no time for timid.

Last week, a girl started her testimony by telling me that it was "just a silly, mushy story."

I totally called her on it. Nicely.

"I'm not saying this is you, but I really struggle with how I talk about God's work in my life. I want to say things like, 'My story isn't that great,' or 'It wasn't really a big deal,' and then I realize that what God did in my life is so much bigger than those words, you know?"

Yeah. I did. I know. I'm that girl.

I think she understood. I think it was perceived well. And besides, this post isn't really about her response to my self-righteousness. It's about my own hypocrisy.

For Easter, I talked about my story with God for a video testimony that was played during services at my church. It was an interesting experience, about which I have a bunch of thoughts, but mainly, right now, I've got one that keeps looping back around: I never told my parents. Not really, anyway.

I may have mentioned it quickly, and in passing--"Oh yeah, I talked a little about God for a video for Easter. Is it still pretty cold there?" But I didn't tell them tell them--"I'm filming a video at church, talking about how God reached into my life last year, and convinced me of His truth, and about how my whole life has changed because I chose to accept what He did for me in dying on the cross, and now I seek a life guided by His spirit. So, um, yeah."

The discrepancy between those versions is about to bite back. The church is playing the video during James River Women's Designed For Life conference next month. The one to which I invited my Mom. She said yes.

I realized the reality suddenly, and violently, during breakfast with a friend this weekend. I knew the video was on the docket through a weird sort of "word from the Lord" kind of deal, but that whole "my Mom seeing it" thing hadn't yet hit.

I love my mother, and she knows I love God, and I know she loves God, but I'm very emotionally open in that video. We don't talk like that in my house. We don't get into the nuts and bolts of faith. We don't share about our loneliness, or pain, or whatever it is that brought us to Christ. And the idea of her sitting next to me, watching me talk about how the church loved me to Christ is...more terrifying than exciting.

But then...who am I, and who is Christ, if I can't let those parts of me be known? Who am I to call a girl on her saying her testimony is "just a silly" story? Who is Christ to me that I'm running scared about my mother knowing the real me, the me that really loves God?

It's time. If God is working in my life, and I believe He is, it's time. If I love Him, and I do, it's time. If I feel as passionately as I do about other people knowing His love, it's time.

So...it's time.

new place.

My faith is changing drastically. It's growing.

Like so: I found a job that is a stable job, but one with challenges, and definitely not a job I love, and the deeper my heart sinks, the more I find my love for God. I cry a lot more than I ever have, and as I do, I remember this prayer I used to make on Wednesday nights. When the "sick list" would come up, I'd pick one or two names, and pray fervently for Felicia, or Elmer, that more than healing, they'd experience joy in sickness. I prayed for healing, too. But more than that, I prayed that in the midst of the pain that wracked their bodies, or the anguish of their hearts, they would lift their arms, and give full praise, and all honor to the God who called those bodies to be.

Because I think that praise in weakness is the source of strength.

I don't mind saying that I'm fighting hopelessness recently--anxiety about how He'll work His promises for me from what looks like impossibility. I've won some battles. I've lost some. But it's so interesting to me that in the middle of the most intense time of uncertainty I've experienced, maybe ever, He is working some of the greatest change my faith has yet known.

Even in the last month, I've come to know God more closely. I love Him now in a way I didn't in May, or June, or July. I trust Him. I believe in Him. I find my heart softening, and my wisdom going deeper.

I'm crying more lately, because I feel scared and sad in these circumstances, and I'm wondering how this will all come together, and how to keep the faith in the meantime. But I'm also praising, and in that, there's joy.

I'm praying. I'm finding a need for His Word that is...driven. It's all very different, and not that it was bad before, but whatever it was, it now IS awe-some, awe-filled.

I've neglected this blog recently, but I don't want to miss this moment. I write to remember, to read later. To track the times from each moment to the next so that at each new place, I can read back and see His goodness.

This is a new place.

benched.

I think I may be living a tremendously important part of my faith right now.

There's nothing happening outwardly to suggest that's the case. In fact, quite the opposite.

