Spring Break So Far

On Saturday morning, we packed up the BCM's big white van and drove down to New Orleans for a spring break mission trip - the drive took us about 14 hours total. April and I are leading a group of five students down here to work on some service and community outreach projects in the city. I did a few of these spring break mission trips while I was a student, but it has been a while since I've done any sort of project like this, and the first time that I've led a team. We've put a lot of thought and effort into planning and preparing for this trip (which was a difficult process for me), so we have been excited to see all of our plans come together and to begin to experience what we've been thinking about for a couple of months now.

Our good friend Zack Reuter works for a church here in New Orleans called Sojourn Lakeview, and we are partnering with them. The idea to head down there came during a conversation we had with Zack over Christmas when we got a chance to hang out with him. Their church is relatively new in its current form, and needs some work updating and cleaning the building that it recently moved into. They will also be hosting a theater production in their building starting the end of this week, and need some help getting the word out to their neighborhood about the production and the fact that the church is back up and running. Our team will be helping with both of these projects toward the end of the week.

We are staying at a place called Rachel Sims Baptist Mission, which has been reaching out to a different neighborhood of the city for a long time. They have programs for needy adults and kids in their neighborhood. Today, we were able to help do some "spring cleaning" of the building and the grounds, including organizing, yardwork, cleaning, and trash pickup. There is a public park across the street from the center that they use for many of their activities, so we did a lot of cleanup there too. In the afternoon, we met the neighborhood kids there for the after-school program. It was great to be out in the 80-degree weather playing with the kids, helping them with their homework, and helping them listen to the Bible stories they were being taught.

Yesterday was a day to relax and experience New Orleans for us. We went to church at Sojourn Lakeview and then drove out into the swamp to get some tasty fresh seafood for lunch. In the evening, we got to head over to the French Quarter, eat some beignets, and explore a little bit. This is definitely a unique city with so much to experience!

A Day in My Life

Since it's hard to describe what I do on a daily basis, I wanted to try to give a sense of what a day looks like for me. Today is our first day back at work after a week off at Thanksgiving, so there is probably a little more organization work today that I'm catching up on than usual. Here goes:

7:30am - Wake up, a little later than I wanted to, but well rested. Eat a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats. Check email and fantasy football/basketball results. My teams didn't perform very well this week.
8:00am - Shower, shave, get dressed.
8:15am - Quiet time alone with God. Writing in my journal, reading Proverbs, praying about the day.
8:50am - Take the dog for a short walk in the snow. Too bad the snow is all melted within an hour.
9:00am - Gather my stuff and make the commute to work (walking across the parking lot). Turn the heat on, set up my laptop, write a to-do list for the day.
9:30am - Update the BCM website to reflect the activities going on in the near future. I do this every Monday morning. Background music: Blue Water Band. Not sure why I wanted to listen to this old recording of us playing - maybe because I saw Mike this past week and haven't listened to it in a while.
9:45am - Write an article for our monthly newsletter about events of the past month. Gives me a good chance to reflect on the month and everything that went on. Also put it into the layout using Microsoft Publisher. April is with her ladies discipleship group, so I get good work done with the office to myself. Background music: Don Chaffer and Waterdeep.
11:00am - Balance my checkbook and process the support checks that we have received over break.
Randomly throughout the morning - Write and respond to emails with BCM studnets setting up a service project this weekend to split and deliver firewood to families in the area who need it.
11:15am - Get asked by a student to do an interview about my views of masculinity for her Masculinity class. Who knew they offered such a class. Spend the next hour and a half talking about family, being a husband, being emotionally vulnerable, and what it means to be a man. I had an audience of up to four other women (including April) listening to my answers, making me feel a bit like I was on trial.
12:45pm - Talk to another student about the possibility of them using the BCM's white 15-passenger van for a trip this weekend. The insurance company is being really picky about who drives the van these days, so it doesn't work out.
1:00pm - Go home for lunch. I made a sandwich with a leftover chicken breast, lettuce, tomato, and mayo - it was quite good. Also had some homemade Chex Mix and Trader Joe's Candy Cane Joe Joe's (a favorite of ours) that we imported from Cincinnati this past week.
1:30pm - Back to work. Write some receipt letters/emails to our supporters.
2:00pm - Read some NFL articles online.
2:30pm - Call a student I've never met or talked to because his grandmother had called here before break asking us to reach out to him. This is a really intimidating thing for me, so it takes me 15 minutes of going through possible conversations in my head before I can call. End up leaving a voice mail. This is the kind of thing that I want to learn how to do more though - God giving me a heart for the broken and hurting.
3:00pm - Walk down the street to Rocket Music to buy some drum sticks. I've pulverized the couple of pairs I have, and have band practice tonight. There are people there eating chocolate cake in honor of somebody's birthday, and I get offered some, but decline.
3:15pm - Write an email to student leaders about the Christmas party we're having next Sunday. It will be a pot-luck dinner and white elephant gift party, so I explain those things. Background music: Pandora radio, Belle & Sebastian channel. I asked my brother this weekend what artist to put into Pandora and this is what he recommended. I'm digging it.
3:30pm - Write this blog.
3:55pm - Do some quick research for a talk that April is giving tomorrow night about James and John the sons of Zebedee, two of Jesus' disciples.
4:00pm - Meet with other staff to pray for the BCM.
5:00pm - Talk about ideas for a weekly advent liturgy service that we could have over the next couple of weeks.
5:15pm - Go home for dinner (I think we're going to make sloppy joes).
6:30pm - Back to the BCM for church band practice. I play drums at church about every other week, and we're playing this Sunday.
9:00pm - Samson society meeting at BCM. This a group where men gather together to talk honestly about their lives, and I love this part of every week.
10:00pm - Hang out with the Samson guys at Taco Bell. This is our weekly ritual after our meetings.

