To be continued...

On Friday, April 30, a group of campus ministers, college students, and ministry and church leaders joined together for a day of teaching about prayer, praying and preparing for an upcoming season of prayer. The season of prayer is twofold: we are calling the United Methodist Church to pray for college campuses and we are calling college students to enter into a life of prayer. The prayer faculty for the day represented people who have demonstrated a life of prayer. Vance Ross of the General Board of Discipleship, Margaret Therkelson of Lexington, KY, Tom Albin of the Upper Room, and Dana Hernandez and David Blackwell from Campus America shared various perspectives on prayer. Their sessions were recorded and will be available for free at a later date. The day represented partnerships by The Foundation for Evangelism, The Upper Room, The General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, and UM Communications.

One of the themes that arose from the day of teaching and prayer was that God is stirring in the hearts of the Church for the people of our college campuses. It is our intention to remind the people of God to be intentionally prayerful on behalf of college students. The intentional season of prayer that we are calling for will last first for 40 days—August 23-October 1—but really is to usher us into a life of prayer. We’re asking campus ministers to demonstrate a life of prayer on their own, but also to prepare their students for the Holy Spirit to teach them to pray on their own. The life of prayer is not one for the faint of heart. Rather it is one that requires sacrifice—of time, of personal agendas, of self-interest. But it is a life that we are called to as Christians, and as Methodists, as we seek to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

There is more to come, but if you're a person who prays, would you add this prayer effort to your intercession? Would you pray for our campuses, for our campus ministry leaders, for college students whom you know? Pray for God's Spirit to capture this generation of students to live lives for God's glory, reaching out in ministry to all the world. And pray that the Church might come alongside the millions of young leaders who are heading to the college campus this fall to be a witness of Christ's transformative power. To God be the Glory!

To be continued...

Nothing Better

Ministry is hard work. This is no surprise. In fact, I remember learning in seminary (and frankly, observing every pastor that I've ever had) that it is important to have good boundaries because ministry will take up every spare moment and even your-not-spare-moments with something crucial. There are meetings, worship services, books, blogs, phone calls, emails, etc., that will necessitate attention and time. And then there are people. People will always need you. Sometimes these feeling of being needed, being able to fix someone's situation, being the superstar, can start to become the driving force instead of living out the Truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And then comes burnout, poor boundaries, and inflated egos. So yes, ministry, true ministry...the kind where the Gospel is lived out and you become Jesus' hands and feet as you are inhabited by the Holy Spirit, is hard work. The hardest part of the work has actually already been done by Christ--who broke the chains of sin, but we as God's ministers (both lay and clergy) must do the hard work of laying down our lives, picking up our crosses and following Christ. We must allow God's Spirit to transform our lives, letting our earthly desires pass away so that we might be transformed by God's grace.

When the work of ministry seems hard, it is so important to remember the fruits of the ministry. For me, that means I take a look at the lives of people that God has transformed that I have been blessed to know. I met Nicole her junior year of college, when I was brand new at Southwestern College. I was immediately drawn to her, as she has a great sense of humor and high level of responsibility. She also seemed that she had been pretty disappointed in her life and was reluctant to trust people easily, even though she had that look in her eye that said she wanted to be able to trust them. She gradually began to open up to me and I told her that while I might disappoint her at some point, I was willing to allow God to use me in her life, if that was okay with her. Over the two years of her time in college, she really opened up to me and began to trust me. One of the things that she talked to me about was her love for all things African. I was so excited, then, when she shared with me about the opportunity that she had to go on a mission trip to Kenya a year after she graduated from college. She had an incredible experience on her first trip and soon after she returned began planning a second trip to Tanzania and Kenya for this past summer. Through a crazy series of events that Nicole tells about, she is now working with an organization of the General Board of Discipleship called Pray With Africa.

Watching Nicole grow in God's grace and follow God's will into her current ministry reminds me that there is truly nothing better in ministry than seeing people that you have invested in mature in faith. The meetings, the programs, the worship services, the phone calls and emails, they certainly are the preparing, tilling, planting, watering, weeding, and tending parts of growing fruit. But when the fruit peeks through and then begins planting her own seeds, there is nothing better.