This article continues our month of sharing our missionary discipleship stories at The Mark 5:19 Project–how we each experienced conversion to God and conversion to God’s people. This story recounts my conversion to God’s people. God bless your reading! –Susan Windley-Daoust

When I was first hired to teach at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, I was offered a new general education course: The Christian View of the Human Person. Since this was my doctoral specialization, I grabbed it with enthusiasm. It was a great course, introducing college sophomores and juniors to the development of teachings on the body and soul, human dignity, conscience, the moral subject, and the meaning of life. 

The first time I created the course structure, something tugged at me at the last minute–maybe instead of a classic reading of the tradition, I could structure the course to encourage them to write their own spiritual autobiography. They were already reading Augustine’s Confessions. Why not challenge them to write their own? I made it one of two options on the final writing assignment, and honestly assumed no one would do it.

Wow. Was I wrong! Almost everyone chose the autobiography option, and loved the assignment. “No one has asked me to think about this,” they said.

I was touched and honored by their papers and their honesty. When I first offered the assignment, the papers mirrored the demographic of the school: 60% Catholic, another 30% Protestant. 10% a mix of every other world view out there.

In the next 10 years, the demographic didn’t change dramatically, but the papers did. The students were still vulnerable, honest, and appreciating the opportunity to write this out. But they were much less likely to identify as any religion at all. It was “the rise of the nones,” in real time.

At the same time…these papers revealed some increasingly unhappy students. Mental illness, trauma, hopelessness, unresolved losses, and more. They never said “I drifted from faith and became unhappy,” but there was no escaping that most students were reporting disaffiliation and sadness, at the same time. 

These papers from students who just didn’t find traditional faith to be a space to bring their sadness increased, along with my own unease. Where was this sea change coming from? They seemed responsive enough in the classroom, but in the quiet of writing–not so much. They were left to deal with their brokenness, alone.

One day 15 years in I was praying about this, after reading a set of especially hopeless and disaffiliated papers. What is going on with these students? I prayed.

Suddenly I received the image of the good Samaritan story–particularly, the robbed and beaten man.

Okay God. I don’t get it.

Then the Lord said, You’re leaving them bleeding by the side of the road.

My response was shock. What? No, I’m not! I mean, I am teaching them theology, and I have this open door office policy, and responding to questions…I just don’t know why they won’t take their troubles, their serious troubles, to your house–that chapel you reside within–just 500 feet away from the classroom. I don’t know why they can’t bring their sadness to you, there.

Because they are far too wounded to get there on their own.

And I stopped. Because what the Lord said was exactly what the students were telling me, as best they could, for 15 years. They were wounded and they needed someone to walk with them to the healer. They were sad because deep down, they knew they could not heal themselves.

A number of conversations happened, quickly. But in a few weeks, I had decided to leave the academy and move into evangelization. It was clear what these students needed before the theology was an encounter with Christ the Healer. And while I honor all teaching theologians–I loved the work myself–God called me through these students to the original mission, to go and tell others that the Lord is good, is real, is your best hope, and you should come and see.

The good folks at FOCUS talk about missionary discipleship as a conversion to God and a second conversion to God’s people. When people ask me where my passion for mission comes from, of course it comes in part from the very goodness of God. Why shouldn’t sharing that be a joy? But it also comes from reading over 1000 spiritual autobiographies from our now millenial generation, who could not think through the sadness to see that God was for them, and Christianity a path of healing, grace, and hope. They were my conversion to God’s people.

I think of those students often, because through them the Lord gave me a direction in my love for him: not only to love God, but to love his wounded people enough to cross the road. That may be the question for all of us who already believe: Who has God used to convert us more deeply to his people? And who is he asking us to walk with now?

You can see all the missionary discipleship stories at https://mark519project.org/category/missionary-discipleship-stories/.