Ambition

“It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.” – Romans 15:20

The word ambition has a negative connotation among some Christians. We think of a self-seeking, self-promoting pursuit of power, position and financial assets. That’s the ambition that is so prevalent in the world.

But there is another ambition. When Paul encountered Jesus, his ambition — his passion, intensity and focus in life — was transformed into an unstoppable energy to preach the gospel in the unreached regions of his world. What is your ambition? What would happen if the creativity, desire, energy and passion of this generation was unleashed to reach the university?

Last week we took four staff and four students from the Atlanta area to Ambition, InterVarsity’s first national conference on chapter planting.  We heard from top international leaders on planting missional movements.  Speakers such as Alan Hirsch, Shawn Young, Brian Sanders, and York Moore challenged us to pursue the Kingdom at all costs.

We left with inspiration and many questions.  How do we develop leaders who place God’s mission at the center of their lives?  What are the forgotten areas of campus?  How do we develop small groups that multiply on campus, develop apostolic leaders, and reach into every corner on campus?  In my own personal life, it made me think about how I reach my neighbors, how I spend my time on campus, and what it looks like to be an influence in the Church.

Perhaps the most exciting part for me was watching the 100 students, especially the four from GSU, encounter God in powerful ways.  In the midst of sharing, I heard students say things like,

“I want to do more to share my faith on campus…whatever it takes”

“Next year I want to move back on campus and make one of the dorms my place of outreach”

“I can’t wait to bring this back to campus”

Our National Director of Planting said, “This is a watershed moment for InterVarsity.”  I believe it was for our chapter as well.  InterVarsity at GSU will not look the same.  I spoke at our monthly worship gathering the Monday following this conference and called students to respond and ask God to give them a person or group of persons to reach out to. Twenty-four students stood up as a sign of committment to this.  In addition, one student stood up to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior!

God has given us an ambition to give our lives to see Jesus lifted up in every corner of campus.  Pray for us as we seek to apply what we learned on campus and that we would see many students being reached for Jesus on campus.

A Story of Healing

Meet Christine.  She is a second year student at Georgia State University and is a leader in InterVarsity. Last year she was a part of Race Matters, our discussion group that won the Diversity Award from GSU (see previous post). After Common Ground, our monthly worship gathering, she said, “For the first time in my life, I am proud of being Chinese”. Here is a little more of her story:

Race Matters really changed how I saw my identity as an Asian-American. I used to detest being Asian, always telling people that I was only American. I realize now that I can actively embrace being both Asian and American. When I was younger, whenever I told people I was Chinese, they would ask if I was communist, or if I ate dogs, you know…stereotypes like that. When it all added up, those stereotypes hurt. I thought to myself, maybe if I stopped identifying myself as Chinese, it wouldn’t hurt as much. I thought I was being an individual, but I was doing something worse by denying myself and my identity as a Chinese-American woman.

After being in Race Matters, I want to tell people what I learned. Jesus wants us to enjoy being who we are. I’m not ashamed of my culture anymore. I think God wants us to embrace that part of ourselves. If people label me with incorrect stereotypes, then I can just correct them and tell them that they are wrong.

We have seen God bring healing in many students lives through our Race Matters discussion group.  Praise God for His work in Christine!

Haiti Global Plunge 2011

“ He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.” Revelation 21:6

Last year our trip to Ca Ira led us to the realization that this community had no access to clean water.  In fact, they had to drive 30 minutes just to get drinkable water.  Currently they have to pay $50 US to have a truck fill up a big tank for them…and that’s not a guarantee.  After thinking about the thousands our team raised last year to go there and being convicted about how many wells that could’ve drilled for them…this year we set out to Ca Ira with $4000 in our hands and hopes of seeing a well drilled in this village.

To our amazement, God worked out more than we could ever imagine this week.  He gave us a teachable experience about how missions should be done, drilled a well, empowered a village, and transformed us.  We just showed up and God did the rest.

Oftentimes short term missions involves someone from the outside coming in, leading the work, doing it themselves, and patting themselves on the back at how good it felt to do good for the poor people.  We leave feeling grateful for all we have but largely unaffected by their pain.  Okay, perhaps that sounds a little harsh, but it’s not far from what I’ve seen in Haiti over the past years.  I’ve seen a lot of ‘helping’ actually hurt Haitians and their country.

