A DAY IN THE LIFE: Promotion

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.

The last installment of A Day in the Life is going to be a post about organizational promotion. Is there some reason that I waited to the last month to talk about this? Is this the climactic part of my job that defines what I do?

Simply, no.

This was the part of my new role that I was most unfamiliar with. While it hasn’t been the worst challenge I’ve ever faced, it isn’t the part of me that comes naturally. I’m pretty introverted in my nature. I like to retreat and study, to teach and preach, to create and dream and podcast. While I don’t try to avoid people (and I can even enjoy them in small doses), I typically like to sit just enough away from social situations.

But promotion is the exact opposite of that natural tendency for me. Promotional conferences are about face time and intentional connections with others. It’s about putting your face on the organization and letting the organization grow through your interactions. It’s all about people.

And this actually explains why I didn’t have a post until now. These experiences are so filled with anxiety for me that I never get any videos! I like the challenge, but the focus needed for me to do this part of my job well can be exhausting. One thing is for sure: I sleep extra well on these trips.

We have a natural and annual rhythm to the promotional events we take part in. Every May, we head to the Campus Ministers Retreat put on by the Association of College Ministries at McCormick’s Creek State Park in Indiana. A few weeks later in June, we are usually on our way to wherever that year’s North American Christian Convention is; the NACC (no longer taking place after 2018) is a gathering where people come to hear speakers, attend workshops, and browse the exhibit hall full of different missions organizations.

In July, the Association of College Ministries puts on their annual National Student Conference where many different ministries bring their students to learn from speakers and workshops, as well as network with other opportunities to grow and serve in the field of missions and vocational ministry. Then, right before Thanksgiving, we attend the International Conference on Missions, usually somewhere in the Midwest. This gathering is very similar to the NACC, with more emphasis on networking and service.

These are beneficial times where we get to strengthen our relationships and partnerships with other ministries. We get to meet people interested in the work of campus ministry and often find new recruits at events like these. And of course, we also get to pursue some exposure, helping people recognize our name, our mission, and what we are doing.

Here’s a video diary I made of my most recent trip to ICOM.

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.

MAKING AN IMPACT: Church

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.

One of our values at Impact Campus Ministries is church.

It might seem like a silly value, but let me explain why we put it on the list.

Too many times, para-church organizations get started because of some need that the local church isn’t meeting — oftentimes because it would not be practical, wise, and good stewardship of their time and resources. There are many ministries like this and almost any missions organization you can think of will fit into this category. While some of these efforts are less para-church than others (e.g., sending missionaries to international settings is less about filling an unmet need and more about sending missionaries to do the work in other corners of the world), a bulk of these organizations will be like this. Homeless shelters, food pantries, and benevolence ministries will be like this. Pregnancy crisis centers and free medical clinics will be like this. Campus ministry organizations often make the list.

Because of this natural gap, there is often an animosity that grows, whether intentional or unintentional. Oftentimes these organizations are started because of a frustration that the local church isn’t meeting an obvious need. That chip on the shoulder is an unhealthy attitude that festers in the church world. In places like campus ministry, it can become easy to critique the local church, throw stones at their methods, and start our own thing to replace the broken piece. In return, churches become increasingly frustrated with organizations critiquing without helping, wanting to take without giving back, and always draining the resources of a church community that struggles to give generously.

And so, ICM wants to be sure we state up front that we value the local church.

We do not think we are here to critique or fix the state of the church. We are not the answer to all the world’s problems. We are simply here to help. And we want to start by coming alongside what God is already doing in His local church.

We will not try to replace the local church. We will not talk negatively about the local church. And while not all of our teams will have intentional partnerships on the level that some teams do (like our team on the Palouse), we will seek to partner with the local church whenever that partnership will be effective and efficient.

We want to do our job in a way that encourages all of our brothers and sisters to run the race well. And we want to do our job in a way that makes the church want to return the favor.

If we truly believed in the work of MILIEU (that we spoke of before) then we have to be active partners with the local church. You may remember Eric Wright sharing his stories of having students exposed to different ideas. We want to remind ourselves that if we are Impacting the U because we believe it will Impact the World, then we have to keep our students surrounded by healthy diversity and a wide demographic of people. This kind of exposure will enhance their personal development, make them better professionals, and increase their ability to lead others later in life. How could we truly pursue this and not value a connection with the local church?

And yet, it is easy to miss. And so we have to remind ourselves by putting it on our list of values.

MAKING AN IMPACT: Character

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.

The next value we will talk about with our MAKING AN IMPACT series is one that is stated in almost every organization, is incredibly important, and is yet a struggle for so many churches, organizations, and fellowships. This is the value of CHARACTER.

