God Created Rebels (or Why KONY 2012 Works)
Your phone rings right after the youth event is over. It's a mom. She reads to you from the same script again, "My son/daughter is making everything so hard. We've been arguing non-stop, and today I found out that he/she has been smoking/drinking/sneaking out/insert rebellious action here." You console; you offer reassurances, but the bottom line is: teens are rebellious. That is part of their state of being.
They are rebellious because God created them that way. That's right. God created rebellion. It's not wrong. It's not a sin. In fact, it is a necessary part of psychosocial development for teens. They need those rebellious tendencies to separate from their parents and form healthy egos. If it weren't for our tendency to rebel as teens, we would end up in overly-enmeshed family relationships that would not allow us to function as adults.
The problem is that, in the developed world, teens are exposed to very little that is worthy of rebellion. Their lives are sheltered and comfortable. They do not experience the terror of bombings or the horror of losing half of the people they know to curable diseases or seeing their family members arrested for speaking out against an oppressive political regime. For many, their largest rebellion is dyeing their hair a radical color or dressing in clothes their parents dislike.
That's why KONY 2012 is so powerful. Regardless of what you think about Invisible Children or the founders, they have done two things quite well. They have raised an issue that is worthy of rebellion and given a method of rebellion that is accomplishable by teens. Students long to rebel, and if we do not give them things worthy of that rebellion, they will express it in whatever trivial ways are presented to them.
This is what I love about youth ministry. We have such powerful tools in our students. There is a passion available to them that is unmatched in any other stage of life, and this passion is paired with this need to rebel.
Here's the question for the day: how are we guiding that passion and rebellion? What are we lifting up as worthy causes? If the most we can offer is a scavenger hunt or random act of kindness, we have missed an incredible opportunity.
So maybe KONY 2012 is not your bag. Maybe you don't want to spend all night raising awareness for this cause, but there are so many incredible places to find other worthy causes. I'll be honest, as United Methodists we do a poor job producing great Bible study material. It's true. We don't have a Beth Moore or a David Platt, but we do have incredible justice ministry. We do have ministries engaging with issues worthy of rebellion.
Look at Imagine No Malaria . This organization is working to END malaria in sub-saharan Africa. If you are interested, there's even a church-wide study (with youth curriculum ) that ties in with INM.
In many of the most tragic world disasters UMCOR is the first relief organization to have feet on the ground and the last to leave. What's more they have great hands on ways to support through flood buckets, layette kits and more. Then, there's the US-2 program and others like it that give young adults an opportunity to serve full-time as missionaries without having to raise their own support.
Don't let this week pass without considering how you will channel the rebellious passion of your students to make the world look more like heaven and less like the messed up place it used to be.
From: YouthWorker Movement
Jewish Background Resources
As I was preparing for the second session of Jewish Jesus, I realized that it had been a while since I recommended resources. Below is a list of several books that I love that help me when studying the Jewish or Middle Eastern background to the New Testament. Keep in mind that a couple of these have a VERY academic edge to them which means that they feel comfortable saying that one thing or the other in the text is not “authentic” or was a “later addition.” All that means is that they believe the earliest form to be a bit different from the current form. I’ll let you know which are more academic in my description.
Jewish New Testament Commentary by David Stern. This is one of the greatest resources! You simply look up the book, chapter and verse, and it gives you any backgrounds information the author deems important. If you don’t buy anything else, buy this one!
Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus by David Bivin and Roy Blizzard. This short book is as much appendix as it is text, and the appendix is almost more interesting than the book istelf as it gives a binch of examples of how understanding the hebrew ideas underlying the greek text allows you to understand the reality of that is going on in the text.
Jesus the Jewish Theologian by Brad Young. This is an incredible book. It is pretty easy to read even though it takes a very academic apprach to the subject. He not only explores background to the text, but the very jewish theoligical message Jesus was communicating through his ministry.
Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth Bailey. This is the newest text on the gospels from one of my favorite background authors. He has lived in the middle east for over fourty years and takes a regional perspective when explaining the text. Brilliant.
Poet and Peasant AND Through Peasant Eyes by Kenneth Bailey. Widely regarded as two of the best background texts ever published are now in one volume. These will blow you away with their insight. I cannot tell you the number of times each month I see references to this work from other scholars. This is a must read for anyone interested in the topic. This has a bit of an academic edge to it.
