Enter New Phase.

Yesterday was my first day as an RA back at Moody (RA stands for Resident Assistant). Been busy the past two weeks with RA training and preparation for new and returning students, leadership meetings, conflict resolution programs, etc. It will be fun and challenging to be the RA of a new floor. I’m looking forward to this new phase of my life.

This summer has been great. I would be overstating if I said it was phenomenal, but it was far better than any other summer I’ve had. I think. Here’s my review (I’ll indent it to make it look more official):

Antioch church has some really amazing qualities to it. The staff and leadership have expressed great interest in exploring, examining, exposing, and encouraging the divine design inherent in each of us as bearers of the image of God. That is a great goal to strive toward, since it makes God supremely valuable in valuing and trusting the purpose of his created design. I’ve always thought this to be idealistic, but it’s been so good to see it actually in practice. It will be great to see how this continues to play itself out as the church grows.

The internship is both fun and hard work, and the church is young, so there is lots to do. If you aren’t doing anything, just ask, and you’ll have plenty to work on. Meetings are short and sweet: this is awesome. For everyone. I don’t know if anyone really likes meetings, and so when we are able to maximize our time by sticking to the allotted time frame and meeting schedule. Things moved quickly. Meeting times and events were communicated clearly and continued to be communicated clearly throughout the course of the internship.

Mentorship was great. I had Matt Smith as my mentor. He has been heavily involved with an organization called World Relief NEXT and in addition to pastoring at Paradox, was also leading the Solitude internship for those interns as well. Matt’s been a great guy to bounce ideas off of and it’s been rich to hear his heart and take in his teaching. We went through the book In The Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen – the same author he used when mentoring the Solitude interns (a book ironically called Reaching Out). I’ve greatly enjoyed our time together and enjoyed learning from him, beginning to understand the value of slowing down and being still and being alone with the God of the universe. I catch myself sometimes in groups of students or other RA’s actually just wanting to leave and get away and be alone. It’s relaxing. It’s refreshing.

The other interns were all fantastic. At first, there was a complaint that a lot of the Moody students tended to hang out with each other for the most part. This tendency is normal. But I think it broke down soon after that, and we all meshed pretty well with everyone. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them all, working with them, hearing what they’ve been doing this summer, and spending time hiking or climbing or swimming with them all. As much as this summer’s been a great solitude experience, it’s been a great relational one as well.

The teaching and worship on Sunday mornings are great as well. Ken is a thorough thinker and carries his audience’s attention well. He allows them to follow his train of thought, and rarely loses them. He isn’t expositional and doesn’t necessarily speak straight from Scripture, but he does give a great deal of Scripture-informed thought. It is interesting and engaging to think through and beyond what Scripture says to what it means for us in our lives and in the lives of other believers throughout Christianity. I value many of the things he’s said over this summer, and have appreciated the opportunity to listen to his heart.

A potential hazard I foresee (and perhaps the only hazard, and maybe hazard is too strong a word) that would be wisely avoided would a path toward a somewhat-elitist value system. This summer I was stoked and excited for this internship largely because I was looking forward to a staff that would not only pour into me, but get to know me well enough to know what my natural strengths and weaknesses are, and how to make the most of those. Now I am good at a good number of things, but what am I great at? Am I great at anything? Some of the interns were specifically sought out and asked and encouraged again and again to come back to Antioch. They were extremely talented individuals. Others wanted to come back and offered, and were gladly accepted, but only a few were sought out. It’s been my journey over the last several weeks to cultivate in my own heart a readiness to celebrate the blessings that fall into the hands of others as if they had fallen into my own. It is good to do this. I don’t want jealousy to arise in me. I want to celebrate with them that something truly good has happened to them and they have found a place where their gifts and abilities are recognized, valued, encouraged, and challenged. And it is an unbelievably unrealistic expectation to think that everyone belongs there. But it would serve them well, and serve the body well, to see a staff or individual who intentionally seeks to draw out of people talents that don’t shine as brilliantly, and to value them just as much. There are fantastic individuals who have beautiful talents and abilities who have no idea they have them, or have had no one who has recognized those in them. And so naturally, they don’t make the best of those talents.

