Embracing the "New."

Today is the first day of classes for thousands of students at Oregon State. Many of them, especially the freshmen, will tentatively take their seats and await instruction. What they will find is that the first day of school is usually pretty boring.

The word of the day? Syllabus.
Here it is used in a sentence: On the first day of class, all you will talk about is the Syllabus. 

But things have been anything but boring for InterVarsity. For the last two weeks, we have been running hard preparing and meeting the new students. Here is a quick list of all we have done:

• Mustard Seed Retreat: All of our leaders gathered in Corvallis for four days for Scripture study (Ephesians), telling our stories, playing at the beach, tons of board games, and training for New Student Outreach.
• Capture the Flag: Last Monday we invited every person we could to a massive game of capture the flag. The students led this with little to no staff help and had about 130 people show up. 
• The Red Cup: We set up a tent at the new student picnic and had spiritual conversations with people for almost three hours. All of our leaders participated and we had over 100 people sign cards so we could follow up with them!
• 70-foot Banana Split: Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. We invited the new people who showed up to help scoop ice cream. It was awesome. 
• Then several days of following up with all the people we met at those events. 

It has been pretty busy, but really great. We have awesome student leaders.

This Friday is our first Large Group. We call it "Awake." I will be speaking and giving an invitation into the Kingdom. Pray for us!


Pictures! 

Here are some pictures from New Student Outreach.

Leader's Team @ The Beach. Lookin' good!

Studying Ephesians. 

Andrea & I training students.

 

The Red Cup Tent. What are you thirsty for?

Reflection

The title of this post is "Embracing the New."

I chose that because coming in to this school year, there are a lot of things that are new. What's that? You wanted another list? Great!

• New Staff. My Fiancé, Andrea, moved out from St. Louis and is now on the OSU staff team. She is extremely gifted and the students love her. Also, Michael got married to Dawn in the Summer and now she has joined the staff team. So many new staff!
• New House. For the last five years I have lived in the same house two blocks from campus. But with marriage on the horizon, the time had come to move on. I now live in an apartment about a mile and a half from campus. It is a weird feeling being in a new place and living by myself. Luckily I won't be there alone for very long. The wedding is in November. Only 47 more days!
• New Leaders: Last year, a lot of great leaders graduated. This year, a lot of new leaders have stepped up to take their place. The team has a different feel but I have loved watching the new ones dive in and meet the new freshmen.
• New Structures: In order to maximize our staff team and leaders, we have decided to split into three smaller groups. Dawn and Michael will be leading all the on-campus Bible Study leaders, Andrea will be leading the off-campus ones, and I will be leading the worship team and large group. 

See? A lot of new stuff.

And I figure that the best thing to do is to just embrace it with big open arms.