PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Church

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the fourth week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

For the last two years, Alex VanDuyne has served as ICM's team leader at the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL. Alex, Emily, and Samuel have demonstrated a very thoughtful presence amongst the students at USF and have been very intentional about their engagement with the local church and its ability to help them minister to young adults. I knew that with Alex's passion for teaching and communication, he would be a great staff person to ask to share his thoughts about our value of church. 

I love the theology of the church universal. Almost everyone believes in it, though some people talk about it more than others. It means that the Church—the “big C” Church—is the communion of all Christians, across every country, across all time. We are an incredibly tiny part of a great chorus of praise to God that involves every Christian who has ever lived and ever will. But part of the beauty of this idea is that it’s so big and abstract and that it does not actually require anything of us. It’s just a certainty. It’s clean and beautiful like looking at the earth from space.

For our purposes, for the practical now, the “real church” is the local church. This is where the action happens. Our local churches are the hands and feet of God. The local church is much different. It gets messy and dirty and complicated. Churches are inherently messy because they’re made of inherently messy people. Sometimes we act like messy churches are a sign that the gospel isn’t working, but messy churches are like hospitals with sick people—neither surprising nor something to condemn, but entirely natural.

Churches are where God lives. We think of the Holy Spirit as living inside each believer, but the primary metaphor for the Holy Spirit dwelling within us is not as individual believers, but as believers assembled. We like to say, “We don’t go to church, we are the church.” This is partially correct. It is better to say that we become the church when we gather as the church.

The local church is to the universal church what a brick is to a wall. It’s what a cell is to a complex organism. It’s what a nutrient is to a meal. The local church is the least common denominator, the base unit that makes up the greater Church. And this is simply the way it is. There’s no alternative. No competing design. God has ordained to work primarily through local churches. And thus so do we as Christians. And thus so does Impact.

There’s no biblical precedent for a solo believer. Neither the Bible nor church history suggests that a Christian should be a Christian apart from membership in a local gathering. Are there exceptions? Probably. Thought experiments show it to be possible. Life certainly yields people on the outskirts who cannot leave their home or who live in countries with few believers. But these people are the exception, not the rule, and certainly not the ideal.

Impact values church. We value church because church is the native language of God. Church is primarily how he speaks and acts. We cannot preach “Pursue” without calling people to do so in the context of a local body of believers when possible. And it’s nearly always possible. For our staff to say we are pursuing God if we are not invested in a local church is problematic at best. Students, more than anyone, require the stability of a healthy, multigenerational church if they are to nurture a serious and significant relationship with Jesus. Impact doesn’t try to supplant this because it’s fundamentally impossible. A student who treats Impact as their church is a like a sick person on a ventilator. Sometimes it is necessary, and it might be helpful during times of crisis, but eventually you need to start breathing on your own.

Ultimately I have not done my job if I don’t direct our students into the local church. Ultimately one of the clearest signs of whether I have been successful with students is whether they insist on membership in a flawed, messy, beautiful local church after graduation. My own serious input on a student’s life lasts only about two and half years. I hope this sets the foundation for a lifetime of church membership, where my own strengths and failures in each student’s life will be rounded and smoothed and balanced out in the beauty of Christian submission.

This hard commitment to churches made of broken people is one of the core signs of Christian maturity. But it’s also one of the key paths to Christian maturity. Church is where we learn submission, and submission means submitting to not only those we acknowledge are right, but also to those who we think might be wrong, and those who are definitely wrong. We have to work out what submission means in each instance, but it usually means staying in your community and fighting for unity, peace, and a passion for God. Remember, Christ’s great act of submission was not submitting to the crowds who called for him as a king, but submitting to the crowds who called for his murder. This is the model for the backward gospel ethics that we learn about in the Bible, the model of life we call students to at Impact, and the attitude we learn to live out in the local church.

PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Character

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the fourth week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

Kerry Eastridge is the Team Leader for our ICM team at Florida Gulf Coast University in Ft. Myers, FL. Kerry is one of our longest-serving campus ministers and has proven throughout the years his commitment to integrity as a minister, mentor, and leader. His quiet, non-assuming demeanor often hides a deep well of wisdom that resides inside of him. If you were to ask other members of the ICM family, they would tell you that there aren't too many other folks that serve as a model for CHARACTER like Kerry.

Sew a thought, reap an action.

Sew an action, reap a habit.

Sew a habit, reap a character.

Sew a character, reap a legacy.

In my opinion, character and integrity are the embodiment of who we are in regard to what we think about and how we act toward God, others, and ourselves. Christian character would include the relational attitudes and actions of Christ. There are two character qualities I believe encompass many of the others and are important for us as campus ministers to pursue, model, and teach: humility and truth. As qualities, they are nouns, but in life we practice them in more of an active verbal manner.

Think about one of the messages social media, mass media, Hollywood, music stars, and professional sports figures all promote; “It’s all about you, so grab your moment of fame while you can.” Today’s college students have grown up with this message of self-promotion pounded into their psyche. It is all too evident in their Snapchats, selfies, and posts.

Humility dares to defy this self-absorptive form of pride. I’m told C.S. Lewis wrote that humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. If that is true, then pride is the obsession with self—thinking of oneself too much. Obsession with self is found in two opposite extremes. The person who is overly self-confident, arrogant, and self-promoting is obsessed with self. However, the person who is consumed with his insecurities, fears, inhibitions, and inabilities is also obsessed with self.

One of the challenges we have with today’s students is to simply get them to greet and talk with other students. Perhaps a true test of humility and getting over one’s insecurities is the practice of “tabling.” Tabling is representing the organization and engaging people at a display table. Spend an hour or two tabling and trying to connect with students walking by, and you will get your share of rejection.

Sometimes practicing humility can feel like walking a tight rope between prideful arrogance and self-deprecation. It is helpful to identify what one does well, but not to dwell on it too long. It is helpful to examine one’s life for areas that need improvement, but not to be overly critical.

Toward the end of the sermon on the mount, Matthew records Jesus warning His listeners, “Watch out for false prophets. … By their fruit you will recognize them.” False prophets pretend to speak truth, but they actually do the opposite. False prophets usually have hidden or ulterior motives. Jesus says they are going to bear fruit that will expose their falsehood.

In contrast, people of Christ-like character are people of the truth, for Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Being a person of the truth includes, but is not limited to, telling the truth. Our students need to have campus ministers who will tell them the truth. This includes the truth found in Scripture, the whole counsel of God. It also includes, however being honest in our conversations and relationships with one another. College students have grown up in a culture where lying is the norm. Christian leaders ought to be the antithesis to this norm. We should be champions of speaking the truth in love. When they ask us a tough question, they need to know we will give them a truthful answer.

People who are of the truth are real, genuine, and sincere. College students are good at detecting phoniness. They may not know how to verbalize it, or they may not be willing to confront you about it, but you won’t see them around for long if they pick up you are not genuine or sincere.

Here at Impact we talk a lot about modeling. Most of the time it is in the context of intentionally modeling our pursuit of Christ in front of others. But as leaders we are always modeling, because our character is always on display. Who we are cannot escape where we are. Our character accompanies our presence.

As a staff member with Impact, one of the things I truly treasure is that our directors strive to live out the mission and vision, and in this case the values of character and integrity. Character and integrity are not just spoken about but are modeled from the top down.

Over the years I have heard our leaders confess weaknesses, mistakes, and struggles in their lives and ministries. They admit through their own transparency that life is a journey where mistakes are made. They practice and model grace and encouragement as they accept our failures and weaknesses and encourage us to take the next positive, God-directed step. We pass that down to our student leaders by encouraging them to step out in faith with the assurance they are “free to fail.” We want them to try things and stretch themselves, knowing that if something doesn’t go so well, we will absorb the hit together without casting blame or shame.