Maybe it’s just my heart to seek out the margins in every group of people, but I hope in the future to see not a wider or broader investment in interns, but a deeper investment. Not more interns, but maybe fewer. I love Antioch, and I love everyone there. They are awesome and perhaps one of the closest body of believers to what I hope will be the church I work with or attend for much of my life. And so, as with anything and everything, change is progress, and I hope that both change and progress continue to be a part of the growth process of Antioch church and its internship program. Corporations and organizations and churches – as with any system – are brutally attacked and criticized by so many, and I pray my voice would not be counted among them. Instead, I hope it would be an encouraging, sanctifying, empowering and trustworthy assessment that can be used for the growth and beauty of the body of Christ.

More to come on thinking over the summer, thank-you’s, and other great ways all of you can continue to journey with me throughout this semester and this year if you so desire.

Share. Pray. Meditate.

Today we enjoyed a hike up Tumolo. There were three different movements we went through as three different lessons. They were John 17′s prayer of Jesus to his Father just before he’s arrested in Gethsemane. It’s called the High Priestly Prayer. It’s beautiful. And it’s so rich. I really enjoyed reading through it and studying it and sharing it with the others who came with me. The day looked like meeting and talking through a part of Jesus’ prayer, and then hiking and solitude and reading. This allows for us to hear God’s word and have space and time to think through it and listen to God.

Well, I’ve been trying to copy and paste the outline into here as text, but WordPress isn’t letting me because of the outline formatting involved in making a Word document outline. So here’s a screen-print image:

There’s amazing depth here in the prayer Jesus prays to his Father. It is as if we listen in on a divine conversation. We hear the heart of Jesus. We see what he cares about, what he asks for and prays for. And from it, we can gather so much. There is more that I said today that fills in between “points” that I wish I had the time to write out. But ask me about it sometime, and I’d be more than happy to share it with you. It’s far easier to explain vocally than to write it all out – I belabor the writing process searching for the perfect word to embody what I am attempting to communicate. So it would take some time.

As of tonight, we officially have two days left in Bend.

Wow.

I don’t know what to do with that. It’s gone by so quickly. I stared for a while tonight at the stars, realizing that before coming to Bend, I hadn’t seen the Big Dipper in some time, and it’s likely I won’t be seeing many stars in Chicago. There’s far too much light pollution to see them. And there are no snow-capped mountains to see or fresh earth and pine to smell. I’ll miss it.

I am excited to return to Chicago, though. I love Chicago this time of year – it’s my favorite time of year there. It helps that my sister and brother-in-law will be in Chicago this year as well. I’m going to love spending time with them. And I’m very, very excited for this year on a new dorm floor as an RA (Resident Assistant) – there’s so much I’m looking forward to and there’s so much I’m nervous about. Things I’m anxious for in both positive and negative ways. Returning to things I miss about college life and things I loved leaving behind.

I’m thinking back over this summer and I’m thinking through what I’ve learned. And there’s so much. I don’t quite know how they’ll manifest themselves this coming year in my life and how they’ll continue to shape the way my life plays out, but I’m glad for them. God teaches in strange ways. God teaches in unexpected ways. And he teaches unexpected lessons. Again, I wish I could write it all out. If you’d like, you can check out my personal blog here, where I’ve written some of my personal thoughts and things that I’ve been learning or thinking about:

http://museandmystery.wordpress.com

I’ll be posting pictures soon of our recent hiking. We climbed the 3rd highest mountain in Oregon – South Sister, at 10,400 FT. It was a spiritual experience. If you’ve never climbed a mountain, I’d encourage you to plan it. We saw people of all ages up there, summitting the mountain and looking out at the majestic creation. Unlike anything else, nature has a way of making us feel small. And rightly so. Sometimes it takes climbing a ten thousand foot mountain to put me back in perspective, to remind me that my world is not the whole world, to convince me that my God is bigger than me.

He is majestic. And he is glorious.

I’ll be posting my next two lessons (tomorrow and Monday) very soon. I’m so excited about this message in Luke. Completely humbling and frankly, hurtful. It hurts to see radiant love for Jesus when it isn’t our own. It is worth celebrating, it is joyous and beautiful and lovely, but it should evoke a sense of ache in us as well. I hope you’ll love this next message.

Again, I’ll be posting more pictures soon. For now, you can watch a video one of the interns put together to promote the Antioch Internship Experience. This video doesn’t capture the essence of the internship, mostly the events. There will be another video posted with interviews (of which I am a part) on what we think of the internship and what it looks like from our perspectives.

Antioch Internship Promo Video: http://vimeo.com/13921795

My Heart.

I am only two weeks away from completing my internship. It’s funny, because many times in life, we don’t realize what our season is teaching us until we’re looking back on it. God’s been good, and I think I’m beginning to see already how this internship has changed and shaped me.

