Yesterday was one of my favorite Mondays on campus thus far. It was a fairly easy day, I wasn't too busy, which was nice, and gave me the energy to do ministry well.
#1- I met with a student to help her plan Bible Study. Each week I am trying to have a student lead, and phase myself out. We were supposed to plan Bible Study, pray and leave. We ended up talking for over 3 hours, or something like that. It was crazy. I asked her how I could pray for her, and she ended up in tears, and we talked about racial reconciliation, the plight of Albion the town, and the role of Christians in bringing community renewal and hope of the Gospel to people who live here. I felt like God was using me to bring healing to her and to motivate her to continue to live out the Gospel in this community. I am also really excited to see what will happen in our chapter as a result of this conversation. It has been my heart and prayer since I have started here at Albion, that students would experience what this town offers, a front row seat to homelessness, poverty, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, racism, etc. Not that the students would be observers, but that they would have an opportunity to change this community and when they graduate go and change the world.
#2- Bible Study. To be completely honest, was hard for me. It was hard to not throw students across the room and wring their necks. Ok, ok. I guess that it wasn't THAT bad. We have been studying the book of Acts, so as an application, I was talking about actually doing evangelism. Actually spending time on campus doing evangelism. The response I got : "I think that we should just love people, and not offend them by talking to them." WHAT!!!!!! I have spent time investing in these students and feel like they haven't learned anything, or haven't even really studied scripture. So what am I supposed to do with this? My prayer and focus has been, "how do I finish this semester well?" It is hard to feel that I have made an impact at all, when they no longer believe in sharing the Gospel.
#3- After Bible study...AMAZING conversation. I told a man, that I really appreciated his spiritually maturity and was grateful for how he added to the Bible Study. I said something along the lines of, "I can really tell that you are a man of God." and to this he responded: "Yah, a man of God struggling." And as you can imagine......conversation ensued. A great conversation of finding out some of his struggles as a believer. He was great! I was encouraged and reminded of why I love staff work. It was a great way to end my evening.
1 comment:
I think there is something in the staff handbook about not wringing students necks when they don't want to do evangelism.
Don't be too hard on them. They probably have a view that evangelism means slapping people around with Bibles--which would offend most people. And on such a small campus you can't do that 'where you sleep'.
On the other hand talking about Jesus/ sharing the Gospel is very much about taking risks.
Glad to hear the other two conversations were encouraging.
Post a Comment