The Christian Chronicle Podcast
The Christian Chronicle Podcast explores the news and stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world.
The Christian Chronicle Podcast
Episode 123: Confessions of an "incompetent" minister (Casey Coston)
In 2 Corinthians 3:5, the apostle Paul writes: "Not that we are competent in ourselves...but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of the new covenant."
Casey Coston is a veteran Church of Christ campus minister of more than 20 years. As he started his third decade in ministry, he took stock of his own "incompetence" and turned it into a book: Made Competent: A Story About Life in Ministry.
In this episode, Casey touches on some of the biggest ministry challenges and shortcomings he's faced so far, including:
- Balancing the commission to "make disciples" (a slow process that happens with a few intimate relationships at a time) and the pressure to attract bigger and bigger crowds to ministry "events"
- Balancing the love the church needs and the love his own family needs (and how church and family often compete for his energy, focus and time)
- Handling disagreements and discord with church elders and members
Casey also uses his unique point of view working with emerging generations of believers and seekers to imagine:
- How evangelism is changing and must change to connect with emerging generations
- How legacy congregations and new congregations might adapt to changes in the culture (without changing the essence of the church and the gospel it practices and preaches)
- The kinds of ministers who will meet the next moment
Links for this episode:
Made Competent: A Story About Life in Ministry by Casey Coston
Campus for Christ national Church of Christ campus ministry network
Episode 72 featuring Chris Buxton and Casey Coston on campus ministry
Discipling: The Multiplying Ministry by Milton Jones
Donate to support this ministry of "information and inspiration" at christianchronicle.org/donate
Send your comments, ideas, and suggestions to podcast@christianchronicle.org
Learn more about how to visit the Bible lands as a graduate student at the Freed-Hardeman University Graduate School of Theology at fhu.edu/chronicle
family and friends, neighbors and, most of all, strangers. Welcome to the Christian Chronicle Podcast. We are bringing you the stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world. I'm BT Irwin. May what you are about to hear bless you and honor God.
BT Irwin:Have you ever heard someone talk about imposter syndrome? Imposter syndrome is a psychological phenomenon where a person, being in a position of great responsibility and or trust, fears being exposed as incompetent and not up to the job. I dare say that, out of all the professionals who suffer from imposter syndrome, ministers may have it the worst. After all, we are often put in high visibility public positions from which we are supposed to model the life of Jesus Christ and teach others to do the same. The stakes are measured in eternity. Mature ministers, wise ministers, know that they are in fact, incompetent for the high calling of ministry, but they also know that they are made competent by the grace, power and working of God around in and through them. As we read in the Apostle Paul's second letter to the Church of Christ from Corinth, chapter 3, verse 5, quote not that we are competent in ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of the new covenant. End quote.
BT Irwin:Our guest today is a minister who dared to write a book about his imposter syndrome, that is, his feelings of inadequacy and incompetence as a minister. Casey Koston set out to be a chemical engineer until his life-changing encounter with Razorbacks for Christ, a Church of Christ campus ministry at the University of Arkansas sent him in a whole new direction. He eventually became a campus minister himself, first with Rebels for Christ, a Church of Christ campus ministry at Ole Miss in Oxford, mississippi, and then Blue Hens for Christ, a Church of Christ, campus ministry at the University of Delaware in Newark, delaware. He's been in campus ministry for over 20 years now. We had Casey on the show back in episode 72 to talk about Campus for Christ, a national support and training ministry for Church of Christ congregations and ministers who want to reach the more than 4,000 college campuses in the United States. Casey recently published his first book, made Competent, a story about life and ministry.
BT Irwin:Casey, welcome back. Thank you, brother, good to be back. Oh, man, good to see you again. So last time you were here back in episode 72, you were here with Chris Buxton and the two of you were talking about Campus for Christ Ministry to Church of Christ Campus Ministries. That conversation awakened me to a mission field that is white, with harvest on more than 4,000 college campuses in the United States. And then, when I read your book, I found myself marveling at the scope and size of what I can only call a campus ministry parallel universe that exists alongside the mainstream Church of Christ community and culture, the mainstream Church of Christ community and culture. It's like there's a whole other Church of Christ world that has been right there all along, but I haven't seen it until I met you.
