Kicking off the Edge: 2012 Style

Human Bingo!

The Edge Kickoff - What is the Gospel?

In the Summer of 2009, my old staff partner, Esther, and our supervisor, Tammy, sat down together to evaluate the chapter.  At the time, we had about 20 total people involved in two different small groups.  We had a "large group" event once per month where we'd throw together a campus-wide event that a few other folks would show up to as well.  Overall, we weren't really very satisfied with where things were going - nobody was coming to faith, we had no idea what we were doing with discipleship, and the chapter had never gotten beyond those 20 people since it was first planted.

So, we scrapped everything. No more small groups. No more "large" group. We started from scratch and got everybody interested in InterVarsity into one room.  All 12 of them.  We called this new group "The Edge" because we wanted to take the Gospel to the edges of our campus - every corner, every people group, every dorm, everywhere.  That year, 12 people grew to 19. The next year the 19 became about 50 which then grew to 90 people involved in InterVarsity at SLU across 12 Bible studies and at least 40 people coming to The Edge every week.

Last night, we kicked off the year officially with about 70 people crammed into a classroom meant for 60 at the most.  We even got them up for a game of Human Bingo (check the picture - it was tight).  We preached the Gospel. We told them about our Bible studies (or "cells"). We sang songs. We ate cookies.  Honestly, it was awesome. Every time we do this in September, I'm reminded both why I love my job and why it matters.  Who knows what will happen with those 70 people?  Some of them may never come back.  But some of them may take my job one day or plant churches, or be amazing Christian nurses and lawyers and doctors and more.  Some of them may meet Jesus for the first time or get plugged into healthy community for the first time.  Lots of them might at least find a home away from home.  Whatever happens, God is good and we're happy to be back in the swing of things!

New Student Outreach 2012

Labor Day Barbecue at SLU

It's been a busy few weeks already here at SLU!  Let me give you a little recap of what InterVarsity has been upto:

Aug 22-23 - The leaders gather in Saint Louis to pray and plan for the semester to come. We study Matthew 28 and talk about what it means to "Go and make disciples of all nations" on campus.

Saturday (8.25) - We set up a table on campus to pass out 300+ water bottles and 200 Capri Suns to freshmen on campus tours.  About 60 of them filled out interest cards!

Waiting for students at SLU Fair

Sunday (8.26) - A few of us attended the first Mass of the year at College Church, an annual SLU tradition complete with Ted Drewes frozen custard!

Tuesday (8.28) - Campus Ministries open house - we joined the other affiliated campus ministries at SLU for a night of worship music and meeting interested students - lots of great conversations!

Wednesday (8.29) - SLU Fair - the student organization fair where we usually meet a lot of the new freshmen as they tour all the student organizations on campus. We had about 12 IV leaders work the table (in the heat!) - they were amazing at meeting people!

A little cereal for your ice cream?

Thursday (8.30) - Follow-up day! We visited and took gifts to people who had given us their contact information (and invited them to brunch on Saturday!)

Saturday (9.1) - Freshmen Breakfast! This was our biggest one ever with over 30 freshmen spread across 4 apartments as upperclassmen cooked breakfast and hosted our new friends. So. Many. Pancakes :)

Sunday (9.2) -  IV Goes to Church - Every September we take students to different churches in St. Louis.  We really value church involvement in InterVarsity so we try to connect students with local congregations that love college students and are actively on mission in the city. This week, we went to August Gate Church.

Monday (9.3) - Labor Day Barbecue - Last year we started a tradition of grilling out by the pool on Labor Day to welcome back the returning students from previous years and introduce them to all our new freshmen friends. Last year, I had no idea what I was doing with charcoal (I'm a gas guy!) but this year, I learned my lesson and bought a chimney for the coals.  We served about 150 hot dogs and hamburgers and actually ran out of food a couple hours in.  All in all, I'd guess at least 100 people stopped by, both new friends and old.

All in all, we've met and followed-up with about 160 new students, including more new upperclassmen than any year I can remember.  It's been quite a ride!  We could really use your prayers as we faithfully continue to build relationships with so many new folks and take every opportunity to share the Gospel along the way!

Sharing the Load

In August of 2008, I was just getting back to St. Louis from having spent 6 weeks in Cairo, Egypt. I was beginning my internship with InterVarsity and we were preparing for the upcoming school year.  I had never been behind the scenes in starting a school year in college ministry and I was curious to see how exactly we were going to go from seeing random people walking through the quad to getting those people to come to our Bible studies.  But, there was at least one freshmen that already had a connection with us.  We had heard that one of our co-workers had a fiance who had a younger brother coming to SLU as a freshman that year.  We figured that at least he would come to our Bible study so I felt a little better.
The Wednesday after school began, we were at SLU Fair, the student organization fair where all the student groups on campus congregate to tell freshmen and other folks about the groups available to them.  My supervisor pointed at a kid walking through the crowd and said, "I think that's Cris' younger brother!"  We called out "Robert!" (we heard that was his name) and he came over to the table.  A few minutes later he was wearing one of our signs on his chest and handing out fliers - three days into his freshman year.
Flash forward four years and Robert is now stepping on to campus to begin his Intern year with InterVarsity at SLU (and even living with me until I get married!).  That's him sitting next to me in the picture above.  Robert would spend a lot of his freshman year in one of our Bible studies before coming on to our leadership team and serving as one of our primary leaders during his time in college.  Robert is a good friend and a gifted evangelist with a huge heart for international students on campus.  He will be spending most of his time this year working with me at SLU, training and discipling cell planters, and leading out in our outreach to international students.  He'll also be spending some time scouting and potentially chapter-planting at Flo Valley Community College with one of our co-workers.
It's been over two years since I last had a staff partner at SLU and I am so excited for how God will use our partnership to grow both Robert and I and to bless the campus and students.  Praise God for community in mission!

