Besides reading and planning and praying during my sabbatical, I also visited a few other churches with healthy college ministries.
The first church I went to was Antioch Community Church in Waco. It is a relatively new church plant, only about nine years old. It sprang from a large Baptist church in Waco, and now averages around 2500-3000 attenders in weekend services. Most people are familiar with Antioch through the story of Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry, two missionaries in Afghanistan who were arrested in 2001 for preaching the Gospel.
I met with the college pastor and his staff over the course of two days, and also had the opportunity to attend a church staff meeting. My main purpose in these meetings was to hear how another church-based college ministry operated and see if I could gain some fresh perspectives and ideas.
I was immediately impressed with the energy and enthusiasm of this church for the Great Commission. From the senior pastor on down the line, every staff member was excited to participate in overseas missions and to mobilize others to do so as well. A great deal of time in the college staff meeting and the church staff meeting was devoted to highlighting missionaries and discussing missions strategy. It was very clear that overseas missions is an integral part of the church's mission, not just in theory but in practice.
In addition, I was convicted and encouraged by the direct on-campus involvement of the college pastor and his staff. They are constantly on campus, interacting with students and spending time sharing the Gospel. It was a challenge to me to find new ways to get our staff and interns on campus more often than we have been in the past. I am optimistic that through this "ministry of presence," our church can have a greater impact on the campus of Texas A&M in the future.
Overall, it was a great church visit and a valuable time for me. Stay tuned for updates on the other two churches I visited!
Monday, June 23, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Spirit of the Disciplines
During the first few days of my sabbatical, I went of out of town and spent some time alone. My primary goal was to refresh my spiritual life and to seek the Lord regarding any changes that I needed to make in order to pursue Him more closely.
While I was away, I read a book by Dallas Willard called The Spirit of the Disciplines. Originally, I expected the book to be a detailed discussion of the various disciplines for the spiritual life (e.g. prayer, study, fasting, worship, etc.). Instead, Willard provides a rationale for the rigorous practice of spiritual disciplines, along with an understanding of their place in the Christian life.
His fundamental premise is that we are bodily as well as spiritual creatures. To deny the bodily aspect of our nature is to lapse into a form of gnosticism, which drew a sharp divide between flesh and spirit, labeling the flesh as evil and the spirit as good. In gnosticism, then, the goal is to overcome the flesh, or even to escape it, in order that we might be holy in our inner beings.
In contrast, Willard explains that our bodies are fundamental vessels through which our spirits interact with the world and with God. Our bodies are created by God, and we cannot experience the world except through the senses of our body. The primary means through which our bodies enable our spirits to interact with God are the spiritual disciplines. As we practice the disciplines faithfully, we train our bodies and minds and spirits to respond to the Holy Spirit. Over time, our natural inclinations change and we transform into the character of Christ.
The disciplines, then, are not ends in themselves, but exercises to train us in the way of godliness. A golfer does not go to the driving range to be good at the driving range, but so that during the course of the game he can hit the ball consistently where he wants it to go.
If I spend concentrated time in silence and prayer on a daily basis, then I am more likely to respond with internal quietness and supplication in the press of my ordinary routine. When I am faced with temptation, pressure, busyness, and crowding, I am more likely to respond in a godly way if I have practiced godliness with diligence.
At any rate, this book challenged me to remember that we cannot grow in godliness with the effort of the disciplines. While justification is a free gift of God through Christ, there is an element of hard work and discipline necessary to become more like Jesus. It is the hard work of increasing dependence upon the Lord.
As Willard writes: "Who are the great ones in the Way, what are the significant movements in the history of the church, that do not bear the deep and pervasive imprint of the disciplines for the spiritual life? If there are none, what leads us to believe that we might be an exception to the rule and might know the power of the kingdom life without the appropriate discipline?"
Well said; now on to the work of discipleship.
While I was away, I read a book by Dallas Willard called The Spirit of the Disciplines. Originally, I expected the book to be a detailed discussion of the various disciplines for the spiritual life (e.g. prayer, study, fasting, worship, etc.). Instead, Willard provides a rationale for the rigorous practice of spiritual disciplines, along with an understanding of their place in the Christian life.
His fundamental premise is that we are bodily as well as spiritual creatures. To deny the bodily aspect of our nature is to lapse into a form of gnosticism, which drew a sharp divide between flesh and spirit, labeling the flesh as evil and the spirit as good. In gnosticism, then, the goal is to overcome the flesh, or even to escape it, in order that we might be holy in our inner beings.
