Campus Ministry: Crazy Adventure

Campus ministry has been a huge part of my time in school. When I started my education at a local community college, I didn't have much direction in my life or a strong understanding of what it meant to be a young adult of faith. Out on my own, I was without the guidance of my parents or high school friends to encourage my spiritual growth and connection with a local church. I spent the year lonely, confused, and frustrated about the ways my life had changed.

Eventually, a call from a friend invited me to move away from the community college and continue my education at Western Washington University. I agreed to join him, although this move didn't seem reasonable or a good way to move forward with my academic career. Within a week of moving two hours from where I was, another good friend invited me to the INN, a large campus ministry in Bellingham.

Through the INN, I reconnected with my faith and began learning and growing more through participation in weekly gatherings, small groups, and a mission trip to rural Maine. My eyes were opened to what it means to make this faith my own and make it a priority in my life. My time at the INN as a student ended last year, as I transitioned into being an intern at the INN and realizing that I have a passion for working with students and helping them discover faith.

Through my growth this year as an intern in a campus ministry setting, I am committed to supporting campus ministry with my time. This year's ministry experience has been fantastic. I love the way I have been able to see God move in a large group of students, as well as how God works through small details. I will be supporting college ministry the rest of my life. Either directly, as a campus minister, or indirectly, through financial and other giving.

Campus ministry faces huge challenges in the future. Campus ministry will continued to be challenged in funding. Students don't have the funds necessary to support large ministry organizations, supporting churches don't gain members or funds from college students, and parents are already struggling to keep up with the raising costs of higher education.

Campus ministry will also be challenged in how it reaches out to students. In a world where we are terrified to offending one another over religious beliefs, Campus ministries will need to continue proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. At times, this will bring challenge, offense, hurt, love, care and joy. Within a campus ministry community, we walk together, causing another challenge of supporting students through changing times. We are challenged to be tollerant, without watering down the Truth.

Campus ministry is an exciting place to be. We live in a changing world, which is amplified in campus ministry, where participants turnover every 4-5 years as they finish their education and move out into the world. Despite the challenges, it's a great adventure that has been worth every dollar and every hour of time. There is no greater adventure than following Christ, and campus ministry is no exception.

Fires and Fires

The last few days have been filled with a lot of fires. The first one is the not-so-great kind. Bellingham's Shangri-la motel caught on fire. Strange motel, but I suppose a bit of a landmark. It seems to still be standing, but we saw some pretty serious flames coming through the roof. We've been having some pretty cold weather (frozen Red Square --->) lately, so perhaps someone was trying to heat up their room a bit more. Who knows.

The other fire is one I experienced tonight. It's the better type. The fire down on the beach type. The kind of fire on a cold beach that rings in spring and all the great adventures to come. This particular fire was a birthday celebration.

The moon was already huge. We got down to the side of the bay, just across the tracks as the sun was setting for the day. As we traded sunlight for moonlight, the fire gave off just the right amount of warmth to keep us down there. Everyone is a friend at these things. We always meet each other for what seems like the first time, only to find that we've heard each other's names a thousand times and we're more connected than we would have previously guessed. We tell stories to our new friends over foil dinners made on the hot coals of our fire. The moon is reflecting off the bay in long streaks, and creating silhouettes of the trees on the rocky outcroppings on either side of us. As we talk, sometimes to only one other person and sometimes to the entire group, a few trains rush by. The tide slowly moves out as our conversations get more and more detailed. The scene is beautiful.

One by one, the individual conversations stop as a friend's excited words catch the attention of our ears. Eventually we are all captivated by what they are saying. The friend has been musing on how He has seen God working through him lately. Through interactions with others and being in the right place at the right time, God is doing something that could have never been planned or coordinated. This friend is excited to share, and we are excited to listen.

In this momment, I am inspired. Inspired to share my faith. Inspired to learn more. Inspired beyond my feeling tired at times and inspired to keep going. Inspired because God is doing something in this place that I see, and that God is doing somethings that I can see. The great adventure has sprung from watching God's plan develop in those that I regularly interact with, and somehow God is using my stumbling, mixed up, words to help this other person. I'm thankful for these momments of realization, and thankful as well for those that God has put in my life that have been unaware of their being used by Him.

May the plan continue to unfold, both in ways visible and invisible.

Snowshoeing

Last weekend I had the awesome opportunity of getting to go snowshoeing with the INN. I've gone on the trip the last several years, and it's always really fun. Snowshoeing doesn't require much skill, and is pretty much hiking without too much effort. Very nice.

