For over 10 years, we've been in the stands watching Mike play football. Now that he is working with Rebirth: East St. Louis, we are so excited to cheer for our adopted team, the East St. Louis Flyers. We've been to several football games and sat proudly wearing our Flyers t-shirts, even against the team Mike played for in high school. 

We had always heard stories about the Rebirth guys from Mike, but until this past Easter, we hadn't had the privilege of meeting any of them. That's when Mike brought two wonderful young men home to spend the holiday with us. We are always excited to host Mike's football buddies. Cooking for football players is one of our favorite things to do. No kidding! Anyway, Luther and Cortez came up for a football combine and stayed the weekend. I can't tell you what an amazing experience it was. We love feeling a part of the Rebirth family and wanted to do something more. 

Last fall me neighbor suggested that we hold a garage sale to help support the efforts of Rebirth. If you've ever had a garage sale, you know how much work it is, and how little your returns may be. After our last garage sale, I actually rememeber promising to myself not to have another garage sale. However, my memory must have softened, because as winter passed I began to think more and more that a garage sale to support Rebirth may be a great idea! We began thinking that this could really make a difference. 

So, over the course of several weeks, I made it my goal to collect as much treasure/junk as I could. The response was amazing. Before we knew it, our garage was over flowing with goods. God was surely shining his light on our little garage sale.

We held the garage sale a couple weekends ago now, and looking back, we are thrilled with the results. Like I said, God was certainly shining his light on our little garage sale, which ended up not being so little. People were extremely generous with donating items to our sale. The garage sale attracted many people and we were also successful in selling a majority of what we collected. We even had the local newspaper come by! In the end, we are thankful for this opportunity to be a part of Rebirth and thrilled to be able to make a contribution to the cause of Rebirth: East St. Louis. To still be able to watch Mike on the football field, albeit on the sidelines, is great. And now, we have Luther and Cortez and the rest of the East St. Louis Flyers to cheer for. Go Flyers! Go Rebirth!

Roni Berttucci

Rebirth students, Johnathan and ReneeOn Friday April 27^th2012, Renee and I (Johnathan) took some of the guys to see The Interrupters. This Steve James documentary followed ex-gang leaders as they walked the streets and “interrupted” the violence in the very same areas of Chicago that they once controlled. In Chicago, these individuals are a part of a public health organization known as Ceasefire. These “interrupters” utilized their street skills and their training from Ceasefire to mediate interpersonal conflicts with the hope of preventing and ending shootings and deaths due to senseless violence. It was our privilege to be able to take some of the students to see this film at Webster University. We had the opportunity to meet Steve James, take pictures with him, and participate in a Q&A session after the film. His passion for urban issues and true relationships with the Interrupters in the film was extremely apparent.

This documentary hit home for me because the areas of Chicago in which the interrupters were going into were some of the neighborhoods where I grew up. I have seen the violence that they are interrupting firsthand. A cousin of mine was killed due to that violence when I was growing up. So, seeing a film that so accurately captured the issues faced in those communities and tempered the devastation with hope was very uplifting for me. I appreciated that issues that are often ignored or glossed over by many were paid attention to and exposed by this documentary.

Rebirth Students with Steve JamesThe documentary reminded me (Renee) of the violence that our kids witness in East St. Louis. After the movie we took them to McDonalds for ice cream sundaes and ate vanishing oatmeal and chocolate bars that my dad made as a way to support the students’ hard work with the ACT class. Talking with them about their thoughts in relation to the movie was very special. Hearing them say that they could make personal connections to the movie was very telling. We talked about how we can each be “interrupters” in our own environment and affect change even if that might play out differently than the movie. The kids seemed to really grasp this concept. Our hope is that exposing them to ideas like this along with equipping them with the gospel will enable them to be agents of change in their family, school, and community. 

Johnathan and Renee Tate

Last week, Shane talked about the difference between God being a concept in our life and God being a reality in our life (see blog post below). This raises several big questions. What is your reality? Is God just a concept in your life or a reality? What does it look like to have God be your underlying reality? How do we continue to live in this reality? Running with this, yesterday was spent looking at the reality of Colossians 1:21-23. In this passage, I think Paul addresses several of these questions. 

