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:

So It's Kind of a Touchy Subject...

A couple of months ago, I sat down with some of my leaders and talked about what kinds of events we wanted to do over the course of the semester. They mentioned offhandedly that it would be great to have an event focused on sex and dating relationships because they had lots of questions and thought their friends would have lots of questions as well. So we put a date on our calendar - November 22nd - and decided that would be our night to talk about sex and dating. Sounds innocent enough, right? Just an InterVarsity staff worker trying to help some students piece together their thoughts on a confusing and sometimes painful subject. No big deal.

Then my mind started going. Wow, sex is a pretty touchy subject, I thought. It's not just Christians who have questions and opinions - everybody has questions and opinions about sex and dating. Wouldn't it be great if we could get lots of people who aren't following Jesus into the room to talk about it as well? Oh wait...what if we could somehow do some evangelistic conversations based on sex and dating and then invite people to come to the event to hear what Jesus thinks? That would be fascinating. How would that work exactly?

Well, we probably would want to gather some hard data about what our campus actually thinks about the subject so we should probably do a survey. But it would be fun if we could also do something that was a bit more of a spectacle to draw attention to the controversial nature of the topic. Then, the image of the poster you see in that picture above came to mind. Oh wow, I thought, wouldn't it be great to make a bunch of these posters and put them up in random gathering places on campus where a few of my students could engage people in conversation? But who would be willing to do that?

Turns out, about 15 of my students would be willing to do that. Their eyes got really big when I told them about my idea, but they signed up all the same. So we held some training and spent some time talking about Jesus and now they are heading out this week to intentionally get themselves into some pretty sensitive conversations about Jesus, Sex & Dating. They're going to ask some tough questions. They're going to tell some tender stories. They're going to talk about the healing they found in Jesus. And they're going to invite people to come to an event where they can find that same healing. Big week, right?

Here's where you come in. We need your prayers. We've never done anything like this before. Would you pray that God sets up fantastic conversations for myself and my students? Would you pray that He opens our eyes to see exactly the right people who need to hear from Him? Would you pray for a staff friend and I as we write a talk that both explains what sex was originally designed for and how Jesus brings healing to the ways we've abused it? Who knows what might happen when that many students dedicate a week of time to engaging people with the Good Story? I'll keep you posted.

A Few Good Problems

I am a dreamer. By nature, I just tend to set big goals and have big expectations for myself and for those around me. I like thinking far into the future and imagining what God could do in my life and in our ministry at SLU weeks, months, even years from now. Sometimes this works against me. I sometimes spend so much time dreaming that I forget to plan how any of these dreams will actually become a reality. Sometimes I think I (or my leaders) can accomplish more within a certain time frame than is actually reasonable. I like to think big picture and sometimes I get a bit ahead of myself.

When I sat down to set some goals for this current school year last May, I tried to be realistic. At the time, we were averaging about 20 students at our weekly meeting, which we call the Edge. I wanted to set a goal for how many people would be attending by the end of the first semester of this year. I thought 30 sounded reasonable but still something we could dream about and work toward. 30 would move us beyond the capacity of our previous meeting space and be a 50% growth from the previous semester. Sounds great right? Yep, I thought so too.

At our first Edge, back in early September, we had about 40 people show up. I was thrilled but honestly, not too surprised. Last year, at the first Edge, we also had about 40 people show up. That number quickly dropped to 20, then 15-16 for the rest of the first semester before coming up to 20 again by May. My Core Team and I were excited but we didn't really know what to expect. The next week another 40+ people showed up, including a few new faces we hadn't seen before. We were even more tightly crammed in than the previous week as our room comfortably seats 35 but reaches capacity around 45. The next week we reached capacity. 45 people scrunched and squeezed into the room to hear about Jesus and the Rich Young Ruler. We started realizing that maybe this wasn't a fluke. Maybe we should start looking for a new room to meet in. Maybe we should figure out some smaller groups for these people to meet in to connect with each other and Jesus and to be trained in mission. We prayed about this, made a few calls, and waited to see what would happen the next week...