Casey Coston:Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for describing it that way. I think, as I said in the book, we're trying to take away some of the secrecy with what we do. We've got a long legacy in campus ministry, I mean practically. You know, we understand there are very few campus ministers and campus ministries compared to youth ministers and preachers, you know, and children's ministers. Maybe, I don't know, maybe we're comparable to children's ministers. You know, we're just, we're a small group in general but yeah, we think we have a big impact because of the strategic location that we are, you know, on the college campus.
Casey Coston:I love that one of my apprentices former apprentices, claire at Ole Miss. She went to her first Campus for Christ conference when she was with us there at Ole Miss and I remember her at the conference saying where has this been all my life? Yeah, and she was a Harding student and she had had a great experience at Harding and I think that is a good tension for us with this parallel universe thing is, I had a really good experience with the campus ministry at Arkansas, did engineering, but then I felt like God was calling me into ministry. So I went to Abilene Christian and so I had a great state, you know public university experience. At Arkansas I had a great, you know, christian university experience at Abilene Christian. But the thing that you know I wrote about was that I don't remember ACU contextualizing my MDiv at any in any way, you know, for campus ministry, and so by the time I was leaving I wasn't even looking for campus ministry jobs. I'd kind of forgotten, you know, about that calling specifically for campus and of course God still got me there, you know, to Ole Miss.
Casey Coston:So I think this we have a potential for a great partnership, you know, between the public university campus ministries, because you know they sent me to ACU and I know others go there. Others go to our Christian schools for training, you know, after their campus ministry experience. And just one thing that we probably did in episode 72 that I know everybody remembers, but I wanted to remind us that you know one of the great things that has occurred is that Chris is now teaching a campus ministry course at Harding. And so if you're listening and you know parents, you know ask, you know encourage your kids to think about taking the campus ministry course just to see what it's like at Harding. And then Chris is also with Milton Jones and some others helped to develop a certificate in campus ministry at Lipscomb for grads, you know, graduate students. So we've begun to make some inroads there and we're really thankful that the partnership has begun. We just hope that'll continue so that the parallel universes you know can kind of partner universe a little bit more.
BT Irwin:Yeah, we'll link all those in the show notes so people can go check them out. We just had Matt Dabbs on the episode just before this one. He brought a lot of research along that showed how congregations have life cycles, like people have life cycles, and it is rare for a congregation to make it to 100 years. Most of them make it to 60, 70, 80, and that's it. And the scary thing that Matt showed us in that episode is most Church of Christ congregations in the United States formed in the middle of the 20th century, which means they are reaching the natural end of their lives. He made the case for congregations that are at midlife or late life to start planting churches now. Make hay while the sun shines. I don't presume that you agree with Matt, but if you do, could you make a strong case for why college campuses would be fertile ground for those new church plants?
Casey Coston:I think a really encouraging thing to say is that this is happening on the college campus. So, for example, the Encompass Campus Ministry in Athens, ohio, at Ohio University, zach Wolf and his team there they planted a campus ministry and then they also planted a church as connected to that campus ministry. So a big shout out to Chris Buxton's, ulife Consulting, but also Kairos Church Planting and Be One, make One was involved in that process. And then we've got the Well Campus Ministry where Amy Kendall-Wilson, my good friend and board member with me in Campus for Christ, their campus ministry in Arizona, kairos helped them get Treco Church Plant started. So they and they literally both of these literally meet on campus on Sundays and so it's really good to see that this is happening. It's good to see that, you know, a small group of maybe older, wiser, mature church members are seeing hey, we want to go to where the students are, we want to be part of this.
