When God Calls You to Hunt for Cars…

There are times in life that I think we get in our minds that we were meant to do something and we set out to do whatever that thing is and it ends up that that was just a small part of something else that God wanted us to be a part of. Over the course of the last few months I have been searching for a car, because the car I have been driving is my parent’s and they were hoping to get it back soon. So with the full intent of finding a car, I and one of the older men of the church, who I thought might know more about cars than myself set out one day a week to go to dealerships and test drive some cars. We drove a lot of different cars some a little to big, some way to small and a few that I thought I couldn’t afford. Every time we went out we would come back with a lot of new information, tired and a little discouraged because the cars that would work for what I wanted were to much. Honestly, it frustrated me a little that somedays it just felt like we waisted our time, but the more I thought about it and reflected on those days I realized there was a lot more going on then searching for a car.

The older man and I would spend the day talking and telling stories. I learned a lot more about his life because we just decided to go hunting for cars and it opened the opportunity to just talk. If you spend six to eight hours in the car with a guy thats three times your age your bound to hear about things you never knew about.  Those days of just driving along and listening reminded me of my passion for people and my belief that everyone has a story worth tell. I think sometimes we get so busy with doing things in life that we forget to stop and listen. We forget that the people around us have a totally different way they have experienced life and there is so much that we can learn and share if we just stop for a while and take it in.

On our trips to the dealers we met a lot of car salesmen, some of which were helpful and others who were not. But what was interesting to me was the conversations we had with some of them. Obviously there were a few times that they would try to sell me cars that I knew I didn’t want, but there were a few that were honest and open. There was one car that we took for a test drive that was pretty nice car until we went back to the dealership and the salesman pulled up the cars history and started to laugh. He said he couldn’t honestly sell me the car cause it had been in eleven wrecks and been totally rebuilt. For some reason growing up I got this idea that car salesmen weren’t always the most honest people and they would just try to sell you anything, however, I learned that that is not always the case.

The last day that we went out we met three pastors who had either retired or this was their side job or were just in transition looking for the next ministry opening. I found these conversations really helpful to me as one of the guys said he just felt like he was done with ministry which to me sounded weird because as a pastor I do not see ministry as a job but rather part of living life. Jesus didn’t call people to be pastors or elders he called people to be disciples and make disciples. Ministry is everything we do even if thats having conversations over our life stories with older men or the salesman who is trying to sell you a car. We communicate the gospel by the way that we live our lives. I believe that this was the way that Jesus carried out his ministry. He ate and drank with sinners, he called tax collectors (car dealers and IRS agents of our day) to come and follow him, he met people in their homes and on hillsides, he fed them with whatever they had, and he most certainly  did not settle to doing ministry within the bounds of the established traditions and institutions of his day.

For three hours we talked with one of the pastor/salesman about everything except cars. I found the conversation encouraging and

refreshing simple because we were sharing our passion for people and what we believe God has called us too. Being a car salesman was not exactly what he thought God had called him to do but out of that he was still finding ways to minister to others and start a

non profit to help children in africa. He and a few friends bought a coffee roaster and sell the blends they make as fair trade sending everything they make over to schools in Africa. Even though he may not be doing “traditional” ministry he is still doing what God called him to do for this time and place that he is in.

There are times in my life that I can be rather discouraged about where I am at or what I am doing, but when I stop and allow myself to center on what God is doing I start to see that he has this awesome way of using the places we are and the things we do. God used the simplest three hour conversation with a car salesman to remind me of the dream he has put on my heart for “Love Helps” and how there is no retiring from following Jesus and even when the place and the methods of ministry change the message is always the same, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself”. When we start to see our lives as a means to spreading the God news of God’s love for humanity our whole outlook on the way we live and what we are doing will change. It’s still a learning process for me and it takes time to really grasp that God can use everything.

I didn’t end up buying a car from any of the places that we went and checked out, however, maybe that wasn’t the point of the car hunting. Maybe God was using the time to remind me of what my calling is and how he can use conversations with salesman to encourage us to live everyday as the day he has given us to live for him.

