Opening Night Jitters

Tonight's our first large group meeting on campus--that's where we gather as a whole community for worship and teaching. I speak a handful of times each year and tonight I'm batting lead-off. I spent just about all day yesterday working on my talk, and it felt heavy and difficult...like trying to roll a bolder out of a mud-pit.

As I was thinking about this talk and why it was so difficult, I looked back over the past ten years of opening-night talks and realized that I almost always feel this way about this first talk. Here are the reasons why:

1. I know that in our crowd of probably 300 or more students tonight, many of them are doing "Christian Rush" where they check out all the fellowship groups on campus before deciding which one they'll plug into. I want to be able to compare favorably with other campus ministers that they'll hear/that they have heard.

2. I want my own students to like me.

3. I know that for some students, they're not doing Christian rush, in fact, they're not sure they want to do anything religious while in college. Tonight might be the very last "religious" thing that they do for a very long time--maybe ever. I want to say just the right thing or present the message in just the right way that maybe it actually connects for the first time, or that it keeps them engaged with Christian community and considering Jesus for a little longer.

4. There will be a couple students there tonight who have never done anything Christian or religious before--how can I speak to them as well, to help them understand what all the fuss is about?

As I considered this list of pressures after a long and somewhat taxing day of laboring over my talk yesterday, I realized two things: these aren't made up, they're genuine and real issues; and in none of it does God appear to be sovereign, faithful, working, good, for me or for these students that I'm charged and privileged to speak to tonight.

So I repented of my functional atheism last night. I repented of the fact that I spend much of my life talking about God being faithful but living as if he was non-existent.

I'm going to go to work with the Lord today. It's good work, it's important work, and it's all way beyond me or my abilities or my gifts to make the important stuff happen. God has to show up in both my preparation today as I finish up and in the students lives all day today as he prepares them to engage our community, be in the midst of our worshipping community, and yes, hear the talk I will give. But God is over this whole equation, start to finish, and that's my hope, my energy, and my motivation as I sit down to go to work with him this morning.