This year we learned a lot about empowering Haitians to bring about change as we followed their leadership.  It was the men in the village who stepped up and negotiated with well-drillers and NGOs as well as organized a community meeting around cleaning up their beach. Our presence, support, and money was enough to see a village empowered in ways that will have huge ramifications down the road.  There is so much more to the story about how different NGOs worked together to get it done and all in a matter of a couple of days.  Something unheard of from my experience in Haiti.  The best part is we heard upon arriving back home that the night we left they found water at high pressure and the whole community responded in celebration.  I’d love to tell you the whole story, but can’t type it all here, so feel free to ask me about it!

Our team, including 3 staff and 7 students (5 from GSU), was profoundly impacted.  We struggled with not being able to work hard and sweat like we wanted to.  But the joy from seeing leaders empowered and a community come together made up for what felt like at times a week of sitting around.  In addition, our time in Scripture and teaching sessions challenged us in the way we live while people in Haiti are living in conditions unlike anything we have ever seen.  Here are some quotes and stats from the trip:

“The trip made me more missional and motivated to get my small group involved in serving.”

“I want to love and serve the poor, even if it is uncomfortable.”

“It helped me learn how to live a more simple life and be an advocate for the poor.”

“I realized I have guarded my heart against what God is calling me to do.  I discovered the time to change is now.”

Because of the trip, of the 7 students:

-4 committed to meet regularly with God in prayer and Bible Study

-7 committed to being a better steward of their money

-6 committed to getting involved in a local ministry in their city

-4 committed to seek out ways they can use their major in college to help bring an end to poverty

Because of this trip a little bit more of the Kingdom of God broke into Ca Ira and our lives.  Praise God for all He did!

New Students Transformed

Summer is a time to be refreshed after the school year, but also a time to meet new freshmen and gear up for the fall. Three days a week Georgia State offers student organizations opportunities to set up information tables at freshmen orientations.  We usually have around 150 students sign up for more information about InterVarsity.  Once school starts we throw huge parties, offer lots of free food, and make many phone calls to further introduce these new students to the InterVarsity community and our mission on campus.

This past year our efforts to reach new students was very fruitful.  We welcomed 30 freshmen into our chapter last fall, almost doubling the size of our chapter.  Here’s the story of one of those freshmen, Jules, who stumbled upon one of our events last Fall, and had she not, would probably have walked away from her faith like many others do in college:

“A year ago I would have called myself a Christian by name: I went to church, went to my youth group, and went through all of the motions, but I did not have a relationship with God and I did not fully live out what it meant to be a Christian. When one of my really good friends, Cole, gave me a very vague description of the event he was about to go to, FreshStart, I decided to go with him and give it a chance. I went and met some really awesome people and thought that it would be just exactly the same, or very similar, to the type of group I had experienced in the past. Little did I know that over this year God would truly show himself to me.

I learned what it meant to live a life that was dedicated to Jesus and his mission and how I could carry that out in my life. I am still learning and building my relationship with God. I am so thankful to have had God’s kingdom shown to me and it has helped me through a lot, including the death of my grandma. InterVarsity and the friends I made through it have truly been what I needed being 16 hours away from home. They have showed me how to love and how God’s love for me is never ending. The friendships I have made this year will never die and the relationship I have built with God will only grow. “

I show a picture of her rock climbing because she and Cole are both avid climbers and having both really been moved by God’s desire to see all be in relationship with Him are leading a campus mission team next fall.  In this they hope to build relationships with other climbers and start a group for rock climbers where they can begin to check out who Jesus is in a setting perhaps more comfortable for them than a worship service.  It’s amazing to see God grab a hold of students like Jules and then use them in big ways for his Kingdom.  Pray that God would use Jules and Cole to lead lots of rock climbers to the Lord and that this coming Fall we would connect with many other Freshmen who like Jules would become missional Christians at Georgia State.

Chapter Awarded “Outstanding Diversity Program” by University

Our InterVarsity chapter was awarded the “Outstanding Diversity Program” for our Race Matters discussion group by Georgia State University this Spring.  This was a great honor and accomplishment for us as we seek to be a witness and bring new life to Georgia State.  It was also a joy to see Jesus honored as a Christian group won an award in a category not typically represented by Christian organizations.

Upon planting at Georgia State we felt God’s call to plant a multi-ethnic chapter.  And God has done just that.  Our chapter is roughly 40% White, 40 % Black, and 20 % Asian.  What has driven us to pursue multi-ethnicity is the life Jesus modeled and His call for His people to be one.