Missionaries Never "Leave": Part Two

Note to the Reader:  This is part two of a blog series about feeling called away from the church that has been my home for the past 6 1/2 years. Part one was the story told from my perspective.  Part Two will be a letter from the Pastor written to communicate his part of the story.  It's been such a privilege to be under his leadership for all of my adult life so far and I was honored that he would take the time to write this letter so I wanted to share it as well!

April 12, 2012

Dear Kale’s Supporters,

It’s rare that I’m happy to see people leave my church.  But I’m thrilled that Kale is leaving.  Good riddance, I say!

Just kidding.  Last year Kale came and told me he sensed an opportunity to serve at a church near SLU’s campus, which could allow him to better serve his students.  Kale values church loyalty and did not want to leave without praying and discussing the opportunity first with his leaders.  He also knows he has a special relationship with Rooftop and some of its members, on whom he depends for prayer and financial support.  So we met repeatedly to talk about this possibility, and Kale even met with the elders to ask for their wisdom and submit to their leadership.

In the end, the elders agreed that the kingdom of Jesus Christ would benefit from Kale leaving Rooftop to work more closely with a different church, and we directed him to do so.  In fact, before Kale could LEAVE Rooftop we decided to SEND him out.  This is what churches should be doing: sending people out into new fields of harvest.  We’re excited to see what the Holy Spirit does in and through Kale and his students at their new place of worship.

I’m writing you this letter so you can have confidence that Rooftop’s relationship with Kale remains strong.  We are still a strong supporter of his work at Intervarsity, and would not have sent him out if we didn’t think he was ready for this new opportunity, or if we thought he was going about it the wrong way.  We are pleased to continue supporting Kale and we hope you are, too.

For the kingdom,

Matt Herndon
Rooftop Community Church

Missionaries Never "Leave": Part One

Note to the Reader:  This is part one of a blog series about feeling called away from the church that has been my home for the past 6 1/2 years. Part two will be a letter from the Pastor written to communicate his part of the story.  It's been such a privilege to be under his leadership for all of my adult life so far and I was honored that he would take the time to write this letter so I wanted to share it as well!

Ever since I came to Saint Louis for school back in the fall of 2005, being involved in a local church has been absolutely critical for me.  God blessed me very early on by leading me to work in the Housing Department at SLU where I met a guy who was interning at this place called Rooftop Community Church.  He invited me to go with him when I was making the rounds as a scared 18-year-old in a new place trying to find a home.  I immediately fell in love, stopped my church-search, and planted myself in that community.

For the past 6 1/2 years, Rooftop has been my home.  When most of my personal life fell apart during my freshman year of college, it was the place where Jesus called me into community.  When I first felt called to be a missionary, it was Rooftop that came alongside me equipping and encouraging me to follow Jesus into the mission field.  For me, Rooftop is not just my "church" or my "friends" (though both of those are true); Rooftop is family.

With this family behind me, I started my missionary journey at SLU.  About a year ago, my students and I were invited by a church in Soulard to partner with them in tutoring 3rd graders at Peabody Elementary in the Peabody Projects between Soulard and Lafayette Square.  Peabody is one of the lowest performing elementary schools in the city and is located in the heart of this project neighborhood.  About 15 of my students and I started volunteering there on a regular basis and fell in love with the school and the students.  I started dreaming more and more about what it would look like to build greater bridges between the City and the Campus.

As the partnership between InterVarsity and this local church grew stronger, several of my students began attending and even became members.  At this point, about 20 SLU IV students attend there with some sort of regularity.  I began praying about what the next steps in partnership would look like and started to ask God if he was calling me to join my students there and further lock arms with those who were actively ministering in these city neighborhoods.  Over the past six months, I've gathered lots of people around me to pray.  Matt and I met together and prayed.  My bosses and I met together and prayed.  I eventually met with the elders and prayed.  As much as I could never have imagined leaving Rooftop, it felt like God kept confirming that this was the right decision.  It felt like he was (and is) calling me deeper into his mission in the City, to begin building this greater bridge between the Campus and the Peabody Projects.

So I find myself in the middle of a gigantic transition that can only be described as "being sent."  I'm moving from the east side of the Loop into Peabody.  My intern for next year (currently a senior) is coming with me and 4 other leaders are praying and actively looking into moving into the projects with me.  I have dreams of tithing 25% of our leadership team every year to God's mission in this neighborhood.  How amazing would it be if this generation of student leaders not only gave up part of their time in college to living and working in the inner city but also decided to stay after graduating?  God is filling me with vision and passion for this next step and I can't wait to see how it all happens. 

With the Elders' blessing, I'm also "being sent" from Rooftop to that local church, August Gate, in South City where about 1/2 of my current leadership team and 20+ SLU students already attend.  I told God at the very beginning that the evidence of His direction would have to be overwhelming before I would ever stop actively attending Rooftop and, over the past six months, he has confirmed this decision.  This is obviously a bittersweet transition as my heart also feels joy and anticipation in praying for Rooftop's future, elders, leaders, and people.  Please know that I'm still around as one of Rooftop's missionaries and would love to sit down and share more about what's coming for the ministry at SLU or just catch up on life over coffee.  Thank you for your continued support as I follow our missionary God into whatever he has for me in this season - I need your prayers now more than ever and it's such a joy to have people to walk with when things get crazy!

