Our Weekend at Transform Student Conference

Flashback to 2012 when I took the kiddos to Precept for the first time...

before I had the sense to take a group picture and not just a random shot of half our group.

When I thought about taking the kids to the Transform Student Conference 2013, I was exhausted by the thought.  On top of my crazy schedule, we had to raise half the funds to take our whole group.  The money issue was enough for me to take the easy way out and bail ("Next year, kiddos!"), but God provided and I was once again blown away by people's generosity.  A huge THANK YOU to everyone who donated.  

Now we had the moolah and all I had to do was make it through the weekend without one of my kiddos burning down Precept Ministries on accident.  

(That was sarcasm in case you thought I was serious.)

No, we didn't burn anything down.  But this awesomeness happened on the first night.  Makes my heart ridiculously happy that someone captured this precious moment.

Photo taken by Transform Student Ministries.

The next day someone captured a photo that is not quite as spiritual as the one above, but I die every time I look at it.  Jamal aka Mr. Popular surrounded by his adoring fans as he blows a bubble inside of a bubble.  This just sums up the fun and fellowship everyone has in between studying God's word at Precept.

They had announced that there would be a late night concert with As Isaac later that night and I was trying to decide if we would stay or head home early.  All the kiddos were staying at my family's house and the thought of leaving early and squeezing in an extra hour of sleep sounded great to me, but I wanted the kids to choose.  

During lunch I asked the kids, "So do you wanna go to the concert tonight?" Then trying to be funny I threw in, "Or we could just go to my house and and read the Bible and talk about what we learned today!"

*cue Veggie Tales music*

To my utter amazement, the kids jumped on that idea.  "YES!" They said.  "That would be amazing!"

"Wait.  Ya'll want to go home and read the Bible?" I asked in disbelief.  

"Yes!" They nodded excitedly.

So we did.  We skipped the concert and headed home and sat around the fire place.  We took turns sharing what God had taught us that weekend and we all cried.  Even the boys.  Some of the things shared were:

"I cried during worship.  I don't know why, but I just started crying."

"I felt God touching my heart."

"What if I listened to God and did what He wants me to do instead of listening to my friends.  I've made a lot of bad choices following my friends instead of God."

I even shared and started bawling and in the middle of my story I looked up and saw the kids crying with me.  They cried over what God was doing in my life.  Y'all.  I get chills just pondering over that.

The last day of the conference was bittersweet, as it always is.  I did remember to get a group photo though!

Our group was the bomb.  We were far from perfect (who isn't?), but God still managed, in the midst of our craziness and flaws, to confront each of us with His glory and power.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. - James 1:27

Bullets Fly Close By

Bullets Fly Close By

By Kara Akins

There was a shooting in Emma Wheeler Homes tonight directly across from our afterschool program. The shooting was at 5:46 and our pre-schoolers are let out at 5:30, the rest of the children are let out at 6:00. Well, we were running late, thank goodness, and the pre-schoolers weren’t let out until around 5:55. My niece and daughter drove the pre-schoolers home and happened upon the scene of the shooting. The police were there but hadn’t even put up the yellow tape.  The victim survived… another blessing. The shooter got away.

And I am sad. I am sad that children played alongside the yellow tape right after the shooting as if nothing happened. It’s too normal to them. I am sad that the police didn’t notify us at the school about the shooting and we released children to walk home in the midst of a dangerous situation. I am sad that I didn’t cry. That no one cried at the thought of someone being shot. What is wrong with us?

Wouldn’t it be something if we, the church… the ones who believe people are made in the image of God, would respond to violence with the emotion and attention it deserves? Wouldn’t it be something if we can convey to this generation of youth the value of life by a display of appropriate emotion when life is violated?

After I drove away from the scene, regretting the lack of emotion I modeled before the children, I couldn’t help but envision what it would look like if the church responded to these shootings in mass number. What if we lined the streets of the projects to show sorrow, much like crowds lined Kensington Palace when Princess Diana passed away? What if the youth of the inner city saw people from all over Chattanooga come to cry over the spilt blood on their streets? What if genuine mourning over needless violence was modeled to our youth each time it happened? Would they begin to believe that life is valuable? Would the church begin to believe that if someone who was killed is valuable, then so is the child who still has breath in him or her? Would we all begin to wake up from our numbness? For we have fallen into a slumber. Our love has grown cold and the coldness has ushered us into a deep sleep.

Martin Luther King had a dream and I want to have a dream, too. But I wasn’t allowing myself to dream. I was stuck in rationalizing.  I reasoned I could help maybe ten or twenty children in the inner city to turn their lives around. Maybe. And even that number can change on a given day. Ha! But even if I helped a hundred children to turn their lives around that wouldn’t really be solving Chattanooga’s problems.

