Crossing KCU

Obedience in the Dishroom

The rest of that summer before I went back to college was an anxious time for me. The process of getting back into Christian school after being expelled wasn’t exactly smooth. It involved me signing some forms agreeing to a non-negotiable set of demands, including having the elders of my home church write me a letter of recommendation, a pre-semester meeting/interrogation with the Student Life staff of the university, my agreement to a period of social probation, and finally my willingness to see a counselor for a period of time depending on the assessment of my social conduct, mental state, and spiritual livelihood, as would be determined by the Dean of Students. I didn’t really have any problem with any of that stuff. I was only going back because I knew it was what God wanted me to do, so I figured the requirements that the school demanded of me were just part of the process, and that these things which seemed a little inconvenient at the time, might actually end up as good things if I just waited and let God work in the situation. So off I went.

I was alone during my first night back in the dorm. My roommate wasn’t getting there until the next day so I had some time to pray and meditate that night. I was scared to death when I arrived. After my parents dropped me off I just sat in my room and stared at the wall. It was painful to be there. Up to that point in my life, this place had been nothing but a source of pain and strife. Memories of the past haunted me all throughout that first night. I saw all of my old friends, who were now gone, I saw all the people I had hurt in various ways, I saw all the places on campus and I experienced them in my memories, I saw myself being thrown out all over again; most of all I saw myself as the person that I had been when I was there before.

In the morning I grabbed my journal, and this is what I wrote:

“Lord my God, I have obeyed. I have come back to this place. You know my past history with this place… how I failed you a number of times here, how I tested you, and how I disobeyed you over and over again. For those reasons this place has only ever caused me pain. But you took me away from here, Lord. You pulled me from my darkness, and you taught me how to truly walk in the path you are leading me down. You showed me how to be patient, to let you work through me, to wait on you instead of jumping ahead on my own terms. You taught me humility, the willingness to be last, to be less, and to let love be the motivation for what I say and do. –Love for you, and for those around me. I strive only to follow you. And in doing so, you have led me back here, to the place I dread more than any other place. It took everything I had to trust you. Without you I would not even have the ability or the strength to live in this place. Everywhere I look I see what your servant, the prophet Jeremiah saw in his time. Yet even his words… your words, go unnoticed and are forgotten in this place. The words you spoke through Jeremiah fall on ears as deaf as those who heard them in that time so many thousands of years ago. This place, this people, this church… they have been corrupted. This place has been infiltrated by the enemy. He has surrounded us, and I am weak, Lord. Why have you brought me? Why have you led me here? I know that your ways are beyond mine, and that your will is always right. I am eager to see what you will do. I don’t want to be here for any other reason than to see you work. Please do not delay in letting your glory shine in this place. The people do not know you, though they carry your name. Rescue them, Lord.”

As you might have guessed, the book of Jeremiah, the prophet from the Old Testament was becoming a major influence in my life at this point. That is to say, God was using this book to speak to me a great deal. It spoke primarily of the spiritual decay of the people of Judah and Jerusalem, right before the Babylonians sacked the city and carried off a large part of the population into exile. Whenever I read it I am reminded immediately of what I see happening in America today, in our time. There are churches all throughout this country, of all denominations and types, that are suffering from the same spiritual disease that afflicted the people of God so long ago. Reading Jeremiah provided me with much needed comfort because in the book God is speaking to his people, trying to tell them what’s going on, but they never listen to him. There’s a lot to say about Jeremiah, because Jeremiah has a lot to say to us.
_______

Registration day presented me with my first challenge upon reentering the school. Basically, I didn’t have the money to enroll for classes. I walked through the lines, signing the necessary forms, getting an I.D. card, key, books, etc. Then I waited patiently as I moved closer and closer to the business area of the whole thing, which came at the very end, wondering the whole time what I would say when I reached the final checkpoint—the one where you paid the bill.

