Casey Coston: What I learned from Ole Miss campus ministry

College campus minister Casey Coston's new book “Made Competent” details his own shortcomings and lessons learned during 15 years of ministry at Ole Miss. Casey talks about how God drew him to campus ministry, why he still loves it (he's at University of Delaware now) - and why you should give your local minister a little grace. 

Transcript

Katie: All right, so it kind of goes (imitates music)...

Well, hello everyone and welcome to the first ever video episode of Oh My Word with Katie, the show where we share stories of real-life Christianity - the good, the bad, and the oh my word - from believers who've been there. My guest today is Casey Coston, a campus minister at the University of Delaware.

And I met Casey when he was a campus minister at Ole Miss, and I was a sophomore there. We're gonna be talking about what he's learned from college students, his new book Made Competent, which I'm about two thirds of the way through and it's awesome, and his encouragement for young people considering full-time ministry.

So Casey, thank you so much for being on the show, and it's great to see you after 15 years. 

Casey: That's right, man. I love how stuff like this gives us these full circle moments, so thanks so much. 

Katie: Yeah, absolutely. All right, we'll talk about the title of the book Made Competent in a few minutes, but you have a story somewhat related to that that might give readers, readers, oh my word. See? Mississippi Christian Living magazine, whatever. I'm gonna leave it in. I'm not gonna edit that. Okay. It might give our LISTENERS a clue as to maybe why you chose that title. 

Casey: That's right. So this is 2006 or 2007, would've been about your time. We did a Wednesday night bible study at the student center and always had to pick a theme for the semester. And I remember we were going to do the lament psalms because we were trying to give voice to, you know, in the book we talk about the great sadness, and this is Tracy my wife's health struggles. And that was just a big thing on our radar at the time. And Psalm 13, how long Oh Lord, had been very helpful for us. But what we decided for the spring semester was to do a lament psalm one week, then bring in a church family or church members that had had some hard things happen to them.

So, every week was a little bit of a downer. This kind of played into my incompetence because at the time I was just like, this was a great plan. So one of our students came up to me somewhere in the semester. I remember so vividly, he was like Casey, do you think we could do something different or uplifting some weeks, because it feels like I'm breaking up with my girlfriend every week. And I was just like, okay, yeah, we've gone a little too far. 

Katie: Yeah. And it is good though to have space for the lament, but then yeah, sometimes it's hard to find that balance.

Casey: Yeah, that's right. 

Katie: Yeah. Alright, so, what led you to campus ministry specifically rather than preaching at a church or being a college minister at a local church? 'Cause a lot of churches just have college ministries within the congregation. 

Casey: So I had had a really great campus ministry experience at the University of Arkansas where I got my engineering degree. My campus minister Scott was awesome, and the campus ministry at Arkansas is what I believe God used to help me go into full-time ministry.

And I talk about going off to Abilene Christian for three and a half years. And then I actually kind of start looking at youth ministry stuff. I just recognized that I didn't think I was gifted to be a youth minister. Part of that. Just the parent component. And some youth ministers are more gifted at winning parents over or doing more things that parents would like to do. 

And I've said in the book, there's a lot that comes with preaching besides preaching. If you like visitation, great. If you like strategic planning, great. If you like being in charge of small groups, great, but most of the time the preacher can get stuck doing 20 things. And like you saw with my growth review stuff that we may talk about, I only felt like I was good at maybe five things, so I wanted to focus on those five things.

So campus ministry, hard trial and error, but it really allowed me the chance to see, I don't think God's calling me to be a youth minister. I don't think I'm wanting to preach weekly and deal with everything that comes with being the lead pastor. So campus ministry just was my sweet spot.

Katie: So after growing up in Arkansas and you spent 10, 15 years at Ole Miss. 

Casey: 15. Yep. 

Katie: 15. Now you're at the University of Delaware. I would love to hear just quickly, what's the biggest difference that you've seen in what your job looks like or what the campus life is like? 

Casey: That's a good question that I get asked some, and it is hard to answer. One of my humorous comments that I like to make is there's just more cursing up here. Like people just cuss more. Down in the south you try and sugarcoat it, and maybe say it under the radar, but up here, even Christians curse more.

I appreciate the honesty. They're not trying to sugarcoat it and people please, they just say what they think kind of flies out sometimes. So that's one thing. 

You know, one of the things I like to say that's very similar is just because a public university, their goal in many ways is just the retention of students. So if you're an RSO, a registered student organization, Christian or otherwise, they are happy for you to exist on this campus. 

Having said that, I think the differences are that certainly up here you do not feel like Christians are in the majority. But one of these lines I always come back to from the Incredibles is that the bad guy's like, when everybody's a hero, nobody's a hero. And I kind of use that. It's like when everybody's a Christian, then it's almost like no one's a Christian.

You just kind of start taking it for granted when you assume everybody is. Then you give up on evangelism. Here it's just a little bit more like, okay, there's plenty of people that aren't Christian. You recognize your identity a little better and you're ready to pursue that.

And certainly in Delaware, starting in Virginia, Maryland and up, there's a lot more blue states. People are more supportive of Democrat policy and voting, that way. And so that's always kind of an eye opener for red state folks to realize, oh, there are real people who vote in blue states, for blue people. You just learn to love everybody wherever they're at. And just try and focus on Jesus. 

Katie: Well, and you talk about in the book that you really did not wanna get pigeonholed as conservative or liberal or Democrat or Republican. And you really just wanna focus on Jesus. So I'm sure it has been pretty interesting being in a blue state since Trump taking office for the second time, I imagine you've gotten some opportunities to just love on students and have compassion for, 'cause they're, a lot of them are probably feeling scared and freaked out. Or maybe they're not paying attention, I don't know. 

Casey: Yeah. I think the biggest thing that you try and help students with is, in an election year you realize how many people are putting their hope in the next person to be elected. Of course then one side loses and that hope is dashed. So that Romans 5, there is a hope that does not disappoint.

We were talking about Eagles fans this past weekend. The Eagles won. So now their hope has been realized. Okay but what else? What happens? Well, life goes on.

So you try and help both sides realize that your ultimate hope is not in either one of these candidates. And that you'll always have little hopes, but it's a big step for a student to acknowledge that and say, I'd prefer this person win, I'd prefer these policies, but at the end of the day, I've already got all the hope I need in Jesus. 

Katie: Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's talk about this title, Made Competent: A Story About Life in Ministry. What was the inspiration behind that title and where does it come from? 'Cause it's from scripture.

Casey: I've really hinted at 2nd Corinthians a lot in my story. 2nd Corinthians 2 is where Paul has this line about, not that we are competent in ourselves, but our competence comes from God. 

I just latched onto that because as I wrote my story, it took me rereading and editing to realize, what I'm doing here is I'm focusing on a lot of my incompetence and why it was so hard for so long and where I made mistakes because I knew I didn't want to tell a story of strength. I think for better and for worse, there's plenty of Christian books that do that, and like we have to be confident and we have to show people that we know what we're talking about. 

And I think 2nd Corinthians is a really great platform for helping us realize we don't have to have it all figured out. We don't have to always come from a place of strength. That God, if he can use death, he can use our incompetence. For me, I used it to stay humble. I was like, okay, I did not feel competent in that situation. I can take that to God and be like, I felt incompetent in that moment, but I can still learn from it. 

Does a person that's been in full-time ministry one year feel as competent as somebody who's been in for 20 years? Of course not. God is very growth based, right? He's not so much performance based. He just wants to see us grow, to become more like Jesus. So that's a big part of the Made Competent title. And then the subtitle, A story about life in ministry. I wanted to tell a story.

I could have done 10 points to bless your ministry. But I just wanna tell a story. I love stories from Lord of the Rings, which is in there, to other stuff. So it's a story, wanted to tell a story about life and ministry, but I, as you know, I really wanted to weave in my family story because Tracy's health struggles early on really blew up on us. The struggle to have more kids. And the path we went and the struggle that that put on our marriage.

I just wanted to put all that in there because not a lot of people think about the behind the scenes of a minister. They kind of can treat a full-time staff minister like you're our manufacturer. Just manufacture the classes, the curriculum, do the evangelism, tell us the results.

And this for me reminded me and I hope reminds others that we are human and that we have our own issues behind the scenes. And it's why growth is slow. So I wanted to put all that in there to make it more authentic, I think. 

Katie: So, you talk about God makes us competent, and a lot of your story is you describing ways that you felt incompetent. At one point in the book, my jaw dropped because you said you felt incompetent as a campus minister for eight years. That's a long time to feel that way. 

And then like I read a chapter of your book where you talk about the performance reviews you used to get, and they were a little different. It wasn't like sitting down one-on-one. It was like 10 different people anonymously would like offer their critiques of how you were doing? Yeah. Maybe a few students, some church leadership, stuff like that. 

And you include in the book just a portion of the comments you received from one year, just one performance review. And I'm reading this and I'm stressed. Like, good gracious. So, I know that was probably part of why you felt incompetent, but how were you able to deal with that performance review type of process? 

Casey: We kind of had two years where it's the honeymoon phase. Had a lot of good things get lined up right. And then after two years is when Tracy's appendix ruptured, and all the health issues came. Now we're getting outta the honeymoon, but then we're just like, just totally thrown off track. Not even working half the time because I'm just trying to care for her. And then juggle Miles a little bit while she's still primarily just trying to heal herself. So that kind of was the first four years.

Then, 2008 to 2012 was still the family stuff like starting IVF. But, learning of infertility and then going down the IVF road, all the emotional toil that that takes. I've got a book now that I highly recommend called The Body Keeps the Score. And it's by a doctor and it's just about how your body holds on to that trauma or the, the things that happen to you, your body holds onto it whether you know it or not, until you deal with it. Whether you go to therapy or whether you exercise or whether you journal it, whatever the ways you can, you get that out. Your body's holding onto all this stuff. 

Tracy's body was holding onto a lot and and took me years to realize my body was holding on to a lot as well. I had secondary trauma because of everything Tracy had been through. So the family stuff is happening, and then yeah, the growth reviews are happening and thankfully, those are just once a year.

Eric, my elder that went through that stuff with me, was very encouraging and very pastoral. And that's, and he's the reason I didn't quit. Because we processed it and, I would grieve, I'd have to grieve some of that.

There were positive comments, but as you and I know, you might get 10 positive comments, but the one that sticks with you is the really negative one. And, and honestly, that was some of my people pleasing.

All these good things are great, but I could change one person's mind about this thing. What would I have to change? Or how could I explain this to that person to help them understand why? And I couldn't because a lot of it was anonymous. 

Eric probably tried to address some of this with some of the other elders maybe that were some of the commenters or some of the church members. And that's why I had a, probably had a really good 15-year career there at Ole Miss because Eric had been advocating for me. He had lost a son. He was by Tracy's bedside. We were just forged, in the fires together. 

God just really used Eric and that's why I want church members and church leaders to read a book like this. Because you want to try and remember that your staff are human. Try and remember that even if this one thing bothers me. Number one, yeah, maybe go have a personal conversation about that with that person and try and affirm them for a few things. And also bring up the thing that's frustrating you. 

I keep hearing in our denomination, certainly in churches of Christ, there's less and less ministers looking for jobs because they've become so discouraged, working in full-time ministry because it is often a thankless job. You hopefully have a Barnabas or two in your life, but you get a lot of complaints. We're very consumer minded, even in church. So yeah, we want church members and church leaders to realize what the life of a minister is like. So maybe we can come at that a little more graciously and humbly sometimes. 

Katie: Yeah. So was there a point, was there like a turning point? 'Cause you gave a specific time period, you felt incompetent for eight years and then there's a division in the book, and you call it the competent years.

Casey: Even as I said that, the things I focused on in my competent years were like, the day I almost got fired, and my toughest student. So, I wanted to come up with sections, and I really did feel competent more. Even after six years, like when we hosted the conference in 2010, I felt really competent after six years in some ways, but we were still dealing with all the infertility and trying to have more kids. So even behind the scenes, it was just like my wife Tracy and I weren't doing super great together. Still wounded and hurting and grieving and longing for more kids. 

One of the things I said was when I, even after eight years, that's when the twins were little, and so I was hardly sleeping at night. And Tracy's nursing twins and we're just in the trenches with the kids, but we're going to Haiti, we're doing these great mission trips. So ministry, I started feeling more competent. Family, I was still feeling incompetent, at least for two or three more years.

Katie: Yeah. And most people today are spinning a lot of plates and I think you even use that illustration in the book, like you're gonna drop one at some point. Yeah. It just might be a different one one month or one year compared to the next year.

So being a campus minister, specifically working with young people, what are some of the things that you've learned from college students or the ways that they've encouraged you? 

Casey: I'm just gonna give my bias for college ministry and working with college students. Teenagers at home, I would think a lot of them, 70, 80, 90% are almost going because their parents want them to go and they have to go. In college ministry, you get students that are there because they wanna be there. 

And of course once you leave college you tend to have a better view of, okay, I have this degree. I'm going to be working in this field. I'm gonna be in this city. I'm gonna be maybe married to this person. And so a lot of things get set, somewhere soon after graduation.

So however long you might have with a college student, you have them at their most open. This is when they are seeking on their own the most. So even the Christian students like yeah, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go every Sunday right now because I just wanna live and explore life and certainly at Ole Miss.

I've always joked that, those first couple of weeks with like orientation and all the tables, all the RSOs are set up. It's like Vegas. Everybody's throwing candy at you and throwing popsicles at you and they're trying to get you to sign up for their thing.

And if you've already been part of Christianity, Christianity doesn't look that cool, for a little while. It's just like, I've done that and I kind of want to try something else. I wanna check something else out. So it's kind of good you get to see Christian students go into a little bit of a wilderness phase and kind of wander in the wilderness a little bit and realize, okay, yeah, I still believe in Jesus. But now they come back to it in their sophomore year, junior or senior year even, and they're like, I still want this, and that is a huge gift to give a college student that, you know, you're in their life.

You get to text 'em a little bit. You hopefully still have coffee with them. Maybe they'll come on a Sunday or a Wednesday, sometimes, not all the time.

And then of course, just the seekers and the international students. I just love college ministry because I think you get a young person at just the perfect time for them to recommit to Jesus if they've known about Jesus or consider Jesus for the first time.

Yeah, the international students, they're looking for friendship and most of 'em would like some help with their English. Most of the time we're like is it okay if we study the Bible? We can read something else if you'd like, but we've got easy to read Bibles or regular Bibles and you know, I mean, you start reading the Bible with an international student, and they're learning about Jesus for the first time. 

And then when the American students actually own their faith. When it stops just being their parents' faith and it stops just being their pastor's faith. God forbid my parents called me and said, Hey. Sorry to break the news. We're done. We don't believe in this anymore. That's not where they're at. But if they did, I would be devastated for them. But I have my own faith. I would keep believing in Jesus. 

That's what kind of we take for granted in American Christianity sometimes. We have parents and grandparents that have believed in this and it's made it easier for us to believe. So I like to remind students that you wanna make sure you've got your own faith so that no matter what happens, Paul says, after you've done everything to stand, you still wanna be standing at the end of this, whatever happens around you.

Katie: So I didn't put this in the list of questions I sent you, but what's one of the hardest things that you've walked through with a college student? 

Casey: One of my associates and I had to walk a student over to mental health services this past fall because she was in danger. She was not safe for herself. And I really appreciate that I have a female associate that was able to be there and we went over together and tried to help her out a little bit and just get her in some better hands than ours.

I certainly believe in prayer, but I don't believe that spiritual leaders can fix everything. We believe in a partnership with mental health and academic folks and all that. We want to take the best of what other professionals can offer.

Certainly when students have to deal with a sibling maybe dying from mental health stuff. Or if they've lost a grandparent or a parent has tragically died, from cancer or something. And that gets back to pastorally, what do we still believe? You know, that our hope was not in our parents' living forever. Our hope is that Jesus is gonna take care of, is taking care of your parent that has gone on to be with him. 

Of course, sometimes not all parents and grandparents are Christians, so that's a hard conversation as well. 

Katie: Mm-hmm. Have you seen, because you've been in campus ministry for 20 years now, I mean, the advent of Facebook and Instagram and all these things. How have you seen the issues change that college students are facing today? 

Casey: Guys might in general struggle with something like lust, right? And just beautiful college women, what am I gonna do with that? And then maybe the flip side of that some for women is, look at all these other beautiful women, and now I have to deal with my own insecurities. And of course social media can amplify that. Guys, it's too easy to find beautiful women online and social media stuff and girls, women may compare that way as well. 

And certainly one of the things we talk about is as we try and do retreats and solitude, we have something called Soul Saturday. Try and take a day. And I just try and encourage, put your phone on airplane mode. It's okay if you wanna take a few pictures, but try and stay off your phone just for an hour. And just notice that you're probably feeling some withdrawal, from not being on your phone for an hour. That's called an addiction. 

You can be a great advocate on social media as well. It's just the spirit and the flesh. Our tendency to mess things up is sin. Social media started great. Most people enjoyed Facebook at the beginning. We're sharing pictures, we're communicating with people. And then I think satan has shrewdly said how can I take that and twist it? And now we've got tons of division and polarization and all these things that make it really hard to communicate online. 

Katie: Yeah. And I don't know that there's like a cut and dried answer on how to, you can't just like, fix that. It's just another struggle, which I'm sure like parents of young people in the 1950s thought the TV was gonna be the end of society. 

Casey: Right. I just think that awareness, like if you can just get a college student to start talking about it and be aware. We have a little mental health group here called Unburden based on Jesus's come to me, all you weary and burdened. And one of the things we just like to encourage people to be aware of is, I feel like I've been on my phone a little too much, been on Instagram too much, just that awareness is helpful because sadly, most folks aren't aware. That's where it's dangerous. 

Katie: Yeah, for sure. So. Besides picking up a copy of your book, 'cause I have, I don't know if you see all these dog ears I've made. All your little question pages, most of 'em I've dogeared. 'Cause you asked some really thoughtful questions, particularly for people who are considering full-time ministry. I would highly recommend people pick it up if they're considering full-time ministry or even just like volunteering in ministry or wanna be better at pouring into the kingdom in general.

But besides that, what would be your biggest encouragement for a young person who's considering full-time ministry, whether it's college ministry or something else? 

Casey: I've got a really good quick answer and then we've got a longer answer. The quick answer is read 2nd Corinthians. You haven't read 2nd Corinthians lately? Just try and read it. 13 chapters. Shouldn't take too long. Paul here, to me, is the most vulnerable in 2nd Corinthians. He 's got some great lines in every one of his letters, but he just keeps coming back to how ministry makes him feel and what it does to him and the suffering that he goes through. And he's convinced that in suffering, there's always gonna be some kind of resurrection on the other side of it. 

And that's what leads into the longer answer. So one of my early chapters was second conversion, and that's my calling, one of my calling chapters. I think I've heard this, that like some people just get into ministry because they just think it's a good job to have. And certainly hopefully, God can use that, but for me, I believe I had to feel like called by God to go into ministry to do it. 

Depending on your listeners, churches of Christ that I'm from weren't big into this idea of calling. What I'm just talking about is, God called Abraham and God called Moses. Somehow he got their attention and asked them to do something that they weren't really even thinking about or planning to do. And I feel like that's what God did with me. He got my attention. He made me pivot from chemical engineering to go into ministry.

Katie: Big pivot. 

Casey: God did something there. To me that's the calling. And so if you feel called by God to do full-time ministry, that is a huge catalyst for keeping you going. 

The flip side of that, the last third of my book, the fourth section The Crucible is about the suffering. A lot of my own suffering in ministry. And when you suffer in ministry, which is going to be inevitable, if you feel called by God to that ministry, you will not give up. You will endure. If you don't feel called, it's gonna be real easy to get out and say, I didn't sign up for this.

And just a reminder, that's how Elijah felt. That's how Jonah felt. They were all like, Nope, I'm out. And then God gave them time. He let them get a nap, get some food, get some self care. And then he said, okay, let's try again. Are you ready to go with me to Nineveh? Are you ready to go to the mountain and let me do that gentle whisper thing for you? So I just want to encourage people, you've got, you might not have to a hundred percent, but you almost certainly need a calling. 

And so if you're just thinking about ministry at all, ask God to confirm that in some way. If you're not even thinking about it, if you're just like me, just wanting to go in, in engineering and make a good bit of money and help other people be in ministry, God, is engineering where I need to be? Maybe You want me somewhere else. Maybe I've made this decision so far based on worldly wisdom instead of godly wisdom. 

Katie: Yeah. 

Casey: And then just the suffering's gonna come and just being ready to endure. And that the resurrection power that we have is to endure. It's not always gonna be amazing miraculous things that God's gonna help us do. Part of the resurrection power is just that, man, Casey's still here 20 years later, loving college students. And praise God, that is not Casey, as good a guy as I think Casey is. He has needed resurrection power to get through all the hard things that have come in life so far.

Katie: Awesome. All right, I think we're gonna go into our lightning round to wrap up here. Are you ready? 

Casey: Let's do it. 

Katie: This sounds like such a fifth grade Sunday school question, but I think it can get really interesting. What's your favorite thing about Jesus and why?

Casey: Well, I can tell you my overthinking brain was like, it was not a fifth grade question. My favorite thing about Jesus is that he had a spiritual life that allowed him to be ready for everything he had to deal with publicly.

Luke says Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. So I love that Jesus in those moments had to be thinking, okay, I know the Pharisees are gonna be coming after me tomorrow probably, so I need to be ready for that. How am I going to address the Pharisees when they come at me with this? He was Jesus, but I still think he prepared somehow in private with the Father before he ever dealt with some of those public things.

Katie: Yeah, for sure. All right. Second question. What brings you joy? 

Casey: I have rediscovered fiction recently because that kind of helps me because I'm, I don't know if I'm that intense, but I don't know. I take my life seriously. I remember at Ole Miss sometimes when we'd go on trips, people see a side of me and they're like, oh, that's weird. I didn't picture Casey as all silly or laughing or, whatever. But anyway, getting back into some fiction just in the last few months has been really helpful for me, gives me joy, helps separate me from the daily grind.

And just the other thing I gotta say is just this week, one of our student leaders and I had a lunch with a freshman seeker just from a different background, not American. And just hearing this seeker ask questions and getting my student leader to be there and try and answer. And we both tried to answer and just love this student and fumbled through some of our answers, trying to help him ask. 'Cause he is asking really hard questions. That's my sweet spot in ministry. Just helping bring a student leader along and working with somebody that's not yet following Jesus. That's gold. 

Katie: Yeah. And sorry I'm derailing the lightning round because that made me think of something else from the book that you said that I really related to. You said evangelism early on, scared the mess outta you. Even for people who wanna go into ministry, I'm sure they can feel that as you did. Was there anything in particular that helped you push through that fear?

Casey: I remember saying in the book, praying before going out if you're meeting someone or trying to do something on campus. I'm a little more introverted, you know? I had another P word, and then prayer and practice. Just practicing it. If you do something two or three or four or five times, you're like, okay, I'm starting to get the hang of this. And if we only barely share our faith once a year, we're never really getting any practice.

And then doing it with somebody else, I forget there's another partner. Yeah, I think that was it. So if you're partnering with somebody, Jesus sent 'em out two by two for a reason. If you're not by yourself doing it, you've at least got somebody there in the struggle with you. So prayer, a partner, and practice.

Very few of us, I think are gifted evangelists. But everybody can do what Colossians 4 says about being devoted in prayer, being watchful and thankful, making the most of opportunities, be wise in how you speak. So those are just things that we can, any of us can cultivate that helps us be better evangelists, even if we're not street corner preachers. 

Katie: I feel like God is still teaching me to have the patience to build the relationship up to the point where I can have that conversation and I'm not like, I mean, I, in the past I have texted coworkers just randomly, never had a spiritual conversation with 'em before, not really good friends with 'em, but I'm gonna give 'em the plan of salvation in a text that's this long. I don't think God's ever gonna stop you from doing that. He is not gonna stop you from sharing the gospel, but I am learning now to have the patience to, to be more intentional. 

Casey: That's right. And I have a little thing later that I just wanted to share that may be helpful. My guy that was working here with me, Rusty, he just talked about how relationships naturally go from casual to meaningful. Then as a Christian, you think about taking them from meaningful to spiritual.

You start talking about God a little bit in your life, or you say, Hey, I'm gonna pray about that for you. So all of a sudden now this person knows, okay, they're praying for me whether I like that or not. Most of them won't tell you, don't pray for me. 

And then after spiritual you can get to biblical conversations where you know, you so casual, meaningful, spiritual, biblical. There is a intentional organic progression that can happen if you just be prayerful and just kinda look for those opportunities. 

Katie: Yeah. And being open about yourself too, for sure. 

Casey: That's right. 

Katie: All right. Finally, do you have, it's probably from 2nd Corinthians, a favorite scripture or life verse that you want to leave our listeners with?

Casey: 2nd Corinthians 12. I've memorized these as part of my prayer walk and I get it mostly right, where Paul says, Paul's talking about his thorn. But Paul says, God said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. We could put incompetence in there for weakness. And then at the end he says, for when I'm weak, then I'm strong. So when I'm incompetent, then I am made competent. 

Somebody like me who, I did band well, I did engineering pretty well. I had succeeded in life so far, and ministry was kinda like a setback for me. I don't feel like I'm really good at this. 

So it's just like, when I'm incompetent, it's a possibility. It's an open door for God to make you a little more competent, to gain a little more wisdom for the next time. 

Katie: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, Casey, it was so good to talk to you. I'm so glad we got to do this and y'all get the book Made Competent: A Story About Life in Ministry by Casey Coston, C-O-S-T-O-N. And if y'all enjoyed this episode of Oh My Word with Katie, please share it with your friends, especially since it's a video. And maybe we'll get a lot of listeners and a lot of sponsors and I'll be able to do a lot of videos.

And please give us both a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, 'cause the more those we get, the more people we can reach with the joy that's found only in Jesus. Talk to y'all soon!