An Open Letter to UNC Students: Recanting Carolina Way Bashing

Dear UNC IV Students, Past and Present,

During my five-year reign of terror as an IV staff on campus at UNC, I regularly dismembered the UNC cultural artifact known as "the Carolina Way." I am hereby repenting of said dismemberment, with significant qualifications.

"The Carolina Way" is UNC-speak for all that the university holds dear: academic achievement, service, justice, and social and relational polish. It is the myth of the perfect UNC student. It is the super-sizing of the impossible self.

In Biblical terms, it is the attempt at self-redemption and self-justification. It is an an attempt to find meaning and ultimate purpose without reference to God, His cross, or His resurrection. It is an attempt to fill the God-shaped void in our hearts with a Carolina-blue Superman or Superwoman.

As such, it is, of course, sin. And I saw it wreaking havoc on many of you particularly during my first four years on campus. I saw it ruining your sense of peace, over-running you with anxiety and frenetic activity--and I saw how it pushed you more onto your own flesh and hard work than towards Christ.

And so, of course, I pushed back against it. Hard. The Carolina Way became an easy pinata for me to take a stick to and thrash in an effort to correct the death that was at work in your lives. And I think that the corrective was important and good.

But my last year at UNC, I began to wonder if I over-corrected. And so I backed off on bashing the Carolina Way. And here today, I want to recant and suggest a better alternative. I want to suggest that the arm of the Lord is not too short to save and redeem even the Carolina Way.

Because of course justice, academic rigor, service and healthy social interaction are not bad things. They are good things that are in need of Jesus to intersect them and bring fullness of life through them.

And Christians across the centuries have displayed these attributes and worked their butts off to bless literally billions of people in the name of Christ: apostle Paul, Augustine, William Wilberforce, and in the last 75-ish years Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gary Haugen.

As long as the Carolina Way vies for your identity, affections and final purpose, it's death. If the Carolina Way goes through the lens of the cross and the resurrection of Christ it has potential to bless many people.

So thanks for your grace and forgiveness for your over-correcting former staff worker. I hope and pray that many generations of UNC students might graduate to bless many near and far-away neighbors in the name of Jesus.

What I Gotta' Do Before I Can Do What I Gotta' Do

So maybe I'm just getting more uptight in my old age, but today was one of those days when I had a bunch to do and couldn't do it until other, less important things got done.

Printer cartridge dry. Seriously annoying. I've got important things to print. What am I supposed to do? I got fifty emails and dozens of phone calls to make, but after a week of not having a printer that prints except in purple, I went to Staples. Printer cartridge. Check.

Oil change 850 miles overdue. I feel like I'm driving my poor beat-up 112,000 mile Mitsubishi Galant with gritty sandpaper running through the engine instead of oil. Gotta' get the oil changed. Jiffy Lube. Check.

Not much gas. Could get home, but then what? Go in the morning? Stop to get gas. Check.

Realize that I need flip-chart paper, tape, and markers for a presentation this afternoon--this realization hits after I have already left Staples far behind. Hit up Walgreens, they come through for me. Presentation props, check.

Ahhhh, now I can really get to work. None of this had any bearing on my tasks for the day, but there's something about nagging tasks floating out there, left un-done and hanging over me, that can make it hard for me to really focus on the work at hand.

But maybe that's just me.

Meanwhile, last night's large group was a great good-bye. Woke up this morning feeling centered and grateful and peaceful about leaving here and looking ahead to what God has next. I'll miss the people, but it's time.

A good gift to me. I'll be praying for my seniors to have the same deep sense of peace for their own lives.

Soundtrack for Emotionally Dysfunctional Griever Wanted

I've always thought that life would be much easier to navigate if it came accompanied by a soundtrack that helped you to know when the big moments were occurring. The music gets louder or more intense or more dramatic and you know to perk up, pay attention, dial in.

Without the soundtrack, it seems so easy to miss the really important stuff. You look back and realize that the moments that most mattered are delighted in more in retrospect than in real-time.

