Friendship

Today, I am going to try to tackle a few tough questions concerning friendships. Now some of these may not seem like tough questions at first but they really are important and will have a huge impact on each individual’s life. I am going to start off in a general sense and then maybe become more specific to a certain demographic. The question you must first ask yourself is “How do I choose my friends?” This question is an extremely easy one for me to answer. I befriend those who want to befriend me. If I initially try to be friends with someone and they don’t really seem all that interested (meaning they don’t message me back on facebook or don’t really talk to me on a personal level) than I decide that I don’t really need to pursue that friendship any further. My friends up to this point have always been made on circumstance. When I first went to college I met the people my brother hung out with and became friends with them, and would then become friends with their friends and so forth. I am probably one of the worst people ever at making friends. I have been in New Orleans now for about two months and would really say that I have only one person that I really consider my friend. Pretty sad huh? It isn’t like I don’t want friends. I try to talk to people, but with they don’t seem interested I back off. Anyway that isn’t what this post is about. After you think some about the question of how you choose friends we should examine the question of how we should choose friends. Is there a specific set of criteria that we should look for in friends? Should we only become friends with a certain kind of people? After we look at that we should try to think about what makes a friend a friend. At what point does a friend cross over the boundary of acquaintanceship into the realm of a beloved friend?

How should we choose friends? In my collegiate ministry class today, we discussed how some people choose friends. I found my way of choosing friends to be unique. No one else in my class ever discussed choosing friends just by who wants to be friends with them. Now I am not saying my way is right. Quite the contrary, by results, my way is not right at all but far from it. Some of the other people in the class chose their friends based on similar interests. If a person has the same major as you, it seems that maybe they have some of the same thoughts and views as you do. It is easiest to become friends with people that you relate to. Maybe this way does not really work for me because I don’t really relate to anyone. Haha. What kind of impact does choosing friends have? To me, it seems like choosing friends is one of the biggest decisions a person can make. Real friends are going to be there for every aspect of your life. They are going to go through your darkest moments with you. They are going to be there to celebrate the best moments of your life. In essence, they are going to help shape the person that you become. So, with such an important decision, how should we choose our friends? To me we should ask the question, how did Jesus choose his friends? That is a good question. He didn’t choose people who had the same beliefs. He did not choose people for their looks or social status. He did not choose people by who could offer him the most benefit. Jesus did not necessarily even choose the most trustworthy people (Judas, Peter). Jesus chose his friends through prayer. Jesus prayed. I don’t know that God is going to send down any divine revelations about who our friends should be, but it is certainly a good place to start. Maybe we should simply expand our horizon when it comes to making friends. Jesus befriended prostitutes and tax collectors. Yet churches today completely shun those people from even entering their doors. Do you really think Jesus would want a homosexual turned away from church because they are different? Because they choose to have a lifestyle that we think is the wrong kind of lifestyle to have?

What should a friend be once they become a friend? What defines a friend? To me a friend is someone who you can trust, who you know will be there for you no matter what with absolutely no complaints, and someone who you can tell anything to without the slightest hint of judgment. A friend is someone loves you for who you are no matter what you have done. The bible defines a friend as being loyal (Proverbs 18:24), honest (Proverbs 24:26), and forgiving (Colossians 3:13). An important lesson to learn, however, is how to live alone. How to be comfortable enough with yourself to not have to have people surrounding you all the time. To be able to do things along is a sign of maturity (one that I have not really learned yet). But friendships sometimes don’t last forever. Sometimes people will grow apart, and it is important to have that social connection to have other people to fall back on when this happens. Friends are one of the most important aspects of life. Without friends I would be a completely unhappy and terrible person to be around. Friends keep me grounded. Friends keep me humble. But most of all friends keep me happy. What do your friends do for you? IF they don’t life you up constantly, maybe you should invest the time to make some new ones.

Why college students?

