Callings & Conversations: Meet Logan Paiste

Logan Paiste is a student at The Pennsylvania State University and currently serves as the Community Outreach Intern at the LGBTQA Student Resource Center where he does LGBTQA outreach with other student organizations and community organizations. He is a senior, currently triple majoring in Ancient Languages, Jewish Studies, and Chinese. Through his work at the center, he supports students struggling to reconcile their sexual and/or gender identities with their faith and religious identities. As a gay Christian, his story is one that dives into the complex and often messy intersections of sexual identity and faith. As one who walks in different worlds, he often describes his calling in terms of bridge building.

As higher educational professionals constantly looking for ways to foster and promote diversity, Logan’s story paints a picture of what it can look like to build bridges across differences and promote thriving communities for all students.

What do you do every day?

In my role, I was hired by the LGBTQA Student Resource Center (henceforth, the center) with everyone on the staff knowing I was a Christian. In fact, discussing my faith was a major part of the interview process. Due to some negative prior experiences between Christians and LGBTQA students who visit the center, I had some big shoes to fill in order to establish trust between myself and the other students. I was reminded that the center is designed to be a space where LGBTQA students can feel safer and more comfortable to be themselves. I spent about two and a half years getting to know students and staff at the center, building relationships and supporting their work. This fall, I moved into an official intern position, where my responsibilities will increase.

My day-to-day job is to be the center’s liaison with student and community organizations in the Centre County area. Additionally, I am a listening ear for students who choose to open up about their past negative experiences with family members, and in many cases, with their churches in their hometowns. I have learned that being an empathetic listener is vital for connecting with members of the LGBTQA community. Outside of the center, I inform other people —Christians and other people alike who are interested in building bridges with the community—about the importance of the manner in which you ask questions to the LGBTQA community. It takes building trust and unfortunately, making some mistakes while being a compassionate listener and showing you care. In the center, we have discussion groups. I have been involved with one called Faith Talks, which is a place where students of different faiths—Jewish, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and Atheist—can come to talk about their faith background and, in some cases, have a safe space to discuss negative experiences in their faith tradition. Also I work at the reception desk, welcoming and greeting students when they arrive, and connect them with resources or staff.

What inspires you to do this work?

Throughout my time in college, I have been blessed with making friends with people of different, diverse backgrounds. For example, during my freshman year, I lived with a Saudi Arabian male who came from a conservative Muslim background, a Taiwanese student with a multicultural religious background, and an Atheist who was born and raised in Pennsylvania. Though the four of us are very different people, we would start to have really interesting conversations about our differences. We each had, to more or less of a degree, lived in our own bubble, so each of us had a lot to contribute and much to learn from each other. Towards the end of my sophomore year, I became friends with a woman from Liberia who is an advocate for ending slave trafficking; being more conscious of ethically produced coffees and chocolates; environmentally-friendly packaging and recycling. Before my senior year, I became friends with a Jewish vegan woman who is very passionate about advocating for the end of consuming and purchasing items made from animals. These experiences grew and I found myself in a place where I had so many experiences with people of all backgrounds, people who were all so wonderfully different from me.

I started to feel this incredible calling to be a bridge for other people and to be a voice for people whose voices are not heard on the same level. As a Caucasian; a Christian; an educated, middle-to-upper class male; who is a native speaker of English, I began to wonder if there are ways that I can use these societal privileges in order to be a voice for the marginalized?

What keeps you going during times of frustration and challenge?

My relationship with God has been the greatest thing which keeps me going in both, the good times and the challenging times. Through the last three years of being connected with the center, God has become so real to me. When I started to follow Christ, my view of who God is had radically changed. When I get frustrated, I sense God reminding me of how long He waited for me. And I remember that loving people is my lifelong work. I also draw strength from the people in my life. In May of 2016, I attended the Oriented to Love dialogue, which was a rich experience, bringing together people from the LGBTQA community, as well as the Christian community, in order to build bridges by compassionately listening to each other and understanding where each person is coming from. Often times, I can become frustrated because I do not sense that there are many Christians in my city who are interested in making an investment with the students at the center and the LGBTQA community at large. I can become impatient by having to inform the same people again and again about the importance of being sensitive with your language when speaking with or describing the LGBTQA community. Generally speaking, however, I have found that most people outside of the LGBTQA community who I interact with are willing to take my advice and it means a lot that they listen to what I have to say. I have found that there are people—including Christians—who want to build bridges and want to love. There are a lot of people who want to invest in the lives of the LGBTQA community and create a safer space for them. Whether we agree or disagree, we are community together and pursuing unity in Christ.