-Caleb Ross Hunter

 

P.S. I did find a car and have since bought it with help from my parents up in Indiana.

Day 10 “A Year of Thoughts”: What is your focus? Let Us Heal Together

“What you focus on here on earth will be your focus in heaven”

 

 

I went to dinner alone tonight because my girl friend was gone and most of my friends had already eaten, so I scanned the tables for someone to talk to. As I did I found an elderly man that that I knew use to live in town and had been a part of this community for a long time. Being a part of this college community in small town Kansas for three years now I had learned his name, but really didn’t know much about him at all. So I chose to go and sit at his table hoping that I might learn something from him.

 

I’ve found that almost all older men have a story to tell and often are waiting for someone to share it with.

 

In this case it held true.

 

Tonight I began to learn the story of Robin Johnston and the focus of his life.

 

There are just some people that you can look at them and you can see the kindness, passion, and love that they have tried to pour out for years. Robin’s smile and passionate kind eyes seem to say that as he reaches out his hand to introduce himself. There is nothing shy about him, he spoke to me as if he had known me for quite some time and as we talked we realized our lives had more connections than we thought.

 

Robin went to school here at Barclay College back in the days before it was changed to Barclay college. He told me about how after graduating he wanted to get more experience in ministry so he pastored out in Berkley, California. He said it wasn’t always easy because many of the people were quakers and christians by name only, however, he said that the four years that he had there were some of the best years of his life. From there he and his wife moved to Chicago, where he went on to get his master’s degree at Wheaten College. Another great learning experience that he said helped him to grow.

 

Eventually, Robin found himself back at Barclay this time as a professor. As we talked I learned that he had taught my mentor Paul Romoser, when Paul was a student here. It was cool to see Robin’s reaction to know that someone he had taught had in turn taught me. Some of the leadership and youth ministry ideas that he had passed on were still being passed on. I learned that much of Robin’s focus in life had been teaching others how to live life and do ministry.

 

He spent years investing in people in the United States and around the world. When I find people that have spent their whole lives striving to do what they believe God called them to do I’m honored to even know them, nonetheless, to carry on a conversation with them. Even in his old age Robin expressed his worries and his heart for the this generation and the next.

 

Over the course of our conversation, I tried to explain my vision of “love helps” and how I wanted to make the focus of my life about training leaders and helping people life life to the fullest. I believe often times in ministry or just any occupation, or way of life we can make our focus about doing things rather than trying to focus on what really matters. I don’t want my life to be about doing things but rather loving people. As we learn to love people then we will learn to do things. We can change the world.

 

In chapel today Derek Brown, was talking about how the world is full of tribes. Tribes that stand for different things, they have different purposes, different banners they carry, and different ways to live. Likewise the church is one of those tribes, but sadly the church has become an ineffective tribe.

 

See the early church was a tribe that understood that Jesus teachings and may of life were meant to be applied. They did apply them and the world was forever changed but why are we ineffective today?

 

 

Well because we have lost our identity and our community.

 

 

The early church did everything together. They ate together, they lived together, they shared life together. Derek made the point, “that the disconnected church today would call that a cult.” As followers of Christ our identity is in the suffering and love of what Christ did on the cross for us. That is what has really changed our lives and freed us to live, yet we have forgotten. We have forgotten our focus. We have forgotten how to live in community?

 

One of the thoughts that I have been going over for a while in my head is that Jesus and the early church never separated themselves from the broken hurting people of the world.

 

They were living with, eating with, sharing life with the broken and finding HEALING TOGETHER.

We have a lot of broken hurting people in this and the next generation. Yet they are longing for identity, a place to fit in a community and they long for healing. But the communities that should be called forth to love them and walk with them through the healing of those hurts and wounds are often to busy doing things to love them.

 

In Matthew 16:19 Jesus says, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and what ever you loosen on earth will be loosen in heaven.”