Why college students? What makes a college minister so much different than ministers of other kinds? Well that is a very good question. I believe that college age students are poised more than any others to impact the world. Am I saying that college students are the only ones that can change the world? Heck no. That is not what I mean at all. The answer is simple. Well maybe not that simple. Before we examine why college age people are better poised than others, let’s look at those other groups. I am going to simply divide them into two categories. There are the youth, which are younger than college students, and seasoned adults, which are older than college students. When I say college age, I am referring to ages 18-25ish. Let’s start with youth. Go talk to some youth in your church. Ask them why they are there. Ask them to give you an honest answer. The majority of youth (and I am basing this assumption on personal experience) go to church because their parents make them. Very few middle school kids would consciously choose to wake up early on a Sunday (one of their two days off) morning and go to church to hear a guy in a suit talk about a book (the Bible) they really can’t understand anyway. Youth have the potential to change the world, but not really the resources or the drive to do so. Now let’s look at the older adults. Why can’t older adults change the world? They can. Of course they can. However, the older a person gets the more the potential for world changing events lessens. Older adults have had their chance to change the world. They have made their life choices and cannot really go back in change them. Most adults are going to already have their major theologies and philosophies nailed down. The older a person gets, the less adaptive, the less open to change they become. It is hard for a person who has lived a long life to break down the walls of their own mind and let Jesus do the work he wants done. It is hard for an older person to really change their minds and be open to change. They are so engrained in their beliefs that the opportunities they are going to be presented with will most likely be missed. So what makes college age people so poised to alter the very fabric of the world?? They CHOOSE to be where they are. No one forces them to go to church or bible studies or prayer meetings. A friend may strongly suggest they come, but ultimately they make the conscious decision that they need to be at those meetings. These people have a set of basic beliefs and principles that they have gathered from life experience and through various other sources. Not many college students are so engrained in their beliefs that they are not open to any other options. If they are in college, they are there to pursue an education. They are there for knowledge. Knowledge can be gained outside of a classroom. College is when people start to make decisions that can impact the rest of their life. Obviously high school students can make life altering decisions too, but these decisions are limited. The decisions college age adults make are completely limitless. College students are training to be the future leaders of this world. They are standing on the edge of a chasm of world change. All they have to do is jump and the world will never be the same. They will not die from this fall, but they will soar into unknown realms of thought that will bring so many new insights that will completely alter the very fabric of how the world functions. College students are the future (the near future anyway). Letting Jesus Christ work through these adults will set them down a road that will impact millions.

Welcome to NOLA

First of all, this is my first experience in trying out having a blog. I really would not have time to have a blog at all, but this blog is qualifying as a class assignment, so that got me extremely interested. Although it does fulfull a class requirement, that is not at all my sole purpose in creating a blog. I have a lot of thoughts and beliefs that may or may not be able to benefit the world. But how will I know their impact if I don't attempt to share them?

I will start off my hopefully soon to be popular blog by simply telling random stuff about myself and who I am. My name is Kevin Sattler. I am a 22 year old student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in (you guessed it) New Orleans, Louisiana. Telling everything about myself at the onset would be a long and arduous process and I do not want to overburden a first time reader with facts so as to turn them off every reading again. I really want this blog to get out there in the world. Not for my own benefit by any means, but so that something can be accomplished or set in motion that could have an impact on the world. I am a first year graduate student getting my Masters of Divinity in Collegiate Ministry. I recently (May 2010) graduated from Arkansas State University (Go Red Wolves!) with degree in Philosophy and a minor in Religious Studies. I am planning on joining the Army as a Chaplain once my years of seminary are over. Whether or not a serve in the Army for simply four years or for much longer will depend on the calling God places on me at the time. I cannot know the future (thankfully), so I cannot really presuppose any actions that I may or may not take at any moment happening after this one. This is not at all my entire story. That would take a ridiculously long time. And you would have stop reading by now. Hopefully, that has not happened yet. As I blog more and more, my life story will unfold bit by bit and hopefully have an impact on yours.

I need to clarify something that I probably should have clarified at the beginning. I am a Chrisitian. There are certain aspects of Christianity that I will (as Pastor Rob Wilton) die on. Some things are absolutely true and cannot be changed. However, do not be turned off immediately if you are not a Christian. On the contrary, I would certainly love for you to keep reading. As a philosopher, I respect and try my best to understand all views over all issues (which I should tell you is an impossible task!!) and keep an open mind about all of the issues that are not certain. A lot of my blogs will be for my Guiding Collegians in Their Faith Pilgrammage class. Meaning I will be covering specific topics relating to how to practically implement certain practices into a collegiate ministry setting. These things will be from a college minister's perspective. If you are a college minister, feel free to try them out with your group of collegians. If you are not a college minister, you can skip them if you want. However, they will probably give a little bit of insight into how my brain works (which isn't very well sometimes) so if you want to know me, you might want to take an interest in them. I will also blog about things that happen in my day or maybe about something I read and contemplated about something biblical or whatnot. Many blogs will probably be random. Others will be structured and hopefully helpful.

Well that is it for my introductory (and first one ever) blog. I hope you will continue reading all of them. Or at least some of them every once in a while. Feel free to comment or email me with any questions or thoughts or prayer requests or absolutely anything you feel like chatting about. Thanks!!!