When I left the University of Kentucky I was confident in my call and excited about going back home. I was also excited about being in the CCO. An organization that I felt I could make a serious contribution to immediately. It also encouraged me to work directly out of a church. There was no reason to feel that I wasn't going to be a campus minister for a long time.
That is until I actually started working in the church. I had a real tough time rectifying the gifts God gave me with the particular demands that my supervisors at the church placed on me. The position wasn't getting better and confusion about why I was there set in. I joined seminary and started to see ministry from different angles. I enrolled in seminary part time and took Church History that happened to be taught from an Eastern perspective. The things I was learning in this class was nothing I was experiencing in the church I was working in. The church I was working at recognized the difference of their desire for my position and mine and decided to not renew their contract with me (to explain would require a whole new series of blogs). If I wanted to continue the work I felt called to do I needed to move away to Ohio for there was a position at Ohio State that would be a good fit.
Campus ministry is the only sense of call next to being in seminary I was certain about. I wrestle and sometimes feel guilty if it is something I will be called back into after seminary. I love campus ministry and if you read the first "call" post, I suggested that I wanted to teach in college. This is a direct outpouring of my love of college students and the university.
Here is my dilemma, I have seen good men and women doing great work on campus let go or even worse made financially crippled due to poor church interaction with campus ministry. This might sound shallow but after seminary, how can I take this profession that I excel at seriously if the church as a whole treats it with a low amount of respect?
I have a lot of positive opinions about the answer to this question because I love campus ministry but I pose the question to hear what others think because right now it seems to be a big obstacle for my thinking through campus ministry as a profession.
(p.s.not to say that there are not some churches highly committed to campus ministry, because there are)
-Next blog OSU-
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
Hey Dan,
we miss you a lot here. i wrote a long comment, but it was really a gripe-fest towards the church. i deleted it. i just like you a lot. i agree that you are very gifted for college ministry!
Thanks Cory. I miss you guys as well. Thank you for the kind words. Though I am interested to read some of the gripe.
The Church is a very, very great and difficult place. Some have been so burned by the church that they can never see the wonder of it. Some only see wonder and turn a blind eye to the ugly underbelly.
It's appropriate, then, that in a series of posts on "Call," you are talking about working in a church. I strongly fell that this is a Call - because if God has not put you in that situation and if you are not confident in that fact and are sustained by knowing you are doing what God has called you to do, then you will burn out. In other words, it takes God's grace to do this difficult work. But, at the same time, the rewards of doing what God has called you to do is amazing. You might not always feel "joy" and may often feel "unquietness" but you will believe in your heart that God is using you for his glory and in the transformation of others for the good of his Creation.
I've started reading NT Wright's devotional book, "Reflecting the Glory." I couldn't help but think of you and your ministry "call" when I read his words. He starts out with looking at Paul and his frustrations in ministry - as portrayed in 2 Corinthians.
"In 2 Corinthians 1:8, he speaks of being so unbearably crushed that he despaired of life itself. Part of the weight that was crushing him was the fact that the Corinthian church, with whom he had lived and worked for quite some time, was casually rejecting him... He is writing to say that the pain he has received, and the puzzles, failings, and difficulties he is enduring because of their rejection, are not signs that he failed as an apostle. They are, in fact, the signs of a true apostle, bearing in his body the dying of Jesus as well as the life of Jesus. Accordingly, the whole middle section of 2 Corinthians (chs. 3-6) examines what it means to have the live and faithfulness of God in Jesus worked out by the Spirit in Christian ministry."
Post a Comment