speaking
Posted by Drew | Filed under General
A week from today I’ll be speaking at La Porta, which is our campus ministry’s twice-monthly Bible study. Gary is our campus director and usually speaks, but will be out of town for that meeting. I don’t have a great deal of speaking experience, but I have done it a few times. The crowd likely won’t be very intimidating, 20-25 people at most, and a third of them will be my teammates. I’ll be speaking on Mark 8 where Jesus asks His disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” I hope that it produces good discussion and challenges students to seek to answer the question of Christ’s identity for themselves.
4 years ago I was a little over ambitious as we began ministry at the University of Salerno. We were the first STINT team in the city, and I was the only team member with any experience in Italy having served the previous year in Pisa. My ambition showed when I volunteered to lead our weekly meetings in Italian. Looking back I regret the decision for several reasons, but it was a good learning experience, and the Italian students showed me a lot of grace. But all three meetings ended with me taking typed script I had prepared beforehand with the help of extensive editing from my Italian friend, Renzo, and reading directly from it. A friend offered consolation in the fact that the great Puritan pastor Jonathan Edwards read his sermons every Sunday. But my guess is that he didn’t mispronounce nearly so many words as I did during those meetings.
I hope next Tuesday, after roughly 18 months more experience living in Italy, my Italian will be comprehensible and students will hear from God’s Word. Thanks for your prayers.
