April 13, 2010
Some News from the Neighborhood So I know it’s been 2 months since I’ve updated… please forgive me! I am trying my best this first year of living in Detroit and doing staff work to stay on top of everything and it is not easy, to say the least. But, I have some cool news to share with you all about some things that are going on in our neighborhood in Detroit. Matt, my housemate, has taken it upon himself to pick up a lot of the trash on the street and start building things out of it (hence the table above, it was made out of a sign, a window, and some drawers that were thrown out). Seeing things cleaned up and reused is a really cool picture of what God does in our hearts, and I have a cool story to share about that. We met this one lady, Debra, who is kind of the neighborhood mom. Through her we are getting the “in” into all the networks in the neighborhood. There is an empty lot next to her house that a house was knocked down on and is now uneven dirt. We started working with Debra and her husband to even out the ground, and in return, she threw a neighborhood fish fry and invited us out. Through these types of connections, we met a young guy in the neighborhood who has been through the troubles of life in this kind of neighborhood. But now, he wants to turn his life around, and he’s decided to come back to church after 10 years of being away! Praise God for his redemption in this young man’s life. We had him over for lunch the other day when he decided to join the church, and it was a good time by everyone. Pray for him, as he has a lot of obstacles in his life to overcome. Pray for us as we continue to get to know people in our neighborhood and continue to reach out on campus. We have seen several people come to Christ this year on campus, and it’s amazing to see God’s faithfulness through it all!

Some News from the Neighborhood

So I know it’s been 2 months since I’ve updated… please forgive me! I am trying my best this first year of living in Detroit and doing staff work to stay on top of everything and it is not easy, to say the least. But, I have some cool news to share with you all about some things that are going on in our neighborhood in Detroit.

Matt, my housemate, has taken it upon himself to pick up a lot of the trash on the street and start building things out of it (hence the table above, it was made out of a sign, a window, and some drawers that were thrown out). Seeing things cleaned up and reused is a really cool picture of what God does in our hearts, and I have a cool story to share about that.

We met this one lady, Debra, who is kind of the neighborhood mom. Through her we are getting the “in” into all the networks in the neighborhood. There is an empty lot next to her house that a house was knocked down on and is now uneven dirt. We started working with Debra and her husband to even out the ground, and in return, she threw a neighborhood fish fry and invited us out. Through these types of connections, we met a young guy in the neighborhood who has been through the troubles of life in this kind of neighborhood. But now, he wants to turn his life around, and he’s decided to come back to church after 10 years of being away! Praise God for his redemption in this young man’s life. We had him over for lunch the other day when he decided to join the church, and it was a good time by everyone.

Pray for him, as he has a lot of obstacles in his life to overcome. Pray for us as we continue to get to know people in our neighborhood and continue to reach out on campus. We have seen several people come to Christ this year on campus, and it’s amazing to see God’s faithfulness through it all!

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February 10, 2010

When the food is bad, feed them good food!

A student recently commented about how bad the food is on the weekends for people who live on campus at Wayne State, which is predominately a commuter school. We’ve been thinking about how to meet some real, tangible needs of students lately, and so we got the idea to partner with my local church, New St. Peters Missionary Baptist Church, to cook them some good food!

We came down on two separate Sundays now and brought tons of homecooked food - fried chicken, spaghetti, all kinds of cake, salad, jalapeno cornbread, mashed potatoes. We then knocked on every single door in the dorm and invited them to come eat, and we were able to give away all but a tiny bit of food both times. More importantly, we were able to tell students that asked, “why did you do this for us?” that Jesus loves them and wants to serve them, as He’s loved and served us. We then invited them out to our bible study.

And recently, we have had 5 new people come to our Ghafari Bible study in the past two weeks, so it is working out well. We are getting noticed in the dorm and developing a good reputation. Pray that God would take this further and that students would go from darkness to light through this Bible study!

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January 21, 2010

Thoughts about evangelism, hell, the limits of human strength.

So, to update you all, I’ve been spending every Wednesday on campus doing evangelism with students on Wayne State’s Campus. We’ve been doing different kinds of evangelism - anything from just sitting down with strangers to talk about Jesus to putting up interactive artistic displays that have relevant themes for students that ultimately lead towards communicating the gospel. We’ve seen two nonChristian students in the past two weeks sit down and have bible studies with people from our chapter and agree to investigating Jesus further, along with many instances of sharing the gospel with people.

This is good, surely, but something hit me today as I spent time with God.

I found myself longing to be with Christ in heaven, as nothing is as sweet as being in God’s presence where goodness, love, and peace abound without limits. I contemplated being with this God whom I love with all my heart for eternity, and my heart melted. I mean, it is the best news in the world. Then, my mind turned to those whom I believe will not get to experience this eternal fate of joy and perfection.

While I knew I believed intellectually in hell previously, today it connected with my heart in a way it hadn’t before. I realize that I believe that people will be spending eternity separated from anything good or worthwhile, that being God. This is absolutely devastating.

I feel such an emotional burden for these people now that I haven’t felt previously, and I must ask God, why are You not doing more? If You perfectly good and perfectly sovereign, and Your Word even say that it is Your desire for all people to be saved (1 Tim 2:4), then why aren’t You doing more? I know I must have faith to believe that God knows what is best, but it is hard when I consider the eternal fate of people who do not believe in Him. It compels me to evangelize more than I have ever felt before, and to desire more than just sharing the gospel and doing bible studies - seeing lives completely transformed by Christ is the goal.

Yet, I also realize I cannot run out into the world and make everyone believe. In fact, apart from Jesus, I can do nothing (John 15). Evangelizing in my own strength leads only to burnout. However, with Jesus, he promises that fruit will come if I abide with Him (John 15 as well). Thus, my only response is to pray fervently, and to the extent that I can live healthily without burnout, give my all to helping those to realize the dizzying, passionate, self-sacrificing, in-a-league-of-its-own love of Jesus Christ.

