The End of Summer Vacation

Summer is coming to an end (and has already ended for some of our students).  BUT, on the plus side, that means Sunday nights for FUSION Gathering are back!

We had a great annual end-of-the-summer float down the James River on Saturday:

Then we met up on Sunday night for our first FUSION Gathering of the fall.  We had a delicious dinner and tried our hand at playing handbells before getting into our lesson for the week.  We are starting a series called "Ancestors" where we will take a look at various people and groups of people in the Bible who are the ancestors of our faith.  This Sunday we began with Mary, the mother of Jesus.  What a faithful servant she was.  God called her to be the mother of Jesus when she was only a teenager, and despite her fears and what this would do to her reputation, she accepted willingly.  Together we talked about how crazy and interesting our family trees can be.  Sometimes we have extra branches here and there from broken relationships.  Sometimes there are severed ties with certain family members.  Sometimes we have family members who are added in either from new marriages or adoption.  For most of us, when we draw our family tree, it doesn't always look quite perfect or balanced on every side.

Can you imagine the conversations Mary and Joseph must have had to have with Jesus when he was a kid.  How do you explain to a little boy that his dad is God, creator of everything?!?  Thankfully, though, Mary and Joseph had not only some of their blood relatives, but also others in the faith that helped them throughout their lives and in raising their children (yes, Jesus had other siblings...well, I guess you could call them half-siblings).  So, if you were to make another family tree...this time a "Faith Family Tree", who would be included?  It probably includes more than just your blood relatives.  We spent time making our own Faith Family Trees on Sunday night, and I challenge you to do the same this week.  For the roots of the tree, write in those people who root, support and connect you to faith.  For the trunk of the tree, write the names of the people who are ancestors of the faith for you...those who help ground and strengthen your faith.  For the branches of the tree, write in those who stretch you toward heaven.  For the leaves of the tree, write in those who receive light from the sun/Son and help nourish your faith.  And when you are done creating your faith family tree, choose someone on that tree to contact this week and thank for everything they have done and continue to do to make you who you are today.  I know it will mean a lot to that person, and i am sure it will mean a lot to you as well!  Feel free to comment on this post with your response to how it went.  See you next week!

Sweet Frog & Fellowship

This summer we are meeting at Sweet Frog on Tuesdays at 2pm for some fro-yo, fellowship and a short Bible study!  It's a great way to stay connected with friends during the summer, and gives us something to do during the day while the youth are home from school.

Yesterday was our first meeting, and we began our study on 2 Timothy!  We will be looking at the ways that Paul still speaks to us like he did to Timothy in these letters.  Yesterday we talked about Paul's support and encouragement of Timothy to remain faithful even when times are tough.  Who encourages and supports you when you are having a difficult time?  Comment on this post with your responses!

Hope to see you next Tuesday at 2pm at Sweet Frog!  By the way, for those of you who don't know, Sweet Frog is a Christian business!  FROG stands for "Fully Rely On God"!  How cool is that?

How to Forgive

This Sunday was our last FUSION Gathering meeting until school starts back in August!  Crazy how time flies so quickly.

This Sunday was all about forgiveness.  Forgiveness is difficult!  Sometimes, it even seems impossible.  But, God calls us to forgive and Jesus often teaches on forgiveness throughout Scripture.  When we look at Luke 17:1-4, we see a few important things about forgiveness.  First, we see that sin (unfortunately) is a part of life.  God asks us to try to stay away from sinning, but inevitably we mess up sometimes.  We also see in this passage in Luke that when someone sins against us, we are supposed to rebuke them!  Call your friend or family member out on what they have done, because sometimes we hurt someone without even realizing it.  Now this doesn't mean you have to yell at the person or be disrespectful.  It simply means you need to let that person know that you are hurt by what they did.  Next we learn that after making the sin known, we hope and pray for repentance...that the person will understand and feel sorry for what they have done.  And with that repentance comes forgiveness.  And we learn here in Luke that no matter how many times someone sins against us...no matter how much we get frustrated...God calls us to forgive that person every time!

In response we each thought of someone we need to forgive.  We took a piece of yarn and tied it around our wrists like a bracelet.  Knowing that sometimes it can take a while to forgive someone, we are each challenged to keep that bracelet on until we are able to fully forgive that person.  Who is it you need to forgive?  Comment on this post with your responses.

