CityLights

Your prayers are appreciated this week as I help to staff CityLights - InterVarsity's St. Louis Urban Project.

Five One Voice students from Wash U will be participating and I long for them to encounter Jesus in significant ways.

This week-long project has changed the lives of countless students, mine included. It is an absolute joy to get to walk with my students as they experience it for themselves!

missio dei

Times have changed. As my students and I talk about how to share the gospel on campus we continue to ask God to empower us by the Spirit to speak languages that are foreign to us. We've also been experimenting with how to step out into situations where we're forced to rely on Him. Two weeks ago we hung out with Chinese grad students to celebrate Chinese New Year. Last week we attended a speech by former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales - half of the students stayed outside the venue to talk to the protesters who were picketing the event.

These have been risky steps for my students. Breaking out of the Christian subculture bubble is hard to do!

All of the new staff in the Central Region met in Des Moines last week for a few days of evangelism training. It was in incredible time of diving into scripture and wrestling with what it means to invite postmoderns to examine the claims of Jesus.

I am more convinced than ever before that my call is to learn how to contextualize the message of Jesus for students at Wash U. It is a challenging call, but it is worth it!

Tim and Rachel L. work on creating a comprehensive witness strategy for Rachel's campus, Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

We hunkered down in a Des Moines coffee shop to get work done on our last day of training: Rachel D. and Amy looking especially productive!

tongues

We studied the first half of Acts 2 on Tuesday night. While I am eager for students to catch a vision for what life and ministry to their peers can look like when the Spirit is leading, I found myself apprehensive at the possible directions that they could take with the passage. Interdenominational ministry is a beautiful thing: we get to experience a kind of Body life that the average churchgoer might not. At the same time, it means that we all enter the study of Scripture with very different perspectives and church traditions. So, I was a little nervous that it would dissolve into a debate about the manifestation of the Holy Spirit and whether or not what happened at Pentecost still happens today.

Oh, me of little faith.

God showed up in a beautiful way. We responded to the passage using art and Guillermo's drawing gave us some profound insights. In his drawing, God was bringing people who spoke different languages, different tongues to our fellowship: they spoke the languages of science, art, literature, anthropology, etc. I was blown away by that very tangible application of God's word. He was speaking to us directly!

We ended the evening by praying that the Spirit would empower us to speak the languages of our friends on campus, across academic disciplines. Amen!

back in action

I've fallen quite short of my commitment to post weekly updates. Working on fixing that for the spring semester. It's going to be necessary because so many exciting things are developing!

I left St. Louis in mid-December for a trip home to AZ for Christmas. Honestly, I was not in a good place emotionally or spiritually. As I looked back on my first few months on campus I had a hard time identifying where God was working. I felt frustrated by the lack of fruit and equally frustrated by my apparent inability to sustain reasonable expectations for this new season of life and ministry. My struggle with perfectionism was on full display!

One Voice student leaders at our last gathering for the fall semester.

Plans to spend ample time with Jesus over the break didn't pan out - I spent most of my two weeks at home lying on the couch trying to get over a sinus infection. The thought of returning to campus for another semester of scrambling to do something, anything to prove that my ministry is worthwhile felt overwhelming to say the least.

I flew back into St. Louis on January 2 in order to attend InterVarsity's National Staff Conference. It happens once every three years and it is the only time when all 1500 or so of us are together. The theme of this year's conference was "I Am Not Ashamed of the Gospel". I came into the week feeling so weary, but expectant that God would speak to my heart in a significant way. He did.

As I listened to powerfully convicting teaching from Romans and had the privilege of engaging in praise and worship with my coworkers, I heard Jesus reminding me that He is attractive enough just as He is. I get so hung up on contextualizing truth for a postmodern college audience. Until that moment I hadn't realized that part of my preoccupation was evidence of my fear that He is not able to do what He's been doing for all of history. I feel the the crippling need to make it look right, say it the right way - as if that is enough to convince people into the Kingdom! I heard Jesus say, "The Gospel is powerful enough. My Spirit is at work. Move forward in faith." The Spirit was truly at work in our midst and it was incredible!

That just scratches the surface of what God did in me at staff conference, but I hope it give you some insight. Students began classes again last week. I hosted our first leader gathering for the spring at my apartment on Saturday and something was different. As I shared about my hope that we would be in tune with the Spirit's leading, rather than simply continuing to plan programs and events in the hope that others will show up when invited, there was excitement among the team. We're moving forward with a unity of purpose that I don't think ever fully crystallized during the fall. Praise God for fresh vision and new life!

I can't wait to see where this leads...

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.