Well, that was a lengthy description with some details that are pretty inconsequential, but I hope you understand a little more about what kinds of things I do during the day.

Off to the Eyrie

This weekend is the fall statewide BCM retreat at Eagle Eyrie! Eagle Eyrie is a Baptist retreat center located in the mountains outside of Lynchburg, VA. There is a state BCM conference there each fall and spring where students from BCMs at all the colleges in Virginia gather for a weekend to worship, hang out, and stay up too late playing games and talking. I can't remember for sure, but I'm pretty confident that I went to all 8 Eagle Eyries that occured during my time as a student. I have to confess though that during all that time I never knew what the heck "Eagle Eyrie" meant. Apparently, an eyrie is a nest or a house that is built on a high place or a cliff. The property got its name from one of the original owners whose nickname was "The Eagle" - sounds like a pretty intense guy.

We're all getting ready to hop in 15-passenger vans and start the 2-hour trip to Lynchburg for the weekend, and I'm getting quite excited. Eagle Eyrie was one of my favorite events as a student. I remember so many fun times hanging out and having significant spiritual experiences there. I even met a few people from other Virginia schools that have been good friends ever since then. They've fixed up the hotel that we stay in and added a few modern conveniences (like cell phone service and wireless internet!) since the last time I've been there, but I am looking forward to the familiar place to retreat from life here in Blacksburg. I know it will be a little bit different now that I am no longer a student, but I'm excited to see what will happen in the VT BCM community and what God will teach us this weekend!

Fresh Air

This weekend I had the chance to get away and do a little bit of light backpacking with some BCM guys. We left Friday afternoon and drove about an hour to a place where we could get on the Appalachian Trail. We hiked up to a shelter along the trail, spent the night there, then hiked the rest of the way up to McAfee's Knob in the morning. There is a beautiful view of the mountains and valleys from up there, so we took it in for a while, then hiked back down and made it back to Blacksburg in time to shower, brush our teeth, and watch the VT/UNC football game.

The trip wore me out - I'm getting old enough where sleeping in a tent without any good camping gear isn't easy for me, and we did a good amount of hiking up the mountain. It was enough that I pretty much crashed the rest of the day Saturday. It was a very refreshing time for me despite that. I'm not a huge outdoors kind of guy - I can't remember the last time I camped prior to this - but I really enjoyed getting away from everything, having a bit of solitude, and getting to hang out with the other guys. One of my favorite parts of the trip was getting to sit around the fire and talk about what God is doing in our lives and pray for each other Friday night.

Saturday morning, I woke up before most of the others, and I took the chance to be by myself for a while and reflect on the past month. I thought and prayed about what were the best and worst parts of the month, how I had seen God work, and in what ways I had failed or felt distant from God. There's something about being alone in the woods that enables those kind of meditation and prayer times to be so much more powerful than they would be in my living room.







Me sitting on the knob and looking out on the beautiful view.














Our group at the top, except Phil who was taking the picture.

Preaching

Over the past two weeks at 6:33 (The BCM's weekly large group worship service - it meets at 6:33 on Tuesday nights), April and I have both had the chance to speak and share our thoughts with the group. April has done this before - she is a good speaker and knows how to share her passion and understanding of an issue with the audience. As for me, this was really the first time (outside of maybe a few short stories or testimonies) that I've ever been asked to say anything in front of a large group. We've been talking about making the most of what God has given us; April talked about making the most of our relationships and I talked about making the most of our finances.

