Yeast starter: Part 2

“Well,” she paused and broke into a big toothy grin before continuing, “about that…”

On the day of the first study where we would introduce the yeast starter application activity, I had a previous speaking engagement. I was set to speak to the Mission Circle at my dear friend Bonnie’s church, and I would completely miss that afternoon’s study.

Now, as you can probably guess from my previous post, I was pretty excited about the whole yeast starter both in its actuality and the ways it could foster a culture of hospitality (I’d have to be in order to endure those 10 days). But I had to sell my bible study leaders on it. Most were not bakers or scientists so my whole “It’s cooking science!” exclamations didn’t really captivate them. I eventually began to win them to the concept of the Friendship Bread, but I knew I’d likely have to be the one to explain the activity during the study, forgetting that I would miss the very first study where it would debut.

Much to the dismay of my student leader AP, she would have to go from being intrigued conceptually and skeptical of its actuality to being the one to win the confused and the skeptics in her study to the vision of this application activity. The night before I sent her additional resources to help her explain the process and hoped for the best.

I arrived on campus later that day in time to debrief how the study went and prep for the next week’s study. I met her in the Pitman cafeteria and asked her how it went…

“Well,” she paused and broke into a big toothy grin before continuing, “about that…” Since this study happened to fall in the week before reading week, most of the usual attendees of her study did not come. But, an hour into the study, student X came in. Student X is an engineering student and is friends with one of our student leaders. He came to our last two social events in the fall semester and eagerly engaged us in conversation that started light but went deep. He’s not a believer, but has a keen interest in spiritual things and wants to know more about Christianity and the Christian worldview. The day he came to AP’s study, he wasn’t sure if he’d fit in or if his questions would be welcome at the study, but decided to pop by anyway. Instead of doing the study, AP and student X got into a long conversation about faith. He asked her a number of questions and shared where he was at. She later told me she felt like she may have flubbed some of her answers, but found he was gracious with her answers and continued to probe deeper into the conversation.

As AP tells me this story, she mentions how before he walked in, she had just been looking over the Uncovering the Life of Jesus book and had it on the table as he came in. She later gave him her copy of the book and told him to use it as a starting point in his discovery of who Jesus is and to follow up with her or his student leader friend with more of his questions. AP also tells me that it really felt as God had set aside the time and space for this conversation as it ran longer than her allotted bible study time, but didn’t have people waiting to use the library study room and thus interrupt the flow of the conversation.

As she recounts this all to me, full of wonder and some residual shock of what just happened, I found myself full of joy and making note of how gracious our God is, and how good it was that this happened when I wasn’t on campus so that He could use AP as his instrument, for I’m sure if I had been there she likely wouldn’t have said much and the dynamics of this conversation could have been very different. I noted the humour in the situation and told AP that she’d been prepared to offer one type of yeast starter, but instead offered another, and only time will tell how it will grow.