Shortly after arriving in Orlando I found myself standing on the beach facing the Atlantic Ocean. Chris’ church was holding their Baptism service – which is much more of a celebration than most churches I’ve attended. I loved the atmosphere and excitement as we celebrated brothers and sisters making a public display of the inward commitment they had made to follow Jesus.
Together in community we shared a meal, cheered as 113 folks were baptized in the waves of the Atlantic (including some more notable figures), worshiped together in music and voice and shared our lives. This church thinks about baptism much the way that Illini Life does – it’s an event we want to celebrate as a church community. It’s worthy of celebrating as we watch others make a public declaration to the church body that they belong to Jesus.
Airtran flight 561 seat 26C from BMI (Bloomington, IL) to MCO (Orlando, FL). At just over a half hour into the flight drinks and pretzels have been served, passengers hide their faces in books, laptops, crossword puzzles – the normal routine.
Like most on this flight, Orlando is my final destination. I hear rumbles of Mickey Mouse, Harry Potter and the Beach. Sounds like fun! Likely for me this week won’t hold any of those staples, at least not in the vacationing sense. I’m on the support raising road back to campus – Orlando is a stop along the way. This week I’m hoping to meet with new and old friends of Amy and I to share about the great things God is doing at University of Illinois and how they can be a part of it.
While I’m there I’ll also be working with the IT guys in the GCM office to install a new network firewall; lending my expertise and experience from my past life as a network engineer. I’m excited to be able to serve GCM in this way. Consulting time of network engineers tends to be pricey so I’m happy to save us those costs.
Isn’t that how we do church? You might have a knack for hospitality so you host welcome events and greet people at the door on Sunday. Or you might be a gifted singer so you lead us in worship. Maybe you do both. Me, I’m a nerd that gets networking and computers, but I also love sharing about Jesus with others. As a missionary I get to do both. Admittedly, the networking and computers hardly ever, making it exciting when I do get the chance.
The Pew Forum on religion & public life posted the findings of a recent survey of religious knowledge. It has made quite the headlines today. You can read the executive summary and stats here.
Several headlines I’ve read point out that atheists and agnostics “know more about the Bible than Christians.” Which isn’t quite accurate reporting. The study showed that Mormons and Evangelicals know the most about Christianity, but overall atheists and agnostics know more about world religions than any other group surveyed.
The more I read through the study the less surprised I was. Evangelicals tended to know most about Christianity but little about other religions. Those with more education tended to score higher on the survey. Those that answered more of the general knowledge questions correctly tended to answer more of the religious questions correctly – showing a correlation of more education or knowledge emphasis in general.
All this has me thinking about if we have any responsibility as Christians to know more about other religions and informing or encouraging our students to know more. Or does knowing the truth leave us content?
Things I’m thinking about… I welcome your thoughts
Awhile back I was introduced to this video and it still makes me laugh from time to time.
“Why didn’t baby Jesus zap him?”
“What would Jesus do if He was attacked by a polar bear?”
We laugh but I often wonder how many of my prayers and questions of God are right along these lines. So often my perspective is so small I can’t see past the polar bear question to see Jesus for who He is and what he’s done.
The past couple weeks have been polar bear weeks, this week my perspective is wider – hopefully for a little while at least.
As I type today, I’m reminded that it’s just been 2 short weeks since I started my regular trips to the Chicago suburbs. Yet in just two weeks a rhythm has started, there is a flow of my week and time seems to pass quickly now. I miss being in Champaign, especially this week as classes get started at U of I and I-Life gets moving again. There are stories almost daily of new friendships being formed as our students, leaders and staff step into the dorms and initiate with other students.
Life-long friendships, mutual discipleship, Christ-centered relationships – all forming as the faithful pick up the phone or send a text message.
“Hey, this is Nick M. from Illini Life Christian Fellowship. Hoping to see you at the Fall Preview tonight @ Illini Union 8:00PM”
Faithfulness for me this year looks a little different. I’m not on campus meeting new students this fall – the first time in 9 years. For me faithfulness looks like dialing the phone for the 50th time this week, to see if I can connect with another person in an effort to share about my work as a campus missionary.
I miss campus, I miss my wife, I miss my friends and my own bed; but this is good. It’s The Land Between.