By the time I finally sat down in front of the woman who was the head of the business department, I was sweating with anticipation, having no idea what I was going to do or say. I watched as she typed a few things into her computer. Then I met her eyes as she looked up and asked me how I would be paying.

“I’m sorry, but I won’t be paying today,” I told her politely.

“Well, excuse me, but we have a policy that states you have to have at least a third of the cost paid at the start of the semester,” she returned with an extremely agitated sigh that ended in a particularly nasty frown.

I shifted in my chair a little uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, I just don’t have any money right now,” I told her. “I mean, I have about twenty bucks to get some food for my dorm room.”

I could tell she was really agitated, like the world was going to end and it was all my fault because I couldn’t pay her any money up front. “Well that’s not good enough, I’m afraid,” she said looking down at my registration forms. “You owe us $2,500 right now. What did you think you were going to do when you got here?”

I don’t exactly know what came over me at this point. I didn’t really have any logical explanation to give this woman, and there wasn’t anything I could do about the situation. So I just leaned forward in my chair a little, looked her directly in the eye and said, “God told me to come here today and enroll myself in classes. I’m not sure where the money will come from, but God will provide it when he wants to, however he wants to.” Then I sat back and waited for her response.

She hesitated for a few moments, let out another heavily agitated sigh, and then dug around in her desk before pulling out some additional forms for me to sign. “You can sign these forms for some loan money, and I’ll give you a few days to come up with the rest,” she said. I thanked her and then got up and left.

I remember thinking as I walked to my dorm room that it was really odd how upset this woman had become. It felt as if she was really angry, and I didn’t know how to take that. It was a cold reminder that I hadn’t just come back to this place for a peaceful finish to my college career; far from it. In fact, I realized in that first week, that God was still teaching me, and that this school, to him, was a battlefield that he had chosen to train me in a specific way. Not having the money was really just a test, because I knew it was nothing for God to provide that, especially when he was the one who told me to go back there in the first place.

The money didn’t come all at once, but it came in staggered amounts here and there, always just enough to appease the business office and prompting them to extend the time I was allowed to stay on campus. About halfway through that first semester the woman who was in charge of the finances finally called me and said I had enough money in to complete the semester, but that I wouldn’t be able to begin the second semester until the entire bill was paid off.

Despite the stress of continually worrying about money, as well as the initial shock from being back on the campus, that first semester was an extremely peaceful time as I look back on it now. In truth, that entire year now stands out as one of the best I ever had there in that place. It’s strange because I was alone much of the first half of the year. I did have a couple of friends; guys from my home church, but they had girlfriends so I didn’t really hang out with them that much. Other than that I was alone most of the time, but for God. Almost all of the friends I had made from my earlier years there were now gone or graduated, and the students who remembered me from before mostly tended to keep their distance.

Being expelled had sort of cast a dark cloud over me in the eyes of many. I couldn’t really blame anyone else for that. Most of the people that treated me with contempt were slaves to the reputation they maintained for whatever ministries they were involved in. They couldn’t let themselves get too dirty, and talking to me was enough for most guys to get dirty. There were a few exceptions here and there, as there always are, but when you’re dealing with guys who are training to become church leaders, and the women who are trying to get married to those up and coming leaders, this is what you get most of the time. It kind of reminds me of old European nobility or something like that. Many of the people, who tend to be ministers where I come from, are people who have had it bestowed upon them from the previous generation. And though I don’t like to stereotype, most of the people that come from that kind of background or marry into it, tend to share qualities that make them a little handicapped when it comes to actually engaging in ministry that’s based on following Jesus Christ. Like I said, that’s not always the case, and I have some good friends from ministry families that break that mold, it’s just that this particular school I went to was full of those who reinforced the stereotype.

Actually, one of the first big lessons that I had to learn when returning to the college was how to love the kind of people I was just talking about. It’s still a lesson that I am constantly re-learning all the time. But one of the first real steps of progress in this area came during that first semester of my return.

