Richard’s Systematic Theology class, “Transforming Theology”, begins again on Monday. As if I wasn’t busy enough…

This will be our third run at the class. I have been Richard’s assistant since he first taught the class in the spring of 2006.

This semester, Richard will actually have three assistants. One is working with him with the goal of eventually becoming a teacher for the school. Another needed a tuition break. And then there’s me… the girl who has become so invested in the class that it would be really difficult to step out now.

Watching Richard’s class develop over the last couple of years has been amazing. I cannot adequately express how excellent this class truly is. Richard has poured a lot of time and energy into this thing. Being a part of the class (and having that material set before me again and again) has certainly changed my life. And I have watched it change other lives, as well.

The last printout Richard gave me of his notes was at 460 pages. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they had exceeded 500 pages since then. In essence, Richard is in the very early stages of writing a book. A very long book.

My primary role in the class is helping Richard prepare his notes and helping him develop the class for future semesters. It’s like I have become his personal editor and critic. I give him feedback on the things that are strong and the areas that can be improved. We seem to work well together in this way.

Recently, Richard tried to pin a critique that his mother had given of his EGS message on me. (She was communicating an observed weakness to him over the phone… after we had just watched him speak together.) When I asked him, “Am I really that critical of you?”, his response was an unhesitating yes. But he qualified it: ”In the most delightful way.”

I guess I can accept that.

I am really excited about the class. I am feeling a little overwhelmed and wish that I could put a few other things on pause just so that I could give myself more fully to this… but we can’t always do everything that we want to do… even if they are good things.

So… if I don’t blog much in the next month… that’s at least one reason why.

My life is undeniably in a place of change right now. First, my mom’s unexpected death in February changed everything. And then there were all sorts of transitions related to the people in my life… people leaving the team, joining the team, two of my good friends actually venturing into the realm of dating each other. And, I was in the middle of moving into a new apartment when all of this other stuff happened.

And then came the changes that I actually chose…

I jumped onto Ron Downing’s Saturday and Sunday 6am sets doing screens. Why? I love those sets and I was looking for an excuse to stay up. Why not do screens? It’s kind of weird, though, having this whole other team of people who kind of know who I am now.

And then I emailed Anne House about changing my service hours and not working for her anymore. I have been working for Anne since I moved to Kansas City. That’s a huge change for me! Anne agree, though, and said that it was probably time for a change. Perhaps we could again work together in the near future.

At first, I had planned on using screens as my service hours. I usually count those sets as prayer room time, as they really help me engage in the set (and reserve my favorite seat in the prayer room–the sound booth). But if I turned them into service hours, everything but my 6 weekly hours of team building would then be in the prayer room.

At first, the plan seemed glorious. 42 weekly hours in the prayer room. Beautiful! That is, until I started to try to work out my sacred trust. There are some sets that I love… but to put 21 of them on my sacred trust… that’s A LOT of commitment to be sitting in that room.

On Monday, a friend randomly asked if my service hours were filled. I informed her that I was kind of in transition with all of that. She mentioned that my name had come up as someone who might be great at the bookstore. And I said that I would probably think about it some.

Well, the next day (Tuesday)  is when I heard from Anne. So I told the friend (Alicia) that I was interested and she sent off an email. And I started to get REALLY excited about the possibilities. The following day (Wednesday), I awoke to find out that I had essentially been hired. No application. No interview. Just a “We love you, you’re in.”

So… it looks like I will now be working for IHOP’s Forerunner Bookstore. I have a pseudo-interview Monday with one of my favorite people in the world, David Scoggan. We’ll talk about availability and all of that good stuff.

I am absurdly excited about this. I am not even entirely certain why I want to work for the bookstore. I think it’s just the kind of job I love. I love books. And, when someone asked if I would be in town the week of inventory, my response was something along the lines of a nearly chirped, “Oooh! Inventory!” (Yeah, she laughed at me a lot.)

So, that’s my latest update. Change is happening. All sorts of change.

Well, that was a new experience…

For the first time in my life, I have officially been fired. Yes… I shall explain.

For months, I have been dreading Friday and Sunday nights, when I run screens at our EGS and FCF services.  For some reason, my heart hasn’t been in it and I’ve just been ready to get out of it. In fact… I got to the point where I was almost desperate to quit. In fact, in my most recent email update, this was prayer request number 2. On top of that, I was asking all of my friends AND my prayer room team all to pray for me concerning this.