Last night, we fortunately managed to secure a one-time meeting in a large room in the Student Center. We got there early and set everything up, praying that God would use our bigger space to bring more people to hear about him. We set out some sign-up sheets for people to indicate interest in being part of a smaller community Bible study, including an evangelistic Bible study where they could come and just ask questions about Jesus, the Bible, Christianity, or anything else that was on their hearts. Last night, we reached 50 people for the first time. 50 SLU students sat in a room together studying Jesus' interaction with the woman caught in adultery from John 8. We talked about Jesus the Savior, the one who puts our sins on his shoulders and offers us new life. After the study wrapped, nearly everyone stood up to sign up for a Bible study community, including 10 people indicating interest in being a part of a GIG to investigate what they really believe about Jesus!

Let me remind you, I was planning for 30 people by December. Not 50 by October. This is what I love about my job: who knows what God is going to do? Who knows!? My Core Team and I have no idea what is going to happen from here, who is going to lead these Bible studies, or what tomorrow may bring our way. We've been hanging on by the seat of our pants all semester and we're here for the ride at this point. That being said, we have a few GREAT problems we'd love for you to pray about right now:

• This weekend is Fall Conference. SLU has 24 people registered which is the biggest group we've ever taken to a conference. However, we are still a few spaces short on cars and trying to coordinate with the other IV chapters in Saint Louis on how to get all of our students to the Conference. It seems like the other staff are also experiencing these good problems :) Please pray that we find transportation and that God does some incredible work in the lives of students this weekend (especially the 4-5 from SLU who don't yet know Jesus!)
• We found a new space to meet that has capacity for 100! I'm sure you can imagine right now where my mind is going :) But, it's very new, in a different location than our folks are used to, and has its own challenges in terms of the need to rearrange furniture, set up the audio/visual equipment every week, and generally just to get used to being in a new space. Would you pray that we overcome the technical difficulties of getting adjusted to meeting somewhere new as quickly as possible and that God continues to bring more and more people to hear about him now that we have space to be a bit more hospitable?
• We have 40 people or so signed up as interested in being part of a smaller Bible study community. Would you pray for wisdom for my Core Team and I as we figure out who will be leading these communities and for the Spirit to move as we hope to build tighter relationships with these 40+ people around Scripture and taking the love of Jesus to our campus?
• As a side note, I'm giving one of the main talks at Fall Conference this weekend. Please pray for me as I finish preparing this week. Pray that the Spirit will guide my preparation and the direction of the talk. Pray that many people will come to faith because of the seeds being planted this weekend and through the relationships being formed in our IV communities.

As always, thanks for your prayers. Hopefully, my next post will be about all of the incredible things God did at Fall Conference!

The Average Week

Hello faithful blog reader. It's a sunny and beautiful day here in midtown Saint Louis and I pray that the day finds you well and reminded of the gracious love of our God. On this blog, I generally like to go into detail about major happenings in the SLU InterVarsity chapter and in my life in general as I serve as the staff of said chapter. I realize that though not everyone will enjoy the minutia of life as an InterVarsity staff, there are some unique aspects to the missionary life that may at least be interesting enough to hold your attention for a few moments as you sweep through your e-mail inbox. I know this because every once in a while, someone will look at me very curiously when I attempt to answer the question, "So what do you do for a living?" My answer usually elicits two responses:

1. Wow. You fund-raise for a living? What is that like?
2. So what do you actually do during the week? I mean, what does the average week look like for you?

Now, that first question is actually not difficult to answer. The answer is this: I used to hate fund-raising. It's really hard. Really hard. But now I love it. I love it because I love stories. I love telling my story, the stories of my students, the stories of how good God has been to us. I love hearing stories too. I love hearing people say, "Wow, I wish we would have had something like that when I was in college. Here's how I came to know Jesus..." I love praying with and for people and knowing that they pray for me. Honestly, I don't think this job would be as interesting to me if there was just a salary check that came in for me every month from some nebulous fund set up in some office somewhere. The fact that every dollar my students and I spend has a face and a name and jobs and history and struggle attached to it changes everything about how we spend it and how grateful we are that you love us enough to invest in us.

