Discontent

It’s already nearing that endearing time of the year where it’s time to start figuring out what life and ministry is going to look like next year. It’s always a time of excitement as I dream about what might be ahead for me and how the Lord might use me, but it’s also a time of anxiety and really having to lean into the Lord.

And this time around, it’s also a season of discontentedness.

I loved my time in college getting to experience all of the different things I experienced and doing ministry alongside all of my classmates. I learned a lot about myself, what I’m good at, what I’m not good at, experienced close relationships and what the Lord is doing in different parts of the world. Whether it was East Asia, Madison, Panama City, North Myrtle Beach, or Boston, each place brought different kinds of people and different kinds of ministry.

And I loved my time in East Asia last year. Out of all the things I’ve done in my life, this was probably the experience and the season of my life that brought the most personal growth and taught me the most about myself. I loved the people there and it was a privilege to get to minister to them alongside all of the people serving there long-term.

But I still get the sense that there’s just more that God has in store for me, my relationship with Him, and how He wants to use me. There’s more power through His spirit than I’ve even begun to access. There’s more joy and adventure to being in relationship with Him than I’m currently experiencing. There’s just more out there somewhere.

I could write a book about what it probably looks like to seek each of these things out, but I think more than anything, my “discontentedness” stems from wanting to stay in one place for more than 10 months and to pour out everything I have into that community of people. To invest in those relationships, love and serve people well, develop people and help them to fulfill more of their God-given potential, and to know that I’m going to be there for awhile so that I can be as effective as possible.

This doesn’t mean I want to “settle down” and buy a house, have a two and a half car garage, and re-landscape around my new home because I’m going to be there forever. But I do desire to figure out how to be the best steward I can of the strengths and gifts I’ve been given, to find a place where I can live those out, and to pour all of my energy into utilizing those talents instead of trying to determine where and how to use them. Unfortunately, I’m sure this is something that will take years.

I have no doubt that God gives some people specific callings. I am not one of those people. At least not right now. In some ways I’m jealous of people who know without a doubt what the Lord is asking of them, but this usually requires great sacrifice.

I only know two things: That God is “calling” me to live out a life that will produce the greatest possible eternal impact, and that I’m getting married in April to a girl I have been called to love and minister to the rest of my life. I think that’s one of the main reasons I’m so excited for marriage. She’s not going anywhere, I’m not going anywhere, and I get to spend however long the Lord has put us on this earth for loving her with every ounce of energy He’s given me and investing in our partnership and ministry together.

Maybe that’s supposed to be my focus in this season of my life. To love her well, seek hard after the Lord, take things one step at a time, and wait until He appoints to me another task.

Engagement Story

I've promised this to several people and realized that there are others that would like to hear it, so here goes...

On Saturday, August 8th, I woke up to a rainy, dreary day. Amy and I had talked about going to Devil's Lake earlier in the week to do some hiking but it looked like the rain might prevent those plans from working out. But at my gentle prompting, we decided to just go and give it a try. If it didn't clear up we'd just make the most of it.

Well it did end up clearing up (thank God!) just before we pulled into the park and we spent much of the afternoon hiking around the lake. I had mentioned at one point in the afternoon that if we found an area where we could have some quiet and privacy, it would be fun to do lectio divina, a method of reading Scripture where one person reads a specific passage out loud several times as the other processes through what it is saying. (Sounds nerdy, but it's something we'd done several times together prior to this.)

After driving to Parfrey's Glen we decided to stop at a big, open prairie that doubled as a cross-country skiing trail. Since there weren't many people skiing on this humid August day, we had the whole area to ourselves. We searched for awhile for a spot in the shade. At one point, Amy said, "Chris, if we're not going to stop soon and sit down, let's just go to the car and drive home in the air conditioning!" Luckily, we soon found some shade and plopped down on a blanket in the grass.

So what follows is basically the proposal itself. But here's a disclaimer: I knew that I wanted to propose during our little excursion that day, but I had absolutely nothing planned when it came to a location or anything like that. It was all pretty spontaneous but luckily worked out really well seeing as I had no idea this prairie even existed three hours earlier.

