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.