I'm not sure what to call what I did. I shared ideas and stories from the Bible and my personal experience dealing with finances to somewhere around 100 students for about 25 minutes. Did I preach? Was it a sermon? Perhaps a homily? I feel very unqualified to use those sorts of words about anything I've done. Regardless of what I call it, it was a surprising experience for me. I'm not nervous to speak in front of a group, but I was nervous that I wouldn't have anything worthwhile to say, and I had a hard time sleeping the night before. I don't know if this is something I'm gifted at or not - I guess I would have to give it a few more tries and get some feedback from trusted people who know what they're doing. It made the worship experience of the night more vivid for me - there was a sense of desperation as I sang before getting up in front of everybody that I needed God's presence and help or everything I was doing would have been in vain.

If you're interested in hearing what I had to say, here's the website where you can download the audio. Unfortunately, April did not get recorded due to technical difficulties.

Beginning of School

These past two weeks have been pretty busy around the BCM. It all started with our international student furniture giveaway two weekends ago. We gave donated furniture to about 200 international students who are new to Virginia Tech and typically have nothing to sit, sleep, or write on. We had people sleeping on the sidewalk next to our building starting at 1:00am to wait in line for furniture, and didn't have enough to give everybody something. It was exciting to be a part of - having the chance to meet so many interesting people and help them out in a very practical and needed way. I hope that we'll continue to be in relationship with some of these students as the year progresses.

This past weekend, we had our leadership retreat with all of the student leaders at the BCM. We went down to Claytor Lake for a night to plan and prepare for the semester, hang out, and spend some time drawing close to God as a group. For April and me, it was a first chance to meet a lot of the student leaders. We are so excited about the group of Bible study leaders that we'll be working with - they are ready and excited to lead their groups and share God's love with the campus and community. This semester, we will be going through a study on the book of Acts and looking at how the church should look and God's plan to love the whole world.

We've also had a couple of events where we've met a lot of freshmen: helping with move-in, basketball, dodgeball, and an open house on Saturday night. Although it's a bit overwhelming for somebody like me who is naturally introverted and sometimes uncomfortable around lots of people, it was really cool to get to meet and talk to so many new people. I remember how intimidating the whole process was for me when I was a freshman, so I hope that we can be welcoming and helpful in any way we can for these new students.

Yesterday was the first day of classes for everybody here in Blacksburg except for April and me. It's a little odd to see all the students headed for the academic buildings, knowing that we have no class and no homework to worry about. Tonight is our first Tuesday night worship service of the year, and we are really hoping to see people come, feel welcomed, and connect to the community at the BCM.

It's Official

One nice thing about working for a campus ministry at Virginia Tech is that you get the hook up from the university. A great example of this is the fact that we get Long-Term Visitor parking passes. This means we can park in any spot on campus - Resident, Commuter, or Faculty/Staff. And it's free. Living right across the street from campus makes this not as big of a deal for April and me, but I'm going to use the pass at least once just because I remember how difficult the parking situation could be when I was a student.

We also got these today:


Somehow, this seems to make everything that we're doing a little more official. It's just so obvious now that I work in Campus Ministry.

It's funny because I was thinking about this idea when I was reading my Bible this morning. I was reading a story where Jesus was hungry, so he approached a fig tree that looked from a distance like it should have had some figs on it. Unfortunately, when he reached it, he realized that it had no fruit. Jesus said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." Later, Jesus and the disciples walked back by the tree and it was withered and dead.

Getting my Campus Ministry ID card made me think about this again, because I fear being like that fig tree. It showed me a picture of somebody who looks like they're living the kind of life God would appreciate from a distance. However, I want my life to bear real fruit - the kind that stands up to Jesus' close inspection. The kind that remains when all of those external things are stripped away from me. I can flash my new ID all I want, but God is not impressed with such things; in fact, Jesus calls the people he runs into who do these sorts of things hypocrites.

So I asked myself, what is this fruit? I think there are a lot of answers to that question, but the ones that I thought of this morning were the "fruit of the spirit" (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control). I thought of a life that is lived in service to others. I thought of a life that shares the love of God freely and does not discriminate. I thought of a life that loves Jesus and is satisfied in him alone. I hope these are the things that Jesus sees when he gets close to my life.

