Honest thoughts and self-observations from recruiting

1. When you ask a freshman if they are interested in something, you have to learn how to properly interpret his response. Here is some sample dialogue:

Me: Hey, are you interested in a Christian Leadership Training course to help you grow as a Christian?

What he says: Yeah! That sounds amazing! Can I have a few of your fliers to pass out to some of my friends that I also think might be interested?

What he means: No.

2. Sometimes it is really hard for me to respond when people tell me they will go to something but then don't. I think the reason is that I am really excited about the things we're doing, and so it is easy for me to assume that other people are to. It is hard for me to conceive of a Christian not being excited about growth, leadership, etc. Also, although I am not surprised at non-Christians being insincere or outright lying, it is harder for me when professing Christians do. I want to say, "Dude, I don't care if you are involved with the Navs! I just want you to grow! I want you to be changed by God! I want you to reach the people around you! You can do that in other groups or if you don't want to, that is fine too! But you got my hopes up, and this is my job and the disappointments in it hurt me!"

3. Sometimes there is bitterness (and perhaps by sometimes, I mean, generally, but I repent of it and take it to Jesus) when I am rejected. When I invite a guy to something and he flakes. I want to say to him "You will regret this one day!" Then I imagination some ridiculous scenario where this student looks back his senior year and realizes he has wasted it and he mourns and comes to me and says, "Steven if only I had joined the Navs during that first week when you asked me! My life would be different! O how I regret the callousness with which I treated you, so willfully neglecting the brilliant spiritual insights which I treated as nothing more than chaff." And then I will gently forgive him, with beautiful compassion.

Yes, that scene is completely ridiculous, since in my heart there is a secret desire for this individual, this human being, this person made by God, to have a terrible four years unless he is in MY ministry! Why not just walk around campus with a sandwich board proclaiming "Salvation is found nowhere else but in the ministry of Steven Crawford."

4. Ah pride. Pride is an ugly, ugly thing when displayed like this? Perhaps I am the only minister of the gospel ever to struggle with such things. But recruitment is a wonderful time for my pride to be exposed, so that I can crucify it and repent of it! God doesn't need me. But he wants me. I have a plan which I have sought the Lord on, and taken before him and prayed over, and which I will work towards and labor in, and which I hope God blesses to the extent he desires. But shouldn't I allow a person to be a person, and love them? Shouldn't I desire that a student who doesn't come into my ministry to still grow ferociously? Yes.

5. But nonetheless, I do wish that freshmen were honest. I wish that if a student looks at me and tells me something, he would mean it.

6. Recruitment is hard. But it is necessary.

A few thoughts from the last few weeks

1. This is the time of year when I have to remember the great patience with which my Savior bore my long neglect, my apathy, my casual disregard for his great service and love. If I do not remember his patience, then the comparatively small slights I must endure from ignored calls and flaked appointments will be met with compassion and forgiveness.

2. I told a friend that we are all divided into two camps. Either we are Dostoevsky people, or we are Tolstoy people. I have for a long time felt myself firmly belonging to Fyodr, but having immersed myself in War and Peace, I am having second thoughts.

3. Did you notice my poetry binge, which seems to have left as swiftly as it came? I don't know what that was all about.

4. Every year I say to myself, "Why care about football?" And then every year I remember, "Oh yeah, because it is awesome."

5. Here is a rejected Facebook status from a couple of days ago. It seemed to self-indulgent and long:

Today somebody got me so riled up when I was driving by cutting me off. I said to myself, "You idiot! How could you do something so stupid!" But then I said, "You hypocrite! You do that all the time to people!" Then I said, "A hippogriff? What is that?" Then I said, "It is a mythical beast, but that isn't what I said."

A short excerpt from Tolstoy

There was one thing he loved--merrymaking and women--and since, to his mind, there was nothing ignoble in these tastes, and since he was unable to reflect on the consequences that the satisfaction of these tastes had for other people, at heart he considered himself an irreproachable man, sincerely despised scoundrels and bad people, and with an easy conscience carried his head high.

A description of Anatole Kuragin, seducer of Natasha Rostov and the cause for a great deal of anguish and despair.

Such a description could be used for many young Christian men, who give themselves small and easy pleasures, while being unable to contemplate the consequences.

Who is Willow Creek trying to please?