One would think that during the course of a ministry internship, you’d learn to give of yourself. To sacrifice yourself on behalf of those around you. To serve those you are in ministry with.

I think this internship has taught me differently.

I have, indeed, been learning to give myself; but to God, not people. I’ve been learning to sacrifice, but to sacrifice social interaction for solitude. I’ve been learning to serve, but to serve God with my whole heart.

This internship has been very much about stopping, and stepping back.

I am an extremely relational person. And I’m prone to make idols of relationships. I’m prone to set them on pedestals and worship them with uncontested amounts of time. Time is how I show affection. It’s a very big way that I show love to those I care about. But I’ve marginalized God.

I know that he’s with me wherever I go. I know that I can communicate and talk to him wherever I am, under any circumstances whatsoever. But I’ve lost the art of being alone with him. It’s a scary thing to be left alone with God, once you really understand what that means.

There’s a book that some of the other interns went through in their Solitude Internship. It’s called Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen. Ironic, isn’t it? A book on solitude with a title like that. The interesting thing is, Nouwen argues that we can never really invest as fully or completely or richly in creating and participating in community until we’ve processed through identity. And identity discovery can be a lonely journey, because no one can walk it for you. We are best known by God. And so if we are to seek identity, where else would we look?

This fall, I will be a Resident Assistant (RA) of the 18th floor of Culbertson Hall at Moody. I will be expected to pour myself into the lives of each of the guys on my floor – praying for them and growing relationships, being vulnerable and available, establishing community and camaraderie, and creating space and environment and atmosphere in which these guys can wrestle with God and learn from each other. But it is wise to understand that I cannot offer them any part of myself that I have not allowed God to teach. And I can only do that if I am committed to spending time alone with him, in solitude and silence, in prayer and aloneness.

I am deeply, deeply grateful to each and every one of you who have been praying and supporting me faithfully in prayer and for providing generously in your finances to make this internship opportunity, this life-changing experience possible. You have been participants in what God is teaching me here. You have left an eternal legacy. You have made your mark on my life that will show forever.

Soon, I will be completing my big project for the summer, and it will be a retreat/hike in practicing solitude and silence, and exploring what it means to be alone with God, even with people around. Interesting thing is, you don’t have to be alone to practice solitude. Anyway, I am excited about it, because it is something that God’s been teaching me, and I think that’s the best way to teach – out of what God is teaching you.

Stay tuned and check back for another update really soon!  More to come on solitude, the Justice Conference, climbing Mt. Thielsen, and more message preparation!

Here We Go.

This week is going to be packed full.  This past week we had designated time set for spending in solitude, and over the past few weeks I’ve been working to chisel out that time for me to simply be, and to listen to God.  It’s not easy.  As a group of interns, we gathered and then split off for a few hours to spend in solitude.  To pray.  But mostly to listen.  I often feel like my prayer life looks like me dumping a bunch of cares and requests at God’s feet, yapping away, then turning for just long enough to say, “Well, see ya!” until next time I need to just throw something at him to take care of because I don’t care about it.

We pray. But it isn’t a conversation.

It’s a monopoly.

When was the last time I practiced solitude or silence?

It took the better part of three hours for me to clear my head enough to actually just begin to start listening.  There were songs, quotes, parts of books and things people had said, items on my to-do list I needed to be checking off – all swimming through my head.  Three hours.  And I only really began to listen.  It wasn’t because I didn’t try to listen the whole time.  I did.  It’s just that we are constantly under a barrage of noise – audible or inaudible.  It takes considerable time to find true quiet.  And when you do take that time in life, people think something’s wrong with you for wanting to be alone.  Forget what they think.  Be still.

This coming Friday, I will be speaking at Paradox again, and I’ll be teaching out of Matthew 13 again – verse 44.  I’m extremely excited (and yes, that’s the appropriate emotion) to be diving into God’s Word there this week, over and over and over again.  This passage is rich (pun intended).  As with before, I will be posting the manuscript post-delivery.  And I hope that this time I can accompany it with an audio recording.  I had recorded the last one, but something happened to the microphone as I was speaking that would cause a loud and irritating POP! and crackle. Like the cereal.

I really want to write more about what I’ll be speaking about, because I’m excited, but it would divert the energy I need to write it out for the actual preparation.  Sometimes to express what is being felt so deeply in your heart is not a good thing.  It is to be felt, not expressed.  Right now is the time I need to be feeling this.  To allow it to fill my heart till it’s spilling all over.  To express it right now would be like putting a small hole in the bottom of a cup I want to be filled.

