Post-Basileia Story: The gift of an image

It's been another hard year, but Basileia was so good and refreshing that I nearly forgot all about how hard it was.

One of the reasons is because of a significant moment for me during chapter time.  While I had been leading these sessions earlier in the week, I decided to step back and give control over to the new Servant Leadership Team (SLT, student exec board) to get some practice.  So I kept my mouth shut as much as I could and let them run with their ideas.  They started off by posing the question, "What does vision mean?" to the group for discussion.  Then Marian spoke up.

"Well, I like to think of vision as a picture of an island," she said, in her usual light-hearted manner.  She went on to explain how we are standing on an island, looking out and seeing another island across the water, and how it looks so beautiful and wonderful that we just can't stay on this island any longer - we must get in a boat and go to that other island.  Vision is the picture of getting to that other, better island.

via Unsplash

To you, it may seem silly or insignificant, but let me tell you a little bit about who Marian is.  Marian was one of the very first students I started working with when I switched campuses to RIT.  My official capacity began at Basileia the year Marian was one of my new student leaders.  It was a crazy year of learning about the campus culture and learning how to lead in the midst of that learning.

One of the ways I led was by teaching the new team what vision was and how it described the current state of the chapter.  The image I used was that of an island.  I said that some students were in the boat, ready to go to that wonderful island but just didn't know how, and some students were back on the shore, confused about why we needed to leave this perfectly good island in the first place.  I often exhorted the SLT to lead other students in such a way that invites more students to come on board the boat, and invites the students who are already on board to have greater clarity around the direction in which we're going.

It was such a distinct image for me that I even journaled about it.

So hearing Marian share about this image was a rattling moment for me in bringing the past 3 years of staff to the present.  It was a moment of experiencing God's presence, with Him saying, "I have been and still am doing a good work in you and through you."  It was a concrete, tangible way to hold on to Jesus in a time where not many of those moments come around.

What a gift from the Lord!

Weeping for RIT.

My Servant Leaders (the student exec team) and I have taken on the practice of spending 15 minutes of our weekly meeting to study and discuss a Bible passage.

As you can imagine, 15 minutes is not a lot of time to study a Bible passage.

To combat that a little bit, I've asked the leadership team to spend the entire week prior to the meeting in that passage during their quiet times with Jesus.  They can study it however they want.  They're encouraged to pray through whatever comes to the surface for them.  They're expected to come to our meeting having spent much more time with this Word on their own than we're able to do so together, armed and ready to share what came up for them during the week.

We're going through the book of Nehemiah, and this past week we went over the first chapter, where Nehemiah hears about the tragic state of condition of Jerusalem and Judah:  "The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame.  The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire" (Nehemiah 1:3, ESV).

Like I said, 15 minutes is not a lot of time to study the many layers of scripture we could unpack.

So we focused on one point - how Nehemiah responded to the news.  Here's what we found:

He immediately wept and mourned for days.  Nehemiah must have cared deeply enough about Jerusalem and his people that it brought such grief into his heart, as one would if someone very close and dear to them had passed away.

He fasted and prayed.  Nehemiah is brought to his knees, but not only that, he does not pray a prayer of, "Please help and deliver them, Lord!" or, "Why must my people go through this suffering?".  Instead, he interestingly prays a prayer of confession.

He identifies with the good and the bad of his people.  Not only does Nehemiah pray a prayer of confession (weird), but he identifies with his people in their sins!  "We have sinned against you," Nehemiah 1:6b says.  "Even I and my father's house have sinned."  He doesn't try to put the blame on anyone else.  He doesn't distance himself from his confession; even though he seems like he has the right not to involve himself.

He wasn't physically there.  This was in response to news that someone had brought to him from afar - he hadn't even seen the state of his community with his own eyes.  Either Nehemiah was super touchy-feely and sensitive, or he cared so deeply and identified so deeply with his community that he was moved deeply by this tragic news, even though he was miles away from the desolation itself.   

As we discussed these observations in our mere few minutes, one question kept coming to mind:

Why don't we respond to the brokenness on RIT's campus the way Nehemiah responds to Jerusalem's brokenness? 

It was a question I posed to the Servant Leadership team.  I asked them to imagine if they had gotten some news from someone during the winter break that RIT's campus was in shambles, would they react the way Nehemiah did, in weeping and mourning and praying prayers of confession on behalf of the sins we as a community committed?  Definitely not, we all agreed, myself included.

But why not? I wonder.  And what would it take for us to get to a point where we did identify and care so deeply with the RIT community that we wouldn't hesitate to respond to and lead out of the spiritual shambles we face everyday?

Perfection vs. Excellence.