Spring 2012: Students on Spring Break Mission

As it's been a while since I've taken the time to update my blog, I thought I'd write a flurry of posts to give you a sense of what we've been up to on campus and what I've been up to personally as well. Happy reading!

As we all know, Spring Break is traditionally a time for college students to get away from campus and head to the beach or mountains or wherever they go to get away from the stress of classes and live it up for a week. Here in InterVarsity, we do that too...but ours looks a little different.

This Spring Break, we sent students out to live it up for a week of missional living, where they could really live it up. We sent 5 students to City Lights 2012, InterVarsity's Saint Louis-based urban project. At City Lights, students come from all over the country to spend their Spring Breaks learning about God's heart for the urban poor and why the Gospel calls us to work for the reconciliation of all people under Christ, even those who don't look like us or make as much money as we do. They spend a week working in areas of the city that SLU students would never see in our Midtown bubble. They work alongside refugees who are scraping together a living after fleeing their war-torn home countries and yet still find a way to find joy in being God's children. Needless to say, students almost always return from City Lights fired up to see the work God is doing on campus spill out into the city around us. I can't wait to see what this team does with that passion!

For the first time ever, our InterVarsity chapter also sent a student abroad to partner with our sister movement in Guyana. Ashley, one of our leaders, joined with students and staff from our region to participate in a campus evangelism partnership with the InterVarsity group at the University of Guyana. The team spent the week doing proxe stations (artistic displays that walk a participant through a series of spiritual questions) to build relationships and pique interest in exploring Jesus for students that they met. They partnered with and learned from Guyanese student leaders and together shared the Gospel with dozens of students on campus. Over the course of the week, LOTS of students either became Christians for the first time or re-dedicated their lives to following Jesus. Ashley was able to share her stories at the Edge on Monday night and it was such a joy to share in her experience. God is doing incredible things with these students!

Interested in seeing more? Here are videos made by each team that go a bit deeper into their experiences:

City Lights
Guyana

Spring 2012: MOmentum

As it's been a while since I've taken the time to update my blog, I thought I'd write a flurry of posts to give you a sense of what we've been up to on campus and what I've been up to personally as well. Happy reading!

Last Spring, the Missouri InterVarsity Staff team was granted a national grant to create a cohort of students who would agree to be part of a semester-long training curriculum designed to help them become better evangelists - to train them in learning how to share the Gospel with their friends and classmates in ways that allow those who don't know Jesus to understand and explore the Gospel.

We had never done anything like this before but about 30 students ended up going through the program and we saw a lot of fruit from even our first efforts at designing a program like this. We called it MOmentum, partly because we thought the MO thing (Missouri) was clever, but mostly because momentum is exactly what we were hoping it would drive on campus. So, as we were planning the year back before school started, we decided that we again wanted to invite several students to join us in growing as evangelists in community with other students and staff. Two of our leaders here at SLU volunteered to lead our team and quickly recruited another 8 students to join them. The team is comprised completely of freshmen and sophomores eager to learn how to share their faith, most of them for the first time.

We've been learning a lot this semester through MOmentum. A few folks experienced frustration right off the bat as they were challenged to talk to their friends about Jesus back in January and found less-than-welcoming receptions to these conversations. A few of the students have felt exhilarated by the surprisingly warm response their friends have given to talking about Jesus. More than anything though, they are learning what it means to be a community learning together. Every month, they gather once as a Missouri team for training and then once more as a SLU team to share stories and support one another. This time has been especially sweet as those who feel frustrated band together with those who feel joyful and together cry out for God to work in the lives of their friends. As the staff of this chapter, there is nothing that gives me more joy than seeing a freshman student whose heart genuinely breaks for their friends who don't yet know Jesus. May God grant that LOTS of the folks we are reaching out to would respond and give their lives to Jesus this year!

Spring 2012: Ambition 2012

As it's been a while since I've taken the time to update my blog, I thought I'd write a flurry of posts to give you a sense of what we've been up to on campus and what I've been up to personally as well. Happy reading!

"It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known..." - Romans 15:20

This past January, InterVarsity hosted its first ever planting conference, Ambition 2012. A few hundred IV staff and students from around the country gathered together to talk about planting, or starting new ministries on college campuses. At SLU, we've been engaged in planting missionary communities (we call them "cells") for the past few years. We've planted these Bible studies in the Fraternity/Sorority system, in dorms across campus, among the International community, and elsewhere. We love starting new things at SLU and it was an honor to be in attendance at this conference.

Four leaders from SLU InterVarsity and myself took the flight down to Tampa, FL for four days of training and preaching from guys like York Moore, Alan Hirsch, Kim Hammond, Brian Sanders, and a myriad of InterVarsity staff from around the country. I even got to lead a seminar on planting new ministries purely through evangelistic Bible studies (i.e. starting with people who are not yet following Jesus).

These four days were a huge blessing to our team. We were blessed by the worship and mission of Tampa Underground, the church that hosted us. We were blessed by the creativity and apostolic spirit of staff and students from around the country. We were blessed by the community God has been building among our leaders and our region here in the Midwest. God has given us a vision to not only see our entire campus reached with the Gospel but also to see the Gospel spill over from our campus into the surrounding neighborhood. Join us in praying for God to lead us in seeing that vision realized!

