Academic Moral Equivalency and Christian Perfection

I have been seriously pondering John Wesley’s doctrine of Christian perfection for several years.  Have we his heirs advanced or retreated in our understanding of Methodism’s “grand depositum” as he put it?  I don’t know.  We certainly don’t like the word “perfection,” a problem Wesley himself had to face.  Still, if he considered it the reason “Methodists were chiefly called into existence,” then it seems like we ought to figure out if there is a 21st century version of it that can be called legitimately Wesleyan.

The idea of spiritual maturity suggests that some people are further along the path toward it than others.  Already we sense the danger of making a judgment, yet the Bible makes it.  One recalls, for example, that word about some still needing milk while they should be ready for meat.  In the Christian life, there is a trajectory toward a telos, a goal.  We can argue about whether or not we ever reach the goal, but it’s a goal we envision.

We do the same in education.  A college senior should be more mature than a freshman.  The very terms we use for undergraduate classification points this way.  Educational theory includes the telos.  I’ve been scouring through Fowler’s stages of faith lately.  He and his main authorities (Piaget, Erikson, Kohlberg) all include a view of maturity.  They believe that they have empirically demonstrated that some people are more mature than others.

We tend to assume, do we not, that a college-educated person is better educated than someone who has no college?  We assume, don’t we, that going to college challenges people to become more self- and world-aware, which is better than not being aware?  One of the major goals of a college education is to help develop whole people, not just skillful people who are good at doing certain jobs.  This is supposedly the difference between a college degree and a technical school degree.

So, in addition to skills, we expect a college education to develop appropriate attitudes and behaviors.  A well-educated person is more than a skilled person.  A well-educated person has some of the right…virtues.  A well-educated person should also be a wise person, no?  Everything I’ve said so far about a college education can be applied to theological education.  Don’t we expect advance in a theological education?  A person with a Master of Divinity should have the skill and the character, by virtue of the education, to lead a congregation, right?

Most academic institutions assume that by merely having the experience, these virtues will emerge in our students.  Yet the academy prizes and rewards skill and achievement rather than good attitudes and behavior.  We tend to assume moral equivalency.  More educated people are supposed to be likewise more trustworthy, more wise, because more aware of “the issues.”

I’m not sure we Methodists have gotten Mr. Wesley right on Christian perfection.  Yet, in higher and theological education, we have taken up this very endeavor, only in academic terms and with academic values rather than Christian ones.  We assume that something like an academic version of that fruit of the Spirit will happen by virtue of the experience.

I think we have something still to learn from Mr. Wesley…

The “Metaphysics” of Blogging

A friend of mine on Facebook posted a link to a blog by Franky Schaeffer about the sickness of evangelicals (and evangelicalism).  He took aim specifically at Sarah Palin and Franklin Graham, but got in a few digs at father Billy as well. Purportedly, the blog was about larger, more substantive matters than just the personalities mentioned, but it came across as especially bitter and vituperative.

I commented on my friend’s fb page, as did a few others.  One commenter reminded us that blogs in general represent a particular type of writing.  He’s right: blogs are commonly expected to be edgy, raw, less-filtered, emotive, therefore provocative. Provocative of what?  Granting his point, I still was left pondering both the impact, therefore the nature of, blogging.

So, here I am, blogging about blogging.  Does it mean that I’m doing an exercise in “meta-blogging?”  Have I coined a new term?  (I didn’t think so.)  Perhaps I’m playing with the “metaphysics” of blogging.

For completely separate reasons, I have been re-reading C. John Sommerville’s book, The Decline of the Secular University, (Oxford Univ. Press, 2006), a slim, but meaty collection of essays on how the secularist university has become irrelevant to public discourse, and why.  One must read this book carefully.  Sommerville, a first rate historian, has been doing his homework for a long time and knows his stuff.  This is a compelling book.

