Planting

Prayers and Planting at Pembroke

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 16:21:40 +0000

Gordon Govier

Prayers and Planting at Pembroke

When Meg Sikes moved from Urbana, Illinois, to Fayetteville, North Carolina, she saw two options for campus ministry: Fayetteville State University (FSU), the local campus, and the University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNCP), about an hour away.

She prayer walked both campuses with her supervisor.

Meg’s church encouraged her to plant at FSU, but the doors weren’t opening there. “At Pembroke, doors were flinging open,” she said. “I was meeting just the right person, who would introduce me to another person, and I was meeting students easily. It was abundantly clear that the Lord was making a way for me to start something.”

The chapter was launched and officially recognized in the spring of 2017. A small Bible study was planted, and four students went to chapter camp at the end of the semester. Two of them were trained in Bible study leadership, and led Bible studies in the fall. The next year, more students received leadership training, and there were four Bible studies launched for the fall 2018 semester. This past fall, there were three small groups and the strongest group of leaders yet.

Riding the prayer wave

Meg did not see herself as a planter. During her early years on staff at the University of Illinois, she was part of a team and was very team oriented. Yet, lacking team support didn’t seem to matter at Pembroke.

“I stopped and asked myself, Why does it seem like everything is working now? These are the same tricks I’ve always used as a staff worker. I realized that the Holy Spirit was creating momentum. I’m just going to ride this wave.”

As Meg investigated further, she discovered that people had been praying for a campus ministry at Pembroke for over a decade. She herself had spent her first two summers in Fayetteville, when planting was slow work, praying an hour each day. “I’m walking on a campus that’s been saturated in prayer and I could tell,” she said.

The Army prayer

Meg had seen the impact of prayer before as a student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE). As a freshman she joined a small chapter of about a dozen students. “We spent a ton of time in prayer, and our chapter just exploded,” she recalled. By the end of her sophomore year the chapter grew to 50 students.

“I came into college as a good church kid who did church things, and God had always been a part of my life,” she said. “It was at Chapter Focus Week [at the end of freshman year] that I realized God had become the center of my life. Chapter Focus Week was a big spiritual milestone for me.”

Meg graduated from SIUE with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts with a concentration in metalsmithing. She said her Fine Arts training taught her resourcefulness. This, along with her strong prayer life, was critical when her husband decided to join the US Army.

The summer of 2014, after she and her husband Ian married, they led an ��ñ�� Global Program to Malawi. He was stirred by the deep poverty and injustice that he saw and felt like he needed to respond somehow. He asked Meg to pray with him about whether or not he should join the Army. She was upset and deeply opposed to the idea of him joining the Army—but not to praying about it.

“This was not at all where I expected life to take me,” she said. “I got to a place where I had to tell God, ‘If you want us to do this, I need you to change my heart, because I don't want to give a begrudging yes.’” And God did change her heart.

Meg and Ian were separated for a number of months while Ian went through training, until they settled in Fayetteville once they knew that was where he would be stationed.

Making opportunities to make invitations

Meg likes the culture of UNCP, partly because it’s known for its diversity. Of its 6,500 students, 1/3 are White, 1/3 are Black, 15 percent are Native, four percent are Latino, and there are smaller numbers of other ethnicities.

Students at UNCP are generally open to ministry; a recent outreach involving prayer and free cookies was particularly successful. Two students came to faith in 2018, and six have already come to faith so far this academic year. “We’re making more opportunities to make invitations, and the students are responding,” she said.

Meg sees strong evidence for how the Lord has been leading the ministry at Pembroke. She has grown in valuing time in God’s presence and praying, and she sees students also valuing that spiritual discipline.

“I don’t know what’s ahead,” she said. “I’ve been along for the ride and it’s really great.”

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Real Ministry Touching Real Lives

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 09 Oct 2017 18:41:57 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

Real Ministry Touching Real Lives

When the San Diego State University ��ñ�� staff met for prayer before the start of classes this semester, two staff members each sensed God impress on them that “faking it” was going to be an issue to deal with in campus ministry in the weeks ahead.

Alan Sun, the South San Diego Area Director, was not too surprised then when New Student Outreach began and he met a student who confessed that he felt like he was faking it in his spiritual life. The student’s father was a pastor, but he explained that he had just been going through the motions and didn’t really have a faith of his own anymore.

The next time they got together, Alan and the student had a long talk about the barriers that were keeping him from an authentic faith. “He wanted to drop that mask and be himself,” Alan said. Eventually they prayed together and the student recommitted himself to following Christ.

During the six years he was a campus minister at San Diego Mesa College, Alan met few students who were faking it. “Everything was on the table; that’s the uniqueness of a community college,” he said. “At San Diego State though, there’s always an image that you have to keep up, the challenge of needing to be something that you’re not.”