We had a student leader some time ago fail morally. It changed the trajectory of her life tremendously. It also served as a test to our character. How would we react when one of our own didn’t live up to the character standards we and she held dear? Would our reactions be true to our message? Would we help her get up and keep moving forward, or would we do our part to keep her down?

I heard Carey Nieuwhof, Pastor, Author, and Leadership Podcaster on the radio recently talking about character. He pointed out our character is the only thing people will remember when we are gone. Soon after we’re gone, people will encapsulate our whole life with one-word descriptions. What will be the word people use to describe you and me?

MAKING AN IMPACT: Mode

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

We have spoken about our purpose at Impact Campus Ministries; we exist to make disciples who make disciples. In light of this, we started with our definition of disciple and the method of discipleship. We want to allow people to become submitted to Jesus by inviting them to imitate a mentor who is imitating Jesus.

We have spoken of ICM’s mission statement: to pursue, model, and teach intimacy with Christ within the context of Christian community on the American university campus. This led us to taking the time to define those three terms — pursue, model, and teach. We spoke of pursuit being the way we intentionally engage in spiritual practices. We spoke of model being the way we pursue God in front of others so they can physically see what it looks like. Then we talked about teach being so important, because as we instruct our students in furthering the discipleship process, we are enabling them to do so much more than simply mimic the actions — we are allowing them to possess the truths for themselves.

When we speak about imitating a mentor who imitates Jesus (our purpose), we see that road map of imitation laid out in our mission statement.

In the most recent post of this series, we began walking through the idea of message, mode, and milieu. This is what enables us to become more effective in chasing our vision — Impact the U, Impact the World. Hopefully the reader can see how these are building blocks that allow us to create an approach to ministry that is more and more effective in reaching our goals. One of those things is message; this is the idea that we need to be able to understand the narrative arc of the Text as just that — a narrative.

The next word that shows up for ICM is MODE. Gifted to us by our last president, Bill Westfall, and the work he did during his dissertation, the idea is simply this: Young adults (particularly college students) learn much better when we can stimulate their mind, heart, and body. On some level, I feel ill-equipped to write about this idea as Bill was the one who did all the research, but the idea makes perfect sense to me and resonates with my experience as a teacher and campus minister.

I’m not sure if this has been true for all generations or not. I have a hunch that on some level, this has always been true. And yet, the research concludes this is even more true with this generation than was typical in the past. There are many hunches as to why this is, from the impact of technology on our culture to the very physiology of our children. But the truth remains: If you can holistically engage the learner, simultaneously impacting every part of their self, the learning is deeper, more retentive, and more powerful.

One of the best ways I can talk about this personally is describing my biennial trip to Israel and Turkey. Every other year, I take a group of students to wander around the Middle East for a few weeks. All the things you would expect to happen are going to happen. We are going to take lots of pictures, learn lots of information, and see lots of famous places. But the trip is so much more than a tourist experience.

On our study tours, my goal is to help students experience the lessons that the biblical story is trying to teach us. A great example is the time of Israel wandering in the desert. I take my students and drag them into the Negev and Paran deserts of southern Israel. I purposely take this trip in August so it is as hot as it will be all year. (I have been in the Negev with students in 117-degree heat.) I do this on purpose because I want to teach them (intellectually, this is the mind) about the Negev and the experience of the desert. I want them to feel (physically, this is the body) the heat and the thirst and the hopelessness of it all. I then want them to connect with the struggle of those ancient Israelites as they cry out for water — and then make the connections to the deserts they have experienced in their own lives (emotionally, this is the heart).

If this is done correctly, the student will learn a lesson, have a mental image, and experience a heart tug that will forever change their walk with God. We attempt to do this over and over again, multiple times a day, day after day for three weeks. I can speak from personal experience to how effective and life-changing this learning style is. I have been with over twenty seminary-trained and graduate-level participants who all said they got more out of two weeks in Israel then in four years of seminary.

