Shortly thereafter, a small but faithful group of guys joined us for Bible study and prayer every week. We focused on our campus, the students’ relationships with Christ, and our impact on the world. Twelve to fourteen of us met twice a week, and we didn’t sit around, sip coffee, and shoot the bull. We were studying God’s Word and on our faces praying.
One day I was walking to that chapel, which was just a block or so from Highway 90 and, just beyond it, I-10. I looked up at the steeple and realized I was standing within shouting distance of the place where my Mustang had been wrecked, four and a half years earlier.
It seemed more like a lifetime. My path had taken a few sharp turns since then. There I stood by a wreck, facing a steeple, with a highway in-between. There was powerful symbolism in that memory. As I gathered with friends beneath that cross, I began to learn what real prayer was all about. What I learned in my classes was valuable; what I learned in the school of prayer was priceless.
That spring I began to think about what I was going to do for the summer. This is always a big question for seminary students. The idea is to go into the “field” and get some solid experience, usually in a church setting or at camp. Alternatively, you could stay on campus and study, but most students choose to take summer positions.
I was offered an opportunity that sounded like a blast. The Southern Baptist Convention offers CentriKid Camps for third to sixth graders. They take place all over the nation, and I had a chance to travel and preach five times a week along the East Coast. It would offer me valuable experience ministering to children, lots of preaching time, and of course, the pleasure of travel.
But then another possibility materialized. A campus minister named Tim LaFleur, from Nicholls State in Thibodaux, was looking for a preaching student from the seminary to go with him to New Mexico for the summer. There was a huge camp and conference center there at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. All through the summer, there are programs and special weeks of all kinds—opportunities to work with people from churches across the West.
I was also making plans to guest-preach at Jeremy Brown’s church in Madisonville, about an hour and a half from Baton Rouge. My friend Rebecca from college—one of those girls who had prayed for me—called me out of the blue. She told me she knew I wouldn’t be too far away from Baton Rouge, and she had a friend she wanted to introduce. She’d be bringing her to come hear me in Madisonville on March 15.
This, of course, sounded an awful lot like a blind date for a preaching event. I wasn’t so sure how something like that would work out—how exactly do preaching and dating mix? Maybe that was the Catholic in me . . .
There was so much going on in my life at this point that I wasn’t much interested in dating. I was finally experiencing the growth and the biblical understanding I had craved.
I would find out later that Kandi—Rebecca’s friend—wasn’t too excited about this thing either. She was willing to go along with it, but it probably seemed weird to listen to the proclamation of God’s Word while sizing up a preacher as boyfriend material. Blind dates are awkward anyway, about a hundred percent of the time.
A few minutes before the service, I walked to the front of the worship center and greeted the girls. We talked for a few minutes, and I had to admit I was impressed with Kandi—how she carried herself, how her smile set me at ease, how intelligent she clearly was. She was unlike any Christian woman I’d ever met. She had everything any guy could ever pray for, and more.
Kandi had a different perspective of me. She was under the impression I was there as part of the Power Team, there to tear phone books, and not to preach the Word. For months, I’d been back in the gym; I walked in at six-foot-six, 285 pounds.
By the end of the night, I felt that talking to Kandi was like being with someone I’d known for years. Later I found out that she felt the same way about me. The awkwardness vanished for both of us, just like that.
I said to the group, “Would you guys like to come to a room in the back and pray for me before I preach?”
They agreed, and a small group of Rebecca, Kandi, my friend Brian, whom I referred to as Big Bill, and I, did just that. We prayed together that God would use my time in the pulpit to change people’s hearts. Kandi still enjoys pointing out that she had the opportunity to pray for me on our very first date, and on every day since. And I enjoy pointing out that, within a two-day period, I met the two people most influential in my life: Kandi, whom I would marry, and Tim LaFleur, who would mentor me.
Back at seminary, Tim invited me to preach at BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministries) the following night. It would be an interview of sorts, to help him decide whether to offer me the summer position in New Mexico. I preached the same sermon I’d just delivered the night before, “A Recipe for Revival,” based on this Old Testament passage:
“If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chron. 7:14 nkjv)
It’s one of the most well-preached passages about revival. It shows the deep desire God had for his people Israel—a whole nation—to come to repentance. The
