Since last posting much has happened, and I will attempt to cover some of it in the following post.
Things are going very well in Clemson as far as my work with RUF is concerned. We have had so many students coming around to our Large Group meetings on Tuesday nights- probably around 300 most weeks. I believe that this can be contributed to several things: the fact that we are able to meet on campus this year makes coming to Large Group much easier for students; also Stephen is preaching through his Dating, Marriage, and Relationships series, and that is always a crowd drawer; and lastly, the fact that we have a strong base of siblings of older RUFers who are now freshmen at Clemson makes recruiting new people much easier. Stephen has been doing a great job of making the topic of relationships relatable to students, even to those who are not currently in dating relationships. He is sticking to the basic Gospel principles and how they apply to relationships, making the series easy to connect with for everyone. You can now check out all the sermons from this semester on itunes! Search RUF @ Clemson under podcasts to listen.
I have been having some really great conversations with students this semester. Maybe it’s that the conversations are happening sooner than they did last year, or maybe it’s that students are being more upfront this year, or maybe it’s because I am more comfortable at asking questions, but for some reason I feel like relationships and conversations have just gone deep really fast with certain students. A couple of students have been wanting to know more about Calvinism and are asking some hard questions about it. Not that Calvinism is synonymous the Gospel or that we push students to adopt a Calvinistic mindset or that we believe they even need to, but I think that it is great that these freshmen girls are thinking deeply enough to be asking important questions about who God is. I can tell the God is at work in them, giving them an interest in knowing Him better. Another girl I have been meeting with has been discouraged about her spiritual life. She feels the weight of her sin very keenly and is troubled by her inability to live for God the way she wants to- much like the Apostle Paul’s confession in Romans and much like every other person who’s honest about their spiritual life. It has been a unique challenge for me to both support her thinking that God does greatly care about the way that she lives, but also to tell her that Jesus doesn’t love her more because she does good things and that He doesn’t love her better on the days when she really has the desire to live for Him. Impressing upon her the understanding that God loves her just as much on her bad days as he does on her good days, that he is ultimately and eternally not less pleased with her when she sins than he is when she prays has been my purpose with her.
On another note, we went to Fall Conference at Camp Greystone in North Carolina a few weeks ago. We took 100 students, which is a lot, and a lot more than we took last year anyway. The encouraging things about taking the group we did was not the number of people we took but the specific people who came with us. There were a lot of the core group of RUFers who came, but also there were tons of freshmen and several new people on the fringe on the ministry. Three freshmen girls who are are upfront about the fact that they aren’t Christians came. These three girls were all invited by other freshmen girls who are still not fully plugged into RUF themselves, which is really exciting to me. These three non-believers all said they liked conference and that they teaching was really different than anything they had ever heard but that they were not turned off by it. They seem intrested in exploring more of the claims of Jesus, and I hope that RUF can be a safe place for them to take their time to think it all through without feeling any pressure to conform or to be converted.
The speaker at conference was the former Campus Minister from the University of Tennessee, who is now an RUF Area Coordinator, Brent Harriman. He spoke about the transformative power of the Gospel, basically addressing the questions of Do we want to change? How can we change? Why do we not change? etc.. It was phenomenal teaching. The Gospel was clearly presented. Brent Harriman truly is a talented speaker. You can also hear the podcasts from Fall Conference here: http://www.furman.ruf.org/listen.
Between Fall Conference and Large Group I have been having lots of one-on-one meetings with girls, mostly freshmen and some older girls who I met with a lot last year. I have a list of around 30 names of freshmen girls who I try to meet up with for lunch, coffee, walks, etc.. During these meetings we just hang out at first, getting to know one another and learning about each other’s lives. The goal for these relationships is for me to encourage these girls as they grow as Christians in college. I have started reading the Bible with a couple of these girls. I read through Colossians with one and through James with another. Being available to these girls to talk about issues they are facing or to challenge them to grow spiritually or to just be around them as an older Christian is what my job is really all about. There are also lots of girls I meet with or have contact with who are not Christians, and my goal with them is similar: being their friend, caring about their lives, listening to their concerns, asking them important questions, and living out the Gospel in front of them as I also tell them about it when the right time comes. You can pray for my conversations with students that I would know what to say. You can pray that I wouldn’t say too much or too little. You can pray that I would be a faithful example of Jesus to them.
My Bible study on Monday nights has also been something that I have spent time on this semester. I lead a group of 6 girls, through Tim Keller’s book Counterfeit Gods. The book is amazing, and if you have never read it run, don’t walk, to the store to buy it. It is by far one of the best, most applicable books I have ever read. It has really helped me personally, and I think idolatry is an issue that not only do we not really understand or see very clearly in our own lives, but it is also one of the most under talked about and underrated issues in our lives and in our culture. Far from being a book about greedily desiring material possessions, Keller talks about how a most of the issues in our lives are actually idolatry issues rooted in our idolizing of either power, comfort, control, or acceptance.
The last thing I will mention is the Dating Game that I have started in RUF! This is a game in which any student who wanted to play signed up and then I randomly (or not so randomly…) paired guys and girls together as dates for the game. Each couple competed against another couple or two in rounds of competitive games like bowling, scavenger hunts, pumpkin carvings, and disc golf. After each round or games there was a declared winning couple and a losing couple. The winners moved onto the next round where they were paired with new dates and the process continued. The losing couples also kept playing but they did not advance towards the prize. We are nearing the end of the game, so a victorious winning couple will soon surface, and their prize shall be…going on a real date together! (They don’t know this is the prize, ha!)
There is tons more I could say, but that’s all I will tell for now. Instead I’ll just leave you with pictures from the semester. Thanks for reading!
April Goes to Clemson 