I sense summer drifting toward its wistful end and while the heat here in Atlanta is not yet diminishing, the time to gather myself to launch into the new academic year is. Last week I submitted my annual report for GFM for 2016-17 (more below) and I’m now finishing up the annual plan for 2017-18 as well as my personal AMP. I know that each of you has also been getting ready for the ministry year: inviting new financial partners, writing plans to spend your work time strategically, preparing for an energetic New Student/Faculty Outreach, perhaps getting in some vacation days or retreat times. May God get each of us “ready” in the way that we need.
Here are some reflections to stimulate and encourage you, starting with some thoughts on this last week.
#Charlottesville
I have been dismayed, like you, at the events in Charlottesville this past weekend and the ensuing responses. I lament the loss of life and the physical injuries. Just this morning I read in the Chronicle of Higher Education about a UVA librarian whose stroke yesterday probably stemmed from the trauma he experienced trying to safeguard students on campus during the torch-lit march last Friday night. I lament the loss of “life” and the infliction of “injury” experienced by African Americans and other people of color in the forms of fear, vulnerability, indignity, and sorrow—yet again. In Ann Arbor, this week, I met a neighbor of Melodie Marske, a Muslim American who expressed palpably his sense of being unsafe in our country. I lament the whole shameful history of our nation in which the empowered (mostly white) have dominated the disempowered (mostly other than white) through strictures and structures of injustice. And I am inescapably implicated in this history, perhaps especially as a white Southerner.
Helpfully, I’ve been reading over the last month Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America (2017) by Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson. His stark, angry, forceful—yet still compassionate—analysis and challenge made me better able to listen this week with ears attuned to God and neighbor: “Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public.” As did my reading last spring of Strange Glory, a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Charles Marsh, a professor of history at UVA and a thoughtful Christian: the almost inconceivable way in which the German people and the German church capitulated in the 1930s to an ideology focused, you could say, on “making Germany great again.” As did my Tuesday quiet time reading of Karl Barth’s reflection on “[suffered] under Pontius Pilate” in the Apostles Creed (Dogmatics in Outline): Jesus’s encounter with Pilate simultaneously condemning the State as “wrong” and God-opposed (so we work to unmask it) and affirming the State as “right” and God-given (so we work to renew it).
Thinking of UVA administrators (like president Teresa Sullivan) and faculty (like InterVarsity Board member Ken Elzinga) and co-laborers at the Charlottesville Study Center (like Drew Trotter) and all manner of grad students and undergrads, I have prayed that God would give us vision for how our mission on campus can make a difference—investing in lives in transformative ways, shaping disciples who will go on to bring about change in every cultural sphere, and serving those called to be a faithful, renewing presence within higher education. Gracious Father, give us wisdom for our part on campus this fall; Holy Lord, let us see your kingdom come.
Annual Report Highlights
Here are some encouraging points from my report on GFM nationally:
- The total of students (3,628) plus faculty/administrators (1,330) being served on campus: 4,958 on 114 campuses
- Of those we work with, 53% are people of color, 47% white, 27% international, 26% ethnic minority
- We served 187 campus fellowships: 74 GCF groups (16 ISM), 60 professional school groups, and 53 faculty communities
- We hosted 243 outreach events where we invited a response to some expression of the gospel—way up from 82 last year—but reported commitments or recommitments to follow Christ remained virtually the same as last year: 83 decisions
- In terms of growth: we planted 11 new fellowships (6 faculty) but closed 18 (mostly due to staff departures); 28 groups grew by 25% or more (ending with at least 20 members)
- We appointed 24 new staff: 5 new Campus Staff Ministers, 11 volunteer Associate Staff, 6 staff directors, and 2 new focused ministry leaders
- Financially, GFM overall ended 158,000 in the black with a substantial aggregate amount in escrows
I share these highlights for two reasons:
- To say thank you for everyone’s faithfulness in ministry last year, especially campus staff for taking more risks to create venues for students and faculty to engage the gospel and hear an invitation to respond
- To spur us on to further love and good works in this new year. To those of you working on campus, may I gently challenge you this fall to…
- If your fellowship is too small to be mission effective, to access the chapter building strategies that have been proved effective in recent years
- If your fellowship saw no one decide to follow Christ last year, to work with your leaders to take creative risks in prayer and evangelism
- If the number of faculty/administrators that you seeking out to equip and encourage is small, to add a networking plan to your AMP
- If your campus group lacks ethnic and cultural diversity or is newly diverse, to press in with your leaders to increase hospitality toward those in the minority
- If your team needs more campus staff, to stay prayerfully alert to who you might encourage to explore InterVarsity vocationally
May God take us and our few fish and several loaves and bless them and multiply them and then feed the thousands through us this year.