Spring 2012: My First Seminary Class

As it's been a while since I've taken the time to update my blog, I thought I'd write a flurry of posts to give you a sense of what we've been up to on campus and what I've been up to personally as well. Happy reading!

This past January, I was given the opportunity to take my first-ever seminary class through Fuller Theological Seminary. One of my favorite things about working for InterVarsity is that IV really cares about developing its staff and encourages us to further our education and training. Back in October or so, my boss let me know about an upcoming opportunity to take a week-long intensive class at Fuller's extension center in Colorado Springs, CO. She told me the class was "The Theology of C.S. Lewis." As soon as I read that title, I was pretty much in.

I'm sure I'm not alone here; C.S. Lewis has been formative for so many Christians in the past three or four generations. I remember first reading Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters in high school and feeling like Lewis was dusting off my old images and conceptions of God, the Bible, the Incarnation, Sin, and what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. His stories and analogies have lingered in my imagination for almost ten years. As I've poured deeper into his fiction (The Space Trilogy, 'Til We Have Faces, Narnia) and other theological writings (favorites include The Four Loves and The Problem of Pain), I've continued to be blessed by his incredible ability to communicate ideas and captivate the reader with vivid images and compelling prose outlining his understanding of the Triune God and His activity in the world. With all of this in mind, I signed up for the class.

A few weeks later, I received the syllabus for the class which included about 1200 pages of reading, a reading notebook to be kept as we went along (roughly 1 page for each chapter of reading), a final exam, and a research paper. Whew. On top of that, the class was happening a mere week before classes started up again for the Spring Semester, meaning that I was almost guaranteed to find it challenging to squeeze in all the time needed to do justice to the final exam and research paper. I swallowed hard and decided to stick it out, praying that God would provide the time needed to complete the classwork.

The new year came and I flew out to Colorado to begin the week-long intensive. I did not really know what to expect from the classroom time but God blessed me (and my classmates) with several good gifts during the week:

• God provided a place for four of my classmates and I to stay for free! A couple in the community opened up their home to us (the wife was in the class as well) and even allowed us to drive their cars and gave us quite the introduction to Colorado Springs. This was such an incredible gift as we were able to rest well and be blessed so abundantly by their kind hospitality!
• The weather was beautiful the entire time we were in Colorado which definitely highlighted the incredible beauty of waking up everyday to a mountain landscape. As a smalltown boy from the Midwest, I haven't exactly seen a lot of mountains in my life. The scenery itself was worth the cost of the trip.
• The four classmates I mentioned were InterVarsity staff which proved to be quite a life-giving little community while we were away from home. My boss and I came in from Saint Louis and there was a girl from Washington D.C., as well as a guy from Maine. As we were stressing out together, God made us into friends. I love these people and still feel connected to them after only spending a week together. Praise God for supportive community!

Long story short, we survived the class together and felt genuinely blessed by God to be there. The lectures (though long at times) were wonderful as the Professor opened up Lewis' theology in ways that I had never seen before. I saw the rich beauty of Lewis' trinitarian theology that illuminates so much of his writing. I was reminded of some of the historical context and details of Lewis' life that informed his understanding of his role as a writer and thinker in the mid-20th century. I was once again swept away by Aslan and the High Countries and the Weight of Glory and reminded of the sheer Joy (or Longing) that both delights and frustrates us in this life. I'll leave you with one of my favorite Lewis quotes:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
The Four Loves

NSO 2011: Week One by the Numbers

9 out of 11 Core Leaders pose with me at our Pre-Fall Retreat

Here are some important numbers from the past week:  350+, 160, 101, 12, 2, 17.  I guess some context would help...

• 350+ = the number of cold drinks handed out to freshmen by SLU InterVarsity leaders in less than 2 hours
• 160 = the number of new people who filled out a contact card indicating their interest in InterVarsity
• 101 = the number of those folks who are interested in being in a Bible study this semester
• 12 = the number interested in investigating Christianity
• 2 = the number of GIGs (Groups Investigating God - a Bible study designed for someone just checking out Christianity for the first time) that have already been started in the first week of school
• 17 = the number of freshmen we crammed into an apartment living room for Brunch Bunch, our first freshmen-only event this morning

If those numbers seem large to you, let me be the first to say that we have been blown away by this freshmen class.  I don't think we have ever collected more than 100 contact cards or had a Brunch Bunch larger than 12 or 13 people.  As you can probably guess, it's been a week full of many small panics and an overarching feeling of tired joy.

Today (Sunday), the Core Team and I took a mini-Sabbath retreat together at Forest Park here in Saint Louis.  We are spending our bi-weekly gatherings this semester in Luke 9-10 and today's time was spent in the story of Jesus Feeding the 5000 (Luke 9:10-17).  As I was lying out in the grass on Art Hill this afternoon, I could not help but see the parallel between this story and our stories from the past week.  The apostles have done much in their traveling - preaching the Kingdom,  casting out demons, healing the sick - yet they are reminded once again how much they need Jesus.  In fact, Luke tells us that after all 5,000 (plus women and children) had been fed and were satisfied, "the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over" (v. 17).  With every step of stooping down to pick up leftovers, the Twelve (each with their own basket) are reminded of Jesus' ability to provide.

As the twelve of us (eleven leaders plus me) have labored together this past week in prayer and hospitality, we have been tempted to rely on our own strength, charisma, and talents.  There have been a few different times this week when, like the Twelve, I wondered (literally) "How will we feed this many people?"  Today, however, we too were reminded of our need to stay close to the One Who Provides.  Much has been done and much is left to do, but we serve a God of wells that will not run dry, a God who can satisfy our thirst.

