Most summers I move for two weeks. I live in Tacoma (or occasionally Portland) with a group of students from throughout the Northwest. We sleep on floors, eat on about $5 a day, work with the poor and, pray and study scripture like they are the most precious gifts in the world. Our cellphones live in boxes, unused and ignored, and our laptops stay home.
It is a beautiful experience that I am once again recruiting for. When I try to invite people, I am constantly struck at the disconnect between how good summit is, and how difficult it is to articulate its value. I am convinced that summit will be the best, most valuable and yes, the most fun two weeks of any student's summer. However, it never sounds like it will be. It just sounds hard. Scary. Financially irresponsible. Semesters are always long and summit sounds like it will only make them longer.
Here's the thing though...it's the best thing that I know how to offer students. Yes, it screws with the trajectory of students lives, but it screws with them for the better. Conferences are great, but like Peter, James and John, we can't live on the mountain with Jesus, Moses and Elijah. Summit offers an alternate way to live. Summit asks students to choose between the best the world has to offer and what the Kingdom offers.
Summit may give students stiff backs, caffeine headaches and uncomfortable scriptures, but it also creates soft hearts, clear vision and the dream of a different world.
I am aware this sounds idealistic. In reality, it is difficult to go every single year. Every year two weeks of rest sounds so good. Two weeks of quiet and privacy sounds wonderful. At home, I rarely have to decide how much our team can spare for the homeless man at the door. I rarely pray for strangers or clean empty bottles and needles from an abandoned apartment. Rarely do I need to look into the eyes of a child how who is bitter against all men, because they remind him of his father.
I often have students (usually around their junior year) start to question the value of conferences. They question whether their experiences there make any difference in the "real world". My retort is simple; where God is active is the realist of all worlds. It is what we usually call the real world that blinds and numbs us. The real world is where Super Bowl winners matter more than famine in Africa. The real world is where it makes sense to not actively love someone, because that act of love might be offensive.
What makes Summit good and the lifestyle it teaches us necessary, is that it trains us live in the actual real world, not the facsimile that we (by which of course, I mean "I") become subtly seduced by.
So if you are reading this and you are a supporter or friend of InterVarsity, I ask that you would pray for those considering coming to Tacoma and Portland this summer. Additionally, if you are interested in helping financially support students attending summit, please contact me.
If you are a student...please come! Take the risk. Jesus said that He came so that "they may have life and have it to the full" (John 10:10). Faith is an adventure, please don't settle for less.
Finally, if you are a student who has stumbled upon this blog who is not a follower of Jesus, I want to invite you to come as well. The Christian faith cannot be understood in books alone. It cannot be evaluated from the outside. If you have any curiosity about the faith that your friends seem to so deeply believe in, please come where it is embodied. You will make the project better and I believe that Jesus would love to show you his face within community and among the poor.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
reflections on a changing world
First off, I must say that I am indebted to Pete Grieg of 24/7 Prayer for this post, as he is the one that stirred these thoughts.
2011 was a tough year for much of the world. Japan experienced a tsunami that cost many thousands of lives and did untold damage to the environment that won't be understood for years to come. Tornadoes whipped through the US. Dictators fell and cities were occupied. Many (including my brother) never were not employed a single day during the year.
It is easy to feel off-kilter after such a year. If the environment can wipe you out at any moment, your seemingly stable government can fall and your well-earned career can fall apart at any moment, then what's safe?
There is a tangible feeling of..something in the air right now. 2012 is the end of the world for some. May 2011 was supposed to be the end of the world for others. Tea Partiers want to reclaim their government, while Occupiers want to reclaim their economy. In the Philippines, many would settle for finding loved ones alive and well after recent flooding.
As a Christian, I feel a great pressure to be able to discern "what it all means". I feel like I should be able to turn to a passage in Revelation or one of the Gospels and capture with eerie clarity what age we are in. I, however, feel unable to do so. Simply put, I feel like a driver on an unknown road, navigating more by sense than map.
Maybe leaning into the road analogy is the best way to proceed. There is a commercial in Allstate's popular (and hilarious) "Mayhem" series that I resonate with. These commercials depict an actor who represents all of the possible calamities of life. He can be a raccoon destroying the insulation of your house, a Christmas tree falling off of the roof of your car or a GPS unit leading you astray. In the GPS commercial, he is sitting on the dash of the car, gleefully dispensing bad directions. In our world today, I feel that we need the anti-mayhem...we need someone occupying our dash with proper directions, even if our destination is murky.
In Matthew 6:33, Jesus instructs those who follow Him to: "seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well." This very famous instruction comes in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount; Jesus' ethical treatise is every bit as challenging and inspiring now as it was 2000 years ago. Before this line, Jesus has instructed His people to give quietly to the needy, to endure in prayer, fast essentials in secret, to store treasure (and value) in heaven and finally, to not worry.
Jesus' lordship is a transfer of our priorities. Our priorities shift from the here and now to heaven, "where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal." You could add to that, where governments are not overthrown and where unemployment is not 10%.