When God is Silent
I have been preaching in our new services for several weeks now, and it has been going really well. Though I have been posting all of the videos on my vimeo account, I have decided to not post ever week's sermon here; however, I received so many comments about this one that I decided to place it here. At the heart of this sermon is a desire to answer questions around the experience of the Silence of God. So... when God is silent, where is he? Why is he silent? What am I supposed to do?
Jewish Jesus 7: The Priestly Garments and Tallit
This is a teaching from my 8-week Bible Study on the Jewish background to the new Testament. I start a 7-week study on the feasts on March 21 at 6:30PM in the Christ Center at Christ UMC. Come join us for the fun!
Fixed Streams (Praying Benedict's Divine Hours)
While planning our summer a couple years ago, I decided somewhat spontaneously that we would take a short retreat during the summer to spend time exploring ancient Christian monastic and mystical practices. If I am honest, it was as much an excuse for me to spend time studying the interesting subject matter as it was an attempt to create a mega-attractive youth retreat. And of course we would definitely be the only youth group in town doing anything like it.
Little did I know at the time, but the movement begun by the Rule of St. Benedict was going to do as Jonathan said it had always done. It was going to “change the landscape” in our area. I expected low attendance and was surprised when we had three times the number I initially expected. Having had enough students sign up, it was set. We would spend two days following Benedict’s hours, experimenting with all sorts of Christian mystical practices and living simply, without electricity.
The backbone of the whole experience was the divine hours. Though they had existed before, the Rule of Saint Benedict that Jonathan explores in his article codified them into a form that is still used today. Our goal was to do as Jonathan says and “root our Spirits in Scripture and prayer… [and] feed our bodies with good food and fellowship.” We began with a midday prayer service at noon then had midafternoon prayer at three followed by vespers at six and went to bed after our compline service at nine. We were awakened by one of our singers singing worship songs for prayer at midnight and three and then had morning prayer at six followed by mid-morning at nine.
What was surprising and beautiful was the way the hours provided a divine rhythm for the day, not just because we were stopping to pray throughout the day but because the prayers of each service reflected some aspect of what was happening with the earth or our bodies at that moment.
First thing in the morning, as we were waking up and bringing our brains back online, we repeated the refrain, “You strengthen me more and more; you enfold and comfort me.” Though I had experienced this moment every day for my entire life, I had never considered God’s design and provision in the process of waking up. It had never occurred to me that it was God’s design causing my mind and body to strengthen more and more.
At noon we prayed, “Almighty Savior, who at noonday called your servant Saint Paul to be an apostle to the Gentiles: We pray you to illumine the world with the radiance of your glory, that all nations may come and worship you; for you live and reign for ever and ever.”
Just before we retired, we closed our compline service with a prayer that said, “Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.”
This infused the day with recognition of the divine. After you prayed about Paul at noon you could not help thinking about the call of Paul as you went about your tasks. You could not go to bed without reflecting on the protection of God through the night. Your very sleep was enacting your prayers about watching and resting.
Whenever I talk to youth ministry friends about this experience, they want to know what happened at the retreat. I generally laugh a bit because, on the outside, not much happened. We studied history, we sat in silence, we prayed. And that was it. There was no emotional rush to the altar; there was no brilliant speaker or talented band. We didn’t play any stupid or outrageous games. We made no attempt to be relevant or cutting edge. We just studied, prayed and lived.
Yet there was something powerful in a different way that happened there. It was as if we were standing at the Grand Canyon together looking at the work that had been done by a patient flow over thousands of years. Because we were choosing to stop and look, we saw how these practices had shaped those who had gone before, and we were captivated. The more we stared at the beauty created by the stream of prayers, the more we longed to surrender to its slow sculpting. And the more time we spent in its shaping flow, the more willing we were to surrender to its non-21st-century pace.
What does that mean? We read prayers. Beautiful, complex, theological prayers. The kind of prayers we wish we could pray but cannot be developed by teens—or most anyone, for that matter—off the top of their heads. We were able to speak to God with words we’d always desired but never had, and we surrendered, if only for a couple hours, our individuality and spontaneity to something greater.
May the Lord bless you and keep you and cause his face to shine upon you from this day forth and forevermore. Amen.