Casey Coston:And, with what you're saying, to have more church plants, we need more ministers and that was just a big reason that I wrote, wrote the book is. I wanted just to give people a snapshot. My story is going to be an established ministry story, although the longer I stay in Delaware, the more I'm becoming, you know, a little more missionary, like in planting in some ways. But we just we need more ministers for these plants, and so we need to be strategic, just like we were with our church buildings, like the buildings we built in the 50s, 60s, 70s. We were. We were strategic with those and now we need to be strategic in a new way perhaps, and, yeah, I think, think more about either being really close to the college campus or just taking advantage. You know, campus ministries have registered student organization status and so we can reserve space on campus, normally for free or pretty cheap, so churches have a great opportunity to be part of this. One other thing you know with this that I think is helpful is just when we talk about being strategic and trying to get churches, you know, to think about this with us with what Matt was saying.
Casey Coston:Again, there could be certainly anecdotes that don't all fall in line with this, but in general, a few people, 18 and younger, will own their faith before they go to college. A few people, after college will own their faith Like it'll become theirs. It'll become real. It won't just be their parents or their preachers anymore, it'll be theirs. But college ministry to me obviously biased, but I think it would bear out is that is the major time that young people own their faith. And where better to be than with them when they're trying to figure out what they're going to hold on to, what they're going to let go of and kind of form their own faith that we hope will still be as vibrant? But it might look a little different and that's okay.
BT Irwin:I have one more question on campus ministry and then we'll get to the book. Let's say a congregation in a college town feels called and moved to plant a new congregation on its local college campus. For that new congregation to be most effective at what the Lord creates the church to be and do in the world, how might a Church of Christ congregation on a college campus be a little different from the older planting congregation?
Casey Coston:Cary Newhoff is just a leadership guy. He helps leaders, christian leaders, and he was talking about this recently and so I thought this was helpful. He talked about how older churches choose methods over mission, and so they had a mission and they used methods to reach. You know, help, you know, fulfill that mission. New churches reverse this. They say, yeah, we now have a new mission. We have a new mission to reach college students and we understand that it's going to take different methods probably to reach that new mission.
Casey Coston:And so I think with that, a church has to ask who do we want to reach? It's very possible that you know churches, where they are, just need to maybe change some of their methods in reaching the community that's right around them. But again, being strategic and trying to reach the next generation might require, yeah, doing something, even a little more bold and a little more adaptive. And so, you know, thinking about, you know, if we want to reach college students, then one of the things I struggled with at Ole Miss a lot that it took me a while to kind of process was do I want to reach Church of Christ students, do I want to reach students from other denominations or do I just want to reach pure lost, you know, seeking students that are a little bit open, you know that aren't just completely turned off but seekers, and so that really challenges you, especially with the one you start thinking. You know, yeah, we want to reach our Church of Christ students and some churches need to continue doing that. But you know we have some great Church of Christ students here but we have three or four, you know that's it. You know, in the Delaware campus ministry. So it makes more sense for us to turn our eyes towards seekers on campus and we'll reach a few students from other denominations along the way. But I've become more convicted in, you know, trying to find those seekers that are open, that are interested, that you know American students that kind of gave up on church a little bit, but again they're open because they're trying to own whatever faith they're going to have while in college.
Casey Coston:Or of course, international students who are just wide open either, you know, at least, to friendship, often to reading the Bible. You know, at least to friendship, often to reading the Bible, you know, because they want to keep working on their English. And then I would just say, you know, recognize, obviously, that if your mission is college students just recognize that you're there for the students and that gets you out of yourself. And the big, the three L's that we like to use is listen, learn and love. So if you are listening, learning and just purely loving those students, you're going to love that because it's getting you out of yourself. You have a mission and the college students are going to love it because they will have kind of a surrogate parent or a surrogate grandparent, you know somebody that is loving them away from home, and there'll be a heart connection there that they won't even realize at the beginning.
BT Irwin:I've spent my entire life around ministers and one thing I think will resonate with them when they read your book is that you struggle all the time with feelings of inadequacy and incompetence. The title you gave your book is fine, but if you asked me, I would have given it the title why, Me Lord? I'm pretty sure I don't have what it takes to do this. So talk about how those feelings of inadequacy and incompetence are such big factors in your ministry. You know, looking back.
