called us the “What’s in it for me?” generation. Their research suggests that we are more obsessed with money and less concerned with the environment, social problems, and politics: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/16/millennial-generation-study-fame-money_n_1354028.html

In other words, we’re not held in very high regard. The nay-sayers are plentiful. If our generation truly represents the future of America, they say, then America is going to hell in a handbasket. But this seems no different than the tired old doomsday prophecies that every generation espouses. Younger generations never quite measure up to their expectations. Reinhold Niebuhr, perhaps the greatest American theologian of the 20^th century, offered two insights about young people. First, he said, youth brings vitality (alright, obvious enough). Second, this vitality usually makes young people oblivious to the brutality which is the inevitable corollary of vitality. It should be pointed out that Niebuhr wrote this in the 1930s. But this is a fairly common sentiment about young people of any era. So are we Millennials really as selfish and oblivious as people make us out to be?

I think it’s telling that the folks who criticize our generation so much have so little interaction with us. If they did, they might realize that such sweeping generalizations have many more exceptions than they think. I know many people my age who absolutely do not fit the stereotype of selfishness and apathy. Two of my very good friends got married last summer. They decided that they wanted their honeymoon to reflect their Christian commitment to love and serve their neighbors. So they led a group of their friends on a Habitat trip to Honduras. They wanted their first act as a married couple to be an act of service that helps give people quality housing. Another friend of mine is just finishing her second year as a Peace Corps volunteer. She committed two years of her post-college life to serving the people of Ukraine. I’m sure many of you have stories of people our age using their youth and vitality to further the cause of justice in the world.

Both Jesus and Paul looked around them and concluded that they lived in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation (Matt. 16:4, Phil 2:15). Surely human history has taught us that this is true of every generation. No generation can claim to be innocent of selfish desires. Every generation is prone to be apathetic about the plight of the poor and all others who carry heavy burdens. Yet in the midst of the sinful human condition, some flashes of love and compassion always seem to break through. I’m inclined to believe that this is no less true of our generation than it was for those who came before us. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to be reflections of the light that shines in the darkness (John 1:5). Sure, we often fail to do this in many ways. But we refuse to accept the notion that these failures mark us as failures. Every day is a chance to renew our commitment to love and serve our neighbors because our strength comes from the steadfast love of the Lord, which is new every morning. Keep trucking, my friends!

Post by recent seminary graduate, former NAPC intern, and insane Tech fan, J. West.

I want names. -JM