Pray for us... on October 15

So glad to get back to the blogosphere! As the fall semester ramps up (mine starts this week), I'm asking for readers to pray for Christian faculty, and faculty & teachers in general... on October 15.

Why October 15? Well, let's take a journey...

I once asked for prayer for effective first impressions for the sake of the gospel just before the semester began. I might ask for the same thing this semester, but since then, I've come to realize two things...

1. While many Christians will pray for professors & teachers at the beginning of the semester, there's at least a small sentiment among non-academics that says something like, "Pray for them? Didn't they just have the entire summer/all of December off?" (Granted, anyone who has talked to me over the last four months knows I didn't have an easygoing summer after being asked by my university to serve as Blackboard administrator.) I'm not going to address the issues of nine-month versus twelve-month contracts and hourly pay versus salary and limited classroom access and the need to catch up on scholarly expectations that impact teachers' and professors' lives, but I will acknowledge that, to an outsider, it probably does seem a little odd for us to feel such a weighty need after summer, and that we typically do come at the beginning of the academic year with renewed energy.

2. While the beginning of the year is important, as I mentioned above, we do generally come at it with a relatively high level of energy. And here's the second thing I realized: The other time (besides the beginning) that Christians typically call for prayer for teachers & professors is at the end of the semester or academic year. "Lord, help them to finish well," I've heard more than one pastor/elder pray. This most recent year, though, it occurred to me, "I started finishing around the middle of the semester. That's when I needed prayer and support."

The middle of the semester is when the despair sets in, when you stare down the gaping chasm of how ineffective you've been this semester (prompted by mid-term grades, students asking the same questions every week, students asking no questions every week, receiving last semester's course evaluations, realizing that you haven't budged on that to-do list on your board while tenure evaluation creeps closer), leading to the existential crisis of wondering if this pursuit is worth spending your life on. The situation never really is as bad as you feel, but that feeling (as my wife likes to remind me) is real. The end of the semester actually has a natural burst of energy thanks to the relief of escaping that chasm once more, such that the low point in motivation and energy and faith is somewhere in the middle.

So, this semester, I'm asking you to pray for teachers & professors... on October 15. If you want to pray for them now, that's super! But around about October 15 is when we'll need it in a very poignant way. So, go ahead and open your calendar, create a new appointment, set the date for October 15 (If you make it an all day event, be sure to set the reminder for a non-integer number of days, so it won't ding at midnight.), and maybe even paste in the link to this article.

And if you feel like it, maybe set aside some time that day to take out a teacher or professor you know (whom you probably won't have seen very often when October 15 rolls around) for lunch or dinner or coffee. (Breakfast is great, too, but be prepared to wake up early...) There's a major criticism of prayer these days that those who believe in prayer don't actually do anything to help the situation they're praying about. (I have a good deal of empathy for this criticism, but that's another topic for another day.) If you're praying for teachers & faculty to be encouraged and energized, offering time with a friend outside the academic world is a great way to be an answer to your own prayer request.

Well, I need to go open my calendar to October 15...

Broadening our sympathy to deter hopelessness

Last week, I posed the question of what motivation leads to withdrawal (and ultimately dissipation), based on the thesis of The Fabric of Faithfulness that a burden of responsibility leads to engagement (and ultimately multiplication).

The answer (as usual) was to keep reading...

[T]he years between adolescence and adulthood are a tumultuous time, anywhere and everywhere. Many students, perhaps most, emerge from their university experience ready to take on the world; the idealism of youth, we call it. But then somewhere along the way the reality of life in the fast lane of adult responsibility hits--sometimes like a ton of bricks, sometimes like acid rain. In a thousand ways they see how hard it is to be faithful to family, at work, in politics. Day in an day out they experience disappointments in every part of life--every part of life--and see how hard it is to be hopeful (and therefore responsible) actors in human history as they try to be neighbors to those next door and to those around the world. --The Fabric of Faithfulness, page 33 (italics is Garber's; underlines are mine)

So, it would seem that disappointment (bred by hardship) leads to hopelessness which induces an abandoning of responsibility--AKA withdrawal.

And it seems to me that we make the disappointment more painful and the hopelessness bleaker when we are sensitive only to hardships that are similar to those with which we are familiar. How often do we hear of someone's struggle in life, only to respond with, "Well, you're not as far along as I am, so you've got it easy?" (And how many times have we used that response on a student!)

Garber says that cultivating responsibility requires a community who cares. So, how can we expand our range of sympathy to include those in our community whose struggles seem foreign to us?

Encouragement Mistiming

It's Week 8 of the semester - The week when...

• ...my students have learned all the skills they need to learn, but have to be reminded daily that they still apply.
• ...I have to lay down the law with some students and challenge them to manage their time better.
• ...I have to tell some students that they should consider withdrawing from a course.
• ...any special projects I wanted to start but haven't will have to wail until another semester.

This is the point in the semester when I have the greatest need of encouragement...

...and yet it's when encouragement is at its lowest. The irony is that those outside the educational world tend to think of offering encouragement at the very beginning of the semester (when we're running on the steam of excitement) or at the very end (when we've given up steam on the present semester and are hoping for a better run next time).

When have you experienced an encouragement mistiming?

