Update

The Catherine Street houses in Ann Arbor

After four days of living on Catherine Street, things are going very well. The brothers here are great, and I've felt very welcomed. When I first got here on Monday evening, I joined several of the guys who met up with a large group to play soccer. I didn't have cleats, so I didn't play well, but it was a lot of fun. Then we came back and ate some dinner, and a few of us went out onto the porch and smoked a pipe and drank beer. Not exactly what I was expecting for my first night of living with the monks, but it was awesome. Since my job hasn't started yet, there hasn't been much to do during the day. Usually I try to do some reading (and often fall asleep), or take a walk, etc. But every night there's been something going on, whether it be soccer, going for ice cream, watching a movie, or going to a prayer meeting and then to the pub afterward. 

The brothers join together for prayer three times a day: in the morning, evening, and right before bed. Eating meals together is very important for their community life, and everyone helps out with the cooking and cleaning. I'm actually looking forward to learning how to cook well. I don't think the brothers would enjoy my grilled cheese as much as I do. 

On Sunday I leave for the Campus Outreach Academy (COA), a nine retreat for training people in UCO. It's weird, because since I'm on UCO staff this year, I'm expected to lead parts of this, even though I have no idea what I'm doing, and the people I'm leading will know a lot more than I do. But from what I've been hearing about it, COA is always an awesome time, so I am looking forward to it. 

Spiritually, it has been a very interesting week. I struggled a lot spiritually this past summer, so to jump right into an environment where seeking God is built into the structure of the day has been good for me, but I'm hesitant to jump right into this place where it's so easy. I don't want the strength of my faith to be entirely reliant on my context, because what will happen then when I leave this place? Faith is something that needs to come from my own convictions and relationship with God, which still is not where it needs to be. So this week has included a lot of quiet repentance and prayer for renewal and obedience. 

The other things I'm struggling with is the worship of the brothers here. The Servants of the Word was born out of the charismatic movement a few decades ago, so there is a lot of focus on speaking in tongues and prophecy and the other spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are things that I am by no means opposed to, but given my background and my personal experiences in worship, it's not what I'm accustomed to. I know that the Holy Spirit has power to work in our lives, especially in worship, but I just don't know. This year will be a good one for learning more about the Spirit and how He can work in my life. I'm excited to learn and grow as much as I can this year, and my prayer is that God will prepare my heart and mind for what is to come. 

A New Adventure

Hello.

If you're new here, welcome to my blog. You're just in time to join me on this new journey I'm about to begin.  For the next year I'll be living with the Servants of the Word, a neo-monastic community, in Ann Arbor, MI. I'm going to be working on staff with their University Christian Outreach (UCO), a evangelistic and discipleship-oriented college ministry directed at the students of the University of Michigan. I'm doing all of this under the umbrella of what's called the GAP program, which is where young adults like myself take a year to do service of some type. So the cool thing with that is that I'll be doing this alongside peers who are doing similar things. 


Some ask why I choose to do this with my year after college. In short, there are 4 main reasons:


1. Celibacy - For the past two years I've felt called by the Lord to commit myself to not dating. This I have done, but as for the long term, I have no idea where God is leading me. So one of my biggest intentions for this year is to explore the call to celibacy and whether or not that might be where God is calling me. I don't expect to have it nailed down by the end of one year (for many it takes several years to make a decision like that, as it should!), but this will be a good start for me. 


2. Spiritual growth - Spiritual disciplines are things that I have never been very good at, and this year will no doubt be very good for developing those more fully in my everyday life. Also, I realize that I just have a lot more growing to do spiritually in order to become the leader that God has called me to be. I fully expect this year to impact my life in an awesome way in this category. 


3. Not academic - I'm planning on going to grad school after this, and toward the end of my college career I just felt burnt out on academics, so this is a welcome break from the stresses of school work. 


4. Awesomeness - who gets to say that they've lived with monks? I mean, seriously, it's going to be a pretty awesome experience, and I'm excited for it. 


This year is something I'm very excited for, and I expect to learn and be challenged and grow a lot. So, hopefully I will use this medium of my blog to keep all you folks out there updated on what's going on, and I'm sure I'll jot down things I learn and all that stuff too. I greatly appreciate all your prayers, and I hope you will join me in praising God for the great work that He does through this!