Anyway, here at OSU we are three weeks into winter term and I really couldn't be more excited about where things are heading and how God is working in our midst. But first you may need a little back story.
After Christmas, over 16,000 students from all over the world gathered in St. Louis, Missouri for the Urbana 09 convention. OSU sent 11 students and then we met a couple more who we didn't know. Students were challenged to participate in God's incarnational mission around the Globe. During the conference, we all studied the first four chapters of the Gospel of John. If you have studied that before, do it again! There is so much amazing stuff in there!
One of the challenges posed at the conference was to take John 1-4 back to campus and invite a non-christian friend to "come and see" Jesus for themself. We have taken this challenge seriously and are seeing an explosion of what we call "GIGs" happen on campus. GIG stands for "Group investigating God." It is a simple bible study for non-christians. The hope is that as they begin to encounter Jesus for themselves, they will want to give their lives to him. This is our prayer as we try these things out.
The first week back at our first Awake meeting, we sent out all the students in twos (like Luke 10) to do spiritual surveys. One of the questions was "would you be interested in a 3-4 week study of the life of Jesus?" we managed to survey over 300 people and about 40% were yesses or maybes. That is amazing!
Some students got serious about following up with those people. Kit has gone out each thursday night since then to find the people who said yes and invite them. He and members of his Bible Study are starting new GIGs all the time and it is very exciting to hear their stories.
Kelly knew she wanted to ask her roommate and friend to do a GIG. She was praying for God to show her when a good time to invite them would be. As she was walking back to her room one day, she found both of them in there. They asked about her Urbana experience. She knew this was the opportunity she was waiting for and she went for it. One of them gave a very enthusiastic yes and the other was a maybe. Kelly was very excited.
I knew I wanted to ask a guy named Matt. We have had a couple of spiritual conversations before and he has always been open to talking about spiritual things with me. I asked him if he would want to sit down and look at some scripture together so he could tell me what he thought about it. He was very excited about the idea. We meet for lunch on fridays now and look at John 1-4 together.
Pray for us and for the students we are reaching out to. We believe that God will change lives through these GIGs and long to see students give their lives to Jesus.
Pray also for our winter conference: JesustheRevolution on Feb 12-14. Pray that lots of students come and bring their non-Christian friends. We are praying for a harvest there, for many students to come into the Kingdom.
Reflection:
I could give you a big reflection about how Urbana impacted me, but instead I would like to share one of the best talks from the conference. It is from Alec Hill and was delivered on the last night of the conference. If you have a spare 25 minutes, it will be well worth your time. Enjoy!
Missions on Your Campus: Alec Hill from Urbana 09 on Vimeo.
On a slightly unrelated note, I have been invited to be the speaker for InterVarsity Colorado's winter conference at the end of February. I am super excited, humbled, and freaked out all at the same time. This will be a great opportunity and I pray that God will use what I can give and change lives with it.
Have a fantastic day and God Bless you!
Ben
