escapingbabylon.com

Yes you heard me right

InterVarsity’s North Central region is having it’s annual student conference called Breakaway this weekend. I’m heading up tomorrow evening.

There is one thing that is very good about having a relatively minimal wardrobe built around two colors. After having done laundry, packing itself took 10 minutes. It was 2:06 when I started and 2:16 when I was done to the point where I could say “I am packed”.

Although now that I’ve said this, I remember that I need to get swimming stuff. Heated indoor pool !!!

And in unrelated news. I’ve got a new color scheme, with one of my favorite sayings ever. This is seriously a life principle of mine.

I think I may have a mild version of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) or at least something that looks like it. I came to realize that my average mood during the winter is a lot lower than my average mood in the Spring or Summer. I really want the sun to come back.

I miss singing (in front of people) so much. And specifically, I miss singing in front of people with a semi-good band (or you know, a band) providing music. Sadly I really don’t have the time to be in the choir, and maybe barely enough time to be on the Praise and Worship team at church.

During breakfast, I decided to start listening to the new John Reuben Album. So when I got to the lyric “21st century America likes it’s witchcraft civilized”. Well let’s just say there was almost a need for cleanup in aisle 3.

So how does “let’s meet after church for lunch” date turn into a 6.5 hour “let’s talk about everything” date.

And that’s all that I have to say.

I’ve been catching myself saying ‘Yah’ recently.

Time for me to re-evaluate my spending habits and go on a stricter budget again. I’m really going to need a car in a couple of months, and I really am not saving enough to do that well. Even when I take into account my giving, I should be saving more. So it’s money-crunch time for me.

I don’t have any real resolutions yet. My mind is sort of in this nebulous God-induced fog where the only sentence that is thus far coming out of it is to “Do better ministry”. Except that I’m not sure what that entails, and my definition of ministry is expanding (see the most recent entry of Blogging IV). Perhaps later this evening I’ll try to work through (on this blog) what “better ministry” entails and/or requires.

First of all, let me get this out of the way. The badge to the left is the first physical thing that I have that says that I am staff, so allow me to bask in that feeling.

I was never sure if I should go to Atlanta 05, Intervarsity’s triennial black student conference. In retrospect, I was having a lot of the same doubts that I had at the last Atlanta conference when I went as a student. I was worried that the fact that I wasn’t African American, but Afro-Caribbean would be a problem. I was worried that being the only staff there from Minnesota would be a problem. I was worried about my inexperience as part of InterVarsity staff. And to top it all off, the week before, I became pretty sick.

There were many things that happened there that did not fit my personality. For example, I did not know what my duties would be until I arrived. One of the things that is not immediately obvious to people who meet me is that I am a planner. I like to think ahead about things, make sure I have the complete picture in my head. I am able to improvise, but only after I’ve had enough time before hand to think about the big picture of the situation, my current position within that situation, and what are the goals for this particular situation. Unfortunately I did not get the time.

Beyond this, I was placed in registration, and on programming. Which I must admit, bugged me at first. I thought that they put me in the two places where I could do as little damage as possible. However there were things that God had wanted me to learn. At this point in my preparation for InterVarsity staff work, I had become pretty depressed about all the administrative stuff that needed to be done. I was ok with raising support in general, what I wasn’t ok with at the time was the amount of work needed to raise this support effectively and in a way that would have people partner in ministry, not just provide money. My attitude was that I just wanted to “do ministry” and not all this other stuff.

Through this conference, and serving with an awesome registration team (Shout outs to Renita, Elena and Mary) I began to learn that there is a spirituality to logistics. That God is as present when we are reconciling records in his name as when we preach in his name. One of the things that I had unknowingly internalized was that some gifts are more important than others. I’d like to thank both the registration and programme teams for showing me the truth, and the importance of the gift of administration. You’ve given me added wisdom and added inspiration. I pray that I may be able to use this newfound wisdom throughout my ministry, both on campus and off.