Casey Coston:Yeah, I just kind of realized some things that created a perfect storm for me. The first one was, ironically, that my success in school and music and engineering set me up for a fall in ministry, because I was a really good student. My wife would say humblebrag here, but I was a good student through high school, decent student in college. Engineering was hard, but I still did pretty good. I played piano, I sang in the choir, I played trombone. I just excelled in all these things and though I really still never really mastered those things, I still had good success in them and one of the hard lessons I learned is that you never can master ministry. Ministry, like you were saying about elders, I mean the elders that hired me were not the elders that asked me to resign. The eldership had changed over 15 years as well, and so it's hard, yeah, as a minister, when you're trying to adapt to new elders coming in and out. You know as well. So that set me up for this fall of struggling maybe more than some would have with this incompetence. I think being a first generation minister plays a big part of this. You know, maybe we talked about this last time too, but you know I just, there are some implicit things, there is some intuition. If you're a second generation minister, you've seen your parents or grandparents, somebody, do this and you kind of know what it's like. And I think being a first generation minister presents, you know, some of its own challenges, because you're trying, you're actually maybe having to figure out a few more things on your own and my parents were very supportive but they just, you know, weren't in ministry life, you know. In that way, I think another thing that I identify is just that I'm a Barnabas, so I like to encourage people and I like to be encouraged, and at best I'm a Barnabas but at worst I'm a people pleaser. And so, man, just you know, and I was able to please people, my teachers and my parents, in my academics and in my music life and in my engineering life, and I had pretty good social connections, you know, in the campus ministry at Arkansas. But, man, just by the time I got into ministry, it was like at any one time someone was no doubt unhappy with me, whether it was an elder or a church member or a student, and my wife would say, I know she'd amen that, yeah, she was unhappy with me sometimes Because you're going to make somebody unhappy and we'll talk more about family and ministry. But so my success set me up for the fall being a Barnabas slash, people pleaser, set me up for this.
Casey Coston:And then just the suffering that came in 2006, that we'll talk about a little bit more, forever changed. You know how I would do ministry and that suffering plunged us and me into just. You know there was no spin you could put on that to make it look like I was doing great. You know, in ministry at that time you know juggling my wife's health and a lot of things like that.
Casey Coston:So, man, just trying to lean into you know you really think Paul is crazy saying for when I'm weak, then I'm strong until you've lived it. And then you have to realize, ok, I am weak in this moment until you've lived it. And then you have to realize, okay, I am weak in this moment, I cannot do this. But this is going to force me to lean on God and surrender to God in ways that I've just been trying to wing it. You know I've been trying to be a cool, professional minister and that's not working, you know. So I'm going to have to just accept the weakness in this moment and trust God to bring the strength. And yeah, the more I can just accept my incompetence, the easier it is to heal, the easier it is to be made competent and to let God use me further down the road.
BT Irwin:My dad was a people pleaser and he was very good at it and it burned him out. So he fell out of ministry when he was 53 years old and it took him a couple of years to get back into it again. I'm a people pleaser, just like him. I reckon a lot of people who get into ministry are natural people pleasers. But then you add on the extra weight of feeling like if I'm not pleasing people then I'm not really loving them in the Jesus way. So if they don't feel loved they may not believe in Jesus. So that adds the pressure of the eternal salvation of souls and witnessing for the Lord to what may just be normal people pleasing. How have you I don't want to use the word mastered that, but how? Over 20 plus years of learning that you're a people pleaser in ministry? How do you deal with that, um? Or how do you discern when is the time to please people and when can I let that go?