In the chapter about post-secularism, Sommerville argues that the dailyness of daily newspapers has helped to create “a news consciousness, a fixation on daily trends and fashions instead of more comprehensive treatments of significant subjects,” (p. 138).  ”News” content reflects what we want to hear and read about.

Which makes me think about blogging.  ”Fashion,” rather than sustained and serious thought, pervades most of our public discourse.  The tone and structure of Franky Schaeffer’s blog about evangelicalism’s sickness demonstrates the “fashion” in blogging.

So, Professor Sommerville has provoked some self-doubt in me about blogging. Somewhat analogous to texting in one’s “vote” on some news item on a cable news network, blogging is ostensibly a form of empowerment, allowing people to opine about all manner of topics.  Since we’re putting our thoughts on the worldwide web, there’s a chance that someone besides our five or six friends might actually wander across our blog and discover our brilliance.

Now, I’ve added another question.  Is blogging merely a form of narcissistic self-expression?  That’s not all it is for people writing books and appearing on talk shows.  Blogging is marketing.  Well, what is blogging for blokes like me?

I enjoy and am edified by some people’s blogs, usually Christian thinker/leaders whose books I also read.  I like to read other blogs because the bloggers are my friends and it’s a way of keeping in touch.

But blogging, like other forms of communication, presents the wonderful possibility of stimulating thought and dialogue.  At their best, blogs accomplish this aim.  Therefore, we blog on.  But at their worst, they contribute to thoughtless, verbal violence.

Dare we check the balance?

Discipleship as Therapy

Was it St. John Chrysostom who said that the church is a hospital for souls?  Sanctification – growing to maturity – is a form of healing, is it not?  Therefore, Christian discipleship is really a kind of therapy.

This thought prompts me to consider how most of pop culture (even in the church) runs counter to this notion.  Think about how we use the term “mental health” in a clinical way, shorn of any explicit theological content.  Think of “life coaches;” consultants, industrial and sport psychologists all standing ready to assist people in working through their problems.

Some people readily include “spirituality” in the mental health medicine bag.  Nurses in hospitals can receive training to employ the individual spiritual beliefs of a patient to help in the healing process.  It has become normative in various forms of the healing arts.  It is based on the “scientific” notion of an empirically-based understanding of human nature and what ails us.  In this view, “spirituality” is an empty container into which one pours one’s own particular beliefs and values.

This model of mental health is not so neutral as it seems.  As numerous Christian thinkers have pointed out, it harbors a number of theological assumptions and depends upon biblical concepts to do its work.  Virtually all the empirical literature on spirituality makes references to concepts like love, goodness, hope and compassion.  Healthy spirituality from this view always looks suspiciously like mature Christian discipleship, without the “Christian” part, of course.  But to have hope in a good (or improved) future one really needs to believe in a transcendent source of goodness, probably even a Transcendent Creator who is personal, who loves the creation and works in it to bring about good.  So, even in the allegedly neutral, empirically-driven spirituality literature, there is, upon examination, a fairy identifiable theological framework in play.

Sprinkled all through our society, therefore, is a vast array of options for what turns out to be a much reduced (and tamed) form of discipling.  What is therapy, after all?  A person, with her or his therapist or counselor, develops an honest, transparent relationship (the therapist must be honest and transparent in a professional way, in order to have the trust of the client), into which conversations take place and guidance is offered for strategies to improve a person’s life.  Sounds a lot like Christian discipleship, without the “Christian.”

In our world, therapy has taken the place of discipleship.  Of course, I am not suggesting that we quit doing therapy, for it does provide help to many people.  But this therapy is just a party of the journey.  We should think about what we’re actually envisioning in therapy and we should also notice that there is precious little in the way of real, extensive, long-term growth in Christian discipleship taking place in the church.  Perhaps we have given away too much?

When people commit to following Jesus in all aspects of life; when life in the Kingdom of God is truly paramount; when people pray for and seek and yield to the work of the Holy Spirit within a community of such humble, open disciples, therapy happens!  Healing takes place.

