Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World, p. 5, emphasis added.

I find these words frightening because I think they are true.

Link

The first, Psalm 125, which begins:

Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion,

which cannot be shaken but endures forever.

The second, is from Luke 5.  After beginning his public ministry, Jesus calls Simon Peter, James, and John to follow him. After addressing a crowd from Simon’s fishing boat, Jesus commands Simon to put out his net.  Simon responds:

Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything.  But because you say so, I will let down the nets.

The nets are lowered, an enormous number of fish are caught, and Simon falls at Jesus’ feet, leading to this exchange:

“Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!.”  For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

Psalm 125 promises that those who trust in the Lord (lit. YHWH) will be like Mount Zion, and Luke 5 depicts Simon – who would be called The Rock – trusting in Jesus.

A couple of side notes.  I appreciate the egalitarian spirit of the TNIV, which I am currently using in my personal reading, but “you will fish for people” simply doesn’t have the rhetorical strength of “thou shalt catch men” from the King James. Also, did Simon’s entire fishing company disband and follow Jesus?  The text has an interesting change of person: Jesus calls Simon to follow him, then concludes “So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything, and followed him.” The change of person is also their in both the King James and NIV.

How does it change our perspective of this scene to think of any entire company of men – a small business, really – following Jesus together?  Were they following Jesus, or were they following Simon Peter, their boss, who was following Jesus?

Two passages that I’ve recently read reminded me of this.  The first is from Life Together: 

“Whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister” (Mark 10:43). Jesus made authority in the fellowship dependent upon brotherly service.  Genuine spiritual authority is to be found only where the ministry of hearing, helping, bearing and proclaiming is carried out.  Every cult of personality that emphasizes the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another person, even though these be of an altogether spiritual nature, is worldly and has no place in the Christian community; indeed, it poisons the Christian community. The desire we so often hear expressed today for “episcopal figures,” “priestly men,” “authoritative personalities” springs frequently enough from a spiritually sick need for the admiration of men, for the establishment of visible human authority, because the genuine authority of service appears to be so unimpressive.  There is nothing that so sharply contradicts such a desire as the New Testament itself in its description of a bishop (I Tim. 3:1 ff).  One finds there nothing whatsoever with respect to worldly charm and the brilliant attributes of a spiritual personality.  The bishop is the simple, faithful man, sound in faith and life, who rightly discharges his duties to the Church. His authority lies in the exercise of his ministry.  In the man himself there is nothing to admire.  (Bonhoeffer, 108)

Perhaps this is a better description of “redemptive influence: the simple, faithful man (or woman), sound in faith and life. 

The second passage comes from Jonathan Wilson’s Why Church Matters: Worship, Ministry, and Mission in Practice. The people that we minister to in ESN and FM are, let’s face it, powerful people, even if they don’t realize it themselves. They are among the world’s intellectual elites: the most educated members of the wealthiest society on the planet.  This position carries with it a whole set of temptations to the Christian, not the least of which is the confusion of worldly success with spiritual faithfulness.  Too often we think that suffering or failure is the result of personal weakness, when it may be exactly the reverse. 

After considering the mysterious phrase from Acts 5:41 – “the apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing, because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name” – Wilson writes of the connection between power and suffering in the Gospel:

This is the lesson of the early community of disciples: the power of the Spirit is the power to suffer as witnesses to the good news of the kingdom of life in Jesus Christ.  This insight is key to the church’s practice of power.  Power is not the means to avoid suffering or protect oneself or one’s community from suffering.  Nor is the suffering of the church a sign of our powerlessness.  Nor is suffering in itself a good.  Rather, when the church is empowered to live by the kingdom of God in a world that is in rebellion against that kingdom, suffering is the consequence of faithful witness. (Wilson, 137)

May I too be considered worthy to suffer disgrace because of the Name. 

In college, I became an English major because I loved to read. Only after I responded to the call of Christ did I start to see that there were truths that could be understood through language, and began to desire to integrate my love for Christ with my love for literature. At the time, I thought that a PhD in English was the most direct route to this integration, and besides, I loved school and had very good grades and test scores, so a PhD made sense. I knew from personal experience, however, that English departments were not necessarily friendly to Christian faith, and explicit questions about, say, how Christ’s identity as the Word of God influences our understanding of human words were not exactly welcomed. I wrote a lot of poetry back then, and I was especially interested in the practice of language, and my relationship with Christ was a central theme in my poetry. I knew that I would have to be careful in my choice of graduate school, so that I would be free to explore this integration project.