Alan’s ministry has been shaped by his time at Mesa, and he and his staff now coordinate a unique ministry that links San Diego State with two other local community colleges: Southwestern College and Imperial Valley College. Student leaders of the San Diego State ��ñ�� chapter spend some time each semester helping with outreach at the other two campuses, and students from the community colleges attend the weekly Wednesday night large group meetings at San Diego State.

There are obvious differences between life on commuter campuses and residential campuses but they are maybe not as significant as they first seem. Alan recalls driving to a retreat once with men from the top San Diego State fraternity houses. A community college student who was a professional gamer on the side was also in the car. “As they talked about their hobbies and their lives, they realized they were not that different,” he said.

Serving at the community colleges has been encouraging to student leaders from San Diego State, where ministry faces its own unique challenges. “Rejection is the norm when passing out flyers on the San Diego State campus, but the response rate is high at community colleges,” he said. “It’s been good for student leaders to get ministry experience outside of their context.”

Formative Fellowship

Alan still has the flyer he received as a new freshman at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), inviting him to an ��ñ�� barbecue. The free food was appealing and he was looking for a Christian community to join. For the rest of that year he vacillated between ��ñ�� and an Asian American fellowship. Though he felt more at home when he was with students of the same ethnicity, ��ñ��’s focus on pursuing God and reaching out to others gripped him.

During his sophomore year, James Choung, then the UCSD Team Leader, encouraged him to commit to ��ñ��. “I remember conversations with James about how my ethnicity is valued in the kingdom of God,” he said. Alan led a small group Bible study in ��ñ�� the next year and became chapter president his senior year.

As Alan prepared to graduate, James invited him to join ��ñ�� staff. Once again Alan was torn. His mother was encouraging him to use his molecular biology degree to do cancer research and to explore science as a profession, in part because his father had died from cancer when Alan was in high school. He filled out the staff application but finally decided against campus ministry.

He worked for a year-and-a-half in the biotech field but he also used his ��ñ�� experience to host Bible studies. After he led a co-worker to faith in Christ, he thought to himself, “I should be doing this as a job.” He re-applied to join ��ñ�� staff.

San Diego Mesa College was his first staff placement; he partnered with Serene Neddenriep there and they became part of one of ��ñ��’s first chapter-planting cohorts. Together they learned some of the best ways to connect with community college students (and administrators).

Four years ago Alan was named South San Diego Area Director. Not long afterward, ��ñ�� was derecognized at California State University system campuses, including San Diego State. ��ñ�� suddenly no longer had the privilege of being an officially recognized student organization.

“That catapulted us to a new normal for outreach,” Alan said. Without a table on the quad or space on a bulletin board with other student groups, ��ñ�� came up with a creative alternative to spread the word about chapter activities: banner backpacks. “It ignited an ingenuity and a missionality that is still used to reach students,” he said.

Today, Alan and his wife, Anna (who is also on staff), direct a 12-member team that partners with local churches to serve students and faculty at San Diego State, Southwestern, and Imperial Valley. The strongest partnership is with Holy Spirit Anglican Church, which lists ��ñ�� on its webpage as a ministry partner in serving the San Diego State community. “They are a couple of blocks from campus and have someone present to volunteer at almost every one of our gatherings,” Alan said.

The church partnerships, the current staff team, and the student base at San Diego State have the potential for reaching more of the 100,000 students that Alan has identified on all of the surrounding community college campuses. "When we think about the harvest being plentiful, I think about my area,” he said. And he’s not faking it.

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San Diego Mesa College

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Planting

commuter campus

Bringing New Life to Every Corner of Every Campus

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 13:22:12 +0000

Press Room

Bringing New Life to Every Corner of Every Campus

(Madison, WI) -- ��ñ��’s ministry vision includes not only transformation for students and faculty but renewal for the college campus.

“Universities bring life-changing wisdom, insight, and discovery to the world,” said Tom Lin, president of ��ñ��. “We long for Christian faculty and students to contribute their God-given gifts to these efforts. As this past weekend at University of Virginia demonstrates, universities also serve as the backdrop for ideas and idols that deface and destroy life. We believe the Gospel calls us to confront and denounce sins like white supremacy. We also want to offer the transforming hope of repentance and new life to the people who propagate these ideologies.”

With a new six-member Executive Leadership Team and 10 new vice presidents assembled over the past year, ��ñ�� has reaffirmed our commitment to our vision of transformation and renewal. “We are longing to see God bring new life in new ways on campuses across the country, and to catalyze movements that call every corner of every campus to follow Jesus,” Lin said, as he reflected on his first year as president. “We want to see systems and structures, ideas and idols change. These leaders will help us steward our values even more closely, respond to God’s invitations more nimbly, and lead God’s mission on campus more joyfully,”

To meet the challenge of reaching every campus, ��ñ�� also has a record number of staff serving a record number of colleges, with 1341 staff ministering on 687 campuses. At the same time, the number of people coming to faith through ��ñ��’s campus ministry is at its highest ever in ��ñ��’s 76-year history—up 12 percent from one year ago, up 130 percent from 10 years ago.

