Chicago Summer Intern: Weeks 5&6
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
22nd July 2010
So Sunday afternoon Ro Ro, no other than Rebecca Lewis, former War College alumni from Vancouver, takes me for a drive downtown Chicago. Its 5 weeks since I’ve been here and I finally get a taste of the city. Its great, set by the largest freshwater lake in the world, Lake Michigan, it has ’seaside’ as it were and a lovely promenade. Kind of a low lying Sydney crossed with the south coast of England thing going on.
Anyway, its a lake and a very nice one, nice colour and I realise how much I miss the sea. I’m a coastal girl at heart and I am stuck in the mid-west of America with no water in sight, so this evening was more than wonderful.
We walked through the city park and checked out DL Moody Bible college/church, there’s so much stuff going on in Chicago bible school-wise and ended the evening with dinner at Old Jerusalem in the Old Town. Tonight I have tickets to see the White Sox baseball which will be an event in itself.
With Josh and Jen going off to Teen Camp this week you’d think things would slow down….not so. I’ve had an awesome week on my own, God is showing up in everything. Its a simple case of not looking to the right or left but hearing that voice behind you which says this is the way, walk in it!
Right now I’m preparing for our first Prayer Ministry Team training morning. We have a handful of people attending and I’m in the process of putting the programme together. We also have Glory 2 God International Ministeries, two women with 20+years of intercession experience ready to lead us into an evening of practical intercessory training.
So I have been ‘discipling’ a lady for a few weeks, a believer in her early 50’s. Her eldest son was shot dead aged 28 not so long ago and I have been discipling a prayer and devotion time back into her life after a period of deep grief. As I prayed us in I asked that the Lord would ensure that my words were His words and boy, did i get that. I’ve never before had an experience like this in prayer. The Lord gave me a vision of a dark tree, the long stump part only and immediately I got the word oaks of righteousness and it went from there. I must have witnessed every tangible fruit of the spirit going in Corinth…. I sat in complete awe of this lady’s courage and conviction in God, I wondered how I could possibly assist her, but God showed up powerfully, filling me up so that I could hardly move, the spirit of God was on me so that my focus was razor sharp, my ears tuned to a pin drop as the images and scriptures God gave me transversed the bible from one end to the other in complete symphony to her cause. Wow. It was like one of those DTES experiences where God shows up to teach you something in someone more broken than you. All I saw was joy, pure joy.
The joy of the Lord, which is in us, despite our broken-ness, that is what we celebrate. We are to rejoice in the Lord’s joy despite our circumstances, our family our problems. It is the joy of the Lord that sets us free from captivity to grief, loss, sin and everything else…joy wears a lifted face, an excited movement, a deep contentment that cannot be contained.
So for this week – rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice!
Blessings from Chicago,
Sylvia
Chicago Summer Intern: Weeks 3&4
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
24th June 2010
UPDATES FOR 614 VANCOUVER by Sylvia Overton
A few weeks in and I am really enjoying my role here as community Chaplain and it seems that God is confirming to me through it, a role for me in the Church. That’s exciting and answers a lot of what God has been doing in my life since arriving at War College.
The environment I’m in each day is a new church/community building complex so the level of chaos is relatively high from day to day. I can be asked to cover reception, attend to first aid, give a tour to a new member, teach bible study, pray with people on request, attend staff meetings, feed into and pray with leadership; contribute to creating flow and unity with internal ministries etc.
I’m constantly amazed at how just simply turning up and tuning into God each day causes me to experience a type of symphony, His symphony.
I could easily say that the role of Chaplain is similar to my every day experience in my practice in London in that I am constantly working with people and their problems, except of course in a spiritual environment and my role enables me to engage with and focus on what God wants me to do. Here I am being tested in patience and obedience, there are times I’m really tired or not feeling up to praying and someone wants prayer.
Amber and I travelled to Detroit Michigan last weekend to meet Joanne and Derrick, Salvo officers at a Detroit corps. They are very incarnational in their approach to their corps and were very interested in the War College perspective. We travelled into downtown Detroit where the Gambles run a corps. Such a shock. The brand spanking new corps is nestled in amongst suburbs of run down communities, ambandoned and boarded up houses, empty shopfronts, houses that have been part burnt and not restored. There are no supermarkets around and the area is ridden with gun crime, the parks are overgrown and even street lights left hanging loose on their wires. Looks like its been hit by a bomb. What great 614 potential. The congregation is mainly black with a white worship band and every single person said hello to me, making me stand up and say my name and where I was from. One of the strongest presences of the Holy Spirit there I have ever encountered. God has not forgotton them.
