Today was the first day back to school for SLU students. They had their last day of finals exactly five weeks ago and now they've officially begun the Spring Semester. Books have been bought, stories from break have been told, and new routines are being established. It is always exciting to see my students again after weeks of praying for them from afar in my apartment and various coffee shops across the city. I loved hearing their stories of how Jesus met them over break and what they're excited about for the semester to come. Already today I've spoken to two different students who are excited about starting brand new Bible studies for the Spring! Inevitably, the question comes back to me, "So, Kale - what do you do while we're gone?" Great question!I had several highlights over Christmas break but I'll share just a few of them with you here:
Regional Staff Conference (Dec. 13-16)
Like many national organizations, InterVarsity is subdivided geographically. I am on staff at Saint Louis University, which is part of the Missouri Area, which is part of the Central Region (Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri make up this Region). The picture you see above is the Missouri Area staff team, representing 7 chapters at 5 different schools. We're holding our boss, Elizabeth, who is the Area Director here in the "Show Me State." Every December, our Area gets together with the rest of the Region for a four-day-long Staff Conference. This time is always refreshing and fun for me. There is plenty of time to relax and reconnect with Jesus and old friends. I have never met a more talented or more fun bunch of people than the folks that I get to work with. It's both incredibly intimidating and encouraging to spend four days with people that I went through college looking up to and am now blessed to call my friends and co-workers. The biggest highlight for me of this time was spending time with the entire community studying John 21 as a group. Hearing Jesus reinstate Peter after the Resurrection is always powerful but this time around it was like he was speaking directly to me when he continued trusting Peter even after Peter had betrayed him. I connected to it so much that I decided to come back and preach on it at Rooftop Community Church, my home here in Saint Louis. If you're interested, you can listen to the sermon here.
Down Time
After Regional Staff Conference wrapped up, I got to travel to Nashville, TN for a few days to stay with some friends and attend an annual Christmas concert put on by my favorite songwriter, Andrew Peterson. If you haven't bought his album, Behold the Lamb of God, do yourself a favor and get it immediately. It's not really a Christmas album; actually it's more of an epic song cycle telling the story of the coming of Jesus into the world, from the Old Testament to the Gospels. I travel to see Andrew and a crew of some of the most talented musicians in Nashville perform this show every year and it seems to be getting better and better as the years go by. Incredible. I was blessed to spend some time in my hometown of Marion, IL with family over the Christmas weekend, which was also relaxing and refreshing. I love Saint Louis but there is a part of me that will always feel at home in Illinois.
The Planning Process
I returned to Saint Louis and began laying down some serious plans for this semester. I had been praying about the Spring for weeks already and I started to receive some of the coordinates of where I felt like God was leading me in putting together the Spring Semester for InterVarsity at SLU. We never know exactly what these four months will hold but God has always been faithful to begin preparing me for the journey ahead well in advance, even when I don't see it at the time. You'll hear more about the semester to come in a week or so but suffice it say for now that we have some BOLD plans down on the calendar and lots of space for Jesus to do some crazy things on campus this semester. I am beyond excited and now that the students are back I'm ready to put my hands to the plow! I'll be getting together with my leaders this coming weekend to cast vision for our semester and call each of us back to focusing our eyes on Jesus and our hearts toward our friends and professors at SLU who desperately need to meet him.
National Staff Conference (Jan 5-9)
The last major highlight for me from the past five weeks was National Staff Conference, the triennial gathering of InterVarsity staff from around the country to our own fair city of Saint Louis. 1200 InterVarsity staff from the U.S. spent four days together last week in community reflecting on one of the three tenants of our national vision: "Students and Faculty Transformed, Campuses Renewed, World Changers Developed." This year, we focused on the theme of "Campuses Renewed," thinking about questions such as "What does it mean for us to participate in the academic sphere of our campuses, not just the spiritual?" and "What role should InterVarsity play in speaking the Truth not only to individuals but also into structures and ideas of injustice happening around us on the campus and in the cities?" These are obviously enormous questions with equally enormous implications. I felt Jesus challenging me to think even bigger about how he wants to use my students and I to be a true blessing not just to students and faculty at SLU, but to the institution of Saint Louis University - its ideas, perspectives, structures, and culture. Fascinating.
Hopefully that gives you a good idea of what my "break" looked like. I feel so blessed to have had these past five weeks to spend time with Jesus and with folks like you who love my students and I and are excited to watch the Kingdom come on campus. Thank you for praying for us - we beg you to continue to do so and to pray even more often and more boldly that Jesus would move in power and that we would see many people at SLU come to know him this semester. We are going to keep our eyes on him and we trust that we'll have some incredible stories to share with you Along the Way. I'll leave you with the following video, which I'm proud to say was shown to all 1200 national InterVarsity staff this past week at our conference. It's a testimony of God's work through a difficult time on our campus last year. Enjoy!
Saint Louis University from InterVarsity-twentyonehundred on Vimeo.
