Get Up

Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.



In this final video where Rowe closes up the S.W.E.A.T. Pledge, I find what is maybe the most important of all the principles. It will make or break all of the others we have examined in this miniseries.

Most people (but not all) will be able to “show up” for life to do what is necessary. But there is an intangible quality to the fact that a much smaller group demonstrate an internal fire and personal commitment to “get up” long before what is necessary and do what it takes to be excellent.

Angela Duckworth calls it “grit” in her well-known TED Talk.

And Rowe is right. This commitment is about choices.

It is not about talent; it takes no talent to get up earlier and work harder than anybody else. It is not about education; you cannot teach this to others in a lecture hall. It is not something that can be medicated or consumed as a product.

This commitment is an internal commitment to be a part of something (to use the cliche) “bigger than yourself.” For many from the secular perspective, they find this fire by being internally committed to themselves. Others find this in their commitment to the larger team, community, or group of “others.” I am assuming that for some, this internal fire is even dysfunctionally fueled by guilt, insecurity, and fear.

Appropriately placed (in my mind), this fire comes from a deep and abiding belief in what is most true about the world: a belief that God is putting the world back together, that this project is deeply meaningful to lots of other people and a planet that suffers from all kinds of brokenness. It is a belief that God is looking for partners and an unbelievable gratitude that we get the opportunity to be a part of these restoration efforts.

We have the opportunity to get up every day and be a part of what the Jews call tikkun olam, or “the repairing of the world.” If this opportunity doesn’t inspire us to be deeply committed to personal growth and hard work — not for ourselves and our own Towers of Babel, but for the wholeness of the universe — then I don’t know what will.

But getting up and working hard is the piece we can control that has the ability, when used by God, to turn morsels into miracles. When neglected, it is also the thing that has killed more potential than any other problem we have ever encountered.

Of all the principles we looked at in this series, if there is one thing I could magically give to each of my students, it would be this principle of hard work and dedication combined with a healthy understanding of identity and a true rest of the Spirit that comes from knowing we are loved as we are. It should be a beautiful mixture of work and rest — work finding its appropriate place, and a healthy human being at rest in the love, value, and acceptance of God.

And the bummer is that you cannot manufacture this in a blog post any more than you can in a classroom.

But the combination of those two realities can change a world — your world. And when enough of our worlds are changed, it helps us be a part of changing the big one. This is why I work with college students: I have a deep, abiding belief that if you can mentor this in enough students, you can change the course of history. If you Impact the U, you Impact the World.

Choices v. Circumstances

Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.



This video was short and to the point. To be honest, I was so refreshingly surprised by Rowe’s proposition in this video, and I couldn’t agree more. Some people make horrible mistakes. I am a person who believes in second chances, and so do most of my readers. When people make mistakes and then respond to those mistakes appropriately, they should be given the opportunity to keep building on that positive momentum. Some of the greatest contributions to this world will come because of some of our worst errors.

What I love about what Rowe did here was that he did more than just agree to an idea. He didn’t just nod his head and decide not to get in the way of someone’s rehabilitation; he actually put his foundation out there to help the person be successful.

To be honest, if any of us are going to rebuild from our major mistakes, we are going to need more than just the tacit agreement of our right to do so. We are going to need proactive and compassionate help from others investing in our success. 

The math doesn’t seem to work right. You take one negative (a person’s mistake) and add it to another negative (some other person’s sacrificial investment), and it seems like you should be losing ground and ringing up negative growth. And yet, the Kingdom economy doesn't work that way. It takes those two negative variables and turns it, somehow, into positive growth — often exponential in nature.

Is it possible we somehow end up even better by responding to mistakes properly than if we would have done it by the book in the first place? I think it is.

I know this series is supposed to be about conventional wisdom, but sometimes that wisdom takes us right into discovering some post-conventional truths, as well.

Cheerfulness Is a Choice

Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.



I’m not sure I would add much to this conversation at all. I will just say, “What Mike said!”

In all honesty, I feel like if I were to write a few paragraphs, I would be trying to manufacture some deep, profound thoughts pulled from the pool of post-conventional wisdom.

So I won’t! There it is. Cheerfulness is a choice. May we all be challenged by the application of this in our own lives.

No Substitute for Common Sense

Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.




“Guidelines are great, but they are no substitute for common sense.”