Casey Coston:Yeah, yeah. Well, the great discernment environment for me is solitude, and I know that doesn't, you know, come naturally. Even though I'm an introvert, I would say solitude has not particularly come natural for me because ministry you kind of get addicted to ministry and you kind of just get addicted to doing, and you know, doing events and we'll talk more about that as well. But I think, even as an introvert just trying to okay, I'm probably not a diagnosed manic, but I can just feel that manic-ness in my life. Sometimes, especially at the start of a semester in campus ministry, there's just so much to do, meeting students, so I have to do things that settle my soul and settle my heart and settle my mind and that solitude for me and I've gotten decent now. At most weeks on Monday I go into the UD library and I just have some solitude and sometimes it's to work on a message, but a lot of times it's just to read and journal and think and pray and just do things that allow me to look back on a week and go yeah, I was trying too hard to please somebody there and I didn't need to do that. Or I'm trying to anticipate some people pleasing coming up in this week and I get to okay. So I try and anticipate it and try and be ready and say, okay, I don't have to bend over backwards.
Casey Coston:You know, in this situation I'm going to say what I need to say and then I just need to leave it alone and if they take it, great, if they don't, hey, I got to trust God, you know, in these situations. So therapy has been a big help, with solitude as well, I've had seasons where I do a little more therapy than others. But I love that cognitive behavioral therapy and I like using cognitive behavioral theology as well, because you have to get some things settled in your mind just about you know the first John three, the love of God being lavished on us, that we should be called children of God. I am a child of God and nothing I go and do today is going to change that and so having that identity. But you've got to make sure you know that verse and that you've had some prayer time and quiet time with God so that that's deep down in your soul, so that you're ready to deal with the winds that are going to blow around you trying to work with students and churches.
BT Irwin:I know a Church of Christ minister that if I said his name most people who listen to this would know him and know who I'm talking about and he for years has gone to see a counselor every month as regular maintenance and he advises every minister he knows get a counselor and see your counselor every month.
BT Irwin:Regular maintenance, and he advises every minister he knows get a counselor and see your counselor every month. It's good maintenance. You reminded me of a story you told in the book about a particular I believe it was a student who was part of your campus ministry and it sounds like this student may have had a leadership role, was a Christian in the first place when he came to the university and got involved in student ministry and there was perhaps disagreement and conflict there and you struggled and wrestled over the course of a long period of time to I'll say please him and work with him and eventually the relationship, I think it came apart. Knowing what you know now about how you handled that situation with that particular student who you loved and you wanted to please and you wanted to work with him, but it didn't work out, what would you do different if you saw yourself walking into another situation similar to that one?
Casey Coston:I was probably in some denial that I was competent enough to figure that out with this student without more help.
Casey Coston:And I think I should have, you know, had some proactive conversations with this student and an elder or two, you know, and we got together because he was a local student, so I mean he knew that he was part of the church family there in Oxford.
Casey Coston:He wasn't, like you know, a student coming from another city, so he had a lot of ties in Oxford and I think I just should have been more proactive with him and drawing some others in to try and help us have conversations, like being a ministry couple, you know, because he cared, he cared a lot and he just had different ideas and ways of going about it than I, you know, thought made sense to me or that I was comfortable doing.
Casey Coston:And so trying to figure out ways to equip him or empower him or to help us find somebody else who could do that if I wasn't able, you know, to be the one who could fulfill that vision. And I'll say I got to have a conversation with him after I wrote the book because I wanted him to know it was in there and I think a lot of what he was trying to do that we'll talk about some more is he was very attraction focused. He was looking for events, he was looking for things that would draw students, and I could just now, looking back, I can just tell that my soul was more focused on trying to disciple a few students, and so we had different visions for accomplishing the same goal and we just, I needed to draw in some more helpers, you know, to help us figure out how to have those conversations sooner.
BT Irwin:My dad I mentioned. He was in ministry for almost 50 years and I asked him to do a podcast with me after he retired so I could get him to talk about all the things that the folks in his congregations were not likely to know about what it was like to minister to them. In particular, I wanted to expose people in the pews to how their minister's ministry affects his family. I was part of that in a very intimate way. My dad, I can tell you, felt this constant tug of war between the attention the church needed from him, and sometimes demanded from him, and the attention he wanted to give to his three kids, including me and his wife. So I was really glad that you devoted so much of your book to the effect that your family has on your ministry and the effect that your ministry has on your family. What do you want to share about that here?
