In July 2016, Netflix dropped its first season of the massively popular series "Stranger Things." Set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana during the 1980's, the series follows a close-knit group of young people as they navigate the normalcy of small-town life--school, home, friendship, pressures, etc. They soon discover, however, that there exists a parallel world or dimension that directly affects the entire town. This parallel word, which they call The Upside-Down...the reality of this changes the lives of these friends forever.
Whether you've seen the show or not, the plot doesn't sound far from what we read about in Scripture. "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Ephesians 6:12). For followers of Jesus, our enemies are not of this world. They live in an unseen, spiritual dimension that exists parallel to the physical world that we see around us every day.
Author John Eldredge describes it like this: "There is something in human nature that just doesn't want to face the reality that we live in two worlds. We live in the physical, material world where we have jobs, read books, and go about our business. And we live in a spiritual world--and that is a world at war."
Join us October 11th-13th for Senior High Impact, where our theme will be "Stranger Things" and we will study in-depth the spiritual Upside-Down world. More importantly, we will discover how to survive and thrive the attack that the enemies of that world throw our way.