I've raised 86% of my budget for next year! This means I can be on campus full-time during New Student Outreach in a few weeks. With committed monthly gifts, one-time gifts that have already come in, regular one-time gifts that have come in for the last 3 years that I can probably count on, and my escrow (unused money from last year), I've got $43,000 raised. I need $7,000 more, so please ask God to provide. I'm closer than I've ever been to being paid my full salary and having enough money for all my ministry expenses.
In the last 6 months, my area director, Josh Howell, encouraged us to live in holy discontent about unfinished fundraising. Way too often, I shirk fundraising, not really thinking of it as part of my ministry. I've allowed my fears and doubts about God providing to paralyze me. But I don't want my students to think that God can't provide. I don't want to see new Texas A&M staff struggle to raise funds, only to give up and finish their commitment to staff underpaid and overstressed. And I don't want to neglect ministry to donors and potential donors by failing to ask them to give sacrificially to God's Kingdom, either my ministry or elsewhere.
As I've lived in this holy discontent, I've seen God spur me on and provide in unexpected ways, stretching my faith. And strangely, the holy discontent about fundraising has led to contentment in my whole ministry - God will be faithful!
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The Heart of Racial Justice
Last week, I finished The Heart of Racial Justice by Brenda Salter McNeil and Rick Richardson. It was a powerful book on the subtle and not-so-subtle effects of racism, and racism's true nature: spiritual sin. They believe that because racism is a sin, it can't be simply educated out of us. Everyone, no matter their race, deals with deep pride which leads to ethnocentrism (thinking your ethnicity is better than all others). Everyone, no matter their race, struggles with fear for provision or protection, which leads to treating the "other" with suspicion and carelessness. These are sins, so we need to confess, repent, and seek forgiveness.
They had an intriguing new way for gaining freedom from racism, based on a healing prayer model. First, worship God. Then, affirm our true ethnic identities, and renounce false ones as idols. Receive and extend forgiveness. Renounce the larger spiritual forces that have allowed racism to flourish - especially the spirits of pride and fear. Embrace the fact that we are a new creation, made for partnership.
They had some intriguing and sometimes painfully true ideas about false identities we put on in regards to race: rage-filled, victim, model minority, color blind, or hip white person (the one I tend to try to cast myself as).
They also believe racism is peculiar to European Americans, because we have galvanized many ethnicities into one powerful whole based on our skin color (White), and not our birthplace or our culture. And we have used that power to clump others into categories based on their skin color.
Their call to be agents of reconciliation resounded in my soul. I long to see InterVarsity at Texas A&M become a place of learning to understand the "other," perhaps coming to desire the gifts of another culture for our culture. I want the scales to drop off our eyes, to see the ways privilege, pride, and fear have blinded Whites, to repent and to see God's power in our weaknesses. I hope that minority students can find healing from wounds, old and new, and find their God-given voice to proclaim justice, freedom, and love. I'm praying that God might use some of the tools in this book to make this vision a reality.
They had an intriguing new way for gaining freedom from racism, based on a healing prayer model. First, worship God. Then, affirm our true ethnic identities, and renounce false ones as idols. Receive and extend forgiveness. Renounce the larger spiritual forces that have allowed racism to flourish - especially the spirits of pride and fear. Embrace the fact that we are a new creation, made for partnership.
They had some intriguing and sometimes painfully true ideas about false identities we put on in regards to race: rage-filled, victim, model minority, color blind, or hip white person (the one I tend to try to cast myself as).
They also believe racism is peculiar to European Americans, because we have galvanized many ethnicities into one powerful whole based on our skin color (White), and not our birthplace or our culture. And we have used that power to clump others into categories based on their skin color.
Their call to be agents of reconciliation resounded in my soul. I long to see InterVarsity at Texas A&M become a place of learning to understand the "other," perhaps coming to desire the gifts of another culture for our culture. I want the scales to drop off our eyes, to see the ways privilege, pride, and fear have blinded Whites, to repent and to see God's power in our weaknesses. I hope that minority students can find healing from wounds, old and new, and find their God-given voice to proclaim justice, freedom, and love. I'm praying that God might use some of the tools in this book to make this vision a reality.
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