McAffe Essays

These are essays I wrote for McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University.  While they are more self-promoting that I would regularly post here, the thoughts contained therein are ones I feel are valuable and want to share.  Enjoy.

1.  Give an account of your Christian pilgrimage.

          When I was born, in Austin, Texas, my dad was a Methodist minister.  I was baptized a few months later as an infant, in accordance with my parent’s beliefs.  Around the age of three, my father decided to return to the denomination he grew up in and was ordained an Episcopal Priest.  Thus, at that time, I became, along with the rest of my family, an Episcopalian.

            My religious affiliations as a child may have had more to do with the vocational decisions of my father, but I am haunted by a recollection that as a young child, I understood things of God better than I have as a teenager and adult.  I sometimes wonder if I will spend my life in the pursuit of knowing God more, only to die and see, hear, and know the things I knew as a very young child.   Paul writes in 2 Corinthians of a man he knew that was caught up to the 3^rd heaven, who saw and experienced things inexpressible by human words.  Could it be that as my cognitive and communicative abilities grew, my innocence diminished and no longer could I conceive the beauties of God?  Perhaps this is inconsistent with the doctrine of original sin, which I hold to, but Jesus did suffer the little ones unto him insofar as to such belong the kingdom…I don’t think he was just making a metaphor.

            At the age of 14 I was standing in church reciting the Nicene Creed, which we always recited after my dad finished his sermon, when a sudden realization came over me.  “I believe in Jesus His only Son…” did not make sense to me.  If God was love, if he was a loving God, then why did I need Jesus?  Somehow, though I grew up in a Christian home, the son of a pastor, I never made the connection either in my mind or in my heart that Jesus was the expression of that Love which is God.  For whatever reason I could not make the justification for belief in Jesus.  It was not for a deep theological reason.  As far as knew, this Jesus wasn’t God and chose to no longer profess Him.

            My sophomore year of high school I went off to boarding school at Subiaco Academy for Boys.  Typically, I would go home on weekends, since my family lived a short distance away.  One weekend my parents were going to be out of town so they gave me the choice of staying at school that weekend or going to a retreat up at our church camp.  I chose the retreat for the very pious reason that there would be girls there. 

            I was exposed to the love of Christ in a powerful way at this retreat.  Suddenly I was enveloped in warmth that I had never experienced, warmth that was beyond description and emanated from the depths of my soul and body.  The whole episode was entirely surprising to me.  At one point we were sent to be by ourselves to think and pray.  I don’t remember the exact point I accepted Jesus as my Lord, as God.  I still really can’t, it just happened.  What I do remember is my reaction when I realized I had changed not only my mind, but also my heart about Jesus.  My confession was not the one they write about in hagiographies of the great saints.  My confession was literally, “Holy <foul explicative>, I believe in Jesus!”

            It wasn’t so much that I found Jesus, it truly was that He found me.  I rejected Him, and he came for me.  Moreover, Jesus met me where I was.  Nothing in my behavior or selfish teenage mindset was or could have been attractive to Him.  To be more succinct, nothing about me earned me the right to have Jesus have an intimate relationship with me.  It was His desire for me, which brought Him to me.  The Father’s Desire, Jesus Love, the Holy Spirits Action…this is what drew me to God.  No longer was mine an interaction with God of getting rules and laws right, now it was a relationship based in His love and expressed in my gratitude, lacking as it often has been.

            A few years later I started going to a Baptist Church.  I was living with my parents during a hiatus from school, and I had decided that I wanted to attend a church where my dad was not the pastor.  Since accepting Christ, I had struggled with how baptism works and when the appropriate time to be baptized was.  My reading of scripture suggested, at the very least, that adult believer’s baptism was the more orthodox approach to baptism.  Moreover, I could hardly consider my personal experience of infant baptism an experience, because I had not the cognition at that time to remember, let alone meaningfully participate in it. 

        Thus, I decided to be baptized as an adult by full immersion and joined the church I was baptized in.  My faith pilgrimage is one that lead me from the very true and real faith of my parents, to a faith that was truly and really my own.  The paradox of my pilgrimage is that as my faith has become more my own, I have been led ever closer to the idea that my faith is not my own.  My faith cannot exist solely on its own; it exists within Christ’s Holy Church.  Binding myself unto Jesus inherently means becoming part of a body comprised of fellow believers and workers of the Kingdom.  As I write this, this is where my pilgrimage has taken me and through which obstacles and turns I am still led by Him.

 

2. Tell the story of your personal commitment to ministry.

           There is a wonderful girl in Cheng-du, China serving as a missionary with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.  Her passion for God, sweet disposition, warm company, and, honestly, attractive features, drew me to her with immeasurable magnetism.  She had my commitment, my devotion, and my heart.  She knew better than to accept it.