Here are a few more pictures from the first week of NSO (New Student Outreach):

Core Team setting up our Freshmen Water Bottle Giveaway

Welcoming Freshmen!

Heading to the Soccer Game!

Tolkien & To-Do Lists, Or Why Missionaries Need Beauty

"Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing."

- Isaiah 40:26

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
- JRR Tolkien, Return of the King

A little after 12:30pm today, I received a voicemail from a good friend. In his message, he told me he was just around the corner from the restaurant at which we had agreed to meet. But, there was a problem. I was not at the restaurant. I was nowhere near the restaurant. In fact, I had already eaten and was on my way to a coffeeshop to get some work done. I completely forgot that we had made plans to eat lunch together. What a jerk, right?

If you have seen me much in person and are very observant, you may have noticed that I tend to write notes on my hand. I have a terrible memory, especially when it comes to scheduling, as proven by my poor hungry friend (I was supposed to buy lunch too - doubly bad!). When we made plans, I did not have a pen on me. My hand remained a clean slate and my lunch hour unscheduled. One thing led to another, a host of other concerns and priorities consumed my mind, and I was given another opportunity to apologize for my disorganization.

I tell you this not purely for self-disclosure but also in the knowledge that I am not alone. We live in a culture of perpetual motion. We have no shortage of meetings that occupy our time, stimuli that occupy our minds, and worries that occupy our hearts. We spend long hours working at our jobs, only to return home and find more work awaiting us most days. We exist in bigger, broader networks of people than did our grandparents, each relationship clamoring for our time and attention. We are beset by more information than generations past, including more than 3,000 commercial advertisements each day for the average college student.

Surrounded by all this swirling chaos, it is sometimes easy to feel overwhelmed. No wonder we often wrestle to find time to be still and wrestle further with what to do when we do find a quiet moment. As the school year draws near, I find myself with growing to-do lists and shrinking hours in which to do the multitude of tasks it takes to begin a college ministry each year. I worry we will not finish planning in time to welcome the first round of freshmen to campus. No matter how many years we somehow manage to get everything done in time, I still worry.

In the middle of the late July administrative storm, I find myself looking for safe harbor, a place to be reminded that the fate of the world is not contingent upon whether we give out water bottles or watermelon when freshmen take their campus tour. When this happens, I often find solace in small, unexpected places - in the line of a poem or the page-turn of a novel or the lyric of a song. I find it in Art, in Beauty. Beauty reminds me simultaneously of both my tiny view of the world around me and God's Good Story surging forward always and ever around me. It whispers to me that even my laptop cannot hold the mysteries, the intricacies, the glorious complexity of the flowers outside my window. I wonder sometimes if this is why a busy king like David took the time to write songs when he had a people to govern, battles to fight, and a kingdom to run. Maybe the Psalms are a collection of David's "Life-is-crazy-right-now" journal entries. Beauty reminds me that while I may be overwhelmed by the first weeks of September here in the last weeks of July, God is not. He knows the name of every freshmen coming to campus. He was working in their hearts long before they met us and he will continue long after they graduate.

As the pace of life quickens, I am reminded of my need for Beauty. I am beginning to understand that it is the Artist who sets our eyes to the sky and the Preacher our feet to the ground. We need both in our lives. In my job, I seem to listen more to the voices of the Preachers than the Artists. There is always more to do - more meetings to plan, more phone calls to make, more students to meet - and these are all excellent activities, certainly worthy of our time as missionaries. But, like Martha in Luke 10, I tend to do for Jesus to the detriment of being with Jesus. Beauty calls me out of my Martha-esque, task-driven, graceless understanding of my job and sets me eyes and heart on the Good Story that makes the job worth doing. It softly sings a melody underneath the vibration of my cell phone and the bustle of the coffeeshop: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. I stop, even for a moment, and try to remember the tune.

Missionary Summer Living

It's officially over 100 degrees right now in Saint Louis. I'm not normally a shorts-wearer but today is one of those days where you just have to make an exception. But despite the heat, I do love Saint Louis in the summer. It's a great summer city. There are lots of free things to do, plenty of green space, and several walkable neighborhoods that make summer not only fun but fast. It's hard to believe, but the summer is already more than half over for SLU students. In exactly seven weeks, they will begin the first classes of the 2011-2012 school year, my fourth year on staff with InterVarsity (wow!). Several friends have been asking what the typical summer looks like for an InterVarsity staff. Here are a few things that I've been up to so far this summer:

Training/Traveling
I've had the pleasure this summer of spending a few days here and there with some close friends who also happen to be some of the most gifted college ministers I know. Back in early June, I spent four days in Pella, IA with other second- and third-year staff from the Central Region (Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas). We are all part of a new staff training curriculum for which we receive a couple of transferable seminary credits (bonus!). In late June, I spent another four days in Madison, WI (InterVarsity HQ and a beautiful city!) with staff from all over the country (see above picture). Each of us had been selected to serve as Regional Trainers in Chapter Building and were receiving training in training, as it was. One of the new responsibilities I'll have this upcoming year will be to facilitate training in my region for staff of established chapters as they think about how to achieve lasting growth (numerically and spiritually) in their chapters over the long haul. It was a blast and I'm excited to see what God does in our region as have these conversations.

