Sierra Service Project is offering two Weekend of Service Projects to churches throughout the Pacific Northwest.  Like our summer projects, our weekend sessions combine Christian fellowship and challenging renovation service opportunities to provide an intense, fun, and unforgettable experience for youth and young adults from all denominations.

Our Portland Weekend of Service Projects run from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, making them ideal for youth groups who are seeking to fulfill their passion for service-based ministry during the school year.  We partner with various local organizations to provide much needed renovations at local organizations.  These projects include the many repair skills SSP is highly experienced in, including carpentry, flooring, wall repair, and painting.

This project is very affordable at only 795 per participant, which includes all lodging, meals, materials, and a t-shirt.  Dates for our Portland projects are April 13-15 and May 18-20.  More information can be found at our website, sierraserviceproject.org.  Also, feel free to contact the SSP office: (916)488-6441 or e-mail director@sierraserviceproject.org.

“Finding your way, through God”

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. -I Corinthians 12: 12-13

I n 1998, I was 20 years old.  For our ‘twentysomethings’ reading this column, some of you may relate to this ‘thirtysomething’s musings of days past.

Back in the latter gen-X days of Tamogatchi digital pets, the Internet boom, and the beginnings of ‘sharing’ downloadable music, I was a sophomore in college.  Some people who knew me way back then would say this was a period of time I was (air-quotes) “trying to find myself”.

I was attending Chabot Community College in Hayward, Calif. trying to find a career calling.  I had questions like, “What do I want to do in life? What is something I really enjoy doing but can still pay the bills? What kind of career path should I follow that will make my parents proud of me, or at the least, not have them embarrassed when telling my very large Filipino family what it is I do for a living?”

Also around this time, I was keeping my eyes peeled for the right girl to have, yes, a meaningful relationship with.  The questions swimming in my mind then were: “Is it possible to find someone who has a great sense of humor? Should I just have fun or be serious and think about someone whom I can share my faith journey with? Who is someone I can consider a ‘partner’ and a ‘friend’?”

I was trying to find myself spiritually, too.  Inside my brain, I’d ask: “What does it mean to be a Christian? Does Heaven really exist? How can I fit into an environment that contradicts my desire to be a good Christian and to follow a righteous path?

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CONFERENCE JR. HIGH/MIDDLE SCHOOL RETREATS!

We are excited to announce the early release of registration materials for the 2012 Jr. High/Middle School Retreats! We hope a group from your church will be joining us this year. Both retreats are only $65 this year if you register by the Early Bird Registration Dates ($75 after the deadline; see below). T-Shirts are only $10! With both retreats nearing capacity last year, it's a great idea to register before these dates. Please call/email the retreat registrar before sending in registrationsless than a week in advance of the retreat date.

• The first retreat will take place at Camp Indianola on February 11-12, 2012.
  Rev. Katie Stickney, Deacon & Pastoral Counselor from Redmond United Methodist Church, will be the speaker.
  The Early Bird Registration Deadline for this retreat is January 27.
   
• The second retreat will be at Lazy F Camp on March 3-4, 2012.
  Rev. Geoff Helton, Pastor at Ephrata United Methodist Church, will be the speaker.
  The Early Bird Registration Deadline for this retreat is February 21.

Check-in for both retreats starts at noon on Saturday with activities beginning promptly at 1:30pm. We will conclude by 2pm on Sunday.

Registration materials, poster, etc. are attached below.

This past June, on my way back from a conference in New Orleans, I found myself on a flight next to a very chatty, recently-graduated chiropractor.  Normally I’m more than willing to strike up a conversation with my seatmates, however, in this case I really would much rather have been sleeping (at least to begin with).  I had not gotten much sleep the previous couple of nights and was heading back to Lazy F to continue with training for a very busy summer.  Once the two of us got past the usual introductory-type conversation, he noticed the book that I had in my hands, “Theology that Matters”, and we spent the next three hours talking religion, faith, theology and belief.  Through most of the conversation, I had an incredibly strong urge to tell the guy that he was the exactly the type of person I had read so much about in the Pacific Northwest.  He described himself as very spiritual but not religious; he had attended various churches sporadically throughout his life, but never really found one he liked or could stick with; he said that he believed that religion really wasn’t necessary to be a “good person.”

Recently, my friends on Facebook have been circulating a couple of blog posts on this very subject.  The postings and discussions were prompted by UCC Pastor Lillian Daniel’s post “Spiritual but Not Religious? Please Stop Boring Me.” (bit.ly/lillian-daniel-spiritual-not-religious).  In her provocative post, Daniel seems to be trying to prod self-proclaimed spiritual people out of their typically American-individualistic shells and into a more challenging environment – a community.  She writes of dreading the very airplane conversation I had, where her seat neighbor discovers that she is a pastor and chooses to disclose that he or she is a very spiritual person, but not religious, and that he or she can see God in sunsets (or for my chiropractor friend, while on his secluded morning runs).  But what good is it to see God in solitude?

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