First Priority Of America

We would like to introduce you to our summer intern, Mary Helen Bayless. She is going into her senior year at Auburn University where she is majoring in Communication and minoring in Business.

Mary Helen was born and raised in Tampa, Florida and attended Plant High School. She was very involved as a student leader with First Priority all four years where she worked alongside Tampa’s Executive Director Amber Johansen to plan the weekly Bible study lunches as well as the big engage week pizza lunches.

Since then she has continued her passion of sharing Christ on her school campus in college. This past year, she was the New Member Educator for her sorority. In this role of guiding 80 freshmen through their first year of college, she got the opportunity to share the gospel and show them what Christ meant to her and how HE is the only one who can satisfy, even more than everything during their four years in college.

“My greatest passion is helping people realize how to reach their own specific mission field that God has given them. In high school, First Priority pushed me to realize that my mission field was the 2,000 students that I walked the high school halls with daily. This same mentality has carried with me to Auburn where I have made Auburn and specifically my sorority my current mission field.”

My fifteen year old son and I didn’t attend church together this week. We normally go to the 11am service, but I went to the early service so that I could help in the 4th/5th grade classroom where my daughter is during that service. So, he came at 11am with his best friend. After church, we met in the foyer to head home together and eat lunch.

Right when we walked in the door he looked at me and said, “did you happen to donate to the middle school project the pastor was talking about today”? I said, “I did. It wasn’t much but I put all the cash in the offering that I had in my wallet.”

Our pastor is preaching a series called What If? It’s about how being educated and engaged is so important. Not just one or the other.

This week he was talking about being educated about a project we are working on as a church to help a middle school in the Nashville area in their time of need. He wanted us to be educated about who the students, families, teachers, and staff are that attend and work in that school. We watched a video and he brought in a staff member from the school that works on engaging the community with the school to help provide food and other resources for them.

It was a moving service that educated us as well as asked us to engage with them. Listed were several opportunities where we could engage with that community through prayer, giving, and several serving opportunities. It definitely made me think of how I can engage with this middle school and what I can do to help.

Our conversation continued. My son said, “I’m going to get online right now and give. And I think we should really help in other ways too.” I said, yes, that’s great! I didn’t ask how much he gave nor did he offer. He has a little side business he does at home to make some money, so I knew he could at least give a little. I was just thankful for his heart and that he felt like he could contribute and make a difference in this school that’s not too far from us.

This morning I got online to check my bank account as I do most days. My son’s account is linked to mine but I rarely look at it. But at a glance I did notice the balance was down quite a bit. So I clicked on the link and saw that yesterday he had given a significant amount to help that school. I am thankful for his heart and that he couldn’t just sit there and be educated about the problem, he had to engage and do something about it.

How many times do we all sit and listen to the things going on around us, thinking, someone else will volunteer or will meet that need. I know I have had those thoughts before. But the time is now for us to not only be educated about what is going on around us, but to also engage through prayer, giving, or serving.

I am a parent. I have two beautiful children, one of which is a teenager. I pray for my kids everyday. Life is scary and doesn’t always work out the way you think it should. I know it definitely didn’t for me. Never would I have thought I would be a single mom. I grew up in the church. Was very involved in the church from childhood to adulthood. I married someone in ministry as well and so I thought my life was set. Little did I know, life wasn’t as set as I thought.

As I pray for my kids, I think of the many things I am thankful for. I am definitely thankful that I was led to work at a place where God is the center of it all. As I sit at my desk, I am reminded of our call to serve.

I know we all don’t have a teenager in our lives. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t our job to pray for them, help them, and reach out to encourage them in Christ. What better way to do that than supporting or starting a First Priority Club in a middle or high school near you. God may be calling you to pray. God may be calling you to provide food. God may be urging you to do more. I know I have definitely felt the call in my life to do more. The students in our schools need us. They need us to help them so that they can do more. Our students are eager to be in community with each other and are eager to hear the gospel. But they can’t hear it if we don’t first make a way for them to share the good news of Christ.

I talked a few weeks ago about being BRAVE. Being brave is hard. It takes that first step of faith to set something into motion. What steps do you need to take to set a plan into motion? Can you pray for our students? Can you pray that God would bring the people our students need to start more FP clubs across our nation so that more lives are changed for Christ? Can you help in some way, to see the HOPE of Christ in every student?

Each day, like you, I face a ton of choices of where to begin. What project to work on next, what school to begin to pray for strategically, and much more.

In the midst of that, I am filled with waves of emotions, thoughts, and outcome possibilities. If I am being genuine, that wave can quickly turn into a tidal wave and cause me to pause or even stop positive forward motion completely. Thoughts of fear, what if, can I, should I, then what, can cripple even the most emotionally intelligent human being.

As a leader in my community, especially one that is for the Kingdom of God here on earth as well as in heaven, I am well aware that “leadership itself begins and ends at the feet of Jesus” (Dr. Brent Crowe). However, as surprising as it sounds, until I take the first step forward, that tidal wave continues to grow.

There is something relieving, almost stress negative about taking the first step forward. Even if at some point I need to adjust my path one direction or another, that simple movement is profoundly helpful to us all. And frankly, adjustment when I am moving forward, never seems as difficult as the first step was.

