Blue Like Jazz: The Movie

April 17, 2012 Campus Ministry No comments

Last night I took three students to see Blue Like Jazz: The Movie. As one who’s been a Donald Miller fan for almost 10 years, I was excited to see the long-awaited film based on the book that spoke to me so deeply. Anyone familiar with the project can tell you that there is nothing normal about how the movie was made, how it has been promoted, and how it is being received. For an independent film that explores the crusty edges of Christianity, it has been praised by many reviewers, and even when it hasn’t, many believe it better than other recent “Christian films”. So what did I think?

All in all, I loved the movie. The story was well crafted, flowed smoothly, and never got stuck in a holding pattern. Just as the book, it is funny, but serious; quirky, but thoughtful; exaggerated, but eerily accurate. There is just enough resolution to make you feel good at the end, but not enough to answer all the questions raised throughout the film.
Perhaps my favorite part of the movie is the realistic depictions of the emotions involved with exploring faith and self. Don’s school year at Reed College provides the roller coaster of emotions that accompany someone struggling to define themselves and their faith. The movie is not afraid to show Don’s deep desire to belong and be liked, nor is it afraid to show how hurt and angry he is by the actions of those he loves. I found myself feeling what Don was

feeling because those emotions are not (and can not be) manufactured, but are real for many people have been on the search of self.

I think in order to fully appreciate Blue Like Jazz, you must take it for what it is, not for what it is not. It is not didactic. It is not an elaborate sermon. It is not a movie meant to convert those who don’t believe. It is not a movie meant to affirm those who do.

It is a story meant to unsettle us in sensitive places. There are deep wounds that affect each of us and how we represent God in the world, but we are too ashamed to allow those wounds to shape us in to who God wants us to be.

It is a story meant to challenge our assumptions. All “churched” people are a part of some sub-culture, whether deeply evangelical or mainline, denominational or non-denominational, traditional or contemporary. Our sub-culture contributes to our understanding of God and how
Most of all, it is a story meant to be lived. Much like the book (and Million Miles in a Thousand Years), Blue Like Jazz is meant to empower us to tackle life, no matter where we are at the present moment. Life is not a spectator sport, and God uses our experiences, both good and bad, to shape us in to people who can change the world.we are supposed to engage the world.

Keeping Holy Week Holy

April 3, 2012 Campus Ministry, Church calendar, Faith and Culture No comments

It’s Holy Week. A time to remember the last days of Christ and follow him once again to the cross. Special church services abound this week, not to mention the regular meetings of our ministries. Since campus ministries don’t get much time around Christmas, it’s nice to be able to focus intentionally on Easter.

But it’s also beginning to be crunch time at the end of the semester. Students are getting more and more stressed as May draws near. There are papers, projects, tests, and presentations…and then there are finals. If students were not focused on their work before, they begin to be really focused now. The pressure is on to finish strong and that means they will spend more time doing school work and less time doing extracurriculars.

In the midst of the busyness of life, how can we help students keep Holy Week holy?

If this is a time to remember, how can we help them remember?

If Holy Week is following Jesus to the cross, how can we help them see Jesus through the fog of their work?

Relational Bridges

April 2, 2012 Campus Ministry No comments

I’ve recently been thinking about the idea of what it means to create relational bridges within a ministry. Relational bridges are the connections we help our students make with other students, but especially with older, more established, more mature students.

So how do we help make connections between students already established in our ministry to new students who are figuring out where/if they want to to be a part?For instance, at the beginning of fall semester there will be an influx of new students (mostly freshmen) who visit the ministry at least once. Whether or not they come back or desire to get plugged in depends on many things, but one of them will be whether they get connected with people already in the ministry.

 

How can we do this so that it is more organic, less programmatic?

I welcome your thoughts on this as well as how you do it in your ministry.

Good Theology, part two

March 30, 2012 Campus Ministry, John Wesley, Lutz book, post-christendom, Wesleyan theology No comments

In my previous post, I briefly highlighted the life of John Wesley and how his life can be considered missional. He was a man on a mission, seeking to reform the hearts of the English people and revive the churches of England. He did this by traveling throughout England his whole life, being among the people, preaching among the people, and helping them learn how to live a life of holiness through love of God and neighbor.

