Just what we need
I spent the last 3 weeks traveling–from Trondheim to Berlin to Toulouse and back to my cold and lonely house till John got home yesterday. For me, it felt like I had just crawled out of my little study to experience the world again after the last 5 years of concentrating solely on my dissertation and begin to grapple with a whole new set of problems…actual challenges that our student leaders and campus pastors struggle to resolve in face to face confrontations with others. Explaining and sharing the vision for reaching students to pastors and churches, dealing with questions concerning commitment and time pressures among students, making money stretch in very expensive European settings (like paying $3.00 for a liter of milk), and creating and training leadership teams who have widely divided interests and ideas. No, its not easy. With the beginning of the fall semester upon us, most of our campus pastors are in a time of stress.
I appreciated greatly the opportunity to be there with these three groups, as it jolted me out of the theoretical and academic and back into action–but I found myself overwhelmed with the realization that God is the all-powerful who pours himself out for his people and for the sake of this world. He is a power-giving God, very unlike most of the taskmasters that we have in this world. And he has a way of supplying just what we need, just when we need it. Like I discovered in the conclusions of my dissertation, redeemed power as modeled for us by Christ on the cross is the power that is available for me and for the student leaders I visited.
Trondheim Team, Cortney and Kelly
Brett was our chef for our Hotdog Feast
Saturday afternoon lunch in Trondheim