First Week of Work

Vacation is officially over, and we have arrived here in Blacksburg. It's been a really busy few days for us, but it's really great to be here. We had a great time hanging out in Nashville with the Reuters , my brother Randy, his girlfriend Sam, and my parents. Some of the highlights of that trip included exploring East Nashville, taking in some good old country & western music at a bar downtown, and a dinner party that included a very spirited game of extreme Uno. April and I even got to go wander around the enormous lobbies of the Opryland Hotel, which I must admit was impressive.

We rolled into town Sunday afternoon and had some wonderful friends here that helped us move all of our stuff from the basement to the apartment, unpack a lot of it, and even put some of our furniture back together. Due to our other staff members going out of town, we had to jump right into work Monday morning, so we're still putting our apartment together - it's finally getting close.

The first day of work was nothing like my other jobs. I don't have a cubicle (April and I share a sweet office), I didn't have to get my picture taken for a badge, and I didn't have to sit through boring presentations about workplace ethics and 401k options. We spent the morning assigning responsibilities for the upcoming school year. I have a few things on my plate that I'm really excited about and are areas that I feel very passionate about (such as working with Bible study leaders, men's discipleship, and website/network maintenance) and a few that are new to me, but that I'm excited to see how God uses me and teaches me through them (such as international student ministry and building repair).

We've had the chance to meet a lot of the students who are here for the summer at Bible study and prayer time. Things are pretty sleepy around Blacksburg right now, but in a few short weeks the place will be busy with activity, and I'm sure everything here will seem crazy. I'm not sure that I'm prepared for that, but it's going to be a fun year - I can tell already!

The Big Decisions

I've had to make a few choices that were sure to define the next few years of my life. Where should I go to college? Should I ask April to marry me? Should I take a job in Philadelphia? The decision making process for me usually looks like this: think and pray about what I want to do, look for opportunities in the direction I feel is right, take a few small steps in that direction, and repeat. Eventually though, I come to a point of no return where I must make a definite decision, regardless of the fact that I have no assurance that what I'm about to do is right. This always makes even the most simple of tasks seem like a nail biting experience like pacing around the fax machine that holds my job acceptance letter, trying to talk myself into hitting the send button. When April and I started feeling a desire to work full-time with college students, the process was very similar.

Due to the positive experience we had being a part of a collegiate ministry as students, April and I have a shared passion for seeing God work in the lives of college students that led us to talk about working full-time in college ministry from even before we got married. After taking a few years to just be married, we decided to start pursuing this passion. Many small steps later, we had the opportunity to either accept the position at Virginia Tech or push it off and stay here in Philadelphia for at least a little while longer. We had no guarantees that we would like this, be good at it, or not regret the decision for the rest of our lives, but we did know that God had put this desire in both of us and that he had brought us this far already.

So it was with a very shaky voice that a few months ago I told the director over the phone that we accepted the position, a decision which will certainly define our lives for the next few years. We are now in the process of preparing everything for our move to Blacksburg, and even now we have seen God provide for us in many ways in response to pursuing the desire he put inside of us. We are still scared and at times unsure of this next step, but excited to see what God will do through us in the lives of college students.

Life Update

I can't really think of a good way to introduce our next bit of big life news, so I'm just going to dive right into it ...

The big news around here is that April and I have decided to leave Philadelphia and our jobs here to move back to Blacksburg, VA and join the staff of the Baptist Collegiate Ministries at Virginia Tech. Actually, we made this decision almost 4 months ago now, and the whole process of thinking about the move started sometime last fall. There are still details to work out, but our goal is to be down there sometime in July or August, ready for the start of school in the end of August.

Working in vocational ministry on a college campus is something April and I have talked about for a long time. Being involved in a college ministry during our time as students at Virginia Tech was a big deal for both April and me. When I arrived at college, I was in the beginning stages of my relationship with God. The BCM was a place where I first became part of a community of people who had a passion for God and weren't afraid to share it with me. I found opportunities to be mentored, to serve other students and the community, to go on mission trips, and to take my first steps in leadership. It honestly changed the direction of my life. Our passion is that every student would have that same opportunity to hear and respond to God's love and to be part of a community that supports, loves, and encourages them.

The first big steps we've taken in the process were a visit to the campus over Easter weekend and a trip out to Colorado two weeks ago for a training conference. Part of the Colorado trip included a chance to explore Denver and the surrounding mountains, so I've put a few pictures from that trip below. We are sure that it's going to be a difficult transition, especially since we are leaving the friends it took a long time to make here in Philadelphia and the church that we love so much. But we're also really excited about the opportunity that God has put before us, and we can't wait to see what great things are going to come of it.





By a waterfall outside of Boulder, CO.















View from the top of Red Rocks. That place is amazing.