I was just looking over some comments on a Facebook status I posted and as I chuckled I thought about  how good it is to really be known.  It is a deeply satisfying feeling.  As our pastor says, “Fully known and fully loved” - deeply satisfying.

This is a lot of ministry.  Paul said it this way.

    ¹⁰You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, ¹¹persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. ¹²In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, ¹³while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. ¹⁴But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, ¹⁵and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.   2 Timothy 3

Timothy knew Paul fully well.  He had spent untold hours with him, beginning with hearing him speak and then seeing him stoned and left for dead.He knew not only what he taught, but how he lived. You learn a lot by being around someone, not just when you have a Bible open, but when you have your life open.  Paul was not perfect and probably had to work a bit to keep relationships clear and reconcile things from time to time.  Yet he could say to Tim to continue in what he was convinced of because he knew those he had learned from.

Paul consistently and intentionally speaks of this:

⁸We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. ⁹Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. 1 Thess. 2

⁹Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.  Philippians 4

¹Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ. ²I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the teachings,^[a] just as I passed them on to you.  1 Corinthians 11

So it seems Paul’s method of discipleship was not just preaching alone, but fully sharing his life - the good and the bad and how he handled the bad and the good.

And we do all we can to model this method with students.  Our homes are open to students and they are in it regularly - though not all the time.  They are able to see our lives and we are known.  Hopefully and prayerfully and intentionally, people around us are able to be more like Jesus because of this, or at least understand Jesus’ way.

It is good to be fully known and fully loved.  It is good to be used by God to move students closer to Jesus.  It is good to have people know you on Facebook.  It is better to have them in your house.

As most of you know, Christian Challenge, while operating as non-denominational of campus, is a part of the Southern Baptist family of collegiate ministries around the world.  This is a very large family and we are glad to be in this family for several reasons.  Ed Stetzer has a great post about why he is Southern Baptist which summarizes reasons very well.  Check out the comments also.

Last week after our study on Monday night, one of the students had a question about the Bible.  Two hours later I looked up and everyone was gone and my family had gone to bed.  Two and a half more hours later I took him back to the dorms.  He is trying to decide if this God and Jesus and Bible thing is really true and worth following, so he had a lot of sincere questions.

Sometimes student ministry fits in a somewhat regular schedule and many times it doesn’t.  We have a lifestyle job instead of a time clock job. So normal doesn’t always apply.  Monday nights may end at 8:30 or 1 am.  Wednesday nights our after weekly meeting talking may end at 10 or midnight.  Friday nights our Friday Night Thing may end … well, you just never know.

The common thread through this is discipleship.  Some of the time may be fun and most of the time there are good discussions where we share life together, understand Jesus better, encourage one another in the midst of present circumstances, etc.   And then sometimes the most powerful discipleship words are “I’m going to bed.”

Sometimes in student ministry you get an opportunity to serve at a moment’s notice.  Last weekend we were able to host 5 guys from a ministry in Nebraska who had come to Denver for a big concert.  We found out the details the night they were going to stay with us.  So all 5 holed up in our basement Friday night after the Friday Night Thing.  We had a great time around the late breakfast table on Saturday.

One of our themes this semester has been ‘Intellectual Faith’.  Guest speakers have been unpacking this for us.  For many students this phrase is an oxymoron - reason and faith just can’t go together because they are two separate categories.  That’s not true and we have had several very smart faculty address this issue.  Check out Reasonable Faith which offers all sorts of articles and resources.  We are hoping more and more students begin to love God with their minds and bring the Kingdom into their studies and classes so that even more students will begin to see that they don’t have to throw away their brains to follow Jesus.

We have put a wrap on the Fall semester.  Things ended with two Christmas parties - one for our freshmen Bible study which was fun except that none of the girls could come (pray for Jenna who broke her arm snowboarding just before) and a big Challenge party with white elephant gifts, ugly Christmas sweaters (for a contest), and lots of food and hot chocolate and Bangladeshi tea.

It was a transition semester.  Sometimes people say this as a nice way of saying bad, or hard, or, in our case, just transitional.  A large group of upperclassmen moved on ( Julee and I were able to enjoy some premarital counseling with 2 of these) leaving a younger group than we’ve had before.  This meant our leadership team had a different makeup.  We also transitioned our leadership team from meeting once a month to once a week.  This was a big change that will take another semester or two to become rooted in the ministry.  Our leaders have counted the cost and appreciated meeting once a week.

So it has been a transition, but some things remain unchanged.  Several students are around who don’t know Jesus, but are moving closer to Him. There are always some people who have a few hurdles to clear before they are ready to commit their lives to Jesus.  Thats why we are here to expose wrong thinking (CU doesn’t always help give students right thinking), to assist and encourage and love people and help them move to acknowledging Christ as their Savior and Lord.

Enjoyed a good game of knock out at our Friday Night Thing tonight.  Played on a basketball court with two balls, players line up behind the free throw line.  The first in line shoots and then then next person tries to make a basket before the player in front.  If the player behind you makes a basket before you, then you are knocked out.  This game is great fun and we had almost 20 people playing tonight.  Its really fun when someone like Hudson or Kylee knocks one of the stud students out.

Sharing life and playing like this make for some great ministry times as well.

A girl came to our freshmen study this week who we had been in contact with since before school began.  Over 6 weeks!  Just an example of how long it can take to have some new students check Challenge out.  She was very excited to be at our study; it had just taken 6 weeks to have a chance to attend.

We have just wrapped up our end of the year frenzyflurry.  Wow!  Things don’t wind down, they wind up and up and up and then drop off suddenly.  Last Wednesday we had our last meeting, which for us is a Spring Banquet.  It was very encouraging.  The seniors graduating were honored by their peers, our Japanese friends were recognized and given special gifts, a slide show recapped the whole year, and we had really good food at a great restaurant in the foothills.

Following the banquet were 2 days of staff meetings to evaluate, organize, and plan.  And then 3 days of meetings with all the Challenge directors and staff from around the state.  This is also a very encouraging time as we are with like-hearted laborers and able to reconnect.

So now we take a deep breath and then get after it during the summer.

In reading Mark 4:26-29, I had these thoughts:

- The gospel in people’s lives takes time.

- We need to be good farmers, not just harvester’s. So evangelism and ministry is farming: knowing how to sow and different ways of sowing, cultivating and fertilizing, and then harvesting at the right time.

- This can make ministry frustrating at times because we want to see results quickly. Jesus said that growth takes time. There is a part of growth the farmer has no control over.

For ministry it made me think of questions to help evaluate.

Therefore, questions to evaluate ministry would be:

- What have we done to sow seed: the gospel, character qualities, vision?

- Which seed did we sow last week?

- What are we doing to watch over the seed and cultivate?

- How are we evaluating the readiness for harvest?

- Do we evaluate with just individuals, ministry as a whole, or both?

- Who is following up with whom?

- What seed have we sown across the ministry this semester through Challenge, small groups, retreats?

- What are we asking God to do with the seed and the plants?

I would welcome comments on these ideas to help us be faithful campus ministers at CU. We are doing our best to sow the gospel in several ways. It has been working best through relationships our students have with their peers. It has worked some through speaking on campus (Bobby speaks outside when the weather, and policy, allows). The whos new and whos close post mentions how this is going.

Weekly staff meetings  are a place we ponder these questions, evaluate, and try to be strategic with what we plan, so that even though there is a part of growth we have no control over, we can be the best farmers we can possibly be by working hard at those things we can control.

Please pray for us as we seek to be good farmers.