Tag: insights

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Sending is a lot like planning a party.

Ever watched your team win the championship when you are the only one in the room who cares?  I have.  It was 2005, and UNC was playing Illinois.  I lived in Middle Tennessee, and had to suffer through Kentucky basketball games anytime there was a Raycom conflict that season.

The day of the championship game I had two bible studies scheduled.  So I had the guys from both of them over to my place, we brought in a projector, and watched the game projected on a wall in my house.  Everyone in the room watched the game, but they were far more interested in watching me watch the game.

There was something about winning it all that was less satisfying than I had imagined.  Part of the joy of celebrating is celebrating with others.  I jumped up and down and even ran down my street waving a Tar Heel flag, but it still wasn’t the same.

That’s what the third and final word in our organizational DNA is all about.  “Send.”  We want to send students and faculty around the world to gather up more people to celebrate with them, not because it is some sinister plot to take over the world, but because we’ve found something we enjoy, and we want others to enjoy it alongside us.

Sending should be something that, if we’ve properly built into the students, happens naturally.  Once a student gets the taste in their mouth of God using them, it’s tough to get it out.  That’s what propelled me literally around the world to tell others about Christ.  I found something worth celebrating, namely that Jesus had paid for all of my sin, and wanted others to find the same reason to party.

The thing that differentiates this missions model from others is that it’s really messy.  We will send a junior in college, with no formal seminary education, to a remote city in Asia to share with others about Christ.  Does it always end well? Absolutely not.  As I mentioned in yesterday’s post on building, we focus on one or two things, and do them well.  We would rather take steps of faith and have to go behind students and clean up the mess than to always play it safe.  And we believe in a sovereign God.

What I have seen in my 7 years of campus ministry is that students are far more effective at reaching students than I am, no matter how trained or untrained they are.  My job is to find Johnny Freshman and build into him in such a way as to give him the vision to reach his classmates.  That transition normally doesn’t take place until at least his fourth semester.  But once it does, I get to watch as a person with far more “street cred” than I reaches out to his peers.

My favorite thing in the world (after Jesus’ life and my wife’s smile) is seeing students catch on, and make the turn from being a consumer in their faith to being an active participant in the Great Commission.

Like having a Heel-by-marriage wife to celebrate another Carolina championship 4 years later, Jesus wants us to enjoy him, and call others into that enjoyment.

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I love my church.

I love it because you don’t have to wear a mask.  I mean, I still do… I just don’t have to.  I see the pastors every week taking off their masks and allowing us to glimpse how the gospel is changing them.  Someday, I’ll take mine off, too.

My church isn’t perfect.  But the one to whom she is betrothed is.  I’m so thankful it’s HIM that the pastors and worship leaders strive to take me to each week.

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The shock of being an insider.

This is a quote that rocked me to the core last week.  It’s something Tim Keller references in his study Gospel Christianity 101 (which you should immediately purchase, read, and use as the curriculum at your small group)  He quoted Richard Hays from his book The Moral Vision of The New Testament:

God’s… invasion of the world has wrought an inversion: God has reversed the positions of insiders and outsiders.  Those who are in positions of authority and privilege reject Jesus and the message.  However, people of low or despised position in the social world of first-century Jewish culture receive the gospel gladly, for their need is great… Those familiar with the story should not  under-estimate the shock of this inversion.

It’s a great quote.  It’s not something terribly new to me, but what rocked me this time as I was reading it is the harsh realization that in my church, in my ministry, and in my life I consistently become an insider.  In fact, at times it is my primary goal. I get a new teaching, or a new way of doing things, and I make and “inside” and an “outside.”  I’m always an insider, scratching and clawing my way to be recognized, applauded, and accepted by the other “insiders.”

The gospel alone forces me to admit being an outsider.  But once I am out in the cold, with no way of saving myself, that same gospel shows me (and in some mysterious way gives me) a righteousness that is unshakable.

May God continue to push us out into the cold, lest we believe the compelling lie that there’s something we did (or can do) to save ourselves.

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Feed my Sheep.

John 21:15

“Do you love me more than these?  These what?  Oh, these 153 fish that I just caught?  I sure do, Jesus.  I’d gladly give up fishing—my very livelihood—if it meant being with you.”

How quickly Peter answered.

Jesus is asking me lately whether I love him more than financial security, or even providing for my family.  He’s not, I think, asking me to forgo money (just as he wasn’t telling Peter to never fish again).  He’s simply asking what I trust in more.  At the end of the day, when all seems lost and I want to crawl in a hole, what do I trust more?  Who do I love more?

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I’m anxious enough to sing.

I was driving today, listening to conservative talk radio (because it’s as funny as Jon Stewart during the Bush years) and all the flailing and panicking and minor-key interludes that accompany advertisements for reseeding packets and buying gold.  Then, I turned off the radio, and looked over the tops of the brilliantly colored red and yellow leaves to notice a hawk flying high on a background of white, wispy clouds.

Despite what is clearly an attack on our way of life, and the worst economic meltdown of the century, and the rise of fascist dictatorships, and eminent inflation, and the end of life as we have known it, and the rolling over of the founding fathers in their graves (according to the show I had just turned off), it was strangely peaceful.

Almost as if God is not worried.

Almost as if the designer of the beautiful leaves and amazing blue sky didn’t stop painting and creating long enough to fret about his kids worrying and thinking he’d left the throne.

God is so worried that he started painting.  Maybe we should take that hint.  We Christians ought to be so vexed and perplexed that we start singing.  The tomb is empty.

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