A ministry lesson God has taught me my years on staff is to be a great learner of people.
Chad Stewart
Denver Catalytic Team
Born in Garden City, Kansas, 26 years ago, Chad came to Christ at the ripe young age of six with his parents. His Dad has worked for John Deere so it would only make sense that Chad would be about the business of harvesting. During his college years at Kansas State University the Spirit moved his crop from corn and wheat to the hearts of men. It was here that Chris McKinney had a major influence in Chad's life. "A season of fruitfulness I remember most was living in the Lambda Chi Fraternity house. Chris McKinney was my first Bible study leader in college and we used to play this dice game for half the time, it was great!"
The other half of the time was spent in exegetical Bible study using the Arndt and Gingrich Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Chris would ask questions from the Torah in Hebrew and the guys could only answer questions in Aramaic or Koinea Greek.
(I don't know if that was true but it will distract Orlando HR from Chris and Chad's gambling problem.)
After graduating from K-State, Chad eventually came west to Colorado where he has served on the Denver Catalytic team with his beautiful wife Bekah for the past three years and is loving staff life in the harvest. "I think one of the greatest opportunities on staff is to live with other staff couples on project. A favorite memory from last summer on project was playing volleyball on the Black Sea with Curtis Brink. I also love getting to work with my wife and going on many outdoor adventures with Eric Heistand."
For more facts and interests about this Kansas kid who went from riding tractors to Lightrail go to the right and click on the profile section.
In celebration of the Easter weekend we have a special competition. Instead of a photograph, our Gravel Road of the Month is a watercolor by Frances Burleson, of Kerrville, Texas. It is not in the United States but was a gravel road where a couple of disciples received some dynamic development on the first Easter. Be the first Bible scholar to name the road and one of the disciples and you will receive a copy of the book of the month, "The Ragamuffin Gospel" by Brennan Manning.
The first Easter morning involved only a few people going to do a sunrise service rather than attend one. The baskets (if there were any) carried spices for embalming rather than colorful gifts and treats for snacking. The hunt for brightly dyed eggs wouldn't come for centuries, but the search for a corpse immediately became the order of the day when an empty tomb was discovered. And it was one of those "seekers" (in fact the only person mentioned in all four Gospel accounts of that historical day) who best embodied the awesome power and purpose of what is the true meaning of Easter. For most of her adult life she had replaced any hope of finding secure love with the temporal security and profit of one night stands as a prostitute. To be used as a form of physical recreation by men and then discarded like unwanted waste was a way of life. It had left her calloused to affectionate ties and benign to romantic notions. She was a whore resigned to the lower strata of society who could only find value and esteem in few and fleeting clandestine moments.
Then Mary Magdalene heard the Words and saw the life of Jesus Christ. In experiencing His forgiveness and acceptance her life was filled with qualities she had long given up as childish whims, things like love, worth, and hope. It was that relationship that compelled her to be one of the first to go to the tomb that first Easter morning.
Brennan Manning uses Mary as an example of what he calls the ragamuffin gospel:
“On Good Friday she watched as the man she loved got blown away in the most brutal and dehumanizing fashion. The focus of her attention however was not on suffering but the suffering Christ 'who loved me and delivered himself up for me.' The love of Jesus was a burning and divine reality to her: she would have been buried in history as some unknown hooker save for the Christ encounter.
The unique place that Magdalene occupies in the history of discipleship owes not to her mysterious love for Jesus but to the miraculous transformation that his love wrought in her life. She simply let herself be loved. The central truth for which Mary’s life has come to stand is that it is possible to be delivered through love from the lowest depths to the shining heights where God dwelleth. Where sin abounded grace abounded all the more.
We do well to join Mary that Christianity is not primarily a moral code but a grace laden mystery; it is not essentially a philosophy of love but a love affair; it is not keeping rules with clenched fists but receiving a gift with open hands.”
Somewhere between Good Friday and the resurrection morning, we need to take the time to ponder and reflect on where our life would be today if we had not had the same encounter with Jesus that Mary had. The longer we contemplate that potential, the stronger we celebrate the Truth that He has risen- He has risen indeed!
-Bert
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