We moved!

come to our new place, our address is:

www.sagemontcollege.org

Help this guy out.

My name is Brandon Shields, and I have been given permission by the leaders at Sagemont Baptist to survey adults who graduated from Sagemont’s youth ministry. If you attended Sagemont Baptist Church your senior year and graduated high school between the years 2000-2007, I need your help!

I would like to invite you to participate in this research via an online survey, in which you basically answer a few questions about your youth ministry experience and your current church involvement. The survey will take no longer than 15 minutes, information collected will be absolutely confidential, you will not be solicited as a result of this survey, and your email address will not be given to another party.

If you would like to participate, please click on the following link to take the survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=DftGGA95azxUOLgqAXON7w_3d_3d
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at bshields@highview. org.

I strongly encourage you to consider this opportunity. Your responses will be part of a national effort to help churches more effectively reach students for Jesus and help them grow in their faith. Thanks for your time and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Brandon Shields

High School Pastor — Fegenbush Campus
Highview Baptist Church
O – 502.231.6275
C – 502.645.1745
F – 502.239.3353
www.highview.org
www.brandonshields.wordpress.com

UPDATE: Please be patient, we’re working on the link
UPDATE2: The link works now.

As promised, Marriage : Recap

The image above was used under the Creative Commons License from greggoconnell.

Just to refresh everyone’s memory and keep you all thinking I’ll post a few of the things that came up last night in regard to the different perspectives on marriage. Please comment if you’d like to add anything to the conversation.

The World and Marriage/Relationships:
Generally, it is the natural course of action for people to seek what is best for themselves. This tendency extends into dating and marriage. Worldly relationships typically consist of two people seeking what is best for them. This is probably best illustrated by a phrase that is so often heard on TV and in real life discussions of relationships: “What about what I want?!” This can reveal something about the person speaking and the person being spoken about.

Marriage is a Contract: Often times in the secular world, marriages begin with prenuptial agreements, and deals involving what one party will do for the other, how often, and what they will get in return, and so on so forth.

Marriage is usually the last step, following things like sex, moving in together, having kids, and buying a house.

Lastly, secular marriages and relationships have a foundation of equality, which is good, but from this equality stems the concept of a democratic marriage. It doesn’t take a math wiz to realize that when things are put to a vote, its either a tie or its unanimous, which can cause problems.

The Bible and Marriages and Relationships:
In relationships and marriages where both are focused on God, service of the other person is, and should be, foremost on the mind of both parties. This concept extends into every other aspect of the relationship.

Marriage is a covenant between the man and the woman, and more importantly, between the man, the woman, and God. It is not something that can be left behind because you’re just tired of the person. It is a commitment to work through the hard times, not run from them.

Marriage comes before sex, kids, houses, etc. This concept ties into some things that were mentioned last night, such as committing to someone before all the hard times come up. You commit to another person knowing that difficult times are coming and that you WILL work through them, instead of trying to work through difficult things, then marrying IF those things work out.

Christian marriages have a foundation of equality, however there is an order of leadership and submission that makes things work smoothly.

Finally, in a Christian relationship or marriage, both parties are operating with the foreknowledge that both parties are broken and that neither can expect the other to be perfect and forgiveness will be a necessity.