The Cool Cutting Edge

A little more than 16 years ago, I started out this ministry gig with the attitude that in order to do what God was calling me to do that I had to be concerned first and foremost with making church "cool." I was committed to leading a "cutting edge" student ministry and help develop a "cutting edge" church. A couple of years in, as I was studying God brought me to this passage about doing "a new thing" that rocked my world: See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. -Isaiah 43:19 My thoughts about being "cutting edge" resurfaced, but God began redefining this in me. Cutting edge ministry isn't to be about being "cool." A stream cuts across the desert, causing life to spring up and flourish in the wasteland. Jesus was and is the Stream in the desert. As the stream cuts through the desert, giving life, Jesus cut through histo