The End of the Beginning, part 2

Our time Oxford started with a great deal of excitement, but also with a fair share of fear and trepidation. In a six month time period, we were going to experience a new home, new positions, new friends, new church, and a new baby. Somewhere there's a chart of the most stressful things that people have to deal with and I think all these are in the top 20 (if not 10). We will always look back fondly of that first year in Oxford, but I look back now and realize it was very much a honeymoon period for us.

This is especially true of the ministry at Wesley.

I came in with grand ideas, plans, and expectations. I had just come from seminary, after all, and I was feeling pretty confident in my ability to run a top notch ministry. All my ideas, though, quickly fell by the wayside when I realized what the ministry (and the running of the ministry) was versus what I had expected. There's not enough room to here to go in to detail, but suffice it to say that while I was excited about where God had led us that first year, I was also disappointed and frequently frustrated.

One expectation that did not match up has to do with how I perceived myself when we got to Oxford. In my overconfidence and naivete, I expected to be the teacher for the students, the one imparting wisdom and guidance, the one leading and inspiring. This is what it means to be a leader, right? While some of those things might have been true, I see myself now more as the student, not the teacher, a follower, not a leader, and a journeyman, not one who has arrived. My role as campus minister has more to do with listening to students than telling them things, and empowering them to be leaders by first being faithful followers...through my example as a follower of Christ.

Forty hours of classes, three years, and two kids later, I am finishing my seminary career. I am once again reminded of the seedbed, and now I understand what I didn't understand three years ago. While the seminary is a special seedbed, a unique season of learning and growing; the life of ministry is one as well. Sometimes we (as ministers) get so caught up in helping others grow that we fail to see how God is trying to grow us as well. But we need to see each ministry opportunity, each season of life, as its own seedbed and be asking God:

What are you trying to teach me? Am I being teachable? Forgive me for not seeing what you want me to see, or hearing what you want me to hear. Open my eyes that I might see, my ears that I might hear, my heart that I might be truly transformed in to the likeness of your Son.