A DAY IN THE LIFE: Travel

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

These days, I travel a lot. I travel for a whole host of reasons.

Ministry Development. I travel in order to stay in regular contact with the teams that work for Impact Campus Ministries. We have ten (going on eleven) teams around the country in places like the Palouse, Salt Lake City, Missoula, Oklahoma, South Bend, Indianapolis, Tampa, Ft. Myers, and Albany. While we get to see each other at conferences one or two times a year, this just isn’t enough time to work on site-specific development for our staff, so I try to travel and spend time with them in person to work on the things that need to be worked on.

Fundraising. Whether it is recruiting new supporters to help us do the work we do or cultivating the relationships of people who already give, the work here never ends. We take any opportunity we can to meet with people while we’re on the road.

Recruiting. Part of my job as President of ICM is looking for more people who would be willing to do that kind of support raising and work in the field of campus ministry. They can be found everywhere, but the most effective recruiting is always done in person.

Partnering with other organizations. At ICM, we believe we are better whenever we get to work with others. The amount that we are able to share ideas and experiences with each other, as well as the opportunity to combine resources, is exciting and provides continual opportunities to grow, improve, and help others do what God has called them to do better. This work is some of the most fun that I get to have while I’m on the road.

Alumni. Just like supporters and recruits — you can find them everywhere! They are doing incredible things and I love taking the opportunity when I’m in their hometown to meet with them and hear about what God is doing in their life.

Expansion. We are always trying to discern where God is leading us to plant next. There are thousands of campuses around our country and hundreds of thousands of college students. All of them are getting ready to go out and make some kind of difference in our world. Where does God want us to go next to help impact the lives of the next batch of graduates? These are things that make us excited at ICM!

Is this hard work? Yes and no. I love the travel and I love the ability to use my gifts to help others and influence the next generation. But it’s hard not to get carried away by all the things that “have to be done” and say no to what needs to be rejected (for now) so I can be present as a husband and a father. When I’m not careful, my travel schedule can be a real burden to my family. I work hard to stay on top of this; at times, I have failed. Unfortunately, it is far too easy to get swept up in the notion that you are needed and important.

I have to work hard to be a good steward in my travel schedule. I have to be a good steward of our organization’s resources. I have to be a good steward of people and their time. And I have to be a good steward of my family. This is hard work and hopefully something that I pursue with character and integrity.

Here is my video diary for A DAY IN THE LIFE: Travel.

MY BLOG IN 2018: Week Two

I have been wanting to take some time each month this fall to share with you a little bit of what to expect on my blog in the coming year. Starting in January, I will begin a weekly rotation of blog themes that will drive the conversation in 2018. In the last post, I spoke of how I will be taking the first week of each month to share the Top 12 Blog Posts of Covered in His Dust. We’ll look back and see what posts have been used the most and I’ll enjoy speculating as to why they are the favorites.

The second week of my rotation will be dedicated to a series I’m going to call “A Day in the Life,” and it should be a collection of different things I do in my job each day. For many of my supporters, they have commented on how nice it’s been to see updates and the occasional video where they get to see what I do secondhand. It’s just one more way we can make our world a little smaller and I can invite you to see what it’s like to be a campus minister and/or President of Impact Campus Ministries.

Some examples of this might be the work I do with students or showing you some of the groups I teach here on the Palouse. I might do a post on discipleship and “take you on a walk” with one of my disciples. I might show you a meeting or two, such as those with the staff of ICM. I might introduce you to some of the staff at Real Life on the Palouse and talk about my partnership with the church there. And maybe I’ll even do a post on what I enjoy doing with my free time. There are so many things to invite you into!

None of these posts will be designed to be instructive or profound in any way — they’re just a fun trip into my day-to-day life where you get to see a little bit of things from my perspective. Of course, I’m sure there will be some cameo appearances from my family (they are who everyone really wants to see, I know) and we’ll have some fun.

So I look forward to inviting you into my life next year as we explore “A Day in the Life.”

One more thought about prayer...

Jesus’s thoughts on prayer deserve more attention because of the famous teaching surrounding what we often call the “Lord’s Prayer.” Depending on which gospel you are reading, Jesus offers up this model of prayer in response to a request by His disciples to teach them to pray, or as an insertion of that prayer into His teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.

Quite frankly, Jesus’s response is telling. The prayer Jesus teaches them is not a new idea. Jesus did not introduce them to the Lord’s Prayer, nor did He create the prayer from His own mind. Most scholars agree that the Lord’s Prayer is a condensed version of what we know as the Jewish Amidah Prayer. Otherwise known as the “Standing Prayer,” this is a prayer that would have been uttered by Jews at the noon prayer time in the Temple. Tradition holds that Jewish men would stand in groups of twelve and utter this prayer together.

Spending a few minutes online searching for the Amidah Prayer will produce results to keep you busy for hours. While one can find several different versions of this famous prayer, we do know that the modern Amidah was not being used in the days of Jesus. Even referencing the modern Amidah Prayer, a reader might notice that Jesus’s prayer is a summary of the content of the longer version. We’ve found significant evidence for the following prayer being circulated in the first century as the Amidah of Jesus’s day:

avenu shabat shamayim; ye’kedesh shemchah; tomlich malchukah; y’aseh bashayim uve’aretz; et lechem hu’kenu ta’lanu he’yom

“Our Father, the One who dwells in heaven,
May Your name be holy.
May Your kingdom come as we do Your will here on earth, as it is done in heaven.
Give us today the bread of today.”

And some versions even add the following line:

“And deliver us from the evil one, cursed be he.”

In essence, this means that when Jesus’s disciples ask Him to teach them how to pray, Jesus responds with one of the most well-known prayers of His day. Jesus was saying, “You know how to pray. Just pray. And mean it.”

Jesus does, however, make one striking alteration. In no version of the Amidah, either past or present, can you find a mention of us forgiving others. There are requests for God to forgive us, but nothing about forgiving others. Again, we see forgiveness and mercy being central to Jesus’s message. We will cover this in greater detail at a later time, but it’s important to notice — especially for Jesus followers who have become so used to the idea of forgiveness that it means very little — that this is a radical idea. For ancient Jews, God forgives sins. We are called to love our neighbor, show mercy to our neighbor, and many other things — but forgiveness is a job for God alone.

This suggestion of Jesus, that we should partner with God in the work of forgiveness, is one that will get Him in serious trouble. This insertion into a basic, everyday prayer for Jesus’s disciples is more of a thunderbolt than many of us realize. It’s enough to make us ponder whether or not we give forgiveness enough thought in our life. There is something about the act of forgiveness and God’s coming Kingdom.

Pulling Our Harps Out of the Trees

The last thing we need to do before we wrap up this portion of biblical history is swing back and grab what many people refer to as the “Wisdom Literature.” The Psalms, the Proverbs, the Song of Songs and the book of Ecclesiastes are usually attributed (on some level; it’s hotly debated) to David and Solomon. So before we get too far past them, we ought to talk about their contributions to the literature that surrounds (and infuses) the story.

The Psalms, quite simply put, are songs. They are poetic pieces that are meant to be put to music and sung by the assembly of God’s people. There are some similarities to the Psalms and our modern understanding of “worship music,” and there are some differences. These were the cultural language of the day. There were songs that were sung on the annual pilgrimages to the Temple for the feasts. There were songs that were sung for those liturgical assemblies, as well. But the Psalms were also a part of daily culture for God’s people. They were the songs that you would sing out in the fields or around the house. The songs you would sing “in the car” as you traveled. They weren’t as neatly divided into “church music” as much of our modern experience would teach us.

