Tag: international

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Charlie Company

To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever*.

It might be argued that Charlie Spear’s all-time-ever favorite term in the world is that over-spilling word – Abundant.  

“Hey Charlie, how’s it going?”

“Abundant!”

“What was Christmas like with the kids and grandkids, Charlie?” “Abundant, bro, just abundant!”

Regardless the topic, the time of day, the weather forecast or just about anything else, the decades-long director of TU’s Wesley ministry rarely missed an opportunity to inject the ‘A’ word where any verbal exchange surfaced. Everybody loved him for it.

I would put his height at 6’ 2”, a full-bodied ponytail falling a good thirty inches toward his blue-jeaned waistline.

But neither his impressive height nor the distinctive ponytail nor the ever-present Abundant (that sat poised to break free from his larynx any second) fully explained the happy magnetism most friends and visitors sensed when entering the Wesley Foundation.

Long before I happened into this student center (christened after English Evangelist John Wesley) a vibrant spiritual garden for pointing students to Jesus had been planted and prayerfully tended.  Charlie and team – all by their confession, ‘spiritual works-in-progress’ – had long since been leaning into Jesus, drawing on grace. The community remained stirred by a common passion. To know Christ and to make him known, as the Commons Room plaque asserted.

“So, Charlie”, I ventured after being the new ministry guy on campus a while, “the Wesley’s FNL (Friday Noon Lunch) serves the weekly meal here”. His arms in a relaxed cross, Charlie followed my ensuing proposal with apparent interest.

“What if our ministry – ISM – experimented with something similar, only focusing the efforts on serving international students.”

The Director seemed to warm to the notion as I wrapped up my pitch, which was being framed breath by breath,

“Maybe on Thursdays. But only one Thursday a month at first. We might call it FIL (Free International Lunch). Think that might work?”

 

When Charlie and his team gave the nod, the FIL was launched, my wife Ann orchestrating a volunteer kitchen staff and servers. We trusted heaven’s supply for funding.

Interest grew, appetites sharpened. The once-a-month international lunch (rice dishes never absent!) stretched to twice monthly. Our modest experiment with FIL took off. Eventually, every Thursday noon through the school year found students from across the world – most of non-believing backgrounds – filing to Wesley’s cozy basement dining hall. Nutritional cuisine for both body and spirit – found a pathway to a diverse array of scholars, graciously served up at the hands of cheerful hosts.

Week after week after week. Indescribable.

Abundant!

(c)2023 Jerry Lout                                                                                         *Henry Drummond

 

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Sharp Turn

Impressive structures that weather the elements of time owe their long resilience to sound foundations. Moving about the Tulsa campus lying along the famed Route 66 corridor, I was garnering insights about T.U.’s own foundations. Not those to do with brick and mortar but of held convictions, beliefs and values – elements that gave rise to the university’s birth back in the nineteenth century.

Along the way I reflected how the many streams of higher education in America had sprung forth and flowed directly from the headwaters of Christian faith and practice.

The first colleges in America were founded by Christians and approximately 106 out of the 108 first colleges were Christian colleges. Harvard University, which is considered one of the leading universities in America and the world was founded by Christians. One of the original precepts of the then Harvard College stated that students should be instructed in knowing God and that Christ is the only foundation of all “sound knowledge and learning*.

The more I drank in of T.U.’s legacy the more I felt a grateful kinship. I paused at the courtyard of Sharp Chapel. Bedrock elements like truth and compassion, mercy and justice – qualities embodied in the person of Jesus himself – had birthed this place. These and other such virtues, all featured front and center at the school’s inception.

The University of Tulsa arose out of Presbyterian Mission roots by way of Kendall College. Even now the ‘vital signs’ of the Christian faith bore evidence of active life. Via several streams of campus expression. From Presbyterian to Baptist to Methodist to Catholic, alongside a range of parachurch ministries.

Buoyed in part by my recent ‘until they know that you care’  moment, I rallied my courage.

