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.