Any Given Wednesday.

Yesterday, I found myself in all of these various roles around Arlington High School, and they all had me thinking about life and Christ and students...

***I started out in Mrs. Stone's class, helping students through a very slow step-by-step process of writing a research paper. I had been trying to help two students at once, and finally, one kid called out to the teacher, "I need help!" I said, "I'm helping you!" He replied, "You're doing a good job, but you can't help two people at once..." I suddenly felt this extreme parallel to what it's like for me to disciple 40 kids at once, and wondered how helpful I really am to most of them....

***At lunch time, I sat down with a group of students I know moderately well...a few girls were playing with a deck of cards, and it turned out they were doing tarot readings for each other. One girl told me she could look into my eyes and read my future.

She stared intensely at me for a few moments and said profoundly, "You have a good life."
I grinned and smiled, "Yes..." thinking, "Ahhhh, my future has been revealed!" But I kept playing along...
Then she said, "Are you married?"
I coyly replied, "You're the future-teller. You tell me."
Bronco laughed.
"I can't see everything...only glimpses."
I responded: "mmm.."
"Well," she replied, "If you're not married, then there's a guy."
I grinned and said, "There's always a guy." I felt like she had just looked into my eyes and told me they were blue, as if it were earth-shattering news. Finally I just looked at her and waved my hand in front of my face, "This right here, if you can't read it, is called skep-ti-cism."
She didn't get it and continued on about how her gift had revealed much.

***During 6th period, I returned to walk with a few PE students around the track...Mr. Smoots has a few students who won't participate during games but are willing to walk...so once a week, I show up to walk with them. For whatever reason, one of the boys and I began talking about music (he was educating me on Rockabilly), and it turned to a conversation about his aggression and his feelings towards the church. He calls himself a Christian, yet hates church because of the strict way it says he's supposed to behave...he said he didn't need a preacher to interpret the Word of God for him, because he can do that on his own.

So there I am--walking around the track at public high school, engaging in a conversation about Christ and the church with a student who doesn't even know that I'm there as a missionary...he only knows that I'm listening.

* * * * *

It made me think a lot about packaged faith and packaged gospel presentations, which I am growing more and more disillusioned to...When I'm loving students or sharing about Christ with them, I don't want them to see it as a slick sales presentation--I want them to see faith for what it is in my life--this ever-transition, ever-dialoguing relationship with this being that I love and serve yet still know little about except that He is good. I also want them to hear it when they're ready to listen.

It feels like being there and listening and helping them for a long period of time, has, in the case of my 6th period student, given me the opportunity to say boldly, "I don't think that's what the church is...it isn't about a wizened man up there telling you about God--it's about being surrounded by a group of people who can support you in the decision that you have made to serve God...it's a family of people who can help you live well."

I can't just walk in the doors of a public school with a sandwich board and say, "Repent! The End is Nigh!" But I can help students with research papers and in PE class and suddenly have this amazing opportunity to challenge students on the things in which they place their faith and the way in which they perceive the church. Praise God for incarnational ministry...for which He already gave us the ultimate model.