When God says it's time to quit

About six weeks from now my wife Karen and I will make our last Monday evening trip to the women's prison in Vandalia.

When that day comes, not only will our involvement in that ministry come to an end, the Christian Campus House's involvement in the prison ministry will also end.

The time has come when God has said it's time to quit.

Date Night at Our Happy Place

On a Wednesday evening in the summer of 2004, Roy Weece tapped me on the shoulder after the mid-week gathering at the Christian Campus House.

"I need you to do something for me," he said. "I need you get involved in the prison ministry. We need someone who isn't a student, someone who will be around for a while."

The prison ministry was important to Roy. When the Mizzou Christian Campus House opened in the Fall of 1968, it was one of the ministries he set up as an integral component of training college students to serve the Lord.

My application to become a Volunteer in Corrections flew through the Missouri Department of Corrections bureaucracy at a pace that would never happen today. In less than a month I entered the prison for the first of what would be over 14 years of Mondays.

Four years later, with Roy gone and most of the other VICs having either moved on to other things or severely reduced their participation, I found myself all too frequently making the trip alone. That's when my wife Karen, who had frequently gone with Roy to the prison in the early 80's when she worked in the CCH office, went through the process to become a VIC. It took her seven months. That long and arduous certification process would contribute to a sharp decrease in the ability of CCH students to be involved.

For the past ten years we've traveled to Vandalia by ourselves the majority of those Monday evenings.  We'd leave as soon as I got off work and then stop for supper in Mexico. We called it "date night."

If you want to strengthen the bond between you and your spouse, I highly recommend becoming involved together in some sort of ministry, especially one that stretches both of you beyond the edges of your comfort zone. The necessities of working together, planning together, and thinking on our feet together have forged us into a cohesive team. The long drives there and back provided opportunity for many great conversations.

And together we built relationships with the women in the prison chapel. Some of them became (and remain) good friends. Some inspired us, like Carlene Borden, pictured above. They all challenged us to embrace grace and practice the love of Christ.

Karen has startled them many times by cheerfully describing that prison chapel as "our happy place."

Out Date 

Among the prisoners, the "out date" is what their all counting the days toward. One of their most common prayers is for an early out date.

Now, we're looking ahead to our out date, the last Monday in June.

We would prefer for there to be no out date. We'd love to continue on forever. I fought back tears when I called the prison chaplain to discuss a timetable for ending this ministry.

The truth is, the prison ministry no longer matches the realities of our life. We're not as young or as healthy as we once were.

If all we had to do was go to a prison here in Columbia and put in an hour with the ladies in the chapel, then arriving home after a five minute drive --  we could continue on a lot longer. There would be no long drive home past our bedtime. There would be no more exhaustion that lasts through Tuesday and sometimes beyond.

And so we can no longer take the lead in this prison ministry. We've missed way too many Mondays because we were unable to physically make it, and there was no one else to take our place.

We've had others who have helped us. Dan Gibbins' energetic love for the Lord filled the women in the chapel with joy. They loved Steve Henness, who led worship and played his own songs for them. Jeff Loftin gave them a walking, talking example of a species many of them had rarely encountered: a quiet, gentle, and genuine Christian man. When Dennis Messimer preached, they sat enraptured by his stories of places and experiences they never knew a Christian could go and do. They loved hearing Lance Tamerius preach, feeling like he was speaking to each of them personally.

But each of those VICs (Volunteers in Correction) had jobs, families, and other ministries that limited their availability for the prison ministry. As much as they contributed, it was never and could never be enough to take over the role of being the ones who could commit to always making Monday at prison their number one priority. And now we can't be the ones to do that either.

The prison ministry also no longer matches up to the missional priorities of the leadership of Christian Campus House. Lance and i discussed the future of prison ministry over lunch one day, back in March. A few days later I received this note from him in an e-mail:

After talking and praying with staff, I do not think the prison ministry is something we can invest more time in. I hate saying that but in relation to CCH, what I am paid to do and the number of students affected, I cannot justify spending such an enormous amount of time on something that relates to the CCH mission so little.

I have to agree with him. The mission of CCH is - and always has been -  ministry to the students. Because of increasing restrictions and complications piled on by the Missouri Department of Corrections, the number of students participating in the prison ministry has been dwindling.

With so many other things going on, it doesn't make sense to have one or more of the paid staff members assigned to devote every Monday evening to to what has become a peripheral part of the ministry.

I wish it were not so, but it is what it is.

God has made it clear to all of us that it's time to quite.

Missio Dei.

It is, after all, God's ministry, not ours.

This was never Roy's ministry. It wasn't the Christian Campus House's prison ministry. The ministry doesn't belong to Karen or to me or to any of the other volunteers who have participated over the years. Dan and Steve, Laura, Aaron, and Jeff. Jim and Jud and Corey and others.

It's God's ministry. All any of us have done is to say Yes when he invited us to join Him.

Yes to serving the people God has put in our path. Yes to the divine appointments and misisonal opportunities He sends our way.

And now, we say Yes when God says it's time to quit. He's made it abundantly clear to Karen and I over the past several months, to the point where the message has become almost deafening.

However, as Roy was fond of saying, there's not one word in all of scripture about anyone ever retiring from ministry.

There will be something else ahead for us. We have no idea what it will be. Throughout our 40 years following God side by side, Karen and I have never really had a clue what God was going to ask us to do next.

But there has always been a next thing. We're praying and we're keeping our eyes open for the next assignment.

There have been many tears in our eyes as God has made this decision clear to us. And there will be more to come: more tears of compassion and more adventures.

But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next. (Frederick Buechner, A Crazy, Holy Grace)