Holiness.
I’ve been chewing on this one today … gnawing away and swallowing bites of something I don’t fully understand but something, nonetheless, I deeply desire –
to be like Jesus.
Getting there isn’t easy. The way of holiness often includes our weaknesses – the stuff within that needs to be rooted without. Exposure of those weaknesses is sometimes painful but can also be beautiful in ways that we never anticipated on the front side of disclosure.
Let me explain.
I want to thread a needle for you and show you a fascinating, most striking mosaic that is part of my story and that warms my heart deeply today in a space that fully needs the witness of its strength.
Not long ago, Jadon sent me a link to series of Wesleyan Theology lectures given by Dr. Ken Collins at the Baltic Methodist Theological Seminary in Estonia (dated 2019). Dr. Collins is a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary who once shared those hallowed hallways alongside my father-professor, Dr. Chuck Killian – two men linking arms to bear witness to the seminary’s motto “The Whole Bible for the Whole World.”
Ken Collins is now one of Jadon’s professors, along with being his mentor for candidacy in the Global Methodist Church. Ken is a world-renowned scholar in all things Methodism and communicates this passion with clarity and originality. Jadon likes his teaching style and, needing to fill my mind with good, God-thoughts, I decided to listen in.
The connectional thread of Jadon being at Asbury and being mentored by one of my father’s friends from ATS is mosaic enough to make me sit back and admire God’s providence in my family’s lives. But that’s not the thread that had me leaning in for a closer look today. Instead, and more deeply, the realization hit me about the lectern from which Ken taught – a classroom in Estonia in a seminary that my father helped establish.
In August 1994, my daddy taught the very first class at the Baltic Methodist Theological Seminary on the subject of “practical theology” to fifty-four eager students, hungry to fulfill their part in the Great Commission.
The facilities in Apteegi Street were extremely cramped. The single classroom was full from the start. Students sat on simple chairs, and took notes with their books on their knees. The dining area did not have sufficient seats, and so for lunch or coffee students were sitting on the stairs and in the window sills. The library was in a broom closet. Open the door and there was the librarian at her desk, with a few books on a shelf. Most of the books were in boxes in the basement. The office for the President, Dean, secretary and all the faculty was a partitioned area approximately 1.5metres (5 feet) wide by 4 meters (12 feet) long.
Students and faculty were literally rubbing shoulders all day, a closeness that created a very warm atmosphere. As well, the excitement generated by the newness of theological study made the Seminary tingle with excitement. Many of the first students were mature Christians and self-taught pastors who had dreamt of freedom during long years of communist occupation and of the chance to study and practice their faith free from oppression and persecution.
The more I listened to Dr. Collins speak about John Wesley and holiness, set against backdrop of the Baltic Methodist Theological Seminary, the more deeply my spirit was enlivened to the Spirit of God. A day that (for me) began in darkness suddenly shifted to a day full of light.
A day full of remembering my legacy. A day full of cultivating hope. A day of forgetting the hard purge of holiness and, instead, a day of relinquishing to its flames. Why?
Because there’s too much on the line by not submitting my life to Christ’s crucible.
What my daddy has left behind and what Ken Collins continues to do through his teaching and with my son is, indeed, a needle worth threading. I cannot fully put my finger on it, but my pulsing heart tells me that I’m on to something.
Daddy has long since left the hallways of Asbury Seminary and the Baltic Seminary. But there’s a piece of him still there in both places. Jadon in the former and Ken Collins in the latter. The echoes from both spaces deafen my ears with a ring of the eternal and paint a mosaic worthy of the throne room of heaven. Heaven, alone, counts the lives transformed by the faithfulness of a few willing servants.
What has happened in the past and what is happening in the present is, indeed, holy. From the inside out and the outside in, God makes himself known to his children. He shows up, sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes on a day when the darkness threatens to snuff out the light, and challenges us to go deeper with him toward a better life of freedom and understanding.
Oh yes, I want to be like Jesus, even when getting there is hard. Today, I think I moved a little closer in that direction. Today I traded in my vain imaginations for better thinking – a mind fixed on Jesus and what he wants me to know rather than on how the world and its people make me feel.
So, thanks be to God, to my daddy, to Jadon and to Ken Collins. Their work toward holiness has offered me a way forward toward mine.
The Whole Bible for the Whole World. Right here where I am. Right there where you are. May the kindness of God, the truth of his Son Jesus Christ, and the strength of his Holy Spirit rest on us all and pull us closer to his image this day. As always…
Peace for the journey,
[accessed 7-05-2024, https://www.emkts.ee/index.php/en/general/history]
wifeforthejourney:
It is remarkable how God continues to make His presence known in ways great and small. In this moment of longing for the holiness of God to be present in our own lives, I am both alternately discouraged by my personal inconsistencies, and amazed at God’s willingness to “show up.” This re-connection with Ken Collins is a strong demonstration of God’s “common thread” in life. At the same time, I can think of at least three other instances this week where God has made His presence known in more common occurrences. God’s grace and faithfulness are such that even when I may not be actively looking, He remains accessible. What a gift that we can still see the blessings of your mom and dad’s love for Christ, continuing to bless the third and fourth generations! ~ Billy
God’s assessment of us and his healing presence therein always trumps man’s assessment therein. I am thankful for the many ways our Father has loved us this week. I love you, husband.