The second question, however, can be challenging. It's been posed to me several times in the past month and every time someone asks, I find myself pausing and asking it back to myself ("Wow, what do I do every week?"). Now part of my hesitation is that every week is a little bit different; the same elements may be present in each week but they are rarely arranged in the same order from week to week. I have to confess, however, that part of my hesitation also comes from some fear and brokenness in me that makes me think if I don't impress the questioner with my answer, they won't think I am a worthwhile investment. There's a part of me that genuinely believes that people won't love me if I don't seem like I will offer a good return on their love. The Fall has shaded my eyes and my heart to see love as a currency that is offered to me only when I deserve it. I pray against this but still it pops up from time to time.

So, in part as an act of transparency and in part as an effort to seek some sort of freedom from that fear, I want to give you an example of what the average week looks like for me as the InterVarsity staff worker at SLU. A few notes before I start:

1. Four days per week I don't work before noon. Those days are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. There are two reasons for this: (1) I am prone to workaholic tendencies. Given the option, I would rather work all day every day until I just pass out from exhaustion. Wisdom has been given to me to see that this is not very wise. Starting at noon guarantees that I don't develop those unattractive gray circles under my eyes. (2) I am young and single. This eliminates the need to be home at a certain hour every night and gives me the freedom to operate on a college student's schedule, which usually means later evenings as opposed to earlier mornings. It also gives me time to spend with Jesus and at the gym those four days.
2. I have one general overriding rule for myself as far as time and work goes. That rule is this: Work 50-60 hours in six days. InterVarsity highly encourages staff to take a Sabbath day every week in which NO work is done for 24 hours. You may have a number of reactions to that rule but trust me when I tell you that it has become my sanity. It does two things for me: (1) It forces me to work efficiently and plan ahead so that everything gets done in six days and (2) it forces me to take time to rest and spend a longer block of time with Jesus that day than I normally would on an average morning. I highly recommend it.

With that in mind, here is my average work week:

Monday - The Edge Day
12pm - Lead prayer with students
1pm - Lunch with students and anyone we meet along the way
2-6pm - Finish any last minute logistics, printing, etc. before The Edge
6pm - Arrive with Core Team to the Edge site and prepare together
7-9pm - The Edge (our weekly large group gathering)
9-10pm - Debrief with Core Team

Tuesday - Fundraising Day
12pm - Pray with students
1pm - Lunch with students and anyone we meet along the way
2-6pm - Fund-raising Administrative Work (letters, this blog, budget stuff)
7-9pm - Phone Calls (calling to invite folks to support InterVarsity at SLU)

Wednesday - My Early Morning :)
6:30am - Meet with my Core Men to Pray
7-8am - Man Breakfast (social event to meet and pray with the men of InterVarsity)
8-9am - Spend time with Jesus
9am-12pm - Work on any planning or prep work for the week's events
12pm - Pray with students
1pm - Lunch with students and anyone we meet along the way
2-6pm - Mission Window (left intentionally open to hang out with Jesus on campus and see what happens)
6:30-8:30pm - Church Small Group
9pm - Lead a Bible study for Fraternity / Sorority students

Thursday - Spying Out the Land
12pm - Pray with students
1pm - Lunch with students and anyone we meet along the way
2-6pm - Mission Window / Staff Meetings (1-2x per month)
6-9pm - Take students to attend other events/groups on campus to meet people and build relationships with the greater SLU community

Friday - SABBATH :)
I usually spend this day at the park, the Basilica, or some other equally quiet and beautiful place just hanging out with Jesus in Scripture and prayer. No plans, no schedules, no cell phone, no laptop. It is glorious.

Saturday - Service and Social Day
Depending on the Saturday, we are either working with a local church to serve the refugee population near SLU, cooking breakfast for freshmen, exploring the different neighborhoods in the city, or hanging out on campus in somebody's apartment. Saturday events are usually great ways to meet and hang out with people on the fringes of the IV community. My Core Team also meets two Saturday mornings each month to be in intentional community together around the Scriptures and to be trained in mission and leadership.

Sunday - Church Day!
8:30am - Take students to church with me
9-11am - Church
1-5pm - Prepare Scripture study for the Edge; Work on any planning or prep work for the week's events
5-7pm - Meetings with students in preparation for the Edge
7-8pm - Put together schedule to prepare for the week

That pretty much wraps it up. If you have any other curiosities about staff life or about how things are going this year, feel free to comment on this post and maybe that will be the next thing I write about! Exciting :)