Hello, friends!
One of the funny things about our job is the relatively short shelf life of the influence that we have when it comes to students. Students will be on campus anywhere from one semester to 6 years (and sometimes longer) and while even the average of 4 years may seem like a long time, it actually flies by pretty quickly. When one considers that Freshmen usually spend their first semester trying to adjust to the college life (which is VERY different from high school) and Seniors have usually checked out their final semester, getting ready for life after college (which is VERY different from life in college), really there's this 3 year window where students are actually in a position to catch the vision and do something with it. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule.
Today I got a call from a Freshman who was interested in joining ACF. That's right, a Freshman called me. Normally, we're the ones who are contacting Freshman, trying to get them to come to our things and get plugged into our community. But, every now and then we get one or two Freshmen who call or email us, looking for a place to land.
These Freshmen come in two types of varieties. One the one hand are the Freshmen who don't actually call us but we are contacted by their parents, or they are forced by their parents to contact us. These students usually have a strong church background but if you look a little deeper, what you see is that their faith actually belongs to their parents. The follow Jesus out of a sense of obligation and when push comes to shove, they probably need some time to really find themselves. We love having these students and we are way glad that they have found our group but oftentimes they aren't ready for mission quite yet. They need some tine to be in community, which is great because that's exactly what we seek to provide!
The second kind of Freshmen is the one who actually contacts us on his or her own. This is the student who led their youth group back in high school, knew about InterVarsity and wants to lead right away. They know the Word. They love Jesus. They love people. The temptation is to plug them into a leadership role right away and start to plan out the next 4 years of their leadership development. The caution with theses students is that while they may be all-stars, the truth is that college is still different from high school. These students can certainly serve right away but it is important to not get carried away and to let them adjust to their new freedom first.
I love Freshmen. I love Sophomores too. Juniors are amazing. Seniors (and beyond) are awesome. Sometimes it is easy in our job to get too tied up in reaching Freshmen. It's important to remember that if we aren't developing students to lead them then we actually aren't serving them.
Prayer Points:
- Tomorrow we have our first ACF events, a prayer walk @ 6pm and a Grill Out @ 8. Please pray that students will join us and that this will be a life giving events for our leaders.
- Right now I am in a time of discernment as far as how to most effectively use my time on the different campuses I have work. Please pray that God will give me good wisdom and discernment during this process as well as peace about letting go of some responsibilities if needed.
Have an excellent day!
~Adam
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