For me, this video was not the most inspiring in Rowe’s series, but the content is decent, and the point is well taken. Even though people tell you that your safety is their priority, it does not remove it from being your responsibility. I think this goes for a lot of other things as well, not just safety. People might say this about your education or your success — they would suggest it is their priority; however, that doesn’t mean it stops being your responsibility.

I like it. There won’t be a lot to say here. Pretty straightforward.

But one passing thought: Some of these same ideas are relevant in a culture that loves to blame others for our circumstances. We love to point fingers and talk about how our situation is brought about by our family, our employer, our government, our neighborhood, our school. We go on endless rants about how somebody else’s mistakes have created my mess.

And this may even be true some of the time.

And I’m definitely not suggesting accountability doesn’t matter or that we shouldn’t fight for justice. That is not my point at all, and anybody who knows me will know I am a big proponent of pursuing those things.

But there is a very significant line crossed when the objectivity of pursuing justice, mercy, and accountability becomes the subjectivity of blame.

People (especially leaders) should be held accountable for the worlds they create.

But we are responsible — solely — for how we respond to our circumstances. And I do get frustrated when people pick one of these sides and denounce the other. They are not mutually exclusive. I say that with all of the awareness of the comfort and privilege I bring to the conversation. As a white male, my list of circumstances working against me is horribly short. And yet, some of the people who have taught me the most about responsibility (especially in the last few years) have been people with much less privilege and comfort than I have.

So accountability does not remove responsibility. And responsibility does not remove the need for accountability. Can both of these statements be true? I certainly hope so.

What does this mean for you and your circumstances? It is not for me to say. I cannot understand what it is to walk in your shoes and I cannot apply wisdom in your life (only my own); but together, we learn from each other.

Bringing the "Awesome" to Anything

Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.



In this conversation, Mike Rowe speaks against this common idea of “following your passion.” I think Mike might say this idea falls squarely in the realm of the less mature, pre-conventional wisdom. He suggests passion is not something you follow, but instead something you bring with you.

One of the things we are intentionally working on at Impact Campus Ministries is the art of sacred vocation. We have a fundamental belief that all work is holy and sacred. There is a sanctity to a vocation that is often overlooked. Why is vocation holy and sacred? Because vocation is, in its essence, about the proper ordering and stewarding of God’s creation. For centuries, Christian theology has unintentionally (I hope) pulled apart soil and spirit, giving the impression that the “Kingdom work” is done by clergy and missionaries, while the rest of the parishioners essentially make money to help the real work happen. They rub shoulders with the unsaved at their places of employment. They bring the money and “the lost” to the conversation and the holy folks do the spiritual work.

But this is not grounded in good theology. God is putting the whole world back together, bringing shalom to the physical chaos of creation. What this means is that the real work is done by those people who have their hands in the soil (literally or otherwise). It is the job of the clergy to help others see why their work matters. The non-clergy folks are actually engaging in the ends and not the means to that end. It’s all holy and spiritual work, but the clergy are engaging in the means to the Kingdom end — we usually have it backward!

This is so important in the conversation Rowe begins above, and yet one of the hardest ideas to grasp is where the passion lies. For many, the conversation about sacred vocation revolves around the idea that they must find the perfect vocation where their true passion lies.

But as Rowe points out, this is backward thinking.

Passion does not lie in the content of the vocation; passion describes the way we engage vocation in the first place. I think some of us go through life looking for the thing in our future that will give us passion when that passion is already within us and would transform the way we engage with our present.

One of the values at ICM is passion. We use this word to talk about the energy we bring to our pursuit of God. In this case, it is fitting that Rowe’s point is we bring passion to our work. In the same way passion describes the energy we bring to our pursuit of God, passion also describes the energy we bring to our vocation.

We have all met people who remind us of Les (from Mike’s video). They aren’t driven by their circumstances but bring a passion that affects the circumstances around them. It might be a grocer who always makes you feel better by the time you are checked out. I once heard a speaker talk about the parking lot attendant at a local establishment; living in a major urban city, he will drive past two other stores of the same franchise just to interact with this parking lot attendant. Why? Because they bring passion to their job, and their job becomes a sacred kind of “holy.”

Some of these people have jobs that would impress us — jobs of influence and intense specialization and high salaries.

And yet, some of these people work incredibly menial jobs and have a similar impact on the world around them.

It is true we have been created with certain gifts and are wired to be good at particular things. It is true some jobs align with those gifts better than others and that some situations are suffocating and stifling the life that burns within us. But we are not created for a particular career. We are created to be a particular kind of person. Our careers are simply the place where we can let those things grow.