How does your work contribute to the flourishing of students and the university?

When I meet with students in the center and ask whether their faith community has been a safe space for them, oftentimes they answer with a resounding “no.” And that breaks my heart. I want to change that. Many of these students desire a deeper connection with their faith background and desire a deeper sense of community and belonging.

On the university level, I want to work with those who want to come together, even if they disagree and to help them listen to the concerns of each other. What I am hoping to pass on at Penn State is making Penn State one community and not different communities; not just different ethnic communities, different religious communities or different LGBTQA communities, but rather, a community reflecting unity and community across difference, reflecting not just a superficial diversity but a deeper trust and investment in each other’s lives.

Favorite moment

The first favorite moment that comes to mind involves my friend Diamond. She is the woman I mentioned earlier who is from Liberia who is an advocate for ending slave trafficking. I remember sitting down with her one day and simply apologized to her that, as a white person, I am so sorry for: all the wrongs committed by my ancestors, by all the atrocities of slavery caused by European and American influence, and for all the bad blood between our people. As uncomfortable as I felt in expressing my feelings, I shared what was in my heart because I didn’t really know what to do in order to build bridges between our communities. As soon as I asked her what she thought about this apology. She was almost taken aback. Not one white person had ever said that to her before. And she encouraged me—heartfelt encouraged me—to keep engaging in these types of conversations, to keep doing what I was doing, including talking about issues like race.

Sometimes I feel inadequate because I am not an expert, but her words touched me so much. They were a reminder that we don’t have to be experts in race relations or the history of LGBTQA community in order to build bridges.
Making the effort to have these conversations and connect with her meant so much to Diamond. This memory is very special to me because God was showing me the value of going out of my comfort zone in order to build a bridge with someone different from me. Diamond became one of my best friends. It doesn’t always happen like that, for example sometimes the other person is not comfortable or ready to build that bridge back and connect further. But when those connections happen, the outcome is pretty special.

Tidbits & Takeaways

As I [Erin] listened to Logan’s story, it was a powerful picture of the potential of our students to lead the way in navigating issues around diversity. Sometimes we think the issues run too deep or the divisions are too steep to cross, they are nothing compared to the power of genuine friendship. As a student life professional, I wonder how we best cultivate environments where those genuine friendships can blossom and grow. How do we bring together students from different backgrounds, religions, and/or identities? As I ponder that question, I think about the value of programs like StoryCorps, that focus on listening and sharing our stories or the Ask Big Questions initiative that provides conversation starters that touch on the pieces of our lives that give meaning and purpose. As I ponder that question, I think about the importance of relationship and community, the call for us to provide space for students to live and to thrive together.

This post is a part of Callings & Conversations, a collection of conversations with administrators and champions of higher education about the work that we do and why it matters. If you would like to share your story, I welcome the opportunity to hear from you. Feel free to connect with me @LearnForwardHE.

Links of Interest

Penn State LGBTQA Student Resource Center
Contact Logan Paiste

About the Author

Erin Payseur is the Associate Director of Civic Learning Initiatives at Baylor University. She has ten years of experience in civic engagement and higher education. As part of the Office of Community Engagement & Service, she develops sustainable frameworks for co-curricular service & social justice initiatives to guide students in considering their roles as leaders and citizens. She currently serves as the institutional contact for the NASPA Civic Learning & Democratic Engagement Lead Initiative. She has authored several articles and presented nationally on civic engagement, service, and leadership. In addition to her civic engagement work, she also serves as adjunct faculty for the leadership minor. She has a B.A. degree in Religion/ Philosophy from Presbyterian College and a M.Ed. in Higher Education & Student Affairs from the University of South Carolina.

