Coming to you today from InterVarsity’s national Staff Conference 24. The last time our entire staff family gathered was right before the pandemic- January, 2020. We’re in sunny (at the moment) Orlando! We’re on a prayer and fasting experience today just about to conclude our last prayer session with a whole-group plenary.

The scriptures we’re studying this week are the opening chapters of the Gospel of Mark. Rich Villodos, pastor of New Life Fellowship in New York city challenged us yesterday with one of those deep questions that gets under your skin and won’t leave you alone. ”When you consider the core of your personal and professional identity, are you defined more by your successes or your failures?” We all constantly manage our image. Rich put it this way: ”There are lots of versions of ourselves that we negotiate: There’s the ME I want others to see, then there’s the ME that I don’t let others see. There’s the ME I want to become… but am not yet. There’s the ME my workmates know and there’s the ME my spouse and family knows. Which ME is ME?”

A we looked at the opening chapter of Mark, Jesus has an identity defining moment at his baptism. ”You are my beloved SON, with you I am well pleased.” Immediately the Spirit then drives Jesus to the wilderness where his freshly issued ID gets drug though the mud by Satan’s repeated temptations. Jesus weathers the aggression by staying focused on the Word of God.

Which is more dangerous to you? Your successes or your failures?

Maybe this is a question we should ask every time we start a fresh trip around the sun. Rich challenged us to rethink how we view success and failure. Success and failure can BOTH destroy our core identity. Failure seems obvious doesn’t it? We fear failure so much because we know how publicly damaging it can be to our image. But if we’re honest we’re not nearly as worried about the danger of success. Most of us are A-OK with success and how silently it distorts our sense of self. 

Pray for us as we meet God this week. Pray for scripture to speak. Pray for the Spirit to meet us, encourage us and reshape our mission on campus with faculty and students. I’ll try to post again before the week is up. I’m hoping your new year is off to a great start. A few things I’m grateful for as I think about your partnership with me:

• Thank you for your gifts to my ministry support – December was a strong month!
• Thank you for your prayers for our family- we enjoyed a lot time with our kids over break.
• So thankful for health and healing from my accident in April (did a 60 mile ride in December to celebrate turning 60).
• I’ve been able to clear away more space in Jan-March to work on finding more funding.
• Really thankful for my awesome wife Cheryl and our home – a place where I love to work and live with my favorite person on the planet!

• Phoebe and Cheryl planned a wonderful birthday celebration for me. Ouch, I’m 60!
• Got to be with Aaron, Savannah and Poppy in Franklin for his 31st birthday.
• Stopped in at Carter’s in Nashville to check out some instruments! That’s an Octave Mandolin I think.
• Poppy trying out her new RC boat!

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