Wesley’s life sets a great example of the missional life, but so does his theology. Those who align themselves in Wesleyanism know that the core tenets of Wesley’s theology lie in his doctrine of grace. The Wesleyan theology of grace is missional in nature because it assumes that God is working in people’s lives to bring them to faith. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Prevenient Grace

Perhaps what Wesleyan theology is most known for is the idea of prevenient grace, or preventing grace as Wesley called it. Wesley deeply believed that God was constantly at work in the world, moving and acting on behalf of his children, wooing them back to himself. The grace that God bestows to lead us to faith in Christ is prevenient grace – the grace that goes before us. The beauty of prevenient grace is that we are not even aware of it. God is working on our behalf without our permission. We do not choose to receive prevenient grace, it is just there.

Justifying Grace

If prevenient grace is the (unwanted/unrequested) movement of God in our lives leading us to faith, justifying grace is the empowerment of God in our hearts of that enables us to receive the gift of faith. It is often said that Wesleyan theology is a theology of works because we believe that a decision to receive the gift of faith must be made by the individual. This is true, but what is left out is the underlying assumption that the decision can not be made if God’s grace is not first finding a home within that person. A person receptive to God’s movement in his/her life will be empowered by that same grace to decide to receive faith.

Sanctifying Grace

Once a person has acknowledged God’s grace in his/her life and (by that grace) received the gift of faith, God continues to work and move in that person’s life. God does not lead us to faith and then require us to figure out the rest on our own. Nor does God lead us to faith and then that’s it…there’s no where to go from there. Receiving faith is only just the beginning of the Christian life, which is where sanctifying grace comes in. Simply receiving faith does not make the new believer perfect in word and deed. Every believer needs the continued grace of God in his/her life in order to grow in holiness. God desires that we live our lives as his representatives in the world, incarnating the love and grace of God within our world. Sanctification, therefore, is not so much a destination of being holy, as it is a constant striving toward holiness.

In missional theology, it is stressed that God partners with people in order to bring transformation to individuals and the world. God sees people as being agents of transformation, grace-empowered persons revealing God’s love and grace through their lives in the places where God’s love is most needed. Does this not match up with Wesley’s theology of grace? Do we not embody prevenient grace when we befriend and love on our neighbors, not to “save them”, but because they are precious children of God? Are we not agents of justifying grace when those same friends need a voice of encouragement or word of affirmation when they are ready to receive faith? And are we not practicing sanctification when we share our lives with others in the hope of perfecting our desires, habits, and words?

Prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace are simply ways to describe God’s movement in the lives of people, as well as our response to that grace in how we live our lives in the world.

Good Theology, part one

February 9, 2012 Campus Ministry, Faith and Culture, John Wesley, Lutz book, post-christendom, Wesleyan theology No comments

Before I reflect more on Steve Lutz’s book, I want to write some on why I believe it is important for me, a United Methodist campus minister, to read and process this book. Though Lutz does not come right out and say it, it is clear that he writes from a more Reformed theological perspective. The missional theology movement is carried more by those within that tradition, i.e. Acts 29, Verge Network, Gospel Coalition, just to name a few. There are United Methodist churches that are more missional, but they are fewer.

Why isn’t missional theology carried out more in United Methodism?

That question is too complex to handle in one post, and honestly, I do not feel qualified to answer. But, Wesleyan theology is deeply compatible with missional theology because missional theology is simply good theology. No matter where you find yourself on the Reformed-Wesleyan/Arminian spectrum, missional theology is about putting those particulars in to practice.

So how is Wesleyan theology compatible with missional theology?

First, missional theology assumes that God is a God of mission. The narrative of Scripture reveals God to be constantly concerned with the matters of the world, so much so, that Israel is delivered from Egyptian bondage in order to be a royal priesthood, a people mediating God to the nations (Exodus 19:5-6). God never intended the Israelites to be cloistered, but a contagious community presenting the true God to the rest of the world.

God’s mission is most visibly seen in the incarnation, the person of Jesus Christ. The Word became flesh and lived among the very people that needed saving. This is the very essence of mission. Jesus, the sent one, then sent his disciples out on mission as well (Matthew 10, Luke 10), giving them the authority to do what he was doing. And then, of course, Matthew records the Great Commission, Jesus’ final words to the disciples “to go in to all the world.” Mission is truly a big part of who God is and how God desires the world to be reconciled.

There is no better word for this life than missional. It is said that Wesley rode more than 250,000 miles on horseback in his lifetime and preached more than 4,000 sermons. Wesley was on a mission to bring the people of England back to a life of personal and social holiness.

Wesley’s typical pattern was to preach first thing in the morning to those going to work, and then again in the evenings when they were on their way home. He invited people to respond to the grace of God at work in their lives and then organized them in to classes and bands (small groups). These groups were meant for encouragement and accountability, a place for each person to be challenged to live every day in the way of Christ. Wesley depended on their changed lives to bring more people to accept the free gift of grace, and hence strengthen the church.

