I want to talk to you about another aspect of ministry that is significantly  important and that has to do with the tapestry of your life. Life is a story, and  stories really do matter. I was studying for my doctorate, and I was in Seattle,  Washington, and it was early before classes started, and I was I was at a  Starbucks sipping coffee and reading, and the day before, Dr Bhatia had his  class over to his home, and he talked about he drew two lines, a horizontal and  a vertical, a horizontal and a vertical line. And he said these lines represent the  different perspectives that the Western Church and the Eastern Church have.  And he said that the Western Church tends to think in terms of the vertical that  we talk of, we think in terms of an immediate relationship with God. And our  thinking is we win the world for Christ in this generation. So there's an  immediacy to it. It's me and Jesus, the Eastern Church has a different  perspective. They tend to think in terms of God over time. They tend they tend to think that being faithful to the end of time so they see God. They see God in a  more horizontal way of thinking. I found that my I tended to think more Western.  I think that is kind of Jesus and me, and more of the immediacy, but his taking  us through, taking us through this course, made me begin to think differently,  and I guess it impacted me more than I realized, because I was sitting in  Starbucks having coffee, and all of a sudden, as I sat down reading, something  came over me, and It's almost like I heard a voice, and it said, You are Theodore Roosevelt Travis the third, the son of Theodore Roosevelt Travis Jr, and the  grandson of Abraham Lincoln Mack. And it just, I just began to shake, and I  seemed to hear, I heard God, seemingly say, he said, you, you are the son and  grandson of these men. This is your lineage. I am the Lord. Now both my father  and my grandfather were believers. My grandfather was a was a preacher, and  when I was very young, my mom says he would take me in his arm and say this, here is my preacher boy, my father. He died of cancer and a bleeding ulcer, but  five years before he passed, he went through the similar experience that I went  through. He became a believer. And so that was my Damascus Road  experience, and I realized that God was playing a role in my life. Well, you know, reflecting on our personal journeys reveals much about who we are and why we  do what we do. This theology is the study of God's working through time. It's  about connecting the dots of life in order to grasp divine meanings, and it's  about finding meaning in our lives and in the lives of others. So we learn from  stories and the chapter I wrote on my journey, I wrote about it because it was  important for me, was important for me to share where I'm coming from, but it's  also important for us as leaders to understand how God has worked in our lives, so that we can greater appreciate how God is working. In the lives of the young  people that we serve. Again, it's not that they enter our story, although they do,  but what's more important is that we are entering their story. God has brought us into their lives. And the question is, What does God want us to do? What role  does he want us to play. So we must have an appreciation of people. And so 

there are certain things that we need to understand. One is what I would call the divine conspiracy. And that's when, as I shared the journey chapter that I felt set  up. I look back and I see all the various things that happened. I thought, wow, I  was just kind of led to this place, not only to become a believer, but also to  embrace what I what, what I now call transformational discipleship, and that's  called a divine conspiracy, being able to see where God is at work in our lives  and how he has orchestrated things. It's important to be to appreciate that that  God is at work in our lives over time, and he has a purpose for our lives. To see  that and appreciate that is important, especially when you're looking to see that  in the lives of other people and affirm that God really does love them, the idea  that image matters, it's the divine imprint that allows all other matters pertaining  to identity to fall into place. One of the struggles I had was, was that of my  identity here, I was a operetically trained singer. I couldn't I love jazz. Could not  improvise, but if you took ink and and threw it on a musical score. I could read  the intervals. I I could read I could read music that well. What kind of anomaly is  that a black man that can do this? It didn't make sense. Who am I? I mean,  there are times in my high school experience I'd be called nigger and Uncle Tom in the same day, I did not know who I was, and it wasn't until I came to grips with the fact that God made me in his image, and he made me black. What does that mean? So that's when I began to realize that it's the divine imprint who God has  made you to be that causes all other matters of identity to fall into place. So  image does matter and divine imprint matters, then there's a matter of leaving  nothing behind. James talks about this. He says, Consider it pure joy when you  encounter trials of various kinds, knowing that the testing of your faith produces  endurance. Endurance must finish his work so that you might be mature and  complete, not lacking in anything well, many of many believers struggle so much with the first part. Count it pure joy. What's up with that we miss the last part.  And that last part literally says, leave nothing behind. The idea is that when we  become believers, we not only see that the trials are the way and means in  which God matures us. What happens to us is not nearly as significant as to  how we respond to what happens to us, and it's in that response that God  causes us to mature and to grow. So we're to Consider it pure joy when trials of  various kinds times come, because it's the testing of faith that will produce  endurance, that work must take place so that we might be mature and complete, literally leaving nothing behind. There's nothing in our past, no no past problem  or issue or anything like that that is left behind that stays there so it shapes our  character in a negative way. And so leaving nothing behind is a part of learning  from our story. There are some negative things, bad things in our story, but the  question is, God, why is. That. Why was that there? How did that happen? And  then how do I respond to it? Now, healing, understanding, whatever it might be,  those things are there. They now become tools in God's hands to shape us into  the people that he wants us to be, and shape us in terms of the particular 

purpose and calling he has on our lives. So it's important that we leave nothing  behind. Then there's a matter of discerning truth. Young people need places  where they can get honest answers to honest questions and honest honest  questions can dare to be spoken, and honest answers can be pursued with a  loving integrity. We live in a very politically correct, very partisan society for us in  America anyway, but I suspect that that takes place in all parts of the world, and  we are people that are characterized by truth, God's truth. We must create  environments where truth can be discerned. We have to allow that to happen.  We have to allow people in our lives, like I did with with John Payton, who we  were, we had strong disagreements, but we loved each other and we respected  each other, and because of that, we could learn from from each other, and all of  it was about being humble, humble with one another. Because the idea was to  come to Jesus and to come to His truth, we need to create environments where  that happens, where that kind of communication can can take place. And we  need to recognize that ours is a purposeful journey, that finding God in story  leads to purpose when you recognize that God created you for a purpose, that  your life has meaning. You are no accident. Then you realize, well, then God,  why am I here? And you can find that out, and you can rejoice in what you find,  because it is purposeful. You have a purposeful life. So there are great  implications for youth ministry. One is the question, when you look at the Youth  you serve, what do you see? Do you see young people created in the image of  God, their image is tarnished and their lives are at risk, and yet God created  them in his image, and so therefore the task is to help them discover who they  are in Christ and allow that to shape the direction of their lives. Tapestry helps us see God in our stories, and it helps us look for God in the stories of the young  people we serve. That is important. I would encourage you in your walk with the  Lord to get in touch with your story, so that you're able to get in touch with the  stories of others, and a book that has been of tremendous help to me in terms of my personal devotional walk has been a book published first in 1949 John  Baillie, a diary of private prayer. I would encourage you to get this book and to  take some time just reading the morning devotion and the evening devotion, and I believe it will, it will get you centered on God and his relationship with you, and  the work he wants to do in your life, the changes he wants to make, I think it will  center you And that and be a great help to your spiritual development and your  and your your spiritual walk.



Last modified: Monday, April 6, 2026, 9:43 AM