This week at our corps, two black women running a local prayer ministry turned up wanting to spread their prayer ministry more broadly. Josh invited me in and the Lord spoke clear visions to me about getting a prayer ministry underway for the corps. So I have been given a ministry now – establishing a house of prayer for XGenerations and linking that in with Blue Island 24/7 Prayer and then 24/7 International Prayer based on Mark 11:17.
So I’m busy with preparing for a Day of Intercession on 10th July, I’m organising a team of intercessors, interested peoples and we will be doing the Esther fast to prep. After that cleansing day there will be an Open Day of Prayer end of July which will be a day where congregation and community are exposed to all prayer types, with stations where leaders take them through various prayer experiences, including prayer walks, corporate prayer, eating together and a celebratory davidic dance at the days end and then a call up for anyone interested in prayer ministry team.
Its a big job but I’m excited about it and so is leadership. I’m hoping to implement the structure and leave it for someone to take over after my assignment.
I’m enjoying spending some intentional community time with former War College students, Amber, Rebecca and Abby at their apartment and we hope to hit Chicago town in the not too distant future….
Blessings and thanks for your feedback!!
Grace, Sylvia
Chicago Summer Intern: Weeks 1&2
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
14th June 2010
UPDATES FOR 614 VANCOUVER by Sylvia Overton
Greetings from my summer assignment here at Cross Generations Church, Blue Island, Chicago.
I have settled in well here in community with leaders Josh and Jen Polenco and their 3 kids. I am living in the War College apartments, a short bike ride away from the church which I share with Abbey who is doing 2nd phase this fall.
Josh and Jen are Envoys with the Salvation Army and were for many years working successfully among the black and hispanic youth in the the Blue Island area. They have just moved into this very new and modern church/community centre complex not far from their old church premises, having opened in April this year. The church is called Cross Generations as the vision was to create a facility and church environment which bridges the gap between seniors and youth and brings people together in common unity. There are two main services, one for hispanic and one for the white/black communities.
Josh and Jen are a spirit led couple and so my first meetings with them were discussing my spiritual gifts in order to place my in a position / ministry within the church that would suit best. Josh heard that I would best be suited to being in a spiritual shepherd role so he posted me in as the Community Centre Chaplain which is my main role here and so I’m here at 7am and get home around 9pm most nights.
The building has two sides, one is the church part and the other is a large interconnecting community centre with climbing wall, basketball court, tag teams for kids, bible study groups, community garden, reading classes, dance and exercise, volleyball, ping pong and internet cafe. On the other side is the church, where I tend to hover most hours.
The Chaplaincy role is a stretch, which is good, I’m enjoying it, I feel made for it, and somehow it seems remarkably familiar in its everyday experience but different and at times surreal that I am here. I meet and greet people coming into the church, direct them, guide them, pray with them and generally just lend and ear. My secondary role is re-working their 24/7 prayer room in the chapel, looking at possibilities of linking surrounding boiler rooms, looking at equipment to do that, the prayer room arrangement, answering prayer line messages etc. I am also in charge of Kingdom Kids, which is the creative bible study for kids 7-13 which I absolutely love doing. Its so well put together, Prezza has done an amazing job of it. So we sing and do movements to music, memory verses, bible reading, video, listening prayer and then usually play tag. I never thought I would enjoy teaching kids so much. I have been asked to put together a Seniors movement/stretch class as the centre currently offers nothing for that age group. I will run this a few times a week. I look after trips to the community garden.
So its pretty busy, but I’m really enjoying the role, its complex and the Lord is revealing things to me through it.
At Rivendell during the preps for this assignment I sat in at the Prayer hour listening to a song called Magnificat and I got a great sense of urgency, urgency for the world and souls to be saved and the gospel to be shared but along with it a revelation that people would know that they had been deceived. It affected me immensely in my lead up to Chicago.
So I find myself in a heightened state of awareness here, in a role of discerning things going on around me, interceding in prayer for people, spending loads of time in the prayer room working out what God is saying. Thank God for Examen, which has been so helpful – thanks Jon for putting this together. Through this discpline alone, I’m staying focused on hearing from God and discerning, and I can feel the pull sometimes not to stay disciplined, to sit back and just see it as a summer thing. But I know the Lord has more in store if I go deeper with Him here.
The Lord brings me people! I don’t go find them like we do in the DTES simply because of the setting I’m in. So someone will come and sit with me and just start talking usually asking questions about faith. I realise this is a God moment and then I fully engage with them and listen to what God is saying through them, to me, about them etc.