I will readily admit (yet again) that David is not the strongest part of my theology, and this would also be true of the Psalms. I know people who resonate deeply with the Psalms. They have a mind (and a heart) that is more in tune (no pun intended) with the poetic perspective of life. I appreciate their appreciation for the songs of history as seen in the Psalms. I know people who authentically weep at what the Psalms are able to communicate artistically. So, it should be said that I’m not the person who is going to write the best piece on the Psalms.

Having said that, there are a couple of observations that I make through the Psalms:

First, there seems to be a Psalm for every emotion and a space in the Psalms for every expression to God. There are Psalms that celebrate God and praise Him for His might and goodness. There are Psalms that remember our history and the story of where we come from. There are Psalms that express our anger at injustice and cry out for God to act and bring vengeance. There are Psalms that encourage us to gather and join our voices in true community. And there are songs that help us lament.

This seems to be missing in the musical expression of our faith today. Not too long ago, worship music was bent towards our consumerism and individualism. Every song seemed to be of “I” and “me” and “my.” The music solely expressed my personal experience with God and was void of the community of God’s people raising their voices together. While this has been changing over the last decade, there still seems to be one kind of worship song — the PRAISE song.

But where do we create spaces to express anger or sorrow? Where are those songs? One of the things that the Psalms teach us is that God can take it; God can handle all of your raw emotion. In fact, He seems to welcome your authentic heart. He wants to experience life with you and feel those feelings with you. I have often sat in the back of a worship space and watched a family, who recently went through a loss, struggle to find the space to worship God TRULY in their present moment and condition. And for them, such a song would be a slow and dark dirge that would grant them the space to FEEL the pain and work through the grief. We simply wouldn’t know what to do with that kind of musical space in our culture.

Second, the importance of music in our communal walk with God is unmeasurable. One has to sing. I don’t mean that literally, but the heart has to find a place to sing. As you find yourself stuck in the cycle of struggle and redemption, there are dark moments when one of the few things you hold on to is song — not doctrinal statements, not theological explanations, not service projects, but the “close-your-eyes-and-breathe-in-the-moment” kind of music. Some of the most meaningful moments of worship in my own life, to this day, have been gatherings where I never opened my mouth and no music came from my physical being. Yet, as I stood there surrounded by God’s people, all lifting up their voices in song, I was reminded of what we believe to be most true. It was the music that brought me hope.

Because sometimes, people go to church and you will sing for them. Because they don’t have the strength to sing. But as they sit next to you, they will hold on to that last shred of hope that says, “If they can keep on singing, I guess I will make it.”

That same couple that I’ve watched from the back of the worship center? They still come to church and as they recover from their grief, they continue to join us in song and put their faith in God and His goodness and His good story. And as I watch them on some Sundays, I start to cry — because they give me hope. If they can go through what they went through and still sing songs of praise with their eyes closed and their hands raised — I think I’m going to be all right.

One of the most tragic stories in the Scriptures will come as the people of God are being carted off to Babylon. They exclaim that “by the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept … we threw our harps into the trees.” The tragedy is that they believed there was nothing left to sing about — no reason to pull out a Psalm.

Sometimes I look to my left and watch the family in the back row use sign language to lift up songs of praise to the heavens. In those moments, I’m reminded of how big songs are in the life of God’s people.

And we realize within that music how big God is in the life of His people.

And we pull our harps down out of the trees.

And we sing.

Because we have to keep on singing, in order to trust the story.

Ministry Update — Summer 2013

We interrupt this blog series to give you our regularly scheduled ministry update.  Blog series to resume next week!

Click here to view our latest newsletter.

Halfway Through Year #2

We wanted to post a quick look back over the first semester as we usually do each year.  Here is one of the articles from our last newsletter:

BEMA Residents: Megan, Roni, & Amanda

This year has been a definite continuation of all of the things that God started in our ministry last year. It has also been a year full of wonderful surprises and lessons. Here is a look at where we stand after the first semester of our second year of campus ministry:

BUSINESS AS USUAL - All of the ministry that we spent all of last year talking about is still up and running on all cylinders. We have continued to grow the amount of CARE Groups and students involved in that small group ministry (appx. 120-150 students; 9 groups; 3 campuses). Life Groups continue to be a big part of individual student growth. The expansion to LCSC has gone surprisingly well and is a smash hit with a very significant group of the student body there.

