Community and Hunter Dorsett

Hey Brian, this is Hunter Dorsett. I’m entering 10th grade and I go to the Methodist church every week. I felt somewhat compelled to e-mail you about your most recent service. I realized while you were talking that the message you were relaying had a lot to do with myself.

I wish that I could say that I have been in a state of spiritual crisis, but a crisis usually sounds like a more temporary gesture. It saddens me to say that it’s been more like a spiritual slump.  For one reason or another, I just haven’t felt the warmth of God’s embrace or touch for about 2 years or so. I first truly gave my heart to Jesus on my first Edge Camp in 7th grade, I believe. I had another spiritual awakening in the 8th grade summer of Edge, and D-Now is always amazing. But every time I seemed to go to one of these events, I’d find myself coming home to a world that wasn’t exactly against how I had changed, but wasn’t encouraging either.  It felt like a gas tank; I’d go to these events and fill up my spirit with God, only to find that whenever I tried to use my spiritual “gasoline”, I would run out in no time at all. It seemed like things weren’t going to change and that I had to try and just fit in.  Socially, I still to this day feel isolated and alone. Sure, I have a few friends, but things never really were the way that I had always wanted and expected them to be.  Sometimes, I’ll find myself sitting alone when a big group of people is around, usually because I feel alone anyway even if I try talking to everybody.

The way that I viewed everything about my situation was a sense of unsatisfaction. I was unsatisfied with the way my friends and even acquaintances thought about me. I was unsatisfied that girls never seemed to even give me a passing glance anymore. I was UNSATISFIED with the way my life was being lived and how mediocre I felt about who I was or how I acted. I thought for a while, ” Well, if you can just find a girl that really likes you and is spiritually inclined, that’ll help you with a lot of stuff.” But that is such a wrong idea on how to approach your relationship with God, I can’t even fathom how I came up with that conclusion. You started speaking about how our generation is so technologically advanced and busy, yet we are so lonely that we don’t even really know how to interact with each other; we are just socially awkward. I knew right then and there that this message was going to pertain to me and how I was feeling.

When the idea of community came up, and how that would truly change the way we live and act and think, I felt excited. This is how I wanted people to act and feel towards me, like a family. I’m so sick of the rumors and people talking behind the back and false imitations that people give off that I get SO offended at the signs of anyone of these being directed towards me. I hate being the cynical, stick-in-the-mud character around anyone, but the way that people had molded how I felt about so many matters had caused me to become just that. Community is the one thing that I truly think will help me be the young man that I want and hope to be. I realized that I can’t live life on my own, and that I need help from not only the people around me, but ultimately from God. Today’s service was a really good one man, and I hope that you and the rest of our church can keep up the great messages and not get cast into the typical “Woodlands”, materialistic, excuse of a church. Your a great speaker and I’m going to pray not only for our community and that my relationship with God will strengthen and grow, but that God will bless you with the words to keep bringing people such as myself back to his word. Thanks, Brian. 

                                                Hunter Dorsett