The Pietist Schoolman

It’s a busy time of year, but it was good to get away and spend the weekend at Covenant Pines, two hours north of the Twin Cities, where my church holds an annual “family camp.” I was invited to teach three hour-long sessions with the adults while their kids were off doing Bible study, crafts, floor hockey, and other activities. I’ll have more to say tomorrow starting Wednesday about my talks, which fell under the rather cumbersome-but-descriptive title, “The Family History That Most Christians Don’t Know, But Can’t Ignore: Three Biblical Tools for Thinking about Church History.”

For now, I’m just grateful to have had the chance to retreat a bit and be with others from Salem Covenant in such an idyllic setting. I only went to camp at Covenant Pines once in my youth, and while I was also the Salem family camp speaker three years ago, that was cut short because my wife was in the first weeks of her pregnancy, and I was leery of being gone for more than one Saturday morning. This time I was again the lone Gehrz representative, while my wife was at work and her mom took care of our children (or, as they no doubt think of it, they took care of her), but that gave me a chance to get to know my church family a bit better.

We shared meals, talents (or lack of them, in a Saturday evening show that kicked off with “The Star-Spangled Banner” as played on a nose harp), and a time of worship on Sunday morning. I have a sinking feeling that I dropped the ball on the last piece: just before I taught my last session at 9:15, our youth pastor, Ben, came up to me and asked if I was going to be preaching at 10:30. Um…

I’m glad he thought to ask, but even gladder that he volunteered to come up with something on Acts 8:26-40. As faithful readers know, I do have one sermon under my belt, but extemporaneous preaching is not in my skill set. And as things turned out, it couldn’t have gone better! I wouldn’t want every worship service to be as informal and free-flowing as this one, but for the setting, it was pitch-perfect.

And Ben’s improvised sermon/conversation went well, certainly better than it would have gone if I’d tried to preach. It helps when you’ve got a text as rich as the story of Philip encountering the Ethiopian eunuch on the desert road leading from Jerusalem to Gaza. As Ben put it, our first reaction might be to wonder, “Why isn’t evangelism always this easy?” Angel tells you to walk out to the desert, you find a guy reading the Bible, he doesn’t freak out when you run up to his chariot but instead asks you to explain what he’s reading, you do, he asks to get baptized, you do, then disappear. Easy, right?

I was surprised, then, how many of us had had something like this experience. (Minus the very beginning and ending, and not necessarily with a eunuch.) Many were more dramatic than mine, but it did occur to me that this pericope (like the story of another encounter on a different road from Jerusalem) is a nice model for what happens at colleges like Bethel.

While our students profess some degree of faith in the admissions process, I’ve long since learned that they come to us at all stages of belief (and disbelief). So it’s not at all unusual for them to encounter some passage in Scripture (or a theological, philosophical, scientific, or historical problem) and ask, in effect, “How can I [understand what I’m reading] unless someone explains it to me?” (vv 30-31)

The passage/problem in question might not be as explicitly messianic as what the eunuch was reading (Isa 53:7-8), but if, as we believe, truth is ultimately to be found in the person of Christ, then most any such conversation has the potential to let us, like Philip, tell our students “the good news about Jesus” (v 35).

(Or vice-versa. As Ben continued his sermon, I found myself thinking of the times when I had been the Ethiopian, struggling to understand, and one of my students or colleagues came alongside me, Philip-like, to help bring clarity.)

So as my weekend on the lakeside campus of Covenant Pines gives way to another workweek on the lakeside campus of Bethel University, I can’t help but imagine myself walking along the desert road, wondering who I’ll come across, and hoping I’ll run up to them with the same eagerness that led Philip to the Ethiopian’s chariot.