How to Resolve Conflict

This week we took a look at how we can resolve conflict in healthy ways.  We started with looking at a video in which a guy and a girl deal with conflict in various unhealthy ways...explosion, transference, breakdown, internalization, etc.  These are all things we've done before when dealing with conflict.  Obviously conflict can't always be avoided.  But when it does arise, we need a plan for handling it in appropriate ways.

As an initial guideline, we took a look at Acts 6:1-7 where the early church was having issues with some of it's members getting left out in the distribution of resources.  In this story, we see that the Disciples took the time to first identify the issue or conflict at hand.  Then they spent time assessing the priorities at hand. The Disciples knew that this conflict needed to be resolved, but they also knew that their current priorities were to pray and perform the ministry of God's word.  So that brought them to the next step of figuring out the solution and acting on it.  Here they decided the best solution would be to appoint seven people who were wise and strong in their faith to be the sort of mediators to help fix the conflict at hand within the church.  That way the Disciples were able to continue their ministry, but the conflict was being taken care of appropriately and by people the church respected and would listen to.

This story from Acts helps us get a handle on the steps we need to take when conflict arises.  Together we also took a look at several tips for resolving conflict in our own lives.  We learned things like making sure we confront conflicts as soon as possible and stick to the subject at hand rather than trying to bring other situations into the argument to try to "win" our case.  We should confront people privately and make sure to express real feelings while demonstrating unconditional love.  We should seek to understand the other person which involves listening, not just talking.  We should be specific and avoid generalizations, and we should confront to heal, not to win!  It's possible that a conflict may end in the two parties agreeing to disagree like Paul and Barnabas when they argued with each other over the next step in their missionary journey (Acts 15:36-41).  That is okay!  What is important is how we treat each other in the midst of conflict and trying to resolve it.  How do you tend to react in situations of conflict?  Try to remember these tips this week and focus on ways you can handle conflict in healthy and appropriate ways that are pleasing to God!

After our conversation we played our favorite game, Gorgon!  Don't forget NEXT SUNDAY we will have a movie night as we watch "Wesley: A Heart Transformed Can Change the World".  Plan to stay until 8pm rather than our regular 7:30pm ending time.  We will have pizza, veggies and dessert!

 

How to Express Anger

We know that there are ways for us to prevent anger...especially by being quick to listen and slow to speak.  But, there will always be times when we get angry.  AND there are appropriate ways for us to express that anger that can be healthy rather than destructive.

We took a look at Ephesians 4:25-28, Matthew 5:23-26 and Matthew 21:12-13.  In these passages we discovered three characteristics of healthy anger:  Healthy anger is rooted in truth, not falsehood.  Healthy anger seeks resolution, not dominance.  Healthy anger focuses on giving, not taking.  We took a little quiz to evaluate our own anger and found that some of us are stuffers who are afraid to hurt other's feelings and therefore end up hurting ourselves by keeping in all our emotions and need to work on expressing our feelings appropriately.  Some of us are exploders who handle anger spontaneously and aggressively and need to work on finding more constructive ways to handle our anger.  And some of us are manipulators who want to get revenge but do so passively and need to work on face to face problem solving skills.  When you evaluate your anger, what category do you fall in?  Take time this week to really look at how you deal with anger and work on ways to do so more constructively!

After our discussion, we spent time in mission tracing and cutting out teddy bear patterns for Operation Christmas Child!

Encounter: Meeting God face-to-face

We began a new series Sunday night!  For a few weeks we will be looking at anger and conflict and how God calls us to respond.  Sunday we took a look at how we can work to prevent anger.  We started with talking about things that make us angry and completed dovetail puzzles where two words are hidden inside each other.  One word in the puzzle is something that may cause anger and the other word is a way that anger may be expressed...for example: SYPELOLIRNTSG would be Sports and Yelling!  After talking about the individual words and why they make us angry we took a look at several passages in James.  After reading James 1:19-21, 3:3-12 and 4:1-4, 7-10, we see that God calls us to be QUICK to listen, SLOW to speak and SLOW to anger.  When we take the time to listen to God and listen to one another, we often are able to understand the situation we are in better and prevent ourselves from getting angry.  How do you deal with anger?  Comment on this post with your response.

After our discussion, we were able to go outside and play "kick the can" since the weather has been so nice!  I hope to see you next Sunday as we look at how we can express our anger.