Fund-raising
As you know, one of the primary responsibilities of any InterVarsity staff is to put together a team of people who financially support and prayerfully intercede for the ministry. I have to give God praise because it feels like there has been a lot of momentum in this area for me this summer. I am currently around 75% of the way toward raising the $54,000 needed to encourage and empower student missionaries this year at SLU. I've gotten to meet with several new and returning supporters and friends this summer who have been so encouraging for my soul after a long year of ministry. Thanks so much for your continued support - honestly, I would have thrown in the towel a long time ago if you weren't constantly praying for and encouraging me.

Preaching
One of the fun opportunities that seems to come my way every summer is preaching at local churches. I actually love getting the chance to preach anytime that I can. Ever since I've been a Christian, I've felt most connected to Jesus through the reading of his Word. Preaching gives me the chance to immerse myself in a single passage of Scripture for at least a week and I love it! This Sunday, I'll be preaching on Joshua 22 at Rooftop Community Church in Saint Louis. I'll also be preaching on the evening of August 7th at Third Baptist Church in my hometown of Marion, IL.

RELAXING :)
Ahh...yes - I have also been doing this. As I said, Saint Louis is a great city to be in during the summer, as long as you can get past the oppressive humidity. As a native Midwesterner, I've learned to manage. I've really treasured having a bit more time this summer to see family, be around friends, read some great books (see below for recommendations!), and spend time outside. I'm looking to take a vacation to the great state of North Carolina at the end of July. I've always wanted to go and see the mountains, so I'm finally going to do it this summer!

I'll keep you posted as we get closer to time for the students to return. For now, please be praying for our upcoming Leader's Retreat, happening August 24--25 in Saint Louis. Thanks and have a great week!

If you're curious, here is my summer reading list thus far:

• Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity and Why It Matters by David Kinnaman with Gabe Lyons - a thought-provoking and incredibly well-researched look at faith trends in 18-29 year-olds
  
  
• Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears - a helpful, popular overview of major Christian doctrines and their Scriptural bases
  
  
• The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton - my first novel by one of my favorite thinkers, this was a strange ride all the way until the last page when everything came together beautifully
  
  
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - a classic and one of my favorite all-time books, it was fun to see the movie for the first time immediately after finishing it again. On a related note, I have a major literary crush on Elizabeth Bennet
  
  
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles - the first "classic" novel I ever read, dating way back to freshman year of high school. The second time around, I was able to appreciate even more how perfectly Knowles captures the darker side of being a competitive teenage boy.
  
  
• The Monster in the Hollows by Andrew Peterson - Peterson is my all-time favorite songwriter and his fiction series, The Wingfeather Saga, of which this is the third installment, is way up there in my list of children's fiction. On a side note, this is the second time in a row that I've cried at least once in finishing one of his novels but I will point out that they were quite manly tears both times.
  
  
• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby - Hornby is a guilty-pleasure read for me. His work is always a bit crude but spot-on to the experience of being a neurotic male (of which I have some...okay lots of experience). For added fun, check out the John Cusack movie of the same name.
  
  
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - I just started this one but I'm already impressed by Card's character development, unique literary structure, and addictive writing style. I read 60 pages last night before realizing it was past 1am.
  

Catalyst 2011: A SLU Recap

Every May, InterVarsity students from all over Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri (we call it the Central Region) gather at Camp Windermere in Roach, MO for one of two weeks of InterVarsity's end-of-the-year conference, called Catalyst. Students hang out with old friends one more time before summer and make new friends along the way. They spend their days hearing excellent Bible teaching, worshiping in a variety of styles and languages, receiving leadership training to take back to campus next year, and eating lots and lots of camp food. I attended the very first Catalyst ever back in the Spring of my freshman year in college, back in 2006. It was a talk at that Catalyst that eventually led to me joining InterVarsity staff. Needless to say, I love Catalyst and look forward to the experience for my students every year.

This year I had a couple of fun opportunities to serve at Catalyst, besides getting to be with my students who came for the second week of the conference:

The Call
One of my favorite things about my job is getting to be a part of the journey of folks who are investigating Jesus for the first time but would not yet call themselves "Christians." At Catalyst, I had the opportunity to help lead a track designed for students in that very place. We spent four sessions together studying stories about Jesus from John and talking about our own fears, frustrations, and questions about Christianity, Scripture, and Christian people. It was insightful and, at times, challenging, to hear the concerns leveled against the Church and the Bible by these polite, well-spoken college students. They allowed myself and the other staff into their journeys and it was a joy to be with them along the way. We spent the week praying for them and encouraging them and trying to answer their questions to best of our abilities. Praise God! By the end of Catalyst, four of the students from the track made decisions to follow Jesus! It was such a treat to hear them share their testimonies in the main session after walking with them for even a couple of days. What a gift!

Leading Worship
I've devoted a whole blog post to this experience at Catalyst. Feel free to read about it here.

But, my own personal highlight came from spending time with the SLU students. On the third night of the second week, our Regional Director gave a talk about surrendering all of ourselves to Jesus, not just the parts we feel comfortable with. After the session, I noticed that one of the girls from SLU had been crying. I asked her if she wanted to talk and so we sat down together. She told me that she had come to Catalyst hoping to grow closer to God but felt like the opposite had happened. She told me that she had been living a very religious life of attending church regularly and praying daily. When she performed the routine, she felt good about herself and her faith. When she failed to, she despaired and wondered if God still loved her. She told me she'd been crying during the session because she knew that there were parts of herself that she was unwilling to surrender to Jesus. She wanted to follow him and become a Christian but didn't know if she could give up these parts.