Casey Coston:Three big things happen that I talk about in the book. Number one I mentioned 2006,. Tracy's appendix ruptured while she was pregnant with our first born Miles. Miles came six weeks early and he was great. He was a little small but he grew and everything about him was fine. But Tracy's body just paid the price for a ruptured appendix. We would, of course, learn of course we didn't know at the time, but we would learn that she became infertile from that.
Casey Coston:So then I talked about the desire to have more kids, and we went through the IVF process to try and have more kids Huge, you know, big thing trying to juggle, you know, bringing new life into the world. While doing ministry, we tried IVF several times. So you know, from 2006 to 2014 was really hard and if you can do the math, that's eight years. Eight years is a long time for life to be really hard. And I've got Tracy in the book that I would love for the wives and moms to read, her writing this note to dear Maggie and Moses, because she wrote this love letter to them before they were ever born, because Tracy and I were struggling with how the future was going to look.
Casey Coston:And then the third thing was just me having my struggle with the elders from 2017 to 2019. So all these things were just, you know, compounded, you know, on us as you talked about the grief earlier. As you talked about the grief earlier. But one good thing that I've always remembered how I saw God at work in this is all the suffering. Kept my ministry ambition in check Because I had that.
Casey Coston:I had that ministry ambition. I wanted to be out more. I wanted to meet with more students. I wanted to stay out late. I mean I'm not a super late guy but I would want to stay out some with students.
Casey Coston:But there was especially 2006 to 2014, even later, with, you know, twins. I needed to get home. I wanted to be home to be with the kids at bedtime or to help trace out because you know she I mean she was in the hospital for three months, you know, back in 2006. I stayed with her. We had people helping take care of miles. Tracy's mom took care of Miles at first and then church folks started helping, you know, take care of Miles. So we didn't even see Miles much the first three months of his life. And so just just so many issues, you know, for us there. But it did all it. God did use that to kind of help keep me in balance so that I didn't get out of balance with the ministry stuff becoming too much.
Casey Coston:And so one of the great challenges it's still cropped up today. You know I thought of it for last year, so last year's Campus for Christ conference in Troy, Alabama. I'm like texting my wife on a Saturday night because she's dealing with some things and I'm texting her. And that Saturday night is when the board surprised me with the kind of the Lifetime Achievement Award. That's one of the biggest honors you get in campus ministry, the Stephen Eckstein Lifetime Achievement Award. So I've been like texting my wife she's struggling and I go up on stage, you know, surprised to receive the biggest award. You know that we give you know for campus ministers recognized to receive the biggest award. You know that we give you know for campus ministers. And again I'm in that tension, I'm in that tug of war because that's and I've just for the most part learned to accept man, that's just the way it is. You know, there's just going to be a tension until the day we die, or at least until we retire, hopefully maybe not the day we die with, you know, family and ministry.
BT Irwin:That's important for ministers to understand. It's important for churches to understand too. So I appreciate you for weaving that very thick, colorful thread through your story. The tension at the heart of the book I mentioned it, I think really draws our focus to a big question hanging over our congregations now in our part of the world, here in the United States, and that tension is between the way Jesus makes disciples and the way we do it, the way we do church in the United States.
BT Irwin:As you grew in your ministry, you noticed and you bring this out in the book how Jesus makes disciples a very few close relationships at a time. He's not trying to get people to agree with certain information. You can do that maybe in one conversation but in the Bible we see Jesus living a life and calling people to imitate that life, and they can only do that by living with him over a long period of time. The Great Commission is not to get people to agree with a few abstract points of doctrine. It is to invite them to participate in an intense, ongoing sharing of life by which they come to imitate the life of Jesus. And that requires intimacy and it requires time, and those two things are not what you are doing when you're giving a 15-minute talk to 100 people. So that might discipleship the Jesus way and you show this in the book is a Christian inviting maybe three people to come along and learn by doing so. Here's the tension again.