We looked at 3 questions from the text:

• What's the reality about us?
• What's the reality of what Christ has done for us?
• What does Paul encourage us to do?

Slowly going through the book of Colossians has been great because it has allowed our guys to really digest what the text says and be able to see it themselves. So, for the first question, what does God say is the reality about us? Our guys were able to see this in verse 21, that we were 1) Far away from God, 2) Enemies of God, and 3) separated from God. Yet, in verse 22, we see the reality of what Christ did for us. Jesus died in order to reconcile us. He bridges the gap. He turns enemies of God into friends of God. He brings together that which was separated. For the last question, our guys pointed out that Paul encourages his readers to do three things (from the NLT translation). He tells us that we must 1) continue, 2) stand firm, and 3) not drift away. 

So, the crux of what I wanted our guys to see was this: To continue in the faith, to stand firm, we must live in these 2 realities. We are great sinners, but Christ is a great savior. As Tim Keller says, "We are more sinful than we could ever imagine, yet in Christ we are more loved and accepted than we could ever dare hope." There is true life, joy, and peace in this reality. To continue in the faith is to return to the reality of the gospel. I think this is important because without understand our sin, God's grace won't be amazing to us. God will remain a concept, just an accessory to our master plan. But, when we understand our desperate need, God's forgiveness becomes an overwhelming reality. It transforms us. And we will continue in it. 

Finally, to illustrate this, we looked at Luke 7: 36-50, the story of the sinful woman annointing Jesus. I love the sinful womans actions in this story. Though she is seen as a sinner, a social and religious outcast, she boldly seeks Jesus out and is wiling to go to him, even entering a dinner party containing high class religious guests. She brings Jesus her most precious possession, the alabaster flask of perfume.  She even soaks Jesus' feet with her own tears.

Clearly, this woman was aware of her own brokeness and her own need. She knew she was a great sinner in need of a great savior. Her actions demonstrate that she was living in the 2 realities Paul outlined in Colossians 1:21-22. In the Luke 7 passage, Jesus explains, "he who is forgiven little, loves little." Likewise, he who is forgiven much, loves much. I deeply long for our guys to know the reality of God's amazing grace. Please continue to pray for our guys, for Shane, Jonathan, Renee and myself, that the reality of the gospel would deeply penetrate our hearts. That we would recognize our own need, and run to Jesus, just as the sinful woman did, in order to receive the overwhelming love of our Savior. Pray that God becomes an undeniable reality in our lives. 

-Mike Berttucci

We first distinguished between a concept and a reality. A concept is an idea, mentally constructed by combining various aspects of something. A reality is simply something that is real, and of course this means it carries weight. Most of our guys knew the difference, but we made sure they did with a visual example.

I filled a container full of water at the front of the room. I had a dime, and a 2.5 pound weight. “So we agree that a concept is something we fit into our life, and a reality has weight so that it actually impacts our life? Well let me show you how this works.” I dropped the dime in the water, which represented our lives. Barely a splash rose from the container. I held the 2.5 weight over the water (admittedly higher!) and I threw it into the container. Almost 2 inches of water immediately dispersed across the room, much to the excitement of our students. I told the guys, “A reality doesn’t simply fit into your life, it dramatically alters it.”

Now that we had a clear distinction, we jumped into Colossians. “Here is the question I want you to consider,” I said. “Is Jesus a reality or a concept?” I read the verses aloud and we began a dialogue. To a man, they agreed that the text left no room for discussion on this point—the supremacy of Christ is an unavoidable weight.

We read Hebrews 1:3: “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” I then borrowed an illustration from Tim Keller, who’d borrowed it from someone else. I told the guys, “If we reduced the distance between the Earth and the Sun, which is 92 Million Miles, to a sheet of paper…Then the distance from the Earth to the nearest star would be a stack of paper 70 feet high. And the diameter of the galaxy would be a stack of paper 310 miles high. And really, the galaxy is nothing bigger than a drop of water on that table when compared to the whole universe. And Hebrews tells us that Jesus ‘upholds the universe by the word of His power’, essentially his pinky. Is this the kind of person you ask in your life to be your assistant?”

After a pin-drop moment, I contended that it’s easy to mentally assent to this without practically living it out. So, to truly urge them to consider whether Christ was a concept or a reality, we left them with a list of statements to meditate on. I’ll leave the list below and ask you the same—Is Christ a concept that fits neatly and conveniently into your life? Or is He a weight that so dramatically alters your life that you re-orient it around Him?

