Dear Colleagues,
I imagine many of us are embracing the themes of Advent: lament and longing with the prophets, expectancy and spiritual enlargement with Mary, humility and hope with the apostles. Honestly, given our disquieting cultural moment, I welcome (need, actually) this season’s invitation into such reflections. May these weeks prepare you for the gratitude and joy of the (twelve!) days of Christmas.
Many of us will be together for five of those days—at the Staff Conference in Orlando. What animating grace does SC20 hold for GFM and our mission on campus?
What to Expect and Embrace at SC20
First, find some time in the next couple of weeks to visit the SC20 website, which is full of information about the conference and how to prepare for it.
The GFM contingent at SC20 will number about 95 among a total of nearly 1400. The gathering will dramatize how we are a distinctive subset of a large organization with a common mission. At some points we may feel “out of the mainstream”—as will staff from other focused ministries (e.g. Greek, La Fe) or employees from IVP or the NSC; at other points, we may feel right at the heart of the longing to see renewal on our campuses. I encourage us to be present with hearts open to God and to our many colleagues in all their organizational, generational, and cultural diversity. (BTW: there will be a cool card in our welcome bags called Small Acts of Inclusion: meaningful actions to catalyze a culture of kingdom welcome at SC20)
Let’s come asking: Lord, what do you have for me? How do you want to equip and empower me for the work you have given me? You may find what you need in the high energy plenaries (worship, stories, messages) or through the afternoon “learning connections or during the special day of fasting & prayer or from simple conversations over meals or at poolside. So much depends on the posture we choose. Let’s be like Mary: open, humble, responsive, expectant.
The conference will be shaped around three goals, each relevant for GFM:
- Prepare for revival: I wrote in the last Inside GFM about asking Jesus to teach us to pray and asking the Father to give us the Holy Spirit. SC20 affords a powerful setting to listen to Jesus and seek the Spirit. Whatever God might choose to do on campus in the coming years, we know that revival and renewal must begin with each of us and on our teams.
- Renew our calling: InterVarsity has an historical calling (plant and grow witnessing communities of Christ-followers on campus) and, yes, we currently have embraced the 2030 Calling as a visionary horizon (catalyze movements that call every corner of a significant portion of 2500 campuses to follow Jesus), but what matters most is God’s individual call to each of us to serve grad students and faculty and to love the campus. We will consecrate ourselves anew at SC20, saying our yes not so much to InterVarsity but to Jesus himself.
- Thrive together: One of my prayers for SC20 is that we will each experience God’s grace and generosity. I hope we can celebrate signs of God at work in our mission, be spiritually fed and encouraged, enjoy community with our colleagues, and feel grateful to be part of InterVarsity (even with our flaws and failures).
Four GFM Opportunities at SC20
1. Humble participants in the fasting & prayer day
On Saturday (Jan 4) at SC20, the emphasis will be on “seeking God for individual and corporate revival through worship, confession, repentance, and lament.” We will be invited to fast from lunch that day and participate in both general and optional sessions. See the SC20 website here for more information. On behalf of the GFM Leadership Team, I want to urge us all to participate (including, in their own way, those not attending). We will provide a GFM-specific resource as a thread to weave into the day
Here’s the story behind this idea: I invited Phil Bowling-Dyer (former national Director of BCM, current Assoc. Dir. for SC20) to serve as the guest “chaplain” for the GFM Leadership Team meeting in September. After a time of prayer following discussions about “revival,” Phil sensed a word from the Lord for us: as part of our longing to see revival among grad students and faculty on campus, a powerful (needful?) step of preparation would be to enter into the day of fasting at SC20 with a willingness to confess and lament any areas of sin or brokenness characteristic of GFM over the three decades of our journey. As a leadership team, we have said yes to this, believing that as leaders acknowledge the failings of their community before God, it opens the way for renewing covenant with God and seeking his blessing. (See Daniel 9 and Nehemiah 9 for scriptural examples of this.)
Prior to SC20, we will send to all GFM staff a simple resource for use, on site or at home, to guide reflection and prayers, so that all of you can join with us as leaders in this humble posture before God.
2. Gracious advocates for future grad students and current faculty
If there is one seed to plant during our various conversations with undergrad staff in Orlando it would be this: among undergrad students finishing their degrees, approximately a third will go on to grad school within a few years, which presents a great opportunity to both affirm them in their professional pursuits and to “catalyze” them to be part of our
movement to reach the grad corner of their next campus by either joining a witnessing community or teaming up with a few others to start one. GFM will be ready to serve them!
If there is a second seed to plant: that Christian faculty and administrators comprise a vital corner on every campus and therefore all staff have an opportunity to find them, meet them, encourage them, and enlist them in ministry to either students or peers or both. Faculty Ministry stands ready to help.
3. Winsome ambassadors for GFM as a staff option
Do you know any undergrad colleagues in your sphere who you can picture serving effectively as a GFM staff worker some day? If so, please let them know that we will host two GFM Interest meals on the last day, breakfast and lunch on Sunday (Suite 935K). These will be low key opportunities to learn more about GFM as an option when folks reach transition points in their staff careers. (If you want to invite someone, let Don Paul Gross know via donpaul.gross@intervarsity.org or brian.chang@intervarsity.org)
4. Happy Epiphany People
Our travel home day, Monday, January 6, is the Feast of Epiphany. We will conclude our SC20 experience that morning as a GFM community with a festive Epiphany Brunch. Since we will not meet in March 2020 at Mundelein, this gives us a nice chance to enjoy one other in the GFM community, to reflect together on how God met us at the conference, and to bless each other as we return to our homes and places of service.
I know these next weeks will be full with holiday activity and welcome days off, but may I ask each of us to weave into our spiritual devotions some times to pray for SC20, so that those of us attending can arrive prepared and open and those not attending share a sense of solidarity through intercession.
God be with you,
Bobby