In contrast, Willard explains that our bodies are fundamental vessels through which our spirits interact with the world and with God. Our bodies are created by God, and we cannot experience the world except through the senses of our body. The primary means through which our bodies enable our spirits to interact with God are the spiritual disciplines. As we practice the disciplines faithfully, we train our bodies and minds and spirits to respond to the Holy Spirit. Over time, our natural inclinations change and we transform into the character of Christ.
The disciplines, then, are not ends in themselves, but exercises to train us in the way of godliness. A golfer does not go to the driving range to be good at the driving range, but so that during the course of the game he can hit the ball consistently where he wants it to go.
If I spend concentrated time in silence and prayer on a daily basis, then I am more likely to respond with internal quietness and supplication in the press of my ordinary routine. When I am faced with temptation, pressure, busyness, and crowding, I am more likely to respond in a godly way if I have practiced godliness with diligence.
At any rate, this book challenged me to remember that we cannot grow in godliness with the effort of the disciplines. While justification is a free gift of God through Christ, there is an element of hard work and discipline necessary to become more like Jesus. It is the hard work of increasing dependence upon the Lord.
As Willard writes: "Who are the great ones in the Way, what are the significant movements in the history of the church, that do not bear the deep and pervasive imprint of the disciplines for the spiritual life? If there are none, what leads us to believe that we might be an exception to the rule and might know the power of the kingdom life without the appropriate discipline?"
Well said; now on to the work of discipleship.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Sabbatical
For the past month or so, I've been on a short sabbatical from my weekly duties as college pastor. The elders at my church were kind enough to implement a policy that once every three years, pastoral staff can take a sabbatical in order to rest, study, and refresh vision for ministry.
Some of my days have been spent in prayer and solitude, seeking the Lord's will for the future of the ministry and for my future personally. Other days, I have been reading and studying about "Generation Y," those born between 1982 and 2000, many of whom are currently in college. Finally, I spent some of my time visiting other college ministries in Texas and around the country to gather ideas and refocus my vision for university students.
On the whole, it has been a productive and restful time. I return to the office on Monday, and I am excited to begin again with a renewed sense of purpose and direction, as well as restored energy.
Over the next few weeks, I am going to post some thoughts on the readings I have done, as well as the ministries I have visited. Stay tuned!
Some of my days have been spent in prayer and solitude, seeking the Lord's will for the future of the ministry and for my future personally. Other days, I have been reading and studying about "Generation Y," those born between 1982 and 2000, many of whom are currently in college. Finally, I spent some of my time visiting other college ministries in Texas and around the country to gather ideas and refocus my vision for university students.
On the whole, it has been a productive and restful time. I return to the office on Monday, and I am excited to begin again with a renewed sense of purpose and direction, as well as restored energy.
Over the next few weeks, I am going to post some thoughts on the readings I have done, as well as the ministries I have visited. Stay tuned!
Monday, June 2, 2008
Tribute
Well, it has been many months since I've updated this blog, so I don't know if anybody will actually read this post. Most of you have long since given up checking it, figuring that I had abandoned it. I do hope to begin blogging again soon, and thought today was a good opportunity to start. I might be writing this for myself as much as for anybody else.
At every church where college ministry is a priority, there is usually a person or persons largely responsible for championing it. College students are not a priority to many churches, because they do not contribute great sums of money. They tend to be a financial drain and the immediate benefit or attracting them is not always obvious. For a church to target them intentionally, there has to be at least one influential individual willing to convince the church body that college students are a strategic investment; we may not reap financial rewards now, but we can literally change the course of history and expand the kingdom of God by training and serving them.
At the church where I minister, that person was Dick Davison, a long-time elder and servant at the church. Dick went to be with Jesus this morning after battling illness for the past few years. He was in his early 80s.
A veteran of WWII, Dick tended to use battle imagery frequently when discussing church ministry. He applied a principle from his military days to college students, often referring to them as the "fat target." This was his way of saying that, in our community, they are numerous and energetic and eager to learn, so why not focus our energy and resources on the biggest and most receptive target.
He frequently came by my office, when he was healthy, and was fond of asking me, "If you had one million dollars tax-free to spend on this ministry, how would you use it to expand the college ministry at this church?" (A few years ago, he changed the number to ten million, saying that one million did not go as far as it used to!) He was constantly pressing me to come up with such a plan, and to do what I could even if I never received large sums of money. To be frank, I have never met a layperson so intensely strategic and focused on the ministry of God's kingdom as he was.