So I'm in my last week of normal campus work. And one of my (many, I'm sure) emotional dysfunctions is that I'm a post-dated griever. In other words, the enormity of my change in work for next fall will hit me sometime in July.

Recognizing this, I'm wanting to be fully present to things this week.

This is my last week of doing what I've done for the past fourteen years: meeting just about every day with students to sort through personal issues, ask big questions about faith and life, point out patterns of sin and brokenness in their lives, celebrate the great things God is doing in and around them, and generally wade into the every-day-ness of their lives looking for how God's at work in them.

It's a great gig. Some days I'll literally have six or seven back-to-back-to-back conversations that run at levels of honesty and transparency and depth of spiritual longings and struggles that some people will never have their entire lives.

But I'm done at the end of this year. And it' s a good thing that I'm moving to--focusing on developing and leading staff across several campuses rather than students at one campus.

But I'm trying to grow up a little bit, trying to figure out how to soak in these last moments on campus rather than realize months from now how much I'll miss the place.

But I don't know how to do that without it feeling forced. Everything seems to collapse into cliche: count my blessings, smell the roses, stop drop and roll. Okay, not that last one, but everything else is what comes to mind. I don't want to try to drum up emotion or invent it, but I do want to feel what there is to feel when it's happening in real-time, not two months delayed.

So I'm not sure what all that means. I'm just praying that this last week on campus will be full of God's grace to help me to enjoy the right moments and to grieve what I'll miss about the place, the people and this specific work.

It would just all be much easier to do if I had that soundtrack.

Will Smith, The Rock Cycle, and The Hope of the Futures

Every so often, I get a glimpse of the future of our country through an interaction with a student and it brings my heart great, great joy. This week, I had just such a moment.

Anna Herring, a sophomore who leads a small group Bible study on campus, told me about her geology professor's challenge: write a poem about the rock cycle and get five bonus points. In a moment of brilliance, she decided to write a rap.

To the tune of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Aire."

Given my love for all things Will Smith, I told her that I wanted to see it. It's brilliant. And tomorrow she gets another five bonus points if she'll perform it in front of the whole class of over a hundred people. She bought a hat to wear crooked and sideways.

Without further ado, so that all of you might also be as encouraged about the future of our country as I am, and with the permission of the author, here it is:

Rocks Don’t Just Form Thin Air
To the tune of the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”

Now this is the story all about how
The rock cycle turns round and round
It takes more than a minute
Thousands of years to prepare
You know rocks don’t just form from thin air

Deep in the earth, formed and raised
In the mantle magma spends most of its days
Meltin’ out bubblin’ –temperatures’ are not too cool
Pressure is important, composition too
When a couple of plates that are up to no good
Start converging and diverging in the neighborhood
Pushing together, pulling apart.-tectonic forces are makin a fuss
Between the plate boundaries magma flows through the crust

Continental Riffs and hot spots also have a say
In the location as to where igneous rocks form today
For that hot, molten rock-crystalization is the ticket
Intrusive forms inside, but extrusive?- you can kick it’

Sedimentary rocks? Yo, they’re rad.
Based on how they form- they’re assigned to a different class:
Biochemical, chemical, organic, and clastic..
Hmmmm, that’s right. Sed rocks are fantastic.

Weathering starts the process and all that
Mechanical breaks rocks up with a snap!
Chemical, well…
It changes the rock’s material
Now our rock’s in pieces just like cereal

Now it’s time to put the sediment in motion
By running water and wind- we like to call it erosion.
And I’ll say because I need an A in this class,
That erosion puts us in a fine position
For sediment sorting, rounding and deposition

When the layers of sediment and organic matter are here
The process of lithification is very very near
If anything I can’t say that sed rocks are rare
And I am sure that this rap has made you really care!

Hey now, I’m not just some dumb jock
Add heat and pressure to that old preexistin’ rock
Whoa that’s metamorphism-
And thus, metamorphic rocks are formed. Do you dare?
I told you rocks don’t form from thin air!

To quote the great philosopher Whitney Houston: I believe the children are the future. Teach them well, and let them lead the way.