This semester our class consisted of one white (Euro-American) student, one African, one African-American, two Chinese-Americans, one Japanese-American, one Indian-American, and one Guyanese-American.  The picture above includes students from last semester and this semesters group.  Over the course of 8 weeks we asked the question “Does Race Matter?  Both in terms of our experiences in life and to Jesus?”  Activities involved different topics and activities such as sharing our own journeys with understanding racial issues, watching and debriefing a movie, sharing things our families have passed on to us, celebrating our own ethnic identities and what they bring to the Kingdom, studying Scripture, and playing a game that involved looking at issues of privilige and race.

Again and again we here students say that this was probably one of the most life-changing things they have ever been a part of.  Many people comment that they never knew Jesus cared about issues of racial reconciliation and justice. Others feel that they now understand and are beginning to accept more of how God has made them, while most left with a sense of calling to stand up for racial injustices and be a part of God’s reconciling work in the world.

We praise God for the reconciling work in our chapter:  that He is showing us more and more of His work of reconciling work in the world, that He is giving us a little taste of what Heaven will be like (Revelation 9:9),  and for how His name is being made great through this small award on campus.  May God continue to use IV at GSU to be a part of reconciling students to one another and to God.

Everyday Justice

The choices we make every day affect others. Choices such as how we spend our time, where we choose to live, where we buy our goods, and what type of items we buy can have profound implications for others. Sometimes these choices mean child slaves are harvesting our cocoa or young women are working 15 hr days, 7 days a week to make our clothes.

Everyday Justice (Mar 21-24) was a weeklong series of events hosted by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship to raise awareness of injustices related to choices we make everyday. We also wanted to spark conversation about what role Jesus plays in fighting injustices like these in the world.

For many of us, this was something we didn’t realize was happening.  But as we did we research we realized some of the following facts:

- Coffee farmers often are unable to get prices for their crop that even cover the costs to produce.  Many have to resort to growing illegal drugs alongside the coffee to be able to make a profit.

-The US State Department’s year 2000 Human Rights Report acknowledged that some 15,000 children between the ages of 9 and 12 have been sold into forced labor on cotton, coffee and cocoa plantations in northern Ivory Coast in recent years.

-In August of 2002, a report found that approximately 284,000 children were working on cocoa farms across West Africa, many of which are involved in dangerous tasks such as use of machetes and applying chemicals without proper protection.  About 2/3 of them are estimated to not attend school.

-Often times in sweatshops, women have to work 12-14 hour shifts, to only be paid .06 an hour making clothing.

-There are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world today.

So this week we set out to engage the campus with this injustice, and what we believe Jesus says about injustices like this, through various events.  Here’s a picture of a demonstration we did that profiled stories of children who have been enslaved through various means.  Along with this demonstration we also had 150 different students sign a letter and mail a piece of chocolate back to the president of M&M/Mars asking them to include slave-free chocolate in their candy.

In addition, we engaged the campus in conversations about Jesus through this proxe station that used a quiz of the above facts to see how aware/unaware they were of injustices in the world surrounding their everyday purchases.

Throughout the week we saw countless students engage in this issue and commit to looking at the products they buy.  In the midst of this we were able to share the Gospel with over 60 students, see 1 student make a decision to follow Jesus, and see new students join our fellowship. Praise God for the work He did to build more of His Kingdom on campus and in the world as a response to this week.

Reflections from Staff Conference ’11

This January 5-9, all InterVarsity staff from across the nation joined together in St. Louis to celebrate, learn, and seek God together. The theme of the conference was Campuses Renewed.  As many of you know, the vision of InterVarsity is “Lives Transformed, Campuses Renewed, World Changers Developed”.  Seeing ‘campuses renewed’ can be a little unclear sometimes, so this week was inspiring to all of us as we dug deeper into this important aspect of what we hope to see on campus.

This is part of a statement that was developed to explain what we mean by seeing campuses renewed:

“Our sovereign God is actively influencing people and events on every campus. Right now. Everywhere. He is at work impacting leaders who hold key positions — both believers and non-believers. Via common grace, He brings good to all.

In this light, we do well to remember the words of the great Dutch theologian and politician, Abraham Kuyper: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”

We do not join those who scorn or fear the secular university. While not being naïve about many less-than-positive aspects of today’s campus culture, we regard ourselves as insiders who care deeply about the well-being of the entire academic community.

Campus renewal is developed through a variety of means. It is our vision to see the culture, climate, curriculum, research, and policies of each institution renewed by the Gospel.

