Bucknell University

Ministry is About Meeting People

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 13:58:57 +0000

Gordon Govier

Ministry is About Meeting People

When ��ñ�� chapters met in the spring to develop plans for connecting with new students in the fall, they had no idea a digital game would be introduced in July that might make connections a lot easier.

Some chapters have found a way to incorporate Pokémon Go into their New Student Outreach (NSO). The jury is still out regarding its effectiveness; but the popularity of the augmented reality game illustrates the potential impact of ��ñ��’s new Ministry in Digital Spaces (MDS). MDS director Bret Staudt Willet said, “The opportunity to meet strangers, build affinity, and do that quickly, is just remarkable.”

Pokémon Go has accumulated both supporters and critics in its short lifetime. Bret sees its popularity positively. “The point is that people are doing it and we can engage them,” he said. “It’s a fantastic icebreaker. We can meet new people and go to parts of the campus we’ve never been before.”

Bret was appointed the first director of MDS just over two years ago, and came to the job after 11 years of campus ministry in eastern Pennsylvania. He believes online ministry is a good way to meet students where they’re at while prompting curiosity about who Jesus is among skeptics and seekers and opening their eyes to new perspectives.

Bret has been a recreational gamer for a number of years, and has found that it’s an easy way to connect with students. Ten years ago, when he and his ��ñ�� student leaders were all playing the game Kingdom of Loathing, he discovered it was a way to catch up on what was happening in their daily lives through the chat system incorporated into the game. “It didn’t occur to me at the time that this could be its own ministry,” he said.

About the same time, through the game Halo 3, he met a friend of one of his students who attended a nearby campus, Penn State Harrisburg. “He was miserable and ready to drop out of school,” Bret said. After going to visit with the student, Bret later ended up planting an ��ñ�� chapter at the campus, a chapter that’s still active today.

Bret’s attraction to online communities came early in his life, through an America Online computer disk that arrived in the mail when he was in middle school. He searched for other users sharing his own birthdate and found a connection. “I happened to find someone who became an important friend all the way through high school, and we still exchange Christmas cards,” he said.

But Bret knows that community offline is also important. He was devastated when his parents announced they were separating during his freshman year in college. His friends in the dorm weren’t much help. “They said, ‘Give it time and it will get better.' And I said, ‘I need a better answer.’”

He sought out his Bucknell ��ñ�� staff worker, Jesse North, who gathered a group of fellow students to pray with him. “That didn’t immediately fix anything, but that was the first time in my life where I felt like I was sitting in the presence of God and doing it with a group of people,” Bret said.

That experience kicked off a long unraveling of a lot of the easy answers and superficial relationships he had relied on up until that time. His ��ñ�� involvement and his spiritual pursuits became more intentional. His career plan to be a college math professor changed, particularly after he spent two summers working at an ��ñ�� Urban Program in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “That totally changed my life,” he said. “I decided I wanted to invest the rest of my life in helping people.”

When it came time to actually settle on a career, he considered youth ministry but was challenged by a friend who asked, “What kind of conversations do you want to have?” He knew that the conversations college students have, as they begin to ask the big life questions, were what he wanted to be involved in.

Bret became an ��ñ�� campus staff member in 2003, working with students at Franklin & Marshall College, a small liberal arts school in Lancaster. As he ministered to students he also took some classes from Michigan State University in game design and later pursued a master’s degree in online communities and social media. So when the MDS opening popped up, he was ready to step in to the role.

This summer Bret was invited to speak at Passion Talks, a conference on the intersection of technology and Christian faith, held at the Google offices in Mountain View, California. He told participants that he rejects digital dualism, the idea that the digital and physical worlds are separate. “It’s all real life, real people doing real things,” he said.

MDS currently operates with five paid staff and five volunteers, located across the country. At this early stage it’s unclear what MDS will become, but it is clear that MDS has a bright future. As Bret said, “Ministry is about meeting and connecting with people. And the Internet is phenomenal at helping people to connect.”

UPDATE: Bret is interviewed by Mission Network News on the Pokémon Go phenomenon and technology as a new way to ministry.

News Keywords

Ministry in Digital Spaces

The Good Life

webteam@intervarsity.org — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 06:00:00 +0000

News

Nakhia Hopkins

The Good Life

As a student, I was involved with helping to start an ��ñ�� chapter on the campus of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA. After my freshman year, I was interested in starting a fellowship that would reach black students. None of the other fellowships on campus seemed comfortable to me as a black woman, and the gospel choir on campus did not meet any deep, spiritual needs. The gospel choir director introduced me to another student in my class that was also interested in starting another fellowship.

We met and discovered we had similar visions. The following year, we looked into bringing two ��ñ�� staff, Jesse and Liz North, to campus to spearhead this new ministry at Bucknell University. My sophomore year, I attended the first dorm Bible study offered. I was intrigued by how the Spirit met us and how Scripture came to life! I attended Atlanta ’98, and got to see the heart of ��ñ�� as a national movement. I was struck by the sincerity of those in leadership to care for black students, from making sure I got to Atlanta to experiencing a conference that addressed my issues as a black woman. I also attended my first Fall Conference, Spring Conference, and Chapter Camp my sophomore year. Through these events, I saw the character of ��ñ�� and was offered more opportunities for spiritual growth as my picture of Jesus was enlarged.

My junior year, I went abroad to London and when I returned God continued to work on my heart as I questioned how I fit into the things that he was doing on campus. Consequently, the end of my junior year, I was asked to lead a Bible study. It seemed very much in line with what God was doing in my life, and so I agreed to lead the study my senior year.

As I went into the dorms to meet freshmen, led a Bible study in the African American studies house, and sang on the worship team, ministry began to awaken something in me. I experienced a joy and excitement I had never experienced sitting in a Computer Science class. Ministry was lifegiving to me and something I had a passion for. I started to think, as I sat in class looking at binary numbers, that maybe the Lord had something different for me after graduation.

As I searched for jobs in the Computer Science field, Liz, who had spent so much time with me over the years, asked if I had thought about ��ñ�� staff. “She must be crazy!” I thought, “I admire her and Jesse for working with ��ñ��, but that is not for me.” Being on ��ñ��’s staff had not been on my list of options after school.

Even though I knew the Lord was doing something new in my life, I still had plans to take a job somewhere far, far away from home with a starting salary of at least $40,000, work hard, look good in my business suit, and ultimately have the “good life,” while putting money down towards a house for my mother.

I had wanted to go into Computer Science since I was eleven and had followed that dream all the way up until that point. My family depended on me–everyone knew that I was going to be the one to make it and bring home the money. You didn’t take the path that I took from the streets of Baltimore’s inner city to the campus of Bucknell University to go onto ��ñ�� staff.

But, God had another plan for my life. I attended Fall Conference where Susan Van Risen was the speaker. I automatically connected with her as she spoke of her freshman year on campus. She described herself as a “fisher of men” because she attracted and had relationships with a lot of men that year. She described my first year experience exactly. She had won my trust, and I listened intently to her story that weekend. She challenged us repeatedly to take risks.

She talked of how God had turned her life upside-down time and time again, but with the same constant bright smile she would say, “My life is so good.” I was particularly taken aback by hearing her story of what it was like for her to come on staff against her family’s wishes and the hardship for her to choose ministry when it would put her against her family. She still smiled and said, “My life is so good.”

I was blown away! How could her life be good when it seemed that God had wreaked havoc in her family and caused separation between her and her loved ones? There was something deep in her risk-taking and trusting God that made her life good. I could hear God saying, ‘Let me turn your world upside down. Trust me. It will be good’. The ‘good life’ that I had always imagined of following my dream in Computer Science didn’t seem to hold any light to the good life God wanted to give me through taking risks, trusting him with my life, and joining ��ñ�� staff.

If you are interested, you can donate to Nakhia’s ministry directly.

News Keywords

Bucknell University