In case you were wondering, this is the playlist we were using before The Gathering this week. Maybe worth adding to your iTunes account:

“Lift Us Up To Fall” Tenth Avenue North
“(A Quiet Interlude)” David Crowder Band
“Love is Here” Tenth Avenue North
“(B Quiet Interlude)” David Crowder Band ***It just didn’t feel right to play A without B***
“Rejoice” Chris Tomlin

So, there you have it.

We’ve been talking the language of becoming “People in Person” for the last couple of week at The Gathering. But that doesn’t mean the Bible’s against technology. In fact, I’m pretty sure Jesus would have a Facebook page…can’t prove that one yet, but He was pretty invested in people’s lives. Any way, that’s not the point.

I’m constantly blown away by the amazing ways Facebook connects all of us. And that’s my point for tonight. Just one example: a friend of mine posted a photo earlier this evening. Within the first hour, it had already accumulated 47 comments! It’s kind of amazing to think that many people were logged into Facebook, interested enough to see the picture and invested enough to comment.

Not going to lie, I was pretty surprised by that…and, by the way, I thought the picture was pretty funny too.

Long live Facebook. MySpace? What MySpace?

Our staff team has been talking about summer internships at The Gathering for the past couple of weeks. It’s always something we’ve done and something we’re leaning towards doing this year. But no big announcement here. Just a question.

I would love to hear from you about past summer internship experiences you’ve had. What made them great? What did you hate? What makes a good internship for you?

We don’t just want to do internships because they seem like a good idea. We want to do them to add value to the lives of our interns. Would love your help in refining what that looks like.

Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
for as many years as we have seen trouble.

May your deeds be shown to your servants,
your splendor to their children.

May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us;
establish the work of our hands for us—
yes, establish the work of our hands.

- Psalm 90: 14-17

I have no idea how your day is going as you read these words. You might be feeling on top of the world or crushed by the weight of the world; but probably just somewhere in between. My guess is a lot of us are pushing our way through a pretty average Tuesday wishing we could find a little more joy in the hours ahead.

Moses speaks directly to that in Psalm 90. Go back and look at what he prays: Satisfy me. Make me glad. Establish the work of my hands. Let Your favor be on my life. How stunning is that? He just asks God to do all those things in his life. Believe it or not, it’s not a selfish prayer. It’s an incredibly humble one. He’s saying, “Lord, I can’t even make my own heart know true joy. I need you even for that. So, please do a supernatural work in my heart that leads me to real joy.” And God isn’t offended. He doesn’t rebuke Moses. He doesn’t drag him up another mountain for a little chat. He hears. He answers.

It seems like we all need to pray Psalm 90 just a bit more regularly over our lives.

We’re wrapping up our People In Person series this week at The Gathering. We’re going to be looking at the seemingly difficult but amazingly freeing life Paul calls us to in Philippians chapter 2, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves.” (verse 3). That’s one of those passages that takes your breath away. It makes you stop and ask if Paul could have possibly meant that. He did, by the way.

There’s another passage just like it a little later in the chapter. This one isn’t going to come up in the talk this week, so it’s a little bonus for us hanging out on the blog. But Paul leveled me with verse 14 a few days ago and I wanted you to be able to share in the experience. “Do all things without grumbling or disputing; so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation”

Kind of stops you in your tracks, doesn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I can be a complainer! Not in a whinny kind of way (at least I don’t think so) but in more of a “do you see what’s going on here!!” kind of way. But, my little distinction is honestly pretty irrelevant. What matters is that all of the grumbling and disputing needs to go.

But here’s the question: why do we all enjoy grumbling so much? Would love to hear your thoughts.

If you follow this blog regularly, you’ll note two little changes we made over the weekend:

1. We moved. The Gathering blog is now at the far easier to remember www.thegatheringblog.com. You’ll get redirected from the old page but you might as well bookmark the new page now. Plus, it’s a lot easier to tell your friends if we’re actually using a URL that makes sense!

2. The comments section now runs on a platform called Disqus. Depending on how you comment, it might not be a big change. But disqus allows for some interesting possibilities (like video comments) and a lot more identity for people leaving comments. Play around with it a bit; I think you’ll like what you find.

I also spent some time rethinking why we have this blog. Here’s the idea in a few sentences, conveniently borowed from the header of this blog:

The Gathering is McLean Bible Church’s ministry with the collegiate generation. We’re one ministry living on multiple university campuses in the Washington, DC area. This blog is a way for us all to stay connected and inspired as we impact the collegiate generation with the message of Jesus Christ.

I hope Disqus and a few other features we’re rolling out in the months to come will turn this blog into an online community for all of us involved in The Gathering. I really don’t want this to just be about my voice – I hope you’ll lend your voice to the conversations here and allow this to be one small way that our diverse community stays connected.

This past week, I asked you to make a list of tough conversations you needed to have with people in light of the truth we looked at out of Matthew 18. People you needed to forgive. People who needed to forgive you. Those places in life where you had gotten sideways with someone and never even saw it coming.