Without shutting down the therapy-as-discipleship paradigm, I do think we should reverse the order: discipleship-as-therapy.  I think we’d have healthier people in the church and, long-term, a healthier world.

How Do We Cultivate Awareness?

I’ve been watching this phenomenon and participating in it myself for years, since I was a college student.  It’s the infamous “quiet time,” our evangelical colloquialism for a much-needed and advocated-for spiritual discipline.  It once was called “personal devotion” or “devotions” – that regular daily time of reading a Bible passage or verse and using some sort of devotional aid, with a little prayer thrown into the mix.

I’m astounded at the some of the crud people can buy at Christian bookstores to help them with their “quiet time.”  A few months ago on one of my browsing trips, I ran across what must be the “Christian” analogy to the “One Minute Manager” for one’s “quiet time.”  Such nonsense.  And we buy this stuff.

It’s Monday and I’m feeling a little curmudgeonly, but my mood notwithstanding, the “quiet time” needs a serious overhaul.  It’s probably some part developmental phase for college students, but the “quiet time” is promoted by pastors and campus ministers and, because we want to be good followers of Jesus, we make a game effort to include “quiet time” in our daily schedules.  My sense is that most of us fail – if not miserably – fairly consistently.  It’s time for a re-think of what “quiet time” actually aims to accomplish.

It is certainly not a mere task that I can check off my list when done for the day.  Confession: I spent many, many years treating the “quiet time” in just this way. We all know this: the point of the “quiet time” is not simply to do what good Christians do, but to spend concentrated time communing with the Triune God.

Because God is merciful and faithful and loves his children, even the truncated “quiet time” can and does have some beneficial impact.  Obviously, I don’t want anyone to quit doing their “quiet time” even if it does mean hurriedly grabbing a few minutes to go along with the cup of coffee (or Coke or Pepsi or Dr. Pepper or lattespressicino – thank you Dave Barry!) they regularly grab.  But, as is the case with much of Christian discipleship, there is much, much more blessing to be had and much more formation to undergo on the way to maturity.

Certainly, one of the major blessings of the “quiet time” is actual awareness of the actual presence of God.  We actually listen to and talk with the living God.  This practice is of the nature of a personal relationship, just like we teach all the time.  A personal relationship requires cultivating.  Our “quiet time” offers us the chance to cultivate our awareness of the actual presence of the living God.  To use Dallas Willard’s term from The Divine Conspiracy, that presence is an “engulfing” presence.  Followers of Jesus are engulfed by the Kingdom Presence.

To cultivate awareness of God’s presence takes a willing heart, time and focused persistence.  There is something mysterious about the human will on this point that calls for reflection.  Wherever that train of thought might lead, friends, we must slow down and listen.  If we want our lives to count for God’s glory; if we want to produce fruit that lasts, we must slow down and cultivate awareness of God’s presence.

If you’re a too-busy college student, but you took time to read this blog and you want to deepen your relationship with Christ, I’m begging you, slow down.  Find the time to listen, to reflect with practiced self-awareness, knowing that you’re doing so in God’s active presence.  That’s part of prayer, too.  May our “quiet time” produce the peaceful fruit of righteousness in us all.

The Troubling Use of “Information”

For some time I’ve noticed a perplexing quality of college student word use.  Here are a couple of examples:

“I have to miss class tomorrow and I was wondering if I could get the information that you’re going to cover.”

“I want the professor just to give me the information without his/her opinion so that I can make up my own mind.”

I hear some version of these remarks fairly frequently and they alarm me.  In the second one, I can see the student’s concern for not being force-fed ideology and I’ll give that one to him.  It’s a legitimate concern, but in a broader sense reflective of a fundamental misunderstanding of what should happen in a college (it was a political science) class.  Secondly, referring to course content as “information” sounds utterly lifeless and sterile, having no more than instrumental value, available only to be manipulated for some pragmatic aim.

(Disclaimer: I believe in the importance of facts and information.  I am not a rank subjectivist.  In fact, I hold an “externalist” view of truth – that it is really “out there” and available.  With that qualification, back to my point.)

