I dont know how many of you wonder what I do all day as a staff worker. I cant give a very succinct explanation, mostly because it changes everyday. But I read an article from intervarsity.org and thought it gives a good taste of what my work is like...
Renewing the Campus by Jonathan Rice January 27, 2009
While hope leads to change, change doesn’t necessarily lead to hope. Despite the educational opportunities offered by technology and the greater political influence won by students in recent years, today’s collegians are still in desperate need of hope and their campuses in protracted need of spiritual renewal.
InterVarsity is seeding the campus with hope by sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, and this message is leading to not only the fundamental transformation of individual lives but also to the spiritual renewal of American campuses.
Since the founding of InterVarsity’s first chapter at the University of Michigan in 1938, our Fellowship’s staff, students, and faculty have been faithfully building witnessing communities that bring hope and renewal to campuses. And despite the ubiquitous influences of secularization and anti-Christian rhetoric at many of today’s schools, InterVarsity is still seeing remarkable growth in the number of non-Christians students choosing to become Christians (28% over the past five years).
Such growth may in some part come from our campus staffs’ understanding of the social, moral, and spiritual issues facing college students today—an understanding that gives our staff the ability to empathetically connect with this generation’s students and the compassion to courageously share with them the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Sharing the gospel on campus is InterVarsity’s primary mission. Through God’s Spirit, the gospel transforms lives and renews campuses. “We can’t renew campuses by ourselves,” says InterVarsity’s president Alec Hill. “Campuses are renewed only as we cooperate with the Spirit of God.”
InterVarsity renews campuses by reaching out with the gospel to students of every ethnicity. At Harvard University we have eight different chapters, some ethnic-specific, for graduate and undergraduate students. In December 2008, these chapters together sponsored an on-campus lecture series by Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright. During this series, a student from China decided to become a Christian. He now attends an InterVarsity small group Bible study. Imagine how God may lead this Chinese Christian in ministry when he returns to his homeland.
We renew campuses by nurturing healthy relationships between our chapters and the various student organizations, administrative offices, and cultural communities in the academy and by demonstrating our biblical values in those relationships.
At Mesa Community College in San Diego, an InterVarsity staff member invited the college’s president to visit an AIDS awareness exhibit that our Fellowship co-sponsored with another Christian organization, World Vision. The college’s president was so impressed with InterVarsity’s work that she said, “InterVarsity impacted our college and moved it to acquire a heart. InterVarsity’s Impact One tent touched the campus and it touched me. We are not the same.”