I always wonder how many people take me up on challenges like that. But what I really wonder is how many people have had those conversations.

I pray many of you have over the weekend. I know it might seem a little frightening – but, go for it! There’s amazing freedom on the other side. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 5:

I know you’re going to think this is either a desperate attempt to sound “relevant” or to score points with college students or just pure insanity played out in a blog but, believe it or not, I love eating in dining halls on university campuses. I know, I know…

First of all, it’s the last time in your life when meals will be prepared for you multiple times a day. Just doesn’t happen in post-graduation life. Second of all, you see so many people in the same place – it’s like the whole village gets together to share stories at the end of the day. And the places are filled with energy. They’re loud, exciting and full of life. I really do love them.

So, I was pretty stoked to eat at Leo’s on Georgetown’s campus last night. Little frightening since Leo’s hadn’t even been built when I went to school there, but that’s another story. It was a great night and very good to get to hang out with the leaders of The Gathering at Georgetown. Definitely a good place to eat on a random Tuesday night.

If engaging community was always easy, we would do it a whole lot more. But the reality is it gets a little tricky from time to time. This week at The Gathering, we’re going to be looking at the reality that conflict is inevitable. Some of us love that and some of us hate it. There are some people who love a good fight and some who will avoid conflict like the plague. No matter where you are on that spectrum, conflict comes into community.

The good news is that the Bible shows us how to handle those conflicts. That’s what we’re going to be studying this week. It’s going to be an incredibly practical and helpful night for each of us. And I guarantee you’ll leave wanting to make a few changes in life.

See you this week,
John

Tomorrow night is going to be a pretty amazing Gathering at American University. I’m really excited to introduce AU to some friends of mine from Maryland who have come together to form the band Zelos. These guys are amazing musicians and passionate worshipers all at the same time. You’ve gotta love a band that’s as at home on the stage of the 9.30 Club as they are in a worship service.

We’re going to keep pressing into our People In Person series and trust that God is going to knit everything together tomorrow night in a way that will change us and glorify Christ.

Help us reach out and connect your friends to what God is going to be doing in Kay tomorrow night.

Hopefully, Passion2010 is already on your radar screen. If you want some more information, check out my previous posts about it or visit the Passion2010 website. It’s going to be an incredibly powerful gathering of the collegiate generation in January (yes, 11 months away!) and I don’t want you to miss it.

Registration opens tonight. Save some money and get registered tonight – you’ll have plenty of time to figure out how you’re going to get there! To register, go to the Passion2010 site.

This week has been an amazingly good but challenging time. I’ve felt the same way at the end of each one of our Gatherings; really encouraged by what God had done but really challenged to live out community at a much deeper level. As I sit here today, I can’t escape the feeling that many of us are still chewing on the talk from this week. Part of us wants to dismiss it and part of us wants to embrace it.

Remember: God uses community to restore us when we sin. Confessing our sins one to another (James 5:16) is awkward, yes, but so powerful. Allow others to speak into your life. Allow others to guide you to truth and to apply just enough pressure to mold you into the image of Christ.

That’s my prayer for you this weekend. Take some step towards that kind of community. As frightening as it might seem, it will be deeply freeing.

I’m really excited by what God is doing through the hearts of a couple of friends of mine who created “Love Stand Up.” You definitely need to visit their site at www.lovestandup.com.

Over the last couple of months, they have been planning a campaign to raise awareness about human trafficking. They’re going to the Hill today to deliver Valentine Cards to the Senate. It is estimated that it would take 14 billion dollars to free the 27 million people in slavery around the world today. America spent 17 billion dollars on Valentine’s Day last year alone. Today is about urging our lawmakers to continue to stand up to this injustice. The thing I love about this group is that they do all this in the name of Jesus Christ.

Would you join me in praying for them today? Please pray that they are able to get into the Senate without obstacle, people respond well to the message, and that God is glorified through their efforts.

- Isaiah 33: 15-16 (NIV)

We all want to be the person who dwells on the heights. We want to find refuge for our souls, our hopes, our dreams. Who doesn’t want to have the needs of life met? We all want the blessing of God. We want to live established on the rock of Christ.

It’s amazing to me how clearly God lays out the pathway to that kind of life. There’s no mystery – no intrigue, no guess work required. Isaiah 33:15 lays it out as clearly as possible.

The only question is whether or not we want it badly enough to follow. Are we willing, today, to mold our lives around the truth of these words so that we can live the way we dream?

Simple thought. Simple question. But the way you answer it could change everything.

It’s funny what you can turn into an office when you end up spending most of your time on University campuses getting ready for worship services.  For example, I’ve spent the last 30 minutes returning phone calls from the glorious loading dock on the back of the Johnson Center at George Mason University!  I have to say when it’s 70 degrees outside, it’s a nice, but admittedly unconventional, place to chill.