I am a recovering perfectionist.  While everyone, to some extent, desires for control over their whole life, I am definitely one who has a tendency to fight for more of that control than others, or at least get extremely frustrated and disappointed if things don't go the way I picture them.  Combine that with a deep desire to help everyone, please everyone, and a detail-oriented personality who loves to plan events, and I can easily become a mess of a crazy woman.  But after my college experience with God doing a lot of work in my life, I'd say I definitely am in a much better place now.

The week leading up to Vision Night last Friday was definitely a test of that progress, to say the least.  Even with months of planning ahead of time, we still ended up being short-staffed, miscommunicating, and changing things last minute.  And on top of that, I was experiencing other unexpected personal and ministry-related obligations.

There were many times where it would've been easy for me to get frustrated or worry, but I didn't.  And there were some moments where I regrettably gave in to the temptation.  But as I reflect on the night, God definitely met me where I was and reminded me that He was in control:

1. First of all, 122 students showed up from all over the Rochester Area.  We were expecting 100 as a max, though were probably realistically thinking it would be less.  Praise the Lord!
2. Five University of Rochester students came!  For a chapter plant that has been struggling to get students to commit and participate in activities, this was a huge success.  It was a joy to have them join in on what God was doing throughout the Rochester Area.
3. Overall, once the night got started, things went pretty smoothly.  There were no major hiccups or large schedule changes.
4. During one of my anxious moments (that I didn't really have to be anxious about), one of my own students was there to say that everything was going to be okay.  And it was.
5. Working on the poster boards and plans was fun.  It reminded me of how much I love being behind the scenes, developing creative spaces for people to encounter the living God and respond to the love, grace, and mercy God extends to us.  It also reminded me of how much I appreciated the staff workers who did the same for me as a student.

When I thought about this week I was reminded of a text I sent to one of my student leaders just a few weeks ago, which said, "Don't forget, we're striving for excellence, not perfection."  When I thought about the difference between the two, it seemed like it was a very fine line.  So how can I make sure I'm actually striving for excellence and not perfection?

Looking up the definitions of the two words seemed to clarify the differences:

per·fect

  [adj., n. pur-fikt; v. per-fekt]  Show IPA

adjective

1.

conforming absolutely to the description or definition of an ideal type: a perfect sphere; a perfectgentleman.

2.

excellent or complete beyond practical or theoretical improvement: There is no perfect legal code. Theproportions of this temple are almost perfect.

3.

exactly fitting the need in a certain situation or for a certain purpose: a perfect actor to play Mr.Micawber; a perfect saw for cutting out keyholes.

4.

entirely without any flaws, defects, or shortcomings: a perfect apple; the perfect crime.

5.

accurate, exact, or correct in every detail: a perfect copy.

ex·cel·lent

  [ek-suh-luhnt]  Show IPA

adjective

1.

possessing outstanding quality or superior merit; remarkably good.

2.

Archaic. extraordinary; superior.

It seems like for perfection, they use words like 'ideal,' 'exact,' 'correct,' and 'flawless.'   There's a mold to fit with rules to abide by, and anything less than that falls short.  With excellence, it seems like you're shooting for 'above average,' and caring more about the quality than working towards exact dimensions.  It seems like for perfection, there's one answer, and one answer only; for excellence, there are many possibilities and room for growth.  With perfection, there's temptation to take extreme control over things out of your control; with excellence, there are opportunities to fail and learn.  There's bondage in perfection; there's freedom in excellence.

With that in mind, I think Vision Night was done excellently - it was an improvement from the year before, and there are ways we can increase the quality for next time.  And hopefully, I'll remember the difference between perfection and excellence in whatever ways I serve the Lord.

Nom nom nom com.

It was the middle of my sophomore year when InterVarsity's Nomination Committee (Nom Com) invited me to serve on our Binghamton chapter's Exec Board as the Administrator for the 2009 calendar year.  I almost thought they were crazy.  Me?  Serve on E-board?  I saw my sister serve on E-board and knew how intense and how much commitment it would be to serve on the team, considering they had meetings that lasted two hours every week and got together for days on end to plan during the winter break.  And Administrator?  Really?  I didn't even know what the Administrator did.

It was risky for me.  I came into college as a very burnt out freshman; I had a track record of not being able to say no to anything, and served or led in everything I wanted to do or felt like I should do and didn't know how to rest well.  I was tired of leading and was wary of jumping back in.

At the same time, I didn't feel like I was qualified - I didn't know what was expected of me, I didn't know what my role would look like, I didn't know if I could live up to it all.  But I soon found out that being a leader in InterVarsity was a matter of saying 'yes' to Jesus and being humbly open to learn whatever Jesus wanted to teach me.