Lord have mercy on this world, and on His Church, when we do not really believe that Jesus will separate the sheep from the goats, ushering the sheep into eternal paradise and the goats out of His presence forever. Compel us to be Your hands and feet in this broken world. Amen.

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January 4, 2010

My struggle with blogging

So, on top of the fact that I have a hard time staying consistent with updating this blog like I would like to (twice a month is my ideal), I’m struggling with something new.

I just returned from Urbana 09, InterVarsity’s triennial missions conference. God moved incredibly, and I felt it too even as a staff.

One of the things that God has showed me is how much I try to stick out for attention, how much I serve for my own feelings of self-righteousness, how much I lead out of a need for control as opposed to having a desire to honor God.

And now, I find myself wanting to make myself less visible so that God can be more visible. Yet, a blog seems to be at odds with that goal.

People write blogs to talk about what they’ve done, things they are thinking about, and I find myself feeling the pressure to write something interesting or worth reading that will capture people’s attention. This type of performance-based blogging is draining and not life-giving, as it seeks to magnify myself and not Christ. The same goes for prayer letters to my supporters.

Any suggestions for one frustrated communicator? Please pray for me.

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December 11, 2009
Prayer Changes Things As you have read in this blog, this year has been a challenging and transformational year for me. I have realized in many ways that I can’t control things, including my ministry on campus, and that only God can make this ministry work to draw students to Himself. Well, as a result of that, I have felt more strongly than ever the desire to pray with students for God to change our InterVarsity chapter and our campus. Our freshmen small group (pic above) in the Atchison dorm has met twice with about 10 students each time crammed in one the girl’s dorm rooms to ask God to reveal Himself to us and for Him to heal us, our friends who don’t know Christ, and our campus. These times of prayer have been great, some of the best times of prayer I have had in InterVarsity as a student or staff. We typically pray for something like an hour and a half, with many students quoting Scripture as God leads them and interceding for people on campus that need to know God’s love. This is really exciting for me, as I believe prayer is the foundation of any movement of God. When God moves His people to ask Him to move in power… He does. :) I’m looking forward to next semester, to what God will do in our group!

Prayer Changes Things

As you have read in this blog, this year has been a challenging and transformational year for me. I have realized in many ways that I can’t control things, including my ministry on campus, and that only God can make this ministry work to draw students to Himself.

Well, as a result of that, I have felt more strongly than ever the desire to pray with students for God to change our InterVarsity chapter and our campus. Our freshmen small group (pic above) in the Atchison dorm has met twice with about 10 students each time crammed in one the girl’s dorm rooms to ask God to reveal Himself to us and for Him to heal us, our friends who don’t know Christ, and our campus.

These times of prayer have been great, some of the best times of prayer I have had in InterVarsity as a student or staff. We typically pray for something like an hour and a half, with many students quoting Scripture as God leads them and interceding for people on campus that need to know God’s love.

This is really exciting for me, as I believe prayer is the foundation of any movement of God. When God moves His people to ask Him to move in power… He does. :) I’m looking forward to next semester, to what God will do in our group!

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November 30, 2009

Hello!

Again, my apologies for not blogging sooner. As you saw from my last post, life on staff with InterVarsity here in Detroit has been hard. And it is only a result of your prayers that God has freed me and lifted me up from my position of desperation that I wrote from last post. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your prayers. I and the ministry here in Detroit cannot survive without them.

See, I had gotten to a point in my staff work where my usual method of using my brain and natural talents to get to where I want to be was not working anymore. I felt lost and confused, not having a clear sense of direction for where the ministry should go next. And in this place of desperation, I reached out to Jesus to help me, to release me from the constant burden of anxiety that seemed to stay with me wherever I went.

It was actually at our Fall conference, Compelling 09, that God met me and answered this prayer. He showed me that my need for control was preventing him from being the Lord of my life. He showed me that although I believed in my mind that my worth came from God’s unconditional love for me alone, I believed in my heart that my worth came from my achievements and the approval of people. He then moved me to release this burden and to accept the fact that I cannot control everything in ministry, nor should I try to. This will only burn me out and wear out my students. Instead, Jesus is waiting for me to simply seek him in prayer, to accept my limitedness as a human leader and simply follow him one step at a time into the big unknown that is college ministry.

I cannot tell you how freeing it was when God moved me to believe these words of healing in my heart. It was supernatural, and the peace that ensued goes beyond describing. I now realize that I don’t know what I’m doing exactly as a staff worker, but Jesus does, and that’s all I need to know. My mistakes and finiteness are insignificant in comparison to God’s grace, love, patience, and power that He will use to work through myself and my students to bring the gospel to the campus.

This story of healing that I have experienced fittingly goes along with exactly what we’ve been preaching to our students - step out in faith, and all your internal junk will come to the surface. let god deal with that, and then repeat with the next step. As I have stepped out in faith by moving to this brand new place with a new job and new everything it seems, this process has exactly happened in my life. I cannot wait to see what God has in store next!

Also, I should mention that a student in our chapter, Erin (2nd pic, left, name change for privacy), decided to return to Jesus and take the next step of placing her faith in Him at the Compelling conference a few weeks back. This is the exact kind of fruit that I have been praying for, and to be honest, God did this in her life through our WSU IV students and His Spirit. I really didn’t have much to do with it directly, which fits exactly with what God is teaching me now - He is big enough to do the work, I just need to trust Him instead of endlessly striving. Praise Jesus, Hallelujah. Hope to post more soon!

-Luke

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October 30, 2009

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.

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October 6, 2009

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!

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September 28, 2009

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!

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September 14, 2009

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!

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