Why is this method so impactful? Because it engages the whole person and doesn’t just pursue a transfer of data. It instead creates a complete learning package where nothing is wasted and everything is loaded with potential.

Realizing we don’t drag people around the world every day, we must do the hard work of figuring out how to pursue this kind of engagement in our day-to-day environments. It is difficult, but it is also very rewarding when it’s successful. May we strive to settle less and less for classroom-style teaching (although it certainly has its place) and emotionally manipulative moments. May we create big, holistic moments of learning where the entire student is engaged in the lesson.

PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Model

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the fourth week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

You've heard and read me refer to Megan before; in my first few years of campus ministry, she was my first disciple and I learned more about discipleship in those few years than all of my other ministry experience to that point. Megan worked for ICM full-time before moving on to work in the non-profit world of homelessness and poverty. She, her husband Chris, and their son Josiah now reside in Raleigh, NC and Megan is currently serving as our chairperson for ICM. After talking about MODEL last week, I asked Megan to share what it was like to follow me around for that season of her life.

When I was first learning about the original context of discipleship, I was told this short anecdote of a rabbi and his disciples. “There once was a rabbi walking through the airport who was closely followed by his young disciples. The rabbi then walked into the bathroom, and the disciples followed. The rabbi then walked into a stall, and still his disciples followed!” This can be shocking for our typical American coffee-date discipleship, but this rabbinic style of discipleship is imitation with the purpose of becoming just like the rabbi.

I spent more than a year imitating Marty as closely as a female disciple could. I imitated Marty in the office, in the classroom, and at home. Practically, this means Marty crafted a schedule that included staff meetings, sermon club, spiritual disciplines, BEMA class, Sabbath, and more. I gained so much from the structure alone, but I believe the true discipleship experience started once we settled into the schedule and got comfortable living among each other.

Through my experience imitating Marty, I learned lessons about discipleship that completely transformed the way I engage my spirituality and Jesus.

I now believe a disciple is as capable of as much as the rabbi, and the rabbi sets the bar. When I first became Marty’s disciple, I thought I was just an intern. I know many people saw me that way, too. However, Marty didn’t. He required of me the same spiritual disciplines he required of himself (although, slightly less). He believed I could do more than I thought I could, and his belief didn’t waver. Together, we were able to establish discipline in me. I could write the Text! I could memorize!

A rabbi and a disciple must have a safe relationship to make mistakes and ask hard questions. I probably thought this beforehand, but now in the depth of the rabbinic discipleship context, it seems more crucial. Of course, I never made mistakes… (Editor’s note: Ha!) But assuming I did, there would have to be a safe space for me to reject religious shame and embrace Jesus. I do know I asked a lot of hard questions. Since we had a safe space for questions, I was able to wrestle with my community and God. That is the Text incarnate.

Discipleship inherently creates accountability as well. There is a certain expectation in the construct of rabbinic discipleship. For my discipleship experience, I was expecting Marty to be disciplined, dedicated to the Text, and supportive. I think he expected me to be faithful, available, and teachable. We both showed up in those ways because we had to be accountable to one another in order for the process to bring forth our desired results. If one of us did not fully show up, the discipleship experience could be a waste of time for both of us.

I believe discipleship transforms both the rabbi and the disciple. You cannot follow, nor be followed by, a person for a year and not learn profoundly from them. We experienced transformation on many occasions. The most memorable for me is in regard to my friendship with a recovering addict. My passion for the marginalized brought this friend into our community. It was a blessing for me and for Marty’s family to be able to love and support this new friend. However, Marty’s family was providing respite care for foster children at the time. Marty and I had to discuss legal boundaries and ways to protect everyone in our community. This transformed both of us because it forced us to have eyes that see, ears that hear, and hearts that understand multiple vulnerable populations.

