For most people it’s easy to plan events, coordinate meetings, and teach lessons. It’s not as easy to make real connections with students. So how do we do it? How do we move past the church roles into authentic relationships? It may be simpler than you think.
Shawn Shannon, BSM Director at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor recalls a significant experience in her life: I went on a sort of ‘you’re off to college’ retreat right before I went to school. I could have easily stayed lost in the group there. But one of the leaders caught me on my way out the door that night and walked and talked with me a bit. He asked me about what I thought was ahead. Then he challenged me to live out my discipleship before the campus community (professors and peers) by simply doing two things: 1)going to class 2)prepared. He helped me connect my personal life with Jesus with the rest of my Daily Doing. It was a word fitly spoken and I was readied soil. So I did those two things, and they made an amazing difference in how I lived my college days.
As an adult who works with students, I see three good gifts in this: Time: This adult saw me as a person worth the spending of his precious time. Timing: This was at a moment of significant risk and opportunity–a crisis in the best sense. Truth: He did not give me advice, really, nor did he talk down to me. He laid out to me a truth about sowing and reaping, cause and effect. Applying that truth set me in a good path.
There is an old saying: Where there is the desire to learn, the Teacher will appear. I believe behind every valid teaching is the Master Teacher. I am glad this elder brother of mine was an attentive servant to his Master. It made (and still makes) a difference.
Posted by Ginger 