Here’s where it gets complicated. I have a little work scholarship through the media/IT department to do this job. This constitutes a huge portion of my tiny monthly budget. And the most consistent portion, at that. Every month, I just barely have more than I need in order to pay the bills.  Just barely. So to let go of this scholarship right now would be disastrous for my budget.

So, within the last week, I wrote an email. Earlier in the day, it was going to be the email that told them I wanted to begin to transition out, but didn’t know what kind of time frame, since I couldn’t afford to lose the scholarship right now. By the end of the day when I actually wrote it… I told them how much I wanted to quit, how much I dreaded the weekends, how much my heart wasn’t in it, the reasons why I was currently unable to quit, and suggested a final alternate plan that might make it more bearable for me. (The solution was something they had shot down before — for me to do both notes and worship at Sunday’s service. I knew it was unlikely, but it was kind of a desperate attempt to make things better somehow.)

I didn’t hear back concerning the email. But… when I showed up Friday night to do my job, we had a talk.  She informed me that there have been issues (such as my inability to get it through my head that they don’t want me to do both jobs at one service). And they had decided that, at this point, it would just be better if they let me go. (Change “me” to “you” and that’s pretty much a direct quote.)

I gladly agreed, and we proceeded to talk a bit about the issues. I mentioned the fact that I’ve been late every Friday for the last few months. She mentioned the fact that my attitude has kind of sucked. And so on. (We also discussed the fact that it has not always been like this… only recently. Though what caused it to change is still a mystery to me.)

It was completely legitimate… their desire to just get rid of me. I have not been serving with excellence for the last few months, and that fact has been killing me. As much as I have despised the job itself, I have tried again and again to motivate myself to do better. But to no avail.

Ultimately, this is exactly the end that I wanted: I’m not doing screens at the services anymore. But it was definitely not the route I wanted to take to get there. I got fired!

It’s one thing to perceive that I have not been serving well lately. But it’s altogether different to have someone else tell me that my attitude sucks. Hello humility. Suddenly I know, by the words of another, that all of my conclusions concerning my poor service are not merely my own harsh self-criticism. A well-known habit of being overly harsh with myself is far easier to deal with than the fact of this being the actual truth.

This also leaves me with one more problem: My bills for the next month. On the afternoon of February 2nd, I had $3.15 in my checking account… until the 15th, when I would get my check through IHOP. Not too bad, really. On the evening of February 2nd… I had $3.15 until the end of the month. A very different reality.

So… I am admittedly quite nervous. I have a credit card bill that is due on the 16th. And rent is due at the end of the month. Apart from the fact that I believe the Lord is faithful to provide somehow, it presently appears that I will be quite short on both.

The whole thing is kind of funny, in a way. On one hand, it is the answer to many prayers. I really wanted to quit. But on the other hand… it feels like the discipline and consequences of my fears and disobedience. …

In the midst of my desperation to quit, I really feel like the Lord was actually speaking to me. I don’t know if this makes any sense or not… but I actually had VISION to not be doing this particular job anymore. There were all sorts of things that I wanted to be able to better focus my time and energies on. And I really wasn’t getting anything out of the services, as I was generally quite distracted by my job and the people I was working with.

But I could not bring myself to quit. It seemed too irresponsible to do this when I didn’t have the finances lined up to replace the scholarship. I needed to have all of my ducks in a row, first. Well… now there are no ducks… and little hope of assembling anything into a neat little row.

So, here I am: scared… somewhat embarrassed… and learning to trust the Lord and receive His discipline.

Perhaps I can blame my lack of email updates in the last few weeks on Richard’s Systematic Theology class. We had class 3 hours per day, 4 days per week, for all of the last month. It was intense. Especially since Richard and I were constantly working up until the last minute to get his notes ready. In the end, the notes were about 400 pages long. There was NOTHING else happening in my life during the weeks that we had class. It was kind of sad. But I am done now. All that remains is the final exam and I am unlikely to attend, as I don’t really have any purpose in being there.

I am both relieved and sad that the class is over. I enjoyed the challenge of it, Richard is an excellent teacher, and I was learning and growing a lot through the experience. The class content is still going deeper in my heart and becoming clearer in my understanding. I am frequently impacted by something I come across in the notes (for the first time or for the fifteenth time) as I am editing them.

The primary source of growth, however, came through the simple challenges of working with Richard like that, given the somewhat wounded state of our relationship. Just sitting in the room and listening to him teach did funny things to my heart. And I would have some new frustration with Richard about five times every day (sometimes legitimate frustrations… sometimes just plain silly). I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to bail out, how frequently it seemed like far more than I could handle. But the Lord gave me the strength (and vision) that I needed, and I learned a great deal about love.