I feel as though my life is on hold. Nothing I thought would happen in ministry happened. I took a job that is good, but certainly not a passion for me. I'm barely pulling through on my thesis (to be honest). I'm looking at some major things that have to be paid off, wondering how I will handle that and keep progressing through new seasons of life. I'm dragging.

A few months ago it seemed like if I wanted to walk into ministry, it was all going to work out. As though I could throw the full force of what I've got into the cause, and really excel.

And really excel. Interesting words.

Instead of being in active vocational ministry, I am now learning deeply, in an incredible way, the reason for ministry. I was so intent on using my skills to "advance ministry" that I think I may have missed the reality. I wanted to do well to help people, but didn't fully understand that I'm not just helping them--I'm helping them to Christ.

Now, benched from the possibilities of excelling, I have no choice but to love God alone. I can't love results, and I can't love my "job" in vocational ministry, because those things are not gifts I was given. And in the interim, I'm learning that life is ministry, and the people I cannot stand at work are those to whom I was sent, and that my faith is both tremendously stronger and outrageously weaker than I had thought.

There are points over the last couple of months at which I thought I'd surely go under. One challenge after another--I've felt as though any weak spot I possess has been targeted and hit. But instead, I'm finding a passion for God, and a belief in the Gospel, that is much purer than any I've ever known.

I don't know what the plan is. I do know that these moments, however much they drag, are formative.

college Christian weird.

Question.

Where are all of the campus ministries in which the core activities are things like kicking it in coffee shops with some Dylan in the background, talking about theology?

Why is it that if I want to be involved in college ministry, I have to be down with a whole host of weird?

Let me pause for a second to say that I know that I'm weird. My secret talent is a dead-on impersonation of Britney Spears, I once watched all three Lord of the Rings movies (which I own) in one day, and when no one is watching, I dance to Christian pop. I am unavoidably weird. But...I am not unapproachable. And nothing is more unapproachable to on-the-fence seekers than college Christian weird.

What do I mean?

Do this: go the webpage of almost any of the ministries of [your college here], and peruse their photo albums. Then ask yourself... who is being ministered to?

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that the vast majority being ministered to in some of these organizations haven't been extensively unchurched. They've been very churched. That's why their college ministry albums are almost indistinguishable from their high school ministry albums.

They. know. youth ministry.

They're comfortable with it. And let's be honest--it's fun! But not for everyone.

I wonder... where's the ministry for the college Ashley? For the girl who wasn't about to bounce with some Christians having an ugly Christmas sweater partay, unless there was some rum bouncing in that room? For the guy who considers himself to be above ice breakers? For the students who feel caught between curiosity in Christ, and the seeming normalcy of their own non-Christian circles?

I couldn't have been the only one. Certainly, had there been a ministry, a different kind of ministry, one that reached out to my friends in college in ways they understood, they might have paid more attention to the cross.

There's nothing wrong with the fun and the silliness of some college ministry. It has its place. But I wonder...how are college ministries reaching the people who either don't understand or aren't attracted to the youth ministry feel of a lot of those groups? How are we reaching those who don't have concepts for "small group" and "outreach event"? Who don't know how to be reached?

It's not just our words that need translation from Christianese. It's our concepts, our intentions, our actions, our structures. It's not just a stylistic issue, it's also an intellectual and philosophical one.

Admittedly, I'm writing on a topic about which I know little. But, thinking on my own experiences with college ministry, my heart breaks. For reference, John Podesta, Clinton's chief of staff, went to my college--what if he had given his life to Christ in those four years? Ismat Kattani later became president of the United Nations--what if he had fallen to Christ while at Knox? On and on. How many students passed through--brilliant, brilliant people who could literally have turned this world upside down for Christ--never having been connected with the Truth? Because they saw the ministry and not the cross. Because they thought differently, their minds worked differently, and the Christian ministries, in full love and amazing intentions, didn't know it. Were set in the ways of ministry. Didn't catch on.

