SAN FRANCISCO (BP)–There was a great deal of talk about feet recently at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.
There were dozens of pairs of shoes strewn across the platform of the chapel and scattered on the tables of a coffeehouse. There were images on screen of all kinds of feet: bare feet splashing into a lake, sandaled feet crossed in rest or standing next to each other in weariness, muscled feet climbing over rocks.
It was “Those Kind of Feet,” the 2002 world missions conference at Golden Gate Seminary, during which 200 university students from across the western United States learned about and prayed for the kind of feet Isaiah wrote about: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news.”
The conference, at the seminary’s San Francisco Campus in Mill Valley, Calif., Feb. 15-17, helped students gain a broader perspective of global missions.
International missionary Steve James, who ministers among people groups in Great Britain and Ireland, cited the New Testament passage in John 13 about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
“Who was in the room when Jesus washed all those feet?” he asked the students at the Friday evening session. “Judas, right? Here’s a question for us to think about: Do we, when we go out to wash feet, choose whose feet we wash? No. We don’t. God does. God chooses whose feet we wash — our task is just to wash the feet of whomever God puts in front of us.”
That task, James insisted, is one believers must do immediately. “The next step in having ‘those kind of feet’ is obedience to whatever God has asked you to do right now, at this moment. If you’re interested in missions, you had better be doing it now, because it is not going to get easier when you’re ‘over there.’ You have to be obedient in the here and now first.”
James’ call to immediate response was echoed in the testimony of Marie Kennedy, a Golden Gate music student who served on a mission trip last summer to Kenya.
“We have trouble trusting God — I know I do, anyway,” she said at the Saturday evening session. “Last year, I just wanted, so badly, for God to just come out and tell me what he wanted to do with my life, not keep me in the dark any longer. And what I learned in Kenya was that God just wanted me to trust him with a little bit — just a little bit — and he could take me miles with that. Now my husband and I are hoping to serve fulltime in Kenya!
“Trust him with just two weeks, or one summer, or next month,” she encouraged the students. “It’s hard to lay down your whole life at once when you don’t know what that means. That’s a big step. Start small. Trust him with a mustard seed’s worth, and he will do so much with that you won’t believe your eyes.”
Brandon Nichols, one of 12 students who came from Boise State, Idaho, took Kennedy’s words to heart. “This conference has been really, really good. For one thing, the corporate worship with other college students has been really refreshing. Also, I think my questions have changed. I graduate in just a few months, so I came here with lots of questions like, ‘What am I going to do with the rest of my life?’ Now I’m asking questions like, ‘Well, what would God like me to do with this summer, first?'”
The conference included four worship sessions led by James and the worship team from New Community Baptist Church, Mountain View, Calif. Six small-group sessions, titled “Transformation Space,” dealt with preparing “your feet to go, your hands to serve, and your heart to lay down.” A coffeehouse and missions theater completed the weekend schedule.
James encouraged the students to make sure it was Jesus’ voice they were following as they pursued missions. “The needs are so, so great, and you can be driven by the need, but you won’t last. Or you can be driven by your own need, for worth or fulfillment or whatever, but you won’t last with that either. Whose voice are you listening to? Can you pick Jesus out of the din and clamor? It’s his voice we follow.”
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(BP) photo posted in the BP Photo Library at https://www.bpnews.net. Photo title: A VIEW OF CALVARY.
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