An Open Letter to CSF


Dear CSF,

I love you. I love what this community has become and I love where this community is going. I just want to write you a heartfelt letter. Being one who is on the way out after serving for four years at CSF, I have a few insights to encourage and exhort you. This isn’t a letter from someone older and wiser. There are plenty of other people who can take that role. This isn’t a letter from someone who is looking to change something. I want God to do His will. This is simply a humble message and reflection on our community. If you are older and wiser than me, I pray you would have patience with this; I’m still learning. I hope the following words can be encouraging and directing as I hope to “spurn you to good works.” The following are a few encouragements and exhortations for our beautiful community as a whole.

Encouragement: Cornerstone
God truly is the foundation of why CSF exists. In everything CSF does, the primary focus is making Jesus famous and inviting God to come alive in us. When I look at CSF, I see a city on a hill. Even though the outside of the building is tiny, antediluvian, and a tad grungy, the inside is teeming with love and life. I give thanks for all of you for Christ is shining through you. Our community truly works towards being a colony of Heaven here on earth. So be encouraged my lovely community, for you are the beautiful bride of Christ. Continue to let Jesus be the foundation of all you do!

Exhortation: Devilish Division
Satan hates our community. He absolutely hates it. Don’t be fooled: the enemy is hard at work in every sort of manner and method to divide what Christ unites. I admonish you not to give way to the enemy’s schemes. Please realize that beneath the surface of our community, a spiritual battle rages on. Through means of gossip, slander, dissension, dissatisfaction, division, deceit, and self-awareness, the enemy is attempting to disarm and disappoint us. Be aware that when you gossip and discourage, you do the enemy’s work for him. Ask yourself before you speak: “Will these words hinder and discourage this person or this community in any way? Or will these words give life and be uplifting?” Please realize, as one who has seen every sort of crazy attempt to divide our community in the last four years, I know the enemy will not rest. Be strong. Seek Peace. Encourage unendingly. Pray always.

Encouragement: Fun Times
This is a fun community. For real. CSF specializes in having a good time. From water balloon fights to rooftop raves, from assassins to totting, from roofball to spikeball, CSF lives and thrives on rejoicing, playing, and laughing. Thank you all for dancing, pancake-ing, frisbee-ing, and inner tube water polo-ing with me. I have no doubt that years down the road, I’ll brag about all the fun we had as a community. Joy is the serious business of heaven, and at CSF, we take our business seriously.

Exhortation: Honeymooning
No, I’m not speaking about what I’ll be doing here in 3 months or so. I am speaking of an interesting phenomenon that plagues any sort of endeavor. When I first arrived at CSF, everything was fresh, new, and exciting. There was nothing wrong with CSF. Everything was sunny, splendid, and magical. But as the years went on, my jaded honeymoon sight wore off and I was able to see CSF for what it was, a community with struggles and ambitions, strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, the newness of entering CSF jades someone, allowing the startling realization that this community isn’t perfect to startle and disappoint us. Friends, there will come a point when you will feel like CSF has more wrong with it than it does right. Please don’t let this feeling coerce you into either leaving the community or speaking poorly of it. Just like you’ll never find a perfect spouse, you’ll never find a perfect church this side of heaven. Despite our flaws, CSF has something really special going on here. Don’t let your extended familiarity with this community prevent you from being grateful and devout. Several Christians succumb to an unfortunate consumerist mentality with their community: This community isn’t what I thought it was, so I’m leaving. This community has done me wrong. Either this community will change or my involvement will. I exhort you, dear CSF, love this imperfect community despite its inconsistencies, its flaws, and its disappointments. As your honeymoon phase with this community wears off, don’t let your affection, encouragement, and involvement follow suit.

Encouragement: Growth
We are growing! Every year it’s the same exciting news: This is the biggest class of leaders we’ve had. This is the biggest retreat we’ve done. This is the biggest water balloon fight, spring break, Synergy, etc. God has been moving in our community and we are growing. This is an exciting time for CSF. I just want to encourage you that the growth of CSF is not solely the brilliance of the staff, or the donations of the old people, or the leadership of Brian Marshall (though all those things really help and are crucial), but because the Holy Spirit is working through all of us to bear fruit and spread the gospel. Because we, as a community, have taken up the commandment to love God and love one another, our community has been like an orchard of fresh fruit, renewing itself year after year in even greater numbers. Keep up the good work and remember it’s not the numbers that matter, but the spiritual life in our community.

Exhortation: Keep the Change
Because our community is growing, things are changing. Unfortunately, we tend to dislike change. Change isn’t comfortable. Change isn’t easy. Change requires sacrifice. As a 4 year veteran of CSF, I’ve found myself wishing things were like the good ol’ days when everybody knew everybody and it was easy to feed everyone. The truth is, we all have a little bit of ‘hipster’ in us. When things change, we retaliate. But Jesus doesn’t ask us to keep things the same. Our life with Christ is a journey, not a camp-out. If we aren’t moving forward, we’ll find ourselves slipping backward. So please community (especially you older readers), don’t mind the change. Embrace it. Don’t mourn over how things were, be thankful for how far they’ve come. We need to allow Jesus to do what He wants with this community. The Holy Spirit, like the wind, blows wherever He desires. Resisting change is like chasing the wind.

Encouragement: Diverse City
CSF is full of characters. Our community is diverse and thriving. We talk funny, we laugh funny, and we dance funny. I love CSF because it is a collection of different expressions of God’s character. Every person in our community is a unique expression of who God is, found nowhere else in existence. Our community is like none other because every person is like no other. I am thankful for this community because we celebrate our differences and rejoice in our likeness. We are a collection of goofy sinners seeking grace rather than a museum of saints seeking religion. Thank you CSF; you are a unique, lively, and crazy crowd.