I have never met Nik Wallenda, however like millions of others, I did watch him on live TV as he walked across the Grand Canyon on a tight rope with no harness in 2013. If you did not get to see it, I recommend you go here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N8fUOLcSak and watch it. It’s truly a wonder.

One logical question after watching this, is why were so many of us moved by Nik’s choice to try such a crazy thing? I think the next logical question is, how did he keep moving forward? As I review my memory of watching this event, I remember thinking, that takes guts to take the first step forward.

Which frankly is the answer to most of our questions in life. “How in the world am I going to do this?”  “This opportunity is huge! Where do I begin?” As a leader, it draws me back to the feet of Jesus. In Psalms 37:23 it says, The steps of a man are established by the Lord, when he delights in his way.  Simply put, when our lives, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the fortunate, are laid at His feet, the next logical place is the first step forward. For He has already established your steps, AND He delights in you going His way!

If you are a parent of a student and reading this and you are burdened to help them grown in their burden for their school, then the next logical step forward is to pray with them for their campus. Not just once, but daily and with repetition.

If you are a student who came home from a winter missions trip fired up for the gospel, and not sure what to do now, the next logical step forward is to share that burden with some friends and start a gospel movement (https://firstpriority.club/changeit/) on your campus.

Whatever your place in this world, in the name of Jesus I pray that you are moved today to take the first step forward.

Steve Cherrico
FP Executive Director Greater Nashville

I was challenged a few weeks ago at church by a message from our youth pastor, telling us to forget the past and look towards the future. He actually first had us take some quiet moments and reflect on this past year. Reflect on those memories of good and bad and laughter and sadness. And then he said, now forget what I just had you do because what I really want you to do is to forget the past. Don’t dwell in the past. Look towards the future. Look towards today. How are you going to be different? What is 2018 going to look like for you? What are you going to focus on?

We were given a card at the beginning of the service with a big blank space in the middle of it. He asked us to pull out that card and think of a word that we were going to try and focus on this year. Now, I don’t always like these kinds of exercises in church because sometimes nothing comes to me to write down and then I feel the pressure of writing something anyway. Or sometimes it seems too cheesy and think do I really need to do this? Or I write something down only to let it get lost in the depths of my purse, where it gets bent and crumpled and eventually thrown away and forgotten.

But this time, I felt challenged. I wanted to forget this past year and move forward. So many times, I get hung up on what’s happened in the past and it has been a stumbling block for me to move forward. So I stood there, in the midst of worshiping God, and knew what my word for 2018 was going to be. Brave. Be brave. So many times, I am hindered by not feeling good enough or holy enough to share the gospel with others. Or I take the easy road and just do what I’ve always done. But this year, I want to be brave. I want to be brave for Christ. Whatever that might look like. Maybe it’s being brave and writing more blogs like this. Maybe it’s volunteering more in ways that get me out of my comfort zone. Maybe it’s sharing Christ with my neighbors. Hopefully it’s all of those things.

What is your word for 2018? How are you going to move forward instead of focusing on the past? I pray that through the challenges and triumphs you will follow where God leads.

Kristina Zirschky
Admin of Systems and Communications

During the end of the year, I always reflect on my life and evaluate all the year has brought me and my family. This year, I find myself pretty much in the same place. I want to stop, but I keep viewing my Christian faith through the eyes of an American Christian. I guess it just gets so easy to look though rose colored glasses when we live in a very blessed place. I know we have our issues and I know the problems are real, but for the most part we are blessed.

I recently re-read a story of Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh. They described their harrowing tale of imprisonment by the Iranian regime because of their Christian faith. These two ladies personify the biblical admonition that we should gain joy through suffering and trials. (James 1: 2-3) Okay, let me stop here. Wow, I don’t know about you, but I really don’t like the idea of suffering or going though trials.

Both women were raised in Muslim homes in Iran. Having never embraced Islam, they became Christians as young adults. They met each other in 2005 while studying theology in Turkey. When they returned to Iran, they evangelized together for several years, covertly distributing Bibles to some twenty thousand people and starting two secret house churches. In March 2009 they were arrested in Tehran for promoting Christianity, which is punishable by death.

When a Muslim prisoner said they were “silly” for not renouncing Christianity, Marziyeh replied, “Our insistence on our faith is not out of stubbornness. . . . I have lived with God for many years. . . . He is my all.” We are inseparable. My life has no value without Him. I love God so much that denying Him would be denying my own existence. How could I ever deny something that is in every cell of my body? I would rather spend the rest of my life in prison if that’s what it takes to stay close to Him. I would rather be killed than kill the spirit of Christ within me.”

I must confess that I talk about faith like that, but rarely experience it. The verse that jumps out to me is Psalm 46:10
“Be still, and know that I am God, I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”

Well that’s my problem…being still. I am so ADD that it took me forever to write this blog. Squirrel! Technology is great but it has also become a distraction especially for people like me. I pray that God would allow me to be still at least a few minutes each day. I pray God would remind me that through the storms and through the trials (even though most of them are first world problems, but still problems) that I can experience God’s presence in my life. I want to be able to say like Marzlyeh, “I love God so much that denying him would be denying my own existence.”

Thank you Marziyeh for reminding me of this truth.

Mark Roberts
Associate Director
First Priority of America