Loving the Body of Christ

This is excepts of a devotional I put together and delivered to OCC's Williamson Dorm recently. This devotional is specifically aimed for Bible college students.

The church is referred to as the bride of Christ and the body of Christ. I do not have to read much in the New Testament to see the Lord's heart for the body. Because of this, students that are preparing to lead the body have to wrestle with their levels of involvement in the body and their preparation to lead. I would ask that every student wrestle with a handful of questions as they process their connection with His bride.

1. Does your time and ministry reflect your future goals?
If you want to lead the body, do you love her and spend time investing in her even when you are not leading? ie. go to church.

2. Does your current community demonstrate the diversity of the body of Christ?
Does everyone that you regularly spend time with share a lot in common? ie. age, season of life, similarity in stages of discipleship journey.

3. What is Bible college's role in your ministry development?
A Bible college is an academic institution, not a professional training center. ie. the college gives you book smarts, the church/experiences give you street smarts.

4. What season of life are you in?
Learning or doing? Both can and should happen together, but different seasons will tip the scales one way or another. Does your life reflect realization and submission to the season that your in? ie. are you doing more learning than doing?

5. Is your current involvement conducive for learning?
-Is there consistency in your walk with Christ? ie. moral integrity
-Do you have balanced ministry opportunities? ie. do you get to shepherd more than you teach?
-Do you have systems in your life to see yourself accurately as a minister? ie. how do you know that you are developing bad habits? Who is refining your skills? Is there diversity in those that help you? You will always learn best from those who have and continue to do ministry successfully. Peer learning is capped by your peer's own experience.

6. Who are you influencing by your example?
Upperclassmen taking underclassmen with them to their ministries assume the role of primary teacher to that student. Are you OK with that role?

7. What is best for the local church?
-We must wrestle what is ultimately best for the local church, not just the temporary.
-We must wrestle with what is best for your ministry development.
-Randy gave a good word when he stated that every person training to serve the kingdom needs two things in their life. First, they need a regular and consistent place to shepherd, not just teach or preach. Second, they need a diversified team of people to do ministry with.

I believe that the status quo of ministry involvement can hinder and prevent the student from holistic preparation. I believe that it is time to wrestle with the patterns and ask these questions for the betterment of the bride and body of Christ for her benefit and ours.

The “Tells” of High School Seniors Continued…

This is the continuation of my May CHCC Newsletter.

Here is a summary to catch you up. Just like people playing poker, high school seniors give away their level of growth if you know how to read the signs. Most high school seniors follow a pattern that we can observe and hopefully pick up on to help them make the transition into adulthood in their faith.

Tell #1: Their current level of involvement in the church. If they are still a regular part of the youth group, this is a good sign. It’s not guaranteed that they will hold to their faith in college, but it is a good start. It either means that they are still pursuing their faith or that they are going because you as parents as still encouraging them…good for you!

Tell #2: Where they sit in church immediately after graduation. I find that students often transition quickly from sitting with their friends in church to sitting with their parents. This generally means that their church support system is mainly their parents—no longer their peers. This can present a problem with them connecting in ministries within the church and their campus that can help them grow.

Tell #3: Where they connect or don’t connect in the first month of college. It seems pretty obvious, but the first month is critical. Connecting with the church, college age, or campus ministry is almost a guarantee that they will be successful in maintaining and growing their faith throughout college. No connection means that they might struggle.

Tell #4: Living at home. I find that one of the largest obstacles for a student to overcome is living at home while attending Ozark, Southern, or Crowder. While this is definitely a generalization with loads of exceptions, it is a pattern that I see. Living at home does not demand the student to put themselves out there relationally or spiritually. This is a necessary part of growth.

Things that are not tells that you would think should be on the list:

Rebellion. Rebellion is wrong, but the quest for independence is normal and appropriate. Recognizing this as a parent and allowing avenues for healthy independence is important.

Friendships falling apart. It is part of rediscovering one’s self. Relax. It is a very normal part of growing up.

Questions. Again, college is rediscovering one’s self. I love honest questions; they mean that the student is thinking.

Not going to school. Breaks are normal. The key is forward momentum. If the student is working to save, make sure he or she is actually saving. Or, even better, help them find a job that can give them experience in the field they are interested in.

I hope that this list helps. Please feel free to post comments, e-mail me (jquade@chcchurch.org) or Facebook me.

Add As Friend?

