Get the Dank

My 1st year of IV staff thus far

I realized I haven’t updated in a while, and I apologize. You’ll see why soon.

I think I walked into my first year of InterVarsity staff confident that it wouldn’t be too much of an overwhelming experience. My InterVarsity chapter at Oberlin was small and in the rebuilding stages, as is the Wayne State chapter here in Detroit, and so I figured that I would be able to handle the transition with no problem.

I knew in my mind there would be significant differences between Oberlin and WSU: non-commuter vs commuter, small town vs big city, not terribly diverse vs. very diverse, etc. but in my heart I think I believed that these differences wouldn’t be that big for me.

The reality is, though, my first year of staff is revealing my ignorance and a lot of my weak points. These differences are big, and the transition is wearing me down. It is becoming very clear to me that my wound of finding self-worth through the opinions of others and through success of my ministry is alive and well. Lord have mercy.

While the mission continues to go forth on campus and still needs your prayers (see the picture of Molly, Mary and T, three WSU students working the “How Has Evil Invaded Your Space?” outreach table), I could really use your prayers too. Pray that God would clearly reveal to me his love for me and that he would help me look to him for self-worth and not the opinions of others or my ministry success.

Also, it was wonderful for me to go see some of my old friends from Oberlin and Pittsburgh during the week of Oct. 12th when my girlfriend Kat visited from California for several days (see the rest of the pictures). These people, along with my wonderful roommates in Detroit, have really sustained me when I have been facing the realities of my brokenness in attempting to follow Jesus with my entire life. Thank you, God, for putting these people in my life.

And I thank God for each and every one of you who is reading this and is praying for me. Without your prayers I could not do what God has called me to do here. Thank you so much.

Out with the in-reach, in with the Outreach!

These past two weeks have been filled with activity - outreach activity to specific - on Wayne State’s campus with InterVarsity. We’ve been doing some open air evangelism on campus, where we had different Christians from different ethnic backgrounds and abilities present the Gospel through a number of ways - Explanatory Art, Spoken Word, Preaching… it was great! The pictures show the crowd that the event drew, and we really got our name out there on campus.

Most importantly though, the Gospel was presented through these different outreach initiatives, and some amazing conversations have come out of that. One story involves a GIG (Group Investigating God, an investigative Bible study into the life of Jesus) that I am leading with two Wayne State students in one of the cafeterias on campus. I don’t want to talk much about them to protect their anonymity, but it has been a great time of sharing our experiences and talking about how Jesus wants to bring His love into all aspects of our lives to heal us and have a relationship with us. One has no previous experience with Christianity and the other has plenty. It has been a growing and learning experience for me as well!

Lastly, we moved finally into the new house, and so we are getting accustomed to our new neighborhood. We were greeted by our neighbors, who made it clear whose parking spots were whose on the street based on how long certain people have been living on this block relative to others. ;) We had a good laugh realizing our misstep in parking wherever we felt like, and so we politely moved our cars to a more helpful place.

More exciting news on the way… keep posted and keep praying!

Finally another update!

Things are happening in Detroit! As for the InterVarsity side of things, the ministry is chuggin along. Above are pictures from one of our recent large group meetings. I gave a talk on helping students take some practical steps forward in making relationships with people who aren’t Christians… and some of our students are really doing it! One story involves a student who is looking into both Islam and Christianity to explore what faith she would like to investigate further… and she’s been making friends with our community, going to a small group bible study, and getting involved. Keep praying that God would be with her as she walks through her journey towards faith!

(Also, the picture of me and the bow-tie involves this game show skit we started our large group meeting off with called “Good News/Bad News” in which I was the host - hence the costume. We’ve been doing drama at every meeting to start off the meetings with a bang… they have been going over quite well and students are getting involved doing the skits.)

On the neighborhood side of things, we are painting our new house on Pingree and will finish up with that this week. We hoped to move in to our new house earlier, but things like water installation weren’t quite as far along as we hoped… but the move should happen at the end of this week.

And praise God - all of the 5 of us have some form of income now! Tyson is working a Jimmy John’s delivery job, Jon is working on a tutoring type program in Detroit public schools part-time, Matt is doing some substitute teaching, while Mike and I are doing InterVarsity with Mike adding some other time in with Starbucks. Keep praying for our provision, as we are all looking for full-time work and for Mike and my funds to be fully developed!

Campus Update - New Student Outreach (NSO) continues

The pictures you see are from the InterVarsity picnic that we threw last Friday, which was a great time to meet new students, get our name out on campus… and take a personal shot with the “Wayne State Warrior” who happened to be strolling by with his camera team. :D

Our NSO has been going well. Grace Biskie, a guest speaker from IV’s Black Campus Ministries, spoke at our last large group meeting and delivered the gospel message in a very contextualized way for college students and offered our students the chance to respond. Some of these students are not Christians and are still wrestling with issues regarding faith, and so it is great to be able to walk with them on their spiritual journeys by having meetings like this.

We are trying to be a loving community for people who are still trying to figure out who Jesus is, so pray that these students would stick around IV and that we would be able to love them as they work things out regarding faith.

Also, I just had my birthday last thursday - the big 22! As my girlfriend Kat keeps saying, I’m symmetrical now… and it was a great day with the Pittsburgh Steelers winning their home opener that night! I also got a bomb piece of vegan cheesecake from our chapter as a present, so I was on cloud 9 that evening to say the least.

We move to the Pingree house this weekend - updates to come!

New Student Outreach Begins

Wayne State… here we come.

Most of those pics you see were taken during the freshmen convocation, where our team of 10 or so student leaders talked to the swarms of freshmen checking out student organizations to tell them about InterVarsity at WSU. We got over 100 names, and about 50 people showed up to our first meeting.

I gave the talk that evening, and called out our Christian students in our group to embrace the lifestyle of giving their faith away on campus this year and to put it to action by asking a friend who doesn’t know Jesus yet to our meeting next week… where Grace Biskie will be presenting the gospel to students that hopefully will be hearing it for the first time. Almost all 50 or so students stood in response to my call for them to live out their faith on campus, and the others who did not were encouraged to come back to IV next week and were welcomed into our community personally by our members afterward as people chatted and mingled after everything was over.

As for prayer requests… pray that students who need to hear about Jesus would show up to our meeting this Thursday and that our student leaders would actively ask people to come… and pray that students will respond to Grace’s call for them to give their lives to Jesus.

Further news: we will be moving to the house on Pingree officially two Saturdays from now!

Pics of the neighborhood

I took these pictures from our porch in the morning time… enjoy. Our neighborhood has a store next door (called Peaches and Greens) that sells fresh produce to people in the city who don’t often have that available because there are something like 3 grocery stores in all of Detroit. A lot of people end up shopping at convenience stores, but Peaches even drives produce trucks around the neighborhoods to make available their food to places that aren’t super close to the store next door to us.

We live next door to the Katos, from whom we are renting temporarily. Steve is white and his wife Simone is Jamaican, and they are great role models for us in terms of living intentionally in a tough place and also of racial reconciliation. They have been such a blessing to us.

Across the street is a small convenience/liquor store, and across the other street (we live on a corner) is a place where a lot of the older men in the community hang out and talk shop. We also have a little playground across from us and several abandoned houses and an abandoned apartment complex a little farther down.

It’s interesting to see what is sold in our neighborhood… Peaches is such a light to the block, and the liquor store can be the opposite at times, along with some folk who sell other things on the street to make some money. This is something you can pray for regarding Hazelwood - that all the selling activity on our block would honor God’s intention for the marketplace and for healthy human living, and that people would choose to support the city instead of fleeing to the suburbs with their wealth.