It was like waking up from a long sleep. Bright rays of light, illuminating the glistening landscape of what God was doing.
Much of this Germany journey for me has been in my weak attempts of faith. I am convinced that God called me toward this move, but there was much I did not understand about how this would work. Obedience was my goal, all the time hoping that the desires would come as I moved forward in conviction.
It’s rare in life that one is privileged with a view of their own transformation, but sometimes you get a view like I did on Thursday… and parts of your world come together in a moment of brilliant clarity.
It happened on Thursday, I articulated it on Saturday.
I’m ready to go.
The better part of my past two weeks have been spent in Georgia and Alabama. I had the opportunity to receive some real southern hospitality as two campus ministries took me in for some time of training and encouragement.
My first several days were spent at Auburn University with ACF. Like me time with Sojourn in Boston, I had the “opportunity” to be thrown into several situations where I was uncomfortably unprepared. The staff, residents, and interns at ACF were so gracious and hospitable to me, but nothing really prepares an introverted Tony to be thrown into a group of 100 college students he’s never met. Three days of meeting new people, hearing beautiful stories, and dreaming about what it means to love college students brought me to a place where I started to see how I could fit into this world. I started to see how much there was a need for love on these campuses.
I carried these barely processed experiences with me back to Georgia, and jumped right back into another campus experience the next day. This time it was with Georgia Tech and the CCF group there, but instead of 3 days I was given 7 hours. These 7 hours were packed straight with meeting after meeting, diving into the nitty gritty of what campus ministry looks like for them in their context and what it might look like for me in Germany. The staff and interns at CCF were kind to me and though we had never met before, we covered some major ground in our conversations.
I walked away from Auburn with a difficult question bubbling under the surface of my soul: Is there a place in this wild world of campus ministry for an introverted, contemplative geek like Tony. Because doing the Bernie in the quad with strangers isn’t quite my “thing.”
But after another experience of being thrown into a large group of students at Georgia Tech on Thursday, I realized something. This was the 20th college campus I had been on in 2 months, and I saw the same thing at each one. I could see these students and I could see their hurt and their dreams and their lostness and their passion. These bundles of potential, wrapped in brokenness were wandering around cafeterias and quads, just waiting to be loved. My heart fully broke as I saw them, like sheep without a shepherd.
And yet, they are not going to come to me. There are too many walls, too many broken parts of stories for most of these students to walk into the loving arms of a church. No, someone must go to them. Love must be displayed to them in ways that communicate to them.
This past week, I saw the very beginning of a transforming work that God is doing in me. I began to see that He is going to take this introverted Tony and teach him how to externalize his love. I saw the change in my heart, because now my heart is determined in this. I must go. I must love these students.
And maybe this means doing the Bernie on the sidewalk, or singing backstreet boys on top barstools, or playing spontaneous games of four square on the quad, or yet another 2am Waffle House run.
Maybe it means having a strong enough love that it moves outside of myself, into the public square. This is not forsaking who I am in my introverted tendencies, but instead it is a becoming into a person that can take that internally grounded love into the streets.
And maybe it’s scary, but mostly it is not. Because I know something these students don’t: I know I love them.
I see this now. I thank God for that change in me.
I’m ready to go, friends.
Still Wandering,
Tony Cole