This year, our destination was the same, but I found the journey much less stressful. I blame this on a few things. Firstly, I think having to walk up a good sized hill to get home each day has made me a good bit stronger. That helps.

Also, I think this year's trek was easier due to using much better equipment than I've ever used before. My parents gave me an awesome pair of snowshoes that worked great, as well as some new layers of clothing for keeping warm. I was more than comfortable heading up the hill. Amazing.

In 2.5 weeks, we depart for Monettery, Mexico. It should be a great trip. We've got 26 awesome students going with us. While we're not fully sure what the organization has planned for us down there, we trust that God is already preparing us for the work that He knows is to come.

All in all, things are going well. This quarter remains busy, but I'm still getting a lot of good reading in and a great amount of sleep. This year has been an awesome adventure so far!

So quickly!

I'm not sure where time has been going this quarter. Things are moving so quickly. The todo list has been getting long, I"m meeting with more people, and things are going. It's been an awesome adventure so far.

The last few weeks have brought a time for us to start recruiting people to take our places next year as interns. This is pretty strange. It means I need to start thinking more about where I'm off to next.

In a lot of ways, I'm grateful that I haven't been thinking too much about the next step. It's meant that I can relax, focus on right now, and keep going. On the other hand, I could use a little bit of panic so that I would actually do a little bit of planning.

I had the opportunity to speak at our student leader training meeting a few Mondays ago. I had a great time. Speaking is usually something that I dread a bit, but this was different, and better. I had a good time preparing, and actually talking it that day. I talked about the mysterious transition to adult faith that a lot of people talk about. I blogged a little about it at the other blog on http://www.theinnministries.org/interns

That's all I've got for now. More "later", whenever that is!

Back again

As I lay in a different place tonight, I'm reminded of living here before. It's a little different (I'm on a pretty old hide-a-bed) and a little more cramped (I'm in a hall way), but still good. The value of this place makes the physical discomfort totally worth it.

As I lay in bed, eventually drifiting off to sleep, I'm listening to two guitars strumming in the living room. The music keeps changing from not really anything to a random worship song, back to nothing, and eventually to some top 40 hit. I can hear bits of conversations too, the left overs of the small group bible study that met here several hours before. One friend is studying the human body in his room, and another has already drifted off to bed. Each person seems to individually be at peace with wrapping up their days in this place.

This place has a culture with it. A community that continues to grow and expand. It's strange, and changes, but is good at the same time.  That's my random thought for now. That's what I've got.

Road Trip!

Well, it's been a while since I've posted (again). I figure this should do the trick Two weekends ago we took the roadtrip I previously mentioned to a mysterious hobbit trail and the Oregon Coast. If a picture is worth a thousand words, and one second of video has 30 frames, I figure this little 7 minute recap must be worth a bout 12,600,000 words. Lets be honest, that's more than I would have written anyway.

Remember, this is a speed recap, as in, most of it was edited in the car on the trip as we went. Don't expect too much in the quality department, or the narrative to be excellent. With that disclaimer, here it is:

Oh, Hello.

Well, it's been a while. I guess I don't really need to preface with that. You either know that, or could know it by looking at the post dates. Whatever. I'm still posting this.

Things have been busy, but great the last few weeks! We're two weeks into Winter quarter. Our talk series this quarter is "God of All", meaning we're discussing each week how God is God of our finances, realtionhips, technology lives, etc. It's a very cool talk series. I'm sure I'll be posting more about it as the quarter goes on. There's really a lot ot talk about in each topic.

In other news, my visit home was very nice. I was home for a week and half, and really did nothing my whole time there. I visited a few people here and there, but I really didn't wan tto do anything except read and sleep. It was probably good for me, but I'm glad to be back in the state of constantly doing things. I get little breaks here and there though, so don't worry too much about me.

Speaking of breaks, tomorrow morning, Zach, Tim, Brooke and I are heading to Oregon for the weekend! We're visiting some friends from Alaska, then continuing on to see some kind of "Hobbit Trail" that Zach found on the internet. The trail is somewhere over on the coast. I agreed to come along on the roadtrip on the condition that we'd stop by the AstorColumn in Astoria on the way back. I'm not sure why I like it so much, but it really is cool.

That's all I've got for now. I'm liking web design more after doing a lot of it over Christmas break. My next task is to work on developing my creative eye for websites and things like that. It's alright, but sometimes not so much.  We'll see. With that said, have a great week and long weekend!