Reality:

• I'm burdened by my sin
• I celebrate and praise Christ b/c of His work for me.
• I consider who God created me to be when making decisions.
• I orient my life around God's best for me.
• I strive to learn more of who God is.

Concept:

• I occasionally think about my sin.
• I think that Christ did some good things for me.
• I "do me" and let God fit in where it makes sense.
• I want to learn about God as long as it doesn't interfere with my schedule.

Shane Fast

• Student 1: 11 Classes Attended, .5 Cumulative Points Improved
• Student 2: 15 Classes Attended, 2 Cumulative Points Improved
• Student 3: 15 Classes Attended, 2 Cumulative Points Improved
• Student 4: 14 Classes Attended, 1 Cumulative Point Improved
• Student 5: 13 Classes Attended, 2 Cumulative Points Improved
• Student 6: 14 Classes Attended, 2 Cumulative Points Improved
• Student 7: 14 Classes Attended, 1 Cumulative Point Declined

Now, let me try to put these in perspective. Each of our classes was, at the longest, 1.5 hours. That’s a maximum of 22.5 instructional hours. We did this at a cost of $300 per student. Kaplan’s course costs $599 per student, and includes 18 instructional hours. Their average score increase is .055 cumulative points per instructional hour. Our students increased at a rate of .058 points per hour (assuming the largest possible instructional hours).

So what gives? Am I contending that our score increases were astronomically better? The data suggests that we came out pretty much the same, though we might have saved some money. Yes, our guys’ total average increase was 1.35 points compared to 1 for a Kaplan course. And yes, we did save $299 per student. But that’s not why I think ours was a far better course.

The reason it was far more effective is because it did what a Kaplan course doesn’t. It took a group of young men who were not raised to value their education and have struggled to see its relevance to their lives and got them to believe that it was of paramount importance. We started with a Bible Study on Jesus as Lord of wisdom and how this should cause us to value our education. Then we had a parents meeting with our students, all of us signed a covenant, and we had them pay $5 to take the class. These first steps set a tone that was the foundation of our class. Our guys bought into the fact that the Gospel demands that we strive for excellence in academics.

The next thing to evaluate would be Renée and Johnathan. Are they that good? Well, yes and no. Are they qualified to teach a Kaplan course? No. They did put together a good plan for our students, and I don’t want to minimize their hard work. But what separated them from a typical instructor was their genuine care and affection for our students. They valued these 7 young men for who they were, not because they were paying for a class. They loved them with grace and truth when good instruction would not have been enough. And they transformed worldviews in the process.

Am I taking anything away from Kaplan or any other professional agency? I certainly don’t intend to. Our course might not have the middle or upper class student as much as theirs, and I recognize that. But I can assure you that placing these 7 young men in a standard prep course would not yield the transformation that our 8 weeks together did. If Jesus is not at the center of our efforts, we will not be successful in changing the culture of East St. Louis. And I thank God for Mike, Johnathan, and Renée, who are walking alongside young men with truth, the hope of Jesus Himself. Lives are changing, and they’re playing a huge role in that reality.

Shane Fast

**Again, I mean no discredit to Kaplan, the Princeton Review, or any other professional course.

Naturally, I planned to visit him sometime this year. I committed to visiting him when I could watch him play his spring game. What I didn’t realize is that Wichita is over 7 hours away and there isn’t a reasonable flight! Thankfully, one of our sophomores, Cortez, expressed a desire to hop in the car and ride with me. We were on the road Friday morning and back by Saturday noon, but had a great time in those 30 hours.