I have always been puzzled by the need/desire to be connected to so many people I am really not connected to. Sure, I would at least say hi to most of my Facebook friends if I saw them in reality, but they are very few that I would say actually, truly know me. In fact, I would like to think that my wall let's you know me, but is that entirely true? I have a Seinfeld app on my wall. I love Seinfeld, but I haven't really watched that show in years. If I was to be totally honest, I would put up a Battlestar Galactica app, but I don't. Why? Because partially because of Jim Halpert dissing Dwight Strute. But mostly, I want me wall to reflect not me, but the ideal me. I project that which I want you to see. I guess to simplify things: we all wear masks, but my Facebook mask makes me look better than the mask that I can wear in public. My Facebook mask can have videos on it.
Facebook is like a gas station that doesn't take a card at the pump. Or at least that is what makes sense in my mind. When I have to choose between a gas station where I can pay at the pump, or one that I have to go inside to pay, I will choose the pay at the pump every time. In fact, I have intentionally gone a little out of my way, wasting gas, to find a gas station that I can pay at the pump. The reason is that paying at the pump minimizes my contact with people. Crazy thought for an extrovert, but I like the concept of the bare minimum human contact with those I don't really know. Facebook allows me to thrive on this. I can write quick comments on your wall, in and out, and I never have to really look you in the eyes.
Facebook’s popularity must tie into some intrinsic need that people have. Maybe it is a need to fuel my human desire for curiosity. I wonder how this person is doing; what is going on with them; or, the very spiritual: how can I pray for them. Anything to justify my desire to snooping. We get mad at Facebook snoopers, but we publish the ideal us for them to see. We update our status, upload photos from our camera, and send each other posts. The truth is that by our won actions we prove that we want snoopers, or I might word it; we want people to be interested in us. There are few things as odd to me as the update. Who cares if I am doing laundry now or watching a show. I need to publish my activities? To what end? We want/need to be known. Sometimes we are trying to make statements about who we are, sometimes they are the equivalent of a kid screaming in the supermarket, or maybe they are passive forms of asking for investment or attention.
I hit 800 friends on Facebook today. 800 people that I am pretty sure I mostly know. 750 people that I think I would talk to and be at least on the surface polite with. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad those 800 people accepted me as friend, but what type of relationships can I possibly hope to have with all those people. Michael Phelps locked up Facebook after he won the gold medals in the Olympics due to his friend requests over-maxed the Facebook limit of 5,000. 'It’s funny,' Phelps said. 'Every now and then you get on Facebook and you have people you see and you’re like, "Wow, I went to school with them and they never said a single word to me and now they’re trying to be my friend." I think it’s funny.' Why so many, a popularity game for all to see, or maybe a popularity game in my own head? Regardless, I have 800 friends, how many do you have?

You see Facebook is safe. I can be the ideal me, having limited and very protected relationships with people, and find a place where I hope that people will notice me and see me as a unique and special individual. Pity me if this is the only way that I can find it. Sorting through the masks, blinded by my own, just hoping that one more person will add me as friend. Facebook is not the place for me to build relationships, but maybe at its best it can be a place for me to maintain them.

A Life Well Lived-My Grandpa's funeral sermon I got to share at his funeral last week.

My Aunt Noami undertook a great project recently. She assembled a collection of stories and memories about grandpa and grandma. Children, grandkids, cousins, uncles and aunts, and great grandchildren separated by great distances and seasons of life. She pulled in a collected work from people scattered all over the nation. It is quite the accomplishment. With family everywhere at great distances from each other and our grandparents it is amazing that the one grandchild who didn’t turn in their story lives the closest to them, me. Well, Aunt Naomi, here it is.

At Christmas this year we sat down as a family and read some of the stories. We passed around the book reading our stories as Grandpa nodded off time to time and Grandma wiped away her tears. It was there that I noticed something that was later confirmed to me a few weeks later when I sat in Denver in the living room of my Uncle John and Aunt Sheri with my cousins Jason and Marlow. The memories that I have come to cherish about grandpa and grandma were not unique to me, they were shared. All my family remembers private conversations about grandpa keeping his chair and falling asleep. We remember the clock in the living room, the one-piece jumpsuits, the squirrel hunting and feeds, the grandchildren vacations, and prayers around the dinner table before grandpa eventually wipes his plate completely clean with that one last piece of bread. We all remember the love, the acceptance, the forgiveness, the hugs and, at least for me, sometimes awkward kisses on the lips. As I listened to the stories and contemplated all the things that I received that I thought were unique to me I was surprised that I was not even the slightest bit jealous. To receive such an indiscriminant love does not make one envious, it makes one proud. Proud to have received something so special, so pure, that can only come from a truly unique person. It actually makes me feel sad for the one who has not known that kind of love.

