A patient community sees harvest

I have been blessed to have been exposed to Christianity for most of my life. However, it wasn't until May 2008 that I chose to accept Christ as my personal Lord and savior. My spiritual journey began when I was 5 years old and moved to Canada from China, the land of my birth. My family attended a Chinese bible study in Canada, and it was there that I was first introduced to Jesus and His love for me. However, before I had a chance to make my faith my own, my family moved to the U.S., where I spent my middle and high school years. I did not attend church regularly during this time, and although I never rejected the idea of God altogether, He seemed like a complete stranger to me.

Regardless of this, however, I felt compelled to join a Christian fellowship my freshman year at Duke University. I was mostly in search of a supportive, moral
community because I knew that college would bring many new temptations, and I
did not want to fall into them. It is strange, looking back, because the choice
to explore Christianity seemed so natural, even though I had been disconnected
from the faith for almost a decade. I participated in a Campus Crusade small
group bible study all of my freshman year, but stopped going my sophomore year
mostly because of time conflicts, but also because I did not really feel my
faith growing. Sophomore year was a rough year for me, as I struggled to
maintain control of different aspects of my life, and found myself feeling
helpless, empty, and alone. It was then at my lowest point that I began to look
into Intervarsity.

Prior to attending small groups or large group, I already knew several IV members from other extracurricular activities at Duke. Indeed, a few of them had tried reaching out to me by inviting me to IV events my freshman year, but it wasn't until January 2008 that I began to recognize their efforts as acts of love and not attempts at making me a "spiritual project." At first, it was definitely a struggle to reconcile the "new" Christian way of life with the way I had been living, which had been entirely self-serving and fundamentally meaningless. However, I began to feel that God wanted me to know Him better, and IV provided the perfect opportunities for me to do so. In IV small group, I felt accepted and cherished even though I was non-Christian, and I felt safe to voice my concerns, doubts, and questions. I rarely found satisfactory answers on the first try (in fact, I still struggle with some questions), but I could feel that some pieces were beginning to fall into place.

I came to understand that the reason I felt empty and helpless was because I was trying to fill my life with worldly objects, like academic success, social affirmation from peers, and romantic relationships, instead of filling it with God. I was solely relying on myself and other people for happiness, an act that is futile because people (myself included) would inevitably fall short and disappoint. Only God
can provide without fail.

Finally, after a semester of actively pursuing God, I decided in May that it was time that I took a leap of faith and committed my life to something that had grown to be an integral part of who I was. To me, the biggest cause of my change of heart was the model of Christian community that I witnessed in IV. So many people shared with me their incredible journeys and struggles and really helped me understand that our God is a god who wants to be in a personal relationship with us. Without these conversations and without the fellowship of IV small group and large group, I know that my faith could not have grown so exponentially in such a short time. By the end of the semester, I still had questions and I was scared of what was to come (I had no idea what to expect), but I was so eager to make God a permanent part of my life.

Six months later, I have absolutely no regrets - I only wish I had made the choice earlier. I feel closer to God than ever, and I am continuously made in awe of His glory and unspeakable love. Looking back, I can see clearly now that even though last semester was the most spiritually awakening one for me, God's fingerprints can be found all over the last twenty years of my life.

He has been working through so many different people, planting seeds deep inside me that remained invisible until the right conditions were presented, at which point these seeds sprung, seemingly out of nowhere, and bloomed into something beautiful and truly fulfilling. I realize now that often, God's work is unseen until He chooses to reveal it, and I feel eternally grateful to those who continued to let God work through them even when they did not see immediate results in me. Their patience and selfless love got me where I am now, and I only hope to be able to show the same patience and love to others who may be in the same place that I was a mere year ago. The bad news is that there is so much emptiness in the world, but the good news is that God is the only one who can truly fill it.

Celebrating conversion-- Food Lion style

So it’s Tuesday night which means I am at Lees-McRae leading my bible study there. I’ve been doing this now for three weeks. The group is still fairly small but they keep coming back :). This night we were looking at Luke 2. One of the things that we talked about was the interaction between the shepherds and angels mainly how they told them that the Savior was born. We then spent a good amount of time talking about the claims of Christianity, namely that Jesus is our Savior and how that is offensive because it’s means it not about us. The bible study went great, though there were only three students who came out. The excited part happened after the small group.

This guy, Mason, who has been coming for the past three weeks stayed after like usual and helped me clean up and we started talking. We have been talking for a little while about where he is spiritually, he doesn’t think of himself as a Christian but grew up in a Christian home and started coming to the Bible study to meet girls. He know about Jesus but doesn’t know him personally. Well he does now.

Mason and I talked for about an hour or so after small group and the Spirit ripped through him heart and in Mason’s words said “I want Him in my life”, he was broken. We spent probably 10 minutes praying and talking to God and confessing our need for him in our lives.

Then I told him we were going to go celebrate. He looked at me a little weird and said “okay”. I asked him what was still open in Banner Elk. He laughed and said Food Lion. So, we went to Food Lion, bought a box of donuts and a 6-pack of Cream Soda and sat in the parking lot and celebrating God’s work in his life. It was so sweet.