We talked about God's unconditional love and the problems with living "religiously," where our performance is what earns our favor with God. We talked about Jesus' sacrifice and how freedom comes from surrendering ourselves wholly to him, not from being "good enough." After an hour or so of conversation, she decided that she was willing to make the leap and trust Jesus with her life. We prayed together and she gave her life to Jesus! She was so excited that she couldn't wait to share her story with the rest of the SLU chapter. The next night, she stood in front of fourteen new brothers and sisters and shared her painful journey to Jesus. After she finished, the students clapped and gave her a group hug. They prayed for her and praised our God for his saving work in her life. I'm guessing you can see why this was my favorite moment from Catalyst.

Praise God it's been a big year. It was difficult at lots of points but always sustained by Jesus. Thank you so much for your prayers and constant encouragement. I am so excited to continue partnering with you in reaching all of Saint Louis University with the life-changing, hope-bringing, joy-filling Gospel of Jesus. Thanks again from all of us at SLU InterVarsity!

Catalyst 2011: Worship-Leading and Me

I play guitar. I've been playing since I was about 16. I started writing lyrics around age 14 because I thought girls were attracted to songwriters. At 16, I became convinced that I could increase the attraction if I could actually play and sing the songs myself. I bought John Mayer's Room for Squares album and started writing songs like his, thinking that his charisma and appeal could be transferred by osmosis to me. This had mixed results at best.

Then this funny thing happened. I was part of the youth group at my church and, as happens to lots of Christians who happen to also be musicians, I was asked to lead worship for the youth group. As a teenage boy with a strong-though-subtle arrogant streak, I of course accepted any opportunity to be on stage holding my guitar (where all the girls could see me). I played in the praise band with some friends for a couple of years at the youth service and had a blast. I didn't know the first thing about leading people in worship but I loved playing music and serving the youth group.

Flash forward to college. I started writing more seriously and fell in love with the artistic process of communicating my story and perspective through words and music in making a connection with other people. I even put together a band and recorded an album of my songs. We started playing a lot in coffeeshops, churches, and restaurants around Saint Louis. Along the way, another funny thing happened. I became really disinterested in the idea of leading worship and even a little frustrated with "worship music" in general. C.S. Lewis once said that music in churches sounded to him like "fourth-rate poetry set to fifth-rate music" and I agreed. As my own musicianship deepened, I became annoyed by the predictable and seemingly shallow lyrics (note again the arrogance) that I was singing in church. When people would ask me to be on worship teams, I refused. I didn't connect with the music I heard in church and didn't think it was fair to lead people in singing songs I disliked and couldn't relate to. I still loved the sermons and community I found at church but mostly just tuned out during the worship.

Then, the last funny thing happened. I came on staff with InterVarsity. One of the values we have in InterVarsity is multi-ethnicity, which basically means that we believe that God's Kingdom is made up of people from across all times, places, tribes, cultures, languages, and musical styles. As I started going to staff gatherings, my "worship walls" came tumbling down. I sang incredible Latin songs with Spanish lyrics and complicated rhythms. I sang Gospel music with amazing dynamics and complex chord structures. I sang old hymns with beautiful poetry and equally rich theology. I saw worship leaders who were listening to the Spirit and actually leading people and not just leading music. My heart started to soften to the idea of worship music and to worship-leading in general. God was changing me.

The past couple years, I have had the opportunity to lead worship at a few different InterVarsity conferences for staff and students and I have fallen in love with it. At our recent student conference, Catalyst 2011, I was blessed with the opportunity of putting together two different teams of staff and student worship leaders. We met and practiced and became friends over the course of the semester. We learned each other's strengths and weaknesses and built chemistry as a team of musicians. But, more importantly, we worshiped together. We let the Spirit move in our practices and got ready to do the same at the conference. It was a beautiful thing. For the first time, I felt like I could hear the Spirit speaking to me while I was leading the music. I could sense when we needed to keep repeating a chorus or when I needed to say something to the worshipers that I felt like God wanted them to know. In a sense, it wasn't that different than having coffee with one of my students. I listened to Jesus and expected him to say something that they needed to hear when they needed to hear it.

As I grow as a worship-leader, the most important thing I'm growing in is hearing from Jesus. Musicianship and arranging will come with practice. Hearing from Jesus is a gift he gives when we actually stop to listen. We hear his voice as we stop talking and worrying about what people are thinking. I'm grateful for the gift and the Giver.

Wait, What Month Is It?

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.

While the Students Are Away...

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.

Merry Christmas From SLU InterVarsity!

It's Final Exam Season here on campus. Students wander listlessly from the library to the cafeteria to the exam room to the dorm room and repeat. Energy is low, coffee shop lines are long, and the longing to leave this chilly Midwestern campus for a few weeks increases with every turn of the textbook page.

As has become the norm for me as InterVarsity Staff, the times when students are the busiest is normally the time when on-campus events and ministry lessens and the need for pastoral care and opportunities for students to "escape" campus for a few hours increases. In that spirit, my leaders and I hosted our annual Bacon 'n' Waffles Christmas Party this past Monday evening. "Breakfast for dinner for Christmas?" you may be incredulously wondering. Point taken but here's the story: long ago, before even I was a student at SLU (pre-2005), InterVarsity leadership on our campus was made up of mostly men. When asked what they thought would make a great Christmas party, the men replied, "Bacon...and waffles." Thus, a tradition was born of which I am only the humble recipient. Though I must say, I'm not complaining.

