What we do…
This year at Central I am the lead staff on campus. I work alongside Ben who is in his first year with InterVarsity as an intern. Together, we work to see this vision statement become a reality at Central.
InterVarsity exists to see students and faculty transformed, the university campus renewed, and world changers developed.
We do this primarily in these ways:
‘Ohana groups. It is very easy to come and ‘consume’ Christianity for a short hour each week in a large social setting, and never let our faith shape the daily habits of our life. ’Ohana groups meet weekly to provide a smaller family setting that values the investment, encouragement and growth of each person.
Conferences, Retreats, and Mission Trips. Every year much of our time and energy is spent on planning, recruiting, and putting on high quality conferences and retreats that take students away from the campus for an intense and set-apart pursuit of God in community. We do one major conference each semester, with 2-3 smaller scale retreats in between. We also make available and promote a variety of short-term (spring break and two week summer) and summer-long mission trips. In my personal experience retreats, conferences, and mission trips have been responsible for most of my major steps forward in giving my life to the Lord and his purposes.
Large Group. Each Thursday we gather at campus center in the middle of UH to worship and learn as a family. Our hope is that we will be a community that comes together so that we may go out.
GIGs. Groups Investigating God. A GIG is simply an informal adventure into the stories of Jesus with a friend who does not follow him. GIGs take place in dorm rooms, coffee shops, cafeterias, and lounges all over campus. We train our students how to invite and foster discussion with friends who may be interested in taking a look at the stories of Jesus. We have found it to be quite rare that a student turns down this opportunity, no matter how disinterested they may seem. GIGs are the primary we we share the Gospel with our neighbors on campus.
Prayer. As staff and as students we take many opportunities to pray for the campus. Prayer is at the heart of all we do on campus.
Discipleship / Leadership development. This happens naturally through much of the aforementioned structures on campus. The reason being that most of what we do is student lead. This means that students are learning how to lead by actually leading! As staff, we do a lot of training, vision casting, managing, and assisting so that students can see their vision for campus come to fruition. The primary way this happens is through our Servant Team. Our Servant Team this year consists of twelve students (the previous largest team was 8, I believe) who oversee their respective Vintage Communities. We meet for 2 hours as a team every week to share stories of how God is working, pray, plan, and discern the direction we feel the Lord is leading us as a movement on campus.
