This past Sunday we celebrated five years of Threshingfloor and our ministry to young adults and college students here in the Fargo-Moorhead area. Five years ago I moved from Brainerd to the FM area, not knowing what to expect beyond the fact that I was going to be studying creative writing and working to see people discipled to and in Jesus. So much has changed since then. I’ve learned a massive amount and changed as a person. We’ve seen people encounter Jesus for the first time, seen people with years as Christians explode into new season of growth, and made a whole lot of awesome friends.
The first few years of ministry here was all passion and almost no knowledge. Dorm room Bible studies, midnight conversations, all-night prayer sessions, leading Salem’s young adult Bible study all filled my life with the rush of doing what Jesus had placed me in Fargo to do. I juggled school, jobs, and ministry, going 1000 MPH all the time and loving it.
In those early years we gathered a team of people that had a passion for something that was truly soaked with the Gospel and reached the unreached in the name of Jesus. We didn’t know what we were doing, but we did we did it with zeal. We spent most of our time bouncing from idea to idea, trying to figure out where we were going.
Around my second year in Fargo I got married, graduated, and moved into working full time. It was a new learning experience and was, in all honesty, harder than the previous. Having a part time job and full time school along with ministry was somehow easier than working 40 hours a week and doing ministry. As I was forced to pull back from such a central role in Threshingfloor, we discovered the beauty of something that is lead by a team rather than an individual. People from within our communities stepped up and took on ministry, allowing us to launch a second community. It’s the power of Jesus that can grow what we can’t grow. His presence is the only necessary ingredient in the process of multiplication of disciples.
For this past year as I’ve moved from working full time and doing ministry to functioning as a full-time missionary to young adults in the Midwest, there’s been increased spiritual warfare. As I was preparing to write this post I looked back over my previous year-of-labor posts that I wrote and posted the first few years here in Fargo. Reading those paragraphs from years ago, I can’t help but see my passion for what we were doing. That passion still resonates in my soul, but it’s different. My passion is still there but it has been tempered and has changed keys.
Three years ago I wrote that Kelly and I had maybe two more years in the FM area and that we wanted to see the city significantly changed when we left. It’s been three years, and (by my estimation), there hasn’t been that significant change – no huge movement or gathering of thousands. But there are lives that have been deeply impacted by our work. I love to hear and share the stories of those that we’ve gotten to shepherd closer to Jesus.
At Threshingfloor’s five year celebration on Sunday we gathered the six people who were a part of the original core that grew into Threshingfloor. We spent 20 minutes doing a panel discussion to share some memories and thoughts looking back over the years. During our panel discussion, Kelly gave advice for people to commit and be faithful to the ministry that God has called them to.
Her words resonate with me. More than zeal or flights of passion, faithfulness resounds in my soul. It’s not possible to set your sights too high when God is in the picture, but it is far better to be steadfast and faithful and have deep, current shifting impact in a few lives than flit from one thing to the next and be a drop of water on the surface of an ocean. I believe that we’ve been faithful – not perfect, but definitely faithful – to the work of Christ within Threshingfloor. That is something that God has and will bless.
Five years of labor have passed. Who knows how many more for us here. Regardless, we want to be faithful and steadfast.
Where does God have you today? If you’re young and new, ride your passions and let them empower you for those 1000 hours poured out, but set your sights on long-term faithfulness. The kingdom of God is an oak tree, not a flower in the field. It will grow and fill the block with shade, but such things take time. Remain steadfast. Don’t step out of the race moments before breakthrough is achieved.
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