I shared some great news with you in my recent newsletter about a student committing to following Jesus at SLU this semester. My staff partner and I have been praying for months that we would see people become true followers of Christ on our campus and we are truly excited to see how God is beginning to answer those prayers. However, at the same time, we are also being made more and more aware of the depth of the brokenness that exists on our campus and in our own hearts. The truth is that though we have had reason to celebrate this semester, we have also been overwhelmed at times with reasons to cry, to shake our fists, to feel helpless, and to ask God some big questions.Back in January, I arrived on campus and was shocked to hear about one of the most explosive and heartbreaking acts of discrimination I have ever heard about in my nearly 5 years on campus that had occurred the night before. Without going into too many details, a couple of guys spent an evening getting drunk and then returned back to an apartment complex on campus. When they arrived, they pounded on the door of two African-American girls and began shouting racist insults and threatening them. The two guys were white students who lived in the complex. The next morning, the campus was electric with the news of this horrible incident. Over the next few weeks, it would prove to be the spark that started the fire of reports coming in of similar incidents that had been occurring all over campus, from the classroom to the dorm room, since the beginning of the school year. To make matters worse, SLU's administration appeared to have little experience dealing with racism and its feeble attempts at damage control ranged from ineffective to causing further damage. Some students were outraged. Others were defensive. The administration was confused. No one knew what to do.
This hit our InterVarsity chapter particularly deeply as several of our students were (and are) intimately involved and affected by the discrimination that seemed to be sweeping the campus. We are a pretty diverse group, especially compared to the average SLU student organization. Of our 25 or so students, about 15 are from different minority cultures. In the midst of our tears and questions and frustrations, we felt like we couldn't just sit by as people transformed by the Gospel and continue to keep our mouths shut at the injustice going on around us. We knew that Jesus had something to say about this but we had no idea what the first step was in following him into the brokenness. So, we gathered together at our core group meeting one night and, after hearing Peter's sermon to the 3,000 people gathered at Pentecost in Acts 2, we made a list of evidences of our "corrupt generation" (Acts 2:40) that we could see on campus. From loneliness to academic idolatry to discrimination, our list got pretty lengthy. We observed the hurt, the sin, the shame, the guilt of our fellow SLU students and asked Jesus to show us what to do next.
That was two weeks ago. This past week was SLU's Spring Break. Esther and I loaded up seven SLU students and headed just a couple miles northwest of campus to join with several schools from around the country for City Lights 2010, an urban mission trip put on by InterVarsity in our very own city of Saint Louis. City Lights essentially seeks to connect followers of Jesus to their Master's love for the poor and neglected living in their own neighborhoods and city. Our students spent a week tutoring and building boxcars for inner city kids, moving furniture for newly-arrived refugees from all over Africa and Southeast Asia, and rehabbing a house for a man who had lived for the last two years without running water and electricity - all in the city where they attend classes everyday.Beyond the daily work projects, City Lights also focuses on issues of reconciliation and justice. These reflections and conversations were incredibly healing and eye-opening for our seven students who were able to attend. One particularly insightful and honest talk on racism given by the Missouri Area Director of IV led to a long night of confession and forgiveness for everyone from SLU, including my staff partner and I. We felt as if Jesus was showing us a crack of light in the dark cloud that we saw lingering over our campus. Though we came from different backgrounds and were warring against the racism in our own hearts, we could feel the Holy Spirit drawing us together and bringing healing to our midst. We knew we had to take what we found back to campus with us, but how?
Robert, one of our student leaders, gave us our answer. He suggested that we set up an interactive display table on campus through which students could come by and have a productive conversation about brokenness on campus and possible solutions to the problems. This would be a great chance to share the Gospel and its power to bring healing to the hurt that starts in our hearts and spreads like cancer to our relationships. We call these tables Proxe Stations and Robert (as well as myself) first experienced them at a Spring Break project last year. The vote was unanimous - this would be how we would take the Good News back to SLU. In God's good provision, it just so happened that the same week we were looking at (next week) is also SLU's campus-wide Social Justice week. What a great chance for Jesus' followers in InterVarsity to speak up and have a voice of truth on campus!
So that's what we're going to do. We're going to set up a table in the most heavily-trafficked part of campus and ask students to tell us about where they've experienced brokenness on campus and what they think some possible solutions might be to those problems. Then we're going to tell them about a God whose heart breaks over racism and who came as a man and gave His blood to reconcile the people who bear His Image to each other and to Himself. Let me be honest with you - we want to see people meet Him. We don't want to just put up a little table and ask some tough questions. We want to see transformation. We want to see conversion. We want to see revival. We really need your prayers. Please pray for us. The schedule is Monday-Wednesday from 10am-2pm and Friday from 12-2:30pm. Would you be willing to pray for us each day within that timeframe? Write it in your calendar and intercede with us and for our campus. We're throwing ourselves out there and who knows what Jesus might do?
