meet the team

These are my co-workers. We're spread across Missouri and Iowa with a small contingent in Kansas, but all that will change in the next few years. We're growing and expanding despite our small numbers, trusting that God has ushered in a season of harvest at college campuses across the Great Plains.

I feel so privileged to be a part of this team.

wrapping up

It is really hard to believe that this semester is coming to a close in just a couple of weeks. As I have been working with the students in One Voice it has become clear that the rigorous academic pace at Wash U pulls them in a lot of different directions. We talked at a leader gathering a couple of weeks ago about how to be good stewards of our time so that we actually have room in our schedules to reach out to the people around us.

In the midst of studying for finals and finishing up projects it would be easy for students to turn inward and neglect the opportunities to minister to their peers that God is placing in front of them. Please pray that God would continue to challenge us to be sacrificial with our time and view it as another resource that we can be generous with.

I was able to spend Thanksgiving in AZ with family. It was so good to get a break from the "transition" mode that I've been in for the last five months. I am looking forward to spending more time with them in three weeks when I return for Christmas break.

Hanging out with my silly nieces was one of the highlights of my visit home!

telling the story

Pray for our staff team this afternoon. We are heading out on campus to have spiritual conversations and share the gospel.

the kingdom is near

Rohit is a freshman at Wash U majoring in chemical engineering. His family is Hindu. I remember meeting him on move-in day when he came up to our InterVarsity table and wrote down his contact information. A couple of our chapter members began visiting him regularly in September. Three weeks ago he showed up at our Bible study on Tuesday night and he's been coming ever since!

Please pray that Rohit would continue to want to learn more about the kingdom of God. I sense that he is intrigued by our fellowship and the way that we've welcomed him. Pray that he would find Jesus intriguing as well!

I met Kevin at Praise Night. He is a sophomore at Wash U, but his hometown is Scottsdale, AZ. If that is not enough of a coincidence, he is also half-Korean! As soon as I met Kevin I felt prompted to pray for him. I started asking other students about his openness to spirituality. My inquiries were met with the affirmation that he is seeking. In fact, he spent the majority of his freshman year attending a prayer meeting for Asian Christian Fellowship, one of the four InterVarsity chapters at Wash U. As I've continued to pray for him, asking God for specific spiritual insight that will help me care for Kevin, I believe that I've been given the invitation to challenge him - to point blank ask Kevin why he is not yet following Jesus.

I don't run into Kevin very often, so the obedient response to this invitation feels tricky. Pray that I will have an opportunity to spend time with him in the next month and that his heart will be open to the God he's been searching for in the past 18 months.

God is at work and we're running to catch up with Him!

update

I am experiencing some technical difficulties with the e-mail version of my October prayer update. I've posted it below as an alternative. Thank you for your prayers!

InterVarsity at Washington University in St. Louis - October 2007 update

Dear ministry team,
As I scan the list of those of you receiving this letter in the coming week, I am so grateful for the truth that God does not call un into His mission alone - He uses teams! I am thrilled that you are a part of the work that He is doing on campus, specifically where He has placed me at Washington University in St. Louis.

NSO

Our official New Student Outreach events and activities for the 2007-2008 school year have come and gone, but the work of building relationships with new students never ends! More than 1300 freshmen arrived on campus at the end of August. For many of them, this is the first time they have spent extended time away from home and many are looking for community as well as people who will engage with them on a spiritual level. As a witnessing community on campus, One Voice desires to share the Gospel as the "big story" of God's redemption. It's a story worth getting caught up in! Pray for our leadership team as we learn what it means to communicate the depth and mystery of our journey as Christ-followers with students who have grown up in a post-Christian world.

FCO7 in Kansas City, MO

13 One Voice students joined 240 other InterVarsity students from across the Central Region for our inaugural Regional Fall Conference - FC07. We heard teaching that challenged us to consider the areas in our lives where Jesus does not yet have lordship and the echoed invitation to drop our nets and follow Him. In addition, my students were encouraged to pursue our vision to be a group that is marked by hospitality to non-believers, especially those who have had negative interactions with Christians in the past. What an answer to prayer!

Perseverance

One Voice has undergone several staff transitions in the past five years, the most recent being my arrival. The task of stabilizing the fellowship structurally is a big job by itself, but it needs to happen while simultaneously coaxing students out of their comfort zones so that we are embodying our mission to make disciples on campus. The challenge is huge! Please pray for God to encourage and empower us as a team. His spirit is moving and we want to partner with what He is doing. I will continue to post more regular prayer requests and stories about God's work in our midst on my ministry blog: agarnergirl.blogspot.com.

In Him,
Andrea
andrea.garner@gmail.com

Preparing to feed 100+ hungry college students following
Praise Night, one of our joint fellowship NSO events.

Sitting at the desk of Tom Lin, our new Regional Director.
I'm trying to look visionary.

expanding

The past several weeks have been full. I've been asking other IV staff folk when I can expect the pace to slow down and they just laugh. Reality is that there will always be too many things to do and not enough time to do them, so I get to learn how to discern where God would have me focus my energy on a daily basis! Not an easy lesson for a recovering people pleaser who cringes at the thought of having to say "no". Differentiating between what is good and what is best has never been my strong suit!

The weight of the job that I have taken on feels heavy right now. I have been reminded of the truth in Psalm 127:1 - Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain (NRSV). I want to build this ministry with Him, rather than relying on my own ideas and vision.

