What is true discipling?

At our staff retreat, "Cultivating Leadership" conference, some "Intervarsity giants"(aka, the "greats") have been challenging me so much in what I think is important "staff work". One of the main topics was about Discipleship, and what do we think discipleship looks like. The simple answer should be: what was Jesus' mission when he was on earth? To share the gospel. Isn't that what he discipled his followers in? And so, instead of following my default discipling method(which is to meet with students, hear about their lives, their "boy or girl problems"...) I should be discipling students in how to share the gospel?

It looks like, from now on, going to the dorms, talking about Jesus= discipleship.

Story from the beginning of the year

Meet Lauren and Amanda

On the first day of dorm move-in, I met a freshman named Lauren. As I got to know Lauren, I found out that she is Christian and she introduced me to her roommate, Amanda. Lauren and Amanda are both bubbly, energetic freshmen who I loved spending time with. After inviting Amanda to a couple Intervarsity events, I quickly learned that Amanda wasn't interested in anything related to "church stuff" because she grew up going to church with her mom, but later in her teen years had some bad experience with her mom that left her scarred and hurt. So she didn't really feel ready to go back into anything "church-related" because she was so wary of the whole thing.

“Keep inviting her!”

But something inside me said: “Keep inviting her!” So shared with Amanda that I wanted to invite her to different things because I wanted her to feel welcome, but that if she chose to come or not come, we would love her the same. So one day, we invited Amanda to dinner with our small group and….SHE CAME. Another time, we invited her to Large Group. She didn’t come the first time…..but the 2nd time SHE DID. Then before we knew it she came to our small group Bible study EVERY WEEK! During one of our small groups, we were studying the account of Lazarus’ death and resurrection and talked about how Jesus is ABLE to step in and fix our hopeless situations. In our passage, we saw that Jesus was able to raise Lazarus back to life and restore a brother to two grieving sisters. Then I asked our Bible study if there was any hopeless situations in our lives now that we want to ask Jesus to step into? And guess who was the first to respond?! Amanda.

I guess that was Jesus, wasn’t it?

Amanda begins to share with our small group, “I have been trying to see my brother who lives 30-40 minutes from Reno forAmanda even came to our fall conference- 2nd from right. the past 4 months because he’s autistic and paralyzed and lives in a home. But every person that I asked to give me a ride either didn’t have time or didn’t have a car. So I was getting really discouraged because I wasn’t sure the next time I’d be able to see my brother. But two days ago, I was sharing this with a couple people from Intervarsity and one of them said that he could take me. So I get to see my brother for the first time in 4 months….tomorrow. I guess that was Jesus, wasn’t it?”

Thank you for praying for students like Amanda that they would recognize Jesus for who He is, a living and compassionate Savior, that wants to step into our lives and restore our hope! --

Prayer Requests

This week our Large Group's topic is "Are You Satisfied?". Pray that non-believers would come and see what following Jesus means!
Pray for an International Thanksgiving dinner, that students from all over the world would feel loved and get to hear about Jesus!

Monday morning prayer

Our staff team this year began getting together every Monday morning at 6am for prayer. Convicted that if we want to see God do truly great things in our leaders, in the dorms, on our campus, than we need to be praying. We didn't know what our prayer time would look like, but we decided to come and listen for what God might show us, tell us, encourage us, direct us to do. This prayer time has been incredible! With listening prayer, we pretty much sit and ask God to speak to us thorugh pictures/images, scriptures, words and then we sit and be quiet for 10-15 minutes and then share what we were thinking. It's been pretty cool to see God show us what he is doing. For example, this week someone saw Jesus as a garbage man and this week there has been a lot of students dealing with the garbage in their lives. We also one week saw a picture of one of our staff fishing for "a big fish" outside the dorm she has for her Bible study. And funnily enough, this freshmen from that dorms, who is Muslim and is a student senator has just started coming to their study. We are praying that God would continue to reach this "big fish's" heart so that he may know our amazing God!

Coming to Southern California Next Sunday!

Hey Everyone!

It's been a while since I've written last, but I am excited to be making a visit to southern california this next weekend, October 23-26th(Friday-Monday). I would love to see you all!

Blessings,
Amy

you know when you're growing up when...

one of your friends are having children, writing wills, and asking you if you would be their kids' godmother! oh today was a momentous day!

tripled and growing at TMCC

This year at TMCC, I have been encouraged by the growth of new students into our group this year. Last year we had about 3 faithful students come every week to our weekly meetings. This year we have about 9! We've tripled! Every month, we do two Bible studies, one week we have a fun/games/hangout/food time and the last week we do a film day. It's been encouraging to meet new students on fire for God!

Movie Night Outreach!

Last Thursday, we had an outreach event where we showed a movie instead of having our regular Large Group meeting. We watched the movie "the Darjeeling Limited", a story about three brothers going on a spiritual journey together. We invited our non-Christian friends to our movie night and Troy(one of our staff interns) gave a 10 minute talk about his own spiritual journey. We then invited anyone who would like to check out Jesus to join a GIG or a "Group Investigating God". We had six people sign up for GIG's and one girl became a Christian after large group! Praise God!