How does our community see and respond to needs?

I gave a talk at Encounter (our weekly fellowship gathering) this semester! My topic? Cross-cultural relationships. This was the third installment of our four-part series "Connected: Designed for Right Relationships" in which we explored our relationship with God, with family, across cultures, and across gender. 

The text I'm speaking from is Acts 6:1-7, but I do a lot of introduction about InterVarsity, Cal, and the first five chapters of Acts, so if you aren't interested in the thrilling recap, start at 9:32 in the video*. It's actually not a video of me, but it has the audio paired with the slides I used, and it's 45 minutes in total. So if you have that kind of time, feel free to lend me your ear as I explain how cross-cultural relationships have deepened my need for and relationship with God.

*If you do start from the beginning, know that the recording starts midway through a description I'm giving about getting lost on the way to Encounter as a first year staff.

A Deeper Understanding of Pain, and Calling.

At UC Berkeley, I serve students who, consciously or not, carry a tremendous amount of unresolved hurt around inside of them. It goes deeper than I can see or even imagine, even when they begin to open up and voice the pain that is a constant companion on their undergraduate journey. Usually, students don't acknowledge this companion until it becomes impossible to ignore. That's mostly because seeking healing feels more threatening than tolerating the dull ache of the wound. We've gotten used to the feeling and convinced ourselves that ignoring pain is the best way to manage it, especially if we believe we are powerless to make a change.

CCF's recent dialogue spaces about sexual violence and assault have shown us otherwise. 

As the moderator of a recent Veritas Forum event said, "Injustice finds no solace in denial." In other words, the most disturbing and awful realities of our world are the ones that most need to be acknowledged, mourned, addressed communally (often sacrificially), and then remembered. This is not a popular nor comfortable sentiment--it wasn't in Jesus' day, and it sure isn't any more welcome today. Most civilians are not given tools to do anything other than witness violence (news reports, movies, shows, and games), and if we do take action, we usually intensify the problem by escalating the violence.

It starts with acknowledging that pain is everywhere, in everyone. 

At the first dialogue, four female leaders invited the men from our fellowship to hear their personal stories of objectification, harassment, and sexual assault. These experiences spanned the spectrum of sexual violence: 

- An anonymous online predator, pretending to be a friend of a friend, making requests over video chat that initially seemed innocent but escalated to indecent

- Being groped on a subway train

- Unwanted, invasive grasping on the dance floor

- Physical attack by a classmate on campus at night; raped in his apartment

Though these stories differ in their particulars, the overwhelming reality is that regardless of the intensity of the event, the feelings of being used/discarded, anger at and fear of men, the desire to disassociate from one's body, and the shame/humiliation of the experience were always present.

The men who were present at this space had time in a separate, male-only space to lament the pain of their sisters as well as acknowledge before God their complicity in the objectification of women's bodies through the use of pornography and participation in a culture that defines women by their sex appeal. Later, they had the opportunity to write anonymous messages to their sisters in the fellowship, who they knew were gathering next week to share in a female-only space. Here are a few of their reflections:

Dear sisters of CCF,

First off on behalf of men including myself, I am sorry for that I have been ignorant and have mistreated the person that God has uniquely made. You are a treasure and you are so valuable. I am so grateful and I am honored to be able to hear these stories. Please pray for us/me as men that we would continue to pursue this space for you and we would listen and respond in a loving manner.

Your story deserves to be heard. You are hugely important to us, in ways that are difficult to describe in words. Please don’t hold back for the sake of others, share for yourself.

Sisters of CCF, we love you! We invite you to help us be better brothers for you.

We love you. You all have been so beautifully made in the image of God. I apologize for ways I or my borthers may have hurt you and repent for ways we may have been complicit.

You are all wonderful sisters to us, and it is an honor to be your brothers.

In reading these messages, I can't help but feel the joy of the Lord strengthening my resolve to keep pursuing community-wide healing. That means everyone--perpetrators, victims, by-standers, enablers, cowards, heroes, etc.--provided they are able and willing to own their God-given role.

I've been learning this year that 

uncovering calling 

is 

paying enough attention 

to my experiences, reactions, and even pain 

in order to be able to identify and pursue 

the work God gives me to do.

And that work truly is a gift to me and to the world.

Moses and God Have a DTR, and Students Get Prayer

First of all, for those unfamiliar with the acronym DTR, it stands for Define The Relationship. If you want a musical explanation for this cultural phenomenon of clarifying an ambiguous relationship (particularly as it takes place in the contemporary church), watch this video.

Onto the meat of our subject, 

Moses and God Have a DTR in Exodus 3. 

Our community recently investigated this dynamic interaction during our second Encounter meeting. Michael Kim-Eubanks (pictured below) invited us to see how God is both familiar to Moses ("I am the God of your ancestors") and foreign/other to him ("Take off your shoes, for the place you are standing is holy ground"). And as a result of God initiating with Moses via a curiously behaving shrubbery, their relationship is never the same again.

Me, Michael, and Matt:

Hopefully at least one of us is familiar to you.

I found this duality--God is both known/unknown--very helpful in interpreting where I find myself and Cal Christian Fellowship as the semester begins. In many ways, ministry looks much as it did last semester: I'm supervising the same focus group leaders, we are running similar weekly gatherings, and I continue to invest in these spaces. On the other hand, ministry feels very different than it did last semester (and last academic year):

1. We have a surprising number of new people coming to BOTH Encounter and our focus groups.

2. We had a dance-off at Encounter, and people got so into it that we had seven rounds of going around the room doing a different dance move each time. (THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN IN CCF. EVER.)

3. Students are honest about their vulnerabilities with other students and staff; they admit their difficult feelings and are taking active steps to resolve them (counseling, conflict mediation, etc.).

I think I need to repeat that last one. Students are being honest about their vulnerabilities and seeking help. At a large, competitive public university where self-sufficiency is an art form and confidence is a survival tactic.

So that's different. Kind of shocking, and kind of cool ... kind of like a burning bush!

God wanted to define his relationship with Moses based on what had been (he knew Moses' life story, including the murder he committed that caused him to flee his homeland) as well as what would be (he had a plan that required Moses to believe some new things--including that he was God's chosen leader). It seems that God wants to define his relationship with me and with the CCF community on similar terms: he knows how hard it has been with the transitions our community has been through, including staff transitions. At the same time, God is asking us to respond in faith to the signs of new life he is stirring--new people and new levels of trust. 

Moses responds with curiosity, attention, and humility. I can say I'm curious and interested in attending to the new things God is doing. I am praying for the humility to respond well to surprises, the good as well as the less straightforwardly pleasant.

Unexpected Twists of Leading Mark Study

This fall (2014), I co-led a weekly inductive bible study on the gospel of Mark, colloquially known as Mark Study. My co-leader and I were excited about making a regular space where folks could encounter the Jesus of the Bible, the one who frequently confounds us unless we expend time and energy entering into the first-century world he lived in. We eagerly anticipated Jesus showing up in the lives of the Mark Studiers. We just didn't know who those Mark Studiers would be.

Fifteen weeks later, and my co-leader and I are marveling at how much God moved in unseen ways (that is, unseen by us until pretty recently).

1. We consistently had 6 students attending.

2. The study that I felt the most insecure about leading was one that folks mentioned the most in their conversations with us at the end of the semester.

3. We had two opportunities to look for Jesus in our present day social climate: one in Oakland, talking about police brutality and racial injustice, and the other in Berkeley, a prayer vigil organized after the non-indictment of Darren Wilson. After these events, my co-leader and I were unsure whether or not folks were able to make connections between Jesus in the gospel of Mark and Black Americans advocating for justice in their communities. But our last study of the semester tied in the way Jesus sends out his followers to see and be with communities previously unknown to us!

4. Students are excited to be part of Mark 2 (the second half of Mark) next semester; and they are excited to lead the study!

5. Students have individually thanked us for the space that we helped create each week because they have seen things they had never seen before in Jesus and in the Word.

It maybe oughtn't be much of a surprise to me that God shows up when people seek him--and yet, I am so much like the disciples, who say, "Jesus, don't you care --- ?!" and get afraid whenever he does anything. So that's the last twist: how Jesus has stretched my belief/faith by putting me in the position of leading others when I'm barely a step ahead!

The [Squirrel] Monster Within

I was meeting with a student on a clear Friday afternoon at Free Speech Movement Cafe on campus. We were talking about insecurity and pride, and how both these human postures communicate a similar rejection of God as Creator and Sustainer. I shared some about my temptation to tell God that he designed me poorly when I found myself not measuring up to my own standards, and the student, Rachel, was listening with rapt attention.

It was then that we saw the squirrel perched on our table, mere inches away from our coffee and food.

This is not the squirrel, but it is about as close to you as the squirrel in my story was to us. 

Too close.

With exclamations of surprise and fear, we leapt up from our table, snatching away our beverages and snacks. One crumb remained and the rotund squirrel gobbled it up greedily, showing even less of an inclination to back down. I watched it in disbelief--when did it get so bold that it would sit on a table, less than a foot away from humans, and not flinch at their words or gestures? How did this abomination come to be??

It was then that Rachel and I realized that this squirrel standoff was a perfect illustration of what we had been discussing: this moment was a story that, along with the associated feelings of terror and helplessness, would sear this conversation in both our minds for a long time to come.

This squirrel is so much like the pride within us--when we feed it a little here and a little there (musing on our accomplishments, dwelling on our failures, investing in our reputations at the cost of our souls), it soon grows bold beyond our control and begins to terrorize us. It starts looking at us with hunger, no longer satisfied with the little morsels we've been feeding it. My wake-up call came in the form of a deep depression*--I had been feeding the monster of vanity for a long time with both self-aggrandizing and self-condemning thoughts, and it eventually swallowed my identity whole. As a result, I experienced what felt like death, but was really God destroying the false beliefs I had about who I am and teaching me to compassionately interpret my emotions.

Rachel and I were a little in awe at how neatly our table-side encounter with the squirrel fit into what God was teaching us in that moment. I am grateful to serve such a creative and concrete God!

*I am continually learning to interpret my experience with depression, and I offer it as a story about my life (no one else's). Everyone's depression is different!

Love First, Ask Questions Second

God has recently been overturning a paradigm I've unconsciously held regarding my relationship with my student leaders.

Firstly, as a function of my own personality and culture of origin, I interpret leaders as those given rightful authority and responsibility to direct followers. When I was a student and staff invited me to respond in specific ways, I invariably did what they requested. And when I deviated or defaulted in any way, I was acutely aware that I had done so and anticipated "the reckoning"--the time when I'd have to account for my procrastination and inaction.

There are various unhealthy dynamics in this approach, but one positive one is that I understood the two-way commitment of my relationship with my staff workers. They were committed to oversee my ministry, help me understand what next steps to take, and hold me accountable to what God was calling me to do in obedience and trust. In order for that relationship to work, I had to hold up my end of the bargain, which was to follow their leadership by obeying, or at least by conscientiously objecting when I felt like obeying was not in my or others' best interest. But nowhere in my mind was there an option to not do something and not communicate with my staff worker about not doing it.

Then I became a staff worker, and this dynamic of one-way communication (me, initiating with my students) and unmet expectations became rather frequent.

As a relatively new staff worker, I have a tendency to overpersonalize ministry situations. This inclination usually starts me going in the wrong direction. The truth is, there are so many things competing for my students' time and attention, many of them worthy pursuits in their own right. Still more carry the brightness of urgency or the allure of prestige. And to interpret a student's non-responsiveness as a rejection of my leadership misses that reality. All of us live within social systems in which there are rewards and punishments--the very least I can do when experiencing students' flakiness is ask some good questions about what's driving them, inviting them to honestly own their priorities without shame. I don't do that very well when I'm trying to defend my own leadership.

While these realizations were stirring around in my mind, I asked God for a way out of the zero-sum mentality of "If they obey me, I'm a good leader, and if they don't, it means I suck." He invited me to think about how he leads me--with intention for my flourishing, with compassion for my struggles and with a whole lot of patience for my wrong choices. God invited me to choose into that style of leadership--self-giving rather than self-evaluative--by pursuing my students' hearts the way He pursues mine.

So then I thought long and hard about how I could show them God's love, and I decided I would buy each one of the leaders I oversee a gift that wasn't expensive but somehow drew on my knowledge of who they are and what resonates with them. For one student, I bought him three different (used) DVD's that had his name in the titles. For a female student, I bought her flowers and chocolate. Each time I spent energy, money, and time on thinking about these individuals and what makes them special, I found myself softening in my approach toward them.

I was loving these students without requiring anything of them but with the intention of showing them God's love. It was not about them liking me more or about me convincing them to undertake an action plan of some kind. It was not about me. It was about God using me to let them know how much he loves them, and in the process, he changed my heart. I was no longer so inclined to be resentful of times when I set clear expectations that students did not meet. I held them accountable to their word and asked them what happened, but it was a not punitive conversation and I didn't feel wronged by them.

God taught me to love first, so I can be in the right place to ask questions.

A New Kind of Gathering -- Encounter

So we used to refer to our weekly (or every two week) community gathering space as "large group." This title had some drawbacks:

• No clues as to what the gathering is about or who is invited
                 (Is Jesus invited? I don't know. Is he large?)
• Sociological nature of the name has generic/static connotations
                 (Does this nondescript group change or is it stuck forever in ambiguous largeness?)
• Not especially welcoming to new folks, and taken for granted by members
                  (Why do we do this again? What are we hoping for in this space?)

At the start of the semester, our fellowship (in various settings) voted on the new name, Encounter. Encounter is meant to be a place where we encounter God, and God encounters us. We've experienced the reality that encounters with God transform our thinking, feeling, and acting. We can expect God to move because he is active and engaged and because he goes out of his way to be accessible to us in our limited frailty.

As we have been exploring this new space, we've had different kinds of Encounters. Our first was a talk series on "What Comes First?"

We also have had two Prayer Encounters -- one focused on intercession, and one focused on prayer ministry.

It's still a bit experimental week-to-week, but it has definitely been a space for our community to gather around Jesus, renew our minds, receive unconditionally accepting love from God, and respond. May God continue to Encounter Cal Christian Fellowship!