12 Dec Kairos Impact | “When Strivings Cease”
Kara Landhuis was a Kairos Summer intern for our Communications team during the summer of 2013. She recently graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in Advertising. She is now living in Des Moines, Iowa, and working as a Marketing and Publicity Designer for Riverside Bible Camp.
My Kairos experience was different from many others’. I was an out-of-towner who found Kairos through a Google search. I flew a thousand miles to get to Greenville, and I didn’t know anyone. The unlikeliness of my story is a declaration of God’s providence in putting me exactly where I needed to be. Even though it’s been almost a year and a half since my Kairos experience, its impact remains evident in my life every day.
To say that Kairos changed me is tempting, but it’s not the full truth. Kairos didn’t change me, it revealed me. It exposed me and validated me. It gave me a new lens with which to see myself.
Before I started my Kairos internship, I was very discouraged. I felt as if my particular set of skills and personality traits wasn’t valuable to the Church. Part of the problem was that I was constantly comparing myself to other Christians. I saw people with traits that I envied, and I tried to make myself more like them. I kept trying to take my sanctification out of God’s hands and into my own.
When this was happening, I didn’t understand what was wrong. I just felt a vague sense of restlessness and unhappiness. Not only that, but I hardly knew who I was. I was a patched-together person, Frankenstein’s monster made of strivings and struggles and everything I thought I was supposed to be. In my quest for self-improvement, I had been ignoring the redemptive truth of the Gospel – the truth that God is working in me and that I don’t have to strive toward holiness on my own effort.
Kairos was the catalyst for so much transformation in my life. One of the most significant things I learned during Kairos was that my unique skills and passions are valuable. The Body of Christ is made of many parts, each with an important and distinct purpose (1 Cor. 12:17-18). After taking personality assessments, working on projects, meeting with mentors, and spending a lot of time reflecting, I understood so much more about myself. Kairos equipped me with language to express things that I always knew about myself but could never articulate.
This self-discovery was a huge gift, but it wasn’t always easy. It’s fun to explore strengths and passions, but it’s painful to confront shortcomings and fears. Kairos is about facing the fun things and the painful things alongside a community of people who are committed to truth, authenticity, and encouragement. Kairos is about being the Church – broken, sinful, underserving of grace, and yet still serving and loving one another through the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s a beautiful thing.
Not everyone gets the same things out of their Kairos experience, but that’s one of the great things about it. Kairos isn’t a one-size-fits-all internship. The experience is deliberately tailored to meet interns where they are and to impact each of them uniquely. I would definitely recommend this internship for anyone who is interested in authentic community, challenging spiritual training, and radical self-discovery.
In a way, I could say that Kairos did not meet my expectations. I thought the summer would be all about the work I was doing in the church. I was wonderfully, beautifully mistaken. Kairos wasn’t about what I could do for the church, it was about what the church and staff could do to equip and develop me as a follower of Jesus, as a young professional, and as a human being. Most importantly, Kairos was about the work God is doing in me. I was reminded that I can stop striving and rest in the confidence of my identity in Jesus Christ.
– Kara Landhuis