I had been having a really bad week. I wasn’t sure why, but for some reason I found that I was becoming angry at a lot of the things I was seeing in other people around me. I was noticing how most of the people there had no clue what it really meant to actually follow Jesus Christ, and they were just putting their time in, waiting for the day when they would get a piece of paper that told them they were a minister, teacher, preacher, missionary, or whatever. And that realization really angered me at the time. It had angered me back before I was kicked out of school, but most of that had come from the things I was seeing about those in leadership positions who were running the college. Now I was noticing it more in the student body. It was the same problem that I had run into before and responded to with pride, anger, and bitterness.

Traditional church leadership as we know it today (at least where I come from), has made many steps away from what it once was in the early church; the Church as seen in the book of Acts that is. Specifically, the process of how people in the church become leaders has changed a great deal. I say this because when I look in the New Testament, and see what’s going on with the churches described therein, I don’t find any mention of Bible colleges or Christian universities and the like. There are no seminaries to be found, no leadership conferences, no voting going on to decide who the elders and deacons are, and no interviewing to decide who the next pastor will be. We have effectively replaced God’s way of choosing, developing, and appointing leaders, with our own, artificial methods for doing the same thing. What’s more disturbing still, is that we have done this without pause, thinking that we are wise for making such advanced innovations in this vital area of the Church.

It was pride that caused people to seek the kind of power they could have by being in a position of leadership in the Church, and pride that caused them to learn how to control other people, and pride that drove their motives in nearly every aspect of their education. I believe this is a universal truth: if you want to corrupt someone, give them some knowledge and then tell them that they are better than other people because they have it. Every ounce of the Christian college experience seemed to instill this kind of thinking in people without exception. Sadly enough, the people I knew who resisted this kind of thinking, who actively sought to serve other people, and who didn’t fit the mold of traditional church leadership almost always failed in traditional church ministry after they graduated from Christian college.

Anyway, as I began seeing and learning about this kind of thing, even from a more spiritual viewpoint this time around, I began to become angry. It started out small at first, and then it slowly grew until I was utterly miserable, and began questioning why God had even brought me back.

It was during this one week in particular, when these things were weighing upon me heavily, that I sat down on a couch in one of the academic buildings in between classes, and just leaned my head back and stared at the ceiling. It was one of those moments when I was at a breaking point. I wasn’t really in despair, because I knew above all else, and despite all the negative emotions I was feeling, that God was trying to teach me something, and that I just had to wait for him to show me what it was. I knew he had sent me back to the campus so I could serve people, but I didn’t know what that meant. How could I serve these people who were so full of pride? How could I even relate to these drones, all doing what they were programmed to do? What was I supposed to be doing? Most of them didn’t even want anything at all to do with me. How could I minister to those who didn’t want to be around me? I was an outsider now, and it didn’t make any difference what I had learned during my time away, because these people didn’t care.

These were the thoughts permeating my mind when I came to the eighth chapter of book three in C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity; a chapter titled “The Great Sin.” I was sitting there on the couch, absorbed in my own thoughts of anger and frustration at what I was witnessing in those around me, wondering what on earth God was trying to teach me by making me live with these people, and then this particular chapter came into my life, bringing with it the light of God which hammered into me quite unexpectedly. I had been reading this book for months, picking it up on and off at different times, and it just so happened that this was the day I read the chapter on pride, and in particular these couple of sentences where Lewis puts his finger directly on the issue: “There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.” It is this statement which has since had the most impact on me spiritually of anything I’ve ever read outside of canonical scripture. By the time I finished reading the chapter I was so convicted that I had to go back to my room and pray and talk to God for awhile.

Of course I was full of pride. In my thinking I had been constantly plagued with the notion that I was better than these other people around me. I was going about from day to day, growing in the belief that I was better because I had attained some knowledge that they seemed to be lacking. I was angry at their prideful attitudes, because I was looking at them through the foggy lens of my own pride. This was the very same thing that had been going on with me when I was expelled two years earlier.