Callings & Conversations: Meet Greg Jao

This post was originally published August 26, 2016, on the Org Sync Learn Forward blog as part of the Callings & Conversation series. This platform has since been removed.

Greg Jao serves as Vice President & Director for Campus Engagement at Intervarsity Christian Fellowship USA. Greg has held many leadership positions within InterVarsity’s campus ministry over the past 20 years: National Field Director, Regional Director, Divisional Director, Area Director, and Campus Staff Member. He has also served as Associate General Counsel and Manager of Campus Development for InterVarsity Press and may be best known as the emcee of five Urbana Student Missions Conferences. Greg holds a B.A. in English from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from Northwestern University Law School. He has authored two books, contributed to four more, and written or been cited in numerous articles. Before joining staff, he was a lawyer for the Chicago firm of Gardner Carton & Douglas.

His career has been one devoted to higher education to foster campus environments that allow students & faculty to flourish as individuals of faith. While Greg is a Christian working for a Christian organization, his work ensures that students of all faiths have the right to practice religion on their campus and that faith is not seen as a barrier to diversity but rather a vitally important strand of it. I know him through student development work in higher education and seldom come away from a conversation with him without being more inspired and challenged in the work that I do.

What do you do every day?

Part of the joy of my job is that I often don’t know what each day will look like. I have three primary responsibilities, one more internally focused, overseeing Intervarsity’s communications, and the other two more externally focused. I’m charged with asking the question how do we leverage Intervarsity’s resources, particularly our student chapters that we advise and sponsor, to engage the whole of the campus. We want our chapters to shape their programming and focus to reflect current campus tensions, issues, opportunities so that we are serving all students. The other part of my role involves responding to crises or legal issues regarding campus access. As a Christian organization, we want to ensure that non-discrimination policies are in place to protect all religious students in their expression of faith and that those policies are not then used to penalize those students when they form a student group and would like for that group to reflect that faith as well.

On other days, I spend a good deal of time brainstorming and networking with our on-campus staff on how we better serve the university, for example, how can we support our campuses as they deal with the issue of sexual assault. What are the unique tools, capacities, and resources a Christian organization can bring to help campuses engage the issue of sexual assault on campus?

What inspires you to do this work?

I have multiple inspiration points: one is the immense potential represented by college students.

I believe deeply the leaders of tomorrow, in government, in culture-shaping institutions, in business, higher education, in churches, in every institution, the leaders 20 years from now are the college students of today.
There is immense potential, both in what college students can learn in college and the impact they can have over a lifetime within their field, whether it is within their home or whether they become a leader of a multinational NGO. I love that in four or six years, college students experience immense growth intellectually, emotionally, socially, spiritually, and to have an opportunity to be a part of that, to contribute to that, to fan those flames never gets old to me. When I am teaching or training college students, I love watching that eureka moment when something connects for them for the first time, and they change as a result of that. That alone would be enough.

What also motivates me is the incredible impact that higher education can have on our campuses and beyond. The ideas that shape our world are shaped by faculty, by their research and innovation. If I do my job well, I am equipping and training faculty and helping them engage their world more deeply. What also motivates me are my colleagues. I work with incredibly creative dedicated people. I am regularly humbled and challenged by their creativity and character. Ultimately, I am motivated by a vision, by my understanding of who Jesus is, unapologetically speaking words of truth which call people to transform and to change and simultaneously speaking words of love, acceptance, and care, and holding those two in such perfect tension that people felt absolutely understood, absolutely loved, and absolutely accepted and simultaneously called to transform every aspect of their life. Seeing the way He loved inspires me. I wake up every day thinking I am a lucky person to do what I love but also what I think serves students and universities well.

What keeps you going during times of frustration and challenge?

