completion (part II)

September 14, 2005

i should have expanded more on how God moved in my life over my past four years in design in the last entry, so here's my attempt to do so. it's funny how limited our view is as human beings. we think we know what's best for us, so we do what we think is best. but in actuality, sometimes what we think is the best isn't the best. it might even be the worst! the only one that knows what's best is God. He's the one we need to bank our hope, our trust, our faith on. if we believe the promise of romans 8:28, that God works for the good of those who love Him, then we'll trust that God knows what He's doing and that He only does what is good for us.

while design wasn't my ideal place for my undergraduate degree (at least back then it wasn't), looking back now, i wouldn't have had it any other way. being in design was the best thing for me because i learnt so much about myself and about God. God called me to trust Him and to step out in faith for my undergraduate degree. surprisingly, a lot of people, especially Christians, thought it was strange that i did that. why study something you don't like for four years? who does that? it didn't make sense they would say. it really didn't make sense to me either. why did God want me to be in a program that i didn't like for four years? i couldn't answer that, but i knew i had to be obedient to His call. here's a summary of the things i learnt and experienced:

1. ministry with the unchurched
one of my prayers before entering university was that God would expand my ministry to include the unchurched. i felt like i had wasted my high school years in terms of evangelism because i hung around mostly Christian people (say 99% of the time). i recall entering grade nine and losing ties with all my elementary school friends because i was so involved with church back then. people stop asking you do something when you keep saying no to them. but i didn't mind so much. i had met a community that i had never experienced before. i met people that were really after God and i wanted so much to be part of that as much as i could. so that's what i did. i cherish those days so much. i believe my high school years were integral in the development of my faith and understanding of God and it was because of that time that i could face all the difficulties and challenges that would come when university began. nonetheless, God really convicted me of isolating myself within the Christian circle. i vowed not to let the same thing happen again when university began.

i decided to be intentional about the way i lived my life on campus. i would try my best to make friends with people and get to know them. the challenge of it was that i was extremely shy back then. it was really difficult for me to even say a simple hello to people i didn't know, let alone trying to get to know them better. but little by little, God was working on me. i remember back in one of my first classes, a girl needed to go the art store to pick up some supplies. she lived on res, so it was hard for her to get there. since i had a car, it was ridiculously easy. i felt the Spirit tugging me to offer her a ride there if she wanted. you have no idea how tough that was for me to do. it took me forever to get the guts to do it. i heard her talking about it near the start of class; it took me till the end of class to muster the strength to make the offer. since i chickened out in class, i told God i'd ask her if He put her beside me in the lab. and when that happened, it still took me a lot longer to ask her. it ended up that our scheduled conflicted, so i never got to drive her there. that simple thing really stretched me. my university years were full of small things like this. little by little, God was stretching me more and more. i have countless stories similar to this one. so what's the point of all this? being faithful in the small things enables us to be faithful for the big things. it doesn't work the other way around.

i made quite a number of friends. and more surprisingly, i got close to some of them really fast. it was pretty amazing. most of them were the unchurched too (though there was a group of us Christians too). i think a major factor of that happening was due to our really small class sizes. each of our design classes had 20 students at most, so it was really easy to get to know people. i loved that about the program. it was like a family.

around my third year, i realized that i was a lot closer to my friends at school than at church. this probably had a lot to do with the fact that i spent more time at school than i did at church, so i was able to talk more with people there and just have good times with one another. and also the fact that since we were in the same program together, we knew the stresses and everything that went along with being in design, so we always understood each other. my community became my school friends. that was huge!

i had so many great talks with a lot of different people. sometimes it was about faith-related matters, most of the time it wasn't. i'm no joe evangelist. i don't believe in shoving the Gospel down someone's throat. i believe in living a life that leads to why and answering appropriately when someone asks what makes me different. sometimes i think it misleading that some Christians intentionally make friends to witness to them. it's like you have this ulterior motive and i think it almost fake to do something like that. people look for authenticity and genuineness. when i befriended people, it was just to befriend them. i wanted to get to know them for them, that was it. the way i was intentional about my relationships, was that i would use the gifts God had given me in the conversations i had with my friends. sometimes people needed an encourager, i was there encourager. sometimes people needed leadership, then i'd be their leader.
sometimes people just needed someone to be their friend, i would be their friend. it was because of this, that i had the authority and the right to talk about my faith to my friends.

somewhere along the way, i found that i had an easier time striking up conversations with new people that were unchurched than i did with new people that were Christians. i had more things to talk about and it was less awkward. maybe i felt that it was easier because there was no pressure. the thing with Christians is that we all try to maintain this sense of "spirituality" when we meet each other. we impression manage like crazy because we don't want people to think ill of us. and we have all these expectations that Christians need to live in a certain way, so there's enormous pressure. all of that disappears when you're with the unchurched, and for me, that makes it easier to talk.

and now, after four years, i realize that i have problems with being isolated in a Christian circle. if the people i hang out with, talk to, interact with comprises of solely Christians, i feel like something's wrong. i need to have unchurched people in my life. and just so you know, for me to say something like this is huge. God has really changed my perspective. you know why it's bad to only have Christian friends? you become isolated from the rest of the world, a world that is much larger than the Christian population. isolation causes you to react to anything different from your own. and when Christians react negatively to the rest of the world, it typically does nothing but more harm because it means more judgments and more hypocrisy. if Christians isolate themselves, they'll most likely get offended by people who drink/smoke/do drugs/swear/premarital sex/etc. all that creates is more barriers. i'm not saying i condone any of that stuff, but if you want to befriend people, they cannot feel like you are constantly judging them. isolation can also cause you to live in a utopian world, where everything is the way it should be. you become disconnected from the true reality of the world.

2. learning about myself
being in design helped me learn that i was a visual person. i could understand things better and quicker when people used visual aids when talking about/explaining something. or in other words, i see things better when i see them. people can talk all day about schedules/ideas/thoughts till the cows come home, but if i don't see them on a board or written out, i can't comprehend it nearly as well.

i also realized that God created me as an artist. i used to deny that all the time. people would automatically say that i was an artist since i was in design. i'd always respond to that by saying that no, i was just a guy who liked playing with computers (aka. computer geek). i would actually get offended by the question. i didn't like the thought of being an artist for some reason... i used to think that artists were people that did fine arts. since i didn't do any fine art, i wasn't an artist. plain and simple!

but little did i realize, i was an artist at heart. i loved being involved with creative projects. i loved being able to forge new ways of looking at old problems. i also found that i became very attached to my work. i sought affirmation from family and friends whenever i created something. i soon discovered that i had an artistic temperament (see http://www.ptypes.com/artistic.html for more info) too. this all happened over my four years in design and now i am proud to call myself an artist. in fact, if you were to say to me that i wasn't an artist, i would get offended. oh how that tables have turned. case in point, a while back, i went out for dinner with some people from my old church. we were catching up and somehow it got to a point where someone was saying i wasn't an artist, that i was just a computer person. i tried to explain that i was an artist, but the person wouldn't listen and insisted that i wasn't. i actually got upset at that remark and that seriously surprised me. i didn't bother trying to further the discussion because the person just didn't get it. understand that being an artist doesn't mean you're good at fine arts. being an artist can mean a lot of things: you're a musician, you're a dancer, you're a photographer, you're a designer, you're a sculptor, you're an actor, you're a videographer, you're a painter, you're a set designer, you're a lighting manager, you're a writer, the list could go on and on. if you can't get that, you don't understand what an artist is. and sadly, some people just don't get it. my definition of an artist is someone who exercises creativity.

i believe that God created us all with creativity. some people would probably disagree with me, but if we were made in the image of God, that must include creativity! after all, God create the entire universe and everything in it from NOTHING. creativity could range from painting, to writing poetry, to thinking about something in a fresh way.

do i think everyone is an artist? no. some people don't exercise creativity. it's unfortunate. they do as they're told. they follow the straight and narrow. they are linear. the see things for what they are.

3. learning about my passion for arts ministry
it's hard to pinpoint where my passion for arts ministry developed, but i know it was because of my exposure and background in design that triggered it and brought it my consciousness. mind you, i've always had an appreciation for music, drama, movies, video, and some types of dance ever since i was a kid. though i was in design, i didn't have much appreciation for it because i used to think design was a complete waste of time, because it was so transient in nature. but i realized that it could be a very useful tool in ministry to attract attention and get people interested in certain things. being in design helped me appreciate other visual mediums like fine art.

in addition, watching 7:22 on a weekly basis, attending urbana 2000 and watching the webcast of urbana 2003 really gave me a glimpse into arts in ministry and how powerful they could be. last year, my church invited me to go the willowcreek 2004 arts conference. i went because of my passion for music, but little did i know that God would reveal to me that arts ministry was something i really did have a passion for. it was at that conference where everything just clicked, where everything made sense (you can read my entry called "inspired (willowcreek 2005 arts conference reflection) for more on that).

final words
had i listened to myself and done what was wise in my own eyes (and the eyes of other people), i would have missed out on so much. i would have never known all the things i just listed above. God is indeed faithful and knows the best for all of us. so friends, let me challenge you with this one thought. if God calls you to step out in faith, no matter how crazy, how absurd, how preposterous it might seem to you (and everyone else), obey Him, trust Him, have faith in His promises. you have no idea what God will do and what He'll show and reveal to you. having the privilege to step out in faith is the most exciting thing you could ever do because that's when you are better able to see God move (because we know that anything that happens is a result of the grace and mercy of God). i am a living testimony of that.

"Lord, if it's you," peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."
"come," he said.
then peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.
- matthew 14:28-29 [NIV]

Posted by Leo Chan at September 14, 2005 10:09 PM