Soaking in the River

This is going to sound like an advertisement at first, but it's not.  Just bear with me:  I work at Berea College as an InterVarsity Campus Staff worker.  InterVarsity is an amazing campus ministry organization with 70-year history and chapters all over England, the US, and Canada.  One of the things that impresses me about it the most about it is how comprehensive it is.  They pull so many important disciplines together: prayer & meditation, evangelism & justice, even activism founded on strong theology.  (The video  below will give you a snapshot of of we do on campuses.)  There are so many important Christian ideals that InterVarsity embodies.

Anyway, I attended Nation Staff Conference in St. Louis earlier this month, and it was AMAZING!  It was sort of like drinking from a fire hose.  And honestly, when I walked away, although I was inspired and enriched, I was overwhelmed. Stressed out, even.  How in the world was I going to do all this?  I wanted so badly to do ALL the things they were talking about - right away.  But where could I even start?

I need to insert here (in case you didn't know) that ministry has a way of bringing you face to face with your own ugliness.  Around the same time I was at National Staff Conference, all my pride and hypocrisy and general fleshliness was parading itself in front of my face.  Don't get me wrong, things on campus are going well, but what was bothering me were heart issues that aren't so obvious on the surface, and these things were being brought to the surface largely because of being in ministry. 

So, I come back from National Staff conference, and I have lots of great ideas to implement on campus, and I have a self that I can barely stand to work with, and there are so many things to improve on.  I take a look at Jesus as the example of the perfect minister, and ouch!  I mean, look at all the things He embodied that rarely come together in human beings:  bold but meek, brilliant but patient, powerful but restrained, critical but kind, strong but compassionate, silent in suffering, but victorious in the resurrection.  He completely wins my heart as Master and Friend, but He intimidates me as a minister, you know?  I am so unbalanced in comparison.

Jesus did a masterful job at embodying all these realities in perfect balance, but any one of these would have had a hollow ring if it had not been permeated by His life in God.  From The Manhood of the Master by Harry Emerson Fosdick, this quote was a great relief to me:

"The Master's preeminance comes not cheifly from His describable virtues, but from those deep sources of His life with God, out of which His virtues flowed, begotten, not made, and fragrant, every one of them, with the quality of His perfect fellowship with the Father."

I can discipline myself in certain ways, and I will, but my life in Him must saturate all of it, for it is He that is perfecting the good work He began in me, and therefore, He must bring it to pass.  I can't be the perfect IV staff worker any more than I can be the perfect Christian.  I must continually soak in the river of His blood, being washed and cleansed.