Man, I Feel Like a Woman

I heard some bad news for us lactose-intolerants this weekend: soy milk has estrogen in it. So they're advising especially women to drink it in moderation. One or two times a week.

On the plus side, I have been more in touch with my feminine side recently.

Great start to New Student Welcome on campus. My wife gave me a great gift of a long nap yesterday afternoon to propel me into a night-time Krispy Kreme run with over 100 new students that lasted until about midnight last night.

Back at it in a couple hours. In the mean time, be on the lookout for other lactose-free alternatives. Rice milk, anyone?

Why I Love My Work: The Pep Talk

I am sitting here in my office, less than one week away from the start of year number fourteen on campus. And so if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to give myself a little pep-talk today, a reminder of why I love my work with college students.

I love my work because in four years I get to watch people grow from wallflowers to leaders, from basically high-schoolers to adults, and sometimes from non-believer to leader in the Christian community. Four years, dramatic transformation.

I love my work because it's part theology, part sociology, part psychology, part business management, part organizational dynamics, part coaching, part pastoring, part training, part marketing, part event planning, part public speaking, and a heck of a lot of coffee.

I love my work because I spend most of my days with people talking about things that really matter.

I love my work because I love watching people change and grow and grow and grow and grow.

I love my work because after fourteen years I have alumni all over the globe serving, leading, teaching, drilling wells for clean water, working in cube world, teaching in elementary school classrooms, leading in churches, serving on the mission field, and on IV staff on other college campuses all in the name of Christ.

I love my work because Jesus loves to do amazing things with college students--most of the revivals in the United States have started with college students praying.

I love my work because locally, regionally and nationally I get to interact with some of the most gifted and creative and intelligent and thoughtful and dynamic people in the world who are all doing this same thing I am and often doing it better.

I love my work because I love college. It's the time in your life when you have the most discretionary time, the most margin to ask big questions and to wrestle through to get to the answers.

I love my work because right now I'm probably working with one or two or three or four or five students who will some day do what I do and do it much better.

Heck, yes, I love my job. The clock is ticking. Year fourteen kicks off officially in about six days. I have a heck of a lot to do. This little pep talk here, it reminds me why I'm doing it.

Back to Work Day 10: Celebrating My Superfluous-ness

So I've wrapped up ten straight days of work after a four month sabbatical from my work on campus. Looking back at the fall, things started off fairly atrocious but they were in stable, if not spectacular, condition when I left.

I'm delighted to report after ten days back that things in our community have improved greatly in my absence. At points in my life this would have been somewhat disheartening. Who doesn't like to feel like the world would stop if they disappeared?

But for this season (today, at any rate), I'm celebrating my superfluous-ness. This was, after all, the original point of rest in the Scriptures.

The commandment to take "sabbath" in the Old Testament was radical in its context. In an agrarian society, when the crops need to be planted, you plant. When they need to be picked, you pick.

Taking a day off no matter what stage the crops were in was reckless. The command to rest on the seventh day was the command to take a day off and trust the Lord with the results. It was to be a reckless rest of faith. God was to be their provider. This was a weekly reminder of his sovereign provision for them.

And so as I return to this InterVarsity community that I am certain that God has called me to serve, it is great news to me that I am not as important as I often like to think that I am. This is God's work. He was here long before I got here and will continue to be here long after I leave.

This relieves me of thinking of myself too highly, as too important or central. And this is the only way I can be free of the tyranny of a burden that is too great for me to bear. The weight of the ministry is not on me. It is on God.

I am not as important as I like to think that I am. Instead, I am more deeply loved than I ever hoped or imagined.

Back to Work Day 2: Where's the Bathroom?

Captain's log, day 2 back at work after four month sabbatical hiatus. I'm starting to remember what it is I did in my former life.

The best image for my slightly dis-oriented re-entry came from my student Amanda. It's like being the new kid in the class half-way through the school year--'when do we have lunch? who are these people? where's the bathroom?' I'm trying to find my way around, hoping for people to have pity on me as I ask questions that I feel like I should know the answers to.

