A New Role with InterVarsity!
Sarah and I with, along with our four children (Noah, Levi, Asher and Maia), meeting with Kathy, InterVarsity's Regional Director for Graduate and Faculty Ministries in the Northeast (my supervisor!)
I am excited to announce that God has called me into a new role as the Area Director for InterVarsity's Graduate and Faculty Ministries in Upstate, NY.
Six years ago, I moved to Buffalo to plant and grow a witnessing community to graduate students and faculty at the University at Buffalo. Since then, God has opened doors to plant five other chapters that are reaching students and faculty in Buffalo, Rochester and Niagara Falls. Thanks be to God!
On every campus I have visited, there have been graduate students and faculty who are longing for a witnessing community that is reaching their campus. On how many more campuses across Upstate, NY are there students and faculty who are longing for the same, but don't have the support needed to start something new?
As Area Director for Upstate NY, I will be recruiting and hiring a team of staff and volunteers who will be able to give focused ministry to campuses already planted, like UB and the University of Rochester, and who will reach campuses across Upstate, such as:
- Buff State
- RIT
- Syracuse University
- Cornell
- SUNY Albany
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- SUNY Binghamton, and others.
Over the next few months, I will be reaching out to ask if you would deepen your partnership in this next season. I am hoping to be fully resourced by July 1 so I can give myself fully to the work of expanding the ministry across Upstate and gathering a staff team.
Your partnership has been critical for these last six years of planting and will be even more crucial for these next many years of planting the Upstate Area.
Will you prayerfully consider now how you might deepen your partnership - through giving, prayer, advocacy and volunteering on campus? I will be in touch with you soon.
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Pursuing the One Lost Sheep
"I'm not a Christian, but I want to know more about Jesus," said a Chinese PhD student during one of our on-campus GIGs (God Investigation Groups).
While she is not yet a follower of Jesus, she has a community of students who are supporting her in her faith journey and are regularly praying for her. She also has YOU. Your partnership fuels this ministry, making it possible for witnessing communities of graduate students and faculty to join Jesus as he pursues every lost sheep.
"When [Jesus] finds [the lost sheep], he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.'" (Luke 15:5-6).
We long to rejoice in the day that she is found by Jesus. Until then, our fellowships on campus will continue to walk beside her, lift her in prayer, and be a faithful, redeeming presence for her to witness.
Thank you for you partnership in giving this student, and others, a witnessing community where she can explore her faith questions and consider the invitation to follow Jesus.
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COVID-19 Update
After several weeks of the global spread of the coronavirus, COVID-19 is now marching across the US and significantly affecting American college and university campuses. Students and faculty have had a flurry of emails come through their inbox in the last several days with information updating by the hour. As of March 23rd all of the campuses I serve will be switching to online instruction for the rest of the semester. Students are moving home, faculty are converting their classes to digital versions, and support staff (including healthcare workers) are scrambling to know how to best support the campus communities. Grad students in particular are in limbo, with many of them having lab-based projects that they need to complete in order to graduate. Things are a controlled mess.
Thanks to the wonders of technology, our fellowships are able to continue meeting online to deepen our dependence on Jesus in this season, resist isolation, and explore together how God might give us opportunities to embody and proclaim the gospel. Our fellowships are asking questions like,
- How is God leading us to respond in love, wisdom, service, and faith?
- How might the coronavirus be unmaking our idolatries of busyness, self-sufficiency, immortality, invulnerability?
- Many around us may be increasingly aware of their mortality and fragility. How might God give us opportunities to proclaim the gospel of hope in Christ?
There is a lot happening very suddenly, but we continue to have our eyes on the mission of calling every corner of every campus to follow Jesus as whole life, whole world disciples.
Here are a few ways you can be praying:
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Partner in Prayer
- For the PhD student in the GIG - that in learning more about Jesus, she would discover the savior for whom she needs and longs.
- For good education to continue as students and faculty move classes to online instruction
- For students, especially international students, who do not have a local family or a means of traveling off campus.
- For our ability as a campus fellowship to creatively adapt to new ways of being both a witnessing presence to graduate students and faculty and a supportive community that sacrificially cares for those in need in the way of Jesus.
- For medical/dental missionaries as they combat the coronavirus on top of the many other illness they are diagnosing and treating with limited resources.
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Thank you for your partnership in this mission to plant and grow witnessing communities of graduate students and faculty who are calling every corner of every campus in WNY to follow Jesus as whole life, whole world disciples.
Your prayerful and financial partnership is pivotal for moving this mission forward.
Thank you so much!
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Grace and Peace,
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