God is better than I know

New student outreach is exhausting. And incredibly rewarding.

Tonight was our first outreach event of the year, overflow. We have been planning this event since May. As a staff team, we have put many hours into overflow, from getting a worship team, to putting together posters, to invites, to writing a talk. Some of that was my time, alot of it was my amazing staff partners.

But it all came together in one event tonight. It is so hard coming into events like tonight. I never know what to expect. Who will show up? How will they respond? How will it go? Will they come back?

As a staff team we had decided that at the end of the talk tonight there were going to be two invitations - one for Christians to take action on campus, and another for non-Christians to become Christian. We have never done any invitations at Willamette, at least not as long as I have been here. And it felt really risky. I know all the excuses. Let's be honest, I use all the excuses: 'Private school kids don't like the really forward invitations' or 'its too in your face' or 'no one will respond, and it will just be embarrassing.'

If I am being really honest, I think the real reason we have not done invitations in the last four years is because I am too afraid to do them. But across the country people are doing direct invitations, and it's working. Across the country students are standing up and responding. They like the hard call, and the sit up and take action when they hear it. And I want that at Willamette. And so tonight we decided to make a real invitation.

As I was sitting in the audience listening to Daniel give his talk I started to pray. I started asking God 'please, please let some people stand up, please!!!' I was really nervous, and really scared. But especially since I wasn't the one speaking, it was too late to back out now. So Daniel started his invitation, and he gave the first chance for Christians to stand up and respond to God calling them to take action on campus for Jesus. I was expecting 2 people to stand up. 20 stood.

20. And with subsequent invitations everyone in the room was standing. Never in my wildest imagination could I dream up a scenario where the entire room stands. That just doesn't happen, and not at Willamette.

And that is why I believe in God. Because even through all my cynicism, all my pessimism (or what I like to refer to as realism), God is powerful and at work in ways I can never imagine. I never thought people at Willamette would respond to God like that. But God has showed me that he can move on this campus more powerfully than I could ever imagine.

Something is happening at Willamette, and I think we get to be a part of it. I am so excited and utterly unprepared for what God is doing here. And amazed. Totally amazed.

Insecurity

It is hard in ministry to not take things personally. God calls us in all different directions, speaks to each of us about our own lives and our communities. But when God speaks to a student, telling them to leave InterVarsity, I feel insecure and it causes me to wonder if a student is really hearing from God, or just fed up with something in the fellowship.

I know there are lots of reasons people move on. And most of them have nothing to do with me. But over the last few weeks I have been asking God to give me the faith to trust that I am still following him, and that what he has planned for us is the best path. As new students begin to arrive, I find myself second guessing the plans I heard from God last Spring. And if they fail, or when students leave, I need to remember that they were not my plans, they were God's.

I keep thinking about the passage in the bible where Jesus calms the storm. We always talk about it as fear versus faith. Fear and faith are opposite when it comes to God. If I feel fear in what I am doing, I no longer have the faith that God is going to work. And so my prayer for this year is that I would have incredible faith to trust in God in the plans he has for me and for the fellowship at Willamette.

Reflections on Genesis

This summer I had a chance to travel to Iowa to get some training on teaching, training, and leading bible studies and manuscript studies. My time there was amazing and I felt so inspired to do so many things with bible study on our campus. One of the places I felt most convicted was in my staff team. Lindsey, the woman leading the training, talked about how when she has worked on campus they had always had a hermeneutical community as a staff team (a fancy way to say that they had a staff team that spent time studying and applying and getting real with the word of God.) Although I lead a team of staff, there are certain things that just don't occur to me. And leading my staff team in regular manuscript studies was one of those things.

Additionally, there were studies that Lindsey referred to as 'the basics.' All of which I had not fully completed. Mark, Amos, Genesis 1-11, Nehemiah, etc. I was beginning to feel that my own experience with scripture was somewhat lacking. So I decided that as a staff team we were going to spend half of our time together studying scripture. Starting in Genesis.

The thing that has struck me most so far in Genesis is the sin and the consequence of it. After much discussion in our staff team we realized that the sin's of Adam and Eve reflect the consequences God gives them. For Eve, she does not listen to her husband's commands, and she acts on her own accord before turning to either Adam or God. She trust's herself to do what is right above God's own guidance for her. And for Adam, he simply sits silently by. This is action in itself, the act of doing nothing.

For Adam, his consequence is to spend his life working to survive. To act because he chose at such crucial moment not to. And for Eve the consequence is all around relationships, because she chose not to trust her husband or God in her actions.

As the school year begins (only three weeks and counting) I am constantly aware of my own actions and God's guidance. The summer is slow enough that I have the time to listen to God, to act on His word. But I know myself when the school year starts. Life gets crazy and I just go. This year I want to remember Eve. I want to remember to heed the word of God, to listen, to seek advice, and to obey God first.