Meeting with my co-staff today helped me, they're being very patient with my bouts of re-entry senility. You can pray for them.

And you can pray for me--good grief, I still haven't met with any students yet. Some days I'll go for six hour straight with appointments back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back. I'm too out of shape for that at this point. But it'll come.

Hopefully they'll be willing to help the new kid find the bathroom.

An Open Letter To the UNC Religious Studies Department

I recently received news of your decision to pursue an endowed chair in Islamic studies. As a Christian campus minister, I must say that this is welcomed news. Given our current political-social-religious milieu, to have students thoughtfully engage with this strong and long-standing faith tradition is a welcome addition to the UNC palate of ideas, exchange, and dialogue.

My one concern is this: it seems that one of the pre-requisites for professors in the New Testament and/or studies of Christianity is that they are not "biased" by a personal commitment to the Christian faith. From what I know (and I confess that I do not know all the teachers employed by the University who teach on these subjects), there is no tenured professor teaching on the history, development, or texts of the Christian faith who is actively and personally engaged with the Christian faith.

If the University wishes to be consistent in continuing to pursue this practice, it might make for an interesting hiring process in looking for a chair of Islamic studies. I'm sure that there might be any number of people who would be qualified to teach on Islam who have absolutely no personal investment in or engagement with Islam.

However, prudence might suggest that this practice be abandoned altogether. It would be of enormous profit to the students and faculty if professors who were authentically and thoughtfully engaged in the practice of their faith were actually a vibrant part of the intellectual life and religious discussion of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Of course, this is unlikely to happen. To hire a faculty to teach on Islam who practices Islam would be a coup; to hire a faculty to teach on Christianity who practices Christianity would be...somehow inappropriate.

Of course, much of this stems from the secular, pluralistic, humanistic worldview that so dominates the University landscape. This faith tradition is in its adolescence in terms of development and has its roots in Christianity--and like an overly-grumpy adolescent it has a tendency to over-react to the parent.

Giving the University every benefit of the doubt, perhaps a part of this glaring omission in the hiring process is the assumption that students in the U.S, particularly in the South, already have some exposure to the Christian faith tradition. That may have been true twenty years ago. It certainly is not true today.

For many students, to have a thoughtful, nuanced, well-versed professor teaching on subjects related to Christianity who actually practiced Christianity would be just as new and powerful as having a thoughtful, nuanced, and well-versed professor of Islam who practiced Islam.

Best to you as you pursue this hire and as the religious studies department continues to evolve and reflect the ever-changing social and religious landscape of our world and our culture. I hope and indeed pray that the UNC religious studies department may one day actually reflect the full array of faith commitments--not the full array, minus one. Such a move would only benefit the students, the faculty, and the intellectual, moral, and indeed spiritual climate on campus.

Sincerely,
Alex Kirk
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

Halloween Timing

A couple of weeks ago I was talking with some students about the funk that our chapter was in. The student drew the parallel with the stock market: people get upset or nervous or worried about what’s going on and then act in ways that perpetuate (or help create in the first place) the negative trends that then cause more anxiety, and the beat goes on.

And so, like a well-timed Fed prime rate cut, Halloween came this past Friday to Chapel Hill. And our IV community did our second-annual Halloween Pancake house. The idea is simple: cook tons of pancakes, set up a large tent on campus, feed people until the food runs out.

Last year we cooked around 1,200-1,600 pancakes and fed somewhere around 600-700 students. IV students loved it. UNC students (both intoxicated and non-intoxicated) loved it. Administrators loved it. They contacted me two weeks ago to make sure that we were doing it again.

This year we cooked 3,000 pancakes. We served roughly 900 students. And my IV students were rock-stars. There were tons of freshmen that I had never met before who cooked, came early to set up, stayed late to break-down. There were a couple of senior women, Ashley, Ashley and Leslie, who were there just about the entire night. Senior women, giving up their entire Halloween night to serve pancakes. You can’t coach that.

