Road Trip!

Hello, friends!

Happy November to you all. It's Thanksgiving season, or if you ask some of the radio stations around here, it's Christmas season already. =0).

We've been working hard out here in Mid-Missouri. ACF is doing well; our numbers are down but we have a really solid core of students who love Jesus and are learning how to lead. International Christian Fellowship (ICF) is doing well too; Megan has been having so much fun gathering students and building a core. On Halloween we had 20 or so students over to carve pumpkins. =0). I've also been having a blast working with the ladies of Nursing Christian Fellowship (NCF) at Mizzou. We've had about a dozen or so ladies at each of the bible studies and the leaders are definitely women who love Jesus and love nursing. As the son of a nurse it warms my heart to see the next generation in action. 

I could spend much more time talking about each of the campuses where work IS happening (including Columbia College, where Charis continues to do good work in planting the chapter there) but this weekend was kind of special becuase we got to spend time on campuses where there ISN'T any InterVaristy work.

Earlier this semester, our Area Director proposed what he called a "discipleship road trip." The goal was to get students from St. Louis and Columbia, where all of our student work in the state currently is, on the road and scouting new campuses to see if there was potential to start new InterVaristy work there. Our goals were 3 fold. 1) We wanted to scout new campuses, 2) We wanted to give students a chance to be included in our planting vision, and 3) We wanted to show potential staff candidates what it would look like for them to be a part of the team in Mid-Missouri.

Friends, we had ourselves a PACKED weekend. Students arrived in Columbia around 10am where we started with some vision casting and training. From there we spent the first part of the afternoon scouting Mizzou then we broke up into 3 teams and went to Lincoln University (Jefferson City), Westminster College (Fulton), and Central Methodist University (Fayette). We came home around 6 for debrief and more teaching before heading to La Casa Leong for games and fellowship. Sunday morning we went to church together then spent our last chunk of time scouting Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, MO.

Looking back, I'm still not sure of what to make of our time together. On the one hand, we did get to scout some colleges and it feels like there may be some momentum at Lincoln University to potentially explore more. Students did get to see more of Mid-Missouri and in general, I think students had a good time. However, I'm not sure how well we were able to cast vision for what is happening outside of St. Louis and get potential staff excited about the possibility of moving out here to be a part of the team. Still, I'm glad it happened and I'm glad that students were able to partner with us to scout some campuses that we may not have gotten to this semester otherwise.

One last thought about scouting is that as I've scouted more and more campuses, I've learned more about what constitutes "success" and "failure" in terms of scouting. Early in my staff career, I though a successful scouting trip was only one that led to a chapter plant. If I didn't find students who wanted to start a group or administrators who felt like we were absolutely needed on campus, it felt like that scouting trip was a failure. Now I see that God speaks both in the affirmative as well as the negative. There are something like a dozen campuses within an hour of Mizzou (Columbia College, Stephens College, 2 Moberly Area Community Colleges, Central Methodist, State Fair Community College, Central Missouri University, Westminster College, William Woods, Lincoln University, etc.). Our team would potentially kill ourselves trying to get to all those campuses at once. Sometimes when we scout, the best thing we can hear is a "no, not yet" from God, which is a really freeing thing.

So friends, please be praying for us as we continue the discernment of where to plant next. There are a lot of options but we want to be seeking out Jesus in how we are planting.

Have an excellent day!

~Adam