A couple of years ago I performed a wedding for a young family. Several weeks after the wedding the father-in-law passed away and the husband promptly left his family. The marriage was to appease a dying man not for love and commitment. I met with the young man in Carthage to listen to his heart and plead the case of his family. He didn’t want to change the choice that he had made and left his wife and daughter. It broke my heart. After our appointment I decided to swing by grandpa and grandma’s house as I was already in Carthage. It didn’t take long for grandpa to pick up on my heart-ache and I told him the story. Up to this point I had respected grandpa as a grandparent, as a man, father, husband, and a good church-going Christian, but I learned to respect grandpa in a different way that day. He grabbed his Bible and said, “Josh let me share with you what lifts my spirits.” He opened the Bible and began to share one of his favorite passages with me. I had prayed with grandpa before, heard him read the devotionals at night, gone to church with him, helped him even mow the church grounds, but it was then that I saw my grandpa’s personal relationship with Jesus more clearly than I had ever seen it before. Ironically he opened his Bible to Hebrews 11, the chapter about the champions of faith. That chapter holds the stories of people who overcame great adversity and held true to right living. Great men like Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and Moses are commended for their greatest achievement: they have become more like God. Grandpa believed in something that I cannot prove to you today. He believed that there is something greater than us and someplace greater than this place, and I believe he is there right now. I believe not because he was simply a good man who did good things, I believe because he had real and personal faith in Jesus. My grandpa too is a champion of faith and his greatest achievement is that he had become always increasingly like God. He loved so indiscriminately, had so much forgiveness, and we all share such equally great memories because that is a reflection of Jesus, grandpa’s Lord and Savior. I believe that I speak on behalf of the family when I say that we will miss him and we are honored to have known him and had him know us. My grandpa was truly a great man whose story cannot fit into an obituary or funeral sermon. But maybe, with the Lord’s help, his story lives on in us as I strive to be like him and who he chose to be like, Jesus.

Let me finish with the verse that my grandpa gave to encourage me that lonely day, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Thank you.

My first whiff of upcoming college freshmen (My lament for myself)

The college age is preparing to bring in the next high school senior class. *WARNING* *CRITICAL ALERT* Please do not read any farther if you are a high school senior, college freshman, or sensitive person who sees all people as truly and deeply unique.

So, as I was getting to, the college age is preparing to bring in the next high school senior class. I don’t know if it is obsessive amount of House that I have watched lately or just the amount of years I have under me now in college age ministry, but I have a tough time not being bored. All things repeat, all things repeat. It is so hard for me to look at a senior and not describe to them their next 2 years of life, and the worst part is that if I allow myself to do it, I am almost always right. It’s not that I am super intelligent, just observant. Seniors will soon graduate and talk of being friends forever, play the same songs at their graduation, and embrace the extreme perpetual nature of pre-adulthood until they are shocked into reality by true responsibility or irrelevancy. The permission of society to see ones self as an independent individual goes rapidly to the brain and eats away the essence of intelligence. I really don’t think that this is avoidable, it is part of growing up, maturing.

I just wish one thing: that they would know why. I have always stated the importance of the question why. It is what separates the foolish college freshman and the foolish college freshman who understands why they are foolish (Foolishness in college freshmen is hard to avoid). And understanding why is half the battle (No GI Joe history here). Now as I want all those who are Christians to continue to grow in Him, for those that leave Him or will leave Him, I long for an honest look at why. I wish they would own up to the truth: I had my parents faith, I am too weak to avoid temptation, I was a Christian by association only, whatever. Any of those things are better than the trailing off of faith as they sit for the first time ever with their parents in the back of the worship center.

I guess it’s the predictability that breaks my heart. The repetitiveness of promises made and not understood, the pleading of friends, family, and ministers to maintain consistency, the arrogance of believing that one has arrived, the cold shoulder of perceived normality. Maybe I do want seniors to read this, maybe it will open our eyes. And maybe it will push me to the best possible and predicable end: pleading with God again for strength and their souls.