restoration

March is just around the corner and with it comes the arrival of something in addition to spring: the CityLights St. Louis Urban Project.

I love getting to tell students the story of my first CityLights experience and how God used it to further my desire to learn what it means to seek justice and to love mercy. That was eight years ago! This year I'm particularly excited because we have at least one non-Christian signed up for join us for the week and I am working on recruiting a few more participants in the next week or so.

The strength of the CityLights experience is that students get to live and serve in community, living out the Gospel in an urban context even as they are invited to dream about what it means to follow Jesus in their neighborhoods on campus. It's a breeding ground for catalytic moments and transformation.

I'm really excited to see how God uses the project this March to further the work that He's doing in the lives of the students who will be participating. It's going to be a wonderfully challenging week!

open

Friday afternoon I received a text message from a freshman international student. I hadn't seen her in awhile. She studied the Bible with a couple of other students in one of our GIGs at the end of the last semester. Her text message asked if I wanted to meet her for dinner. I jumped at the opportunity.

In the midst of eating and catching up I asked her if she wanted to continue to explore more about Jesus. She said that she is really curious and she wants to keep learning about the possibility that God exists and that He cares about us.

I know where I'll be on Friday afternoons: studying Mark's Gospel with this student and one of her close friends. Praise God for open doors and the chance to discover where He's been at work!

lost

,

I am a fan of the show Lost. Tomorrow night is the premiere of the show's sixth and final season. As I was coming up with a list of creative ways to gather students on campus and maybe meet some new ones, hosting a Lost premiere party was at the top of my list. A couple of One Voice students, who shall remain nameless, were not sold on the idea and one even said, albeit in a somewhat jocular manner, "No one is going to come to your party because no one here likes that show. It's soooooo dumb!"

Remaining undeterred in the face of criticism is something I am getting better at and so I ignored the dissenting views.

Fast forward to this past Friday. As one of the One Voice seniors and I are visiting freshmen and bringing them homemade chocolate chip cookies we intentionally go to meet a student who has been emailing us and trying to get connected with our fellowship. As we talked about the coming week she mentions apologetically that she will not be able to come to our prayer gathering on Tuesday night because several of her friends from the dorm are planning on watching the Lost premiere together. The timing was impeccable.

"Hey! That's what we were planning on doing, too! Could we bring our premiere party to your dorm?" I asked.

She agreed and so that is what we will be up to on Tuesday night.

Now that was a fun lead to follow.

leads

I feel like a detective these days. If you were to ask me how I've been spending my time on campus I would respond, "I'm following leads."

It's all rather exhilarating. I meet a potentially missional Christian or a leader from a community that we want to intentionally engage with and then I get to scope them out. It takes energy and some serious intentionality, but I find myself excited about where it could lead and confident that Jesus already knows the people he's drawing together.

One of those potential people is a student named Jamie. At Urbana she committed to leading a GIG using John 1-4 with some of her non-Christian friends on campus. I'm meeting up with her tomorrow to chat about her Urbana experience and to ask if she'd like me to co-lead her GIG. Partnership and risk-taking with a potential student leader? Sounds like fun!

urbana reflections

What would it be like if thousands of people eager to hear about God's mission in the world took over your city for five days? What would that look like? I will venture to guess that it might look a lot like what we in St. Louis experienced during Urbana 09. There really is no accurate way to describe the thrill of watching as the downtown area began to fill with the 16,000 people, mostly students, ready to hear and respond to God's call to join His work in our neighborhoods, both local and global.

Experiencing Urbana from the staff perspective was something new for me. A lot of my energy went into my teaching role during the morning Bible studies and I absolutely loved it! It was an incredible privilege to serve with my assistants, all of whom are InterVarsity alumni. I also appreciated that the participants in our study were a diverse group of U.S. and Canadian college students, InterVarsity staff from around the country, InterVarsity alumni, and even a few folks from the Pastor and Church Leader Track. We had a lot of fun together digging into the first four chapters of John's Gospel. It was such an honor to serve as a teacher.

Stepping back from my job assignment and getting to hear how God was moving through other elements of the conference was equally exciting! Over 300 conference attendees (and even several stadium workers employed by the convention center) responded to an altar call on December 30. 2000 students committed to serving in long-term, cross-cultural ministry. A few thousand more committed themselves to short-term assignments. The stories of responses made in the light of the calls issued will continue to be lived out in the coming years. The kingdom will advance as a result of many saying "yes" to God's invitation to them at Urbana 09!

And in the midst of all of the excitement I found that God had some specific invitations for me, too. Even as I write about them they don't strike me as exciting or as alluring as trekking off to a distant land for the sake of the gospel and yet they are infused with so much gospel truth! I heard the invitation to forgive as I have been forgiven. I heard the invitation to love extravagantly. I heard the invitation to faithfully point the way to Jesus again and again.

I hope I never get over being amazed at how He knows exactly what we need.

wanted: missional students

According to InterVarsity's Chapter Planting material a missional Christian is, "a student or faculty who is motivated by their relationship with Jesus to advance the gospel on their campus, someone who is willing to devote time and resources to take risks for Jesus' sake." Missional Christians are essential to the health and vitality of a fellowship and they are particularly crucial in the start-up phases. At our Central Region Staff Conference in December I had the opportunity to interact with one of the staff who coaches chapter planters in New England. As I shared a bit about the history of One Voice with him and some of the current realities and challenges of working to replant the fellowship, he began to ask some really good questions.

"What kind of evangelistic risks are you willing to take?" "Are there students in the group who are pushing you to raise the bar when it comes to evangelism?" As I shared my responses he thought for a moment and then said, "It sounds like you need to pray. You need to pray that you will encounter missional students on campus who will join you in the evangelism that you're already doing and even lead out in greater risks. You need start praying for conversions. It sounds like God could be shaping your group to be a community built around conversion.

As soon as he said that I was reminded of the words that I've been holding onto for the past couple of years. As I prayed for One Voice in the summer of 2007, prior to knowing very much about the chapter or its students, I heard God saying that the chapter would not grow because we were attractive to all of the Christian students at Wash U. Rather, One Voice would grow through conversion - students encountering Jesus, perhaps for the first time in their lives, and choosing to follow him.

I am committing myself to prayer towards this vision even as we continue to experiment with creative outreach this semester. I am asking the current core of One Voice to spend more time praying towards this vision. In particular I am asking Jesus for some divine appointments with missional students. I believe they're out there.

Will you pray with us?

experience urbana

Check out the videos from Urbana 09! Here are a few of my favorites that I would recommend to you:

Day 2 - Interview with Patrick Fung

Day 3 - Money and Power: Oscar Muriu

Day 4 - Pray Big and Pray Bold: Sunder Krishnan

Day 5 - Michael Oh

Day 5 - I've Got A River of Life: Brenda Salter-McNeil