INTERNSHIPS - This has been one of the biggest changes and blessings of this year. I was not expecting the time commitment that bringing two interns on would entail (I think we all had visions of our work-load being lightened). My ministry feels like it has become primarily about the work of raising up and training Megan and Nate to do the work of vocational ministry. This work comes with lots of questions, doubts, and lessons about leadership. However, I feel like through these internships, I have accomplished more discipleship than ever before. Bless God!

BEMA HOUSE - The BEMA residents have been a HUGE blessing for me over the last month. While I have been greatly discouraged about what hasn't happened at the house (i.e. strict disciplines, intentional discipleship, more time spent with the students), they have given me great faith in what is happening if I just open my eyes to see it. The students continue to throw parties that are attended by an amazing amount of students; they invite the broken and offer community to those who need it. While I have been busy worrying about the content of the teaching, they have been busy living it. Bless God, again!

BEMA STUDY GROUPS - The groups continue to grow - in attendance, in knowledge, in depth, and in character. We add new students every month and it is so exciting to see them dig into God's Text with vigor and amazement!

The Year of Learning

I have been thinking about how my experience this year has been varying from my experience last year.  If I were to give last school year a designation, I would have called 2011-2012 the "Year of Surprises and Blessings".  God surprised me around every corner by overcoming my cynicism and pessimism about what is possible around me, through me, and through those I work with.

This year has been a great one so far.  It too has been a blessing, but in a completely different way.  It has been a year of being humbled and challenged.  And while the entire experience has been very tiring over the last few months, I wouldn't trade it for a moment; I'm going to be much better on the other side of this experience.  God is at work molding me, pruning me, and teaching me to continue to grow in my leadership abilities.

If I could be so bold as to make a presumptuous prediction:
2012-2013 is the Year of Learning

It's been a year of learning about my personal capacity.  I pushed the limits of what I was trying to do this summer.  I set goals that were a little too high and expectations that were probably even higher.  From fundraising to personal growth to what I hoped to accomplish in my ministry, I kept trying to feed the "expansion monster".  I wanted my knowledge to expand, my ministry to expand, our funding to expand, our impact to expand...   I forgot to listen to what God was doing; I ran past Him.  I bless Him for His gentle call back to where He was on the path.

It's been a year of learning how my plans are not always (or even most of the time) God's plans.  To hold my dreams loosely and wait on what God wants to do in the lives of other people was incredibly important to my sanity this first quarter.  This is not to say that it wasn't a personal struggle -- it most certainly was.  But to constantly be reminded that just because our interns don't respond the way I envisioned them responding, or just because my disciples don't see life the way that I see it, or just because I'm not able to be the rabbinic Superman at the BEMA House that I wanted to be, this doesn't mean that God is not directing our steps, impacting lives, speaking to our hearts and setting captives free.

It's been a year of learning about the things I still struggle with personally.  Pride.  It rears its ugly head from time to time.  And it hurts.  When I don't hold it in check, it can hurt other people.  This leads to confession and the need to seek forgiveness from other people.  People are most often ready to grant that forgiveness and that actually leads to another challenge -- accepting grace!  When you know that you've dropped the ball and blown it and the offended party tells you that they know and that it is OK, can you accept the grace?  Do you continue to try and "right the wrong"?  Prove your genuineness?  To accept love is harder than we might think.  But it makes us better, doesn't it?  To be a part of that story is compelling and I long to put that on display to others.

It's been a year of learning.  The Spirit is such a tricky thing to discern.  As Jesus said, like the wind, She blows this way and that, and it's impossible to tell where She's coming from or where She's going.  But you know that the Spirit is working.  (see John 3:8)

To stay faithful to the call.  To be ready to jump out of the way and let God move.
This is a tricky thing to learn.

