Living the Dream
Once upon a time (starting in 2010 and running for a little over a year) Ben put in a lot of hours on a blog named “Assume The Best.”
It chronicled his life as a full-time staff member of Campus Crusade for Christ, attempting to make light of and encourage specifically around the process of raising financial support.
We had left staff at that point, and this writing is an interesting look into his process of grieving that loss, with an eye toward “becoming a writer.”
Here, in the order they were released, are those posts.
I’ve written 122 posts on this blog. There have been 279 comments, and thousands of people from over 100 countries have checked us out, with upwards of 13,000 pageviews. That’s pretty cool, right?
I read once that you are not officially a blogger until Continue reading “3 ways you can encourage hundreds of missionaries–without even leaving your computer!”
Support raising forced me to really face the core question of my life for the first time.
The question that would come to define the next decade.
The question that, if I’m honest, it’s still tough to ask.
It’s just three words. Those same three simple words have haunted me even since leaving vocational ministry. I’ve shed tears answering the same question over and over.
Is Jesus Enough?
For the first time in my otherwise easy suburban existence, in support raising I was faced with the rubber-meeting-the-road reality that I didn’t actually believe the gospel. Sure, I would intellectually assent to the fact that Jesus was big enough to care for my every need. But to say it with your head was one thing. To trust it with your wallet was entirely another. God was exceedingly gracious to me to allow my first “real job” to be in raising support, relentlessly trusting God to provide for my needs.
By no means did I do it perfectly. But I think that’s kind of the point.
My faltering, hiccuping faith that God would provide for me further underscored my need for a savior. My need to be rescued from my own religious tendency to try and save myself, to be my own “enough.”
It turns out, raising support was just the training ground.
Rob Bell blew up the conservative Christian blogosphere recently. It got me thinking. I wonder who is worse for the cause of Christ:
(1) A universalist ignoring the clear claims of Christ in Scripture,
or
(2) An arrogant fundamentalist (Me in college, and if I’m honest, still my default mode apart from the grace of God) angrily misapplying and weaponizing the clear claims of Christ in Scripture.
What do you think? Who is worse, me or Rob Bell?
For 6 weeks during the summer of 2003 I didn’t do laundry even one time. And I could’ve gone for another three weeks, without breaking a sweat (metaphorically… I was in Florida in June, so Continue reading “Support raising, Laundry, and Pimples: A cautionary tale.”
One time a lady tried to fast-forward my (live) support presentation.
She took the presentation binder out of my hand and started flipping through it like a photo album documenting her elderly neighbor’s recent trip to the orthopedist. Apparently, one step beyond a page-turner: Continue reading “The time I almost used a cuss word on a support appointment.”