 

Binding and loosing is a matter of what we are focusing on. Where is our focus, because those things that are our focus, well they matter in the end. Is our focusing on loving people, sharing life, and living the way that Jesus did?

 

Are we finding the broken and hurting and finding healing in Jesus together.

 

Jesus was never disconnected from his world.

 

He knew the hurts, he knew people’s stories not just because he was God but because he spent quality time with them. He slowed down enough to listen and to care.

 

The church, we the church, we the people that claim to follow Christ and represent him as a tribe that stands under the banner of love has often been guilty of divorcing ourselves from the world that needs us the most. We stopped being an honest, real, open and raw community that wants to heal with the world.

 

We spend a lot of time and energy telling, teaching and educating the world about what we believe but do we show them with our lives. Do we invite the world to see our wounds and hurts and show them our healer? For many years the church has been so scared of Hell and made staying out of it there focus rather then facing their fears, asking questions, and exploring the world that God has placed them to love in, share in, and live in.

 

Where is our focus?

 

Is our focus on freeing and loosing the world around us so that we might allow them to see our savior in heaven or is our focus on condemning the world, divorcing ourselves from them and caring little about people that God created.

 

After talking to Robin Johnston today at dinner I believe his focus is still about learning to know God more, to love people, and to invest in their lives. It may mean just coming to the college to have a meal once or twice a month and talking to students. He doesn’t do a lot of the stuff that he use to. He doesn’t get up in front of a class and teach like he did when he was a college professor, but if he were to read this I would want him to know that he is effective in what he is doing now. Why? Because his focus.

 

In the span of a thirty minute dinner he ate with me, shared life with me and told me his story.

 

That is church.

 

Encouraged by his words to chase my dreams of learning to love and help the hurting heal I feel my focus is in the right place.

 

What is your focus?

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Love Holds Humanity

LOVE

Helps

Heals

Hears

Holds Humanity

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Live Life: life lived to the fullest

Life is full of metaphors for how we live. Take for example my life motto which is to “Live Life”, you might read this and be like well isn’t that everyone’s motto as long as they are breathing. Perhaps in some sense it is or should be everyone’s motto, yet for me “Live Life” is a loaded set of two words that means so much more.

To LIVE LIFE

Think about it for a second what does it really mean to Live Life.

Are you alive?

What makes you alive?

What gives you the right to say I am Alive? Or I am living Life!

Often times we assume that we are living life. Coasting along and doing everything we think we want to do and calling it life. We eat. We Sleep. We Read. We Write. We have friends. We have family. We Work. We Play. We drift through twenty-four hour periods that we mark off on the walls of our prison cell life as just another day. But is there more? Is there more than just drifting? More than just calling today a day? Are we living?

Life is not simply explained by any form of science, philosophy, education, or religion. Life is not a mathematical formula that we can just type into our computer chip brains and come out with the answer too. We were not made to know all about life and just read a manuel to fix all the twists and turns, breaks and problems. Live Life is so much more than that.

At the core what is life? An experience? A Journey? A story? A bleeding out of all emotions and thoughts? Is it something that only we can feel or is it something we share fully in with others? Life raises a lot of questions but to find the answers we have to live the very thing we can not at times fully define. But what is life at it’s core.

Jesus speaks on life in John 10:10,

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (NIV)

“Anyone who goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out, and find pasture. A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.” (Message)

When I read these verses it’s pretty clear to me that Jesus says at the core life is lived through him. Life is only fully life when it is fully lived in the way, the truth, and the love that Jesus offers. It’s there that we find the pasture where we grow and learn to enjoy life. So life is more than what we think we might be living?

Jesus life was lived in serves to others. In other words life is most full when we are able to give it way. When we serve we find life but also in serving we are sharing the experience and joy of life with those whom we serve. Jesus spent the majority of his time on the streets or in others homes healing the sick, comforting the weak, telling stories to inspire and spread the truth of love, and ultimately giving all he had including his life to serve others.