There were certainly highlights, but some of the greatest fruit of a trip like that is deeper relational connection from time spent together. In everyday life you don’t do things like almost run out of gas because the college-educated, 30 year-old driving the car didn’t think about Kansas having very few gas stations! We saw more cows than we’d ever seen. “Coach, I think we must’ve seen a million,” said Cortez. After I questioned if it was quite a million, he said, “Well, probably more like a thousand I guess.” Those conversations are priceless—trying to figure out if they are beef cows or milk cows, wondering how the farmer keeps up with them all, talking about how dynamite is used to blast through mountains to pave roads…

Clint with Owen -- Maybe a little size difference?We got to visit with Clint for several hours. He proudly showed us around the athletic facilities and introduced us to all his coaches. It dawned on me while we were walking around that this was the first time anyone had visited him at school. I remembered that my mom or dad would visit and inevitably offer to stop by a grocery store or Big Lots to grab a few things. I asked Clint if he might need anything like extra food, and he said, “Coach, do you know how much I weigh?! Of course I need food. Why would you even ask me that?!” In my defense he needed to lose some weight a few months ago, but now that he was at a light 290 pounds (paradox intended!) he had some more freedom. We went to Wal-Mart, where he was very thankful to get stocked up on groceries and some basic clothing needs. Imagine if you’d been a college student and that never happened? I was extremely thankful for supporters who make that gesture possible.

We watched his spring game, visited with him afterwards and headed home. Cortez and I spent the night in Kansas City and then made the rest of the trip home Saturday. We worked on the reading Cortez missed on Friday, we played Gospel music from Cortez’s tablet, and we listened to a Tim Keller sermon (entitled “The Gospel and Your Self”, one of the best EVER) as well. About 12 minutes into the Keller sermon, which I knew would be a little different for Cortez, he cut it off and got out his phone. I paused and then asked what he was doing. “I’m putting that on Facebook,” he said. What?! He did this four times, pausing the sermon to put Keller quotes on his Facebook page. We had a good discussion of the sermon and its implication on our lives.

Cortez (left) with ClintI really felt blessed to have gone on the trip. 4 years ago I was just moving up here, starting to plug away. Yet this weekend I got to spend time with two students I have incredible relationships with. I can push and challenge them as hard as I want, to the point they are so angry I can tell they want to hit me. But ten seconds later they’ll tell me they know I’m doing it from love and concern. That doesn’t happen overnight. 

Cortez likes to write so I had him jot a few things down early Saturday morning. He really looks up to Clint, so he focused on him more than the overall trip, but I think it’s worth sharing:

Seeing A Old Friend

I think the trip that Coach Fast and I took to Wichita, Kansas was just too short. In the midst of the short trip, We visited a former Flyer of East St. Louis, Clint Tucker. We had a blast talking with him again. He is still a great football player like he has always been. He showed in his Spring Game that we watched. He’s still stuffing lineman in the backfield. We visited his dorm room. The weight room was great looks great. The locker room was the best. We meet all of his coaches, a great set of people. It was great seeing him again. The still funny and physical Clint Tucker.

When I dropped Cortez off he said, “Coach, I really appreciate it. I had a great time.”

“I did too Cortez, I’m really glad you came with me. 

“Who are we going to see next?” He asked with a smile. 

Shane Fast

Day in, day out, our staff is investing our lives in a city that is presently the most dangerous 7 square miles on the planet. 5 of the nation’s 7 poorest zip codes denote East St. Louis addresses. Almost 90% of our students don’t have fathers in their homes, and 2 out of 3 won’t make it through high school. Obviously this is a bleak picture, so when something is worth celebrating, we really, really celebrate! We send emails, texts, call even when we know an answer is unlikely. We really celebrate “wins”, and they throw us onto emotional highs.

Is this unnatural? Of course not. Am I going to try to force myself or our staff team to temper emotions? By no means, as I think this would be unbiblical. But, here’s the rub—while it’s natural for us to rejoice in the wins, it pushes the pendulum to such a degree that it’s almost violent in its return swing. When something very discouraging occurs as we’re at one extreme of emotion, it’s paralyzing.

This is where I found myself last night, and I’m fighting with the Lord to move me back to “normal”. I had a phenomenal meeting with the Superintendent of the East St. Louis School District yesterday morning, and rode that emotional high all the way to 4 p.m., when our reading class started. The class was incredibly frustrating for every member of our staff team, as we witnessed about 6 of the 16 young men in class give no regard for the opportunity before them. Why is that such a big deal? Because if they follow the trend of the city, they become uneducated, unemployed, perhaps father multiple out-of-wedlock children, and end up meandering aimlessly through life—if they’re not killed in the streets. That’s the reality before them, but they don’t grasp it. And thus the emotional pendulum violently swung in the other direction, causing great discouragement.