There are several books full of these prayer services. Here's a link to my favorites: Pocket (Pictured above) Fall/Winter, Spring, Summer, Nighttime.
Pig of God?
So, they were faced with a choice when translating the Bible. Make the text totally inaccessible by making up a word for lamb and having to teach about what the animal was before anyone could understand the text or find an equivalent in their culture. They chose the latter.
The only reason that it was problematic was that the animal closest to the lamb in their culture was the pig. In their culture there are two grades of pigs raised: those for consumption and those for sacrifice. The ones raised for sacrifice have to be unblemished and raised in a special way. When those pigs are sacrificed, their blood is understood to provide reconciliation with individuals, the east and the spirit world.
Like I said, it is as close as an animal can come to the significance of the lamb for the Jews and early Christians. Yet, the pig is the opposite of that symbol for the Jews. It is an interesting problem; however, they made the call and translated lambs as pigs. In their translation of the Bible, John 1:29 reads "Behold the pig of God that takes away the sins of the world."
As hard as it is for American eyes to conceive, it is as close an accurate translation to communicate the Gospel to the people of New Guinea as there could be. Wow. Hard.
So, my question for you to consider is this: where is the line? What pieces of your faith are open for translation and contextualization? How far is too far when trying to reach people with the Gospel of Jesus?
Jewish Jesus week 6 (Temple Part 2)
The second installment on my teaching on the temple. This is just about the structure. There is so much more when we dive into what went on there in the ritual and practice of the people through the feasts. Stay tuned for those teachings in the future.
Journey to Hope (An Ash Wednesday Lesson)
In case you are scrambling for what to do for a lent study, I have gotten to write another great resource with the team at RETHINK Church. Below the video is the experiential element and Bible discussion for the Ash Wednesday lesson. You can download the entire curriculum free at the RETHINK site.
In the original language of the Scriptures, the word repent means to turn. When we decide to accept forgiveness and attempt repentance, we set off in a new direction with our old life at our back. What an adventure! For a long time, we may have been taking a well-known path of sin. We likely have become comfortable with its direction. The turn of repentance takes us in the opposite direction. It takes us into the unknown. It is an act of risking adventure. That is what the ashes of Ash Wednesday are about. They are a sign of repentance; they are a sign of risking adventure!
Imagining Adventure: Tell the students that you are going to spend some time together using your imagination. Ask everyone to close their eyes as they walk through this imagination-focused story:
You are standing in front of a massive plain. It is as flat a piece of land as you have ever seen. You see an occasional tree or bush, and you have the distinct feeling that you can see everything. Ahead of you are no surprises. The colors are as plain as the landscape, browns and brownish- greens. A few small animals walk freely. They reflect the landscape. What kind of animals do you see? (Pause.)What colors are they? (Pause.) What are they doing?
In the original language of the Scriptures, the word repent means to turn. When we decide to accept forgiveness and attempt repentance, we set off in a new direction with our old life at our back. What an adventure! For a long time, we may have been taking a well-known path of sin. We likely have become comfortable with its direction. The turn of repentance takes us in the opposite direction. It takes us into the unknown. It is an act of risking adventure. That is what the ashes of Ash Wednesday are about. They are a sign of repentance; they are a sign of risking adventure!
Imagining Adventure: Tell the students that you are going to spend some time together using your imagination. Ask everyone to close their eyes as they walk through this imagination-focused story:
You are standing in front of a massive plain. It is as flat a piece of land as you have ever seen. You see an occasional tree or bush, and you have the distinct feeling that you can see everything. Ahead of you are no surprises. The colors are as plain as the landscape, browns and brownish- greens. A few small animals walk freely. They reflect the landscape. What kind of animals do you see? (Pause.)What colors are they? (Pause.) What are they doing?
In the distance, you can see someone headed toward you. You remember that you are here to meet someone. The man is far away, but your eyes are fixed on him. You can’t stop looking at him, but you begin to hear things behind you ... wild things. You can’t quite make them out, but you know that somewhere in the distance behind you is danger. What do you hear? (Pause.) At the same time, the wind comes from behind you, and you smell some of the most intoxicating smells you have ever experienced. They are like your favorite foods all rolled into one hunger-producing scent. What do you smell? (Pause.) It is clear that no matter what those sounds and smells are, there is definitely one thing back there: Adventure. What are you feeling? (Pause.) Are you scared? (Short pause) Are you excited? (Short pause) At the same time you wonder what it is like back there, you are unsure if you are really interested.
