Meaning in the Work
Testimony at InterVarsity Staff Conference 08by Don Everts
I stand up here tonight to give witness to what a good worker our God is. One of my favorite songs these days has a line describing God that says, “He’s a workin’ man; none can stay his hand.” He’s a worker, and the particular work of God that I’m giving testimony to tonight happened last August, last two weeks of this last fall, and it happened in one of the hardest fields to work in – the interior of my own soul. Rocky ground, often.
And this work, in the last two weeks of August – due to no lack of preparation or planning, or no procrastination on my part at all – happened to be the two intense weeks of New Student Outreach on the University of Colorado, Boulder campus, and it exactly coincided with two separate InterVarsity Press writing deadlines that I was on.
So for two weeks, every day went something like this: I would get up in the morning and I would go to campus and do the NSO (New Student Outreach) thing. You know that, right? Helping student leaders reconcile, playing Ultimate Frisbee, meeting every freshman and finding out what they thought they were going to major in, all that kind of stuff. And after eight hours of just frenetically running around on campus, I would drive myself across town to my office (which is in the basement of an abandoned church) and while my body was inert, my mind started running around as frenetically as my body had earlier in the day – you know, sculpting chapters, smelling words, conjugating.
And then, when my brain was as fatigued and exhausted as my body was, some other part of me drove me home – I don’t know, perhaps my soul, I’m not sure – and I would go to bed, sleep for a couple of hours, get up and do it all the next day. For two straight weeks, that was my life. And it wasn’t just exhausting, those two weeks turned out to be sacramental in my life. God used the exhaustion of the two weeks to work inside of me. Perhaps some of it was the perspective of pursuing two different types of ministry side by side, and the perspective that brought. I tend to think that I was so fatigued that my guard was down enough for God to teach me things.
The first thing that God worked in me was a deep understanding and deep sense of my place as a servant in his Kingdom. As I labored on campus and as I labored in silence in my abandoned church building, God was speaking over me the words, “Your life is not your own.”
In Romans 1, which we are going to look at tomorrow morning, Paul calls himself, “I’m a servant of Christ Jesus.” And that’s it, isn’t it? That ultimately, ministry is simple obedience. That whether we are in the bustling student union or we’re sitting with paper, we work at his bidding. We go where he tells us to go, and we do the labor that he calls us to do. And not only that – Paul takes it further and, for the introverts, this gets kind of intense – but Paul in Romans 1 as we’ll see tomorrow, not only does he call himself a servant, he says “I’m actually obligated to the Greeks and the barbarians.”
And as I was on campus running around, believe it or not, there were moments, as I’m trying to keep up with the 18-year-olds on the ultimate course – I did, but while I did, the question was inside of me, “Why am I doing this?” You have that moment, right? “I really don’t care what you’re going to major in. Why am I doing this?” And God cleanly spoke to my soul: “You do this because you are obligated to the incoming freshmen. You are my servant and I send you here.”
And late at night when I’m twitching at my desk and I know the chapter doesn’t work, it doesn’t sing but I don’t know why and I just want to go to bed. [And I ask,] “Why do I have to try to figure it out? Why do I try to massage the chapter better?” And God said cleanly to my soul, “Because you are obligated to the readers.” He worked in me a deep sense of almost humiliation, a humbleness that I am his servant. And I get up in the morning and I initiate with freshman, I step onto the campus, I conjugate, at his bidding.
But not only that. The other work that God – while he had me pinned – taught me was a deep sense of my undeniable naked dependence on other people. As I was on campus, this was patently obvious. What good is a shy, skinny dude like me on a campus like CU-Boulder? And I realize I could not move forward, I could do nothing on the campus without partners. My partner Dulcie Booth on campus who is a prayer warrior who can read my moods like a book – I needed her. I could do nothing without her. And our new student leaders, Tim and Michelle – whenever I saw Tim and Michelle, it was like cool water to me, because they were so good with freshmen. They walked into the dorm with such ease, and they knocked on the doors as if fear wasn’t even in their vocabulary. And I needed them. I needed my supervisors, Ryan and Scott and Bob, to call me up and encourage me and tell me I wasn’t crazy. Towards the end, maybe I was crazy, but it was worth it to be crazy. I could do nothing without them. I can’t do anything on campus without them. And God was massaging into my own soul a sense of my dependence on others.
It was obvious on campus, but I felt it deeply at night as well. I looked alone, but as I labored into the evening hours, writing and editing, I felt surrounded by other people, which does sound creepy in the basement of an abandoned church. Come to think of it, it was a little bit creepy! But most of the people who came to mind were dear brothers and sisters who labor in IV’s modern-day scriptorium nestled in the suburbs of Chicago – people at IVP. As I was laboring late into the night, working, I felt the presence of Al Hsi, my brilliant, witty editor, who I’m convinced can read whole books and hold them in his head like most of us can with words and sentences.
I thought of Cindy Keipel who, with her artistic team, writes the perfect introduction to every book with the image they put on the front. I thought of Jeff Crosby, who heads up the marketing department. He’s like the students who go around and knock on doors, and he does that. And so I can follow behind him. I thought of Doug Schaupp, my relentlessly collaborative co-author, who keeps pushing me away from the soft land of the well-put, into the hard land of the researched and right and wise. I thought of Bob Fryling, whose humble and powerful leadership renders those three little words on the spine of each of my books so powerful and trust-building.
I felt surrounded. I can do nothing on my own. God gave me a sense of just my naked dependence and how I need the others around me.
In all this, the amazing thing, as I look back, is I thought I was doing stuff those two weeks. I thought I was getting something done. But when I look back, I realize that God was the one at work. That God was the one teaching me these things. And what I find even more extraordinary than these lessons that he taught me is that he can use someone even like me to labor in his kingdom. “He’s a working man. None can stay his hand.”
Don Everts is an author and area director for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Colorado.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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