There is a verse that caught my attention. I have heard it before but I never needed it as desperately as I feel it is needed now… or I simply wasn’t aware of the need until now.

“If my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14

I can’t help but to ponder what a land that has been healed looks like. Healing in Emma Wheeler. Healing in Chattanooga. That’s what we need and it is refreshing to remember that God is able to do it. And the formula for healing has a lot to do with the church.

Maybe humbling ourselves is going down to the projects. Maybe it is weeping over those that are slain in our city. Maybe it is allowing the sorrow of what is taking place in our city to drive us to our knees as we cry out to God for mercy.

Maybe (the church) disengaging from our apathy is what turning from our wicked ways looks like. Maybe our apathy and living so much for our own comfort is revolting to God. Mordecai didn’t mince words when he told Esther,

“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this? (Esther 4:13&14)

According to Neighborhoodscoutreport.com, Chattanooga is ranked to have the 10^th most violent neighborhood in America. OCHS Center says Chattanooga ranks 11^th in the country for crimes, ahead of Detroit and Atlanta. Ironically, American Bible Society ranked Chattanooga third in the most Bible minded cites in America. Let’s face it, we aren’t being nearly as effective as that Bible statistic implies we are. There is a gap from what we (the church people) are learning and what we (the church people) are sowing. Because it’s not that the children in the inner city won’t go to church or Bible study. They will go. There just aren’t enough people who are willing to take them. Didn’t Jesus Himself say, “the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few”. (Matthew 9:37) When you immerse yourself around the needy then you are able to compute how vast the need really is. That is when you find yourself praying for laborers and staying up until 3:30 in the morning writing a blog post about your longing for people to take action… even though it’s referencing a shooting that logically would keep people away. But I am hoping the opposite.  I am hoping that it will serve as a reminder that we need to draw near.

For I have a dream.

I have a dream that one day Chattanooga will be healed. I have a dream that the church will rise up for the distinct purpose of falling to our knees because we care so deeply over the condition of this place. I have a dream that violence won’t be ignored, but that it will be mourned. And I know that when we allow our hearts to break, God will show Himself near for He is always near the broken hearted (Psalm 34:18). Always.

Kara Akins married Mr. Jack Stephen Akins III at age 18.  She is now the mother of six children, ages 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18.  Her "7th child" is her niece, Cecily, who also lives with the family.  She has one boy in the bunch who is spoiled rotten.  Along with being a mom, she is also a speaker for the Be Still, Get Real team.

We Don't Know What We Think We Know

"We Don't Know What We Think We Know"

By Kate Gifford

The first day my kids and I tried our hands at this tutoring thing with WOW Kids was a hands-down fiasco.  I, with a teaching degree, with a couple of decades experience with kids in various capacities, with a small army of helpers, could not keep ten primary-grade children under control.  There were less than two kids to every helper.  Excellent odds for maintaining control, no?  No!  Those kids ruled the roost.  They shouted me down and danced on the desks. Anything in their hands became a projectile missile.  We dodged and they dashed out of the classroom.  And after they dashed, they screamed a frightening array of choice vocabulary that left my own children goggle-eyed.  My family huddled up and changed tactics, to no avail.  The city kids won that week and the next week.  And the next.  And the one after that.

We started this thing in our own strength but turned to prayer in a nanosecond because truly there was nothing else to be done.  This is a dark place and, but for the Lord, we fight an impossible battle. Five months later, we’re still at it but before we open the doors to thirty or so hyperactive children, the handful of volunteers meet to beg for God’s mercy on the lives of these children, to take our meager abilities and multiply them into something powerful, something beneficial.  I’m always impressed as we gather together, The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  We seem too few to do this job.  How can we do this work?

We are too few to do this job.  But for the Lord!  Little by little, month by month, we inch ahead.  We get to share hope with these kids.  We get to share the love of Jesus.  There is something different about sharing the love of Jesus with a well-fed, loved, self-sufficient friend or relative and sharing the love of Jesus with second graders sprinkled with burn marks because they can’t count on adult help to cook their meals.   There is something powerful about holding the face of a fourth grader, looking into her eyes and telling her she is beautiful, she is valuable, she is important to myself and more importantly to Jesus and then watching her react to these words because where she comes from, hopeless people aren’t equipped to offer a lifeline of hope. We get to share Bible stories and principles that speak to their lives; stories they can relate to in ways that we sheltered middle-class suburbanites simply cannot.  (Cain’s murder of Abel is a favorite.) We get to demonstrate that God is love by loving them, by sharing the imperfect but healthy bonds of love in our family.  We get to show that God is just by stepping in and administering fair discipline (as many times as it takes.)  We are careful about the promises we make and even more careful about keeping our word. By doing so we build credibility and show them that our God is faithful. 