IV students lined the brick walkways cheering for folks as they made their way to walk up and down Franklin Street, THE Carolina thing to do on Halloween night. We played sweet music, had lots of hot chocolate available, my co-staff walked a couple of drunk people back to their dorms.

One of the senior women overheard someone say, “InterVarsity knows how to throw a great party!” Heck yeah, we do.

I got to bed Friday night around 3 a.m. I was exhausted, but glad for our first clear-cut “win” of an event since mid-August. Not saying that one night will turn everything around, but it’s sure nice to have a sense of a job well done.

Honoring Tyler: A Retraction

So in an earlier post I was talking about how often "justice" has come up in our large group meetings, how we've been surprised by that, and how I think that's one reason why some of our freshmen have run away.

As an easy (and lazy) point of reference, I talked about a speaker who we asked to talk about hope and who ended up talking about justice. That pastor was Tyler Jones, pastor of Vintage 21 in Raleigh. He and I went to school together. He's one of our students favorite speakers. He's one of my favorite speakers. He very graciously e-mailed me today, saying that he wanted to honor IV and asked if I was talking about him in that post.

I was, and I need to post an apology. Both to honor Tyler and make sure that my students who read the blog don't think ill about him.

My intention behind the post was to say that any one of the nights that we've had at large group where we've talked about justice in and of itself would have been fine. But together, it's felt like a lot. And my process has led me to asking what does it mean to shepherd people into issues of justice and race and ethnicity when for many of them it is new?

Tyler's talk about hope wasn't soft and fuzzy. He challenged Christian students to become agents of hope in the world--exactly as he should have. If we had done our work around Tyler's talk to invite students into a welcoming and deeply gospel-centered community, students could have received his talk or any number of things that we've challenged them with much better.

But as it is, we didn't do our work of building trust before and after he came to help shepherd students into the good challenges that we've put before them. Tyler did not dishonor us in his talk. He spoke the truth. We haven't done as faithful a job gathering and building trust. And so some have left--obviously not all, and clearly large group is not the only reason why they've left.

But I chose my example poorly in my post the other day. I should not have used the example that I did. It came across as someone not honoring our request to speak about a specific topic, when in actuality he spoke exactly as he should have and did nothing wrong.

And I want to make sure to clear things up so that I'm not dishonoring a friend who has faithfully blessed our community year in and year out with his gift for teaching and his heart for the Lord.

Chilin' with D-Webb

This past weekend InterVarsity brought in singer/song-writer Derek Webb, formerly of the band Caedmon's Call, for a concert on campus. We marketed it only to students, thought it was going to be a great night. It was a disaster. We expected around 450-500 students. Only 150 showed up. Bad publicity on our part, I guess.

Afterwards, I got to get dinner with Derek. At 10:00 p.m. we were sitting down to Qdoba burritos along with my co-staff John Farmer, and we got to talk.

Derek's music was extremely formative for me when I was a college student and he was just getting started with Caedmon's. I knew the word "grace" but my time as a student was crucial for understanding what it really meant...and much of Derek's music paralleled and informed my journey. So I was geeked out to talk with him about his work and life.

At one point he bemoaned a couple of his older cd's. I told them that I had both of those albums and I loved them. He said that being a songwriter for as long as he has is kind of like having poetry you wrote in junior high circulating around. Some people like it, but you're kind of embarrassed that you ever had anything to do it.

As we talked, it became clear that we had some things in common. We both got started doing what we're doing about the same time. We both have young families in jobs that at times allow us to spend luxurious amounts of time with our kids and at other times severely strain our families.

Our conversation meandered to music that we loved growing up. We both loved the cd that most shaped my junior high experience, Lisence to Ill by the Beastie Boys. Eventually conversation turned to concerts: Van Halen, Guns 'n Roses, and Metallica cemented it. We were ready to be best friends forever.

I dropped him off at his hotel and apologized for about the sixth time for the anemic turnout at the concert. He said not to worry about it, that he'd love to come again sometime. We shook hands and I pulled off. A couple of guys in their thirties, juggling family and ministry and faith and doing the only thing that we've ever known to do.

spent

after 8 days of nearly non-stop events and planning and writing talks and running meetings on campus (many of them running 'til way past my bedtime) i'm ready for nap time. is that on the schedule any time soon?

