Underground

Yes, yet another tardy blog post. Sorry for not staying on top of things; the past week has been rather uneventful as far as ministry things go, so I haven't felt a strong need to update. Things are largely starting to wind down, especially with finals coming up for the students next week (or even this week for many of them).

The past week has been fun, though. For Large Group, we had a special underground church night. This meant essentially using the entire Students Union Building as an arena for us to try to hold a secret service for the Christians, who had to hide from the undercover police in the group. I happened to be one of the police, and so my goal was to find my way into the meetings by blending in with the Christians, then arrest those who did anything overtly "Christian", especially targeting the leaders of the group. It was a lot of fun to run around trying to be under cover (though after a couple of arrests I did become somewhat infamous), but it was also interesting to see the ways that the groups naturally reacted to the situation. We had some students resist arrest, while others would be really discreet or even just avoid the meetings altogether. Meanwhile the leaders, when put in our makeshift prison, would try to evangelize their captors, and in the absence of leadership, others would take on the mantle of leadership and organize meetings on their own. It was supposed to be a really open-ended simulation, but it was cool to see it take on aspects of reality down to covert communication between the Christians via text messaging. We ended the night in a time of prayer for those around the world for whom church oppression is the reality, and I think we all felt a renewed sense of unity and brotherhood with those far-flung churches after spending a short time seeing things from their perspective.

Though the semester is coming to a close, there are still a number of events that I would appreciate your prayer for. This week marks the end of our regular meetings, so we are having the final Small Groups and Large Group. We will also have an end-of-the-year party and a farewell party for seniors this weekend, and then for a couple of days next week we're giving away coffee as a service to help energize students needing a little pickmeup for finals. Not to mention the week of Chapter Camp the following week, which is going to be an incredibly important occasion. Please remember all of these things in your prayers, and please also pray for the students as they undergo the craziness of finals week (and graduation in some cases). Also, I can tell you all now that I probably won't be able to update until sometime next week, so don't be expecting my next post to be on time....

"What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?"
- Romans 8:31