BT Irwin:When our churches hire ministers, they pay them real money. That is often one of the biggest line items in the church budget. So there's this pressure for the number of dollars that go to a minister to generate numbers that justify that expense. So maybe disciple-making happens three people at a time, but three disciples does not seem like a good return for the investment that a congregation makes in a minister. So, given a choice, the congregation might rather see 300 people at an event than three people quietly growing alongside the minister over several years. So the pressure is on for the minister to get the big numbers that justify what it costs to pay him. And I think your book hits on this point again and again and again. Would you like to talk about that?
Casey Coston:Milton Jones old book Discipling the Multiplying Ministry. I think it's out of print but you might can get it somewhere. So I have these his illustrations in the book. So if you can imagine an epicenter and then the ripple effects, these concentric circles you've got Jesus with, with John is, you know, the beloved is his one, and then you've got the three, peter, james and John, and then you've got the 12,. Okay, so those were what Milton were calling levels one, two and three, and then levels four, five and six are the 70. Jesus sends out the 70. The 500 are with Jesus, you know, after his resurrection, and then the crowds, the multitudes for the feedings and you know some other big events.
Casey Coston:What I learned the hard way at Ole Miss was just living in this tension. But what Milton said was discipleship only occurs on levels one, two and three. So only when you're with one person or three people or 12 people can you disciple them in that intimate way that you're talking about. That's going to move the needle, to help them become more like Jesus. And you know, I can see that being a little bit of an overstatement. We hope, obviously, that sermons and messages to you know a few hundred people makes a difference. But, yeah, week after week, teaching a Bible class to Ole Miss students, I didn't feel nearly as effective as I did having one conversation with one student at lunch about their faith. I felt like I was able to nudge them and move the needle a little bit more with the Holy Spirit's help. You know, in that one conversation, some of it is, you just don't know how 100 people are affected, you know by your message and you kind of have to trust and let go.
Casey Coston:But again, the one, two and three levels are multiplication. The four, five and six levels are addition. And so this is where, yeah, our ministries and I'm sure it's not just American, but I think it's certainly true of a lot of American churches If you build it they'll come mentality from Field of Dreams. We just we tend to get excited about addition and we have to find, you know, some ways to at least balance out our addition mentality with the multiplication mentality. And so, again, the thing I wrestle with in the book is if Jesus is focused on 12. Right, why am I not focused on 12? And so you can say, yeah, jesus, he launched out and had these two or three days with the 5,000. Okay, that's great. That was an attraction thing. There's a lot of teaching there but there's food there. But he didn't do feedings all the time. He did that big one, he did another big one, you know, mark tells us, and that was about it for the big crowds.
Casey Coston:But then you know some of the famous interactions he has with people the rich man, the woman caught in adultery. These are one-on-one, intimate conversations that are life-changing. They are changing. You know, the Samaritan woman, nicodemus, all these stories are one-on-one conversations and the disciples are listening in, you know, probably to some of those conversations at least, and so that's just the big emphasis. So for preachers, campus ministers, youth ministers, I would say, man, the next time you are getting hired or looking, you need to have these kinds of conversations in the process of being hired and say, look, we're going to do some four, five and six stuff, but we have got to have some one, two and three stuff to make sure that there is some balance. If for no other reason than for my soul, but I think it's also for the kingdom, it is going to benefit the kingdom if we are multiplying and not just adding.
BT Irwin:Well, I think the growth and spread of Church of Christ congregations in the United States in the middle of the 20th century is an example of a model, meeting a moment, in other words, the way we did church back then bus ministries, door knocking, church buildings, education programs, gospel meetings, jewel Miller, film strips, vacation, bible school, youth groups, that kind of stuff. It fit how people behaved and thought in our culture in the post-World War II years. I don't think we've done enough to consider how much what we think of as church emerged from the culture to meet the culture in that moment. But the culture and the people are different now. They're changing. So those old models met a moment that is long gone. You, being in campus ministry, are in the vanguard of those meeting the new moment and the emerging generations making it. What do Church of Christ folks need to know about? What is coming and how might our local congregations meet this new moment?
