Practicing Hospitality

Issue No. 2 Oct./Nov. 2007

I want to take the opportunity to share with you some things that Kelly and I have been doing this semester to try to love Kenyon students by being hospitable and creating space for them to freely speak, move, and be. This is an endeavor that we’ve been pursuing for awhile, but because I just recently read Henri Nouwen’s book, The Wounded Healer, I will include quotes about hospitality from it at the end of each of the following paragraphs.

We now live within walking distance from campus, which makes us much more accessible than last year when we were a ten-minute-drive away. We have been able to have students over to our apartment almost every single week this semester! Sometimes it’s for things like Bible Study preparation, or for discussions of a book I’m reading with a student, but many other times it’s to have open discussion about whatever the student is thinking about. As the weather gets colder, we offer students tea or hot chocolate to drink while they’re here. We welcome them into our lives to know us better, and we intentionally try to carefully listen to them. Someone once said that the closest thing to feeling loved that many people experience is being listened to. “Hospitality is the ability to pay attention to the guest. This is very difficult, since we are preoccupied with our own needs, worries and tensions...”

In Sophomore Bible Study (SBS) we are sharing our stories with each other. We’re modeling our sharing after the structure of the Un-Game, which calls for thoughtful listening by everyone. Over the remaining weeks before Christmas Vacation, each SBS participant will share their faith journey, and how they have currently come to be at SBS in order that we may know where each other is coming from, learn how to listen to each other better, and to just overall know one another better. I hope that this will greatly benefit SBS, and I pray that it will strengthen
the entire fellowship at Kenyon. “Hospitality becomes community as it creates a unity based on the shared confession of our basic brokenness and on a shared hope...Community arises where the sharing of pain takes place, not as a stifling form of self-complaint, but as a recognition of God’s saving promises.”

Lastly, the Freshman Bible Study (FBS) leaders and I asked the freshmen for suggestions for topics or scripture to study for FBS. As usual, there were many great suggestions, however, unlike past times that I’ve done this, there were a few faith questions written down in addition to study topics. All of them were questions that most Christians ask themselves at some point, and these were all questions that I asked after accepting Christ during my college years. Two of the questions asked, for example, were: “What happens to people of other faiths?” and “How can we reconcile the condemnation of homosexuals with unconditional love?” So the last Monday night of October, during the time that we normally meet for FBS, I gave them my answers referencing many biblical passages. I told them that my answers were not “canned” answers, but they were the answers that I came to after much discussion, prayer, and contemplation. I also told FBS that my answers should NOT be the end of their conversation about these things but just the beginning. I’m so grateful that FBS felt comfortable to ask these tough questions. Too often, some Christians feel like they are not able to ask questions, because they think that if they don’t have everything perfectly figured out they have somehow failed. Jesus calls us to follow him (Matt. 16:24). He does not say that we have “arrived” once we acknowledge him as Lord and Savior, but in fact that we have just begun a journey. Practicing hospitality and creating space allows for real questions and real conversation, and it allows all who enter in to be themselves and be loved where ever they are in their journey. “The paradox indeed is that hospitality asks for the creation of an empty space where the guest can find his own soul.”

Seeing God at Kenyon

Issue No. 1 Aug./Sept. 2007

I’d like to reflect on some specific ways in which I’ve noticed God working at Kenyon so far this year, particularly in the Bible Studies. Firstly, the first year students have already started to jump into the Fellowship here at Kenyon with both feet! There are already seventeen first-year students involved in Freshman Bible Study (FBS)(see pic.), Saturday Night Fellowship (SNF), and Koinonia! Furthermore, one of the FBS student leaders who is a Sophomore made the comment that “they’re already talking and participating in the Bible Study; I remember last year it took us several weeks to get into it and feel comfortable enough to talk!” Praise God for how these students have been prepared to be involved in his work at Kenyon!

Because Jesus Christ’s timing is perfect (Rom. 5:6), I know that God is behind several situations that might otherwise seem like coincidences regarding the other Bible Studies. Keep in mind, neither of the following examples had anything to do with me prompting the student leaders...

For Sophomore Bible Study (SophBS), the students requested that this semester we begin studying what it means that Jesus came not to abolish but to fulfill the Law and the Prophets (Matt. 5:17). As I always tell the students, I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers; my role is to facilitate discussion and lead inductive group study of the Bible. However, this past May, through the CCO’s partnership with Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I was able to take a course on Biblical Theology, which deals with this very question! The question the SophBS posed is intricately connected to one of the larger questions Biblical Theology is concerned with: “What is the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament?” A fantastic book I read for the course was Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament, by Christopher J. H. Wright. Praise God for giving me this preparation for SophBS that I could never have foreseen or planned!

The first week of classes I was given a stack of five-page packets entitled God Time. The introduction said that this was a guide to facilitate “quality, quiet time with the Lord.” I was told that somebody found them and thought that I might be able to use them. I took them and set them aside without reading further. Literally three days later, at my first JBS Preparation meeting, I asked the student leaders if there was anything on their hearts that they wanted to explore during JBS this semester. Without hesitation, both leaders said, “Prayer!” I told them, incredulously, of the resource very recently given me about prayer. We will be utilizing God Time during JBS this semester! Praise God for his perfect timing!

Please join me in praising God for his goodness in these matters and also – especially – for the things of which we are unaware! Christ Jesus is certainly at work here at Kenyon through his Holy Spirit, whether or not we notice, but when we do witness God we can do nothing but marvel at his glorious workings, and declare with the Psalmists, “Hallelu Yah!”

Summertime in Gambier

Issue No. 6 Jun./Jul. 2007

It has actually been almost exactly one year since we sent out our first newsletter. Kelly was in her second trimester, I had just finished CCO’s New Staff Training, and we were trying to learn our way around Mt. Vernon and Kenyon College. We received a phone call inviting us out to dinner with a few students who had been working for Kenyon’s Summer Conferences. We were very excited and very nervous. This would be Kelly’s first interaction with Kenyon students and only my second interaction. We went out to eat at Hoggy’s Bar and Grille – a place with delicious, barbeque meals – as a going away meal because one of the Summer Conference student workers was leaving the next day. We had a great time and were grateful to have met these students, but we certainly weren’t really in their lives at that point.

Well, one full year has passed. Kelly and I have had a great school year here at Kenyon, and we’ve had a great summer, too! This summer, we worked alongside those Summer Conferences students, most of whom we knew from the school year. And the same student who we went to Hoggy’s for last year, came back after already graduating, and worked one last summer here at Kenyon. Furthermore, we went out to eat at Hoggy’s as a going away party for him – again. Looking at this picture makes me think of how grateful I am for how far God has taken us into relationship with Kenyon students since that first, somewhat awkward, meal, and the awkwardness shown in the after-meal picture from last summer’s Hoggy’s trip.

Our first newsletter talked about the first Core Value of the CCO, All Things Belong to God. The CCO’s third Core Value is, We Love College Students. Loving these Kenyon College students is integral to what Kelly and I do, and is made possible with your prayerful support. Whether they’ve always been Christians, or if they’re new Christians, or if they don’t know Christ at all, God loves them and desires that they know him. And we pray that God will use us as instruments of his love towards them. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” ~ Romans 5:8