[Maybe] The Best Thing to Ever Happen to You

Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.



Rowe took time in this video to share multiple stories of rejection he experienced on the path to his own calling. While I’m not a major fan of the phrase “pursuit of happiness,” I really did appreciate his overall point. But I would like to add something I don’t feel he touched on.

Throughout his story, the obtrusive question I kept thinking about was, “Why did he keep going down this path?” I do not ask that question with an assumption of the negative (“He should have tried something else!”), but rather an assumption of the positive (“Why was he driven to persevere?”).  The fact of the matter is that Rowe would have never learned this great life lesson to share with the rest of us if he had not kept going back, again and again. But because he did, he learned a very important lesson about rejection.

I believe some people have an internal awareness of the thing they are made to do. There is this inner voice that tells them they exist to be a part of some idea or create a certain experience. Because of this, they keep getting up and walking down the same road. I do not want to give the impression that I understand the psychology behind this reality; certainly, insecurity rears its ugly head in many different ways for so many of us.

I do know what I have experienced with my students, though. Many of them are very quick to question what we are doing and who we are becoming. Many of us see obstacles and frustrations as signs that we’re not made to do “this” and we change our track. I often feel like every time we do this, we begin to suffer an increasing lack of resilience and rising levels of doubt about ourselves.

This is not to say that obstacles and pushback are not powerful tools to help us make decisions and find the best fit in life, but I want to recognize that there is a tacit awareness, a resonance of the soul, a leading of the Spirit, that wants to guide us to who we are becoming. When we find that thing, we need to run down that path with a resilient commitment to the calling. We need to trust that calling and learn from our mistakes — which is another thing I feel like Rowe didn’t address. He probably learned a great many things from those experiences of rejection. Still, we push on, knowing that if we keep pushing toward the good, we will experience hardship and rejection. And yet, through it all, the relentless pursuit of our calling might just lead us to a place better than we could ever hope or imagine.

MAKING AN IMPACT: Passion

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 last value we have to talk about is the value of passion for God.

This value is really the first on our list and I purposely saved it for the last post in our series. Why? Because this brings us all the way back, full circle, to where we started years ago under the leadership of Dean Trune. Dean’s passion for Jesus, back then and still today, is his sole concern. For Dean, his pursuit of God was his passion, and true passion is seen in our pursuit of Jesus.

Anyone who meets Dean would be able to tell you about his spiritual posture, through all of the ups and downs of his family and their experiences. Through Dean’s successes and mistakes (he’d be the first to tell you he makes them), his steady gaze, fixed on Jesus, is the one trademark he tries to pass on to as many people as he can.

At Impact Campus Ministries, following Jesus and giving him our everything is not an afterthought. It is not a secondary focus. It is not what comes at the end, or the value that gets our leftovers.

It is the foundation we start from. We begin our workday, our productivity, with a focus on what Jesus is doing in us, through us, and around us. We attempt to discern the movement of Jesus and go with it. This is not just the thing that we do “before the real work begins.” On the contrary, this is actually the work.

One of the things I should certainly do here is recommend Dean’s writings. His first two books have always been my favorite when it comes to communicating the essence of who we are at ICM. Dean’s first book is Path Toward Passion, and I’ve always felt like it is his personal magnum opus. His second book challenges me to be more “awake” and present in my interactions; the book is titled God's Divine Appointments.

This last January, we had an opportunity to let Dean come in and remind us (for some, it was brand new) of the thinking he instilled in our beginnings. One of the examples he used was the idea of deep friendship versus romance. Many of us have experienced or observed a deep and meaningful friendship; we have also seen or experienced the different kind of quality in a romantic relationship. Both are meaningful and powerful, yet one is so much more intimate.

Dean suggested to us that far too many Christians have a deep friendship with Jesus, but not a romance. I have written at great extent to show how far the Scriptures go to reiterate this perspective of God’s relationship with His people. Outside the metaphor of “Father,” the metaphor of “Lover” is a close second. God wants to have that kind of intimate relationship with us.

God wants to have that kind of relationship with college students.

It is this kind of intimacy that empowers them with a supernatural ability to Impact the World.

How will we ever Impact the U with this kind of message if we don’t experience it daily in our own lives?

Jesus, please lead us, call us, and draw us to yourself, that we might know you intimately and be able to share that kind of “knowing” with the world around us.

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.