Casey Coston:I think this is hard but good for us. How much were those methods focused on attraction? How much were they focused on four, five and six? Because what I would say for in college ministry right now, trying to meet the moment, the really good thing amazing thing is that discipleship really doesn't change. Amazing thing is that discipleship really doesn't change. Okay, discipleship is a meal or coffee and conversation and Bible study and prayer and someday, with, without force and without manipulation or pressure, lovingly winning somebody to Jesus. And they're going to, they're going to give their lives to Jesus at some point.
Casey Coston:I don't think the discipleship changes very much from 1950, you know, to 2025. The attraction stuff that we're trying to do, I think does change. And so you know, I thought I know about the Jewel Miller film strips. I'm not sure if I ever saw one, but right now, you know we have the Chosen and people could watch the Chosen right now and they could have watch parties in their home, you know, for you know pool season, and invite some neighbors over or have a small group you know that watches the Chosen together. I think those are great.
Casey Coston:You know attraction methods that might work, you know, for folks now, students and outsiders today and seekers, let's let's not forget. I mean we can get caught up in our attraction stuff but really what they need is a meal and some love and some conversation and we can be intentional in those conversations. We don't want to get stuck in casual conversations about up here we're always talking about the Eagles or the Phillies, and I'm a Cardinal, I'm not wearing my Cardinal shirt today, so we can get stuck in the casual conversations. We want to be intentional about moving those conversations on to spiritual things and trying to get into biblical conversations, churches of Christ. You know, we kind of were in that season of certainty like, hey, we knew the Bible, we knew what to do, and I think we've learned some humility, certainly over the years and I think we can still be confident without the arrogance. But I think the humility to say, hey, this is going to take faith for all of us. It's going to take faith for us to leave the 99 and go find the one. But guess what that's what God said life's going to be about is faith. So anything that is requiring some faith, requiring some trust, going to require some risk. We have got to remember that God's probably involved in that.
Casey Coston:I think my last, you know, plea with everything that we've done here at BT that I appreciate so much. This opportunity is again. We need a new generation of ministers who are willing to be made competent, which means accepting our incompetence. We're going to have to be willing to suffer a little bit, which is why I put the suffering in the book, because, as John Mark Hicks told me, the book was inspiring but sobering. And even if you're not ready to go into ministry, I'd love for you to read the book. If you're a parent or grandparent, give it to a young person in your life. Just encourage them to read the book and see if God, you know, wants to use them to help raise up a new generation of ministers.
BT Irwin:Casey Koston is a seasoned campus minister with more than two decades of experience on public university campuses in the United States. He is author of Made Competent, a story about life and ministry now available from Karis Publishing. You'll find a link in the show notes. Casey, I have to say I admire you because you always go toward what you fear that's one theme in the book is that you feel incompetent and not up to the challenge, and yet you always go forward in faith, and I admire you for that. Yeah, and last question here what does a blue hen say? Meyer? You for that, yeah, and and uh.
Casey Coston:Last question here what does a blue hen say? You know, I'm not sure I've heard at a, at a football game, what they say.
BT Irwin:Uh, just, yeah, not sure there's a call there. I mean I know, I know, I know, uh, I went to school at Harding.
Casey Coston:So I know the Razorbacks right, it's, that's right. Woo pig, we can woo pig yeah.
BT Irwin:There you go. And what about Ole Miss?
Casey Coston:Ole Miss is hottie totty. Yeah, okay, all right.
BT Irwin:All right, university of Delaware. You need to get working on that. You need to. That's right. You need a call. Casey, thanks for being on the show. Thank you, brother. We hope something you heard in this episode encouraged, enlightened Thanks. Be to God and please pay it forward.
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