You’ve spent so much time listening and smelling and feeling that the man has nearly reached you. You recognize him. You have never seen him before, but you know exactly who it is. It is Jesus. He is there to meet with you. He leans forward and says softly, “It’s time. I need you to trust me. It’s going to be an adventure. Let’s go.” Then he takes your hand. As you turn, you realize your adventure has begun.
After the experience, ask:
Experience Scripture: Have the youth open their Bibles and read John 8:1-11. Discuss the Scripture using these questions:
You’ve spent so much time listening and smelling and feeling that the man has nearly reached you. You recognize him. You have never seen him before, but you know exactly who it is. It is Jesus. He is there to meet with you. He leans forward and says softly, “It’s time. I need you to trust me. It’s going to be an adventure. Let’s go.” Then he takes your hand. As you turn, you realize your adventure has begun.
After the experience, ask:
- What sorts of emotions did you feel?
- Were you surprised that Jesus wanted you to turn around and head into the danger/adventure?
- Which do you prefer in life going into the known or the unknown? Why?
- What makes the unknown scary?
- What is the risk of following Jesus in this scenario?
Experience Scripture: Have the youth open their Bibles and read John 8:1-11. Discuss the Scripture using these questions:
- What would have happened if Jesus had not been there, but another person had stood up for the woman?
- If you were in that situation, would you have risked the crowd turning on you if you defended the woman? Why or why not?
- What do you think happened when the woman left that place?
- How was this situation similar to the story we imagined earlier?
- The word repentance means to turn from sin and head in the opposite direction. Understood that way, how is repentance risky?
- As we sin over and over again, we experience the negative effects.
- We know the bad consequences. What makes us choose to continue sinning instead of moving in a new direction?
Jewish Jesus Week 5 (The Temple Part 1)
This is a teaching on the outer courts of the temple. We have been studying this Jewish background in the hospitality room of the Christ Center on Wednesdays at 6:30 (At Christ UMC Mobile, AL).
Make an Impact on MLK
The event happens the Sunday
evening before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. You decide to host a meal and
work to bring people from diverse backgrounds together to share a meal and
discuss issues that affect your community and possibly serve in some way.
What a great way to get your youth not only involved in community issues,
but inviting all sorts of peers to dialogue about what is happening in their
world.
As I understand it, the goal is
to get people talking or acting or both. So how about hosting a dinner
that focuses on bullying, cheating, discrimination, civil rights, or... you get
the idea. It is much easier to get non-religious and nominally religious[1]
teens to an event with this sort of focus than some Christian band they've
never heard of. To sign up to host or attend one, just go to www.sundaysupperumc.org.
Let me know how it goes!
Prayers Like Incense
The Future of the Church (or reaching for Trinitarian tension)
However important this concept is, it has often been ignored because of the difficulty of relating it to the human experience. My best understanding of Trinity is as the personification of relationship. This is not personification in the sense of the literary device that gives human qualities to inanimate objects, but in the sense that the Trinity expresses relationship by creating a being that is explained best by relationship. It is personification in the sense that it personifies (embodies, epitomizes, is the incarnation of) relationship. This is a powerful way to understand and speak of God. This would seem to indicate that as we relate to others, we are experiencing some piece of God, or that we are echoing the basic aspect of who God is. In a world defined as much by globalization and social networking as anything else, a faith centered around the beauty of relationships is a powerful one. It is in relationships with others that we grow, are challenged, are loved, and experience almost all of the deepest aspects of what it means to be human.
It is in its unique brand of relationship that Trinity exhibits another feature that is key to the future of the church: tension. This tension is not merely the tension that exists in all relationships as we understand ourselves and our life in comparison and contrast to others. It is far deeper. It is the tension created by two seemingly mutually exclusive concepts that find themselves held together in Trinity: three and one. Somehow those two concepts exist in the person of God, and that is exactly what a postmodern world needs: comfort with tension. This demonstrates that God not only defies and exists in a dimension beyond logic, but that he is comfortable with things that seem to be true, yet are logically impossible. In a non-tension based faith where logic is king, one has a difficult time reconciling the fact that evil exists in the same universe that an all-good, all-powerful deity exists. However, when one finds life in tension, the response to that problem is to realize that beyond both existing, the truth of each confirms the existence of the other. Or you might say that there is creation and life in the tension between those ideas.
