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Merry_Christmas

Taking a cue from my sister and sending out our "christmas card" via blog post. So, Merry Christmas from the Boutry's! 

Next post will be the last of 2011: Top_5_Lists will be out next Saturday.

Also, look forward to 2012! New format is coming, plus a goal of posting monday through friday. Get excited =)

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Killer_Quote_of_the_Day

"To love is to suffer...and that's probably why we generally don't do it well. Unwillingness to venture, plus a desire to be safe, holds us back from love. To be sure, most of us do have a vision of what makes a good life, and as believers we know that it involves growing in the love of God. What we seem to lack, however, is the will to attain to this good life of love. Most of us prefer to skip over the pain and the discipline, to find some easy, off-the-shelf ways to sainthood. Christian self-help spiritualities are a classic dodge of the real issues and manifestly do not produce maturity. We do well to be reminded of the cost of shortcuts in Carl Jung's penetrating statement, 'Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.'"

- Michael Frost  and Alan Hirsch in

The Faith of Leap

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Better_Stories

The past week has been spent with three of our core campus groups (Northeastern, UMASS-Boston, and Boston University), as they wrap up their semesters. What an incredible group of students we have! Diverse and eclectic in every way (personality, culture, background, etc) they have come together to tell great Jesus stories in Boston. Here's a shot of each group and the story they are telling:

Northeastern...

I think NEU is telling an "integration" story. They have a unique model where students spend at least two semesters on "co-op"...an opportunity where they get to work and learn in their field while they are undergrads. Co-ops are super important, students stress out over them, and some even find their first "real" jobs through these internships. The idea flows out of the culture of the school: learning happens been in practice. I see these students really working to integrate their studies, their work experience, and their faith in Jesus. It is a beautiful story.

UMB...

I have watched our UMB students tell a "multi-cultural" story. Multi-cultural because we quite literally have students from all over the world in our community: Brazil, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and even India! We also have multi-cultural "native" students (Mexican-Americans, African-Americans, etc). That's pretty amazing all by itself, but I actually think the true multi-cultural story comes from the ways these students seamlessly flow in and out of various communities and centers on campus. We never have to encourage UMB students to get outside the Sojourn "box". They just do it. They cross all kind of boundaries and build all sorts of bridges and they do it effortlessly. This is also a beautiful story.

BU

No other campus lives my favorite Donald Miller quote quite the way that BU does. (The quote, just in case, is We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us that life doesn't mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It's a good calling, then, to speak a better story). BU is about as hedonistic, individualistic, and nihilistic as you can get. It takes great courage as a student to insist that life means something, that community is possible, that there are better ways to live. They are telling a story of "meaning" and it too is a beautiful thing to watch.

Well done!

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advent_appreciation


final leadership community of the semester...an opportunity to thank and appreciate all the leaders who have worked so hard all semester. played some minute-to-win-it games, spent time celebrating stories, and had a lot of space to talk and laugh and just be together. great times! really love the students we get to work with and i'm deeply impressed with their courage as they tell great stories around out city.

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the_team


pics from saturday night's sojourn team get-together. awesome to have the team from providence for the festivities. continue to thank God daily for this group of people, the families and couples represented, and the community they have provided for amy and i here in boston. love these men and women!

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new_additions


amy and i have been revamping our living room. we added the chair on the left last night, so that we can have his and hers wing-back reading chairs! we also picked up the chest so that we (finally) have a coffee table type thing so folks don't have to set their glasses on the floor any more. feels a little more homey now.

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giving_thanks


grateful for many, many things today (including but not limited to these pies). actually it's been a crazy year with many ups and downs, but in all of it so much to be grateful for. so, time to give much thanks for it all. 

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action


here are some of our UMB students in our "office" space on campus which happens to be right out in the open with all the other campus organizations. it is a great place to be and wonderful conversations and life happen right here. i appreciate our students so much for being present and for being fully "in" at school. love these kids!

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appreciation


amy and i took andre and aleyda to providence on saturday to see rob bell. andre and aleyda have been super instrumental as student leaders for our community at umass-boston. saturday was a good time to appreciate and honor them for their hard work this semester. we had an awesome time and rob blew our minds!

63959

after_sunday

what a strange weekend it's been for the boutry's. amy and i had our world's rocked on friday (perhaps more about that in a future post). bottom line: it was really unexpected and hard. and yet, life doesn't stop...we both had significant assignments: amy helped lead and teach at Sojourn's women's retreat and steve taught at REUNION on sunday morning. both went well and were really good to be invested in, even in the middle of pain.  

two thoughts come out of that: one is, we are so glad for our friends and community who walked with us through this weekend. the other is that giving yourself away, even when it would be easy (and excusable) to think about yourself and your problems is helpful and healing. probably in more ways than i realize right now.

so, thank you to our friends and family for being there for us this weekend.

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read_retreat_serve


i love our ReadRetreatServe experience. once a semester we do a mash up of the typical campus ministry retreat/service project in a way that is disruptive, refreshing, and challenging. i've written about our fall/Halloween/salem experience here and here, so i won't go in to the logistics of what we do. what i will say is this: one, it's fun to see how this experience has grown over the past three years. more importantly, we have an AWESOME group of students this year. i am continually amazed at their depth of insight, their level of maturity, and, this weekend especially, their courage, their servant posture, and their flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances (and weather). i am so proud of them and honored to work alongside them on campuses and in neighborhoods around our city.

63759

open_mic


we held our first ever open mic night on friday in an event titled: perform*. there is a ridiculous amount of talent in and around our community, so it was fun to watch that blossom. the night was also a success in that it brought attention to and raised some money for Amirah House. Amirah Boston is doing some good work and i'm stoked we were able to bless them in some way.

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fun_with_photos


some edited pics from our trip this weekend to ludington, mi and chicago, il.


enjoy!