How did we get here?  Well, clearly, the “information age” of personal computers and the worldwide web has helped dramatically.  I love the technology, but if we don’t pay attention to the paradigmatic control these computer metaphors are working on us, I can hardly imagine how impoverished, even perverse, our lives will become.

The other culprit is hiding in fifth or sixth grade classrooms, where students are indoctrinated with the fact/opinion distinction.  Certainly, there is a difference between facts and opinions and I applaud the intention, but I’m worried about the misleading implications.  A “fact” is evidently something beyond need of interpretation because it is “neutral.”  We trust facts.  ”Opinions,” by contrast, are squishy and subjective and, most damming, idiosyncratic.  How many times have you heard, “That’s just your opinion,” as if the mere fact (yes, I meant that word) makes the whole thing dismissible?

It’s a short step from “fact” to “information,” Same feeling, same attitude, same problem.  First, it seems to assume that people are neutral information processors, a self-evidently absurd notion when one pauses to think about it (but who’s pausing?).  Likewise with facts.  Facts have to be applied and application requires interpretation.  We have to figure out what the facts mean. They tell us nothing in and of themselves.  Do students understand how important this step – from facts to meaning – is?

In this context, campus ministers have a crucial role to play.  The world needs wise, well-formed disciples of Jesus.  Wisdom requires thoughtfulness, the habit of taking into consideration a range of opinions, weighing evidence judiciously; most of all, it means applying truth lovingly, with the heart of Jesus.  In other words, to think well requires a well-formed character, which involves far more than “getting information.”  ”Just getting the information” simply won’t cut it.

Campus ministers: we’re supposed to be about developing well-formed followers of Jesus.  We may not assign grades, but we’re still educators in the best sense of that word.  Precisely because we are not giving exams and assigning grades, we have the luxury of helping students learn, untrammeled by the pressures of academic demands.  Let us not squander this sacred opportunity.

Affirm People, Acknowledge Diversity

Working on a college campus puts one in the position of hearing lots of talk about diversity: racial diversity, national and ethnic diversity, cultural diversity, religious diversity, gender diversity.  These are among the standard referents for folk in higher education.

In a chapter on the importance of student affairs programs for developing college students’ spirituality, Jennifer Capeheart-Meninghall writes, “Programs and services that offer activities that affirm diversity (emphasis added), establish and hold students accountable for conduct, celebrate campus traditions, and join various constitutencies together will help build community,” (Spirituality in Higher Education, p. 35).  For all the value and importance of her aim at building community and developing spirituality (an aim I completely support), I’m stuck on the difficult notion of affirming diversity.  Who sets the criteria to determine that diversity has been affirmed?

As much as I appreciate the sentiment, I think it is ultimately misdirected.  I think what we should affirm is people.  People are diverse.  Because we are diverse racially, ethnically, socio-economically, culturally, and so on, we should affirm people as they demonstrate a wide range of characteristics and qualities.  We affirm people and, in doing so, acknowledge that we’re different, diverse.

Some people might consider my point nothing more than pious cant, a clever-sounding rhetorical sleight-of-hand.  (Some may find it completely obvious and not clever at all!)  In the current climate, am I just one more white, male, middle-class traditional/conservative complaining about losing power?  I don’t think so.  I hope not.

Maybe I’m splitting hairs.  Maybe “affirm” and “acknowledge” mean the same.  A quick check of the dictionary suggests the contrary.  To affirm something is to state it positively, to validate it or legitimate it and, furthermore, to “express dedication” (Webster’s 9th New Collegiate Dictionary) to whatever is being affirmed.  To acknowledge is to recognize, to own up to (Ibid).

Because all people are created in God’s image, we value them.  We value their characteristics, cultural and otherwise.  We affirm them.  We recognize that we come from a wide range of nations, backgrounds, worldviews and religious commitments.  We accept our diversity, but we value people and we commit ourselves to living together in peace.

