Evangelism at Lincoln

Hello, friends!

I know it’s a few weeks late but I wanted to share about an interactive Gospel display that we did at Lincoln University a few weeks back.

InterVarsity puts together these things called proxe stations that are basically opportunities to start conversations about the Gospel in a non-threating and more relational way. Each proxe consists of 4 panel. The first panel asks a general question based on the theme of the proxe (hope, body image, money, etc.). The second panel asks students to make the theme more personal to their own lives. The third panel asks students to interact with a passage of scripture. The final panel is a Gospel presentation where students are asked to respond to the Gospel.

Our proxe was about satisfaction. On the first panel, students were asked to put a sticker where they felt like they received the most satisfaction, whether it be love, purpose, fun, or success. On the next panel students were asked to pick out a photo from a collage of images that most spoke to them. The third panel was a passage from John 4, where Jesus tells the Samaritan Woman at the well that she can have living water that will never go dry.

It was a lot of fun running the proxe on campus. A campus pastor friend of mine brought along a few students to help us put it on and people were very engaged. Megan came along too which was lots of fun since we don’t get to work together as much anymore. Students were interested and we had a lot of great conversations about where they saw themselves in their walks with Jesus. All in all, I’d say it was a really great time. Pastor Nelson (the campus pastor) said he was love to do more of these next fall, which is a huge blessing because it means more partnership.

Of course, not all of it was perfect. There were a few observations I had that were a little disheartening. The first is that because of our location, we were pretty much only reaching the black students on campus. Reaching black students with the Gospel is a beautiful thing, so don’t hear me say that I didn’t enjoy that. However, most of the students at Lincoln are White commuter students, meaning we weren’t reaching most of the campus. We may need to change locations next time.

The second thing that was a little disheartening was how every one of the students identified themselves as Christians who were doing good in the world. This would be a great thing… if I believed them. However, in conversations with Pastor Howard, who may know every student on campus, he told me that there were a lot of people on campus who were more culturally Christian than anything else. Based on the conversations that folk were having before and after their experience with the proxe, I may be inclined to agree.

There’s still hope for Lincoln. There always is. I’m excited to see what our continued engagement with the campus will reveal about its spiritual climate and openness to following Jesus for real. I guess it’s just one of those things where we’ll have to wait and see.

Have an excellent day!

~Adam