We long to see revival on campus. When the Holy Spirit moves, not only do people change, but institutions do as well”

Throughout the week, I reflected on ways we’ve seen God begin a work of renewing Georgia State:

-being invited to a discussion with decision makers in the community on making GSU more sustainable

-partnering with Greek Life, bringing together all Greek councils, to talk about racial reconciliation in the Greek system

-being invited by University Housing to train all RAs on how to have spiritual conversations with their residents

God is at work at Georgia State to renew all aspects of campus.  I can only imagine what He has in store.  Will you join me in praying for the professors on campus, the administration, the ideas being ingrained in students minds, the hiring process and treatment of employees, the acceptance standards for students, etc. so that Georgia State might more fully reflect the values of God’s Kingdom.  May His Kingdom Come and His will be done at GSU as it is in Heaven.

View a meditation on our theme: http://vimeo.com/18035035

The Beginning of a Journey

About 1 year ago Daniel Buckley decided to go to the 40, Georgia IV’s annual Fall Conference.  Little did he know that small decision would lead him on quite a journey the following summer to Iraq.

The 40 aims to train students, be a catalyst for our work on campus, and engage students with the purpose of InterVarsity.  Each year we cycle through the ‘4 loves’ as InterVarsity calls them:  Love for God, God’s Word, God’s people of every ethnicity and culture, and God’s purposes in the world.  Last year we focused on the theme of God’s people of every ethnicity and culture and invited Joshua Settles (Area Director with IV in TN) to speak to us on what that means to love people cross-culturally.  Daniel was one of the 11 students from Georgia State who attended this weekend.

Throughout the weekend students were challenged to think about their own ethnic identity and what it means to reach out in friendship cross culturally for the sake of the Gospel. Some powerful testimonies were shared at the end of the weekend and students wrestled with what it meant to love all of God’s people.  And this, in some way, marked the beginning of a journey for Daniel in how God was challenging Him to love people of different cultures.

As Daniel began to pray about what this meant for Him, an opportunity came to him through an organization called the Preemptive Love Coalition (PLC). PLC seeks to ‘eradicate the backlog of Arab and Kurdish children waiting in line for life-saving heart surgery and to create cooperation between communities in conflict.’  Daniel felt a call to go spend most of his summer in Northern Iraq building relationships with people and helping bring life-saving surgeries to children affected by chemical warfare among a culture much different than ours.

This trip really challenged Daniel as he had to step out in faith, taking many risks in raising support to go, being among a culture much different than ours, and allowing this situation and trip to pull on his heart and bring about change in his life. Daniel writes about his experience:

“Through the 40, God had given me a more complete picture of his Kingdom, and tons of questions. And so, when an opportunity to intern with the Preemptive Love Coalition arrived, I decided to apply. The Preemptive Love Coalition is a non-profit organization actively working to provide heart surgeries for the thousands of children in Iraq suffering from congenital heart disease.  Two months living in Iraq and working with PLC made me realize how oblivious I was to my pre-conceived notions of a people. A country otherwise defined by a war in my mind became a country defined by people.

When I think of Iraq now, I think of my friend, a local engineering teacher, named Hassan, who is passionate about being there for his students, or two year-old Mohammed, whose family we visited, thinking we would see him go to surgery at the end of the summer, only to find out that a local community member who had donated a substantial sum had requested it back to build a new home for himself. I learned how to suffer with them while I sat in their home listening to his mother retell the story while Mohammed was beside me dropping grapes in my hand. I also learned how to rejoice with them when I found out after my internship that Mohammed was recovering well from the surgery he had three weeks after I left.  PLC continues to challenge communities at odds, addressing ethnic and political tensions through partnership, service, and reshaping peoples perceptions of what it means to be Iraqi, Arab, Kurdish, American, Christian, or Muslim. I continue to remember the ways in which these stories have radically changed my perceptions of a people, and it continues to challenge me in showing those I meet with enough love to understand them.”

Daniel’s perspective on life and how he should live his life here in the US was radically altered.  Seeing and experiencing the life others live in different parts of the world and being on the receiving end of hospitality and generosity seldom experienced here in the States, Daniel wants to incorporate those more in his life and continue to build cross-cultural relationships here in the States.  Praise God for how He is using people like Daniel and using conferences like the 40 to bring about transformation in the lives of students.

This year at the 40 we will be focusing on God’s purposes in the world, with a more specific focus on sharing our faith.  We hope to increase our attendance from GSU from 11 last year to 35 this year!  Pray that we would see that many students come from GSU, that God would give us His heart for the lost on our campuses, and that there might be many students like Daniel this year who make decisions that will change the rest of their lives at the 40 this year.