The reality is that in my current job, I don’t get to do all the fun things anymore. I spend much less time on campus since most of my current job is crisis management and problem-solving. What keeps me going? I am so compelled by the potential of college students, by faculty, by my colleagues, and by Jesus that I can’t imagine just walking away and saying that’s too hard. I believe in Intervarsity’s mission. I believe it actually serves college students, faculty, and the university well. I have such a deep passion for what we do. And I work with an incredible team of colleagues. There is something deeply encouraging and reassuring about knowing when things are frustrating, that I am surrounded by a strong team that will support me, challenge me, walk with me.

How does your work contribute to the flourishing of students and the university?

Our belief is that we need to help our students integrate the different aspects of who they are—intellectually, emotionally, socially, physically, and spiritually. While there are resources on campuses to guide students in other areas, there are much fewer resources available to help students develop spiritually. When Intervarsity is working well, it is engaging all of these aspects of their personhood in ways that other organizations or places on campus cannot.

Part of what religion does, and part of what we do at Intervarsity is consider how do we take these truths that we are wrestling with and actually implement them. One of the great challenges for the university is you can take Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and read it as simply an intellectual exercise. And part of what separates being a part of a religion from just being spiritual or just meaning-making, is that religion doesn’t give us that option. It requires something of us. In Christianity, when Jesus commands us to serve, you actually have to go and do that. And so we send hundreds of students each year into immersion programs in the inner city that are learning the issues there and how to serve. We have an overseas program which does the same. 53% of our students are non-white Americans, so our students are actively engaging in Black Lives Matter and immigration reform. We have Latino students and Filipinos.

When Intervarsity is doing its job well, students are flourishing in every aspect of who they are as people being engaged, developed, and grown.

Imagine at the university, if you had a substantial number of your students trying to engage the university’s issues, its culture, its problems, its heartache as fully integrated people who were driven and shaped by principles that made work like asking for forgiveness and offering forgiveness, justice-seeking and restoration-offering core beliefs and core values? How would it change campus conversation?

Favorite moment

I remember working with a student who was pre-med or economics. He was doing poorly and didn’t seem interested in it. I remember asking him “Could you explain to me why you are studying this? You’re really struggling, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense.” And he said, this is what I want, and he began to describe a lifestyle he wanted out of college and the salary that he needed to fund that lifestyle—$86,000/yr. Campus ministers are usually supposed to be compassionate and accepting. I guess I must have lost my poker face for a moment. And he asked, what’s wrong with wanting to be comfortable? I paused for a moment to consider the question and then commented, “What strikes me is not that you are asking for so much but that you are willing to settle for so little. You’re willing to trade a deeper sense of calling and purpose for $86,000 a year.” The conversation went on. And so did he. He has spent the last 10–15 years here in New York City advocating for the rights of working families to help them make it economically and socially. I love that! I love those moments when I can help a student’s world open up a little bit or help an administrator grapple with the bigger world. I love investing in not just knowledge but also the value and worth of people, educating people, and helping them make connection.

Tidbits & Takeaways

As I [Erin] reflect on my conversation with Greg, I am reminded of the importance of seeing our students as whole persons. Student development work is about creating environments where students can flourish, where they can develop emotionally, socially, and spiritually, as well as intellectually. It is about creating space where they can engage the different aspects of their identity, including their religious identity. Faith communities on campus can be places that bring richness to our institutions and can contribute meaningfully to the common good and civic nature of the university.

“With Student Life, we really want to partner together to serve students, and I would like to see us more fully engaged in the conversations on higher education, because so many of the issues, all of the areas that Student Affairs is wrestling with are the same things we are wrestling with. Part of my role at Intervarsity is to be more fully engaged and to be a partner and active contributor to that community. We have a lot to offer, but also a lot to learn. The great thing about working in higher education is that there is always more to learn, and we are at the place where learning happens. It is an incredibly rich environment.”

This post is a part of Callings & Conversations, a collection of conversations with administrators and champions of higher education about the work that we do and why it matters. If you would like to share your story, I welcome the opportunity to hear from you. Feel free to connect with me @LearnForwardHE.

