Fighting the November blues

It is officially November-- that time of year on a college campus where mid-terms pile up and whatever boost Fall Break gave has disappeared. Many students start to retreat to their bubble of class, favorite study location and dorm room. I'm pretty sure UNC students think their InterVarsity staff is immune to this feeling, but I can testify at least this one isn't. I ride the Robertson bus from Duke's campus, near my home, to UNC. It is a 30 minute drive where the bus is generally silent as people read or listen to their Ipods. I enjoy my silent ride by reading the newspaper.

Recently, I sat down in a seat appropriately spaced out from others with an open seat to either side of me and opened my newspaper. There is only one other stop and when some people got on, I didn't even look up. I put my newspaper in my bag jsut as we pulled onto UNC's campus and noticed the man sitting next to me with a shaved head was reading "Buddha: a beginner's guide." I was disappointed in myself. What an easy opportunity to talk with someone about faith and religion. Neither of us were going anywhere, and all I had to do was ask about what he was reading. I was reminded of one of my favorite passages about prayer and evangelism.

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. (Colossians 4:2-6)

As I walked to my first meeting, I prayed that I would be more aware of what was going on around me, even if I was tired. That afternoon I boarded the bus with the vague memory of the morning. I opened up my paper again and started reading. This time a woman behind me asked the man next to her to use his phone. She had left hers in her room and needed to let her boyfriend know that she was on her way. She then shared that she had also lost her glasses that day, and I joined in lamenting the annoyance of losing something valuable.

We all started talking, and it turns out the man lives two streets behind me. He works in Chapel Hill and she is a student. They found out I was a campus minister and didn't get too weird. We talked about what it was like to grow up in our respective hometowns and roommate drama. Then he asked if InterVarsity ever does any events comparing different faiths. I shared that last year we were a part of an inter-faith trialogue, and the woman said her friend was organizing it this year.

I took that as an open door and asked him about his faith background. He graduated high school last year and was confirmed Methodist as a child, but wants to read both the Koran and the Bible to figure out what he believes. The bus was stopping at that point and I knew I wanted to pursue that more, but before I could say anything he said, "So, do you have groups that look at the Bible or anything like that?"

We exchanged contact information and hope to get together soon. It is just like God to redeem my self-absorbed or at least apathetic morning with a similar opportunity in the evening. Despite the November blues, it was the most energetic I felt all day.

Random conversations?

InterVarsity at UNC Chapel Hill recently ran proxy stations beside the Student Union. A proxy station is a visual aid designed to start conversations between believers "running" the station and anyone walking by, with the hope of ending in a presentation of the Gospel or conversations about Jesus.

I got the opportunity to participate in running the station on hope, and I asked passers-by to take a survey in which they responded to questions ranging from "What's on your to-do list today?" to "Where do you put your hope?" and "How certain are you that this hope will last for the rest of your life?" They would then put a sticker by the response that best suits them.

While I was working the station, God kept bringing people to me who I could connect with on several levels. One woman I knew from a Hindi conversation class last year told me she was a Muslim, and she had worked with Christians in a ministry called Cornerstone in the past. Another was a woman who attended a 24/7 Prayer event last year, which I had helped organize.

Another woman had grown up in a Catholic school but didn't see how Jesus mattered to her life. She said she still prayed every night anyway, so I asked her if there was anything she had been praying for recently. She told me about a friend with severe back pain, so I ended up praying with her for the healing of her friend. I ended up giving a basic presentation of the Gospel to almost everyone I talked to.

One guy in particular, a Hindu who knows some of my friends from Hindi class, said he was "pretty open" to different beliefs and worship. I talked with him a little bit about Hinduism and Christianity (I took a course last semester on Asian religions), and then exchanged contact information to meet up with him again. His name is Vik, and we got to hang out a week later. It was so amazing... he literally asked me to talk about Jesus and my faith. Multiple times.

When I mentioned sharing my testimony with others at an upcoming retreat, he asked what a testimony was. I told him, and got to share with him how God led me to Carolina and how I'm trusting Him with my major and my life. Then, a separate time, I got to share how I committed my life to Christ and explained the Gospel to him, more in depth than I had at the proxy station. He was a good listener, and we spent pretty much the whole time in deep conversation about Jesus and Hinduism. We're going to try to meet up again next week.

When Meredith is not studying Hindi, she is the Prayer Team Leader at UNC Chapel Hill. If you have questions about how to do proxy stations on your campus, contact jennifer.hagin@gmail.com.