But it's good.
And it's going to be a good year.

2012-2013 has been kicked off!

It's true.

The year has begun.

The students are back.  They are back to school for another great year of big enrollments.  They are back in church, leaving us with 'standing-room-only' situations.  They are back to their relationships and friendships.  They are back in the bible studies and CARE Groups around the Palouse.  They are back and it is great to have them.

Two weeks ago, we moved in more freshmen who are beginning their first year at both universities.  The days were full of fun conversations, great introductions, (a few awkward moments) and lots of boxes carried up lots of stairs.  Last week, classes started and many of these students are now panicking as they get use to the new expectations and schedules.  Pray for them -- many are cracking under the stress; they will recover (they always do), but its tough for them to be in the moment.

We also had our typical kickoff events.  We set up our annual booths and handed out more Ramen Noodles in order to promote our organization.  We seem to be getting better at what we do and most of the adjustments we made from last year feel like they have paid off for us.  We invited students to our annual cookouts and had even better turnouts this year.  We had a great time eating food, playing volleyball, challenging others to "cornhole" and just talking around the picnic tables.

We also had a great baptism service where we saw 22 people get baptized from Real Life on the Palouse.  Some of those people were college students and it was a great night of celebration and story-telling.

Just last week we had our official College CARE Group Kick-Off at Real Life and invited as many college students as possible to sign up for CARE Groups and make community a priority for the upcoming year.  We had more than 100 sign up for new groups over the last two weeks.  We bless God for that.  

All in all, we've had a great start to the year and we're looking forward to the fruit that God wants to bear with all of these opportunities.  Pray that the students would follow through on their initial promptings to take part in Christian community -- this will be the engine that God will use in a big way to bless and shape their year!

Mid-Summer Update

Well, we are halfway through the summer and I thought it would be incredibly timely to update you on how our summer is going.  We left the Palouse up north with two goals in mind for this summer season of 2012.  First, we wanted to make sure that we took time to say thank you to all of our supporters this last year.  Second, we needed to raise funds for the team ministry and all that God is doing for next year.  I’ve been calling the two goals the “THANK YOU” and the “PLEASE”.

THE THANK YOU.   This has been – by far – the favorite part of our summer.  We have loved getting back “home” and seeing all of the faces that we know and love.  It is very fulfilling to let them all know how much they mean to us and what God is doing through their generosity in our ministry.

THE PLEASE.  This part of our plan has been struggling this year.  Part of that struggle is that it is a whole lot easier for me to schedule “thank you’s” than it is to schedule “please’s”.  The other reasons come down to just a barrage of economical realities, summer schedules, and unexpected responses.  We currently are sitting around 20% of our summer goal and need to hit it hard in the coming weeks.  If you’ve ever thought about supporting our ministry, now is a perfect time to consider doing so.  We could use your help as a financial partner and God is doing some BIG stuff in our ministry.  Just contact me if you’d like to talk about the possibility of helping us out.

There will be some other really big things to celebrate at the end of the summer.  For now, I’m hoping to let some of the details settle and have a good sense of where we are at coming out of the summer before I share some of that, but I will say this: IT IS EXICITING!!  God is doing some awesome stuff with the future of BEMA Discipleship and I can’t wait to tell you more!

If you would, be praying for our support-raising this summer, for our house, and for God’s continued direction, guidance and blessing.  And again, thank you to all of you who interact with our ministry on so many levels!

Year-at-a-Glance

If you received our latest newsletter, than this blog post will be a tad redundant, but it just felt like I needed to post a summary of our first year on campus on our blog.  I will be posting the second half of our newsletter next week.
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It’s over.  Our first school year on the University of Idaho and Washington State went by like a blur and we’re still trying to catch our breath.  While we do so, we wanted to capture the experience in a nutshell and look ahead to the fall…

As you’ve read in our earlier publications and blog posts, God has truly blessed the ministry of Impact here on the Palouse.  From the partnership with the local church to the steady involvement of college students, things have gone really, really well.