Wesley was missional before missional was popular. As descendants of this movement, we need to seek out how Wesley’s passion for mission and people can be realized in our context.

**For tomorrow, Wesley’s theology of grace and missional living.

Doing mission vs. being missional

February 8, 2012 Campus Ministry, Faith and Culture, Lutz book, post-christendom One comment

More thoughts from my reading of College Ministry in a Post-Christian Culture.

Many campus ministry models are not inherently missional…What do I mean? Traditional campus ministry treats mission or outreach as something we do while “missional” is something we are: mission shifts from an activity to our identity. – Lutz, 37

I mentioned previously that there has been a growing tension inside me about how campus ministry is being done, and part of that tension lies in seeing that the students to whom we are ministering are less Christianized than ever before. This means we cannot go about ministry in the same way, operating under the same assumptions, using the same techniques thinking they will work the same as they always have.

So what has to change?

The opening quote captures the essence of the problem – mission should not be one part of our ministry, but should be the essence of our ministry. Campus ministries must be inherently missional in order to survive on today’s campuses. In order to be inherently missional, there must be two dramatic shifts in how we (ministers and students) think. The first is how we view ourselves; the second is how we view our campus(es).

We must begin to view ourselves as a people sent to our campuses. I think one thing we can all agree on is that Jesus extended the movement of the kingdom of God by sending the disciples out to carry on the ministry he began. We, too, are meant to be sent. If we see ourselves as sent, then we begin to see our day to day interactions differently. We are not just another person going about their day, but we are the embodiment of Christ wherever we go – intentionally bring the love and peace of Christ to a broken and chaotic world.

It also changes the way we view our personal devotion time. Prayer and the study of Scripture were never meant to be legalistic means to holiness, but a means to encounter God. If our day is centered in God – not in whatever our mood du jour is – our focus will be less on ourselves and more on how God is moving and working around us and in others. When we faithfully engage our own spirituality it then becomes easier to see ourselves as God’s missional agents of love and grace in the world.

We must also begin to view our campus as a place that needs God’s sent ones in it. This does not mean harping on all the bad things that exist on our campuses, or preaching condemnation to those who don’t know God (by all means, NO). It means realizing that just like the larger world, our campuses are filled with broken people who do not know what holy love, grace, and mercy feel like. We are sent to bring God to the campus through practicing these things every day.

We must also begin to view our campus as a place that can be a beacon of God’s light. What do we hope for? Do we hope we have enough students attend our ministry to keep it afloat? Or do we hope that God’s love will manifest itself through our students to the point that even our campus is transformed so that there is more unity and more collegiality among all students, faculty, and staff?

These are the questions I’m left with after reading this chapter:

  • Is my ministry inherently missional?
  • What do we hope for in our ministry?
  • How do we view ourselves? 
  • How do we view our campus?
  • In what ways does God’s love need to be made known on my campus?

**A little research will show that missional theology and ecclesiology is thriving in the neo-Reformed movement. In my next post, I want to pair these ideas with Wesleyan theology, showing that there is room at the table for us as well.

The Tension

February 7, 2012 Campus Ministry, Faith and Culture, Lutz book, post-christendom 3 comments

I‘ve been reading College Ministry in a Post-Christian Culture by Stephen Lutz, a campus minister at Penn State. This entry will begin a series of entries where I ask lots of questions about the ins and outs of campus ministry. I welcome any comments that contribute to the conversation, and look forward to hearing what others have to say.

“We are experiencing a transition from what has been called “Christendom” to a largely post-Christian society…For at least one thousand years, the Church in the West could assume that people would be “Christianized,” though not necessarily converted, by society.” - College Ministry in a Post-Christian Culture, 21

For some years there has been a tension growing in me about the kind of campus ministry in which I practice. I think many campus ministries are similar, but I can only speak from my own experience. What I am talking about is a campus ministry that is largely made up of already-Christian students that attracts more already-Christian students, and therefore, operates on the assumptions of most people being “Christianized.” Meaning that those who are drawn to our ministry share the same basic values and beliefs as we do – and those values and beliefs are rooted in church and Christian experiences.

The reason there is a tension, though, is because I can tell that more and more students are less Christianized. Campus ministry in the Deep South of the United States means that many students are coming from communities with more churches than gas stations, but what I’m realizing is that less students are attending these churches. It only makes sense. The statistics tell us that less people overall are attending church on Sunday morning, which means less parents are attending church, which means their kids are not attending church. So while there are still a plethora of churches in our small southern towns, that does not mean we can assume our students are going to those churches. If our students are not regular church-goers, then that means their values and beliefs will not be shaped by the Christian perspective.