Markers

Last week I was talking with a friend of mine who works in cube world. It was the last day of classes. The last day of classes is a tremendous mile stone, an end point, a place to step back and evaluate, consider, reflect, celebrate, rest.

Cube world doesn't have many of those places.

I'm glad for my friends who do good work in cube world. But there are many reasons why I'm glad I don't spend my days there. Having a natural end point, something marks the end of this leg of the journey, is one of those.

I don't have summers "off" but I do have summers "different." Part of the work of the summer is to do the reflection and evaluation that I don't have time to do on the fly. It's good and important work that I enjoy when I've got (or have made) the time to do it.

I'll get there soon. In the mean time, a big part of my job is praying for students as they wrap up the year with exams. Ah, the joys of exams! But that's another post for another day...

Wheat Growers Unite

It's been gray and drizzly for the past several days here in the greater Chapel Hill area. This more or less matches the mood on campus after UNC got pounded by Kansas in the Final Four this weekend.

Clearly, I'm no basketball coach. And I'm not saying that I could have navigated the game better than Roy Williams did on Saturday night. But seriously, at some point during a 25-2 run don't you call a time-out and try to stop the carnage?

A couple of months ago I was talking with a couple at church who are in the small group Bible study that meets in our house. They are from Kansas and were letting me in on the deep emotional pain and baggage they have after coach Roy Williams jilted them to come back to Carolina. Ergo, they hate all things UNC. Especially, of course, the basketball team.

"How do you Kansas-ins feel about the other really flat States around you...say, Nebraska?" I asked, "Do you hate them too or do all of you wheat-growing States pretty much stick together."

"Yeah," said Paul, " we pretty much stick together."

So on behalf of all of us here in a dreary Chapel Hill to all of you wheat-growing States out there, congrats on a good win and best of luck tonight against Memphis.

Cornelius and Eve

A couple of weeks ago a guest teacher at our church preached from Acts 10. It's one of those watershed stories of the early church: Cornelius is a God-fearing Gentile who is very devout and gives to the poor. An angel appears to him, affirms him for his good actions, and tells him to send for Peter, the head apostle who also happens to be Jewish and very committed to the gospel going to the Jews.

Peter comes, Cornelius and his whole house is converted, and Peter is converted to the work of the gospel among the Gentiles. Fast forward a couple thousand years and you've got me, a Dutch-Scottish Gentile worshiping Yahweh.

One of the teaching points at church that morning was this: good people need Jesus. Cornelius was about as good as they get. And yet the Peter is not sent there to affirm Cornelius' goodness. Peter is sent there to tell him about Jesus, the good news about his life and death and resurrection and the forgiveness of sins in his name. Good people need Jesus.

There was a huge celebration of Eve Carson's life today on campus. Thousands of people came to hear stories about her. And the stories were inspirational. By all accounts she was a tremendous and fantastic leader, person, student body president. You either felt inspired by her seemingly boundless energy and love for people or ashamed for being such a complete slacker and waste of a human being by comparison.

And as I heard the stories, it began to make more and more sense why we sang the alma matter and "Carolina in my Mind" at her services. UNC was her life. She poured herself into the work of making the University a better place for everyone. To make Carolina a better place was her life's work, it was her passion, the thing that she oriented her life around.

So here we are. A tremendous and gifted and wonderful woman who crammed more into 22-ish sleepless years of life than people twice her age...and yet it still all feels so empty. And I'm coming away from this experience more convinced than ever that work, even good work, even good works, even great relationships, even great family...none of those stories is big enough to give our stories the profound meaning that we long for, that we were created for.

Eve was a Cornelius. She was a good person, a great person. She needed a Peter. I have hope that there were inklings of the gospel at work in her life. I'm more committed than ever to developing and raising up leaders, Peters, who will be humble, bold, loving, committed, gracious, passionate, patient, gentle, in the speaking of the gospel...even and especially to the people who don't seem to need it.

