Substitue Youth Pastor

Last night I went up to Covina to fill in for my friend Ty Dripps, the youth pastor of Covina Evangelical Free Church where I have been going while I’m in Azusa for School. Ty went to hang out with his family and spend some much needed quality time and he asked me to run things for their Tuesday night youth group meeting. It was the first time in a while that I’ve had a chance to talk to a decent sized group (there were around 30 of them) and I had a blast. I think they enjoyed it as well.

Brief summary:
I started out with a disclaimer that what we were about to discuss raised more questions than answers as is the case whenever you study the Bible. Then we dove into some texts about heaven (Isaiah 65, Amos 9, 1 Corinthians 15, and Revelation 21 to name a few). Throughout scripture heaven is here and not in some other place. All the imagery in the Old and New Testaments points to a restoration, renewal, rebuilding, and reconciliation of THIS world, and the work we do in THIS world has something to do with it also. Heaven isn’t just about our souls it’s about everything. Feeding the hungry, healing sickness, saving from poverty, freeing from slavery… it’s all kingdom work and it has everything to do with heaven.

It was fun playing substitute youth pastor and getting to engage the Bible with such a cool group of students.