If, in fact, less people are going to church, then we should assume that more of our incoming students are not Christianized – not well-versed in the Christian life and all that goes with it.

So what does this mean for ministry?

Is our ministry to students operating from outdated assumptions?

Are we making an effort to address the new place students are at – the non-Christianized place? 

Why chocolate crosses matter

April 7, 2011 Campus Ministry, Faith and Culture No comments
As Easter approaches, I’m reminded of a conversation I had with my student leaders last fall. We were talking about a random number of things before our weekly meeting the conversation turned to the commercial Christian culture. The fact that Christian bookstores limit what they carry based on their theological stances, but also what’s in demand from the people who shop at their store.
I then brought up how I had seen several items that were distinctly Christian, and yet also distinctly edible. First communion? How about a cake in the shape of a cross? Easter? How about a milk-chocolate cross instead of a chocolate bunny?
The mention of these items created quite a bit more conversation. There were those who thought confectionary crosses were as harmless as earrings and necklaces. Then there were those who thought it was weird and kind of wrong, but didn’t know why. And then there were those who were adamantly opposed to such things. All of this created a great conversation and teachable moment.
In campus ministry, we need to be ready for every kind of conversation. Even ones that center around chocolate crosses. While I often fall in to the trap of getting on my soapbox, the most important thing is to raise the right questions that will lead students to reverently critique their faith. This is a discipline not easily mastered because it requires honesty to ask hard questions in the light of divine guidance.
In the case of the chocolate cross, the following questions were raised:
  • Why does this chocolate cross exist?
  • Who do you think will buy a chocolate cross?
  • What does this communicate to people about Easter?
  • What does this communicate to people about how we see ourselves as Christians?
  • What does this say about the culture we live in?

What are your thoughts on chocolate crosses?

Being an Encourager

August 25, 2010 Campus Ministry 2 comments

Most campuses come alive this week. The freshmen have arrived, the upperclassmen have returned, and classes are starting up. And so our ministries come alive as well. So far, our students have been on leadership retreat, cleaned and organized the Wesley House, given rides to new students and parents during Move In, prepared breakfast for new international students, welcomed freshmen at the campus organizational fair, cooked supper for 50+ students, and led in our first worship of the semester.

And it’s only Wednesday.
When there is this much activity this early in the semester, it is important to remember that we are not defined by what we do. It’s easy to think our value lies in what we are able to accomplish because when we can see the fruits of our labor, it’s easy feel valuable.
I have great students who are committed to making this ministry a welcoming, friendly place for all students to come explore their faith. All our activity is centered on this common purpose. They have worked very hard these last several days, and there are many visible fruits of their hard work. Sometimes I feel guilty because I feel like I’m not working as hard as they are, but then I remember that I have a very important role to play this week:
I need to be their #1 Encourager.
Encouragement is a funny thing; most of us don’t think we need it unless we’re actually feeling discouraged, and most of us don’t give it to others near enough. But encouragement is always welcome, and you can never get enough. So why don’t we do it more?
My goal this week is to be a great encouragement to the students who truly make this ministry tick. I want them to know that I am in their corner, but more than that, I want them to know that I appreciate who they are, no matter what they accomplish.

Making Excuses

July 25, 2010 Campus Ministry No comments

There’s one big drawback to starting a new campus ministry position in the summertime: college campuses are pretty quiet, especially in mid-July. While I’m thankful for some space to read, think, write, plan, and pray, I’m also a little lonely. There’s no buzz, no activity in the Wesley House or on campus, so it’s easy to spend all day in my air conditioned office.

I think when I started my first campus ministry position four years ago, I did just that. But new beginnings are for learning from your mistakes, so this time around I’m making excuses for getting on campus.

The other day I had a simple question to ask someone on campus that I could have emailed or called about. However, I had already decided to eat lunch on campus (another excuse to get out), so I decided to drop in and ask the question in person. I was there for maybe five minutes, but in those five minutes I accomplished something very important – I nurtured a relationship.

Emails are great, text messages are quick, phone calls are convenient, but a face to face interaction builds community exponentially more than any of those. In those five minutes, I asked my question, but I also learned a little more about the person. My presence communicated that I do not view this person simply as a source of information, but as a valued child of God. Technology helps us be productive and efficient, but too often at the expense of relationships. People are no longer people, but contacts in our address book who we call or text for information.

So, this summer I’m making excuses for myself…to get out of the office. But more importantly, to build and nurture relationships with the people across campus who I’ll be in ministry with this fall.

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