To reach more campuses, ��ñ�� is pursuing new partnerships: “How can we best partner in reaching the approximately 2,600 campuses currently unreached by any major campus ministry?” Lin asked. “Could we empower more churches and other ministries to work alongside us to reach the campus? Beyond U.S. partnerships, what could God do if we more intentionally sought out best thinking and practices from our sister movements in the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students?”

In his travels during his first year as president, Lin said that he has heard regularly from people he meets about how ��ñ�� staff and ��ñ�� Press books have changed their lives. But he stressed that student-driven ministry is the heart of ��ñ��’s mission. “Our chapter planting leadership team has done an amazing job creating a planting culture in ��ñ��,” he said. “Not just staff but student leaders are catching the vision and reaching out to neighboring campuses. These students are not simply sheep to be gathered, but seed to be scattered.”

��ñ�� is an interdenominational ministry to students and faculty on U.S. college and university campuses, working with more than 41,000 core students and faculty on 687 campuses nationwide. ��ñ�� is a founding member of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, advancing Christian student work in 160 countries. ��ñ�� is also a charter member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

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The Future of Chapter Planting

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 16:26:51 +0000

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Alec Hill, President of ��ñ��

The Future of Chapter Planting

“We don’t think of students as sheep to be gathered, but as seeds to be scattered.” - Shawn Young

Over the past eight years, planting chapters has become a major focus of the Fellowship. With so many unreached students and faculty across the nation, establishing new witnessing communities is central to our mission.

In a recent conversation with Shawn Young, our National Director of Chapter Planting, I discussed the future of this initiative. Where do we sense the Spirit leading us next? How is our model changing? How enthusiastic are staff about moving to new campuses?

Our Dream
��ñ�� chapters currently exist on about 600 campuses. While we have committed to a specific plan for the next five years, we dream of planting even more chapters. While this is certainly ambitious, our vision has precedent. After establishing Christian communities in the eastern half of the Roman Empire, the apostle Paul looked west:

From Jerusalem and as far around as Illyricum (modern Croatia) I have fully proclaimed the good news of Christ. Thus I make it my ambition to proclaim the good news, not where Christ has already been named, so that I do not build on someone else’s foundation… when I go to Spain…”¹

Someday we hope that every one of the 4,000 American campuses will have a significant Gospel witness. While reaching out to more campuses will be a stretch, Shawn is deeply encouraged by a meeting of 25 Area Directors in Chicago last month. This relatively small group alone identified 281 campuses where they hope to plant in the near future.

Refining the Chapter Planting Model
In 2006, our first national chapter planting cohort was launched. To date, 134 chapters have been planted via eight national cohorts. Cumulatively, these chapters have added 4,116 core students and faculty and 1,384 new believers.

While Shawn plans to continue recruiting 20-25 planters for the national cohort each year, he is also expanding the model to include new ideas. Five stand out:

Regional planting – in a pilot project, four teams have received grants to plant 10 chapters each. These include: Florida, Red River, Faculty, and the Western Cluster (Northwest, Rocky Mountains, Pacific, Southern California).
“VISA” (Volunteers, Interns, Students and Alumni) – we want to expand our leadership teams. At Florida Atlantic University, for example, super-volunteer Deb Cusick has pulled together a team of fellow-volunteers. This fall, they have seen more than a dozen students come to faith.
Part-time staff as planters – this approach is proving particularly effective at commuter schools.
“Plus one” – current staff add another campus (e.g. a community college or small private school) to their ministry. “VISA” helps to distribute the work load.
Study Abroad – our vision even extends overseas. American students may now partner with select sister IFES national movements to plant witnessing communities during a semester abroad.

U of Arkansas
In late November, 51 Red River region staff boarded a chartered bus for a four day trip to the University of Arkansas (see photo above). Their goal: replant our chapter in Fayetteville. Fifteen gracious families hosted them in their homes.

For a full day, staff descended on campus – interacting with hundreds of students via proxe stations and informal conversations. Not only were 25 missional students identified, but great contacts were made with faculty and administrators who serve athletes, Black, Latino, Greek and international students.

In the near term, the chapter will be served by volunteer staff member, Joseph Pao-Wu. Bless you Joseph! And bless you Red River staff!

Ambition Conference 2015
Two years ago, Shawn hosted our first ever national conference for chapter planters. Expecting 150 participants, he was stunned when 330 staff, student leaders and volunteers showed up. A second conference, Ambition 2015, will be held next year at this time, January 15-18, 2015 in Tampa.

At Orientation for New Staff last summer, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of incoming campus staff who felt called to plant new chapters. I see this as the Lord’s renewing hand on our community. And it is wonderful!

¹ Romans 15:19-20,24

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