Links of Interest

Intervarsity Christian Fellowship

About the Author

Erin Payseur is the Associate Director of Civic Learning Initiatives at Baylor University. She has ten years of experience in civic engagement and higher education. As part of the Office of Community Engagement & Service, she develops sustainable frameworks for co-curricular service & social justice initiatives to guide students in considering their roles as leaders and citizens. She currently serves as the institutional contact for the NASPA Civic Learning & Democratic Engagement Lead Initiative. She has authored several articles and presented nationally on civic engagement, service, and leadership. In addition to her civic engagement work, she also serves as adjunct faculty for the leadership minor. She has a B.A. degree in Religion/ Philosophy from Presbyterian College and a M.Ed. in Higher Education & Student Affairs from the University of South Carolina.

Callings & Conversations: Meet Tiffani Riggers-Piehl

This post was originally published August 12, 2016, on the Org Sync Learn Forward blog as part of the Callings & Conversation series. This platform has since been removed.

Dr. Tiffani Riggers-Piehl is the Assistant Director in the Academy for Teaching and Learning at Baylor University (Waco, TX). She earned her Ph.D. at UCLA, where she studied college student spirituality and student-faculty interactions. Prior to her studies at UCLA, Tiffani earned a Master of Science degree in Educational Administration at Baylor University, where she discovered her interest in scholarly pursuits: specifically spiritual and moral development, research and teaching, and gender differences in education. She left a career in fashion merchandising to pursue a path in higher education. Since 2003, she has served in various roles within student affairs and the academy, and for the last year has been working in her current role at the intersections of teaching and learning. I know Tiffani as a valued colleague, talented teacher, and friend.

What do you do every day?

The Academy for Teaching and Learning (ATL) is outside of traditional student affairs. A lot of my day is spent planning events for faculty, coordinating presenters and topics, working with graduate students on research projects relating to teaching and pedagogy, and working to help faculty be better at what they do. A typical day is a lot of emails and a lot of meetings. I also do some teaching of faculty and some teaching of students as well.

What inspires you to do this work?

I thought I was going to be in student affairs. When I started in student affairs in 2003, I was working in athletics and doing women’s ministry. I loved undergraduate students. During my master’s program, I worked in spiritual life with students and student leaders on a variety of different service projects. At the same time, I was exposed to research on college student spirituality, and this whole world was opened up to me. I realized that it was okay to do research on things related to spirituality and this idea of meaning and purpose.

How do people find meaning and purpose in their lives? How can we help students develop that meaning and purpose in their collegiate experience and on into their careers?

When I found there was this avenue of research open, I thought I would get a Ph.D. in education and do research on student spirituality and then return to student affairs. Through my experience in doctoral work, though, I remembered my love for teaching. There’s this sense of mentoring and teaching that go together. When I was in the corporate world, I was always the trainer, always the one teaching others. So I began asking, what if I was teaching instead of doing practical student affairs work? What if I was teaching in the classroom instead of teaching in the life and co-curricular context?

That’s where my focus had begun to shift when the ATL position came up. The focus of ATL is to inspire a flourishing community of learning on campus for both students and faculty. Our desire is that we would encourage learning; for faculty that means learning about teaching and for students that means having good learning experiences. I get to teach while doing this administration post. After a couple of years I may move into a faculty position, or perhaps I will stay in administration. But for now, I enjoy getting to be in both worlds.

What keeps you going during times of frustration and challenge?

This year, I’ve had to adjust to a new position, a new institution, a new context. What has kept me going, though, has been how the work that I’ve done has impacted me personally. I’ve learned from the speakers we’ve brought in and the events we’ve done. It has helped me become a better teacher. Hearing from faculty and graduate students that are attending these events, they talk about how the workshops are benefitting them. They are finding nuggets to use in their teaching. I know students are getting a better experience from the work that we do. It is nice to know that it makes a difference and that you might be having some kind of impact on the people that are participating in the programs. Sometimes when we’re doing an administration post, it is easy to think that it is all just paperwork, emails, and meetings, but when students are being impacted positively, it makes it worth it. The work matters.