We sat down and read through two of my favorite passages. Ephesians 1:4-6 and then Ephesians 5:25-33. I pulled out a journal where I had written out some things from that passage and how it made me want to love her in that way and to continue to pursue a relationship with her that modeled Christ to our family and friends. I then told her that I also wanted her to read the FIRST journal entry from that particular journal...

When she turned to the first page, she saw that it was dated September of 2008 and she immediately began to start balling! What followed was a serious of letters and journal entries from my time in East Asia that I would write whenever I missed her or couldn't talk to her. The journal had been in China on the Great Wall, Singapore, and Malaysia before eventually making its way to her!

She says she still had no idea that anything was coming at this point, but I then proceeded to grab one more small gift that I had for her, wrapped in tissue paper. She unwrapped the paper and found a much smaller journal. The first page said something like, "Amy, the last chapter of our lives is finally closed and we get to move on to a new one. Some pages might contain some ugly things, but others will be absolutely beautiful, and what's most important is that it's OURS. So if you're up for the adventure, turn the page..."

And in the next page was a box cut out of the rest of the journal with an engagement ring sitting in it! And...she said yes! Technically, there was just a lot of crying for the first several minutes, but she eventually got around to giving me some sort of verbal confirmation! :)

It was a perfect day and we got to take our time and enjoy the moment with no one else around. We drove back to Madison and celebrated at The Great Dane, our favorite restaurant, before we started making calls and telling everyone.

We are planning on getting married on Friday, April 16th at Blackhawk Church in Madison and you can pray for us as we try to figure out what comes after that!

Greek Ministry and Pioneering New Movements

Sorry it's been so long. Then again, I apologize for that just about every time I leave a new post. I won't make any promises to do this more regularly because I'll probably fail to follow through. :)

We're at a point in the semester where I am finally feeling like I know what I should be doing when I step on campus. There are so many different stories and happenings that I could highlight from the past several months, but for now, I'll just jump in at the most recent things.

A couple weeks ago as a form of outreach, our students decided to write out their “stories” and to post them online for everyone to see. The results have been overwhelmingly positive. Over 9,000 DIFFERENT people read at least one story in just the first week they were up and people continue to view them every day. Check out my story here: http://uwsi.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/chris-story/

But what’s even cooler is if you click on some of the other peoples’ stories on the right and hear first-hand how God has been working on campus at the UW-Madison in and through our movement. It probably won’t take long looking through the stories to find someone that decided to follow Jesus sometime in college. I’ve loved reading through many of these and hearing about how God’s worked on campus, many times without us even knowing it…until now!

This past Sunday night, we did our fourth presentation in a fraternity so far this semester. In about 12 minutes before the house meetings, we go in, explain what our organization is all about, what we do on campus, we share the Gospel and an athlete from campus like Chris Maragos or Luke Swan gives their testimony. So far we've been able to share the Gospel with over 130 fraternity men!

I've shared the Gospel many, many times (it's my job!), but there's something terrifying about walking into a Greek fraternity through the sticky residue left from the beer spilled the night before, out into the middle of 30-50 men. It's a completely different culture, both compared to the rest of the campus and because of the many backgrounds and religions of its members, and something I'm still getting the hang of. It scares me every time, but every time it turns out to be very rewarding and the feedback we've gotten has been incredibly positive.

Today, several of us went to UW-Whitewater in an attempt to surface possible leaders to launch a contextualized ministry nationally known as IMPACT, that is directed toward African-American students. On our way down, we had no idea what we would find or how productive the day would be, but through references of people giving us contact information for others they thought might be able to help us out, we were able to sit down and talk to four different believers on campus before we left for the day! We found that there were already several pockets of African-American believers on campus, they just don't know about each other, aren't very well resourced, and often don't really feel like they have a place on campus where they can come together and worship. It was a very fun and encouraging day, and hopefully the beginning steps toward African-American students being an influential presence on campus for the Gospel.

I make no promises, but stay tuned for more posts...