going public

Wash U Christian Fellowship is a community of Jesus followers free to love God and to make His love known at Wash U. That's the vision that I have been sharing with the students I am meeting. There is something in particular about the public nature of making God's love known to others that presents the challenge for students to choose faith instead of fear. I continue to hear that invitation for myself as well and so I've been experimenting with some creative ways to engage students in conversations about spiritual reality. This kind of public outreach has been helpful because it's a tangible way to invite students to join me in mission on campus and it allows me to gauge their openness to risk-taking.

The week after Fall Conference I planned to run a Proxé Station for two afternoons on campus as a way to publicly invite students to consider the God who loves them. A Proxé Station is an interactive experience used to clearly explain the Gospel and help people to respond appropriately. The Proxé Station that I decided to use involved asking students to respond to questions about how they have been both victims and perpetrators of injustice. I had a few solid conversations with students who stopped by the display on the first day, but I left campus feeling tired and lonely. The thought of trying it again the next day just felt daunting.

I called my supervisor that evening and as I shared how tiring and lonely my experience of the day had been she offered to join me at the Proxé Station for an hour the following day along with one of our other teammates. Esther, my friend and staff with Asian Christian Fellowship (ACF), was able to join us as well. If having three staff partners with me wasn't enough, two students from Wash U Christian Fellowship's sister chapters, ACF and Harambee, ran the station with me for the second half of the afternoon and changed their plans at the last minute in order to do so. Together we were able to engage so many more students in conversation than the first day and many conversations revealed the spiritual hunger that exists among students at Wash U.

Isn't God's provision incredibly timely?

That same day I received a call from Howie with the idea to bring a team of staff to Wash U to run multiple Proxé Stations on campus on November 2 as part of their evangelism training. Pray for open hearts and minds next Tuesday as we confront students with the evil of human trafficking, invite them to consider the things that they are enslaved by in the process, and point them toward Jesus as the one who brings freedom.

Partnering with friends from Asian Christian Fellowship to
start conversations about Jesus and social justice.

momentum

Debriefing our John 9 Bible study at Fall Conference with Jenn and Valerie.

According to the dictionary I just consulted momentum is,"strength or force gained by motion or through the development of events." Momentum is definitely my buzz word these days. In fact my planting coach, Howie, and I spend most of our conversations discussing where I am seeing momentum on campus and how to capitalize on that. I notice that the momentum has shifted around a lot in the first half of the semester, but there are a couple of locations where momentum has been building consistently. Here is where I am seeing momentum:

• Athlete Bible Study - 3 freshmen football players, 1 cross country runner, and 1 swimmer joined me to study a passage from Mark two weeks ago. Our discussion was lively and somewhere in the middle of it one of the football players, EJ, expressed his doubt about God's existence. EJ is one of Andrew's roommates and Andrew texted me later that night to let me know that they had a great conversation about faith when they returned to their dorm room.

• Catholic students - Several of the students I've met through hanging out in various freshmen dorms come from a Catholic background. Three students who came to our first two events of the school year happened to be Catholic. I was so excited about their initial interest, but when they stopped responding to my invitations for further connection I was rather disappointed. Despite that disappointment I continue to meet Catholic students and I am asking God for wisdom on how to invite them to get involved in the mission of Wash U Christian Fellowship.

• Being present - I spent one recent evening hanging out in a fort that some freshmen had constructed in their common room out of stacked furniture, bed sheets, and duct tape. Their RA had hoped that the night would involve discussing faith and so he invited me to join them. The conversation didn't end up there, but I did get to meet more students and share what I am doing on campus. I ran into a couple of these new students on campus last week and found myself feeling surprised as they recognized me. I realized that simply choosing to be present with them in that fort has potentially opened up a door for ministry.
  

I am encouraged by the evidence of momentum and I am praying for wisdom as I plan the next steps.

aftermath

Missouri Area staff and students at Fall Con 2010

Fall Conference was pretty great! I think it stretched our staff team to pull the whole thing off and lead in different capacities. I think it stretched students as they were called to live as bold witnesses for Jesus on campus. It's good to be stretched.

We talked a lot about how easy it is to say "yes" to Jesus when you're spending a weekend surrounded by other students who are excited to respond to God's call. It's not always so easy when the retreat is over and you're back on campus surrounded by friends who haven't had the same experience that you've just had. Before we all went our separate ways on Sunday afternoon each fellowship had a chance to meet together to plan how we would apply what we had learned.

I sat down with the two students, Jenn and Valerie, from Wash U Christian Fellowship to come up with outreach ideas that we could do on campus. We ended up deciding to host a game night for Valerie's floor in her dorm. Valerie is a freshman at Wash U and she is fairly quiet and reserved. I wasn't sure how she'd fare when it came to inviting her neighbors to a game night so that we could build more relationship with them, but she was enthusiastic about the idea and so we went for it.

Last Friday night I showed up in the lobby of Valerie's dorm with homemade cookies and Apples to Apples. Students from her floor began to gather and everyone who walked through the lobby was invited to play with us. We played for four hours with a rotating group of 8-12 students. At the end of the night one of the students commented that this was the most social the floor had been since before classes began. I am excited to help Valerie continue to build relationships with her neighbors and to discover those who are curious about Jesus.

do you know him?

At 7 PM this evening over 170 students from schools in St. Louis and Columbia, MO will descend on Potosi, MO for Fall Conference 2010. We're asking the question, "Do You Know Him?" as the theme of the conference. Pray that many students would indeed be able to say that they know Jesus in a new way because of our time together this weekend.

I will be leading the group through an inductive Bible study in John 9 on Saturday morning. It's a powerful passage and I am excited for the way that God wants to use it to empower us to be His witnesses even when it's costly. I would appreciate your prayers for clarity and the ability to discern how the Spirit is at work in the room as I lead. I am so excited for what God wants to do!

This is my 9th InterVarsity Fall Conference. One October weekend in 2000 I decided to commit to following Jesus at a Fall Conference in Arizona. Ten years later I am convinced that it was the best decision I've ever made! As our staff team has been making final preparations for this weekend I have been marveling at what a privilege it is to be a part of a movement that is continuing to invite students to follow Jesus.

I'm ready for a great weekend!