I treasure most the walks and drives to campus. These were the moments when Marty was not on stage or in front of a classroom. It felt like it was on these walks and drives that our relationship grew from a rabbi and disciple, to friends and co-laborers. Eventually, he could be himself freely and process more than just Text with me. I can imagine the disciples experienced something similar with Jesus. And I am excited for the day when we get to share our rabbi pranks!

MAKING AN IMPACT: Model

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

We’ve covered our definition of discipleship as being imitating a mentor who imitates Jesus, and we’ve even hinted at the fact that, for years, we’ve had a mission statement that serves this end by providing us a roadmap to discipleship. For a long time, we have said ICM exists to pursue, model, and teach intimacy with Christ on the American university campus, in the context of Christian community. In our last post we spoke of the first word on that roadmap — pursue. We spoke of having an intentional pursuit of God and defined the word pursue as intentionally engaging spiritual practices.

But is this enough? Is it enough to pursue God, creating space for Him and letting Him bear fruit?

On one hand, yes! If we truly pursue God in a way that resembles the “abiding” of John 15, the idea would be that God will call us to do what He wants us to do. The “fruit” is a natural (or supernatural) byproduct of our intentional pursuit of God — without a doubt.

But God also told us to do a lot of things. The Bible is a big book full of a lot of big ideas, so there are probably a few more things we can use to give us guidance. Of that whole big book of God’s dreams for this world, which ones do we use to give us direction?

Fortunately, this is where our purpose of making disciples and our definition of discipleship serve our mission very well. If we are to make disciples who make disciples, and we have defined that as a process of imitation, then the next word to come is only natural: MODEL.

If we really believe that pursuing God will lead to intimacy with God (what we define as success), and if that intimacy with God is what He uses to bear fruit that will last in our lives and ministries, then discipleship is the process of teaching our students how to do this well. Our job becomes one of pursuing sustainable spiritual formation. In this regard, it is not enough to simply pursue God and create space for Him in our lives. We also have to show our students how to do this. We’re going to show them in a very literal fashion… by modeling it.

ICM’s Vice President, Jeff VanderLaan, has one of my favorite sayings in relation to this topic. He likes to say, “Just because you’re wearing clothes, doesn’t make you a model. A model is somebody who wears clothes in front of others for the purpose of being seen.” This is a fantastic metaphor and drove us to define the term ‘model’ as pursuing God in front of others.

This is also a natural progression from the rabbinic idea that discipleship is about mimicry and imitation. You cannot imitate a rabbi or a mentor if you don’t have a model to mimic. I would never have learned how to tie my shoes without a model to follow and a teacher to imitate. I would never have learned how to do a load of laundry without imitating my mother’s example. Why do we think others can learn ideas like memorizing scripture or taking a sabbath by merely talking about it? Aren’t these things that need to be seen?

Now, some very astute Bible students will be quick to point out, “We aren’t supposed to do our spiritual deeds to be seen by others! We’re supposed to pray and pursue God in secret, without the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing.” And this desire for secrecy is a good point and certainly worth addressing. The reference comes from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6) and reads as follows:

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

But we would be wise to remind ourselves of words Jesus spoke as part of the very same teaching in the previous chapter:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

So what gives? Obviously Jesus taught us that the way in which we live is to be seen by others so they can know and glorify God. But what we have to be careful of is our motivation. Jesus says not to do these things “to be seen.” If this is the reason you are doing them, you are going to be disappointed in the reward you receive. You’ll end up with the praise of others as your reward, but not the mission of God (i.e., disciples).

And so we model our pursuit of God on purpose in front of our students. We pursue God in front of them so they can see what a healthy pursuit of God looks like. We do not do this in order to be seen, but to instruct them and help them develop as maturing followers of Jesus.

But speaking of instruction, is pursing and modeling the whole of the process? Is it enough to merely mimic our instructor? Or is all of this imitation a part of something bigger?