How does your work contribute to the flourishing of students and the university?

Baylor has had a historic focus on teaching. With Baylor 2012 (university strategic plan from early 2000s), there was this real increased focus on research and there was kind of concern on campus that good teaching may fall by the wayside as the research expectations of faculty were made higher. What we really see in the ATL as our role is to help faculty stay inspired and enthusiastic about teaching. As they identify the research they want to do and move toward publication, it is very hard to prioritize both teaching and research, because there are limited time resources. For me, what it means is keeping faculty interested and enthusiastic about teaching, presenting them with new evidence about different teaching strategies and skills. We have to model to our students that learning is a process and that teaching and learning is not just a transaction. When things fail, it’s not a reflection on us as individuals. We need to hear that and be reminded of that. It’s okay to experiment in the classroom. It’s okay to take a small chunk of time out of your summer to work on your course improvement and to take the feedback you get from a course evaluation and improve it. I would love to see all faculty involved in our programs. You can get this one sentence and it works around in your brain and takes off. What if I do this one thing? Before you know it, you’ve branched off from the initial presentation. You’ve branched off to this place that is really going to benefit your students and benefit you personally.

Favorite moment

One of our graduate students this year came to me and said not all of our graduate students feel like they are learning to teach. So we said, what if we made a workshop for them, a two-day workshop to give them the building blocks of how to teach. And he got completely inspired and got another graduate student to help him. They completely planned and executed this workshop, and it was awesome. The feedback was really positive about how the students learned about teaching and how they could become better teachers. So that was one of those moments where I was excited that I could empower a student and watch him and his partner take ownership of it. Then, I got to be a part of it. I got to speak at it and support them. It was exciting!

In my own experience, early on I was sitting in a seminar, and my brain was going crazy, with all that I was learning. In those moments, it’s wow! This is exactly where I am supposed to be. I was nervous this position may be too far afield from my teaching aspirations but in those little moments, I began to see how my calling is being executed, where I am getting to teach and to learn in ways that I could not do in a traditional faculty role.

Tidbits & Takeaways

As I [Erin] asked Tiffani about advice that she had for other higher education professionals, she reflected on her career path, from fashion merchandising to student affairs to the academy. Her takeaway is a valuable reminder to all of us that there is not just one approach to different opportunities. “Just because we’ve been in student affairs 10 or 15 years, we shouldn’t let that stop us from exploring other areas of higher education or the academy. We need to remember that our skills are transferrable and that we, as individuals, do not have to follow a cookie cutter approach to our careers. There are a lot of different paths to where we end up.” As I, too, have followed a non-traditional path to higher education, I have found that to be true in my life. There are many different paths we can follow as we passionately pursue our calling and many different ways we can contribute to the flourishing of our campuses and our students.

This post is a part of Callings & Conversations, a collection of conversations with administrators and champions of higher education about the work that we do and why it matters. If you would like to share your story, I welcome the opportunity to hear from you. Feel free to connect with me @LearnForwardHE.

Links of Interest

Academy of Teaching & Learning

Let's Connect

Contact Tiffani Riggers-Piehl
Contact Erin Payseur

Click here to see all posts in the Callings & Conversations series.

About the Author

Erin Payseur is the Associate Director of Civic Learning Initiatives at Baylor University. She has ten years of experience in civic engagement and higher education. As part of the Office of Community Engagement & Service, she develops sustainable frameworks for co-curricular service & social justice initiatives to guide students in considering their roles as leaders and citizens. She currently serves as the institutional contact for the NASPA Civic Learning & Democratic Engagement Lead Initiative. She has authored several articles and presented nationally on civic engagement, service, and leadership. In addition to her civic engagement work, she also serves as adjunct faculty for the leadership minor. She has a B.A. degree in Religion/ Philosophy from Presbyterian College and a M.Ed. in Higher Education & Student Affairs from the University of South Carolina.

Inspiring a Renewed Sense of Calling

This post originally appeared as part of the Callings & Conversations series on OrgSync Learn Forward.

What is your calling?

Why do you do what you do?