Angst and Relief

Friday morning after the craziness that was the day that we all found out that Eve Carson, UNC Student Body President, had been killed, I was driving down to campus and I was frustrated. Let me count the ways:

1. We live in a world where 22-year-olds get shot to death.

2. The campus leadership has nothing more to offer (and indeed, nothing more that they COULD offer, even if they believed something more themselves) than "live the Carolina way."

3. The Christians on campus could offer something more from The Story of hope, redemption, healing, and forgiveness but:
a. when we do get a chance to speak, we often say something stupid or
b. when we get a chance we often duck the opportunity to speak altogether.

4. With Spring Break this week, we don't have a chance to offer a more large-scale response to the issues and questions that this whole thing raises but even if we did, I don't know that anyone would come.

Pastors after September 11th often say that their churches were packed-out. I don't know that crisis in my context (i.e. Bible-belt big state University) drives people to seek out answers from the Christian community.

There's probably a couple reasons for that: first, we don't have street-cred on campus; i.e. we don't have the trust built to engage at these levels. And second, students in the South think they already know what we'd say.

As I rehearsed these issues in my head on the way to campus, I was getting more and more worked up.

And then I started talking to people. I heard about Abby, who knew Eve Carson, and how she walked around in her grief offering to pray for others who were close to her...even those she didn't know particularly well. I talked with Calin who found himself talking with a confused and sad suite mate about the situation. He listened well, asked questions...and then shared some of his journey with this man who's talked off and on about faith issues with Calin before.

Just a couple of stories, but it was enough to rescue me from my death-spiral of pessimism. If that's what I'm hearing, there are probably dozens, maybe hundreds more stories that I'm not. The Lord is good to redeem tragedy. Even here at UNC. There's issues we need to work through (how to talk about hope in tragedy, gaining street cred) but the Lord is not limited by our issues. That's good news, a small ray of hope in the midst of this ongoing tragedy.

Prayers For Carolina

If you've seen any headlines recently you might have seen that the UNC student body president, Eve Carson, was killed yesterday morning. They id'd the body and released the news this morning. It swept through the campus like wildfire, as students start to trickle out for spring break.

A few of my InterVarsity students knew Eve. Mostly the entire campus is just in shock. We canceled our normal Thursday night meeting and joined in with the campus candlelight vigil. That's where Jesus would have been.

It was good but hard to be there tonight with hundreds, maybe thousands of students. It is good and right for us to mourn together. It is necessary to grieve, essential to mark the passing of a major student leader on campus who was very popular and very well loved. Students told a few stories, the administration invited students to care for one another, to seek help if they need it. These are all critical parts of the process, important things for students to hear.

But on the other hand, there's so very little hope. The vigil had the forms of Christian worship but none of the power. Instead of hymns there was the Carolina alma matter and Carolina on My Mind. Instead of a homily about the hope of redemption and heaven in the midst of suffering and sadness there was only a call to give one another a giant group hug and to live out 'the Carolina way.'

Here's the deal: a 22-year-old student was shot to death a couple days ago. That's completely messed up. The students need something more than James Taylor and the alma matter and some candles to get us through. Unfortunately, secular campus culture doesn't have anything else to offer.

Every now and then I start to become entranced by the siren song of secular pluralism. Maybe having the dominant operating system of our culture be a vapid, non-committal, vague acceptance of anything and everything is a good thing for a crazy-diverse place like the United States. But then I see how completely impotent secular pluralism is in dealing with any of the things that really matter--like calling people to make an ethical decision that would require sacrifice...or helping people actually deal with the death of a peer--and I wake up and come back to my senses.

Please pray for the students. Pray for a couple of the administrators that I respect for their love for the students: Dean Blackburn and Winston Crisp; these guys are working overtime right now. Pray for the family and friends.

And pray that the hundreds of students that were there tonight might hear the good news of redemption and the power of God to overcome death somewhere in the next week as they continue to process this event. There is more to help these students deal with the painful reality of death than was given them tonight.