A Mathematical Model for the Questionable Sower

I recently revisited Jesus’ parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-23) and noticed a few things I had never noticed before.  Most of these observations were inspired by Andy Crouch’s interpretation of the story in his Culture Making. I’ll summarize them here in three points:

1.       This sower is rather questionable. On looking at his sowing techniques, one finds that he must be very young, very blind, or very stupid.

2.       This parable of fruitfulness, fruitlessness, and faithfulness applies to our everyday lives, and not just Jesus’ telling of parables or our outright preaching of the gospel.

3.       This may seem anticlimactic, but I think it fleshes out the picture Jesus is painting here: The Sower’s method and result make for a very interesting math modeling problem.

The sower is rather questionable. He is throwing seeds everywhere, including places where, in retrospect, it’s obvious that the seed couldn’t grow. Seeds landing among thorns and rocks are one thing, but can’t this guy exercise just a little care to not let seeds land on the road? Nobody practices agriculture like this (and I’ve spent my share of time around agriculturalists, and they don’t tolerate foolishness)! Picturing this sower scattering seeds carelessly like this, he must be very young, very blind, or very stupid. These are very odd details for Jesus to leave out!

The analogy, of course, is that, in the ministries we feel that God calls us to, we don’t know which endeavors are going to bear fruit and which are going to die on the spot. We can certainly keep developing the areas that look promising, but we can’t know a priori which endeavors are going to succeed or flourish.

This parable of fruitfulness, fruitlessness, and faithfulness applies to our everyday lives. Jesus’ immediate interpretation of this parable is Himself proclaiming the gospel via parables. Only those whose hearts are prepared like good soil, he explains, can receive the parables and understand them such that they bear fruit. “To the one who has [i.e., the good soil], more will be given [i.e., fruit]” (v. 12). He also indicates that this applies when we proclaim the gospel, for which we certainly don’t know when we will see fruit.

But I also think that the parable applies to our everyday lives, as well. Our lives are to be expressions of the gospel—including not just our “moral decisions” and our “conversation,” as a fundamentalist would stress, but the endeavors we pursue. For example, when I teach physics, or when my wife works with her team to prepare a proposal, those pursuits are to be expressions of the gospel. Not that we insert the Four Laws (or Seven Truths for you Piper fans) into our materials, but that we pursue them out of hearts that have tasted the goodness of God and want to see that goodness propagated across creation in as many ways as possible. That is, after all, what we were created for: to spread the image of God across creation (Genesis 1:28-30). We all have a lot of room for creativity in our lives. Even the line cook slaving away at McDonald’s for minimum wage has an opportunity for creativity, in how he treats his fellow employees, or what he volunteers to do, or how he stacks boxes, etc.

In a sense, the seeds of this parable are like seeds of creativity; we don’t know what will come of our endeavors, but (to use the old adage) we won’t find out unless we try.

The Sower’s method and result make for a very interesting math modeling problem. Suppose, for example, that the Sower starts out with 100 seeds (100 is easy to work with percentages). Because the seeds that land on the good soil bear a minimum of a 30-fold return, he only needs 4 out of the 100 seeds to land on the good soil in order to end up with more than he had before—that’s a 4% success rate. In our mindset, that seems unsuccessful, but in God’s mindset, it’s a tremendous success.

What that means is that when I feel discouraged in what I perceive to be a weak progression of the gospel in the world around me, I have to remember that God takes what looks like a few feeble seeds and turns them into a new generation of fruit, beyond what I could have imagined or thought.

Doubly Marginalized, Part 6: What the Church Can Do

Christians in the university very often feel like outsiders in both their churches and their institutions. In this series, I take a look at the different aspects of this situation of being doubly marginalized.

I'd like to close this series of posts with a few practical thoughts for Christians in the university and their churches. Last time, I focused on how Christians in the university can help each other. Here, I'd like to offer a few practical thoughts on how our local churches can support Christians in the university and encourage us even in everyday conversation and fellowship.

1. Understand that we never really stop working. When we come to church, we try to put the mental processes on hold so that we can fellowship with you, but sometimes inspiration just strikes and we may look like we’re in LaLa-Land. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to talk to you and wouldn’t welcome your distraction from our distraction to bring us back to focusing on God.
2. Understand that we don’t have “normal jobs.”
3. But at the same time, don’t refer to non-academics as “people in the real world.”
4. Understand that we have to choose our words carefully, and that just because we may articulate our faith differently than you, it doesn’t mean we’re not committed to Scripture.
5. Understand that we see many terms like “pluralism” and “humanism” differently than you do (and very likely use the words differently than you do). I’ll expand on this another time…
6. Approach grad students with sympathy. If a grad student seems to drop off the face of the earth, don’t assume they’ve apostatized; they’re probably buried in dissertation figures. A warm meal is probably more helpful than a sermon about church attendance.
7. The same can be said about new faculty nearing tenure evaluation.
   
8. Don’t imply that theology is superior to other fields of study. I’ll expand on this another time…
9. If you really want to make our day (especially a grad student’s day), ask us what we’re learning in our research. (NOTE: Do not ask, “How is your research going?” or, “How much longer do you have til you finish your dissertation?” See http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=47 for more. Just ask about the content.) If you don't understand, ask us to explain.
   
10. Don't respond to a novel research method or theory with, “Well, that makes sense.” In the academic world, statements like that mean, “That’s so logical, you should have thought of it sooner.”

What else have you found to be helpful encouragement as you pursue your calling in the academic world? What have you found unhelpful?