Exhortation: Meal Packing
Freshman year, CSF poured into me like a fire hose into a teacup. With a whole ministry devoted to freshman, I felt special and loved. Every Shift was encouraging, every Shift group meeting was life giving, and every Synergy was awe-inspiring. Sophomore year, I was so excited to both pour out into other freshman and be poured into in my Core group. CSF still felt like a place of learning and receiving. However, as I got older, wiser, and more mature, things began to change. CSF no longer filled me up. The CSF activities, which used to be a waterfall of life, now seemed to be a sinkhole of drainage. Unfortunately, this happens to most in our community. We grow and we grow and we grow until we are too big to fit in the spiritual clothes that the CSF activities offer. Now, I am the one pouring, giving, and serving with very little people pouring into me. Service no longer has that fun and exciting shine around it. Rather, it can be boring, hard, and uninteresting. Many who experience this suddenly find distaste with CSF because it no longer offers much value to them. They stop attending Synergy and retreats. They stop getting excited about pancakes and parties. Everything seems dull and old hat. But when this happens, we’ve reached the point when our job is no longer to consume the spiritual meals Synergy and so on have to offer, but to pack meals for those to come after us. When CSF no longer satisfies our hunger, we complain that it’s changed and become more watered down when really our appetite has changed.

Community, please hear me when I say that if you have come to the point where Synergy, and retreats, and trips, and parties no longer give you life, it is time for you to start giving others life. You’ve enjoyed eating for long enough. It’s time to start serving. So many in our community can easily find a bad taste in their mouth because they no longer get what they used to. Jesus encourages us to persevere and let Him be our nourishment so we can feed others. You’ve been taught to feed yourself with Christ. Now it’s time to go feed others.

Encouragement: Welcome Home
CSF makes people feel at home. Many in our community do an extraordinary job at making people feel welcome and loved. People come into our community and they see how well we love each other. People see what we have and think “I want some of that!” Thank you CSF for being so open and inviting. “The Stump” at Winter Retreat was a clear indicator that people come from all over to CSF and are immediately immersed in real, authentic, life-giving community. CSF has been an amazing home for me and others for the past 4 years. It’s no wonder that every winter and summer break, I find myself yearning to return to the community here. Your love is addicting. As Rachel and I look to find a new home here in a little while, we can only hope that we find a community as endearing and welcoming as this one. Thank you.

Exhortation: Clique Calamity
Unfortunately, with a community as large as ours, cliques are inevitable. I’ve noticed there are seasons in my life where I am incredibly focused on making others feel encouraged, loved, and welcomed and other seasons where I am so inwardly focused I don’t even care about the person crying next to me. The challenge for us is to be grouped inclusively. There is no way to stop our natural habit to form social circles, but we can control how easy it is for people to come and go. Our social circles need to be fluid and open rather than rigid and closed. As a community of Christ, we must always be aware of how inclusive we are. I can offer no simple solution except to understand that we have the tendency to become cliquey. Look no further than post-Synergy or post-608 to see physical circles of people. Is that bad? Absolutely not. But the trouble comes when those circles never change or intertwine or invite others. Please community, do everything in your power to keep our social landscape open so God’s love can flow through us. We are meant to be streams of living water, not ponds.

Encouragement: Staff Strength
CSF would be nothing without its amazing staff. We don’t give the staff enough credit. They go through all the grunt work, long meetings, and paper pushing it takes to keep CSF running as smoothly as it does. In fact, I’ve noticed that our wonderful staff even sacrifices their own spiritual walks with Christ to benefit us. I know several staff members who are weary, tried and tired physically, emotionally, and spiritually, all for us.  How humbling is that?! I am so thankful for the many staff members who have postponed their own personal dreams and careers just so they can give life to ours. So be thankful for the staff and do what they say. Their hearts are pure and their intentions are for people to know Christ and experience His love. Be thankful for the CSF staff, and if you can, give them a big ol’ hug. They deserve it.

Exhortation: Service Sluggishness
This last exhortation is for the CSF leaders, myself included. Because of the reasons listed—and many more—we as leaders don’t give as much as we could. We’ve grown so big that we’ve all succumbed to the idea that someone else will do what needs to be done. Someone else will get to know that new person at Synergy. Someone else will go to that focus meeting. Someone else will clean-up. Someone else will do this and someone else will do that. When we all have this mentality—and many times, we have—no one else steps up. We need to be the first to want to serve, to love, to encourage, and to bring peace and not leave someone else the responsibility.

I am no saint. In fact, I’m probably more guilty than most. If I were to get on the stump in front of all of CSF, it would be to confess that I haven’t been that great of a CSF Leader. We get caught up in our own lives too easily. We enjoy the comfort of friends we’ve already made rather than meeting someone new. We settle for the excuse of busyness when we have more time now than we may ever have. We allow ourselves to discount the importance of our attendance and attention. My hope for us as leaders is that we take our commitments seriously and let our ‘yes’ be yes and our ‘no’ be no. I’d rather have a group of 40 committed leaders than a group of 400 apathetic ones. But I needn’t rant on. I just want us to make sure we are giving our lives to Christ, our community, and each other rather than our own selfish ambitions.

THANK YOU
But I shall not end this letter on a down note because all that God’s done through this community far outweighs any that’s gone wrong. CSF is such a beautiful and wonderful place. I thank each and every person at CSF for the amazing fellowship, the incredible friendship, and the undeserving love I’ve received. You all have been too good to me. I am so excited because I know that God is going to use you to do far greater things than I ever did during my short time here.