It Just Makes Sense

From February 2010 until June 2011 I worked as the Director of Recruitment for Avant Ministries. Most of you who read my blog already know this, so it really must seem redundant to post in a blog almost two years after the fact. But, working as a recruiter could be compared to working in sales in other industries, and with good reason. You have to really understand and buy into whatever it is you are recruiting for, whether it’s a college sports team or a mission agency. Your job is to get the right people through the door. Part of what makes a good recruiter is knowing the most they can about whatever it is they are recruiting for because who knows what someone will ask you about your organization!

One day, while speaking to a class of freshman in an Urban Ministries class at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, I realized I was being completely hypocritical in my pitch to the students giving me their, almost, undivided attention. One of the biggest plugs I made when I talked about doing ministry beyond the walls of Moody was developing relationships while they spent four years with the same people and going out into the world with these relationships already established and doing ministry together! It makes sense, right? One of the biggest keys to ministry is developing community and utilizing the gifts of others to accomplish a certain goal, and an easy way to develop gifts and establish community is spending four years in one place training together. What I realized as I was talking with these students was that I was not even practicing what I was asking them to do!

Today, as I was reading through There Is No Time by Dr. Paul Nyquist I was given a glimmer of hope, though. TINT is a fictional story that explains the principles behind Avant’s Short-Cycle Church Planting method (I’m pretty sure they trademarked that phrase so...act accordingly). One chapter in the story documents the reconnection four classmates go through after spending years apart doing completely different things with their lives. The thing that reconnects them is their passion to do ministry together. Like I said, I had renewed hope!

In the past few months I have been thinking a lot about friends I have all over the country and world serving the Lord in one sense or another. Whether pastoring in a community in Oklahoma, planting churches in Mexico, working with street kids in Kansas City, or serving their family in Indiana there are people all over this world who we have grown to love and know and who it would be a pleasure to serve with.

This is definitely not to say that you cannot meet others beyond your time in school and graft them in, if you will, but it does make sense to be looking for those who you can serve with while you are training and preparing to go out and reach the world for Christ. I’m not sure what God holds for Meghan and I in the future, but I am praying that we would get to serve and be a light for this world with people we love and care for because...it just makes sense.