I have also never met another man of his age who LOVED college students the way he did. Every week he and his lovely wife Joy stood in the back of our college auditorium and served donuts and coffee to the students who attended the college class. Students were constantly blessed by their joy and enthusiasm for ministry, as well as their close and loving marriage. He continued to attend until he was literally too weak to stand in the back of the room, often sitting on a chair while he and Joy did their job.
One of the last times I visited him in the hospital, he could not stand and was incredibly weak. Nonetheless, when I entered the room, he immediately began to ask me how I was going to implement a program to strategically recruit more interns for the college ministry. "I want a dozen interns, even more if possible. What are you doing to make that happen?" Dick was a man who finished well; when I returned home, I told my wife that I can only pray that when I am in my final days I will have as much commitment and dedication to the Great Commission as Dick.
A few months ago, at Dick's request, I asked my assistant to create a book filled with pictures of all of our former interns, including updates on where they are now and how they are serving the Lord. Dick received it in the hospital, on his birthday, and called me to say thank you. He went on and on about how glad he was to see so many of them serving the Lord, married to other former interns (Dick was a big champion of marriage and wanted everybody to married as soon as possible). He showed the book to everybody who visited him, and expounded upon the strategic value of investing in the lives of young men and women headed into a life of service to Christ.
I hope it was an encouragement to him in his final days to see that his life's labor and dedication in the service of Jesus had an incredible impact. He certainly had an impact on me, and I am one of literally thousands, some of whom will never even know his name.
I miss him already, and pray that God will give me the strength to live with his same kind of intentionality and dedication to the things of God's kingdom.
At every church where college ministry is a priority, there is usually a person or persons largely responsible for championing it. College students are not a priority to many churches, because they do not contribute great sums of money. They tend to be a financial drain and the immediate benefit or attracting them is not always obvious. For a church to target them intentionally, there has to be at least one influential individual willing to convince the church body that college students are a strategic investment; we may not reap financial rewards now, but we can literally change the course of history and expand the kingdom of God by training and serving them.
At the church where I minister, that person was Dick Davison, a long-time elder and servant at the church. Dick went to be with Jesus this morning after battling illness for the past few years. He was in his early 80s.
A veteran of WWII, Dick tended to use battle imagery frequently when discussing church ministry. He applied a principle from his military days to college students, often referring to them as the "fat target." This was his way of saying that, in our community, they are numerous and energetic and eager to learn, so why not focus our energy and resources on the biggest and most receptive target.
He frequently came by my office, when he was healthy, and was fond of asking me, "If you had one million dollars tax-free to spend on this ministry, how would you use it to expand the college ministry at this church?" (A few years ago, he changed the number to ten million, saying that one million did not go as far as it used to!) He was constantly pressing me to come up with such a plan, and to do what I could even if I never received large sums of money. To be frank, I have never met a layperson so intensely strategic and focused on the ministry of God's kingdom as he was.
I have also never met another man of his age who LOVED college students the way he did. Every week he and his lovely wife Joy stood in the back of our college auditorium and served donuts and coffee to the students who attended the college class. Students were constantly blessed by their joy and enthusiasm for ministry, as well as their close and loving marriage. He continued to attend until he was literally too weak to stand in the back of the room, often sitting on a chair while he and Joy did their job.
One of the last times I visited him in the hospital, he could not stand and was incredibly weak. Nonetheless, when I entered the room, he immediately began to ask me how I was going to implement a program to strategically recruit more interns for the college ministry. "I want a dozen interns, even more if possible. What are you doing to make that happen?" Dick was a man who finished well; when I returned home, I told my wife that I can only pray that when I am in my final days I will have as much commitment and dedication to the Great Commission as Dick.
A few months ago, at Dick's request, I asked my assistant to create a book filled with pictures of all of our former interns, including updates on where they are now and how they are serving the Lord. Dick received it in the hospital, on his birthday, and called me to say thank you. He went on and on about how glad he was to see so many of them serving the Lord, married to other former interns (Dick was a big champion of marriage and wanted everybody to married as soon as possible). He showed the book to everybody who visited him, and expounded upon the strategic value of investing in the lives of young men and women headed into a life of service to Christ.
I hope it was an encouragement to him in his final days to see that his life's labor and dedication in the service of Jesus had an incredible impact. He certainly had an impact on me, and I am one of literally thousands, some of whom will never even know his name.
I miss him already, and pray that God will give me the strength to live with his same kind of intentionality and dedication to the things of God's kingdom.
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