Passing Mid-terms 101
This is mid-term week here at Grace College. A couple weeks ago in my Letters genre (Bible class where we study the letters of the Bible) two friends and I gave a presentation on the book of 2 Corinthians. During the presentation we used cookies to keep people's attention and encourage participation. Well the prof. seemed to get the biggest kick out of it and thouroughly enjoyed the cookies. We joke around with this prof and have fun with him before and after class. So my friend Ashley suggested we make him cookies and give them to him before the midterm. So we did. While the cookies were baking we decided to write him a letter based on everything we have learned about writing letters in NT times. Here is our wonderful letter.
Winona Lake, Indiana
February 28, 2006
Ashley Nicole Masten and Hannah Elizabeth Ray to their gracious professor O’Hare. Greetings! We hope this finds you in good health.
Each week we look forward to the blessing that God has given us to learn from you. We are thankful that God has blessed you to convey messages about Himself.
As you know from your experience as a student, midterm time is difficult for any student. We have studied individually, in groups, e-mailed you to gain clarification, and made study sheets. We also recognize that as you grade papers it is strenuous to continually write “A’s” on papers. In order to aid you in your “A” writing stamina, we are providing you with some energy in the chocolate chip cookie form.
Throughout our college experience, we have observed that it is much easier to write a “C” than an “A”. We have seen friends study long hours only to receive the dreaded “C”. Therefore, we are hoping to provide our professors with the energy they would need to complete the pen strokes necessary for an “A”.
Many professors believe that giving out to many A’s means they are to easy. However, students spend hours studying and as you have seen we have done this. Therefore, a great many students receiving an “A” does not show low quality in the professor, but diligence in the students.
We are asking you to please remember the stress of midterms as you grade these tests.
Greet your wife and sons with a holy kiss. Bob and Kathy Masten and Bruce and Betty Ray send their greetings and thanks for your participation in their children’s academic success.
We were excited to get to class tonight. When we got there he wasn't there yet so we left the cookies and the letter (tied up to look like a scroll) sitting on the podium for him to find when he got there. Well a few minutes before class was supposed to start the chair of the Bible department walked in and said he would be giving us our exam. Now I knew most of the Bible department would not find this funny but I didn't know this guy well enough to know if he would. Well Ashley is braver than I am, so she went up to ask if he was going to see our prof that week. He said he wouldn't and she explained to him everything and told him he had to read the letter. He found this letter so funny, and decided to read it to the whole class. He ends by saying "Some might call this brown nosing, but I call it creative".
So yes you read correctly... The way to pass midterms is to bribe your way through it! I just wish I could be there when Prof O'hare reads it because he is going to think it is funny...
Well I must get back to working on stuff for this week... one more test and project... a couple class periods and then it will be spring break...
The Great Commission
In my last post I mentioned Dale and Jononlyn Fincher and their
ministry. I have been thinking about another thing he discussed during one of our conversations. He talked about how few really strive to follow the Great Commission. Many have taken this passage and watered it down to mean that the Christian's goal in life is to get people saved. This leads to all kinds of wonderful revivals and camp salvation stories. However, we then have all these "christians" who are not living any differently. This has completely affected the church to the point that there often is not a distinction between a Christian life and lives of those in the world.
In the conversation he contributed this in part to a lack of understanding of the Great Commission. As I said earlier many people believe this means the goal of the Christian should be to get people saved. Well what does the passage actually say?
Matthew 28:19-20
All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of teh Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching tehm to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.
Christ doesn't say "Go and get people saved". One very obvious reason for this is that is not our job. We can't save people, Christ alone can.
Christ tells his disciples to go and make disciples. His disciples had just spent three years being discipled and taught by him. They were called, they responded to the call, and they learned what that call meant. Now they are told to go and make disciples, baptize, and teach them to observe Christ's commands.
You see the attitude that Christian's are supposed to "go get people saved", has damaged the church. We obey the first part of the command well. We go and call others to "become a disciple of Christ". Sometimes the second part is even observed. We get them baptized. However, the issue of teaching others to observe Christ's commands is left out of many ministries. We simply drop them once we can count them in the "saved" column of the score card.
Why? I think part of the answer is it is to time consuming and not product oriented. I have spent three summers working with a mission. Through that I have gotten a glimpse into many mission philosophies. A constant struggle of missions is to financially support itself. Many of the financial supporters are not involved directly with the mission, they simply send a check. Because humans like to see a product where we put our money, the mission has preassure to deliver a product. That product is of course "souls". In our super sizing world more is always better. If at the end of the summer if we can report to our supporters that "75 children were saved", we will probably continue to receive financial support or maybe get more so we can continue our programs and maybe add more. It is not as exciting to read "We discipled two children who had committed their lives to christ and helped them become part of a church" in a mission report. The fact is that the time our ministry took to get those 75 children saved was less than the time it took to disciple those two.
Many Christian's (including myself) have watered down this passage and believe the focus is on numbers. However, Christ's own ministry tells us something different. Christ calls us to be disciple makers not soul savers. I pray that the church and my own heart would gain this focus as we interact with a lost world! We need to train those who have committed their lives to Christ, to obey His commands.
Faith and Life
Recently I have been thinking a lot about the future and where God wants me. This is in a lot of ways natural because I will be graduating in 82 days according to the countdown calander. It is odd to realize in 82 days I don't know what I will be doing. This is where faith comes in.