Why does my distinction matter?  Well, in my little mind, it seems to be a step in the right direction of disentangling us from some of the political animosities that infect Christians.  It’s too easy to come up with the grocery list of qualities that “proves” one “affirms diversity.”  (By the way, how diverse is the group making that list?)  Then people can make preemptive judgments: if you don’t accept the list, you don’t accept diversity and you’re disqualified from the conversation.  If, on the other hand, we affirm people while acknowledging diversity, then we don’t prematurely disqualify.  We listen with compassion and generosity – and take their ideas seriously.

“Diversity,” sadly, is a politically loaded term.  It shouldn’t be.  We are a nation of diverse peoples.  That’s an uncontroversial fact.  What we value is people, who always bring with them their cultural, ethnic, and other (diverse) qualities.  We don’t ignore diversity.  We acknowledge it; accept it.  But we affirm people.

When Do We Become Adults (and Why Does It Matter)?

The distinction between college ministry and youth ministry is based in part on the assumption that college students are young adults, living more or less on their own, and dealing with more adult-like challenges, while youth are still under the control of their parents/guardians.  Notice the qualifiers in that sentence: “more or less” and “adult-like,” for example.  Two books with two distinct theses are having a fight in my head.

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s, Emerging Adulthood, has been making the rounds for at least a couple of years.  Based on social science research, he describes a new phenomenon in the 18-28 year-old age range, which is encapsulated in the book’s title.  The young people he studies neither define themselves as “young adults”  nor as older youth.  By their own self-description, they are taking longer to become adults than earlier generations and that “adult” has less to do with chronology than the old “18″ or “21″ threshold (depending on the legal drinking age) and more to do with having achieved or arrived at certain markers points in life.  One is not fully “adult” until one has one’s own place, a more-than-temporary job (one that is starting to look like a career) and sufficient income not to be dependent upon parents.  Such criteria are used by young people themselves for deciding when they are adults.

A counterpoint to this idea is offered by Philip Markham, a British psychologist in another Oxford Press book by the title, The End of Adolescence.  Most of this author’s work is based on research in the UK, but his thesis still stimulates thought.  He argues that adolescents (teenagers) have been badly stereotyped through popular media (TV, movies, magazines) as spoiled, volatile, hormone-driven miscreants.  Quite the contrary to this picture, most of them are reasonably happy, well-adjusted, responsible human beings.  Furthermore, by early teens, they are quite able to handle complex ideas and life challenges.  In fact, he relates how some teenagers are taking care of disabled parents, for example, and carry on quite well, with a mature sense about the challenges life has dealt them.

Now to the really provocative claim from Markham: he believes that 14 (yes, fourteen) is, generally speaking, the age at which young people ought to be considered as adults.  Obviously, this blog cannot spell out how he qualifies his claim, but all things considered, he believes young people at this age should be able to do virtually all the things that adults do.  He doesn’t recommend that 14 year olds get married, of course, but he does say that they should be able to engage in other “adult” activities, like voting.

For a long time, I’ve worried about how we (especially parents) have prolonged adolescence.  Labor laws originally designed to protect children from sweatshop situations also prevent able-bodied and interested teenagers from undertaking gainful employment.  Until kids turn 16, if they don’t live in rural areas where they can do farm work, or if they don’t belong to a family running a business, the only options for working are pretty well limited to having a paper route (which can be a dangerous occupation when you try to collect – my son and I were literally run off a place one evening).

These books have implications for college ministry.  Are we working with adults or with youth or with “emerging adults?”  Answering this question helps to determine the ministry we undertake.  What do you think?  If you work with 18-28 year olds, how would you describe them?  What kind of ministry do you think we should do with them?

If you are in the 18-28 range, how do you see yourself?  Your friends?  Your age group?  And would you tell your experience and your opinion about the kind of ministry offered for people like you?  Are we on target?  Missing the boat?

