Several months ago, Alex had a heart to see the college students in our church body reached, and to even form a college ministry. Since our church doesn’t really have the funds to hire on extra staff, Alex was told that was a great idea, but that there was not really a ton of help that could be offered to get it started and organized. With the help of his roommate, Zane, Alex began to pursue an opportunity to reach out to these fellow students. In the beginning, some of the staff was able to step in and provide the weekly teachings, but before long, Alex and Zane were having to figure out if this was worth continuing to pursue. Better yet, they had to figure out if they could rearrange their schedules enough to make it happen. For the first time in several years, we were finally able to have a regularly scheduled college Bible study, and Alex and Zane led it.
Throughout this year, they have done a few studies, and now they have started allowing different members of the group to lead each week. Zane has already started his graduate education about an hour away, and Alex will soon be heading off to Dallas to start seminary. Since there isn’t a staff position of college minister, these guys are having to prepare this group for a transition and see who they can find to carry it on. After all, good ideas die pretty quickly if no one is there to carry them on. The good news is that the group that has been coming regularly are very involved and see the importance of this ministry. They’re the type of group that has already made this happen once, so they can continue to pursue it even with these seniors leaving.
After the Bible study, I was able to spend a little more time with Alex and tried to catch his vision for the future. One thing that came out that I really liked was how he’s just jumped head first into some of these situations and God has worked out the circumstances perfectly. For example, despite his hometown being about an hour away and several other high school students from his area coming to Alabama, he tried the ole potluck roommate challenge. That’s how he and Zane were paired together. Now, with the college ministry, he knew it needed to happen, and that’s how they became essentially our interim college ministers. Soon, Alex will be headed to Dallas Theological Seminary where he knows no one and he’s trusting God to provide the proper path and route to take.
I know it seems crazy to set off on things alone when there are perfectly good people around you, but sometimes you have to. Attending DTS, while there are other schools, or even more well known environments for Alex, may seem like a step of faith, but it looks like just another step for Alex. I’m a firm believer in the fact that God never leads us to a dead end, and even if it looks like it, all we have to do is keep walking, and we’ll eventually see the path He’s laid before us.
One of the most frustrating things I’ve learned is that most of the time, the hardest path for us to see is the one God puts us on. We have plans and ideas that we can see go on for years, but God leads us down a path where we don’t know what tomorrow looks like. It doesn’t make any sense, but every time we take a step, we’re able to see a few more feet of where God is leading, and even if it doesn’t make sense, when we look back behind, we tend to get a much clearer picture. I’ve always found it weird that the more steps of faith we take, the more that seem to appear down the road. You would think we’d get a quota, but that doesn’t seem to be the way God works. But I guess when we ask for faith, instead of giving it to us, He just gives us another faith step to take. Sometimes it doesn’t get any easier…
