life together :)

is a great book by Bonhoeffer! I was just looking at it this morning! Thanks for the encouragement, Meesch. You are doing pretty much the same thing with students as we are with non-students, so it's always good to hear your struggles, victories, etc. The biggest difference in my mind is the sense of ministry with a para-church and maybe the sense that Christians aren't "everywhere" in a campus setting. So many adults seem to exist entirely within a Christian bubble where they don't even speak with non-Christians (other than a family member or something). Their idea of being pilgrims gets lost. Then they move into thinking about life in terms of their group, their needs, their family, their church, their "rights"--instead of seeing all of these things in relation to their general calling as "strangers on the Silent Planet" as Lewis used to refer to it. Priorities get rearranged until they are more fearful and interested in protecting themselves and their possessions than they are about making disciples through themselves and their possessions. I remember going into a woman's house who was considered a "prayer warrior" and being overwhelmed by the number of Precious Moments figurines covering every conceivable space. Stuffed between the statuettes were cross-stitchings, etc. When someone asked her about having a small group meeting in her house while the normal hosts were on a vacation, she insisted it would be impossible--there wasn't enough room. Unfortunately, she felt that the risk of having a crowded house where one of her PMs might be broken was greater than the joy of using the large numbers of chairs and rooms that she had for a gathering in God's name. But no one could confront her on this (in my mind) obvious materialism because she was very vocal and used a lot of Christianese/Vineyardese so everyone assumed she was an unapproachable saint. Anyway, as my friend Jeff Cannell says (to augment B's assertions in the same vein) "If you aren't involved in messy community, you aren't fully involved in community." So, it's not that I'm hoping for a really flawless group or something. I guess I just want partners who see the same goals and who are willing to go after them--who will give people responsibility according to their gifts and allow them to fail. People who are more committed to creating the kingdom through community than growing large and noticable, rich or famous, or even influential. I guess if you seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, all of those other things might follow anyway. But we so put the cart before the horse when we go for the large, influential, wealthy stuff and assume that because it's big or successful that God's blessing must be on it. I don't know what this has to do with anything....