Haiti Global Plunge 2010

Our 4th trip with students to Haiti almost didn’t happen this year due to the earthquake, but at the last minute we were able to finalize plans to continue partnership with Alpha Omega Psi Fraternity, Inc (AQPsi).  Plans had changed. No longer were we going to Cap Haitian, but to a small village just off the coast called Ca Ira (translated: ‘It will be alright’).  Our plans were to help clean up rubble from an orphanage that collapsed, search out prospects for creating a new AQPsi chapter there, and continue with our teaching we have used in the past few years to introduce students to Haiti and God’s heart to end poverty.  We came in not knowing what would happen, just an expectation that we would see things and experience God in such a way that we would all leave different people.

This year we took 8 students from Georgia State, UGA, Gainesville State, and UK.  We faced a lot of challenges this week. We lived in tents, took bucket baths, had to adjust to different food, struggled with the tension of being served more food than we could eat while children were on rations, worked harder than some of us ever had and wrestled emotionally and spiritually on a deeper level than we were used to.  Our students were amazing and pushed through, never ceasing to engage and ask Jesus what He was up to.  Because of that many students’ lives were changed.

During the week we were able to make a serious dent in a pile of rubble that used to be the orphanage.  Perhaps one of the more impactful experiences for students was the relationships built.  We heard stories from many people whose families were lost in the earthquake.  People who are now homeless and living in tents.  Yet, people who have not ceased to hope, to serve, and to celebrate.   Here are some commitments and reflections made by students on the trip:

3 committed to regularly meet with God in prayer and Bible Study

4 commited to seek out living with the poor after graduation

7 committed to use their majors to help end poverty

4 committed be a part of a local ministry serving the poor back home

5 committed be a better stewards of their resources

“This trip gave me a renewed focus to pursue a career in medicine.”

“I was impacted by the power of alone time with Jesus.”

“I think I will have a greater love for the poor,and I really want to give.”

“I’ve learned to be an advocate fo the poor and that I can make a difference.”

“At first I was mad at Jesus for letting kids be in such poverty-stricken conditions, but this trip helped me realize it is our job to help.” Thanks for your partnership in developing students as World Changers!

How Green Is Your Soul?

How Green is Your Soul? was the title of our weeklong outreach at Georgia State designed to build awareness of environmental injustices both domestically and globally and look at the spiritual realities and solutions behind these crises. In partnership with local ministries and environmental groups (such as the Sustainable Energy Tribe and the Council for InterFaith Concerns) on campus, we challenged the student population at Georgia State to take an active role in caring for the environment. In addition, through various  avenues we engaged students with the Gospel which we believe has the power to not only save souls but break through injustices in our world.

For a lot of Christians it is a new thing to think about God’s call to care for creation.  As we went through the week many students’ eyes were opened to see a God that from the beginning of the Bible to the end gave value to creation and demands that we be good stewards of it.  Of particular notice in Genesis 2 God commands Adam to till and keep the land.  The Hebrew word used here for ‘to keep’ is the same word used in the blessing ‘may the Lord bless you and keep you’.  So in the same way that the Lord keeps us, we are to keep the earth.  One of the more amazing things to see this week was how much students’ lives were changed and eyes were opened.  Many are living completely different lifestyles as a result of this week.  Praise the Lord!

Some of the events we hosted included an interfaith lunch N learn with Dr. Rusty Pritchard (Flourish), Common Ground with author Jonathan Merritt, and a weeklong experience called the No Impact Experience.  One of my favorite things of the week was our EnviroProxe, partially pictured to the top left.  This proxe station used art & questions to look at the spiritual contours of environmental degradation.   I had countless conversations with non-Christians who were pleasantly surprised to see that Christians cared about the environment and hear that Jesus actually cared about these issues too. Some of them stayed around to hear a presentation of the Gospel. We saw many of the same non-Christians come to our table and we are beginning to build relationships with many of them.

The talk/topic for our last event  sought to more deeply answer  the question “How Green is Your Soul?” in addition to sharing the Gospel.  Thomas Daniel did a fantastic job laying that out for us.  It was, however, one of the more frustrating parts of the week for me.  We had only 6 people attend.  That’s how campus ministry goes sometimes.  You put in so much time, so much prayer and desire so much to see people come to know Jesus…and then only 6 people show (and that includes current InterVarsity people.)  Such are the challenges of campus ministry.

We are grateful, however, for the many bridges built on campus.  Since the event we have built many relationships with non-Christians and other groups on campus.  In addition we were even invited by the University to be part of a discussion on sustainability at Georgia State.  It is great to see our vision continue to grow in seeing students’ lives changed, campuses renewed, and world changers developed through events like these.