Phillip A. Bishop
Human Performance Studies
Alabama
Some of my best conversations happen on 6-mile runs.
One December morning when one of my graduating doctoral students and I reached University Boulevard in Tuscaloosa — about the five-mile mark on our run– we found ourselves discussing our spiritual callings. My student felt called to reach the lost for Christ. I see my gifts and calling used in some small way to steer the Church to be true to Christ.
I was encouraging him to come to our Christian Faculty meeting a little later that same day. He responded that since his calling was to nonbelievers, he doubted that he’d find many lost folks at our meeting.
Who Better To Learn With?
In a moment of illumination from God, it dawned on me.
What could be better for someone called to reach the lost, than to assemble with other Christians? Who better to learn with, than colleagues who live and work in the very environment where the evangelist will be working out his calling?
During my grad school days at the University of Georgia, I remember being frustrated by a nurse speaking to our church concerning a Christian Nursing Society. I felt that she was sequestering a “particular” part of the Body of Christ.
“How much smaller are we going to divide the Body of Christ?” I indignantly asked friends. “Pretty soon every Christian will have his or her own individual Christian group.”
And then I joined the faculty at Alabama!
They Understood The Culture
To effectively minister in any foreign culture, you have to understand its distinguishing characteristics. It didn’t take me very long to realize that higher education is a separate culture, as foreign as some distant countries. As faculty we have our own governance, social hierarchy, lingo, even our own economy.
And this is why I now repent from criticizing that Christian nurse. She was smart enough to join together with fellow believers who understood the culture in which they worked.
We as Christian faculty can most efficiently and effectively reach the higher education community by joining together to share strategies, failures, thoughts and prayers.
And, that’s just what I told my grad student during our run. His calling isn’t just to the lost, but to the lost students, colleagues, and staff at whichever college or university he finds himself. His best way to learn how to be effective is to fellowship with like-minded Christians who share his world and have experiences, both positive and negative, to speed his maturity to Christian and professional effectiveness in our world of Higher Ed.
Why meet together on campus? Because it’s a tough place to minister and we need each other’s advice, support, and inspiration.
We ought to instruct/correct/encourage (2 Tim 3:16) those called to reach the campus. We ought to pray together. We ought to share our very lives with each other. We ought not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together (Heb 10:25), because there is nothing more important than serving the true and living God.
So what’s holding you back?
© 2007 Phillip A Bishop Used by permission of Faculty Commons