Everything began making sense after that. I started praying for humility, and I confessed my pride to God, and asked him to help me love these people, instead of constantly judging them all the time. As time progressed that semester, I began seeing that if I was truly sent back there to learn and to serve, I had to be humble in my approach to others, regardless of what I saw in them and despite the flaws that I noticed. I had to learn to see those flaws as part of an illness that needed healing, knowing that I too was sick and needed help from God to be healthy.
_______

As that first semester came to a close I went home for Christmas break and began thinking about what to do in the area of finances. I still hadn’t completely paid for the first semester so I wasn’t going to be able to enroll again after the break unless something happened during the month in between. I spent time in prayer, asking God what he had in mind for me, and waited patiently for him to answer. I had asked my home church if they could help me months earlier, but there was still no answer from them, so I did some more waiting. As I waited and prayed during that break, the conviction that I needed to go back to Grayson, no matter what, was very strong. I knew without a doubt that it was where God wanted me to be.

It was good that I had that conviction because I was about to be tested in a way that I had never been before. The exact day that I was to leave for Kentucky a couple of the church elders came to my house to inform me that the church was unable to help me financially. They told me that McDonald’s was hiring, and that I should go work there for awhile and then go back to finish college. I guess I wasn’t that surprised, but I was a little upset. These were the same people who had first advised me to go back to Christian college after my expulsion, yet they were unwilling to help me with it.

So there I was. I had no vehicle at that time, and I had no way of actually continuing my education in Kentucky. What I did have was God telling me to go back anyway. And I had a good friend of mine who had decided to enroll that spring semester for the first time. This gave me a ride down there, but the problem was that I didn’t know what to do when I arrived.

My friend Jason was just as scared as I was when we got into his little white S-10 and headed out that Sunday evening in early January. Jason was several years older than me and had been a student at another Christian college in Missouri some years before. He had been there a couple of years before dropping out, disillusioned with the very same things that I had been struggling with as well. He had been working regular jobs ever since and I had met him during the previous summer. We were both rejected by the same girl, and as soon as we discovered this fact, we became good friends. But more than that, I found in Jason another brother who had traversed the same road as myself, and experienced many of the same trials along the way. Our conversations about the Bible, Church history, and the state of the world would last for hours every time we got together and talked, usually over coffee and cigarettes. Jason was heading back to Christian college, fully aware of what he was getting into, but having had several years away from that kind of environment. Between the both of us, the anxiety was pretty thick in that truck as we made our way south.

I’ve still never had to do something that required the amount of blind faith that this situation demanded. I was essentially moving to another state with no vehicle, no job, and no place to live. How I was able to actually go through with this is beyond my understanding. All I know is that Christ literally took me by the hand and led me through it, because I had no clue what I was doing.

And it all worked out. Within a week of returning I had been given a job working in the cafeteria at the college. Moreover, some friends of mine who were married, Andy and Tracy Baysinger asked me to live with them in their house which was just about a mile from the campus. They wouldn’t even let me pay any rent. That semester turned out to be the best one that I ever spent on the campus. I would go to the college each morning at around eleven o’clock, eat lunch, wash dishes throughout the next few hours, and then hang out in the dorms until dinner time. Then I would go back to work for a couple of hours, eat dinner, and go hang out with my friends until late at night. It was great being on the campus without actually being a student there. Of course the fact that I could get away and sleep peacefully in a comfortable house away from the college each night was the best part about it.

Doing the dishes for the campus population each day seemed to have an impact on some of the college administrators. I wasn’t really thinking about this at the time. I was just enjoying the time I had there each day working and spending time with friends. I guess they felt sorry for me or something, because later in that semester the Dean asked me to speak in chapel about my experiences in getting kicked out of the college and then coming back, and how I had grown spiritually from this experience.

Before I left to go home near the end of that year, I was asked to come back the following year, with the assurance that I would have the money I needed to pay for school. They even asked me to come back as a resident assistant, the most difficult job for any student to get on the whole campus. God had taken care of me in ways that I could not have fathomed just a few months earlier.

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” –Joshua 1:9