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Beginning of Comm Project

Index for Communication Project

BSU program director/ other group leadings)

My freshman year was largely an affirming one. My older brother had preceded me by a year at Murray State University (Murray, KY in western Ky.), and he was very active in the Baptist Student Union. His involvement was also accompanied by his soon to be fiance", whom he had dated exclusively for the past 3 years, and she was the daughter of our home town church's associate pastor. It seemed people were impressed with this "younger brother" of David, who seemed to have an intelligent faith. (My brother was a "jock-type" who also was rather macho; not obnoxiously so, but not given to a lot of piety or seeking after deep discussion.). The first BSU student council elections I experienced in the spring of my first year saw me nominated and selected as program chairperson, a rarity for freshmen. (The BSU had about 100 active members, and we had "vespers" twice a week)

During the first couple of years in the BSU, I began to turn from a rather conservative, dogmatic kind of understanding of the faith to a more "relational", "humanistic" kind of emphasis, influenced in no small part by the likes of Keith Miller , Bruce Larson, and Robert Raines, early spokespersons for what was known as the "lay renewal movement". After my second year, further influence came in the long discussions at the house of one of the leaders in my high school youth group about the kind of model existed in The Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. I began keeping a journal, and found that I was to have an outlet for expression that I was to continue for the rest of my life .

The Church of the Saviour often spoke of disciplines, and a small group of us covenanted to meet together on Friday nights during the college semester and exchanged spiritual autobiographies, personal visions of the church, and what we wanted to become as a group. We never moved out with any "mission", and perhaps this was what kept the group from moving on. I think we allowed it to dissolve because it had started bringing us closer, and we didn't really know how to move deeper. We were all the same age (20), and I guess weren't sure where to go from where we were. But I had gotten a taste of community and caring that I have never known since.

There have been profound community experiences, but none which had that sense of accountability to each other to continue and check on each other. Even though it eventually dissolved, I was not happy with the movement away from the commitment to each other, but what could I say? I tried to defend the continuance of the group, but I also felt deep down that it must have been largely due to me-that the other two didn't want to get closer to me (they were male and female, and were a couple, and I felt rather close to both of them---- (I still often wonder where they are and how they see things now. The last time I saw them was 10 ½ years ago at my wedding (and at that time, it had been 5 years since I had seen them). On the one hand, I was very hurt by the end of the "covenant", but I was also very profoundly changed by the stories of the ministry and community of The Church of the Saviour, and our explorations of "Our Many Selves" (a book of self-observation spiritual exercises written by Elizabeth O' Connor, who wrote many books centering on that community.) I continued to read all of her books through "Cry Pain, Cry Hope" in 1987. If she's written since then, I have missed it. But if I were to find another writing of hers, I know I'd be reading it, because she has a way of "calling forth the deeps" in me (as she is oft known to write).