I Hope This One's Smoother...

I was too tired last night again to get this posting up, so I'm risking another morning posting, cognizant of the fact that last time I did this, my off-hand remark sparked a firestorm of debate. I promise to make this one go down a little bit smoother. Maybe I'll coat it in chocolate, a la Miracle Max.

Fortunately, I have nothing much of substance to say. Day three of The Great Parent Visit, which is going quite well. I love the fact that there's someone here who is more than willing to give Theo his bottles and such. Especially since it's crunch-time in the semester; I just did a list to make sure I knew what was going on, and it turns out I have three major things due in the next two weeks, plus four more if I want to get my distance ed classes done on time, too. No pressure, though.

In chapel yesterday, we had the student union (SU) leading, and I made an interesting observation that might or might not be true of everyone. When we walked into chapel, there were two SU reps at the doors, telling us that we had assigned seating that day, and it was in alpahabetical order, starting from the back and moving to the front. Please find your name card and sit there, we were told. Okay, I thought, no problem. I'll just combine the two important pieces of information (my last name and knowledge of the alphabet) and go from there. Sure enough, after not much searching, I found my seat.

On each seat was a candy cane (it's the last SU chapel before Christmas) and a name card, folded in half. When I opened up the name card, someone on SU had taken the time to write (not type) me out a personalized note. It was nothing monumental, but it was personalized. And they'd done that for every one of the 400 students.

That's not the issue; the issue is the lack of respect displayed by some students for the efforts of the SU. The main complaint I heard, having found my seat, was "How am I supposed to know where my name is?" Well, it's really not that difficult if you know (a) your name, and (b) the alphabet. We're all college students, here, do you think we can figure that out?

The second complaint I heard was along the lines of, "It's too early in the morning to think." Okay, that's just silly. I understand it's 9:25, but that ain't early. You want early, go work in the real world outside this college bubble. Or have a kid. Then tell me when it's too early to think.

Finally, the most frustrating thing I heard from the students was, "But I don't want to sit here." Aw. Cry me a river, build me a boat, and get over it. It's one day. Chapel is 30 minutes. If you have to sit in the front for 30 minutes one day this semester, I'm sure you'll survive. And if you can't sit by your friends for 30 minutes one day this semester, I'm sure your friendship will survive.

My main issue with this comes back to some of the things I've been talking about in this space over the past little while: the rampant amount of individualism in the church, manifested in our little microcosm of chapel. It's all about me, me, me. Don't tell me that I can't sit where I want; don't tell me that I have to do some work to figure it out; don't tell me that you've expended a whole lot of effort on me--I don't want to hear it. I ran into this as a pastor, and continue to run into it in various church ministry roles. No matter what you do as a leader sometimes, you're always going to get burned by someone who doesn't like it. It doesn't matter that you've given up a lot of your time--it isn't what I want, therefore, it's not good enough.

So I guess I'll just throw this down as a challenge to you today at work, school, play, whatever, and then going into the week at church. Where can you submit to leadership? Eek, ugly word alert. We don't like submit, do we? It implies being a doormat or something weak. The world doesn't value submission. But I think that's a misunderstanding of what submission actually is. Submission isn't being walked all over.

Not sure where that sermon came from, but it's there nonetheless. Hope you can take some challenge from it. As for me, it's time for breakfast, and then off to chapel. As long as they don't make us sit in different seats.

See you tomorrow (or tonight, actually).