A ministry of Cornerstone Community Church, CRASH is a high school youth group with a purpose. As a verb, CRASH means "to make a loud, clattering noise" or "to collide, esp. violently and noisily." As a noun, a CRASH is "a sudden loud noise" and "characterized by an intensive effort." Like a car accident or the sinking of the Titanic, what we want to happen at CRASH is a sudden, unexpected, life-changing, and sometimes noisy, encounter with Jesus Christ. And while a car or oceanliner crash often results in tragic loss of life, and collision with our Savior will change your life forever.

High school meets at the home of Rollie and Debbie Clarkson in Johnston  (8823 Oakdale Drive) for games, food, music and life-changing lessons on Wednesdays from 7:00 to 8:30 PM. Junior high meets at Crown Point Community Center in Johnston (6300 Pioneer Parkway. Need more info? Email us, and check out the news, calendar and photos below. Also visit us on MySpace or Facebook for other news, blogs, photos and videos.

Missions Trip July 2-12

This summer we’re headed for Fuguay-Varina, South Carolina (20 miles south of the Raleigh-Durham area) to serve, worship and fellowship with people living in poverty, helping to reconstruct their homes so they are suitable to live in. We are going to be working with an organization called Mission Serve and staying in a local high school with 400 other students from around the country. 

The TOTAL cost for this trip per student will be $250. A $50 non-refundable deposit is due NO LATER THAN WEDNESDAY, FEB 25th. Let Nick or Heather know ASAP if you are interested in going, and as always, DO NOT let money be an issue. Contact the Reeds with questions, and look for more information here soon. A fundraiser for this trip is planned for April 26th directly following Cornerstone’s CONNECT service in the cafeteria at Johnston Middle School. More details about this event will be posted here and on our Calendar soon.

Contact Nick or Heather Reed with questions about the missions trip or fundraiser, and be sure to check out Mission Serve’s web site at ServeMG.com. 

Looking for CRASH photos?

Browse Cornerstone’s Photo page, the photos on the CRASH MySpace or Facebook. The latest are pictures from the Nov. 9 Rice Krispie Sculpture Night.

God Eraser

Mike Johnson 02.2009

If he were fit to survive this long, Charles Darwin would be celebrating his 200th birthday on February 12th. It took a hundred and fifty years for me to finally get around to reading his landmark volume, "On the Origin of Species", published in 1859. Darwin, of course, brought us Evolution, thanks in huge part to his imaginings about the limits (or lack thereof) of Natural Selection. Something else that reading his book has brought to light is how much of a step backward we can take by removing God from the picture.

Darwin, his one and only degree in Theology, was once a believer in Creation. As you read "Origins" you can see the step-by-step dismantling of his belief in creation by God's hand. In observing how species change and adapt, he lets go of the hand of God and marvels at the "hand of Nature", boasting that the "works of Nature are to those of Art" (p. 60). Darwin also wrote of the species that appear to advance over time, "they seem to me to be ennobled." (p. 383).

My mind went repeatedly to a verse from Romans 1: "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator..." (verse 25). This is exactly what Darwin did.

The same unreasonable exclusion of God exists today, despite the many problems with Evolutionary theory. Neo-Darwinism, or the "Modern Synthesis" of Evolution combines Darwin's Natural Selection with genetics. Modern Evolutionary theory assumes that over millions of years, life began as very simple organisms and evolved into more complex life forms through random mutations. However, no research has ever been able to plausibly demonstrate how organisms can advance in complexity beyond the limitations of the genetic information in their ancestors. In addition, millions of years of life forms evolving upward would logically leave behind transitional "missing link" fossils and millions of failed attempts from nature trying to produce higher surviving life forms. On the contrary, we find no undisputable fossils of this nature. Despite these and other serious problems with the theory, Evolution is published and preached as established fact.

As Christians, we believe that the Bible is inerrant, including its description of God as Creator in Genesis. Can we prove God? No. Can we prove Evolution? No. However, a careful look fossil evidence, geologic factors, and our understanding of genetics should show us that the world, universe and life we see fits much better into the framework of God as Creator. For example, when God created plants and animals "according to their kinds" in Genesis 1:25, He included all the genetic information needed to produce the variety in those "kinds" that Darwin observed (and we see today) as DNA is sorted and lost from generation to generation. What we observe today fits this model. DNA information that moves forward from simple to complex, from mere molecules to man, contradicts both the Bible and important scientific principals. Creation violates neither.

Speaking of "Origins", also consider that Evolutionists—or proponents of Big Bang, another Godless theory of beginnings—don't even begin to address the question of absolute origins by theorizing what sparked the Big Bang or where the first living cell came from. The Bible answers the question of origins in Genesis 1:1. Is the concept of an infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator too unbelievable for some? Absolutely. But it is consistent with the evidence. God fits. Man's theories don't. Notice that you don't hear so much as an imaginative guess for explaining origins without God. Alien seeding doesn't count—alien life would still require an origin. It's because you can't rationally explain life without God.

So why is Evolution still taught as fact? I have a theory: We are still in the habit of erasing God. It's the only reasonable explanation as to why Evolution of life and the universe continues to be pushed while evidence clearly exists for its absurdity but is supressed and downplayed. The only other theory on the table is Creation. So consider this: If the Bible is actually true in its account of Creation, then what else in the Bible might a person have to consider? The consequences of sin? The doctrines of Heaven and Hell? Who Jesus was? Repentance? Forgiveness? Moral Responsibility? Judgement? Depending on who we are, these can be very uncomfortable facts if we actually had to face them.

To push away God, mankind came up with his own ideas. We have been doing this throughout history. Our ideas don't really work in practice, but we live in denial and come up with more theories to vainly attempt to validate our theory. We continue to shut out the Creator and worship the created thing until we're convinced we will someday solve for X without having to use the X. But it doesn't work. On different levels, many of us push away God and try to fill the vacuum with something else. In the end, we see that the "something else" doesn't fit. In the end, we will all know how we got here. Refusing to acknowledge our Creator is a temporary condition, because one day, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Who is Lord (Romans 14:11). Darwin erased God and replaced Him with his own ideas to explain life, and 150 years later secular science is still trying to make it work. We should stop propagating a lie and be sure not to make the same critical mistake in our own lives.