One of my favorite quotes that seems to capture this thought on how serves is a part of life is from J. Oswald Sander’s book Spiritual leadership where he writes, “True greatness, true leadership, is found in giving yourself in service to others, not in coaxing or inducing others to serve you. True service is never without cost… we must aim to put more into life than we take out.” To put more into life than we take out. Live Life means to give all we have to serve the world.

To Live Life is to Serve.

Even if that means giving up everything to do it.

But thats not all that life is. Life is so much more. It’s adventure of exploration and discovery, each day holds truth and mystery. For me this means going on quests to find truth, search honestly and deeply to find what drives my soul. Adventure is calling us forth to get up and find the life that God is calling us to. To be never settle for the mundane or boring. To always look for more, always to grow, explore, create and be all that we can be.

This is living alive.

Live life is an Adventure.

Live Life is also a Story.

In the Message translation of John 10:10 it says “ (they) will freely go in and out, and find pasture”. Freely we will explore the world and find the adventure and write the stories of our lives that will be worth retelling to the next generation. New York best selling author, Donald Miller, has written a number of books that have inspired me to live a better story. To live life in such a way that it’s incredible, different and creative. Donald talks a lot about living the story and making intentional choices that will create moments in your life that will teach you things that you never thought of learning and wont ever forget.

Dare to actually live life.

Live Life.

Live the Story.

I think the third thing that we often miss in trying to live life is we forget to Love. We forget that at the core of everything love is always better. I do not mean love in the sense that the world uses it, as going out and getting the girl or guy and being intimate in a sexual way. No, love is more than that. Love is caring so deeply for others that it moves you to take action to meet their needs in every area that you possibly can in a healthy and meaningful way. Love means putting others first and pouring all your potential gifts into them.

Love Helps.

Love Moves

It not only moves you but it moves them.

Love changes things

When you encounter Love that cares you can not remain the same.

Love is not passive it is active.

When life is lived to the fullest it is there that we love people enough to bring them to the pastures with us. To bring them on the adventure. To share our story with them. To serve others along the way or wherever we find ourselves. Life can not be separated from love because without love life is merely an empty space filled with worthless lines of history soon left in dusty closest irrelevant and uninspiring.

Jesus came in Love that we might have life to the full.

It’s there for the taking or the living.

The first half of John 10:10 talks about the thief coming to kill, destroy and rob us of life. There are many things that have been robbing us of Life. The things we often choose to fill our days with are really killing and destroying us. If self is the core of our own lives are we not stealing from ourselves the opportunity to share our experience with others?

I can’t say that I have always lived life. I have stole a lot of time
and opportunities to be more alive simply because
I rejected the very thing that would give me life to the fullest.

Fear often drives us away from living the adventure because there is to much risk. Pride often keeps us from serving whole heartedly because we look for what we might get out of everything. Lies rob us of the truth that is freely ours to be lived out. Love is to hard a choice to commit to. Laziness kills the greater stories that are just waiting to be written in your life.

I don’t know of anyone what would allow a thief to come in their front door and steal the very things that mean the most to them. BUT why do we do it? Why do we steal and kill the very life that is waiting for us to live? To live life is to get up and take action. To live like Jesus. To chase the dreams and find adventure. To throw off fear, pride, lies, laziness and so much more that we are allowing to stand in the way of Living Fully alive.

WE MAY HAVE LIFE TO THE FULL.

Live Life

Live life is written on a few places around my room and on my phone so I remember it everyday. Two words inspire me to search, go, learn, grow, be, love, care, dream, adventure and always tell my story one day at a time. A few years ago I wrote on a blank white piece of paper the words LIVE LIFE in black sharpie and hung it on my wall. Slowly God is showing me more fully what it means to live life. It’s become more than two words on a piece of paper, it’s a motto and the first of many metaphors that are becoming reminders and lessons for me on what life is really all about.

My hope is that you would LIVE LIFE

Join the adventure

Take the risk

Life is waiting for us to Live it.

-Caleb Ross Hunter
10/26/2011