Why is this such a struggle for the Christian world? I think the short answer is that we are just a bunch of people who are screwed up. That is true, but how many of us are tired of reading what feels like a continuous news feed of Christian organizations that harbor abusers, struggle with sexual conduct, mistreat women, and succumb to other “moral failures”? It’s exhausting.

I think the answer is that theology matters. I won’t be taking this time and space to pull apart the pieces of theology I think are most responsible for these stories, but I will say that our theology is often the bedrock we build our culture on. The way we understand the nature of who God is and what He is doing in the world, the way we understand the nature of humanity, and the way we define the gospel, breeds a particular culture in the missional communities we belong to. If we foster a theology that believes God is looking for the unflinching devotion to a moral code, we will simultaneously breed a culture that puts on a show, afraid to be vulnerable to the struggle we all experience to become the kinds of whole people God has designed us to be.

So what do we do? Impact Campus Ministries has said — like so many others — that we want to be people of integrity and great character. How will we succeed where so many others seem to fail?

A large part of this will reside in our commitment to community and each other (more on this value in another post). The greatest form of accountability will be the fact that we don’t do life (or ministry) alone. Of course, this commitment is only powerful if we trust each other enough to be vulnerable. We have to work hard to build a culture of openness and honesty from the top of our organization all the way down to the bottom. We don’t want to be people who fight for privacy, but fight for each other.

This isn’t to say that privacy is not important or that wisdom would dictate open vulnerability with all people in all circumstances — it would not. But within our family at ICM, we need to learn how to trust each other with our struggles and our failures. This means we can’t be quick to punish others when they slip up, but we also need to be resolute in our commitment to each other, to help each other become the people God is inviting us to become.

Hopefully you can see how well our value of character works alongside the tension of excellence and compassion. We have to have a commitment to excellence in our integrity, but that will only be achieved if we can be gracious in our failures. I really believe that the destructive and harmful failures in character come as the byproduct of a culture that doesn’t foster healthy growth and compassionate belonging. When those things don’t exist, we begin to hide. When we begin to hide, our lack of character begins to fester until it erupts in something horribly destructive.

Unfortunately, this culture of hiding is often cultivated in our faith communities.

We want to be better than this. We want to be the kind of family — brothers and sisters — who make sure we all have a place to belong and that the space can be trusted. We want to build a culture that says, “I am FOR you!” — and doesn’t doubt the sincerity of that stance. Only then can we be honest about who we truly are and who we are trying to become. And only when we are honest can we find family who help us strive to develop as we pursue character in our organization.

This will be an ongoing struggle. We are far from perfect.

But may God bless ICM’s efforts to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly [together] with our God.

PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Milieu

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.

Eric Wright is the Team Leader for our ICM team on the Palouse. They minister to students at the University of Idaho, Washington State University, and Lewis-Clark State College. Eric and Mitzi were on the Palouse more than a decade ago when Real Life on the Palouse came to town to plant their church. Eric built an incredibly productive relationship with RLOTP and has enjoyed the benefits of the intentional relationships that come from that partnership. I asked him if he's be willing to share his perspective on our pursuit of MILIEU.

One of my favorite aspects of campus ministry revolves around the opportunities to rub shoulders with those who believe differently than I do. I have been blessed with mentors who have challenged me to read and listen to great thinkers and writers who reside on the opposite side of positions I hold. Civility and the ability to listen to understand the thoughts and opinions of others is key in our day and age to move the kingdom forward. This anomaly of bipartisanship only occurs when we choose to place ourselves in the nexus of diversity and ideas in our society. This nexus is the university campus in America.

While the word milieu may sound uncomfortable to the American ear, the concept of a physical or social setting in which something occurs or develops is not an altogether new concept for us. The term environment is one we may be more familiar with in our society. The environment in which we grow up helps determine our personality and works to direct our future in positive and negative ways. The milieu of the university campus works to direct the future of our civilization in a similar fashion.

One of my best opportunities to engage in intentional relationships with others on the university campus involves my connection with other student organizations at the University of Idaho. For five years, I had an office space with twenty other student organizations in the student organization center. This space put me in daily communion with students from diverse milieus. For two years, my desk faced the desk of the LGBTQ campus student organization.

This was my first occasion to engage with someone from this community. Being a student myself at the University of Idaho at the time, I had many openings for conversation. I developed a relationship with the organization’s student leaders by choosing to listen to understand and not by trying to win an argument. One of the key moments in my journey in understanding my place in God’s story involved the realization that these students I sat across from are just as much a part of God’s story as I am. God’s story of redemption and resurrection does not belong to my belief community or me but to all creation.

Those students I sat across from were as passionate about the restoration of community and our planet as I was. This actualization of the expansiveness of the breadth and width of those included in God’s story brought me to an understanding of milieu. One encounter with the student leader centered on my asking if there was anything for which I could pray about for them. The student questioned my motive by asking if I was praying against her lifestyle and for her world to be turned upside down.

