Going through a transformation

These past couple of years my heart, brain and ministry have gone through a transformation and I hope will continue to do so. In the summer of 2003 I had been doing full time ministry with Campus Crusade for Christ based out of Boulder, CO for 9 years. Three of those years I had been the director and also have been given the opportunity to lead some movements overseas in Chile and Spain.

I found my self that summer feeling drained, tired and ready to quit the ministry. I couldn't reconcile what I was feeling inside with what I was doing daily on campus. We talked all the time as a staff team and as a corporate ministry about getting to all 60 million college students (now 100 million) around the world with the gospel but I just felt like the little work we were doing at the University of Colorado was in vain. Yes, CU has been a campus that has sent hundreds of graduates into full time ministry but it seemed we were missing the very students that surrounded us on campus. We would fight, dream, pray, strategies and labor hard at tweaking our outreaches, our weekly meeting and try to dream up something new and big that would be "it." They all seemed to go off with a small bang.

That summer one of my good friends (Jeff) from California gave me a few books to read. I have received books from him before but these came at the perfect time. The Spirit of God used these to take me on a journey of self discovery and renewal. The two books he gave me were
A New Kind of Christian and The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Win the West....Again. The sparked some new thoughts. They grabbed a portion of my heart. I have felt for some time that our ministry on campus was missing the majority of not yet Christians. Our solution as stated before was to just tweak and work harder at a weekly meeting. But the not yet Christians weren't coming and didn't really care about what we had planned. We were failing at getting to the culture that God had called us to reach.

What I saw happening in my life was a dissatisfaction with church, my own relationship with God and our ministry. I was going through the same old motions of meeting with God and going out daily to reach the campus. What I was missing was a heart that was soft and ready to be used by God to reach the lost.

A few other books:
The Story we Find ourselves In
The Younger Evangelical
Adventures in Missing the Point
Blue Like Jazz
Invitation to a Journey
The Church of Irresistible Influence
The Kingdom Assignment 1
The Kingdom Assignment 2
The Divine Conspiracy
and recently
The Shaping of Things to come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church
Liquid Church
Cultivating a life for God
Master Plan of Evangelism
The Church in the House: a Return to Simplicity
and a few audio sermons and Bible studies from Tim Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church

Some of these are great and I would recommend and others were just okay. But all in all they formed some new thoughts, ideas and most importantly renewed my passion and desire to reach those that are not yet Christians.

At times it is frustrating because I still feel like I am failing as a leader to reach every student every year but I feel like God is calling me, us, our team, our ministry to try; to step out in bold faith; to try something new, radically new. If we don't we'll lose a whole generation of men and women who need a savior.
Categories: Books