A Harsh Assessment of Young Adults

I just finished a book by an author not so enamored with the effects of technology on the “net generation.”  Entitled, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, (Penguin, 2008), it mounts massive data from various surveys and organizations to argue that, for all their tech savviness, most young people use the internet for entertainment and social networking and not for (the author’s main concern) “expanding knowledge.”  Hence, the claims made for the educational benefit of the internet are badly exaggerated, even dishonest.

Mark Bauerlein, the author, is not “anti-young.”  He acknowledges regularly throughout the book how curmudgeonly he sounds, but his point is not to run down young people.  It is, rather, to sound the alarm about the myth-making by educators about the educational benefits of various forms of computer and internet-based entertainment.  Worse, he’s concerned about the way some of these educators are talking about plain, old fashioned paper-based books, as if we don’t need them any more.

Perhaps the most damming chapter is “The Betrayal of t he Mentors.”   Here he uses the term “Twixters” to refer basically to the same age period that Jeffrey Arnett calls “emerging adulthood.”  Bauerlein mentions an article from Time magazine (24 January 2005) that describes this demographic category: “22 to 30 years old, have a college degree or substantial college coursework; come from middle-class families and reside in cities and large urban centers.”

There’s the demographic.  Now the problem.  Bauerlein continues: “What makes Twixters different from other people with the same demographics from the past is the lifestyle they pursue after college. [ ] Instead of seeking out jobs or graduate studies…they pass through a series of service jobs as waiters, clerks, nannies and assistants.  Instead of moving into a place of their own…they move back home with their parents or into a house or large apartment with several Twixter peers.  Instead of forming a long-term relationship to marriage, they engage in serial dating. [ ] They have achieved little but feel good about themselves,” (170).

And the betrayal of the mentors?  Here we turn to Bauerlein’s deep concern: teachers who jump on the bandwagon of disdain with their own toward books and more traditional forms of learning.  Bauerlein again: “In casting Twixter lifestyle as genuine exploration and struggle, neither the author nor the researchers nor the Twixters themselves whisper a single word about intellectual labor.  Not one of the Twixters or youth observers mentions an idea that stirs them, a book that influenced them, a class that inspired them, or a mentor who guides them,” (172).

I still don’t know what I think about this book, but I’m inclined to share Bauerlein’s concern.  As he says, there is no question that this generation is bright and full of talent.  But they seem more achievement-driven than thoughtful and they’re (generally) impatient with intellectual struggle.  And the thoughtful ones turn too easily to dismissive sarcasm for ideas that don’t seem immediately to match their beliefs.

The internet isn’t going away.  We need to learn how to use it educationally, with good means of assessing learning without buying the hype of vendors.  At the same time, I’m solicitous for the leisure of slow, thoughtful reflection, for young people.  How else will they become wise?

Two-tiered Witness?

Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians has been holding me for weeks.  I’ve blogged already about Paul’s vulnerable, transparent witness: “You are our letters of commendation,” he says to the Corinthians (chapter 3).  Paul has no structural, organizational props for his ministry, just the effective witness of a life lived before others that he can point to it and say, “See here?  This [my life] is visible proof of God’s transforming work.”  I like it.  Or do I?

Then I read chapter 6: “We have commended [there's that word again] ourselves in every way…” and then a long list of sufferings: “through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities,beatings, imprisonments,” and on and on.  Now, I’m not liking it.

Which prompted this thought: is there a qualitative difference between the witness of “regular” Christians and people called to full-time ministry and then, by extension, even more so for people in apostolic-like ministries of the sort that Paul had?  My question is too long, so let me try again.  Is there one set of witness/lifestyle expectations for regular Christians and another set for people in full-time ministry?

The standard Protestant answer is no.  We like to tout the priesthood of all believers, which I believe myself.  But then I start thinking about how a middle-class American guy with a wife and kids and job and other such commitments reads and hears Paul’s testimony.  What is God’s Word for that guy when he reads 2 Corinthians 6?  By the way, we evangelicals love 2 Cor. 6:2, “…now is the acceptable time [for salvation].”  It really preaches well in evangelistic settings.  But immediately following is this “commendation.”  Paul is challenging the Corinthians: “Look at my life.”  So, “now is the day of salvation” is connected to “look at my life.”

Maybe that is it.  Maybe the key is, “Look at my life.”  I live within a particular set of circumstances.  Am I a transparent Christian there, in that context?  Paul’s calling was his and mine is mine.  Different time, different circumstances, different callings.  Of course, it is true.  But then I start to worry a little that I am too-easily letting myself off the hook.  I’m not an apostle, after all.  I’m just a regular Christian.  God doesn’t expect that sort of witness from me.  Or you.

What did we just do to our reading of the Bible?  On the one hand, we should read carefully and not just woodenly lift “life principles” out of the text in some mechanistic way.  On the other hand, I’m concerned about how the trajectory of this sort of “interpretation” always seems to soften the call.

I think, in practical ways, we do have a two-tiered witness among even Protestant Christians.  We love reading about the Jim Elliotts and the Amy Carmichaels.  We are inspired by their passion for the Kingdom of God and their sacrificial commitments.  But…we wouldn’t do it ourselves.  So, when we read Paul talking about his sufferings, do we blunt God’s Word  to us by putting Paul in a different category?  He’s an apostle and we’re just regular Christians, after all.

Is there a de facto two-tiered witness among all Christians?  Is it OK that there is such, if there is?

“What Hath God Wrought?”

This question my friend, Dan McFarland, asked in prayer as he prayed for us at the CornerStone dinner last Friday evening.  The question comes from the Bible (Numbers), but we Methodists also associate it with John Wesley, who used this question to reflect on various circumstances relative to Methodism in the 18th century.  For one, he asked it when the new City Road Chapel was opened.

Dan asked it in regard to the transition in my life and in the CornerStone’s.  I have departed from my usual blog topics and have shared more personal stuff of late.  This past weekend was another doozy.  After being associated with the CornerStone since 1981 (Joni and I went to Italy under their auspices) and having served as board Chair since 1991 (hence 18 years), I resigned.  This past weekend was my final board meeting.  What a weekend.

As I wrapped up our meeting yesterday, I told the board members once again something I’ve said many times: “CornerStone is nothing like anything else I’ve ever experienced.”  From the first time Joni and I met with the board as they considered us for service in Italy to Saturday’s final meeting, that sentiment holds rock solid.  I told them that I don’t have adequate words to describe my sense about this group, but let me try.

I think that it comes as close to pure Christian community as anything I’ve ever experienced.  The CornerStone is a mission organization.  We receive candidates, screen them and send them to various fields of ministry.  CornerStone is tiny by comparison to the better-known mission organizations, but we have staff on five continents and in some of the most “on the ground” places in the world.  Many of the ministries combine acts of mercy (medical work, orphanages, working with AIDS children) with sharing the Gospel.  Every board meeting we receive reports from our missionaries and the stories are always touching and convicting.  (See www.cornerstoneinternational.org.)

This description sounds pretty much like any mission organization any of us knows.  It’s the community.  In large part because we’re small (our board numbers less than 15), everything is personal.  We share our hearts with one another.  We pray with and for one another.  We look each other straight in the face and speak hard truth sometimes.  And underneath it all there is a fundamental conviction that each person is a trusted and valued member of the group, a brother/sister in Christ.

A couple of the members of the board talked about how I had helped them and the organization grow up.  (We’ve gone through a couple of major changes in the past fifteen or so years.)  At least, that is what I understood them to be saying.  But when I look at the years and how I changed because of associating with them, it’s really the other way around.  That community of expatriate Christians in Italy helped me to become a pastor.  I was just a kid trying to follow Jesus and they – in part because of circumstance – took me in.  When the organization was floundering, I became the board Chair.  In so many respects, CornerStone helped to draw out and develop my leadership gifts.

I will forever be in their debt.