Man Down

Gauntlet of a weekend. Our Saturday Bible study attendance was hit pretty hard by a mandatory student-body meeting at one of the big universities in town. But we still had a good time – my voice hurt and I felt I bombed big time in the first service, but we had some good visitors, returners, and leader-at-bat’s. Th. and St. both taught for five minutes, one before each service. St.’s been doing this for a couple months now and he’s really making great progress. He’s much more comfortable in front of people, and he’s pulling more and more out of the Bible every time. He goes mainly topical, which isn’t really conducive to a five minute message, but he’s doing pretty good with my nudges towards expository teaching. It’s hard to (correctly) teach expositorily without a basic overall concept of theology, but as his theology grows, his ability grows. 

Th. is totally different. It was his first time, though he’s been a Christian longer. He’s been doing the welcome for the second service for some time now, and he has seemed to struggle through some nervousness. But he really showed some passion in his lesson Saturday! They both taught from Job, which we studied last week in our Friday class. Their teaching was definitely the highlight of the weekend for me.  

From top to bottom. Here’s the worst thing about this weekend. Strangely absent from the Bible study last night was D., who I’ve written plenty about before. Normally a double-attender leader, probably the most faithful girl we’ve got, it was pretty odd that she didn’t show up. In fact, there was a girl who did come who came because she was invited by D.! So, when your guests show up, but you don’t, it’s cause for concern. So I sent her a message last night telling her we missed her and we hope she’s okay. We hear from her this morning: “I hope we can still be friends, but I can’t come to anything anymore.” Wow. Well, seeing it’s hard to still be friends when you can’t see each other anymore, I thought we’d give her a call to see what’s up. 

The J-dub’s strike back. For the record, I hate religion. This is the girl that has some Jehovah’s Witnesses friends that bug her about coming to our study. They’re really friendly, though, so sometimes that makes that whole damnable-heresy thing easier to swallow. Anyway, I was pretty sure this was over. Apparently not. These J.W. girls really pressured her a lot about coming here and finally put her in a crisis. She folded. No more real Bible for her. So I’ve been pretty crushed about that all day. Something about watching a sheep get carried off a by a wolf that doesn’t feel so hot. Don’t really know what to do. This girl was introducing me to people two weeks ago as her pastor. As we should all already know too well, deep relationships trump almost anything: right doctrine, good memories, past favors, and relationships of a shallower sort. So I’ve spent most of the day going back through the past couple months since D. became a Christian, trying to see where we messed up and how we can prevent this happening again in the future. Her absence is hardly unnoticeable, and I’ve already talked to St. about it. He had lots of questions about this sorry excuse for a false religion. My wife had to explain it to another girl tonight. Pray for her with us.