The mega-church Willow Creek has some sort of leadership conference everywhere year, at which bizarrely the non-Christian CEO of Starbucks was scheduled to speak. Why? Who knows?

However, an online gay-rights advocacy group created a petition pressuring him not to speak, claiming that Willow Creek is anti-gay. After a whopping 717 people signed this petition, Howard Schultz withdrew from the conference. The senior pastor of Willow Creek issued the following statement (excerpt):

First, if the organizers of this petition had simply taken the time to call us, we would have explained to them (as we have to many others ) that not only is Willow not anti-gay, Willow not anti-anybody.

Our church was founded on the idea that people matter to God. All people. All people of all backgrounds, all colors, ethnicities, and sexual orientation. The mat at every door on this campus has always read “Welcome.” And for over 35 years we have flung the doors of this campus open to the widest array of humanity I have ever witnessed in the global church. And thousands--tens of thousands--have come to learn the teachings of Jesus. So to suggest that we check sexual orientation or any other kind of issue at our doors is simply not true. Just ask the hundreds of people with same-sex attraction who attend our church every week.

Now what is true is that we challenge homosexuals and heterosexuals to live out the sexual ethics taught in the Scriptures--which encourages full sexual expression between a man and a woman in the context of marriage and prescribes sexual abstinence and purity for everybody else.

But even as we challenge all of our people to these biblical standards, we do so with grace-filled spirits, knowing the confusion and brokenness that is rampant in our fallen world. And at Willow we honor the journey of everyone who is sincerely attempting to follow Christ. So it’s unfortunate that we could not have explained this to those called us anti-gay and started this petition.

Some thoughts:

1. Why have a leadership conference with non-Christian speakers?

2. Are you seriously trying to convince the world that you are not anti-gay? I suppose Hybels means that they don't despise homosexuals. But this will not convince the world of anything. If they are faithful to the Bible, then they are against homosexuality. The world is not asking them, "Do you allow people struggling with same sex attraction to attend your church and receive help being transformed out of these attractions?" The world is saying, "Do you place any hindrance on following every sexual desire that occurs to anyone at anytime, so long as it is consensual?" Saying no to this equates to being anti-gay.

3. This attempts to placate, to give ground in the name of love, to please those who cannot and will not be pleased, will only lead to a fatal compromising of the Word, to detriment of those struggling with the power of homosexual attraction.

Our Savior, dressed in a robe dipped in blood

Revelation 19:11-13

"I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True...He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God."

Near the end of Revelation, John sees Christ, appearing as a rider on a white horse, Christ is described at length. The part highlighted above is part of that description. He appears in a robe dipped in blood.

Quick: What is the meaning of the blood-stained robe? Why does Christ appear in it?

These symbols have meaning, and John is constantly referring to the prophetic literature, especially Isaiah and Zechariah and Ezekiel. The imagery is drawn often drawn from these sources, modified somewhat, but reflective of the same ideas. Or, better to say that God presents himself to his prophets in a consistent manner!

So, did you say that it is his own blood that stains his robe? A reference to his sacrificial death? Well, then you are wrong.

Isaiah 63:1-3

"Who is this...with his garments stained crimson?
Why are your garments red...?
I have trodden the winepress...
I trampled [the nations] down in my anger...
their blood splattered my garments."

It is the blood of the slain enemies of the eternal king which stain his garments. The robe is dipped in blood like the garments of one treading grapes in a winepress. Vivid imagery. Christ conquers and destroys his enemies. This is as much a part of the revelation of God's son as when he appears as the lamb "looking as if it had been slain" earlier in Revelation.

Preach Hell and Take Joy in it

...for the saints did. What do you think is the meaning of the blood of Abel, which cries out from the ground? What is the joy of the elect in Revelation over the destruction of the dragon and his armies? What is the hope of the Psalmist who cries out to see Babylon destroyed and her people wiped from the face of the earth?

Do you apologize for something that God does not? Are you ashamed of something that God is not? Then you fail to comprehend the fullness of it.

We should not apologize for what God will do, as if our small and sin-scarred minds knew better than him the pathways of love! As if we could sit in judgment over his decisions!

So, preach hell with no apology, for it is the full counsel of God. Don't couch it in some false way, as CS Lewis does, that it is God's great love in letting sinners have there own way, instead of his just wrath at the rebellion and disobedience of his creation. And above all, use it to flame your gratitude for and joy in your precious salvation, which has freely rescued you from this.