Engage People of All Cultures and Ethnicities
Our staff, Tony Gatewood, had an opportunity to speak to students and staff after a cross-burning in the city of Dubuque, Iowa. Here is his report:
So…today was AMAZING! I spoke this morning and shared the Gospel through Matthew 5:3-11, Ephesians 2:11-22 and 2 Corinthians 5:18-19.
60 people attended and about 40 said yes to the receive the ministry of reconciliation.
Praise God with me for his work!
Today one of our staff, Tony Gatewood, will be sharing at the University of Dubuque chapel our choice between two crosses: The One that Cinders or The One Where Christ Surrendered.
This special chapel service happens as police investigate a reported cross burning in Dubuque, a small city in Northern Iowa, where we have worked with Black students on campus.
Would you join me in praying for him and the students/staff on campus?
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)
Could you pray with me over the next two months for these activities?
Thanks for your prayer!
For the next month InterVarsity staff are joining our national leadership team to fast and pray for our movement. As we’ve reflected in Nehemiah 1 about areas where people are at risk and where we feel vulnerable (like the Israelites of his time with no walls around them), four areas stood out:
We are in a season of continued growth as a ministry and we believe that growth in these areas will propel us as a ministry in this next season to see every corner of our campus reached.
Would you join us in prayer?
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.
Usually new part-time employees do not press you as an organization, but this past weekend I was blessed to train a group of interns who have done this for the Central Region.
They have started new work among Persian students, Native Americans, refugees, multi-campus Black student collaborations, art students, Greeks, and new campuses. They have been pressing us in prayer, growing as a family, and empowering students.
Please pray that the path they have set for our interns would start a wave of intern classes pressing us to every corner of the campus.
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.
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