But for all this, God has shown my family more.  When we wrangle a rebellious child back into order in the classroom, God reminds us, You, too, are rebellious and I love you enough to tackle the places where you go astray.  When we hug a child reeking of dirt, smoke and worse, before we wrinkle our noses, He whispers, Your pride is sooo much more offensive than this.  When we are frustrated by the magnitude of the work, the one step forward, three steps back, He says, So it is with you. I love you. You are worth the effort.  It is good to be knee-deep in sin and the literal darkness, mud and desperation of the Projects because that is the perfect picture of every area where we live our lives apart from Christ.

These children are amazing.  They are curious, resilient, and joyful in the face of chaos and uncertainty.  They can be moody, disobedient and out of control, but over time the children are letting down their guard, beginning to trust.  They are started to show us their tears, share bits of their stories, wrap their arms around our waists, nestle in for comfort.   And that makes the many journeys across the tracks to an overlooked part of town well, well worth the effort.

Kate Gifford is a wife, a mom with a houseful of kids and a recipient of God's great grace.  She and her children teach the K-2nd class at WOW Kids Tutoring on Tuesdays.



A Little Boy Named Jarvis

There is a little boy named Jarvis.  Well, he's not so little.  He's in 6th grade.  But he's small for his age.  He is one of the cutest kids ever with an adorable smile.  He loves snakes and riding his bike.  He is protective of his little brothers.

He's reminds me of the child in this poem:

There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad,
She was horrid.

When Jarvis is good, I love that kid.  When he sees me, his whole face lights up with that adorable smile and he throws his arms around me in a big hug.

When Jarvis is bad, he's horrid.  And I still love him.

I've seen him at his worst, his saddest, and his lowest.  I watched as he struggled in school and was sent to ISS over and over again.  I watched as his family was homeless this past summer as they moved from motel to motel because it was too dangerous to be at their duplex where someone had broken in.  I watched his face crumble when a neighbor ran out of the house yelling that his mom had been taken to jail and I held him as he cried with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Jarvis, Jarvis, Jarvis.  I was so full of hope when I interned in your classroom that first day.  I thought I could change your life around in one week.  I was so determined that I could get you and your two friends under control.  The next day I sat at an empty table in disbelief.  I had taken you three to the bathroom the day before and you guys got into a fight.  You were all suspended for a week.  I stared at that empty table for one solid week and it represented my failure.  Could I not even get three children under control?

My whole internship, you were like the girl in that poem.  You could be so sweet and then turn around and be so horrid.  I remember once when you were in trouble and there was nothing I could do but take you out in the hall and talk to you.  We sat on the floor and I stared at your dirty shoes with holes in them.

"You know, Jarvis."  I said.  "There are children who don't have anything nice.  Food, clothes, or shoes."

You looked up at me.  "You mean those children in Africa?  I will send them my shoes."

Oh, sweet boy.  I was talking about you and your ragged shoes, but all you thought about was children who are poorer than yourself.

I sat next to you in church and I was overwhelmed at how the odds are stacked against you.  You sat next to me oblivious to the pain in my heart.  How, God?  I asked.  How can a boy in the projects who's life is the furthest thing away from your perfect plan change his life around?  It seems so impossible.  Everything in his life is twisted.  Marriage doesn't even exist in his world - only casual sex and abandonment. 

I laugh at my ignorance the first week I met you.  Change your life in one week?  Me?  I must of have been living in a fake world of Christian summer camps or something.  Radical change in one week?  I've known you for a year and I'm still struggling to see any change in you.

I never understood when parents discipline and they say, "This hurts me more than it hurts you," until I had to discipline you a couple weeks ago, Jarvis.  I had warned you over and over again that if you got sent home three times at tutoring that you wouldn't be able to come back until the next quarter in April.

But you didn't listen.  Or you didn't care.  Or you just couldn't behave.  I honestly don't know.

You got sent home three times and I had to remove you from the tutoring program until April.  On your last day, you acted like the old Jarvis during my internship and I think I know why.  Is that your way of pretending to not care?  To pretend that you're not embarrassed when I call you out?  Is it easier to act out and put on a show to make the other kids laugh than it is to cry?

It broke my heart to send you away.  I kept telling my family, "Jarvis got sent home three times."  Other kids have been sent home and they come back having learned their lesson, but I hated to see you go.

I'll still see you at school, WyldLife, and at Music Camp but I will miss you at tutoring, my sweet boy.

Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education.  She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers.  She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in East Lake.  She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.