            She was going to China.  She knew this two years ago.  As I write this, she has been in Cheng-du for about three weeks.  How mad I was at her when she told me we had to go separate ways.  Now, I am deeply thankful that she looked through her own desires, her own pain at having to make a sacrifice for Him.  She and I are still very good friends.  Often, when we talk we are struck by how our relationship is a living parable of the supremacy of our commitment to ministry in Christ.  We sacrificed a passionate romance for our greater passion Christ Jesus.  Moreover, we sacrificed that passionate romance so that we may fully attain the ministry He set before us.

            I remember sitting in an older friend’s office one night as she emphatically stressed to me that I was to “teach!”  People, she said, understand God and His things when I talk to them, be that in conversation, in the pulpit, or in front of a class.  The supremacy of God’s call in my life was burnt into my heart that night.  “And, everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children for My Name’s sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29, NASB)

            Truly, the rewards for following Christ are great.  But, even if they weren’t, if in this life I were to receive nothing, I would continue to follow Christ in the ministry he has set before me just like Peter and the others who alone remained with Jesus after the hard teaching, “to whom shall I go?”  I believe Christ has, “the words of eternal life.”  They are a river of living water flowing from my, “innermost being” (John 7:39, NASB)

 If I were to dam them up would be to cause them to stagnate and cease to provide life.  The words He has put in me were not meant to be for me alone, but to further His kingdom.  Life begets life, when life is hoarded, it ceases to be what it is and becomes corruption.

            My friend in China is one example of how even the beautiful things and people of this life must be subjected to the Supremacy of Our Commitment to Ministry in Christ Jesus.  While I had chosen to follow His call to ministry many years before, it was at that point that I realize that in my zeal for Him and His work, there could be no compromise.  Does He allow me beautiful things in this life?  Yes, I do not believe that he has called ministers to some sort of ascetic masochism where we reject all that bring us happiness.  But, when those things conflict with the true joy of serving Him, I believe that we must willingly return them to God as a sacrifice and as an acknowledgment that He is sovereign over our ministry and us.  Moreover, when we do so we show our belief in His unfailing goodness and love for us.  We submit to the fact that even in the ministry He sets before us, He is the one taking care of us.

 

3.     What factors have led you to apply to McAfee School of Theology for your theological training?

         Many of my professors have spoken very well of McAfee in my classes.  They spoke well of both the ministry preparation and the scholarship at McAfee.  In my opinion, ministry and scholarship go hand in hand.  Scholarship has played an important role in the seminaries and divinity schools that I have chosen to apply to.  My experience in my undergraduate program is that my ministry has been greatly benefited by my studies.  I want to continue this trend in my graduate studies.  Ministry, whether it is the formally trained pastor or the lay person to whom the pastor is charged to equip, must be informed.

            As I was researching McAfee, I came across a quote by Jessie Mercer, which conveyed to me a belief that McAfee was very much a school I wanted to consider studying at.  The quote was something to the effect of, “Lord, deliver us from ignorant preachers.”  I believe that Christianity in this country is in desperate need of leadership that is as sound of mind as they are full of passion.  We are told by our Lord in Matthew 22:37 to love God with all of our heart, soul, and with all our mind.  Too often in my life I have found myself confronted with well-intentioned, but thoughtless and ignorant Christians who have, rather than provide comfort and peace in hurting times, made things worse…both to others and myself.

            I have for some time felt that the cornerstone of the ministry God has given me is to develop, by my teaching and example, a love for God in the minds of those to whom He sends me to minister.  McAfee has presented itself as a school that strives to allow the Holy Spirit to seamlessly merge the passion of the heart and soul with the renewing of the minds of their students in order to form well educated and heartfelt ministers of the Gospel. 

4.  What are your ministry goals? (The kinds of ministries you envision for yourself)

        The ministry I envision for myself is one that is characterized by compassion and intelligence all to the glory of the Father.  My talents and gifts lay in two areas, giving counsel to people (be it discipleship, or in times of grief and hardship) and in teaching.  I have found that the counsel I give people affects the way I teach, and my teaching informs the way that I counsel.  Not that I do ministry to feel close to God, but one of the times I feel closest to Him is when my mind snaps and pops to the order of thoughts He has given me to respond to the hardships and confessions of a person in need, or of a person who desires to do the Lord’s work and seeks guidance for that endeavor.  It never ceases to amaze me the verses of scripture that come to mind and the seemingly obscure theological concepts that suddenly are so useful in speaking the gospel into someone’s life.  And, that is not just for believers, this happens with non-believers as well.

         My gifts and passions being what they are, I look to minister in such a way as to best use them such to grow the kingdom.  Essentially, I envision myself in a bi-vocational ministry. As a counselor, I envision myself in the pastorate, preaching, listening, and equipping men and women for the service of gratitude we are all called to.  As a teacher, I envision myself teaching young minds how to minister effectively and compassionately.  To show them that passionate ministry does not preclude intelligent ministry. The ministry I envision in the future is much the same as the ministry I now see myself in, one in which my teaching informs the way I counsel and guide, and my counseling effects my teaching.  For me, the two are intertwined such that I cannot imagine one without the other.  And, I find that beautiful, as true reflection of God’s work in my