Ministry is hard. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
I must be honest: sometimes, while I work outside the on campus coffee shop, I watch the student baristas with a kind of jealousy. It's hard for any college student to hold a job amidst the craziness that is college life, that I do not doubt. But I think about being able to leave work and simply being done for the day. Just leaving, locking the door, and with it, leaving behind your duties. It'll still be there in the morning. Ministry is a different beast altogether. As Kellee Popp, the California Director for the California School Project, once said "Ministry is not a five to nine job. We don't just stop working. Most people wouldn't dream of taking a call from work on a Sunday; we have no choice but to." Oh, the truth in that statement.
When I took the position as Student Director, I had no idea how much time, energy, and focus it would take to be a full time student and do my job. And let me tell you, it takes a lot. And I'm not trying to complain here, I really am not. Let me just stop here to say that I love my job. It is wonderful. I get to work in a capacity in which I get to further God's kingdom and train up high school students to do the same. I work with some of the most amazing people I have ever met. I am so blessed to have this job. It is just altogether more challenging than I was expecting it to be. It has nothing to do with lack of preparation, there are just some things you cannot prepare someone for enough; you can explain how to swim to someone a million times, but they will never grasp how to do it until you throw them in the water.
Working in ministry, it is so very easy to just keep your head down and push through instead of stopping and realizing all of the amazing things that God is doing and I think the minute we start doing that, we have to stop and reexamine our hearts. Ministry is not like a business; we cannot just look objectively at numbers because each number is a person, be it a person volunteering a year of his or her life to work with local high school students or someone giving his or her life to Christ, these are individual people who are being individually effected by God and being shaped and molded by the people of God. We cannot be objective. We cannot do that disservice to the Holy Spirit.
All that to preface this: the last couple weeks have been insane. But God is good. God is so good. He is stretching me in every single way. But all the while, He is speaking softly to me the truth of being still and simply knowing that He is ultimately in control. He is God. Psalm 46 gives us that phrase ("'Be still and know that I am God'"), but the rest of the Psalm puts that into perspective. "Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change/And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea;/Though its waters roar and foam", we shall even then know that He is God and we can be still before Him, knowing that He is in control and that He will take care of us. What a comforting truth!
Okay, well with all of this in mind, please allow me to update you on what is going on in the Azusa Pacific Chapter of the California School Project! So much has happened since my last post! First, at the end of September, we had our fall training for our new volunteers, university students who have given up about six hours per week to help high school students impact their campuses! We call these amazing, amazing volunteers Campus Mentors. We brought ten of our twelve person team to a joint retreat with our Biola and USC Chapters to a campground in Idyllwild, CA for the weekend. It was so amazing to be able to share the mission and vision of our ministry with our volunteers and to be able to teach them out of our brand new Outreach Guides! Also, it was a very sweet time just to bond as a team and to get to know each other.
Campus Mentors and the brand new Outreach Guides!
Me, speaking to the Campus Mentors at our retreat!
We then turned around the very next weekend and trained the amazing high school students that we work with at our fall GO Conference. At this joint event, Biola and APU Campus Mentors got to meet the high school leaders of Christian Clubs that they are going to be working with all year and they got a chance to hear these students' visions for their campuses. In turn, the Campus Mentors got a chance to relay the training that they had received and begin training these students how they can reach their campuses for Christ. It was an amazingly fruitful time-and it was just the beginning! The Campus Mentors will be meeting with their assigned students from here on out every week until all of their plans culminate during Outreach Week! During Outreach Week, Christian Club students will be attempting to reach the the entirety of their campuses with the truth of God's love for them through Gospel rallies, materials distributions, and by starting personal, loving witnessing conversations with their peers. I am so excited to see how God is going to move in these high schools!\
High School Christian Club leaders getting trained on how they can impact their campuses this year!
High School students making plans for their Outreach Weeks!
Woohoo! The students are so pumped about reaching their campuses! And the Campus Mentors are pumped to help them do so!
As an APU Chapter, we have also been going out and witnessing in the community. During our witnessing trips, we go out and start conversations with people. We ask people if they have a minute to talk and we ask them about what their thoughts on God are. We hear them out, listen to their heart, and ask them questions. We then, in turn, ask if it would be alright if we share what we believe with them. If they allow us to, we then share the Gospel with them, all the time answering their questions and sharing the truth of the love of our amazing God with them.
If you told me I would be leading witnessing trips two years ago, I would have told you that you were crazy. God has done a number on my heart, reminding me that I have been commanded to share His Gospel and that it has nothing to do with me, rather He is choosing to use me as His mouthpiece to speak into these peoples' lives. It has been one of the most difficult but rewarding things.
We went witnessing last Friday at a mall near APU's campus. Before leaving for the trip, I was having a really difficult time finding a positive attitude about the trip: to be frank, I did not want to go. I was feeling tired, run down, and the last thing I wanted to do was witness. However, I knew that I needed to go out because fulfilling God's commands has nothing to do with how I am feeling. I called my boyfriend, prayed with him about it, and decided that I just need to grin, bear it, and get it done. When we got to the mall, however, the Holy Spirit began moving in my heart. We had two good conversations, one with a young man who seemed very receptive to the Gospel but he needed time to think about it, and a young woman who was already a Christian. Time was running out, so as we were heading back to the cars to meet up with the rest of our team, Tori, one of our Campus Mentors and my friend that I was witnessing with, and I decided to stop and talk to two teenagers standing together. We introduced ourselves and asked them if they had a minute to talk. They said yes and just as we began to ask them about their views on God, over came mama bear, curious as to why we were talking to her children. I decided to leave talking to the students up to Tori as I turned my attentions to talking to their mom. She explained to me that she was a new Christian and she and her children had just begun to attend a local church. She articulated to me the change that had happened in her life once she accepted Christ and what He had done for her on the Cross and how she wasn't sure if her children had experienced the same change yet. She and I prayed together and just as we were finishing up and rejoining the conversation with Tori and her daughter and son, Tori was finishing up explaining the Gospel to them. She then extended the opportunity to ask Jesus into their hearts to the two, and they said that they were ready to make that choice! There, in the middle of the mall, Tori and I got the chance to lead the two in the sinner's prayer and they offered up their lives to the Lord, with their mom praying over them right alongside! It was amazing! Walking away from them, I was absolutely amazed that God chose to use me-despite my horrible attitude-as His mouthpiece for the Kingdom! God is so crazy good!
And that's kind of what this update was for: to remind you how amazing our God is. I know amidst the hustle and craziness of our lives, it is so easy to slip into the mindset that success is dependent upon us. How foolish of us! God asks us to show up, to love Him through following His commands, and in return, HE will supply the results. He will. He is faithful to provide. It is Him, not us. How comforting and how amazing that is.
And so, my dear brothers and sisters, may I implore you to be praying for me and my team this month. You can be praying for...
- Our high school students: that they will remain motivated to reach their campuses
- Our chapter: that we will continue to grow in community with one another, grow in number, and continue to do God's work
- Our USC and Biola Chapters: They are reaching the high schools in their areas, too!
- My support: financially, I am going to need to be support raising again in order to continue to be paid for my position.
- My classes: I am a full time student as well!
Thank you all so much for your diligent support. May God bless you and keep you! If you have any questions, feel free to email me at sbarber11@apu.edu
Love,
Nicole
For more information on California School project, please check out our website and watch this awesome explainer video!
