Happy March everyone! It's hard to believe but it is in fact the first day of a new month. January and February have flown by and we are already almost halfway through the Spring Semester. Crazy.A lot has happened in these first two months and I wanted to give you a brief rundown of all the good things we've seen God doing on campus at SLU:
New Bible Studies. This semester, we've seen three new ongoing Bible studies planted by students, bringing our total to six with one more in process as I write. What I love about these groups is that they are focused on specific subgroups of students within the greater SLU community (we call them "neighborhoods"). We have students leading studies in the Black Student Alliance, among the fraternity/sorority community (see picture above), on the medical campus, with international students, and in two different freshmen dorm communities. We're looking to start a couple more in another freshmen dorm and with commuter students before the year ends. Studying Scripture with InterVarsity is what made me fall in love with reading the Bible in college and I am a big believer in the power of the Spirit working through the Scriptures to bring real change and healing in the lives of students. Exciting!
New Brother and Sisters. After being on campus for the past 6 years, first as a student and now as a staff, and seeing very few if any people become followers of Jesus and join the family, it's been difficult to keep hoping that we would see a movement of the Spirit in the hearts of folks seeking after God. I am overwhelmed and humbled to tell you that we have seen three students come to faith in the last month, each of whom were led to faith by a friend from our Core Team of leaders. I wish I could better communicate the joy that comes in receiving these phone calls from students where the joy is so thick in their voice that I know exactly what they're about to tell me. Mostly I just laugh and yell like a crazy person trying to get them to calm down and tell me the story. It's the most thrilling experience I've ever had to see so much happening at once. I think I could get used to this...
New Missionaries. At SLU, our desire is to see a multi-ethnic community of missionaries raised up among the student body. We don't want people to just become followers of Jesus (though that's obviously a BIG deal!); we want to see them become missionary followers of Jesus who are willing to share the hope and healing they've found with other folks on campus. As Jesus says himself in Luke 10 - "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." In line with this call, my students and I are pretty passionate about helping the followers of Jesus we meet on campus realize this part of what it means to be a Christian. My Core Team of leaders is especially dedicated to seeing new InterVarsity students get connected to the community, learn how to share their story of meeting Jesus, and maybe even start a Bible study of their own one day soon! So, as we start these new studies, we're always looking for the next bunch of new folks who could one day be doing the same. Praise God - we're finding them faster than we can train them this semester! So far, we've invited two new leaders up into the Core Team and hoping to end the year with 20 leaders in our chapter. Pray with us that the Lord of the Harvest would indeed send out more workers into the field.
The Spirit is on the move and we are tired but excited at the halfway point this semester. He has been so exceedingly good to us and we give Him praise and glory for all that we've been graced to see. Pray that we would continue to search for (and find!) where the Father is at work on campus so that we can join Him in the work He has been doing since long before we arrived and will continue to do long after we're gone. Peace to you friends.