It is in this tension that there exists a great mystery, the mystery of the Godhead. The modern world has reached out its mind and tools only to be disillusioned with a world that might be fully explained one day. Our race longs for something beyond us, something mysterious, something not describable by the scientific method. That is the Trinity. It is a being in which artist, flesh and spirit meet. It is a being which stretches beyond the cosmos, beyond time, and beyond the finite, yet calls out to us in beautiful creations, captivating love, and extravagant action: O, great mystery.
If the church were to take hold of this distinctive concept and allow it to inform and infuse its ministry, there would be a connection and relevance that has not been seen for decades if not centuries. No longer would we focus on impersonal programs where the priority is the anonymous dissemination of information, the church would focus on developing deep relational connections. No longer would we demand to share the same logical explanation of God before eating with our brothers or sisters. Knowing that life exists in the space between those in tension, we would welcome those of differing view points to our table, we would reach out and minister to the world together. And, with the knowledge that our world desires mystery, we would let go of all the modern control issues and allow the Spirit to move in our midst. We would open ourselves up to explore the mysteries of God and call others into that same exploration. In short, we would be exactly what our world needs right now: the Body of Christ.
Set World Records at Your Next Event
I was watching some podcast Brian Brushwood was on when I first discovered RecordSetter.com. This is a online, user-generated world record site. (I almost feel foolish writing anything else because I know your brains are already spinning on this one.) It’s easy. After signing up, you post a video as proof. They review it and then confirm you made or broke the record.
After hearing about this, one of our students immediately went and broke the record for number of times saying “pretty” before “good” in one breath. He was beaten soon after by a girl from Canada, but rest assured that he considered it a matter of national pride to get this record back in American hands!
So, we hosted a world record event and set a bunch of great ones that are being verified as I type. As a fun promo for the event our staff broke several records including my own world record:
Expressing your Heart to God through Prayer Books
Today in the 9:15 Sanctuary service, I spoke on prayer and mentioned the fact that most of us are not great at expressing our hearts to God off the top of our head. Luckily, there are brilliant writers and theologians that have gone before us and written books full of prayers that we can use.
Most of them are in the form of "The Hours." Basically, "The Hours" are set times each day that many people all over the world take a moment and pray. Most prayer books have some sort of calendar with the assigned prayers for each hour for each day. Below are several protestant versions of prayer books that I like with links to amazon where you can purchase them.
Most of them are in the form of "The Hours." Basically, "The Hours" are set times each day that many people all over the world take a moment and pray. Most prayer books have some sort of calendar with the assigned prayers for each hour for each day. Below are several protestant versions of prayer books that I like with links to amazon where you can purchase them.
Where's The Crisis?
Why does this matter? The point I was making in the sermon is that rather than being on a downhill slide as the graph would suggest, our world is in a state of improvement year over year in everything from public health to education. While we want to maintain that improvement, we need to realize that in a very real, tangible way, God is moving in the world through his people to make "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" a reality.
Beyond that, I think it underscores our need as individuals and as a church to be cautious about getting sucked into this sensational negativity hole. We need to be people proclaiming the rule and reign of God. Shouting from the rooftops his incremental victory over unclean drinking water and illiteracy so that people will give this God who cares about our life now a fair hearing. Maybe, if the church was leading the charge on positivity, people would want to hear more about this life-giving, active God we serve with in the world.
Is the God of Muhammed the Father of Jesus?
This post is basically a summary of a chapter of the same title from the book Theoloogy in the Context of World Christianity by Dr Timothy Tennent.What I like most about his chapter is that he takes a step back from this politically charged question and considers what exactly is being asked. Tenant comes up with three different, more specific questions that may be being asked, and addresses each in turn. I will do the same here. The three questions are:
- Are the English words "God" and the Arabic word "Allah" interchangeable?
- Do the subjects "God is..." and "Allah is..." refer to the same being?
- Are the predicates that Christians and Muslims use to complete these sentences the same (are the specific beliefs about God and Allah the same)?