On another note, I am still working on the contact cards – I’ve been waiting for an email with a Photoshop file so that I can finish and print off the one I’ve completed, and begin designing the next two.  My hope is to have them printed off for Friday.  That would be ideal, though I don’t know if I’ll have the time.  God, make me efficient in my work this week!

On still another note, it’s been good to spend time with and connect with some of the people here who aren’t interns.  With so many interns, it can be difficult to feel the need to branch out and spend time with – yes – people from Bend.  And so it is a conscious effort to take as many opportunities as possible to connect with them, and not necessarily interns.  Ministry is present between interns as well – spending time with one another, gaining trust and encouraging each other, eating lunch and talking and grabbing coffee and hearing the prayer requests and cares of each other is all part of ministry.  And it’s something I enjoy.  But I want to be intentional about reaching out.

In fact, this past week we had a scheduled day to spend with our leaders and other interns while hiking or kayaking, etc.  I chose hiking with Kevin.  He was our leader.  We had a great time – just a bunch of guys on a hike, wandering through the woods.  One of the fondest memories I have of my dad is walking (it felt to me like hiking through a jungle) to some train tracks by our house we lived in up until I was five or so.  Those memories are so free of care or concern or stress.  I needed that this past week.  Still, I would like to spend more time alone with God, even apart from a few people.  Up until this point in my life I haven’t spent significant amounts of time alone with God.  I want more than a daily devo.  I want more than a few minutes here or there in the Word.  I feel like I want to be alone for hours and hours with him.  But I don’t know for sure, because I haven’t had the opportunity to experience that.  Please pray that I will make that time.  It won’t happen on its own.  It just won’t.  Our lives prove that.

Anyway, here’s some pictures of the hike to Paulina Peak.

The beautiful mountains that can be seen from anywhere in Bend, but especially atop Paulina Peak.

Amazing people to share this experience with. From left to right: Jerell Carper, Paul Crouse, Will Kellar, and Isaac Hawkins.

I hope that you can worship with this photo as much as I could taking it.

There's something about feeling the power and pressure of thousands of gallons of water rushing off the edge of a cliff onto your back that makes you feel very small indeed.

A volcano that erupted and let loose a flow of rock called obsidian. It's black as a raven and sharp as glass. It even sounds like shattered glass when you step on it.

Spending time just absorbing the enormous landscape. There were huge snow-capped mountains to the front, two lakes green with algae and blue in depth against a forest of pine and juniper, and a huge lava flow to our right. Again, there's something about nature that can make you feel small. I think it's when we spend our lives indoors and looking down at all the things smaller than us that we begin to cultivate a very secret, almost invisible pride that doesn't allow us to see how small we really are.

More waterfalls. Isn't it beautiful?

ONE WEEK.

One week from today, I leave for Oregon.  As the internship gets closer, I’m starting to feel both anxious and excited.  The internship is going to be amazing; hard work isn’t so difficult with great people.  And this is what I love.  I love to see believers coming together to enjoy being with one another, to enjoy the union that it is to be part of/with the body of Christ: to really and truly be excited about that.  When we gather together and really love each other in the ways that we are created to give and receive love, edifying and encouraging the rest of the body as if it were our own, that is when we most truly bear the image of God – the imago dei. We look like Jesus!  That should be exciting!  And I’m very, very excited to meet a whole new part of Christ’s body and to revel in its beauty.

Jesus, you are amazing and your bride is beautiful.

I pray that I will recall and use the ministry training I’ve received these past three years with excellence, that I would not take for granted all that I’ve been privileged to study, and that I would make the most of the teaching and wisdom and training has been entrusted to me.

I want to empower the body so that others may also go and do ministry wherever they are.  I believe that Christ is not bound by the walls of a church building, nor restrained in worship to a time of singing on Sunday, nor limited in his all-encompassing power and plan to redeem the world to himself and crown himself King.  He is sovereign over our greatest mistakes and his will is perfectly effective – not despite our deficiency, but – with our deficiency.  He is amazing, and his body – the church, his glorious bride – is here on earth to bear witness to the coming of a kingdom far greater than any has ever seen.  We are that community. And I hope that wherever we are, we – together – seem to others to bear a remarkably uncanny resemblance to a place we have not been, but have always longed for.

I hope that we bear the image of Christ.

I’m excited to be a part of this.