I sensed the weight of my response and I took a moment to answer. I shared that my prayer for her was that God would bless her life and would show Himself and His love to her and that she may have a clear understanding of His love for her. Clearly this student was not expecting that response and it opened up even more conversations about the kingdom of God and her place in it. Moving the kingdom of God and conversations such as these forward hinges on our choice to engage others in the story.

This moment would not have been possible had it not been for those in my story who have encouraged me to listen to understand and lead with love. As a campus minister, one of my duties is to come alongside students and challenge them to listen to understand and lead with love. These actions give God room to move in the hearts of those with whom we intentionally step into relationships. It is God’s work to change hearts and move His kingdom forward; ours is to step out of our comfort zones and into relationship.

MAKING AN IMPACT: Milieu

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.

With today’s post, we wrap up our approach toward reaching this generation of college students, something we call Message, Mode, and Milieu (Mx3). In order to reach young adults today, we believe we have to be able to tell the whole story of God and His invitation to join. This narrative-based approach to the Text is something we call message. We also believe we have to teach this in a way that stimulates the mind, heart, and body; this approach is something we refer to as mode, and we talked about it last month and heard Zack tell a great story about his experience on the BEMA Trip.

This month, we talk about the last component, something we call MILIEU. I remember the first time Bill Westfall presented this material (and many times after that), and I laughed at his word choice and his commitment to alliteration. “Milieu” (pronounced mil-yoo) isn’t a word we typically use in everyday conversation, and I’ve only recently been able to consistently spell it correctly, so it would behoove us to make sure we examine its definition. Siri tells me that milieu means a person’s social environment.

Our social connections continue to be what has the most sustainable potential to impact us. Many sources of wisdom tell us to surround ourselves with the people we want to become. While many mothers have encouraged us to consider the practical sapience (how about that for a word you need to look up?) of, “if your friend told you to jump off of a bridge, would you do it,” we must also routinely have that conversation because of the power of the communal voices with which we surround ourselves.

Community is important. Because of this, we have to be very intentional about the relationships we build with others. ICM has defined milieu as intentional relationships with others in the story. This idea of social networking is intertwined with our idea of message. If God is telling a story and is inviting us to join it, then that means there must be others who are already in the story and others waiting to jump in. As we talked about with discipleship, there is always somebody in front of you, and always somebody behind you.

When you consider all of this, you realize how dangerous it is for a campus minister to just run with a flock of students. If it is simply one campus minister and a bunch of college-age students, the milieu is undeniably weak! In fact, depending on the personality of the campus minister, this is downright dangerous. Another campus minister was talking to me recently, following a workshop on discipleship I had done, about the danger of becoming “cult-like” in our adherence to rabbinical principles. It is incredibly important to realize the dangers of this! I went on to talk to him about how important my commitment to the local church is in the health of my ministry. I personally need to be surrounded by other pastors and leaders who will let me know if I start to get a little crazy. I need my students (and myself) to be surrounded by older folks and children, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, conservative and liberal.

Why? Because diversity is what allows us to grow and gain wisdom. It is in encountering differing worldviews and opinions that I am kept humble and forced to consider other ways of viewing things. It is through this diversity that I learn how to respect others. The Spirit moves and bears the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as I interact with people who see things differently from me. Diversity is what protects us from the close-minded tribalism that threatens to destroy our world from all directions.

And it is this diversity that will help mold and shape young people into the leaders they are going to become. Just because we have intentional relationships with others who aren’t like us certainly doesn’t mean we agree with those people on everything — or even lots of things. It just means we respect their humanity and see our own development bound up in their own.

I need my computer science student to be rubbing shoulders with the IT Director of Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories. I need my Bernie-Sanders-supporting sophomore to listen to the reasoning behind a Donald-Trump-supporting farmer. I need a newly baptized freshman serving in the children’s ministry with toddlers who are being exposed to a Jesus she only recently met. I need older, more experienced people mentoring my students. I need my students mentoring others in the church. And we all need the mentors to be learning from those they are leading. Why? Because it is this living Eucharist table that reminds us of the world that we are called to change.

If we Impact the U within the context of milieu, we will Impact the World.

Top 12 of CiHD: #6

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

The next post in our series examining the Top 12 Blog Posts at Covered in His Dust is a teaching on the Tabernacle. I called it “Falling on Joyful Faces” — and you can find it here.

In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think this post got so many views; why were others drawn to it? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?

WHY THIS POST?

To be honest, I don’t have many ideas as to why this teaching made the list — let alone so high up. I do know this is one of my favorite lessons to teach in person, either in the classroom or on my trips in Israel. There is a built-to-scale model of the Tabernacle in the Negev desert and I love to take my students there. I know that it communicates well in person, but I never felt like written teaching was the way to go here. Maybe I’m wrong.