It was so awesome seeing God work in his heart tonight. We’ve been talking about the same thing for the past three weeks and God chose tonight to break into his heart and breathe life into him. Praise God for his mighty saving work in our lives.

Truth or Dare- a new retreat experience

I was walking through the main hangout room at this year's New Student Retreat when I suddenly heard a string of curse words. Pockets of students were playing board games and hanging out after the main session was over - and apparently the last round of Catchphrase was particularly disappointing for a few of them.

Here at Duke we're starting to see a pretty significant number of non-Christians commit to our community (some of them have even come to faith, like Louisa who shares her story here). Their presence is influencing a lot of our decision-making and communication as a community. I'd like to share a few reflections about taking a retreat with a high(er) number of non-Christians. It is important to note that some of these folks grew up in the church and could therefore be described as nominal Christians, but some of them are completely new to religion in any form. Both exist on your campus, I bet.

First of all, make no assumptions during the content time. It is slowly becoming a habit for us to not just talk about the context of Scripture we're using, but also to talk about the particular type* in a way that is easily translatable. Obviously, this is good for Christian students to hear, too. I also explain the book, chapter, and verse organization of the Bible early in the weekend and take a swing at explaining the difference between the Old Testament and New Testament.** It's surprising how often people don't know how the Bible is divided up and that we use chapter:verse to note that.

Second, pay close attention to free time. Make sure there are a few Christians in charge to maintain influence. I'm not sure if this is specific to just our chapter, but it seems to me that many times non-Christians are pretty influential socially. When we don't plan good activities for free time and have strong believers present, sometimes free times degenerate into Truth or Dare or a super competitive game of football. These things aren't inherently bad of course; but left unchecked, they can take on too much power in the flow of a weekend. Plan good activities that are fun and inclusive. Pick leaders that aren't afraid to intervene if a game/activity starts to feel...unChristian - or don't be afraid to step in yourself!

Final thought: do what you do! Weekend retreats are excellent windows into the power of a Christian community at work. I've heard non-Christians marvel at how everybody serves each other and is generally pretty friendly over the course of a weekend. This is actually true of many of our communities. Don't be afraid to show it off a bit over a weekend away, together.

* epistle = letter to early church, gospel = biography of Jesus, psalm = poem, etc
** "The Old Testament is all about God preparing the Jewish culture for Jesus. The New Testament is all about what happened once Jesus got here." -- take Systematic Theology at NISET for true brilliance on this
Allison King, Duke staff

Eye-opening evangelism training

Plenty of students who are not following Jesus have followed friends and fliers to the InterVarsity groups at the UR. Students who are uncertain about Jesus commit to University of Richmond’s Umoja gospel choir to experience the community among black students. Underclassmen in fraternities and sororities attend Rho Iota (Greek IV) studies in their chapter in order to get to know upperclassmen. IV students have found new members through school papers, dinners in collaboration with Multicultural student groups, and upperclassmen looking for something new. These non-Christian students participate in small groups, worship, and retreats. But are they being invited to truly participate in the Kingdom of God?

We worry that students are hanging around Christian friends and Christian groups without being invited to share in the life of Christ. In response to this observation, staff planned a Saturday morning focused on evangelism with an hour on the Biblical foundation for evangelism and another hour divided between spiritual conversations and inviting someone to follow Jesus. However, as we studied the scripture passage with the 20 participating students, we realized how rarely Christian students on campus were having forthright conversations about the Gospel. After an hour and a half of students marveling over how important it was to invite others to “be reconciled to God,” we spent a few minutes encouraging them to have conversations that move from general content, to abstract content, to spiritual content, to Gospel content.

Our Saturday morning conversation on evangelism at UR revealed to us as staff that students are more curious and more in need of encouragement in the area of evangelism than we imagined. Our tentative Saturday morning response now seems it could comprise several weeks of conversations; “when does this happen again?” students have asked.

As we hope to see IV attendees become Jesus followers, we realize it may be insufficient to respond, “wait until the Good News track at Rockbridge!” Though we have yet to organize another Saturday morning conversation, our tentative start opened our eyes that when it comes to evangelism it is not only the nonChristians who are in need!

Goodwyn Heard- University of Richmond, Greek staff

Reimagining Evangelism training material review

There is significant benefit of using the Reimagining Evangelism materials to encourage and equip students to share their faith. Rick Richardson, particularly in the included DVD, does an excellent job of addressing the fears, hesitation, and baggage that many students have when it comes to evangelism. His push for doing the things that you love and just being intentional to take non-Christians with you and be open and willing to have spiritual conversations is empowering to students who often view evangelism as just one more IV thing they have to do.

Wake Forest students were particularly impacted by the reminder of the biblical call that all of us go and make disciples of all nations, but that this can look different for each person based upon their gifts, personality, interests, etc. Too many students think that evangelism has to be just contact evangelism or that it can be "living the Christian life" without ever speaking the truth about Jesus Christ. Rick Richardson challenges those assumptions while encouraging students to do evangelism where they are, with people they know, in places they already feel comfortable.

For staff who don't feel they have the time or the gifts to put together a full evangelism training session (or sessions), Reimagining Evangelism is a great tool that challenges students to think about outreach in a new way and empowers them to, even in small ways, begin to think and live evangelistically.