Prayer Walking brings victory

I had an amazing experience prayer walking through the campus of Old Dominion University. As part of our leadership retreat at the beginning of the year, the leaders paired off and spread out over dorms, buildings, malls, and sidewalks to pray over the coming New Student Outreach weeks and student body as a whole. Before the Good News track at InterVarsity's summer conference at Rockbridge, I had never really participated in prayer walking other than my personal prayers as I walked to classes.

I stood with my staff worker, Kristen McCrillis, in the middle of the quad and felt led to pray for the football players whose stadium was in sight. Next thing you know the coach and 60 football players came marching down the middle of the quad towards the field. We were both hit by the timing of our desires and what we were seeing. Our prayers started general and went more specific to prayer for one man on that team who was struggling to stay strong amidst the temptation around him. The team won our first game in 69 years that next weekend!!

Since I am the Large-Group coordinator, we decided to go pray over the room where we have Large Group. It was a Saturday and surprisingly the 250 people lecture hall was open, but completely black...we couldn't find the light switch anywhere. So we began praying in the dark, interceding on behalf of all students who will walk in that room.

We prayed that they would find Jesus, learn more about Him, that they would have peace, comfort, and joy for life. We went on for a good thirty minutes until the point where we were both crying and felt God completely cover that room. Four years ago, our chapter had five students. Last year we had a consistent 30 people at Large Group. However, our first Large Group brought in 96 students!!! I was awed at God's power and plan for InterVarsity to impact our campus. With Him I know great things will happen.

Jana is on leadership at Old Dominion University and enjoys break dancing in her free time.

Finding joy outweighs fear

Growing up with a Christian family and strong church, I had loved God for as long as I could remember. When I got to Duke, I attended FCA regularly and went to IV maybe once a month. I was getting my “fix” of God-time throughout the week, but my social life was dominated by friends who didn't believe in Jesus.

I didn’t feel like I was falling into sin or anything, but in a way I had compartmentalized faith and friends into two separate boxes. Though both boxes were full and growing, at times in fellowship I would feel spiritually taxed, and at times with my friends I would feel unfulfilled. It wasn’t until my second year that a friend from IV would challenge me to live missionally, and my third year that God would teach me the joys of doing so.

Like many other Christians, I didn’t realize just how much work God is doing in the hearts of non-believers. I didn’t realize what a blessing it is to be surrounded by so many non-believers, and at the same time enjoy the comforts of a strong Christian community like IV. “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few”.

Fearfully, I began to pray for opportunities to share my faith with my friends. Secretly I would hope that God would not answer these prayers lest He make me live up to my words and spill my faith out of the closet. Well, as God would will it, I found opportunities left and right. Though many times I would feel inadequate or stuck, God and my Christian friend would continue to encourage me.

There was one hallmate whom I was able to convince to come to IV two times. Issues of human rights and career paths had sparked conversations about things beyond the superficial. At the time, my faith was still too small to see where these conversations were going though.. Actually I still feel like my faith is not big enough to comprehend how God is able to use small things.

The end of my second year I was distressed about changing roommates. The relationship I had with my previous roommate was not fruitful; I could tell he did not want to hear about my faith at all. After many block meetings, I decided to room with the hallmate I mentioned earlier.

An IV friend encouraged me that I shouldn’t feel as if I’m giving up witnessing to my former roommate, but have new opportunities with a new roommate. Well I prayed a lot about it.. sometimes fearfully like before. What followed is the most humbling experience of my life time. God answered the prayers like I would never believe.

Over that summer I was not in much contact with my soon-to-be roommate, but God had completely worked in his life in a very real way and he began to accept Christ. “Night and day, whether [the farmer] sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how” (Mark4:267-27).

The first thing my current roommate told me when we saw each other again was “I need to go to IV" and that he had accepted Christ over the summer. *Baffled*. Here I was being afraid of what to do, whether I was inadequate, whether I was really going anywhere.. and there God is reminding me of just how strong His will is despite the weakness of the tools He uses to achieve it.

To this day, I am still learning from my roommate, and finding such joy in seeing his faith grow. I am still marveling at God’s ability to change people’s hearts so drastically and mysteriously. In addition to gaining a brother, I find great joy that there is power in prayer and peace in sharing through the Spirit. I share this hoping that other Christians might discover that the joys of witnessing outweigh the fears of putting your faith out there. Fear, whether in prayer, thought, or action, is not enough to stop God from using you if you let Him :)

-- Jason, Duke '10

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