10.15.05
WOW. How can you even begin to describe the last three months of ministry:
- From a student perspective Greek IMPACT looks great. Tons of new students getting involved, students taking their faith seriously in college, FOCUS groups forming, students taking each another seriously. Lives being changed.
- From a staff perspective ministry couldn’t be finer – student leaders taking initiative, numbers and energy at all-time highs on Monday Nights, students mentoring other students. Lives being changed.
From a lasting perspective, though, I often wonder if we’re making a difference – students weighing their opportunity to invite others into a true relationship with Christ verses their commitment to academia, lack of desire to model a risky yet rewarding lifestyle around their friends, and perhaps the ignorance of the significance of the call on their lives to change the system around them. We strive for a real life with Jesus that isn’t about rules and isn’t about the do’s and don’ts that student often carry with them from Sunday school, the passion of the work of God at its peak, but an actual relationship with God questioned.
These are the crossroads I find myself at as we approach the midway point of the semester. I recently attended a conference that might forever skew the way I think about life, about ministry and about our purpose in this world. October 7, 2005. Dave attends a conference for 9,000 ‘next generation leaders’ in Atlanta named ‘Catalyst.’ Andy Stanley, pastor at a phenomenal church in Atlanta (and son of the more famous Charles Stanley) stands up and challenges us that a Catalyst Leader is:
- Courageous in calling.
- Engaged in culture.
- Passionate about God.
- Uncompromising in integrity.
- Intentional about community.
Dave’s life, and perhaps the ministry’s life, changes forever. Or does it?
It’s so hard to live these five simple calls to our lives – whether we are full-time ministers, college students, teachers, or busy business professionals. But I believe that Andy and the Catalyst crew are right – that these five core values are essential to a full and a true life with Christ.
This semester we’ve been looking at what it means to be ALIVE! in the Greek system. We’ve been basing our Monday night time on the simple yet profound saying that the “Glory of God is man fully alive.”
Did you get that? St. Ireneus, a nobody in the early church (100s) is saying to us that God’s glory is YOU AND I fully alive?
That’s a tough cookie to swallow, but a delightful one, if we can only get our hands around it.
As Greek IMPACT reaches the midway point of the semester, I’m not quite sure if we have our hands around that or not – not as a community, not as a Vision Team, not even as I the staff personally. But I know that we are, in the words of Paul, “forgetting what is behind and striving towards what is ahead so that I might win the prize for which Christ has called me.”
Please be praying for us as we move to being a catalytic force in the Greek community at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Thank you for your prayers and support that allow us to even be at the place we are currently, let alone the place that we believe that God has called this community to.
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... The challenge of both serving as the Director for the Charlotte Greek Conference (2.17-19) AND heading up our local recruiting efforts is becoming evident. Pray for my focus and endurance as I try to do both well.