The Work of Student Development: Participating in the Ongoing Work of Jesus Christ.

Recently I was asked to speak at the national conference for the Association for Christians in Student Development (ACSD). The organizers asked me to give a theological account for the work of student development and to show how the themes of the conference connected to the good work of student life. Here is the first installment of the six talks I gave on June 10-13. 

Session 1   The Good Work of Student Development: Participating in the Ongoing Work of Jesus Christ.

 

Thank you, Dr. Morgan for allowing me to be a part of this gathering. I wish you could all be on our campus this week, and I wish I had to the opportunity to meet you and hear your stories, and to learn more about the important work that you do on our campuses.

 I must say that of late I have come to appreciate the important work you do at a deeper, more personal level. That is not to say that I didn’t appreciate your work before! As a former campus pastor, and as someone who became a Christian in the middle of my undergraduate years, I have always known that much (if not most) of the formation that happens during the university years happens outside the classroom. Honestly, as a professor, it kind of pains me to admit that. And certainly, watching how you met the challenge of Covid protocols these past 15 months has only served to enhance my view of you and your work!

But listening for the past four years to my own kids talk about their experience in college has opened my eyes in fresh ways and reinforced just how important your work is. Yes, sometimes they call to talk about the things they are learning in class (to my delight).  But I have come to see that some of their most formative experiences are facilitated and nourished by the direct and indirect impact of the ministry of student life. So, as a parent of young adults who go to a school like most of the ones you serve in,  I want to say “Thank you”. Thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you for your hard, sometimes invisible, sometimes thankless work! Your work is good, and it matters.

 In her introduction,  Dr Morgan mentioned that each day during the conference I will be sharing a with you, framing how your good work is connected to the work of Jesus Christ. My hope is that you come away refreshed and encouraged with a renewed sense of purpose and perspective on what you are doing.  

 Today in the brief time that we have, I want to reflect on a phrase that Dr. Morgan used in her opening address to describe the work that you do. In a variety of ways she mentioned that the work of student life is ‘joining with God in His work of restoration, redemption, and reconciliation’. In our time together, I want to reflect on that language, anchor it to the Scriptures and the life with share with God in Christ, and discuss how attending to that reality illuminates and animates the work that you do.

 I want to start with this reminder. The Christian life cannot be reduced to a worldview; what we are called to as followers of Jesus is more than understanding principles and propositions that we affirm and then apply to our lives. Life in Christ and by the Spirit is more than an ideal that we try to envision and execute. Instead, the Christian life is a reality that we are invited to participate in; it is an invitation to engage with real reality—life as it really is—because of the work of Christ and the enlivening of the Spirit. Fundamentally, our work is participating in the ongoing work of Jesus Christ—the work He is doing in us, through us, before us, and around us (and in some cases in spite of us!). And this makes all the difference in the world! In the days to come, I hope to explore the difference that this makes for the work you do in student life. But for now, I simple want to establish this claim: that our work is to participate with, to join with, the ongoing work of Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit.

 Nowhere is this more apparent than in the overarching narrative of the Gospels and Acts: Jesus comes to inaugurate the kingdom of God; he does this not as a solo project, but instead by gathering and equipping disciples who will be responsive to him and his word. His work of gathering, healing, and teaching is embodied in his crucifixion which was an offering for reconciliation (joining); and the Father vindicates all that Jesus said and did by raising him from the dead—in essence He says “Yes! I endorse his work—all that he said and did.” But the Book of Acts does not present Jesus as one who has simply left us with teachings that we are now to go and apply to our lives. Instead, Acts tells us that Jesus continues His work at the right hand of the Father by sending His Spirit to equip those that he continues to gather so that they, so that we, can join in his ongoing ministry of reconciliation, redemption, and restoration. This is the time we are in: a time of be gathered to Christ and joining in his ongoing, active work of making all things new. And you are on the front line of that work!

The apostle Paul tries to get at this reality in two well-known passages. In Ephesians 2.4-10, Paul says that God has “made us alive together with Christ”. This is a new word that Paul invented in the Greek language to try and describe the Christian life. He took the preposition “with”, the word “life” or “alive” and the verb “to make”, jumbled them all together and invented a new word that is translated “made alive together with”. God, Paul says,  “alive together with Christed us”. And in so doing, he has created us afresh with good works that he has prepared for us that we should walk in them (2.10). That is participation language—not worldview, application language! It is our shared life with Christ that generates good work.

In 2 Cor 5.17-20, Paul gets at this reality in another way. He says that we are a new creation, reconciled (that’s relational, participation language) to God through Christ and that God gave us the ministry of reconciliation…God making his appeal through us.

 How might this change the way you engage in your work in student life, to know that you have been joined to Christ’s work, His agenda? What does it do to your work on campus as you attend to the fact that your work is oriented around the work of another, namely that of Jesus Christ?

 Let me leave you with one way that this matters. Because your work is joined with the work of Christ, your labor “in the Lord” is not in vain. Therefore, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that “in the Lord” (that’s participation language) your labor is not in vain.

 Father, we look forward to what you will be teaching us this week about our work; make us attentive to the work of Jesus, through who you are reconciling all things; and help us to keep in step with the Spirit, who works to conform us to the image of our Son, the faithful witness and the foretaste of the life to come. Amen.