I think I’ve written this more for myself, to put words to what I experience so often. But our whole staff team experiences this struggle, and I’d ask you to pray for us all. Sometimes the pendulum swings so hard we don’t want to fight any more, and that’s not a place we can stay. Pray for us all to hope in the Lord, as He works through even the bleakest of situations.  

Shane Fast

As we were looking at Colossians 1:5b-8, the push for us to be sharing the "Good News" was very, very clear. Even within this text we see a flow from Paul to Epaphras (whether initial conversion or discipleship) to the people of Colossae. And Paul tells us that the Good News is “bearing fruit all over the world.” Wow! This is a BIG deal right?

It was fun to press and prod the group of guys to really investigate the text. What’s the Good News? What does it mean to “bear fruit”? Have you seen lives changed? How would it go “all over the world”? Why would we even want to share the Good News with someone else? All these questions led to a pretty good discussion overall, and it was fun to continue to walk through Colossians with these young men.

It was also great for me to be reminded of the privilege we have as those whose lives have been transformed by the Good News. We have a God who loves us enough to send His Son to live the life we couldn’t live and to die the death we should have died. Jesus conquered sin and death in His resurrection, and we have that power living within us in the form of the Holy Spirit. Shouldn’t we want to share that?! It’s so challenging to read Acts 20:24 and see Paul’s mentality. Or to think of the many, many martyrs through the course of history. Without sacrifice, I wouldn’t have heard the Good News. Am I willing to sacrifice to share it with others?

Shane Fast

After walking through these things we camped out on the word “love”. John tells us that “we love because God first loved us.” Since we know this, we know that it’s a quality He’s set, and not something we inherently understand. We read Ephesians 4:29-32 and built a great list of what it looks like “to love” and “not to love”. We established that we are often much more unloving than we are loving, and started to dig into the “why”. I pressed into things like an unsure identity, image-consciousness, and pride as being roots of unloving behaviors. But I didn’t think they totally got it.

So, yesterday we talked about it again. I put three questions on the board and had them answer them on a sheet of paper, then we discussed their answers:

1. Where do you fall short of genuine love?
2. Why?
3. What can you do to move toward being more loving?

I’d rate our discussion as a 6 on scale of 10. It was okay, not great. There were some guys that “got it” and really dug in, and some that didn’t. We kept pressing for them to get to roots and stop picking leaves in terms of their self-examination. I really think some of them walked away with deeper conviction and a deeper understanding of how they can work with God as He works in them in certain areas. And, at the end of the day, if only one got it, I’d call it a victory. As with everything else, time will tell!

Shane Fast

           Resting in Him

 focus on Unseen

                         Sitting at His feet

                                Thankful heart

On Saturday, April 14^th, the seven ACT prep students took the ACT test that we have been preparing for over the past ten weeks. As a way to come alongside them and truly TRUST God to work mightily, the Rebirth team committed to praying and fasting during lunch on Friday, April 13^th.

During my time fasting, praying, and spending time with the Lord, I made some response artwork that I would like to share. I started with the word TRUST and wrote a series of thoughts, prayers, hopes, and Bible verses over the entire page. I then used oil pastels to make an image while following the lines the words made.

(if you can't see the image you'll need to visit the actual blog site to see it) 

Some of the writing includes trusting that God will move miraculously in the hearts and lives of the students, that the staff will be used as agents of change (even when it is not evident), and that we will put our TRUST in God alone. We can do nothing apart from Him. We need to keep our eyes fixed on Him and what is unseen or eternal versus temporary (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). We desperately need God to renew our minds daily and bring transformation for our students and ourselves. 

The image is supposed to represent a tree. I thought of this in reference to oaks of righteousness (Isaiah 61:3) and that we are to be trees planted by streams of living water (Psalm 1:3). Rebirth’s mission stems from Isaiah 61, so my hope and prayer is the team and the students we serve will be oaks of righteousness that are connected to Jesus—the only Living water. 

Acts 5:38-39 states, “Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”

This passage always inspires me. It gives me courage and hope that if what we are doing is in God’s will, nothing will be able to stop it.  God will be faithful to continue to redeem and restore East St. Louis, just as he is redeeming each of us. 

May we continue to TRUST God to move in our hearts and in the hearts and lives of our students!

Renée Tate