As I have been thinking about this, we had a couple come in to speak in chapel last week. Dale and Jonalyn Fincher have started an organization with a motto of "Sturdy answers, better souls". You can find their website
here (he has written a wonderful article on why the Movie "The Lion the Witch and the Waredrobe" was so dissappointing... I mentioned in a conversation with him how I didn't like the movie as well as the book and he told me to read the article and I loved it :)) Anyway as a friend and I were talking to Dale one evening, he talked about the concept of faith and how it has gotten so twisted in Christian minds. It has become a "feeling" that the Holy Spirit gives us. He argued that was a complete twisting of scripture. The concept of "a leap of faith" or "childlike faith" were concepts that went against the word of God.
Now I am going to make a huge jump over to a Bible project I just had... and if anyone is reading it I will put it all together in the end (I think). For my Bible elective I am taking a class where we are studying the letters of the Bible (the epistles). In that class we had a group project where we were supposed to explain one of these books. My group chose 2 Corinthians and I was assigned the job of analyzing about 5 verses and explaining the theology of those verses. The verses I chose to do was 2 Cor. 4: 16 - 5:5. In this passage Paul argues that even though they are experiencing suffering they have hope. What I found interesting in this passage was that this hope or faith was not a feeling. It was in spite of what he was feeling. Instead it rested on the fact that Christ said in John that he was going to build a heavenly home for us and that the Holy Spirit was being sent to guarentee our heavenly home. As I was studying the issue of faith and hope based on this letter I went over to Hebrews 11:1 where we see a definition of faith. As we read the chapter we recognize that all these examples of faith never acted on a feeling. Instead, they believed the promises of God and grasped them in their life.
As I was talking with Dale all this came to mind and it began to make sense a little more. Faith is not a leap. Faith is not something that just occurs. Faith is knowing and trusting the promises of God and living life in light of those promises even when everything around you is telling you otherwise (just as Paul did as he wrote 2 Corinthians). So even when I feel as though I am lost and no one knows where I should go, the promises of God tell me that he will direct my paths, that he will make my paths straight, that he has a plan. Even though in 82 days I will have a college diploma and not know what I am going to do with it, God knows, and it is my responsibility to grasp those promises and live in faithfulness to him in the meantime. And even on those days that I don't know if I can trust God and decide I know what is best, I can look back at the people of faith mentioned in Hebrews 11 and see that although they showed great faith they also stumbled, and yet God didn't give up on them.
If anyone wants a good laugh check out
Charity Blackwood's blog. The post I am talking about is the Terrible, Horrible, No good, Very bad day. If you have never read that book you may not enjoy it as much as I did. But don't despair, go to the local library I am sure they have the book. It will take you five minutes to read and you will be a much better person for having read it. Then you can go to Charity's post and enjoy the humor in it.
lots of stuff...
Well I have been thinking a lot recently, which may be quite dangerous so I won't blame you if you duck.
This week was hip hop week in chapel. We had two speakers who have studied this culture come in and share with us things that it tells us about ourselves (christians). These two men are well known men in inner city ministry groups. They really made me think a lot. I have enjoyed rap music to some extent for awhile because I really think it is thought provoking. The people who write it really know they are looking for and can explain in human terms why they haven't found it. During chapel these men used the words of rappers to show problems in the church (that are quite real) and then addressed those problems with scriptural answers. Although I didn't agree with all the conclusions these men made I appreciated that they were willing to honestly look at a culture and seek to understand it. We as Christians are often quick to judge a culture as bad and therefore have nothing to do with it. But aren't we called to go and be witnesses in the dark places. There is a lot of trash in rap music but there is also a lot of true hurtful life experiences.
One of the most interesting songs we discussed was one in which the rapper states "curiosity killed the catechism"
(all the lyrics to the song can be found here). This song really is an idictment on many ways that we minister. He knows that religion should be a lifestyle but what he is seeing isn't that. He knows that there is truth but all he sees is people memorizing catechism. Ministry in general and particuarly inner city ministry deserves many of the charges this man brings forth. This week just reminded me again of the importance of listening to culture as they discuss the church. There is truth in what unbelievers are saying about us. Instead of listening we are condeming them as evil.
Graduation is less than 100 days away (more like 90 now)... My roomate has a countdown calander and if it is correct 91 days. Since that is including the breaks we have left I probably have less than 80 days left to spend on this campus. It is really quite sad. I really can't imagine leaving here and never coming back. This place has been a refuge for me. It has been a safe place to grow and change. It has been the place that I have called home for the last few years. In a few short weeks my friends and I will be graduating and moving all over the country maybe even the world. It is times like this that I wish I had a button that I could slow down time with. But I know life keeps going and God has an amazing place planned for me and I am excited about that!
I wish I knew where I was going to get a job next year. My roomates mom works for a school district between Peru and Kokomo Indiana (near where the CYA conference is) and she told me last night there is a 3rd grade position opening up there. As my roomate and I talked about it I again realized how much I want to live in Indianapolis. During the conversation I realized that most likely I could at least get an assistant teaching position in the fall. If I got an in like that hopefully by Christmas a head teacher position would open up that I could take.
My new favorite verse is Col. 3:3 For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
Well I have lots of children's books to read for my children's lit class, so I will leave you with that!