I also remember this post being shared by others more than usual. Many have pointed out that there is no science behind why something gets shared and some others do not — there is no correlation to quality of content — but I imagine those shares were a big part of the view count.

The only other idea I can come up with is that if people were searching the Internet for Tabernacle and Temple and their relationship to each other, this post would have shown up on the search.

WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?

Obviously, this is one of my more “poetic” pieces, so it would be safe to say I hope people found inspiration and a compelling call to engage the missio Dei in the world.

I hope it challenged readers to pause and consider the reaction of the people. Growing up in the Church and being exposed to the Bible routinely had caused me to make some assumptions about God and His presence. I had picked up the idea that God is scary; when people meet God, they fall down terrified. Without a doubt, there are those instances in the Text. But with that being my go-to assumption, I read over instances like this one — so much so that I remember having to give serious thought to what it would have looked like to “fall on their faces in joy” when I first heard this teaching.

WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?

I would certainly point out how much the original lesson impacted me and provided the basis for my own teaching. I first heard this lesson in 2008 from Ray Vander Laan while we were spending time in the Negev desert. Later, I was able to revisit the lesson when it was produced by Focus on the Family in the That the World May Know series (Volume 10, “With All Your Heart,” Lessons 1–2).

If I could, I think I would have added more to the idea of the corporate “we” being the Temple of God. It’s a common idea and so I think I just assumed it at the end of my original post, but I would have been wise to let more of the Text speak there. I would have included passages from the New Testament like 1 Peter 2:4–5:

As you come to him, the living Stone — rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him — you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

I would have also included 1 Corinthians 3:16–17:

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

Connecting this idea to Pentecost is a powerful way of reminding the readers that we all — as the corporate Body of Christ — are a new Temple, opened on that day. If we are familiar with how people responded to the grand openings of God’s other spiritual houses, it would be an easy assumption to make about how they ought to respond when they meet us. In order to make this point even more poignant, one could hear this idea of God using us as living stones as a call back to Isaiah 51:

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousnessand who seek the LORD:Look to the rock from which you were cutand to the quarry from which you were hewn;look to Abraham, your father,and to Sarah, who gave you birth.When I called him he was only one man,and I blessed him and made him many.”

It would be a powerful consideration to think about the qualities of Abraham and Sarah that we studied early in the series. If they are people of radical hospitality (referenced by Jesus himself!), it would give us an indication of the missional methodology behind the reaction of people who see the goodness of God and the enduring nature of His love.

A DAY IN THE LIFE: Real Life on the Palouse

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.

One of things that has defined my weekly work presence over the years has been my family’s relationship with Real Life on the Palouse. It’s been an incredible blessing to have a church family that we love as much as we do here on the Palouse. Those of you who know me know that I don’t qualify as “normal” (easy with the jokes). The church has often struggled to know what to do with those who lie outside the bounds of typical. But RLOTP has been incredibly accepting of me and all of my quirks; there are days when I still can’t believe the level of involvement they’ve encouraged (not just allowed) us to have.

Becky and the kids love serving in the children’s ministry here. They have been a fantastic encouragement to my children, identifying their ability to lead and encouraging their involvement at every level of the ministry. They treat my kids as true volunteers, inviting them to the same events and awards they would offer to any other volunteer.

When I first arrived on the Palouse in 2011, I was certain I would not be welcome in the faith community. Instead, I was ushered right into staff meetings and invited to staff retreats; I was immediately given a seat at the RLOTP table and was never forced to “earn” a voice at the table. I found my first place to serve as I always have in church — behind the drums. I enjoyed helping lead worship on almost a weekly basis for the first few years.

Eventually, I was invited to fill the pulpit for a Sunday when Aaron was gone and that led to a place on the teaching team. For years, we have met for what we call “Sermon Club,” a weekly get-together where we plan upcoming sermons and sketch out the message for the upcoming week. We share ideas and give feedback on how to design each message and what we think might be important. It’s a wonderful practice. Obviously, preaching and teaching are my greatest joys and most prominent gifts, so I love to get to use them on a regular basis. I know I’m playing my part in the body in a way that blesses others.

We have served the community in different ways throughout the years — leading small groups and helping establish accountability and mentoring — but what I mention above has definitely been the places where we have found our home as members of RLOTP.

With recent changes to my job and the increase in my travel schedule, I have had to continue to step further and further back as I do the things my position requires. This has been one of the most difficult things to navigate in living here on the Palouse. I suppose this kind of connection is a good thing and a testimony to the kind of family we have. I have made some of the deepest friendships I have ever had in my life here in this body of faith, and I’ve experienced acceptance like never before.

Here is a video diary of my weekly time at RLOTP: