This morning, I woke just before the Kenyan sunrise to join Gladys and Martin, two students at Africa International University, and a few of my colleagues for a run through and around the campus. Martin is from South Sudan and is working on his doctorate at AIU. He desires to return to South Sudan after his studies are complete. His country faces many new challenges with its recent independence, and Martin believes that the church must play a vital role in stabilizing the country. Gladys is finishing a Master's degree and is training to make the Kenyan Olympic team as a marathoner. 

We started off at a jog, rolling over the gravel and dirt road that extends from the center of the university campus to the main gate. Things were feeling good. I'd not run in a week, I had adjusted to the time, and the morning was cool. At about the one-mile point, I gave myself a quick check-up. I'm not used to running early in the morning. Nor am I used to running at 6200 feet. In the end, it was the elevation, not the hour, that did me in.

After 2 miles, I had to pull up. Two of my compadres slowed with me, but it was Gladys that surprised me. Standing at the top of the hill that bested me, she started clapping and motioning me to come on. Head down, I picked up my feet and caught up to her. She wouldn't let me drop. She ran just off my shoulder for the rest of the run. When I slowed, she simply put her hand out from her side, palm forward, beckoning me to pick up my pace again. She ran me in the rest of the way.

In a very real way, she was giving me a lesson in discipleship. She is a much better runner than I. She knows it, and so do I. Yet when I started to flag on the journey, she adjusted her pace to fit mine and then pulled me along. Also notable is what she didn't do. She didn't regress to where I was. She's an elite level athlete. She didn't pretend that she wasn't better conditioned and more experienced than me. Nor did she let me set the pace for long. She slowed to what I could handle, but kept on increasing the pace, gently coaxing more out of me.

In Christianity, discipleship works the same way. We invite people into the journey that we, too, are on. Whether they are consider themselves "runners" or not doesn't matter. We are runners and so we run. The simple act of invitation to run alongside us is all that is needed to start discipleship. One cannot become a runner until one begins to run. But somewhere, if they stay on the path long enough, their identity changes.

Jesus started discipling with the simple command to come and follow. Let's not make it more difficult than it needs to be. Who's running alongside you?

View from the top of Cooper Mountain, looking south. Credit: M.O. Stevens

My job is quite different from anything I've done vocationally before. Still in the early months, I'm finding that at least once a week I get overwhelmed by the differences. Up until a few months ago, my jobs were in ministry and largely relational. Now I build course sites and manage social media for a doctoral program. While I possessed all the raw ability to perform the job before I was hired, actually employing those skills in a way that is productive and contributes to the success and mission of the various programs is proving harder than I anticipated. 

Sure, there is a learning curve or ramp-up period or whatever you'd like to call it. My supervisor (who is also a subscriber to this blog - hi LK!) expects that it may take up to a full year before I really feel like I have a handle on the rhythms inherent in the workflow. I'm fortunate to have some grace there. That being said, I still have some frustrating days where I feel like I'm all thumbs. I had one of those days yesterday.

As I was running, I kept thinking back to that book Isolation I mentioned in a recent post. The author writes about a process she calls "stripping," during which someone in isolation is stripped of their vocationally-grounded identity. I didn't think there was much left to strip, to tell you the truth. A lot of that was done during my exit from my last job in March.

What I found though, as my shoes beat out a rhythm on the pavement, is that even in these last few months I've been trying to form my identity around my new job. I pick up new things pretty easily. I understand what is required of me in this job and am confident I possess the skills and tools necessary to do it well. So when I have days where I feel like I'm not doing it well, it feels like a blow to my ego. 

The stripping process is intended to get you down to the core of who you are so that God can root you in Him, for that's where a follower of Christ really finds his or her identity. It is the only antidote to ministry-centered identity. And maybe that's just the point. Instead of defining myself and finding my value in what I do, I need to finally learn who I am. 

The author of the post was talking about how during training it is easy to become distracted by hitting pace or mileage goals. What gets overlooked is the value of time on the feet, of constant forward motion. I have to admit, since getting a GPS watch a couple years ago I've become reliant on the real-time feedback. I find that I'm constantly glancing down to see what my pace is or how much distance I've covered. 

I've never really run with people. I mean, in races I'm surrounded by people, but it's a stretch to say I'm running with them. It's more running in the midst of them.