And, why does it matter?

Many of us have clear answers to those questions and come to the work of higher education with a clear sense of calling. Many of us come to this profession as a way to make a difference in the lives of our students and to create environments and programs in which students can thrive – personally, socially, and academically.

The longer I walk in this profession, the more I find that connecting to that sense of calling inspires me in my work, keeps me going amidst the challenges and frustrations of program administration, and provides a vision of the deeper impact of the work within our field. I also find that the more we share our respective sense of calling in this work, the more we build deeper connections with others. The more we find encouragement as we traverse a common path toward shaping students’ lives and creating flourishing university campuses.

Sometimes that sense of calling gets buried under to-do lists and programs or set aside for reports and planning. The summer months, though, are often a time I set aside to intentionally reconnect to those questions, to the deeper motivations behind the work that I do, and why it matters. This summer, as part of that process, I plan to talk to several of my colleagues across the country to learn about their sense of calling in their work, to glean morsels of insight and encouragement from the work that they do, and to think about how it might encourage me and others. And the team at Learn Forward has graciously allowed me to bring you along for the journey!

In the coming weeks, I plan to chat with five practitioners at different colleges & universities working in different areas of higher education to learn what inspires them and why they do what they do. I want to glean how we individually and collectively articulate the value of the work that we do and the calling we bring to it. We’ll hear from colleagues about the following questions:

• What do you do every day?
• What inspires you to do this work?
• What keeps you going during times of frustration & challenges?
• How does your work contribute to the flourishing of students and the university?
• Describe a favorite moment where you felt you were walking in your calling as a student affairs professional.

Then, I’ll share a related tidbit or insight from the story that we can hopefully apply to our individual work. I expect there to be many valuable morsels.

I hope you’ll join me for the journey.

Choosing God, Recklessly

I was a little harsh on Katie, from Kisses on Katie, in my post the other day, perhaps a little unmerited. I don’t mean to disparage her efforts or what God is doing in her life and the lives of the children. How much better our world would be if each of us would take the call to get involved and love our neighbors in such real and practical ways!

I do like her, and as I mentioned, she reminds me somewhat of myself. I still have a lot of maturing to do when it comes to walking alongside others and not trying to do it all myself. And I certainly didn’t have those answers at 19.

What I am learning from her story is the beauty of a reckless abandon to God’s call, a willingness to not just step outside her comfort zone, but to give up one way of life to wholeheartedly pursue another. I appreciate that. I have moved several times. Even when I have found myself in unfamiliar places or new cities, it has still been relatively easy to integrate my life into my new surroundings. I don’t have to rethink who I am or what I am doing. I have ways to connect, to interact, to live my life, albeit with some adjustments, but still live my life the way I have always known it.

How different it must be to pick up and leave everything to live a completely different life, to go from the relative abundance of middle class life in America to a poverty-stricken area in Uganda, to be in a place where running water is a luxury and starvation is too much of a reality. How do you adjust to a life like that?

In the book, which I recommend if you haven’t read it, Katie talks about the poverty there and the healthcare needs. She also talks about returning to the States and what that adjustment was like, the juxtaposition of her two worlds and the internal struggle that resulted from that reality, how hard it was for her to reconcile the materialism of America and the need in Uganda. What she realized is that she had to choose where she belonged. She couldn’t keep a foot in each place; she couldn’t make both places her home.

I think God often places us in places where we have to choose. Katie references Matthew 6:24 – “No one can serve two masters. He will hate the one and love the other or love the one and hate the other.” I think, too, of when God tested Abraham – forced him to choose God or his son (Genesis 22). Abraham chose to obey God. Katie chose to obey God and return permanently to Uganda. Do I choose God? Would I choose God if He called me to give up everything I had or to go across the world? Would I choose God over a spouse, a job, family? Would I choose God if, like Job, I lost everything (Job 1-2)?

What do you think? Do you think God calls us to give up “good things” for Him? Is this reckless abandon to God or just reckless? How do you make sense of God calling some to give it all up and others seemingly called to live a content and comfortable life?