On Wednesday, November 4, we introduced our new topic of “Confusion and Learning” to our students during a worship night. Our main goals for the night were to show students how natural it is to have questions relating to our faith and how the community of believers is a healthy and safe place to express and grapple with our questions.

During the night we had a panel, made up of five of our staff members and a current senior, share their personal experiences with confusion and learning. We did this in hopes of showing the ministry not only what it looks like to have a healthy view of vulnerability with our questions, but also to show that the staff is just like them and each grapples with their own confusion. We led a time of reflection through worship and provided an opportunity for students to anonymously write down and enter their questions or prayer requests. Jordan ended the night acknowledging that the service may have been a bit heavier, but encouraged the students to take what they have processed and felt into the next three weeks of small groups. After the service as we hung out and talked with everyone, a handful of students mentioned how refreshing it was to hear every staff member talk about their own struggles. We were very excited that students felt like we weren’t “above” them in any way in our dealings with confusion as leaders of the ministry and felt we could relate to them. We really look forward to the next couple of weeks as the students continue to reflect on how people through scripture dealt with confusion. Our prayer for the ministry through this topic is that students don’t feel they have to fake their faith in any way, questions will continue to be encouraged as we exemplify the love and gentleness of Christ to those who have the faith to ask tough questions.

I personally have already seen fruit from this when I had a one on one with a guy in my core group. As we caught up and talked about life he brought up the topic of understanding what it means to hear God speaking to us. He wondered how some people can be so confident that God is telling them to do something when it seems He almost never audibly speaks to us. This opened up conversation about what it meant to walk with God in life and develop a personal relationship with Him and how that intimacy results in knowing God and hearing His “voice” more and more in our lives.

Tyler Balsbaugh