This does not mean that Jesus' way is simply disengaging from this world. It means placing your security in another world and kingdom, so you can operate in this world with no pressure to win, succeed or advance. Jesus' way is a way that looks like reckless risk, but in reality there is no risk at all. To live Jesus' way in an unsure time is to drive on the dark, unknown road listening to the dude on your dash because where he is taking you is better than where you were heading anyway.
I am proposing that a feeling of uncertainty creates the opportunity for us all to see more accurately than we ever did before. The world has always been uncertain. When our false security erodes, we are given an opportunity shift our investments to where they belonged in the first place.
If we're not careful, 2012 may make us numb again. The economy may rebound for enough many, that we forget those for whom it did not. Environmental tragedies may slow enough, that we forget the "mundane" tragedies of famine, human trafficking and poverty. We may, again, simply return to an apathetic existence. We may replace our angst with once again competing for the best toys, jobs, grades, homes and spouses.
We live in an opportune time. It is a time when it is perfectly reasonable to ditch reasonable aspirations for Jesus' narrow road. It is an opportune time to bet fully on the Kingdom of God. The hold of money, upward mobility and success has been weakened, but for how long?
I wonder what it looks like to step into something new? What does it look like rediscover just what is that we are made for? In the now seemingly far away era of the early 2000's, the band Switchfoot claimed, "We were meant to live for so much more, we've lost ourselves".
What does it mean to know find ourselves again?
2011 was a tough year for much of the world. Japan experienced a tsunami that cost many thousands of lives and did untold damage to the environment that won't be understood for years to come. Tornadoes whipped through the US. Dictators fell and cities were occupied. Many (including my brother) never were not employed a single day during the year.
It is easy to feel off-kilter after such a year. If the environment can wipe you out at any moment, your seemingly stable government can fall and your well-earned career can fall apart at any moment, then what's safe?
There is a tangible feeling of..something in the air right now. 2012 is the end of the world for some. May 2011 was supposed to be the end of the world for others. Tea Partiers want to reclaim their government, while Occupiers want to reclaim their economy. In the Philippines, many would settle for finding loved ones alive and well after recent flooding.
As a Christian, I feel a great pressure to be able to discern "what it all means". I feel like I should be able to turn to a passage in Revelation or one of the Gospels and capture with eerie clarity what age we are in. I, however, feel unable to do so. Simply put, I feel like a driver on an unknown road, navigating more by sense than map.
Maybe leaning into the road analogy is the best way to proceed. There is a commercial in Allstate's popular (and hilarious) "Mayhem" series that I resonate with. These commercials depict an actor who represents all of the possible calamities of life. He can be a raccoon destroying the insulation of your house, a Christmas tree falling off of the roof of your car or a GPS unit leading you astray. In the GPS commercial, he is sitting on the dash of the car, gleefully dispensing bad directions. In our world today, I feel that we need the anti-mayhem...we need someone occupying our dash with proper directions, even if our destination is murky.
In Matthew 6:33, Jesus instructs those who follow Him to: "seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well." This very famous instruction comes in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount; Jesus' ethical treatise is every bit as challenging and inspiring now as it was 2000 years ago. Before this line, Jesus has instructed His people to give quietly to the needy, to endure in prayer, fast essentials in secret, to store treasure (and value) in heaven and finally, to not worry.
Jesus' lordship is a transfer of our priorities. Our priorities shift from the here and now to heaven, "where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal." You could add to that, where governments are not overthrown and where unemployment is not 10%.
This does not mean that Jesus' way is simply disengaging from this world. It means placing your security in another world and kingdom, so you can operate in this world with no pressure to win, succeed or advance. Jesus' way is a way that looks like reckless risk, but in reality there is no risk at all. To live Jesus' way in an unsure time is to drive on the dark, unknown road listening to the dude on your dash because where he is taking you is better than where you were heading anyway.
I am proposing that a feeling of uncertainty creates the opportunity for us all to see more accurately than we ever did before. The world has always been uncertain. When our false security erodes, we are given an opportunity shift our investments to where they belonged in the first place.
If we're not careful, 2012 may make us numb again. The economy may rebound for enough many, that we forget those for whom it did not. Environmental tragedies may slow enough, that we forget the "mundane" tragedies of famine, human trafficking and poverty. We may, again, simply return to an apathetic existence. We may replace our angst with once again competing for the best toys, jobs, grades, homes and spouses.
We live in an opportune time. It is a time when it is perfectly reasonable to ditch reasonable aspirations for Jesus' narrow road. It is an opportune time to bet fully on the Kingdom of God. The hold of money, upward mobility and success has been weakened, but for how long?
I wonder what it looks like to step into something new? What does it look like rediscover just what is that we are made for? In the now seemingly far away era of the early 2000's, the band Switchfoot claimed, "We were meant to live for so much more, we've lost ourselves".
What does it mean to know find ourselves again?
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