Just as Israel had the desert to cross between Egypt and the Promised land, so a missionary has support raising between the initial calling and released to assignment. It’s The Land Between where God chisels away at the rough edges, softens the hardened heart and strengthens His call. The Land Between is where God speaks softly and quietly, reminding of His goodness and provision.
In The Land Between I have the choice to embrace and trust a God who I know is good or run to quick fixes to numb the pain of rejection, boredom of idleness, and loneliness of isolation. If the story of Israel teaches me anything, I’ll take God over the quick fixes, they just leads to wandering for longer.
Amy and I just celebrated our 1 year anniversary this past weekend. It was a time to look back and be reminded of the sweetness of our marriage and the good gift God has given me in a dear wife. Not to be all gushy and all – well actually yeah that’s what I had intended 😛
That set the stage for me leaving on the first support raising trip without her. Most of the next weeks and months will be this way. I’ll be in the Chicago suburbs raising support while she’s in Champaign working in the schools and seeing each other for a short weekend each week.
I can feel a sense of urgency to finish support raising as quick as possible, it is stronger, almost new. Certainly God provides in His time and I’ll be doing this until He tells me otherwise, but nonetheless my heart speeds and my pace quickens.
“Just drove away from Champaign without my wife, one of the hardest things I’ve had to do so far while raising support. 9:50 AM Aug 9th via Twitter”
The hard thing about leaving has less to do with separating from her – that’s tough for sure – it’s the not knowing for how long. How many weeks will we be following this routine, how many more times will I drive away from our house watching her eyes fight back tears as mine do the same?
As I prayed through all this, it became evident to me the urgency, the questions, the worrying were all rooted in the fear I was feeling. I haven’t had to be alone for the past year, I’ve had a companion. As I pull away for the week, I’m alone again: me, my thoughts and my work. Lucky for me I follow a God who meets us in that place of alone.
This video has inspired a lot of dialogue between several close friends and colleagues in ministry. We’re asking questions of one another like “How do we change to meet this culture?” “Should we change to meet it?” “Are we called to stretch them out of a short attention span?”
Throughout my years of working with college-aged folks it’s become apparent that in order for me to get someone’s attention I need to be communicating in the medium they do. This is essential for the initial phase of getting to know someone but quickly dissipates as a relationship is formed.
I don’t think college-aged folks are hurting as far as relational interaction anymore today than they were 5 years ago. But the question this video raises for me is how do we get to a relational interaction? How do we move from strangers in the Starbucks to sanctified students of Christ?
I believe we continue adapting the way we communicate at SNG (our Saturday night large group gathering where we teach on topics relevant to college-aged folks), we hold their attention with story and interaction – bringing to life the Gospel in all it’s richness. We adapt the way we interact and exchange small talk and build our friendships. And in Home Fellowship (our community groups focused on sharing our lives together) and discipleship times we work to stretch their patience and teach them to be nourished spiritually apart from fast food and microwave spirituality. We teach them to slow down, we teach them to listen for a God who whispers in the silence.
I’ll end with an example that I think illustrates my point well. Several years ago the Home Fellowship I was apart of didn’t have any students willing or able to lead a dorm based outreach group, so I went back into the dorms to lead at 25 years old – noticeably out of place. As my fellow “old people” and I called through our list of students interested in attending we hardly reached anyone. Noticing that most were cell phones we decided to try texting to reach each person, in many cases we received immediate responses.
We adapted our communication medium and style to that of the natives and it was more fruitful. Several of those text messages resulted in friendships, none of which remained in a discipleing over text message medium, but rather patience-stretching one-on-one times. At our weekly times I watched as the semester progressed and they started to put away their cell phones and not answer text messages while we discussed. Still initiating a meeting or a ride to service was always best done over text message – their native language.
The last thought or question I have would be, do we sacrifice The Gospel, truth about sanctification, etc by adapting the WAY we communicate these truths? IE putting it in movable type for a printing press to be read by individuals instead of handwritten and orated to the people.
I’m sure readers familiar with Marshall McLuhan will have much to say on this topic.
I spent last week in Orlando, FL near the headquarters of GCM, as a stop along the support raising trail back to campus. My good friend Chris hosted me at his place for the week as I worked at finding times to meet with folks and share about the work I do and – during the off hours – spent much time working on upgrading the GCM network firewall with our IT department.