Probably the toughest thing about this last year has been our family’s’ living situation.  After we could not sell our house, we were forced to live apart for this school year.  Becky and the kids lived in Montana with her family while Marty lived with a WSU student in Pullman.  At the time, we just didn’t feel like God was leading us to put the home up for rent.   Well, the house still hasn’t sold, but our time living apart is over.  We will be together throughout the summer in Twin Falls and we have signed a lease on a duplex for next school year.  We pray for our home to sell or rent in the next couple months in order to keep us out the danger of foreclosure.  We rejoice in a God that gave us everything we needed to do what we needed to do to follow His call and remain close as a family.

 

We have approved two interns who are spending their summer fundraising for their full-time salaries next year with Impact.  Megan Palmer and Nathan Lanting are two WSU graduates that love the Lord deeply and we are excited to work with them.  God also opened doors to sign a lease on another unit in the same complex as our family’s duplex.  We already have four students who will be living in the new “BEMA House” and pursuing intentional discipleship.  All of these open doors will require some additional funding – but we’re excited to watch God provide for what He’s doing in our ministry!

Lots of Things to Pray For!

OK, I'll just have to apologize.
After a lot of prayer and contemplation, I have shelved the blog project that I have been working on for quite some time.  I wanted to do a blog series on college students and sexuality and I just don't think God is behind the project at this point.  I'm passionate about the content, but I think that it's just not the right time yet.

Too much work to be done before the concepts would be communicated well.

If you're curious, ask me about it the next time you see me in person; for now, the ideas are going on the shelf.


In the meantime, however, we've had a lot of great stuff happening over the last few weeks that I would ask you to join our team in praying over.  I will update the "Prayer Needs" portion of this site as well.  God has been putting some pieces together and opening some doors that I didn't anticipate being opened for quite some time.

First of all, as the school year comes to a close, things are continuing to flourish within the ministry environments.  While some of the numbers have waned with the school year getting busier and busier.  The core groups of all our ministries are as strong as ever.  Many students talk with enthusiasm about coming back in the fall and reuniting.  Other groups are piecing together time for summer Skype calls and chances to reconnect before classes.  In short, the conversations that are being had are encouraging and stories that are being told are communicating life change.

Secondly, two of the graduating seniors in my Pullman BEMA Group have applied for internships with Impact this next school year.  This is a huge blessing and great challenge for our team!  The ministry that could be accomplished by doubling our manpower could be astounding.  We encourage you to join us in praying for God's guidance, His provision as they attempt to raise funds this summer, and our ability to lead them in pursuing God well.

And finally, my family has signed on a lease for a duplex rental this fall.  We will be living as a family in August on the Palouse!  This is a huge blessing that we are hoping will be complemented by the sale of our home in Twin Falls or (if it hasn't sold by June) renters to help us cover our mortgage payments.  As we looked into the unit in this particular complex, we also ran into another unit that was available and the perfect fit for college students.

This opportunity was one of my long-term goals of crafting a community-based approach to campus ministry and intensive discipleship.  We wanted to be able to offer a place for students to live and be mentored more directly and discipled more intentionally.  Also, with the possible addition of interns, our current office space would need some adjusting.  Renting this kind of unit would answer those kinds of questions.

This, of course, will demand some fundraising this summer to help cover those costs and happens a little earlier than we anticipated.  We certainly have never wanted to rush our dreams or force our plans where they shouldn't belong, but this opportunity seems to have come to us and we don't want to miss out on what God could potentially be doing.

Would you join us in prayer for all of the above items?  It is incredible and a little overwhelming to be in the middle of what God appears to be doing in our ministries.  It is our desire to stay in tune with His Spirit and follow in His steps as we turn each new page of our ministry here on the Palouse.