Top 12 of CiHD: #1

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.

This is it! We’ve travelled this 2018 path of the Top 12 Blog Posts at Covered in His Dust and we have arrived at the end of our list — the most viewed post in my blog’s history. The winner of this title is the blog I wrote on the Resurrection back at the end of August 2015. The post was titled “Empty” and you can read the original post here.

So, for one last time, let’s remember what I’ll try to do.

In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think these posts got so many views; why were others drawn to them? 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?

Well, if you would have asked me about which post I had hoped would get the most views, it would have been this one. I am a big believer that the most important truth, the most profound reality, the pinnacle of all theology and of the Kingdom is the resurrection. There are many theologians who talk about the crucifixion as being the most central to theology, that everything revolves around the work of Jesus on the cross. Many of these theologians are men and women I respect very deeply. But I respectfully disagree.

The apostle Paul did not say that without the crucifixion, our faith is in vain. No, he said that without the resurrection, our faith is in vain. That’s a strong assertion to make and it drives my theology.

Having said that, I wonder if there are other reasons the page views were driven up. I don’t feel like it was one of my best written posts. Are people that driven and interested in the resurrection? That hasn’t been my experience, typically. I can’t seem to find any unique or unusual words or phrases that would have caught some other Google search. Did people think I was posting about how I was feeling empty and so they were driven to click in and read? That could be.

WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?

Well, the truth and power of the resurrection is really, in a lot of ways, a mystery. Part of the reason we don’t get more excited about it is because there is so much about it that we don’t understand. Much of the last century has been misdirected in simply trying to prove the historicity of the event. This is a shame, as the power of resurrection doesn’t lie in intellectually proving that it happened. No, the power of the resurrection lies in realizing what it means for our daily walks, trusting that great truth to be real, and leaning into the consequences.

Even I struggled (then and now) to write about the resurrection in such a way that captures the power of this great truth. To that end, I recommend a great book called Surprised by Hope by NT Wright. It does a good job of talking about the resurrection in a western way that helps us capture some of the applicable ramifications of the resurrection.

WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?

I would talk about the power of hope.

The story of God’s people, all the way back to the story of Abram, is a story about hope. It’s a story about people who believe there is more going on — that more is possible than simply the concrete thing we experience in the Order of Brokenness. This reality is deeper and greater than a battle between optimism and pessimism. This isn’t about whether or not the glass is half-full or half-empty.

This is about whether or not you believe the glass was meant to be full — and, no matter what happens, will be full again.

The resurrection is about what you fundamentally believe is true about the world. What is the truest true? What is the realest real? What is the thing that if you burned away all of the dross, would remain? Does love win? Does life end in death? Or is death not really an end? And no, I’m not just talking about what happens when we die. I’m talking about the true order of things.

Here. Now. When we are alive.

When the Order of Death rears its ugly head, is it a roar of triumph, or is it the gasping and grasping of a creature whose days are numbered?

When you encounter greed and selfishness, are you dismayed? Or are you grounded — as a Child of the Resurrection — in a truth that what you are looking at is a fleeting shadow? And does this change the way you live?

It should. It should make us more selfless. More generous. It should make us better priests. It should prepare us for Kingdom, making us conduits of God’s redeeming work. It should rid us of fear and equip us to lay our lives down — because we understand that there really is no way to lose our life.

Maybe this is the reason the Rabbi said the only way to save your life is to lose it.

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.

Top 12 of CiHD: #2

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.

We’re down to the last two posts in the Top 12 Blog Posts at Covered in His Dust series. Today, we’ll look at the second-most-viewed post in the history of my blog. Just what is the second-most-viewed post, you ask? Well, it’s an old post on the book of Obadiah. You can read the original post here.

Wait… what? Obadiah? You’ve got to be kidding.

I’m not kidding, but more on that in a moment.

In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think these posts got so many views; why were others drawn to them? 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?

I have absolutely no idea.

I couldn’t even begin to offer a respectable guess on why this was my second-most-read post. I can’t find any keywords that jump off the page. I can’t think of any topical connections. While the ancient city of Petra may have some draw to it, I’m not sure it would justify that kind of viewership.

What about the old Christian rock band? Yeah, I don’t think so, either (although you're welcome for that link).

Moving along…

WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?

I hope the reader found a helpful dialogue about a book that we spend very little time in. Writing about these prophets is fun because a person could count the number of sermons or lessons they’ve heard on Obadiah on one hand (if there were any to count at all). So to bring an unexcavated portion of the Text out and shine a flashlight on it is a great discipline to be a part of. I hope that experience was beneficial for my readers.