In these daily interactions, I’m being challenged to become the Barean Michael Collins talks about when a former criminal, talks to me about spirituality and how its ‘all the same thing’ as christianity, or a confused and talented youth who in a homosexual relationship feels that being both Christian and actively gay is okay, or young boy from a broken disturbed home to whom no one listens or seems to care. Its brokenness, and it turns up at the Salvation Army and God rises up in me as I meet with them.
Wow, what an honour, what a role, what a responsibility. I sense the responsiblity and importance God has in these moments for me, for people and i feel that urgency once more, I have to respond and that means being constantly focused on Christ. To the point where I will need to collect sometimes during the day, so I go to the prayer room.
My relationship with God is in the moment, tangible and directly co-active in my every moment in this role. All of me is called to surrender to the moment. It is not my own, I can’t do it without Him for absolute certain. Now that’s a good place to get me! When I’m tired or want to get something done, but God calls me to talk with this person, I learn to listen a bit longer than normal, bear up with whining and knowing how to direct it. But somehow I know this role, somehow its familiar, but its not…you know?
I teach the kids and they look to me earnestly, I sense the thirst for God’s word through them at little 6yr old girl who stares at me for answers and with such concern…. Is this normal I ask, where have I been? What’s going on, so much urgency. I’m reminded that words do indeed have power.
This weekend I attended Salvation Army Commissioning of the Central Territory. About 4,000(?) people turned up and the General Clifton Shaw was there preaching. It was an eye opener for an Anglican but I enjoyed witnessing the inner workings of a long established part of the body of Christ. I even brought a Salvo hat…wow. I sang along to Chicago Staff Band, a brilliant brass ensemble and I saw the officers graduate and get their posting. A very joyous crowd of people and as I sat there watching these people give their entire lives away to surrender to a post somewhere they had no idea about, I thought, wow, now that’s total surrender….such faith.
I’m enjoying this post and sometimes I have to remember that I haven’t been here for a year already. Its a pivotal time to be here because its a pivotal time for this church, which has recently experienced a split in congregation and having lost a large part of its members. There’s persecution going on and coupled with the relatively dark spiritual atmosphere in the community here, I need to press in. I don’t feel alone though, I’m totally resting in God’s peace and strength as I seek Him deeper.
Please continue praying specifically for protection for me and my role here, that my encounters would give words of life to those who the Lord needs to speak to, and to keep me focused.
Blessings,
Sylvia
Summer Assignment: Week 6
Sunday, July 18th, 2010
Hey Everyone!
This week has been a crazy week! We sent kids to camp on Saturday but we needed to get all the kids in for their physicals. It was a week filled with driving around every where and was pretty tiring for me. On Saturday we drove the kids up to camp and had a situation with paper work. My whole week of craziness was almost in vain when they said I would have to take the kids back home. But I was determined not to let a piece of paper keep the kids from going to camp, they were too excited for it. Thank the Lord that he provides and they let the kids stay any way. It would have been a shame for the kids not to be able to stay and would have been a major let down for them, which is something they see far too often.
I am looking forward to this week, hoping it cools down (metaphorically and literally) a bit. It’s hard to be still before the Lord when everything seems hectic. But we need that peace and we need the rest. Resting in the Lord is the most peaceful way to rest. His Spirit rejuvenates my soul, shines my armor and prepares me to go back out into battle.
1 Samuel 12:16
Psalm 46:10
Have a Blessed Week
-Prezza
Update.
Sunday, July 11th, 2010
Hello from 100 degree Charlotte! (well currently it’s evening so there is a cool summer temperature of 85)
This week has been an ok week for me. Rob and Heather Dolby (our leaders) went on vacation this week, so Brad and I are holding down the fort. I have to admit, with them gone I feel more pressure, even though I am doing the same things I did while they were here, there’s just a little bit of worry that when that we’ll leave something on and burn down the Playhouse. But I am confident that wont happen…I hope 
Anyway you can definitely pray for Brad and I as we spend our time in the Playhouse and I’m going to be going to the Women’s Shelter a few times a week to do different activities and spend time with some truly beautiful women. It’s a great blessing to spend time with those women, let me tell you that.
On the way home from hanging out with Brad, Kally and Chelli (a couple who run the hispanic 614) I was listening to a song and this sentence in the song really stuck out. It stuck out a lot last week as well so I thought I’d share it with you.
