Visionary

With the ending of this semester, the thinking in IV is beginning to shift to prepare for the new year. Well, for the staff at least that is. I think that the majority of the students are focused more on just surviving the semester at this point, preparing for finals, all of that. In any case, the time has come to begin preparing next year's leadership team for the tasks ahead of them.

To that effect, this last Friday we put on a special leadership retreat at my place, welcoming in the new leaders and drawing up the foundations for the coming year. Since the focus in InterVarsity is on indigenous (i.e. student-led) ministry, these kinds of meetings are incredibly important since they give the students a chance to really determine where the ministry will go in the coming year.

We started with some fun time - ate pizza, played some video games, and spent a good long time with a game of Signs. Then Hans spoke on the history and purpose of InterVarsity as a whole and took the students through a short IV introductory course on visionary leadership. This led to the meat of the evening, a big planning session where we tried to figure out what out chapter is all about and where we feel God is taking it in the coming years. It was actually probably the best planning session I've ever been a part of; the students were all full of really great ideas and really wanted to get at the heart of what makes the chapter great. We came up with a core vision oriented around strong discipleship, community, and Christian living, along with some really exciting ideas of how we plan on achieving those goals. Man, the semester hasn't even ended yet and already I'm looking forward to the upcoming one!

In other news, it looks like the Rio Area (that is, UNM and NMT) will be bringing almost half of the students attending Chapter Camp this year! It's a really great blessing to have so many students going from our two chapters, and it's sure to mean a lot in the coming years. Plus it'll be a whole lot of fun having our chapters together for that fun and powerful week.

Please keep be praying for the students as they prepare for the end of the semester and also for the other staff and me as we prepare for running Chapter Camp. Please also keep Chapter Camp itself in your prayers; it's an incredibly important time for all who attend, and so it's a pretty big target for spiritual attack. Finally, please also pray for me as I make the final preparations for beginning my next round of fundraising. I'm still a little nervous about it, but I'm sure God will provide.

"I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile."
- Romans 1:16

Mission: Improbable

One of the great things about working in ministry is that I get to see more often how God is at work behind my back. Whether it's a message that hits someone at just the right time or a meaningful spontaneous conversation or whatever, things just seem to fall into place some of the time. That seems to have been the "theme" for this week.

Once again, I changed up my small group for the week. We have only 3 more lessons left, and 3 weeks of school to do them in, so we had a bit of room to have a change of pace this week. More importantly, I had been trying to find a way to incorporate some worship into our group, and it just so happened that the Rock & Worship Roadshow was passing through this last Tuesday. So I conferred with the group, and we decided to attend. The music was great, featuring the likes of Flee, Family Force Five, David Crowder*Band, MercyMe, and others. We were also lucky enough to run into some of the Tech IV group and hang out with them during the show. It was a really great time of worship and fellowship. I also found out it was also my friend Frank's first outing to a Christian concert, and it really changed his opinion on Christian music (namely, that it's actually fun!). Though I wasn't planning on helping my group discover a different kind of worship, it's great to see that that's what God had planned for Frank.

For Large Group, we had our Evangelism Coordinator, Nikki, speak more on prayer. Following up from my talk a couple weeks ago, she had us do some more listening prayer to see what God was trying to tell us at that time. Then she added a bit of a twist, though, and sent us out in small groups to do something called "treasure seeking". No, it's not some kind of an Easter egg hunt; it's a way of walking around and staying prayerfully in tune with what God is doing, ready to participate as you feel led. I went with my group to pray over the fine arts building, especially for a friend who is preparing for a major performance in the coming weeks. Though nothing especially dramatic came out of the evening, I was glad to see another way that prayer is becoming a part of our chapter and how the students can use it to directly affect the campus.

Friday was the Guys' and Girls' Night Out, and though I can't speak for the girls, the guys had a blast. We try to combine food, fun, fellowship, and uh... (f)learning at this events. This semester that meant starting with a trip to Pepper's BBQ to enjoy piles of roasted meat slathered in BBQ sauce. Then, after thoroughly stuffing ourselves, we undertook a special "mission". Traveling into the foothills of the Sandias, we split into two teams: Impossible Mission Force and KGB. The task of the IMF was to retrieve 3 canisters of nuclear material (glowsticks) being guarded by the armed KGB (who all had Airsoft guns) and return them to our vehicles without being caught. We scrambled around for a while and had a great time, and though it was windy and rainy the whole time, that just made the experience all the more fun. Finishing the game, we returned to my house and received a message from the Guys' Small Group leader, Clayton. He spoke on spiritual warfare and had us spend time in groups discussing ways in which we are vulnerable to spiritual attack, banding together to pray for and support each other. Once more, though I wasn't sure what would come of this night, I kept hearing people share meaningful issues and knew that this was just what God had planned for us.

There's some other stuff coming down the pike that I would really appreciate you all praying for. First is our welcome party for the new student leaders for next year, which will be happening this Friday. Second, we're planning an end-of-the-year party and a separate party to say farewell to the seniors. Finally, we're gearing up for Chapter Camp, our annual region-wide retreat in the heart of the Colorado Rockies. These are all some final opportunities for us to really disciple the students this year, and so I ask that you pray for them to be effective. I would also appreciate your prayers again as I restart my fundraising for the coming year, which will begin in the coming weeks. I'm still a bit unsure of how I'll get fully funded, but we do serve an awesome God!

"Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;
his greatness no one can fathom."
- Psalm 145:3

InterVarsity: Serious Business

One of the things I love about being an IV staff worker is that part of my job is getting to do fun things with students. This week, it was hanging out with my disciple group - something I've been unable to do for a while. It was actually a great chance to just hang out with the guys, which I've been realizing lately that I've been a little poor at. So, by way of remedying that, I took them out to Kelly's a local burger place converted from an old car dealership with some pretty excellent food. We conversed over buffalo burgers and an enormous grilled chicken salad, which might not have been the best choice for the next part of the day: rock climbing. I haven't been rock climbing in years, which was really an unfortunate turn of events since I really like it. Granted, I've never really been any good at it, but it's a great way to hang out. I took the group out to the Stone Age Climbing Gym, where we got to spend a few hours scrambling over (and occasionally falling off) the wall and bouldering areas. Great fun, and a nice change of pace from our normal more serious meetings.

The Large Group was fun as well. This last one was our worship night, so the worship team prepared a set to take us all the way through the night. It was great to devote a significant time to worship. I also really enjoy seeing other people getting into worship in their own way, and the night definitely had that. Students felt free to raise their arms, kneel on the ground, and sit off to the side making art. It's interesting - I've actually found that I feel much freer to worship at IV than at my church. I guess it might just be a matter of precedent, or maybe just the music choice at church versus Large Groups, but there is a strong sense of the presence of God at these kinds of worship events that I seldom feel anywhere else. To spend an hour and a half worshiping in that way is really an awesome experience.

This past weekend was our work day, a fundraiser to help students get to Chapter Camp this summer. We generally get a fair number of odd jobs involving things like raking leaves or pulling weeds. This year was a "bumper crop," though, with 22 jobs to split between UNM and Tech. Not only did it end up being a fantastic opportunity to serve and fellowship with one another, but we also were blessed to receive a really great amount of money to help the students.

Well, the time is approaching for me to begin my fundraising for the next year officially. Please pray for me as I begin this process. I feel pretty busy now, but I know that I'll really need to get it started quickly since I'll be even busier in the coming months. The official number is just over $33,000 or about 2.5x what I raised for the internship, which honestly seems pretty daunting. But I'm sure that if God is truly calling me to this endeavor, He'll certainly provide for my needs in this fundraising.

"Surely the righteous will praise your name
and the upright will live before you."
- Psalm 140:13

The Belated Blog Post Title...

One of the more interesting features about working with InterVarsity is that it teaches/forces you to think on your feet some of the time. That was my experience, at least, this last Tuesday. Rod, the Area Director, and I were supposed to take my discipleship group to do some contact evangelism (stiking up spiritual conversations with random students around campus), but at the last minute Rod found out he wouldn't be able to make it. That meant I had to find a quick solution that didn't require any prep for either me or the other guys.

Thankfully, a conversation with Hans led to the idea of a special prayer walk - easy, effective, and a good opportunity to grow. We ended up taking some time individually walking around campus, trying to open our hearts to see how God was already at work around us and praise Him for those things, as well as looking for ways in which we saw a need for God and praying for them. Then we came back together and discussed what we saw, praying and praising as a group. It was a cool way to become more aware of the spiritual state of the campus as well as a wonderful way to enjoy one of the first really warm days of the year.

I also had some trouble preparing for my James small group, but since it occurs rather close to dinner, it was fairly easy to come up with an alternative. Namely, taking the students out to eat. I've been wanting to work in some more challenging applications into the group as well, especially since James is all about living in a Christ-like manner. So rather than just go to dinner, I challenged the group to try to invite some of the homeless people that frequently show up around the school to come to dinner with us.

We decided on going to the Brickhouse, a local pizza shop with some relatively cheap but monsterous slices. On the way, we actually were approached by a guy asking for food, making my little challenge pretty easy to follow through on. He came with us, chatting (and cursing) along the way about how few people will actually take any time to notice him. The dinner itself was interesting, in part because the man 1. was drunk, 2. wanted more beer but didn't have an ID, and 3. got up at one point to ask the people around us for cigarettes. Still, though, it was good to chat with him about his life, sports, and TV. Also, when we said the prayer for the food, he offered to translate it into his language (he's from Taos Pueblo), which was a cool treat. While it certainly wasn't the smoothest encounter I've has with serving the homeless, it was still a good growing opportunity for the group and a good way to demonstrate some love to someone in need of it.

I also had the opportunity to teach this week's Large Group. The focus was on prayer, so I decided to talk about listening prayer and then spend the rest of the night looking at different methods of hearing God. One of the most important lessons I've learned about prayer is that it's not unilateral but really should be an active conversation between us and God. This seems rather obvious to some people, but it's rare that Christian prayer is characterized not simply by what we say to God but also how we listen to Him.

It was great to share how my prayer life has been transformed by trying to really hear God speak, but it was even more exciting to watch as we explored different methods of prayer. We began with a time of confession before God, preparing our hearts to hear Him. We then moved to Lectio Divina, meditating on God's character as revealed in Psalm 46. Then we spent some time just silent before God, trying to listen to Him as He spoke into our hearts. We had a time of group prayer that spontaneously transformed into prayer for the needs of others. Finally, we worshiped together in song and in one-word prayers, shouting out aspects of God's character that impacted us. It was a great and holy night, and I was really privileged to be a part of it.

I got the final details for my appointment as an InterVarsity Campus Staff Worker, meaning that pretty soon I'll need to start again on the process of fundraising for the coming year. While in some ways it's stil a little ways off, please pray for me as I prepare for that in the coming weeks.

"But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God."
- Acts 7:55