I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Mexico City. For some reason, I can’t get it out of my head. There is an enormous need in this mega-city. Our job is to train youth workers for local churches. In the United States, there is a trained youth worker for every 600 young people. In the rest of the world, there is a trained youth worker for every 400,000 young people.
In order for Mexico City to have one youth worker for every 600 young people, there would have to be around 25,000 youth workers in this city. There aren’t even that many evangelical churches in Mexico City. The population of Mexico City is less than 2% Christian, and the young people of this country are in desperate need for role models, mentors, heroes, and leaders.
We’re off to a great start with the 9 students studying at the seminary to be youth ministers, but we need more workers. I believe that something great is going to happen in this city. We need youth ministers here in Mexico, and we need global youth workers from the United States who will help with this enormous job.
We went to church at Capital City Baptist Church, and English speaking church in Mexico City, since Easter isn’t celebrated that much in Mexican churches. It seems like Good Friday is celebrated more here than Easter Sunday.
We invited two students from the Seminary over for Easter dinner, and we tried to explain to them how we celebrate Easter in the USA. We had great food, great company, and lots of fun playing with Nathan’s Easter present.
Here are 25 images of Mexico City that we have taken while we’ve lived here. If you want to use some of these free pictures of Mexico, please just make sure that you credit us in your use of them and leave us a note in the comments. They are licensed with Creative Commons.
The account of the resurrection in Matthew 28 sounds crazy to me. The author seems to be talking out of his mind.
“There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.”
You know how things get skewed when you are excited? I imagine that the account is somewhat like that. I can imagine that the author was flustered, trying to put into words what he had seen, saying, “There was an earthquake, and then, there was an angel. He looked like lightning. He was glowing. His clothes were as white as snow. All the guards were like dead men.”
Unfortunately, we usually tell it with a monotonous tone of voice, as if we’re not excited to hear it. One day, I want to see someone burst into a church service with the kind of excitement that I read in that passage. “You’re not going to believe me, but here’s what I saw.”
That’s the craziness of the resurrection. It’s wild. It’s unheard of. It’s something that will change your life radically. It changed the lives of the disciples who were scared out of their minds in Matthew 27, and now in Matthew 28 (and Acts), they went on to change the world. That’s what the resurrection can do to you.
On this Saturday before Easter, I thought I would post some quotes I’ve read about Jesus. They go well with the video I posted yesterday.
Here are seven quotes about Jesus that I have found useful or thought-provoking in the past.
“The Jews tried to keep Christ contained within their law, while the Greeks sought to turn Him into a philosophy; the Romans made of Him an empire; the Europeans reduced Him to a culture, and we Americans have made a business of Him.” – Unknown
“Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old.” –Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander the Great, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science and learning, he shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of school, he spoke such words of life as were never spoken before or since, and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet; without writing a single line, he set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art, and songs of praise than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times.” – Philip Schaff
“I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.” –H.G. Wells
“As the centuries pass, the evidence is accumulating that, measured by His effect on history, Jesus is the most influential life ever lived on this planet.” –Historian Kenneth Scott Latourette
“Socrates taught for 40 years, Plato for 50, Aristotle for 40, and Jesus for only 3. Yet the influence of Christ’s 3-year ministry infinitely transcends the impact left by the combined 130 years of teaching from these men who were among the greatest philosophers of all antiquity.” –Unknown
“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” -C.S. Lewis
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