As has been the case for most of the events we've hosted this semester, my faith in God's ability to bring people waxed and waned throughout the day leading up to Bacon 'n' Waffles. I wondered if we'd have enough cars (or too many!), if we'd have enough food, or if anyone would honestly miss out on 2-3 hours of studying just to come eat breakfast food a few blocks from campus. And again, as has been the case all semester long, God showed up everywhere I needed him to and then some. At 6:50pm, I pulled my car behind one of the freshmen dorms to pick up students and found 20 people (the number we were expecting) waiting in the cold for me. As I waited for a few minutes, 10 more showed up. Enter the transportation panic - "How do I move 30 people using 4 cars?" Enter God - 3 of the 10 had brought their own cars with them. Then my mind turned to the food. We'd been expecting 20 or so - would the team of 3 I left behind in the kitchen possibly have had time to make the 20 or so extra waffles we would now need? Again, enter God - yes they did and plenty of bacon to spare as well.

So I just stopped worrying. I decided to go along for the ride and we had a great time. About 35 people in all came through the party, 5 of whom I was meeting for the first time - my students are such great inviters! About 10 of the folks you see in the picture above aren't following Jesus; they're simply friends of people who are and find our community of Jesus-followers attractive and fun - what a gift! One of my primary Core leaders reminded me that night that she had first come into our community at this same party two years before. Five months after first meeting us, she gave her life to Jesus. One year after that she joined our Core Team and started inviting other people to meet him. Who knows what Jesus might do with this year's new group of Bacon 'n' Waffles attendees? Join me in praying boldly that God would continue telling this story of transformation over Christmas break and as we start up again in January!

From all of us here at SLU InterVarsity, we pray that you have a peaceful Advent Season and a blessed Christmas! Thank you for partnering with us as we continue to speak the Great Story into the lives of students and faculty at Saint Louis University - we couldn't do it without your constant encouragement, prayers, and support. Merry Christmas!

Jesus, Sex & Dating: A Recap

"This event was great!! Speakers were on point! I look forward to future events." - First time InterVarsity attendee

"I liked discussing [sex and dating] directly with people in person. I also liked knowing how Jesus fits in to sexual relationships." - Occasional InterVarsity attendee

"It was nice that everyone was so open and willing to speak their minds but also to listen to others without shutting people down or being condescending." - Regular InterVarsity attendee

It's been a fascinating week. Starting last Tuesday, fourteen SLU InterVarsity students and I engaged in eighteen combined hours of evangelism around the topic of Jesus, sex, and dating. We talked to dozens of SLU students on every corner of campus and, as we invited them to join us for our event, we asked them questions about their own understanding of sex in our culture, their advice on dating, and whether or not Jesus had anything to say on the topic. Here's a few examples of what we learned:

• Most of the students we surveyed never had "the sex talk" from their parents growing up.
• According to the students we surveyed, the average person has sex for the first time at age 16.
  
• Only 55% of the students we surveyed think that sex is always a spiritual act.

Even in looking at these few pieces of data, I think you can gather both the necessity and a bit of the magnitude of attempting to make a connection between Jesus, dating, and sex. We heard lots of stories of brokenness from past relationships gone bad, of hurt and abuse from family members, and even of pain from poor handling of the subject by church leaders. We knew that this conversation would be important and we prayed that it would be a place of healing for many for whom sex and dating had only added to the brokenness.

At 6pm on Monday night, my leaders and I gathered to pray and set up the room. At 7pm, students started showing up, trickling in slowly in clusters of 2-3. They were greeted with name tags, themed snack options (Forbidden Fruit Snacks and Name-All-the-Animal Crackers - Genesis 2 shout-out), and friendly conversation from one or more of my students (they're so talented at hospitality!). As we got ready to start the event, we looked around and realized that nearly every one of the 60 chairs we had set up was taken - we estimate that about 55 SLU students were in attendance, making this InterVarsity's biggest campus outreach ever at SLU. The students began the night in table groups that rotated every five minutes, discussing various questions related to the night's topic, including questions like "What do you think about interfaith dating?" and "What is your view of your parents' relationship? Healthy or unhealthy?"

After about twenty-five minutes of table group discussion, my friend Andrea (IV staff at Washington University) and I gave our presentation on how Jesus connects to dating and sex. We talked about how God created humanity to be in relationship with one another, reaching its apex with sexual intimacy in the context of marriage. We talked about how humanity introduced brokenness and sin into the world in our suspicion that God was holding out on us and that we could control our own lives. We shared stories from our past of relationships gone bad. But, we also talked about hope. We talked about the freedom that Jesus came to offer from this cycle of broken relationships. We talked about the woman caught in adultery in John 8 and how we too can leave our baggage at the feet of Jesus, how we too can be healed of this disease that we've inherited.

When we finished, we asked students to respond to the presentation personally on response cards and then in their table groups as well. We rounded out the night with a time of Q&A where the students could submit index cards with specific questions for Andrea and myself. We tacked subjects from physical boundaries in Christian dating to homosexuality to how to find healing from past relationships. Several students stayed after to continue their conversations and ask for prayer from staff and IV leaders.

All in all, it was a fantastic evening - I'm so proud of my leaders for loving their campus so well in the past week, which was one of the most academically rigorous weeks of the semester so far. They had great conversations, invited lots of their friends, and displayed true servant leadership as they welcomed new faces into our community. Next week is our final Edge for the semester and I'll be excited to see who from the event decides to get plugged into our permanent community. Thank you so much for your prayers for our week of evangelism and for my own preparations for the evening - we would not have made it without you! I'll leave you with a few more of my favorite pictures from the evening: