Study Abroad

International Student Ministry Opportunities Continue to Grow

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 20:20:02 +0000

International Student Ministry Opportunities Continue to Grow

For Immediate Release

(Madison, WI) --- The 1,095,299 international students studying in the US during the 2018-2019 academic year set a new record. Last year was the fourth consecutive year that this group of students surpassed one million, according to the 2019 Open Doors report of the Institute of International Education.

“��ñ�� has been promoting friendships with international students as a part of our ministry since we began, 78 years ago,” said Marc Papai, Director of International Student Ministry (ISM). In the mid-1950s, staff were inviting international students to International Houseparties, a chance to get away from campus during holiday vacations. Houseparties were held at many different locations, particularly at ��ñ�� camps, like Cedar Campus. And the tradition still continues.

In 1959, ��ñ�� published a Guide to International Friendships by then ISM director Paul Little. It reported that the US international student population at the time was 90,000. Today’s Friendships with International Students booklet carries on this legacy of encouraging and equipping students and volunteers to connect across cultures.

“Today ��ñ��’s 2030 Calling is focused on calling ‘every corner of every campus to follow Jesus,’” Papai said. “That includes international students, who are now a part of the student body at the majority of US campuses.”

At some campuses, ISM is the only ��ñ�� presence. “Part of our ministry is to help US students gain a deeper appreciation for God’s people of every international ethnicity and for God’s purposes in the world,” he said.

During the 2018-2019 school year, 3,846 international students were regularly involved in 499 ��ñ�� undergraduate and graduate fellowships. Sixty of those fellowships were specifically for international students.

The IIE Open Doors report also announced that the number of US students studying abroad continues to increase. During the 2017-2018 academic year numbers were up 2.7 percent over the previous year.

��ñ��’s Study Abroad ministry, now in its seventh year, helps students get involved with Christian community in other countries, connecting them to local campus ministry, discipling them through video conferencing, and challenging them through short pilgrimage experiences. Study Abroad also offers semester-long justice-focused programs in Rwanda and Ecuador. Last year 620 students participated in ��ñ�� Study Abroad, and another 125 engaged with Study Abroad resources.

Another long-standing ��ñ�� tradition encourages local community members to invite international students into their home for Thanksgiving Dinner. Students get to learn about and experience a traditional American holiday, making new family connections while they are a long way from home.

��ñ�� Christian Fellowship has 1,119 student and faculty chapters on 772 campuses across the US, from the Ivy League to community colleges. ��ñ�� is a founding member of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students and a charter member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

News Keywords

Fluent in Patience: Participating in God’s Story Abroad

ashlye.vanderworp@intervarsity.org — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 21:27:58 +0000

Drew Larson

Fluent in Patience: Participating in God’s Story Abroad

Picture yourself alone in a foreign country—a place where you have no connections. You’re a college student studying abroad and interning thousands of miles from your campus and your friends, and a Christian in a country where following Jesus makes you a curiosity at best and a threat at worst.

And, with all that going on, you’re also asking yourself: What can I do while I’m here to advance God’s kingdom?

Hold that picture in your mind for a moment. Because that’s exactly what James* did.

As an energy science major in New England, James had been preparing to work and study abroad in South Asia for most of his academic career. He’d taken pains to become fluent in the native language of the place where he planned to intern and had created a small group Bible study on campus just for other South Asian students in his major. James was also, according to his ��ñ�� Campus Staff Minister, Karen, low-key amazing at leading people to Christ.

“He was just one of those students who consistently had two, three, four students coming to faith in his small group every year,” she said. “He’s one of those unassuming, quietly confident guys, but not one of those people someone would look at and say, ‘Oh, you’re a gifted evangelist.’ So I knew he was going to be a missional student before he went to study abroad because he’d been that kind of student already.”

James first spent a semester abroad studying at a South Asian university, supported by a Digital Small Group through ��ñ��’s Study Abroad program, and dreamed of all that he hoped to accomplish for Christ while overseas. But while he shared his faith with a number of fellow students, he found his efforts at outreach mostly stalling out.

“He had this moment in the small group where he realized that he had entered the semester with a dream of a ton of people coming to faith around him, and he hadn’t [seen that happen] yet,” Karen said. “That dream was all about him. But God was preparing him for the slower, more faithful work of missions, for trusting God for what God will do—kind of a holy patience. That can be hard for a rock-star evangelist to hear.”

James did settle in and wait though, and several months later, while interning at a large South Asian energy company during his second semester abroad, he finally got his chance. The company asked him to lead an English language lunch on Fridays all about American culture. With Good Friday approaching, James sensed an opportunity, despite the fact that the Human Resources Department heavily monitored public speech. He put together a presentation that used the Easter holiday as a springboard to subtly share the gospel.

“He and I met to find all the subtle ways that we could talk about the true meaning of Easter in the context of an American holiday, and then we prayed. By God’s grace HR [at his company] approved the plan,” Karen said. “So he essentially got to share the gospel with his coworkers.”

Afterward, one of James’s coworkers asked him additional questions about his faith, and James was able to share more about the hope of Jesus.

After his year abroad, James returned to campus, graduated, and now works full time at a US branch of the company he interned with. Even more importantly, he returned to the US with even more confidence and strength. “There’s a new sureness around him and his faith that I don’t often see in 22-year-olds,” Karen said. “He’s also gained some new evangelistic creativity, realizing that mission and evangelism look really different from context to context, and even from campus to the workplace.

“Study Abroad students [like James] have this opportunity to plant seeds that others often don’t,” continued Karen. “James had this really great placement to work with some very influential local people. All he had to do was be patient, plant seeds of the gospel, and then pray for God to bring along someone else to water them and make them grow.”

For more information about ��ñ�� Study Aboad, click the link below.

Check Out ��ñ�� Study Abroad

*Names and some details changed to protect student’s identity

News Keywords

Chapter Challenging Chapter

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 21:14:04 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

Chapter Challenging Chapter

Elizabeth Booher was near the beginning of her 2011 semester abroad at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, sitting in the first class of the day, when the building started shaking. The university was heavily damaged by the earthquake that struck and ended up being shut down for the semester. Amidst the destruction and casualties in the city, Elizabeth wasn’t sure what to do.

Officials from Smith College, her school back in Massachusetts, called every day, wanting to know if she was returning to the U.S. She decided she was not. A transfer was negotiated to the University of Otago in Dunedin.

Not long after arriving at Otago Elizabeth stumbled across two women having a Bible study in the student center and found out they were part of a campus Christian fellowship, like ��ñ��, affiliated with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). As she got involved in the chapter, the inductive Bible studies felt very similar to what she was used to in her ��ñ�� chapter back at Smith.

While at Otago, Elizabeth had an honest and deep conversation with a former Campus Staff Minister and confronted the uncertainties and worry she was feeling about an invitation to join ��ñ�� staff after graduation. While she had “majored in ��ñ��” and been very active in the Smith Christian Fellowship (SCF), she was doubtful about her capacity for ministry. But the conversation was very clarifying and when she got back to Smith to begin her senior year, she was ready to start the application process for coming on staff with ��ñ��.

Also at Otago, Elizabeth deepened her appreciation of Christians from other cultures.

“I don’t think I realized how mono-cultural my life was—even though I had friends from so many different ethnic backgrounds and countries as a student at Smith—until I engaged in my faith with students from other cultural experiences,” she said. “It helped humble me and encourage me. It's hard to describe how encouraged I was, especially by my friends from Malaysia and the faith they had. I realized we were really missing those students in our fellowship back home.”

She began her senior year at Smith with a plan to start a Bible study for international students. “At every New Student Outreach event that fall I met at least one international student who was not a Christian who had been wanting to study Scripture,” she said. A local family who lived near campus opened up their home for the Bible study and each week students from a half dozen different countries participated.

Elizabeth is now in her sixth year on staff with ��ñ��. She was a full-time staff minister at Smith for three years but has been part-time there the last two years, as she also became the Area Director for the Five College and Greater Springfield areas of western Massachusetts, now known as the Pioneer Valley Team.

SCF is among the growing number of chapters that no longer have a large group meeting during the week. “It’s clear that at Smith the model of ministry that is working best is small intimate communities with people you already have trust with,” she said. Focusing on small group Bible studies has been a key component of SCF’s growth. But the proximity of vibrant ministry on other nearby campuses has also been key.

The student leaders from Smith and from the chapters at other consortium schools that Elizabeth oversees meet together monthly for training and to pray together. The students are used to taking classes at these nearby campuses, so there’s a lot of unity in the area. “Through the sharing of stories and testimonies, prayer movements have spread from campus to campus,” Elizabeth said. “Students have been encouraged to take risks, and they’ve visited each other’s campuses to learn from each other.”

The spiritual climate is different on each campus but the hunger to see God at work is growing. “There’s a lot of conviction being imparted from schools that are seeking God’s face more earnestly than others,” she added.

As she reflects on her study abroad experience as a student in New Zealand, Elizabeth is thankful for the opportunity to observe the world, and faith in a university context “down under.” She received a new perspective on campus ministry, and grew her appreciation for international student ministry and small group Bible study. It helped form the foundation of what she does today, and challenged her to grasp the scope of both God’s people and his desired work on the campuses of the Pioneer Valley area of western Massachusetts.

News Keywords

Studying Abroad and Growing in Faith

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 14:46:02 +0000

News

Lauren Dueck

Studying Abroad and Growing in Faith

The last place I expected to find myself was in a gay club in Cape Town.

My friends had been pestering me to go clubbing with them since we’d arrived in South Africa eight weeks before. I’d always said a polite “no, thanks!” and gone off to play solitaire in my room. But I finally caved, and found myself on a sparsely populated dance floor, watching guys make out around the room. To say I was uncomfortable would be an understatement.

To rewind – I grew up homeschooled, so I don’t think I knew what a club was until I got to college. I’d quickly joined ��ñ��, which kept me away from the party scene, and, unfortunately, let me lose touch with most of my non-Christian friends.

When I got the opportunity to study abroad in Cape Town, I was thrilled. It was a phenomenal program run by my school, known for its world-class faculty and high-caliber students. Plus, my family had connections in South Africa. I was pumped.

So, I was confused when my staff worker asked me not to go. Her reasons were sound — I was a senior leader in my chapter. Missing a full term would harm the chapter, and my development as a leader. I was needed, and God was growing me on my campus in Chicago. She asked me to pray about my decision.

But God was speaking to me about this opportunity. I prayed, got more counsel, and packed my bags.

Discipleship Pressure Cooker
What I didn’t know when I got on the plane, however, is that study abroad is a discipleship pressure cooker. I was soon immersed in a brand new culture, and surrounded by people I didn’t know. It was like freshman year all over again, with an international flair — Who would my friends be? How would I find a church? Would there even be any Christians there? Would I make any South African friends? Can I take public transit? Can I drink the water?

It’s no wonder that so many of our students struggle while studying abroad! As a staff worker, I understand why MY staff asked me to stay home, and why many staff report having negative feelings about study abroad. It seems like a liability — why send a student overseas, when they’ll not only miss out on the ministry God is doing on their own campus, but also be thrust into an experience that might lead them into temptation and away from their fellowship?

When I arrived in South Africa, I got in touch with a couple of local campus ministries, including ��ñ��'s sister movement with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). Within my first week in Cape Town, I had met with three different staff. This relationship was vital — by the end of my time in South Africa, I had build solid friendships with South Africans, and even partnered in ministry — I had helped plant a new ministry to arts students.

Evangelistic Opportunities
As my relationships with my non-Christian friends in my program deepened, I stumbled into evangelistic opportunities. One conversation happened on the beach, as we were warming up after body-surfing in the Atlantic. Another happened after dark while camping in the bush and shooing away giant stick insects.

My richest evangelistic experiences happened while I was overseas, because it was there that God taught me how to love my neighbor, even when it’s uncomfortable — even when it meant hanging out with my friends at a gay bar because they wanted to go somewhere they felt welcome. I learned to navigate the tricky terrain at the intersection of big words like “temptation,” “incarnation” and “witness.”

I came back to campus on fire for the gospel, and it was the following quarter that the Holy Spirit started to move on our campus.

��ñ��’s Newest Ministry
��ñ�� sends over 1100 students to study abroad annually — and I know that most of them don’t have the phenomenal experience that I did. I was blessed with a unique combination of chutzpah, connections, perseverance, and luck that most students don’t happen upon.

I want to change that.

Which is why I’m working with ��ñ�� Study Abroad. We are fully convicted that study abroad is an opportunity that the Lord wants to use in the lives of our students — to bring them more deeply into communion with him, to grow them as leaders and as disciples, to build cross-cultural skills, and to deepen their conviction and competence in evangelism.

We want to provide the tools and training to make this possible, and replicable, for as many students as possible. We want to grow communities of ��ñ�� students who are studying abroad, and connect them to the IFES in their host countries. We long to see study abroad cease to be a discipleship liability, and turn instead into a missional opportunity for our movement, and for the IFES in every place we send an ��ñ�� student.

We’ve already started – last spring, we gathered a cohort of American and Canadian students for a weekend retreat in the UK. We discussed worship, sex, drinking, crossing cultures, justice, and evangelism, and 20 students left equipped to engage in the IFES’ evangelism efforts across Europe.

We want to do it again this fall — we’re inviting students studying abroad in Europe to Barcelona, September 13-15th, so that we can train, equip, and commission them to discipleship and mission while they’re overseas. We’re starting in Europe, and we hope to roll out world-wide programming in the next five years so that those 1100 ��ñ�� students can join with the IFES to be transformed and transforming presences to the ends of the earth. In the meantime, we’re already pioneering virtual ministry to connect and resource students studying on every continent.

The next time I studied abroad, a friend and I were sitting in a basement cafeteria in Moscow, trying to figure out what was in the salad we’d just bought. Neither of us had recognized the Russian description, so we took a chance. As we prodded at the unfamiliar meat, my friend brought up a conversation we’d started earlier. “I never really thought I was interested in spirituality, but then I read Dostoevsky, and it’s really got me thinking. You’re a Christian — what do you think about God?”

I gulped down a bite, prayed desperately, and started talking.

Turns out it was fish.

For more information about what’s happening with ��ñ�� Study Abroad, like our facebook page. If you know a college student who is studying abroad, invite them to visit www.intervarsity.org/studyabroad and click “Connect with us.”

Photo: Lauren (2nd from left) meeting with the small group that planted an arts ministry in South Africa.

News Keywords

Study Abroad

IFES