Wake Me Up When Ministry Gets Glamorous

We had planned for 200; we had 50. 

The party felt forced, awkward, and embarrassing. We were trying too hard. Dejected, we packed up 150 quesadillas and left early. Welcome to our first week with RUF*. 

What I had foreseen was a slamming party with people packed around the pool, music playing, people laughing, and us mingling with college students looking to connect with RUF. The venue was perfect-- a pool overlooking the bay. The weather was perfect-- warm, but comfortable to sit on the edge of the pool. The food was delicious and more than enough. Wasn't this going to confirm that we belonged here? That God was at work? That we had uprooted our lives to move to Corpus because God was going to do something BIG? 

The more temperate believer in me understands that's not always how it works, and even when it does work that way, it's not always God-honoring, but the girl who desires ministry to be packed with bright lights and big audiences sometimes likes to get out her glitter-covered camping chair, treated it as a throne, and pout. Wake me up when ministry gets glamorous.

Fast forward 1 week. 

We set up a table on campus each day. We have a stained tablecloth and a broken banner. And God keeps sending people to the table. Some have been looking for RUF, and some just want a Christian organization to visit. But they come, and we tell them what we're about and they show up to Bible study the next night. There is nothing flashy. There is nothing glamorous. It's just God doing what he wants and us standing in surprise... and I think He kind of likes it that way. So the throne quickly becomes a time-out chair, and I'm the one wearing the dunce hat. 

Interestingly, I recently read that a dunce cap was not actually used on students that were bad, but on those who were slower learners. And that the cap was allegedly named after Johannes Duns Scotus, who is said to be "one of the most important and influential philosopher-theologians of the High Middle Ages."** Apparently, with the rise of humanism, his "dense, detailed, indirect reasoning was derided as sophistry and his followers ["The Dunces"] hopelessly behind the times, incapable of understanding the 'new learning' of Renaissance humanism. The Dunces, already saddled with a reputation for painful hair-splitting, now became synonymous with unrelenting, unteachable idiocy."***

And that pretty well describes how I earned my dunce cap... unrelenting, unteachable idiocy about the sovereignty and providence of God. A slow learner.

Fast forward two weeks.

An international student comes for the first time and is almost in tears telling me how happy she is to be there because she's been desperately lonely and looking for "something that felt like family." And all the bright lights and crowded rooms seem less important than this beautiful moment that Christ has orchestrated, and out of my overwhelmed heart, all I can do is burst into spontaneous praise with Paul, "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" (Romans 11:33). 

So, while the path out of unrealistic expectations about the glamour of ministry is slow, it is not without its beautiful, humbling gifts of grace. Oh the depths of the riches of God that bestow themselves in ways less glamorous but more glorious! 

Thankful for this lesson, even if I'm a bit slow,

Stefanie

*Reformed University Fellowship: John is the new campus pastor through this arm of the Presbyterian Church in America. He serves at Texas A&M Corpus Christi as of August 1, 2015.

**"The History Blog: The original dunce was actually brilliant." http://www.thehistoryblog.com /archives/13469, 2015.

***Williams, Thomas, "John Duns Scotus", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .