"Theo. Loons here. I need a favor. Could you fill in for me?"

"When?" I said into the mouthpiece.

"Thirty minutes from now. Sorry."

"Sure. What class?"

"Not a class," he grumbled, "a meeting. Do you know the student organization, CrossTalk? I'm the faculty sponsor."

"Can't they hold a meeting without a sponsor?" I asked.

"Yes, but this is different. They're planning a new members retreat. I promised to listen to their plans and give them feedback."

"Bob," I groused, "they don't know me from Adam. Why can't you go?"

"They do know you from Adam. Besides, I've been called on the carpet by the Dean of PMS." That's short for Post-Modern Studies. "I've got to meet him in 30 minutes."

Surprise. "Why?"

"Haven't you taken your morning pill?" More campus slang; The Pill is the daily student newspaper.

"I never take my pill." Enlightenment struck. "Would this be about that petition?" My friend Loons had remarked in class that he thought there might be lessons to learn from history. Three students ratted on him to Peccata Mundi, the Modern European History prof. Within a week the entire faculties of History, English and Religious Studies had signed a petition, denouncing him for what they called pastism and demanding that he be disciplined for violating the Campus Speech Code.

"Theo, could we put off playing Twenty Questions until later?"

"Sorry. Just tell me where to be."

"Subsidized Activities Building, Room 3-B-12."

"B as in basement?"

"No, three B as in third basement."

"Thirty minutes, you said?"

"Make it 20. You've already used 10."

I got to the meeting in plenty of time, and Loons was right. I knew each student there.

"Professor Loons! How you've changed!"

I smiled. "Truer than you think, Marcy. He had another meeting and asked me to fill in. I'm Professor Loons today."

I'd thought they might be worried that their sponsor was in trouble, but students are oblivious to faculty politics, and they didn't even know about the petition. What they did want to know was what I thought about the bailout plan.

That surprised me. "Is the financial crisis such a hot topic on campus?"

"Not the bank bailout," said Peter. "The student activities bailout."

"The what?"

"Didn't you know? The Student Senate says something has to be done about failing student organizations. They want to allocate 70 percent of campus meeting space to groups with fewer than two members."

I must have looked dazed, because they all laughed. "Never mind," said Blue. "Faculty are oblivious to student politics."

At that moment Tiffany walked in with a girl I didn't know. "Good, you're here," said Marcy. She looked quizzically at the other girl and said, "These are Peter and Jordan. That's Professor Theophilus. I'm Marcy. I don't think we've met. Are you here to help?"

"Don't mind me," the girl answered. "I'm just tagging along with Tiffany." She took a chair at the far end of the table and busied herself with her fingernails.

After a little pause, Marcy said, "Um. Well, I guess we can get started."

Peter asked, "Shouldn't we fill Professor T in on what we're doing?"

"Why don't you do that?"

He turned to me. "We get new members for lots of reasons. Sometimes because they're Christians, sometimes because they want to be better Christians, sometimes just because they want to hang out with Christians."

Marcy broke back in. "But they don't necessarily understand the basics of the faith, or have a relationship with Christ. So we're having a retreat for them."

"It's an experiment," said Jordan. "We've never done this before."

Peter said, "We're going to build in some free time and fun activities. But there will also be prayer, worship, music, discussion, shared meals —"

"— and a series of brief talks," said Marcy.

"By whom?" I asked.

"By us."

"About what?"

There was an uncomfortable silence. "Well, that's the problem," said Peter. "We've had trouble agreeing on a list of topics."

Marcy added, "That's one of the reasons we wanted Professor Loons to come today."

"You couldn't reach any agreement?"

Tiffany said, "That's not exactly true. We could have eight topics —"

"Why?"

She shrugged. "Seems like a good number. So we agreed that each of us would bring two topics that we wouldn't mind talking about to this meeting. Since there are four of us." She looked at the girl I didn't know.

"Don't mind me," the girl repeated.

"What do we have?" asked Marcy. "I could talk about prayer and about faith."

Tiffany said, "I was going to talk about forgiveness. But prayer was going to be one of my topics too."

Jordan cleared his throat. "I was thinking of speaking about faith, and, um, prayer. What did you come up with, Peter?"

"Faith and forgiveness," he muttered.

"So our eight topics," declared Marcy, "are prayer, prayer, prayer, faith, faith, faith, forgiveness, and forgiveness."

"Thank you for the summary, madam chairman."

"It's not my fault, Peter."

Someone asked, "Could we just do three topics?" Everyone ignored that. They all turned their heads and looked at me — even the girl I didn't know.

"Prof," Jordan ventured, "you're not going to get out of saying something by looking innocent."

"Do I look innocent?"

"Not really," said Peter, "but you're still not going to get out of it."

"If you really want to know," I said, "I think you're making a lot of unnecessary work for yourselves."

"How?"

"You're trying to decide all by yourselves what Christians need to believe."

"Of course we're deciding by ourselves," Marcy said peevishly. "We're the retreat team. Who else is there to do it?"

Jordan looked puzzled. "Prof, do you mean we should copy someone?"

"Not the way you mean," I said. "But in a way, yes. Don't you see what you're doing? You're trying to write a creed."

"We are not," said Marcy. "We're just trying to list the eight or so most important things for Christians to know and belieee — to know and — wait a second."

"Yes." I smiled at her. "That's what a creed is."

"I guess it is at that," she conceded.

"The great thing is, Marcy, you don't have to invent the faith. It's been done."

"You mean," she asked, "that we should choose some classic Christian profession of faith, and get our eight topics from there?"

"Why not?"

"But CrossTalk is interdenominational," said Tiffany. "Our denominations all have different professions of faith. Not all of them even use the word 'creed.' Some of our members belong to a tradition that doesn't believe in having creeds."

"But they're OK with a faith and message statement," Peter answered.

"Well, yeah," she said.

"There must be something we agree about," said Jordan. "Otherwise, how could we even be interdenominational?"

Peter said, "The oldest profession of faith is 'Jesus is Lord.' We all believe in that."

"Good place to start," said Marcy, "but not enough."

"How about the creed in 1 Corinthians 15?"

"Is there a creed in 1 Corinthians 15?"

"Sure," he replied. "Starting somewhere around the third verse, Paul says, 'For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,' and, um, um, I don't remember the rest of the words. But he goes on to say that Christ was raised on the third day and seen by lots of people."

"Still not enough."

"There's the rest of the Bible," said Jordan.

"That's too much. A creed is just a summary. Something short."

"Whether you call it a creed or something else," I said, "Why don't you use the Apostles' Creed? It's much older than the denominational divisions."

Tiffany asked, "Is that the one that begins, 'I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth'?"

"That's the one."

"How many lines is it?" demanded Marcy.

"Just 15 or so. But a lot is packed into them."

"That might work," said Jordan.

"We could try it," said Marcy dubiously.

"Then why don't we?" asked Peter. "Next time we meet, let's see if we can divide the Apostles Creed into eight topics."

"When's next time?" asked Tiffany.

"Decide that without me," Marcy said. "I can't wait." She vanished into the hallway.

"Is it that late?" asked Jordan, glancing at his watch. "Whoa. I've got an exam." He disappeared too.

Tiffany said, "Before we break up, there's one more thing. We still don't know what topics to talk about at the retreat, but —"

"Tiffany," said Peter, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I have to leave too. I've got a class. I'll e-mail everyone and try to coordinate a time for our next meeting." He floated out the door, leaving just me, Tiffany, and her friend. We looked at each other.

"Prof, do you mind if I go ahead with the question I was asking when Peter left?"

"Don't mind me," said the friend."

I grinned. "If she doesn't mind, why should I?"

"OK. Like I was saying, it's been hard to decide what topics to talk about, but we did agree last time about how to talk about the topics."

"Oh?

"We thought we'd use all use personal testimony. What do you think?"

"Might be good, might be bad. Tell me more."

"Like when I thought I was going to talk about prayer. Maybe I'll still get to, who knows. I figured that I'd tell everyone about all the wonderful experiences I've had in prayer. How God is always so close. I thought I'd illustrate by telling about some times when I was down and He lifted me up. You know? And some times when I needed something and He answered my prayer."

A bitter laugh came from the end of the table. It was Tiffany's friend.

"Hah," she said. "That's a pile of baloney, and you know it."

PART TWO: THE PILE OF BALONEY