Praise God with me for:

• Cat - a freshman student who has been hanging out with us and has a lot of leadership potential
• One Voice student leaders excitement about bringing their cynical friends one step closer to Jesus

Prayer requests:

• clarity for the One Voice student leaders and myself as we seek God's guidance regarding how to best use our time and energy resources for the remainder of the semester
• wisdom as I learn how to disciple individual students
• grace to make the choice to spend time in prayer as a team, even when our instincts tell us to rush forward and "do" tasks
  

Fall Conference was an amazing time of training and fellowship for the students in One Voice. On Friday night we were challenged by Tom Lin, our IV Regional Director, to ask Jesus to reveal the "nets" that we are holding onto. He described nets as the things in our lives that are keeping us from fully following Jesus' call. Like the fishermen that Jesus invited to be his disciples, each of us have to wrestle with the cost of leaving those nets behind.

The weekend continued with great worship and further teaching from Dr. Bernard Franklin. Dr. Franklin serves as President of Metropolitan Community College - Penn Valley in Kansas City. He helped us dig deeper into the theme of the conference: a life together, a campus renewed. His talks on the beautiful mess of Christian community and how our fellowship are called to bring new life on campus were both challenging and inspirational.

We are returning to campus with a renewed vision for One Voice and a commitment to praying for God's further direction as we begin inviting our friends to explore more about Jesus. What a blessing!

conference

240 InterVarsity students from Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska will be descending on Kansas City, MO this coming weekend for a regional fall conference. This is a huge answer to prayer because it's the the first time that we've attempted fall conference regionally and we created the budget based on an estimate of 250 registrations. What provision! You can learn about what the students will be experiencing here.

All of the staff were assigned various tracks to serve on. I have been working with three other staff over the summer to plan the evangelism track. While we were hoping for a good number of attendees to sign up for the track, we were also unsure of what to expect - the idea of evangelism can be scary! I just received an email this morning: 82 students are signed up for the evangelism track. As a result we will work this week to restructure some of our plans to accommodate such a large crowd and adjust to the idea of presenting in the room used for the plenary sessions. We are trusting that God is going to use our time with these students on Saturday to serve as a catalyst for region-wide evangelism efforts on campus.

Please join us in praying that the Spirit would be working in our hearts as we present and teach, as well as the hearts of the students who receive our invitation to begin trusting Jesus and stepping out to advance his kingdom.

Ministry is not an equation. X amount of effort plus Y amount of planning does not automatically result in the Z results that I was hoping for. It's not as if I didn't know this in theory, it's just that the experience of it is a lot more jarring.

As this reality has played out in my ministry on campus I have found myself contrasting it with the manageable tasks that I find myself involved with at the coffeehouse where I work part-time. There is something satisfying about knowing what I'll get when I start making a latte. Not a lot of surprises. Satisfying in some regards, but I also find that it lacks the deeper sense of fulfillment that I am seeking.

So I will press on. Pray that my student leaders and I will fix our eyes on Jesus and refuse to take what we see around us in the residence halls at face value. God is at work and we long to join him.

persistence

God is a pursuer. I feel like we're experiencing just a sliver of his character as we visit and revisit freshmen. I'm realizing that I tend to feel like I'm imposing or that they're tired of seeing me again. I just need to get over that. I've heard a couple of stories of people who are now a part of our fellowship because they were personally invited repeated and over the course of an entire semester. Now that's persistence!

Lord, continue to call us to follow you in ways that feel risky and outside of our comfort zones.

connections

Thursday was the day we've been anticipating: freshmen move-in day! I joined the student leaders of One Voice for a day of tabling alongside other student groups. We passed out a ridiculous amount of bottled water and had the chance to talk with incoming students and their parents about what InterVarsity is all about.

Friday we headed out into the residence halls for a little IV tradition at Wash U - dorm storming. It sounds a little militaristic, but it really just involves pairing up with someone to go and visit a few of the students who signed up to learn more about us the previous day. I have this silly fear of somehow coming across as a creepy adult who hangs around campus too much, but the One Voice students have all assured me that I can still pass for a college kid and the freshmen I met confirmed this. "So, what are you studying?" and "What year are you?" are going to be the most common questions I face this year. Not bad.

This week we're sponsoring a photo scavenger hunt and our first gathering as a fellowship. We would all appreciate your prayers as we continue to welcome and visit new students. The next couple of weeks are jam packed with activity, but it will pay off in the coming months as our chapter is solidified.

Holly, Christy and Guillermo tabled in the extra hot afternoon. What troopers!

Jonathan, Olivia and Meredith, plus a whole lot of bottled water.

bonding

The Washington University Class of 2011 will begin moving into the residence halls tomorrow morning. It's an exciting time of the year! It's also probably the busiest time of the year for InterVarsity staff and student leaders. Our goal is to be the most hospitable welcome wagon we can possibly be.

I read an article on Sunday that described what incarnational ministry looks like in a campus context. Did you know that some of the most significant bonding that humans experience happens in the first 24 hours after birth? Likewise, the first few days on campus provide a significant opportunity for building friendships with new students. One of my co-workers who serves with the Asian Christian Fellowship at Wash U is actually spending a couple of nights sleeping over in her students' residence hall in order to model what this kind of outreach means. For the next three weeks we will be adapting to the schedules of the new freshmen: late nights and an endless amount of energy to meet new people.

The students of One Voice Christian Fellowship - that's the name of our InterVarsity chapter - want to use these crucial days to love sacrificially by giving of their time and energy at a time in the school year that is also busy for them academically and socially. Join us in praying that God would honor these sacrifices and that He would mold us into a community that is marked by our hospitality.