The prayer posted by my desk

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.  --- Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"

I've been living with this prayer now for coming up on a year.  One of my professors at Princeton handed out a little card with this meditation on it in my Prayer class.  I started to read it and could hardly make it past the first line.  Here I was, having just moved across the country for more school, and deep down I knew that I had no idea where I was going.  I thought I knew where I was going; God knows I had been seeking where to go.  But I still had to admit that I was full of anxiety because I could not see the road ahead of me.

Following after Jesus Christ is all about trust - and here in my hands, finally, was a prayer of honest trust.  It was honest because, well, "the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so."  And it was a prayer of trust because, "I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you."  The fact is, I can't always know what the road looks like ahead of me.  But I can know that God is simply with me, always.

As life has tossed my family and me back and forth across the country this past year, I have become more confident than ever that God is with us, and will never leave us to face our perils alone.  What's more, when we find ourselves in calm water, there is the peace that God remains with us.  This is not a God of the gaps, who only shows up when things are bad.  We have a God who is ever with us and for us.

That is why this prayer has stayed on my desk for the past year, because it is a prayer I can always pray.  Even now, as I am finally beginning a PhD program and I can leave all the anxiety and questioning behind, I pray this prayer.  I still have to admit to myself that I really don't know where I'm going.  So, I still seek God, and trust that my desire to please him is enough.  There is nothing greater than the peace that comes from allowing God to be God.

Why I'm Here (working on another degree, that is)

The summer before my senior year at Seattle Pacific University, I found myself in Taizé, France.  Despite being a bit shy and introverted, I quickly became friends with Joel, a 17 year-old from Sweden.  We were in a bible study together, and one morning he simply asked me what I thought about Jesus.  He had very little knowledge of Christianity, and so throughout the rest of the week, we spent hours walking around the village, sitting under shady trees, and even camping out under the stars talking about faith and life.  Joel was truly wrestling with the question of what it could mean to follow Jesus Christ.  One night, I wandered out of the village and into the countryside to pray.  Suddenly, the weight of God’s compassion for Joel, and for the world, overwhelmed me, and I felt my heart break.  Joel was full of so much wonder and curiosity, and even faith.  He longed for Jesus, but was not sure how to reconcile such a faith with his life.  Walking alone in the moonlight that night, God assured me that Joel would not be forgotten when he ventured back to Sweden.

A few years later, I was an M.Div. student at Fuller Theological Seminary’s northwest campus and a pastor of small groups and adult education at a relatively new church plant in Seattle.  One Sunday morning I was leading a class discussion about faith and doubt when Melissa, a biology student from the University of Washington, shared her hesitation with Christianity.  She talked about how she wanted to believe in Jesus, but couldn’t accept the biblical story of seven-day creation, and so reasoned that she couldn’t become a Christian.  I asked her, what if the first chapters of Genesis weren’t about how the earth was created?  What if they were about who God is?  Her eyes bulged, and she smiled a little.  We opened the story and talked about what we could learn about a God who creates with love and purpose, and who is ultimately interested in redeeming all of humanity.  She left class that day with new hope in a faith she desperately wanted to believe in.  I left class with renewed resolve that small group and education ministries needed to work hand in hand, addressing the very real and relevant questions of what it means to follow Jesus Christ, today.

As I was finishing up my M.Div., I realized that my calling to the teaching ministry was shifting from the church and into the academy.  To help affirm this calling, I spent a year and a half as a teaching assistant to Ed Smyth, professor of educational ministry at Seattle Pacific.  Ed gave me the opportunity to gain confidence giving lectures and assessing student work, even allowing me the opportunity to teach solo on a few occasions.  While I can picture myself teaching in either a university or seminary setting, my time with Ed at Seattle Pacific really ignited a passion for Christian liberal arts undergraduate teaching.  One of my main goals in my time with Ed was to see if deliberate ministry could be carried out in an academic setting.  I felt that my calling was as much to ministry as it was to teaching and wanted to see how this could practically work out.  For 23 years, Ed has led a men’s discipleship group out of his home on Thursday nights.  For him, teaching is a window to discipleship.  Ed is an excellent teacher.  But his legacy at the school will be the hundreds of young men who have prayed on their knees on Thursday nights in his basement.  Wherever God calls me to teach, I want to leave a similar legacy of excellent teaching, creative scholarship and passionate ministry.

Lately, Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been extremely helpful as I think about what it means for individuals and the church to follow Jesus Christ.  I am realizing that discipleship cannot be just a question of personal piety.  It certainly was more than this for Bonhoeffer.  The question of discipleship – what does it mean to follow Jesus Christ – is just as much a sociological, ecclesial or ethical question as it is a theological one.  Indeed, discipleship is even a question of religionless Christianity.  These are important questions for the academy and the church to consider.  What does it mean for Joel to follow Jesus from Taizé back to Sweden?  How does the church walk with Melissa as she grapples with her understanding of the Bible?  How can a university or seminary equip its students with the tools and ideas to not just think about God, but to follow Jesus to the ends of the earth? 

But there are more questions: questions of tragedy, of ethics, of culture…  What does it mean to follow Jesus Christ for the abused, for the Wall Street executive, for the iPhone toting teenager?  And how can the church foster a culture of discipleship for those who are seeking Jesus, both inside and outside of the church?  My task, then, is to express an understanding of discipleship that is grounded theologically, functions socially, ministers ethically and embraces the culture, in participation with God’s mission to world.

This is no small task.  And so I find myself working towards yet another academic degree – but for a clear purpose, and with a clear calling.  I am convinced that discipleship is playing a key role in God's continued restoration of the church today, and I cannot wait to see where the Spirit leads.

It is an exciting time to be a young theologian.