Listen to my message on Jesus’ offer to us of a full life from John 6:30-40 at Church at Bevo. In this passage the crowds were forgetful, sought to form Jesus in the way that they wanted, and many missed what he was offering. Let us not fall into this same trap and miss Jesus’ invitation to feast on him.
Category: Draw Students (Page 11 of 13)
Draw Students and Faculty to Jesus as Savior and Lord
Our desire is to see students empowered to reach out to their classmates. Read this story from Domenic, our staff at Webster University, with an example of this on campus in St Louis:
Two weeks ago, my students threw together an outreach for the Art department on Webster’s campus and called it, “Ping Pong Brunch.” We got a huge ping pong table, tons of food, and invited the entire art department and everyone showed up! Students, professors, and the chair of the Art department got together to eat, relax, and played each other in some intense games of ping pong. Later, the chair of the art department came up to me and said, “I’ve really appreciated you working with the students to build community here. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a long time, but didn’t know how to do it.”
The best part is that I only went to the store with another staff to pick up the food. The students had the vision, had the goal, did the advertisements, made the connections, and served their fellow classmates. The event was only intended to go from 11am-12:30pm and ended up going all the way until 3pm. Afterwards, my sister invited one of her friends at the brunch to do a GIG with her and she said yes!
Here is an update from the Vision Conference this past weekend from Eric one of the regional staff attending with our students.
“We added several more students into the Empower Academy, which at this point is stacked deep with very high caliber student leaders and potential staff. The other really encouraging thing is that these students are 100% on board with hosting our first ever regional Black Campus Ministry (BCM) conference next year. All weekend they kept noticing things at the Vision Conference and saying ‘we should definitely do that at our conference’ or ‘let’s incorporate African worship too to represent the broader African diaspora at our conference’. It feels like we are at a tipping point in our region both in ministry to Black students and in creating a pipeline for Black staff. Praise Jesus with us!”
Thanks for your prayers!
30 Students from the Central Region are joining 120 others in Chicago for Vision 2016. This conference has been an important place of renewal for our students and calling them to plant work among Black students on campuses in our region. Please pray that the 30 attending would come back with a vision for their campuses.
This conference is also the first step of the Empower program for 10 of the delegates. The program will have as its capstone the first ever Black student conference in our region in Spring of 2017. This conference will be planned and led by students under the direction of Tony Gatewood. Please pray that these students will catch a vision for what God wants to do in 2017 as they attend this weekend.
God is moving among faculty! After years of praying as a local pastor and a year of relationship building as our faculty ministry catalyst George Stulac is seeing fruit. Here is a taste of what is happening:
“After spending all of 2015 initiating relationships with individual faculty on different campuses, the desire to start meeting as faculty groups came together with hardly any push from me on three campuses. Since Urbana15 we have launched a faculty ministry at Washington University and at Forest Park Community College. At Washington U, 25 faculty took part in the poll to schedule our meeting. At Forest Park CC, 7 faculty have agreed to meet once a month as a Christian faculty group. At our launching meeting, one of those faculty said he had been thinking of retiring after this semester, but now, since we are doing this faculty group, he wants to stay on. The third campus is Lindenwood University, where several Christian faculty have asked me to meet with them later this month to discuss vision for a faculty ministry there. That may be a third launching of an ongoing faculty ministry.”
To be connected to George’s ministry please contact me and ask to be connected to his work.
It is a great joy to see students begin to take the good news of Jesus to the edges of our region. This is what is happening with one of the first students from the U of Nebraska – Omaha chapter who is helping to plant an InterVarsity chapter as an alumni among Latino students at the U of Nebraska – Kearney .
Their first large group gathering was this week and they have 5 small groups meeting throughout the week. Please pray for InterVarsity’s work at UN Kearney and for more students to catch a vision to see ministry spread throughout our four states.
Have you been to the corner of Jesus Street and Sorority/Fraternity Row? 42 students from 6 campuses in our region are joining 500 others at Greek Conference to experience this intersection and receive training to lead communities like this back on campus. Please pray for the growth of our work on this corner.
Do you remember the impact on you of the first time you read the Bible? For me it was experiencing the peace of God reading Revelation 21 as a child up late because of fear of death.
This month our students and staff in Missouri are inviting students into Bible studies we call Groups Investigating God (GIG). We have found GIG’s as a great way to help people meet Jesus, including those from other countries. Additionally I read a story of one of our former staff starting a GIG with her coffee shop coworkers.
As you pray for this GIG launch ask God if there are people around you to invite into your own GIG.
1500 InterVarsity staff are preparing to welcome 16,000 students to St Louis for Urbana15. Like this year, at Urbana 2000 many things were ready but as I experienced 15 years ago much prayer is still needed.
At 12am on December 28, 2000 I was on the phone with my sister asking for prayer to find 10 cots so students sleeping in dorms at University of Illinois would have beds. Within the hour 10 cots were found by another staff walking through a dorm on the way back to their room. Joyfully I delivered these cots to weary students and praised God for answered prayer.
Please join me in prayer for final preparations and that students would be welcomed in to encounter God in powerful ways during Urbana15, December 27-31.
The end of the semester is a time of great anxiety for many students as they think through finals and finances for the coming semester. This time also provides a great opportunity for InterVarsity students to minister to classmates and other friends on campus.
In addition many chapters in our region are hosting Christmas outreach meetings and are helping students identify what God has done in their lives this semester. Please join me in praying for this important season in our work on campus.
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