I also hope this conversation on a seldom-talked-about book of the Bible provided a new look at a conversation that we do have often — that is, how we treat other human beings, no matter who they are. These conversations or behavioral soundbites can become like white noise in our world of spiritual development. We hear the “be nice to others” lesson so much that it loses its potency. A book like Obadiah has the potential to jar us to attention because of the unusual setting where the conversation takes place. The context is like its own inductive teaching.

WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?

I think I would be tempted to wax eloquent on how this post is even more applicable now than it was when I first wrote it. The original was posted on June 4, 2014, in a much different world than we live in today. In the last four years, a few things have changed politically, ecclesiologically, and digitally — and mostly not for the better. We now seem to demonstrate even less ability to show the minimal amount decency and respect to others. Quite simply, we need to figure out how to disagree and still have a dialogue. We need to figure out to the find the humanity in our brother/sister and not demonize their perspective or their history. We need to figure out how to learn from each other and seek understanding like buried treasure.

And that means this book has a deeply serious message for us: God expects a certain amount of human decency from all people — how much more the people of God! It is not OK for human beings to treat other human beings in need with disdain or negligence. I have always felt like the words that fell from Cain’s lips in Genesis — “Am I my brother’s keeper?” — are the words that sit unspoken by the people of Edom in Obadiah. And God’s response is telling: “Yes, you are your brother’s keeper.” We all have to look out for our brothers, our half-brothers, our distant cousins, and even our enemies.

It doesn’t matter if the person you are talking to wears a MAGA hat or voted for Hillary. It doesn’t matter if they are pre-millennial, post-tribulation, Muslim, or Baptist. They are people; they are divine image bearers with thoughts and values that lead to convictions, just like you. There is a shared humanity being lost and I have great faith that our children are going to teach us how to reclaim it. My prayer is that their instruction will come in time, before the condemnation of Obadiah passes for too many of us Edomites.

PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Community

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.

Impact Campus Ministries hired Karl Moritz to plant a team at the University of Montana in Missoula, MT at the beginning of 2017. Karl's been in a fundraising phase since then and demonstrated a true commitment to our vision as an organization. He and Gretchen have been an unbelievable asset to our ICM family and his presence is a wonderful difference-maker for us. Recently, Karl's family began to walk the path of having a family member who is battling cancer. Their journey has been an inspiration to many and I asked Karl to reflect on his observations about community for our post this month.

Going back as far as I can remember, some of my first memories were of our family home being filled my with my father’s co-workers. He worked for a church and these people were his work community, our family’s spiritual community, and they were our friends.

Being raised in and around the church meant that I had built-in community surrounding me. There were always people nearby to call me out on something or give me praise. Away from my family structure, I was involved in youth group that provided a fun and safe community, as well.

Fast forward a few years when I moved away from home to college, I lost that community that had surrounded me for years. I was on my own, making poor decisions, and it took me many years, three moves, and two different campuses to find my community again. Those years were rough. The best community I found was off campus at The Alpha Omega house, a community house in Missoula established on Christian principles, run by a couple that love and cherish students.

About ten years ago now I met my wife and our community formed through church and small groups. Three years ago, our small group was at a crossroads. We were craving more and started listening to BEMA long before knowing Marty. Through a series of events, I had the opportunity to start as a Recruit with Impact which has changed the way I view a lot of things in life.

Our close friends encourage, support, and love us. Our Impact family prays with and for us and is always thinking of ways to help me in the position that I’m in. With fundraising, our family, close network, and community rally around us to remind us that we are doing the right thing. When life gets too hard and I consider a break from fundraising, my fellow staff members and my boss tells me it is OK to take a break. Impact values me and my community more than my “job.”

So today we lean into our community so that our family can continue to grow. We are comfortable having hard conversations about how it feels to lose a loved one slowly through cancer. We charge into discussion about why I am striving to do ministry but rather working full time. And the community we have around us is wonderful.

I’m so thankful for the home I have with our Missoula BEMA group, my Impact family, and in our cul-de-sac. Without our community, I would feel lost.

In Matthew 18:20, Jesus says, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am with them.” As we move forward through life we are constantly reminded that we must have good community around us. If we don’t surround ourselves with the right kind of community, those who build us up, we will find community in other places that don’t.