1. Are the words "God" and the Arabic word "Allah" interchangeable? In the book, Teennant traces the history of the words and shows how (before Muhammed) Christians used the word "Allah" to refer to their God. There are even existing translations of New Testament books that use the word to refer to God. However, the word was never used to translate the proper name of God (the tetragrammaton YHWH). So, by the time Muhammed came onto the scene, Allah was commonly used by both Jews and Christians to refer to their God the same way that we use the word "god" to refer to any diety of any religion in English.
You can make a qualified "yes" in answer to this question speaking from a purely linguistic standpoint as long as you clarify that you are not using the word 'Allah' as a proper name for God. Muhammed moved the meaning of the word in that direction (using it as a proper name) which requires us to explore the next question.
2. Do the subjects of "God is..." and "Allah is..." refer to the same being? Transitioning from the previous question, you might restate the question this way: "Is the 'Allah' of Islam the same as the 'Allah' of pre-Islamic Arabian Christianity?" In this section, Tennent points out that if one is truly a monotheist they have to believe that God is the ONLY deity. If that is the case, then one could say that anyone seeking God can only be seeking the one being.
This gives yet another qualified affirmative. One could say yes, but would have to explain that just because someone is seeking God does not mean they are finding Him. This leads us to the final question.
3. Are the predicates that Christians and Muslims use to complete these sentences the same (are the specific beliefs about God and Allah the same)? Here is where we obtain some clarity. The good news is that a lot of what the Qur'an says about God is in line with the Bible. For example, Christians and Muslims agree that God is the creator (Surah 57:4), that Abraham is a great example of faith (Surah 16:123) that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary (Surah 3:45-47), and that Jesus was without sin (Surah 19:19). However, Christians hold some very central and distinctive beliefs about God that are not in line with Islam; namely, the trinity, the deity of Christ, the diety of the holy spirit, the incarnation of God in Jesus, God in Jesus suffering on the cross, etc.. Likewise, there are several problematic beliefs put forth in the Qur'an like the fact that God is the deceiver who leads people astray.
We can finally come to a well reasoned conclusion. While the word may have been used to refer to the Christian God before the time of Muhammed and while a monotheist cannot believe that there is another god to which a human can direct their worship, one has to say that the being described by Christianity and Islam cannot be the same being as central concepts about that being put forth by each religion lie well outside the bounds of the opposing religion's understanding of that being.
So, no, The God of Muhammed is not the Father of Jesus.
We must be encouraged by this. One of the things we discover when looking at these two religions is that there is a large amount of overlap. That is good news! That means that we can be like the Apostle Paul at Mars Hill (Acts 17:22-34). He surveyed their temple and found a bit of their religion that he could identify as true and used that to open up a conversation about the One True God! May we seek to do the same sort of respectful evangelism in our world!
Circuit Riders, Camp Meetings and the Allure of Comfort
FYI, I am preaching this upcoming sunday (9/25/11) at our 9:15 sanctuary worship service... look forward to seeing you there.
Quick Tip: Unhiding the Friends Facebook Secretly Hid
If you go to your feed and click most recent, most people assume that is everything posted by every one, but that is most likely not the case. Click the disclosure triangle next to “Most recent” and the go down to “edit options.” Now look at the field next to “show posts from:” Unless you have changed from the default you will notice that “Friends and pages you interact with most” is selected.
For a while, I had been noticing that I wasn’t seeing baby pictures from my extended family or my Church’s main group updates, but figured they were getting lost in the feed. These were groups that, though I wanted to see the information, I didn’t interact with very much. All you need to do is change the setting to “all your friends and pages.” Then, just hide the people and pages you don’t want to see in your feed.
From YouthMinistryGeek
Quick Tip: Laboring with Technology
Labor mate is a typical great iPhone app in that it does one thing incredibly well. It times contractions. Press a button when the contraction starts, press again when it stops, and Labor Mate puts together a nice list of the frequency and duration. Think it's about to get real? Labor Mate will email the contraction log to your doctor for him or her to review. It will even update twitter and Facebook if you are the type who loves to over share!
My advice for all people who are pregnant is to go straight to the app store and spend the $0.99 for this perfect little app (and ask your wife before tweeting contraction information).
From: YouthMinistryGeek