Francis Schaeffer begins the unbelievable "the God who is there," with some simple words: "The present chasm between the generations has been brought about almost entirely by a change in the concept of truth." He wrote these words in 1968, asserting that the greatest crisis in Christianity was then that Christianity had missed the crisis! The thinkers, the teachers, and the leaders had missed this fundamental shift in the understanding of truth, and kept on as though nothing had happened, and in so doing, had lost touch with the culture, with the souls they were appointed to assist.

I think Schaeffer's words are fresh.

I fear that they're fresh for college ministry. I hurt for the students who pass through--unfamiliar with the structures of ministry, and the presuppositions of faith, with the style and the substance--never meeting Christ.

fessing and failing.

I was at a training this morning, for the New Life workers--the volunteers who pray with people who come down to accept Christ during the altar call. Before I hit the room, I realized...

This is my passion. Oddly. Crazily. Outrageously.

The girl who is kind of shy in faith, and won't even tell her family or friends that she has this blog.

This is my passion. Figuring out how to reach people with the promise and hope of Christ. Watching them grow, as I am growing, in relationship with the God who loves them more than they can imagine.

Somehow, this is my passion.

I'm not sure what that means. Immediately, I make it mean something terribly negative. "You can't ever help someone know God. You don't even share God with people in your life. There's no way. You're crazy. Or stupid. You're so not ready. You'll never be ready. You can't share a blog URL, but you think your passion is sharing Christ with people? Stupid. You can't ever help someone know God."

But...how about something different? How about it means that God is working in me? That He wouldn't place a desire where He didn't also place an ability. Maybe not right now, maybe not tomorrow, but gradually, surely.

The moments I feel most alive have been those in which I am talking with someone about Christ--even when I was theologically liberal! How crazy is that? And how crazy is it that I spent more time speaking of Him when I believed He was a moral teacher, than now when I know Him to be so much more?

I don't know how this will all end up. I do know that I don't want to be too afraid of failure to fess up to a call.

campus courage.

Every couple of months, in college, I had coffee with a guy named Doug. He and his wife were the regional coordinators for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. They were over-saved. I assume they still are. But they were/are also top-notch people. They loved God, and obviously loved His kids, if our coffee meetings were any indication.

I didn't know why, but in the midst of my partying, in between week-long drinking sessions, and awful sexual decisions, I would sit down some mornings, and send Doug an email. "You want to grab coffee sometime this week?"

He would say yes, of course. And we'd find ourselves in the middle of Innkeeper's Coffee, having an adversarial conversation about how any Christian could claim that Christ absolutely wiped away sin, if "sin" was a real thing.

It went pretty much the same with my best friend, Judy. She was the campus coordinator for IVCF, and she was not, thankfully, over-saved, but loved God with all of her heart. I would show up at her place, crying and drunk, at 2 or 3am. She'd settle me in her guest room, and the next morning, over an inordinately large glass of water, she'd let me cry and talk. I'd tell her the same thing I told Doug--it just doesn't make sense. I know I'm messed up, I know that something is wrong, I know that I have a strange call to God, but He just doesn't make sense.

Doug and Judy showed me love, albeit in different ways, and their love is not the only I was shown. On a campus that had little respect for Christ, or for Christianity, they were willing to reach out to someone on the other side--someone who drank and partied, and studied neuroscience, and hung out with all the people who called "bulls**t!" on their faith. Granted, I sought them. I wanted God badly. But they could have done much differently by me. Much, much worse.

As I look back, from faith, I'm so grateful to them. I think it's their love that sinks into me, that pushes me towards campus ministry. I remember who I was, and what it took to reach me, and I want so badly to give that to someone else like me. Those people never saw the fruit of their work with me, and I think that's kind of beautiful. I want to give that.

I've had a million excuses for avoiding it. I'm too young. I'm too old. I'm not mature enough in faith. I don't know enough about faith. There's no opportunity. I would stink at it. I'm not funny enough. I'm not serious enough. I'm not kind enough.

It's all ridiculousness. So I'll pray, and I'll try.

On a side note, one of the greatest pains I now know is that Judy no longer believes. When I first moved here, I grieved because I needed her faith, her strength. Now, I grieve for her because I know that she needs her faith. Please join me in prayer.