It's been 3 years since I've served my last term on E-board, and I am where I am because I chose to say 'yes' to Jesus at that time.  My leadership, visions and decisions in life are all influenced by my experience serving on E-board.  It was a hard but refining process that allowed me to fall on my face, get back up, sacrifice everything I knew, and take risks beyond my understanding, but it is an experience that drew me into a deeper dependence on God and opened my eyes to ways I was blind, and I believe that it was worth it all.

Now, as a staff worker sitting on the other side of the leader selection process, I'm excited to see what God will do in the lives of these students who are willing to say 'yes' to Him.  It's exciting because what it boils down to is not simply what abilities, vision capacity, or leadership skills they have that qualifies them for leadership.  It's exciting because leadership is about how much these students are willing to learn and sacrifice in order to follow Jesus, serve and love like Jesus, and empower others for mission like Jesus.   

And it's particularly exciting for me because Jesus invites me to be a part of the process of what He's doing in and through them.   

Go deep and cast the net wide.

Luke 5 is following me everywhere.  Well, not quite everywhere I guess.  But it's enough to get my attention.

Last Sunday, during our leadership meeting, two graduating seniors (and previous exec team leaders) from our chapter led a short manuscript, inductive Bible study of Luke 5.  They had studied the passage with the thousands of others at Urbana this year and wanted to cast vision to the core members and leaders of the chapter to take risks for the sake of the gospel.

It was clear that in the same way Jesus was calling Simon to follow Him, Jesus was calling us as a chapter to "put out into the deep" and "let down our nets."  Casting fishing nets in the deep part of the lake in the morning after fishing all night and catching nothing?  Come on, Jesus, seriously?  Apparently, Jesus was being serious.  He was calling Simon the same way He is calling us now to take risks of faith for Christ even when it may seem ridiculous at times.  He was calling Simon the way He is calling us now to reach out even when we've come up empty before.  He was calling Simon the way He is calling us now to take action when we're tired and have already started washing our nets.

The questions that lingered with our chapter were:  what risks do we need to take?  What will it cost?  What do we need to leave behind?  Where do we need to cast our nets?

The questions weren't quite answered that night.  Maybe for some individuals, but not quite as a whole.  It was exciting, though, to see how the following Sunday's meeting began connecting those loose ends.  By using Tootsie roll candies as a visual for the students on campus that we are called to reach, a couple of our current Servant Team (exec team) leaders gave us a bigger picture and cast the vision for our spring quarter New Student Outreach (NSO) events.

This is it - this is where Jesus is calling us to put out into the deep and let down our nets.  Our RIT chapter needs to invite everyone - friends, professors, students they don't know - to NSO and follow up with them, not just so we could have a lot of people at our events, but so that we could invite them to meet this Jesus who has so transformed our lives.  We need to invite whoever we can because we don't know whom Jesus is inviting to say 'yes' to Him.  If we're expecting a 75% rejection rate, we need to sow more seeds.  We need to cast our nets wide.  We need to go where everything's a lot less familiar, a lot less comfortable, a lot more uncertain of the outcome.  We need to go to the deep.

The next day after the first leadership meeting where we studied the Luke 5 passage, I went to a nearby retreat center to spiritually re-calibrate my vocation with the Lord.  At the midpoint of my retreat when I sat down for lunch, there was a little calendar that had Bible verses and a little devotional thought for each day.  Lo and behold, here's what it said:

Simon answered, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything.  But because you say so, I will let down the nets."  When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break.  --Luke 5:5-6

We're tempted to haul in our nets, grumble, and go home until hearing the invitation, "head to deeper water and see what you can do there."

My, my.  How indeed the Lord calls us personally and communally into deeper water - inviting us to trust Him more and more.

Striking the flint rock.

When I thought about how I'm doing recently in this season of ministry, I thought of a quote from the movie, It's a Wonderful Life:

Clarence:  You sent for me, sir?
Senior Angel:  Yes, Clarence.  A man down on earth needs our help.
Clarence:  Splendid.  Is he sick?
Senior Angel:  No, worse.  He's discouraged.

I'm going to be honest, I think I subconsciously try everything I can to beat around the bush of admitting that I'm discouraged.  That's probably because my temperament likes to lean towards the image of having it all together and being super positive all the time.  It's also probably because I know the truth in my head:  I have a God who is stronger and greater than any obstacles or issues I may face.  How can I be discouraged if our God is for us?  What can ever stop us or stand against, right?  That's how the psalms and songs go.

Also, it's bothersome that my attitude tends to bend with the weather.  I find that it can sometimes be harder to see the exciting things God is up to through the pelting sheets of rain and depressing gray sky.