Through a series of InterVarsity connections, I was put in touch with Terry Morrison. Robbie Castleman’s True Love in a World of False Hope had been very influential in my relationship with Elizabeth, and we had met Robbie at chapter camp in Florida. At the time, Robbie was working with graduate students in Florida, and she directed me to Terry, then the Director of Faculty Ministry. One of Terry’s gifts is countless relationships with Christian faculty around the country, and he immediately pointed me to three Christian English professors who he thought could help me.

I emailed all three, and put to them a question that, looking back, I think is a little odd: “Where I can I go to earn a PhD, where I can integrate my love for Christ with my love for literature?” The first emailed me back and said, “I have no idea, but don’t do what I did.” The second wrote back and said, “I have no idea, but perhaps Baylor.” The third wrote back: “I’m not sure there is such a place. I think you will be facing a long and lonely battle. You can, however, do what I did, and earn a theology degree first. That way, you will have the foundation you need to do the integrative work yourself.” I just happened to be reading Knowing God by J. I. Packer and Earth and Altar by Eugene Peterson at the time, and both men “just happened” to teach at a school I had never heard of, Regent College. And now you know the rest of the story.

Looking back, that series of conversations and connections – from Robbie, to Terry, to those three Christian professors (whose names, alas, I have forgotten) – was one of the key turning points in my walk with Christ and my understanding of my vocation. As I have joined ESN, I have spoken to many people about these conversations, and reflected on them frequently to understand why (I think) God has called me to ESN. I would be willing to wager that Terry was a central link in more conversations like these than he will ever know on this side of heaven.

And that’s why I praise God for Terry Morrison.

• At the end of February, I went to Nashville to see Kevin and Beth Line, some old friends from college (from the University of Louisville InterVarsity chapter, in fact!), meet some new friends from their church (Faith Church), and touch base with a few colleagues from InterVarsity.  Jason Ingalls, InterVarsity staff at Vanderbilt, has been doing some great work among grad students and faculty, and I got to meet with him and with a few of the emerging scholars he has gotten to know at Vandy.
• At the beginning of March, I traveled to Chicago, and then on up to Madision, WI.  In Chicago, I was trained on InterVarsity’s website management system by Jon Boyd, who is also serving as conference director for Following Christ 2008.  Jon is a very busy person: his wife just gave birth to their second child.  I have recently taking over editing both the ESN and Faculty Ministry websites, and Jon was very gracious in opening his home to me and handing me the keys to the website.  I continued on up to Madison to introduce myself to some folks at InterVarsity’s National Service Center and visit with Rachel Bawden, our hard-working Operations Director for Faculty Ministry.
• Finally, last week, I traveled back to the Chicago area for InterVarsity’s national conference from Graduate and Faculty Ministry.  We were treated to several great talks by Andy Crouch.  Andy is a writer, editor, and director of The Christian Vision Project, and he has some important things to say about Christians as cultivators and creators of culture.   He has a book coming out this fall which I am sure I will be recommending to many ESN members.  I also had the chance to see many of my InterVarsity colleagues and have several crucial conversations about moving ESN forward this year.

As part of our staff conference, many of the details of Following Christ 2008 (in which ESN will play a major part) were revealed.  I encourage you to check out the website and prayerfully consider coming and inviting friends you know who would benefit.

We also celebrated the ministry of Terry Morrison, director emeritus of Faculty Ministry, who is retired from InterVarsity after many decades of service as a student, professor of chemistry at Butler University, and longtime director of Faculty Ministry.  Terry played a small, but extraordinarily important part in my personal and professional development, which I will blog about later this week.

In the second century, Christian apologist Justin Martyr grew up over the hill from Galilee.  Interestingly, he notes that the plows made by Joseph and Jesus were still being used widely in his day.  How intriguing to think of Jesus’ plow rather than his cross – to wonder what it was that made his plows and yokes last and stand out.

Isn’t this an amazing thought – owning and using a plow made by Jesus?  Justin Martyr was born early in the second century (Wikipedia says AD 100, the intro to his writings in the AnteNicene Fathers says AD 110).  The plows of Jesus and Joseph, then, were still in use nearly a century after they were made.

Today, I was staining a cabinet.  I wasn’t very good at it.  Though I often think that I like woodworking, whenever I try some project, I remember that I’m not very good at it.  Jesus was good at being a carpenter.  He was good at his job – superior, in fact.  And I bet he enjoyed it, too.

Will our work survive a century?  Can we be as dedicated to our daily calling as Jesus was at his?