“So focus is way overrated. I’m so quick to point out my flaws but when you look at me. When you look my way: You call me worthy, you see beauty ,You see purity. You see purpose, you see value, you see who I’ll be”
I know that God see’s the person I am now. He knows that I sin, but to bask in the knowledge that he see’s who I’ll be and that he is guiding me in that direction is awesome. It’s so beautiful that he loves me despite everything but it’s encouraging that someone out there knows that I am meant for better things. That I am not the things I think I am.
A few weeks ago someone prophesied over me that there were a lot of things that I believe about myself, things I think are just who I am, that it’s just the way I was made. But he said that God is about to show me that I am not the things I believe about myself and is going to mold the woman of righteousness that he see’s I’ll be.
How awesome is that! I believe that God has that plan for all of us. He see’s what we will be and he wants us to see it and live it as well.
Be encouraged brothers and sister. Someone knows who you’ll be and he has the power to make it happen!
Hallelujah!
He’s alive
Sunday, July 4th, 2010
Summer Assignment Update
Sunday, July 4th, 2010
Sorry it has been a while.
I wanted to share with you guys some things God has been speaking to me about since I’ve been here. A lot of them are quotes from a recent conference I went to called “The Great Awakening” We’ve been going to this church called MorningStar every Friday night, and last week we were there for most of the week at the conference. This church is such a refreshing place to be and the Spirit is really moving in that place. http://www.morningstarministries.org/
“I left my heart in the hands of a broken one, and it got broken, in all the right ways….I said goodbye to the status quo, that all men can reach, and was kindly greeted by a love that can breach the sky. I was tires of living a lie”
-Amber Brooks ‘To whom it may concern’
Bill Johnson quotes:
“Sometimes a word is given to you over and over again. That’s because it will be the word that has the greatest opposition.”
“Sometimes God allows opposition to a word so that we stay with it. Even to see if we’ll stick through it.”
“Confusion comes into a Christians life when we consider non-God ordained things.”
Declare to the enemy “This is the word of God over my life and I will not alter it!”
“Passion-less leaders lead their followers astray”
“Jesus paid such a high price. I’m going to live my life so that he gets what he paid for”
“Minister faithfully in a place where there is no honor” Am I addicted to the praise of men?
Jerame Nelson Quotes on Revival
“The anointing is there so you can go, not sit back and bask in it.”
“When you get the counsel of God, the might of God is released.”
“We need to seek the face of God until we hear the voice of God”
“God wants us to be uncompromising in our walk”
“The signs and the wonders are the dessert, not the main course.”
“The body must be mobilized! Take the power of God to the streets!”
“Unless you get hungry and thirsty for yourself, you’ll be bankrupt, no one can do it for you”
“Radical obedience releases the supernatural.”
“Death has lost it’s hold on me, and a wellspring of life now runs through me” Amber Brooks “Vagabonds”
“You love like Father, love like a brother, love like a lion, fierce like no other. You violently chase me, down to embrace me. Engulf me in who you are” Amber Brooks “Come like you promised”
Have a blessed week.
Summer Assignment: Week 2
Saturday, June 19th, 2010
Hey Everyone!
This week has been wonderful/tiring/inspiring/refreshing. I don’t even know where to start.
This week, during one of our bible lessons, we talked with the kids about worries. Matthew 6:25-34 talks about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. They don’t worry about what they will eat or “labor and spin”, God provides for the birds and clothes the lilies. ”If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” We had them grab rocks to symbolize their worries and we were going to throw them into a creek, symbolically giving our worries to God.
While waiting for the kids to get into a line so we could walk to the creek, one of the kids was picking up TONS of rocks. My first impression was that he just wanted to throw a bunch of rocks in the creek so I wanted to hurry him up. I walked up to him and asked him why he was grabbing so many rocks. He said “these are for all my worries” I said I could see that he already had a lot of rocks in his hands so maybe it was time to go. He showed me his front pocket, which was filled with rocks. Seeing his hands and pockets full of worries filled me with so much love for him. Earlier when we asked the kids what they worried about, this boy raised his hand and said “I worry about when I’m going to pass away.” The previous week he told us that his low for the year was when his family member was shot and killed.
This boy is 11. Yet his hands and pockets are full of worries. At 11 he has seen death by violence, moving because his home was torn down by people that want their city to “look nice”, and his new home will probably be torn down again by the same people within the year.
Watching him throw his rocks into the creek made me realize something. My pockets were full of rocks. I have so many worries that I know in my head that God will take care of, but my heart just doesn’t get it. How much more free would I feel if I threw those rocks into the creek? I needed to let Jesus hold those worries and allow myself to walk in faith, trusting he will take care of all my needs. I gave one of the girls my rocks to throw into the creek, because she wanted to throw more, and I prayed that God would take those things that I worry about away from me and carry it because I couldn’t do it anymore.
Of course, once I do that Satan wants to bring me down again. He wants to make me forget that I gave those worries to God. But I have one up on him. I have a community here that continues to speak into my life, confirming that I carry too many burdens (bad burdens) and filling me with wisdom. With out that, I’d just be going in circles, giving worries to God but taking them back again. My soul is being refreshed daily and I praise God for the family I have here in Charlotte. I’m so glad, I’m apart of the family of God.
-Prezza
Check out this artist from the Charlotte area. Her songs are amazing and I just saw he last night! (even though she was a back up singer and not leading worship that evening. But someday! I will experience her leading worship! I hope)
http://www.myspace.com/ambernbrooks
Summer Assignment Week 1
Friday, June 11th, 2010
Hello from Charlotte, North Carolina!
So I haven’t been here a full week yet, but I just want to update every Friday. I am in Charlotte, NC with my session mate, Brad Marsh from the War College Vancouver. We’re hanging out here in Charlotte, helping out with the 614 “Playhouse”. The Playhouse is run by some amazing, godly people, Rob and Heather Dolby. In this area there are a lot of youth that don’t have a safe place to hang out. In the area of 614 there aren’t any playgrounds, basketball courts, etc for the children to go to after school and during the summer. So the Playhouse is a 3 bedroom house where the kids can go on the computers, play video games, work on crafts (in progress) and just hang out. It is such a beautiful community and the kids are great.
For the summer, Brad and I are basically running the summer program. There are some things that seem a bit daunting to me, basically this lunch program that has a lot of rules that we must follow or we’ll be disqualified from the program. There are a lot of things to remember with it. But I think that once it starts up, we’ll get the hang of it.
It’s going to be an exciting summer and I know God is going to work in amazing ways both for me personally and in the lives of everyone in the community.
I will be updating weekly so if you think this is short, don’t worry it’ll be longer.
I would really appreciate all prayers for this summer. That God’s love is shown and glory is given to him during these next 2 months.
Prayer Requests
The Lunch Program
Communication, Teamwork and Leadership between Brad and I and that it will be God centered.
The Hispanic 614 ministry that is being started by another couple.
The 614 Charlotte Community and Summer Programs
Rob and Heather Dolby and their sweet little (almost) 2 year old Jonathan as they head to training college in August.
Thanks for praying y’all!
Fear
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
I’m afraid.
I am afraid of a lot of things. I’m afraid of wet hair hanging around the drain in showers. I’m afraid of intruders coming into my house. I am afraid loving, trusting, rejection and I am afraid of vulnerability.
The last four are things God and I have been working on lately. They are problems that go far back beyond my memory and the last thing I want to think about.
You won’t relent until you have it all, my heart is yours. -Misty Edwards
Those words have been pressing into me for months. I can’t escape them because I can’t escape Jesus. He wants all of my heart and I don’t like that. I want to hold onto it, to protect it. The deepest part of me says “God I can’t give it all to you. I know you wont mean to but you’re going to hurt me. So I need to protect myself from everyone, including you.” Time and time again he says Don’t you see? I love you. I am not going to hurt you. You are hurting yourself by keeping your heart from me. Don’t you see I have a love that will never let you go. I’m going to pursue you and I’m not giving up until I have your heart. But I won’t force you, I’m here where your ready.
“But God you don’t understand.”
What a silly thing to say because he understands completely. Jesus experienced the ultimate rejection on the cross.
“He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” Isaiah 53:3
Who am I to say that Christ doesn’t understand my fear of love and rejection? He loves me so much yet I continue to reject HIM. I continue to hurt HIM by choosing books, music, friends, and myself over him.
I saw this video a while back and it really changed my perspective. The acting isn’t the best but it has a great message and that is what matters.
http://www.beamerfilms.com/catalog/sermon-videos-illustrations-c-65/wounded-bride-a-parable-of-god-s-grace-and-forgiveness-p-184
Sometimes we believe that God could never truly love us, especially if we don’t even love ourselves. How could he love this? I’m so screwed up. But his love is unconditional, his grace is without measure and his forgiveness is ours. We don’t have to have it all together. In fact God wants us broken and contrite trusting in the Christ.
So I have given up trying to keep my heart from God. For the past five months I’ve wrestled with God trying to give him all of my heart, praying about celibacy, and being vulnerable with him about my feelings. Every time I try to close my heart off from him I am filled with loneliness and unsatisfaction. My heart is his and I never want to go back to keeping it for myself.
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39
Peace-
Prezza Rene