But there's this one thing that has been coming back to me again and again ever since I spotted it during one of the sessions at Expedition, our InterVarsity Upstate NY Fall Conference.  I was in the Map & Compass Track, where students were equipped with tools and skills to dig deep into God's Word by studying the book of Jonah with the inductive, manuscript study style.  I noticed that even though Jonah went out of his way to flee God and go in the opposite direction of where God wanted to send him, God drew people to Himself.    God worked through Jonah's disobedience to bring the sailors on the ship Jonah was taking to flee the presence of the Lord came to faith in Him.

That's pretty amazing, especially to a young woman like myself who tries so hard to "do the right thing" and go in the "right" direction.  It's a deep, freeing reminder of how God is in the business of drawing people to Himself in His time and His way and that it doesn't rest alone on my own abilities or power.

I'm realizing I need to spend some time reflecting deeply on the vision I have for RIT's campus and its students.  I'm not as excited as I once was because the vision I once had is leaking and getting fuzzy.  I need to practice some self-leadership and do well to uncover and steward the vision God graciously offers me for the sake of the gospel.

If I don't cultivate the vision for myself and for others, how can I expect my student leaders to do the same?

The picture on the box.

The start of classes last week was also the starting pistol for my one-on-one meetings with key student leaders.  And as I've been meeting with leader after leader, I find myself having similar conversations around a very important thing I learned to develop as an InterVarsity student...the big picture of vision.

I used to consider myself an extremely detail-oriented, present-minded person.  I remember freshman year I couldn't really plan beyond two weeks ahead of time, and two weeks was really pushing it.  I got annoyed with the way announcement emails I received were formatted to squeeze important details for six events going on that week into one fat, plain-texted paragraph.  I knew if we were going to have a potluck, we needed to figure out how many people were coming in order to bring enough utensils, plates, napkins and cups and if it looked like most people were bringing starchy food and meats, I would provide some vegetables or desserts for a little variety.  On spreadsheets, charts, and word documents, well, I was the one who wanted consistencies in capitalization, indentation and punctuation.  Believe me, it wasn't just because I was an English major.

To some extent, I'm still like this today.  In some ways I've changed, and at the same time, some things haven't really changed.  But when I became a student leader in InterVarsity, the concept of vision and question of "where are we going?" really stretched and over time shook everything I knew about my detail-oriented, present-minded leadership.

"What do you mean, 'where do you want the fellowship to be in two years'?  How can we think about two years from now when we barely have it together for next week?"

That's what I used to ask myself incredulously when my staff worker challenged me and/or my E-board team to think beyond "here."  This big, fat, abstract, fuzzy picture of "there" was nowhere near my radar.  But over time, my way of thinking has shifted.  I've made connections of how lacking a clear vision can cost your leadership and the growth and change you want to see happen.  Or how without it, this "vision" can become a delusion or the groundwork for cynical and jaded leaders and followers.

Among InterVarsity staff in the NY/NJ Region, I've heard the analogy of "big picture" being the "forest" and "details" as the "leaf" on a tree in the forest.  But while I think it's a helpful picture of identifying those who tend to see things in bigger, more abstract ideas and those who see the smaller details, I think it's lacking the depiction of how the big picture and the small details relate to each other and how both are necessary in leadership.

Last year I was listening to a Tim Keller sermon (which had nothing to do with leadership, vision, or anything of the sorts) while I went running one morning, and he used an analogy that I love applying to this concept of "big picture" to "details":

Let's say you just bought a new house appliance that you need to assemble.  Well, let's use an Ikea dresser as an example (I heard those can be quite complex).  It comes with all the nuts, bolts, and parts in a giant box that are necessary in putting it together.  All of it is necessary, including the box.  The goal is to have a completed and functional dresser.  If you only had the pieces and didn't have the picture on the box, there'd be a good possibility that you'd get frustrated with putting it together and quickly lose sight and motivation of what you wanted to make in the first place.  And obviously, if you didn't have the pieces and only had the box, you would simply have an empty box good for uses other than to make the beautiful dresser pictured on it.  In order to build your Ikea dresser, you need to have the picture on the box ready for you to refer back to when you get stuck focusing on the pieces, and sometimes, you'll be able to figure out where a piece goes better by looking at the picture as opposed to the thorough but unclear typed instructions in the manual.

That's the relationship between vision and details/next steps.  We need to develop the big picture of our vision before we can set off on our day-by-day, week-by-week decisions and evaluations.  It doesn't mean we don't care about details.  I still deeply believe that the small things make a big difference...that they matter.  But understanding what the vision is helps make sense of the details and next steps and what you're actually working towards in the long run, not just today.