Honesty time. A while back, a couple of the students at HCU (where I work) came by the PR office (more specifically where I work) to let us know that they were planning a "Student Gospel Meeting" on campus, and to ask if we would be willing to help them with advertising and such like. Outwardly I smiled and said we'd be glad to, while inwardly I groaned and made that "tsk tsk" noise... until they walked out of the office, at which point I groaned and made the tisking noise out loud. There were a million reasons why I, in all my PR wisdom, knew that this was a silly idea. For one, it's hard enough to get anyone to come to a gospel meeting anymore, even at their own congregations. So who's going to come to one without congregational backing? For another, the people who will feel obligated to come - those of us who work for the university - have heard more than our share of sermons. Working as we do for a non-profit, religious organization, we are overworked and overstressed... and this is just another addition to our workload. For
another, it's the week of the biggest fundraising event of our year, so we'll be much too busy... And etc., ad nauseam. These were my internal observations.
Fast forward to this afternoon. I had been in Birmingham all day for a doctor's appointment where I had been poked, prodded, and stuck... tried to play catch up for the graduate class that I missed due to said doctor's appointment... and haggled with a book distributor that has made preparations for the big event this weekend a nightmare. I really did not want to go to this "student gospel meeting". Only my guilty conscience caused me to shove myself off the couch and make the trek to Florence. But like so many other things, I arrived to find that the Lord had a lesson ready and waiting for me... it just wasn't hanging on a string above my love seat. I had to go out to get it.
This time, the lesson was this... this meeting was something these students needed to do. As ministry students, they needed an opportunity to learn how to organize an event... to introduce a speaker... to mail out flyers... to lead singing, and prayers, and all those things that they don't always get to do at their home churches. They needed to learn, on their own, what things work and what things don't. They needed to make their own mistakes, and adjust, and to succeed. It reminded me so much of... myself.
All of a sudden, sitting there watching them as they sang and introduced and preached, I remembered myself, not too long ago, at the Christian Student Center at UNA. The girls and I wanted to have a ladies' day. We didn't have congregational support. We didn't know how to do - well, pretty much anything. But we wanted to try, and so Danny, the campus minister, let us try. He didn't tell us we couldn't, or that it was a bad idea, or that no one would come, or that we needed to do our schedule this-or-that way. I think he knew that some lessons we would have to learn for ourselves.
And we did. We learned that if you schedule a ladies' day from nine to three, only your mothers will stay the whole time. We learned that the PR advertising techniques you used in class for businesses wouldn't work with little old ladies from churches. We learned that you never, EVER try to make a million gallons of chicken salad, from scratch, the night before, or you will all be crying in the floor of the industrial-sized kitchen at 4 a.m. But all those things made us better, and stronger, and more capable.
I should have been so much more supportive. I should have been proud that, out of all the projects they could have chosen to undertake, they chose to teach the gospel. Especially in the light of the sad news of the closing of Magnolia Bible College, I should have been glad that we have so many students who are eager and willing to preach. I should have been better. Our students - and I am so proud to call them our students - will be better, stronger, and more capable for having organized this week.
And one more thing... I realized, too, that I, one of the chiefest of sinners, can never hear more than my fair share of good preaching. But the great thing about God is that He keeps giving us room to grow, and lessons to learn. I'm so grateful for the chance to learn this one, and next time I will be better.