Entering through large ornate doors of Sharp Chapel I followed a stairway up to the Chaplain’s office.

Would my request be approved?  I wondered. Would International Student Ministries be endorsed as a formally sanctioned presence. To offer, through the Lord’s grace, a witness to the life and hope resident in the person of Jesus? Particularly, among scholars and students even now making their way to this place from across the world.

© 2023 Jerry Lout                                                        *Theclassroom.com

 

 

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Conundrum

During unsettling times, from the terrifying to the mild, a prevailing hope in many is to catch sight of some proverbial North Star.

For centuries and for throngs of people in numberless settings a wildly diverse company of pilgrims called Jesus followers, have centered and then re-centered their trust in this one person. The carpenter’s son. The Messiah. The Good Shepherd. . . (It seems interesting that a noteworthy feature of any credible shepherd is that he leads).

So, What now, Lord? The days going forward found me itching for resolution. With my mentor (Jim) now off the scene what am I to make of this teasing draw toward international student ministry. Am I to press forward along the intriguing but ill-defined road? Or, shall my wife and I – as advised by one pastor – suspend missions work altogether since we are not now overseas, “Take up pastoring”?

Day by day I kept being drawn to the student community. Apart from whether or not a ‘call from above’ was in the works, a couple factors loomed large.

Do I have what it takes? (Obviously, I was skating toward the ‘Lord, help my unbelief!’ zone)

Undertaking Christian service among a diverse company of university scholars from around the world (“the brightest and best” goes the phrase) would mean something far different than what I had known.

The other factor playing on my mind was the question, to whom or what would I hitch my faith wagon to? Until this point, New York’s Elim Fellowship had been serving as our overseeing body.

In the end, several answers to the puzzlements had already started making their way my direction. The surprising turn of events would mean the end of my two-fold conundrum:

  • With what group might God have in mind for us to work alongside?
  • Any chance my limited knowledge and experience could pass muster?

©2023 Jerry Lout

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New Normal

Funny how conditioning works – not that of the hair treatment variety.

A person flies off to another land and settles into the things of life and work. Some years later, having grown conditioned to her adoptive culture, the person returns to her homeland only to find life disorienting.

Depending on how deeply entrenched he has settled into that ‘other life’, the reentry and reorienting process for the returnee may leave him reeling. I’m clearly a misfit, he reasons.

Such a person  may feel more at ease in the company of the clerk tending to the nearby Asian or Latin-run convenience store than with many of his acquaintances of an earlier time.

It happened with me at the intersection of Sixth and Birmingham. Where aromas of Indian Curry and Chinese dumplings hung in the air.

ISI’s area director Jim Tracy had reached out, inviting me to accompany him on his rounds – connecting socially in informal friendship with international students hailing from lands abroad. Malaysia, Venezuela, China, the Middle East. . .

I fussed with upside-down feelings day by day as I routinely shadowed Jim, venturing along from one apartment dwelling to the next. Where we happily sipped hot chai offered up by our gracious, momentary hosts. (But wait. Aren’t we. . . us ‘Yanks’. . . meant to be hosting them?)

I grew mildly surprised sensing how the needle of my social barometer tilted in uncommon directions. Feeling less at home within my own mainstream American culture than with the young college students coming from places far, far away. I had hardly begun to know these ‘outsiders’ yet an easy kinship felt more in reach.

For a while this tug-of-war left me unsettled, musing over my ‘space’ and my identity (aren’t I the same red-blooded American fellow who merely relocated for a while those years back?).

In time I made peace with befuddling but pardonable reality. I had changed.

Change had happened on the inside of me. Living in Africa for a couple decades among people groups of varied customs and languages had ruined me – in the best kind of way. Components of my worldview had shifted, broadened. My preferences on many fronts had tweaked. In short, I had taken up a strange and intriguing and somewhat messy cross-cultural identity.

This new normal, it’s going to need some time.

©2023 Jerry Lout