Summer Welcome...

Hello, friends! 

Right now I am in beautiful Columbia, Missouri.  Meg is in Madison, Wisconsin training staff on how to be an excellent planter, which is great for her but sucks for me because I miss my wife very much.  Still, the time apart has given me the opportunity to be in CoMO to get the house ready for our move in a few weeks. 

One of the other things that I'm doing is helping out with Summer Welcome at Mizzou.  I am part of a professional organization at Mizzou called the Association of Campus Religious Advisors, or ACRA.  The goal of ACRA is to get students plugged into student groups and religious organizations on campus so they can grow their faiths.  The theology of being part of an inter-faith council can be debated back and forth but the one thing I know for sure is that being a part of ACRA has given me unprecedented campus access and a lot of great friends. 

ACRA's main event is being a part of Summer Welcome, when all of next year's freshmen make their way to Mizzou for orientation and such.  There's an activities fair where dozens of organizations are present to try and attract students.  The ACRA table hopes to connect students to faith based organizations based on their religious backgrounds and such. 

Friends, I will be honest with you.  Summer Welcome does very little for ACF.  Summer Welcome runs about 20 days or so and if we can find 5 students who are interested in ACF, we will consider it a banner year.  Most students (or their parents) are looking for a denominationally based group, or they aren't Asian/Asian American, so our prospects aren't great to begin with.  Still, I really enjoy being a part of Summer Welcome and helping out my friends at ACRA. 

Let's be honest: I want everyone to follow Jesus.  I don't care if they do it through us, Cru, Navigators, church, or whoever.  What I want is for folk to follow Jesus.  What this also means, by my logic, is that I want students who have a faith background that is different from mine to be real about their faiths too.  Cultural religion, regardless of if it is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or whatever, does not add to society.  It does not lead to folk being changed.  It does not bring people closer to Jesus because apathy is a terribly strong force.  Summer Welcome, as trivial as it may seem, is an opportunity to witness. 

I had a great conversation with a father today at Summer Welcome.  He has 6 kids and his youngest daughter will be the first in his family to be going to college in the fall.  He was terribly proud but also terribly afraid that his daughter would not be able to make it.  It was a short conversation but I was able to talk to him a bit and encourage him to encourage her to get plugged into good community because that is what is going to keep her grounded.   I have no idea what will happen to this student.  She wasn't Asian/Asian American so the chances that she'll end up in ACF are pretty slim.  But that doesn't matter because I was able to help. 

Can we be praying for next year's freshmen?  I don't think it's too early.  How amazing would it be if the class of 2017 was a class that totally turned the campus towards Jesus?  For that to happen, we need to start praying for them now. 

Have an excellent day! 

~Adam