Covenant Seminary - New Student Orientation

In an effort to do my best at my job I enrolled in some classes at Covenant Seminary. I hope to become better equipped to work with the sharpest minds in the university world. Today was new student orientation. I met a lot of interesting people, from those who came to seminary straight out of undergrad to those who are starting seminary after leaving an executive position in a billion-dollar industry.
I am highly encouraged by the caliber of student at Covenant and their desire to follow God even into a seemingly fuzzy calling (not everyone is exactly sure what they are there for but they are certain that God wants them there now). I am especially impressed with the opening talks that emphasized 'community' as one of the major essentials in growing as a Christian. It is primarily through community that the depth of our relationship with God can really be challenged, stretched and developed even more. Through community we see our weaknesses as well as strengths and giftings; community also demonstrates and challenges us to love one another - despite our sinful natures.
Classes start this coming Thursday and with my funding at a point that puts me off campus and not working with the students - I am thinking of taking a few more classes than I had planned to get a step up in preparation for next year. I also plan to begin work on the worship leader curriculum I want to put the SLU worship team through. As always, I will keep you all posted!

---- Planned Classes ----
-Praise & Worship in the Church
-Bible Overview & Background
-Spiritual & Ministry Development
-Preparation and delivery of Sermons (? maybe - depends on course load)

Prayer Request - Fall Conference & NSO

Please be praying for the upcoming:

Fall Conference : 10/6-10/8 Lisa Espineli Chinn who spoke at Urbana '03 & the Urbana '06 worship team will be ministering to students @ Camp Windermere from SLU, Wash U and International Ministry areas.

NSO @ SLU & WashU : The next couple of weeks will be New Student Outreach at SLU & Wash U. At WashU on Sept 1 parts of the Urbana Worship Team in STL will be helping to give a picture of diversity in worship. Please be praying that the right message gets communicated and that students take interest in both NSO opportunities.

God's Grace

So I've caught a very annoying cold here in MN. It is making me dizzy and a little off during the worship sets. Beyond the cold however, I honestly made quite a few major mistakes tonight that were blatently obvious. We had some reflection time arranged for the students and I was playing an instrumental with some of the other members and man... totally started out in the wrong key and had numerous technical difficulties dealing with the sustain and shape of my guitar's tone (which in hindsight I really should have worked on earlier more).
At the end of the set I felt like I had let the team down. I am however, very grateful for our worship director Daryl Black. He encouraged me to get past the mistakes I made and even said it was a good thing and all part of the learning curve. As someone who pours all they have into their work and craft, I greatly appreciated his encouraging words.
We will be returning home tomorrow after playing one more set in the morning. Please pray that it goes well and that I recover from this sickness (especially as I have a donor meeting on Saturday).

A Relaxing Work Environment

One of the things many people dream about is a great work environment. One that is relaxing but allows you to focus without too many distractions. The camp we're at in MN is exactly that. It's a great place to be where you can easily find places to enjoy the beauty of the world God created.
The retreat so far is going very well. We got a lot of work done the past couple days and we're enjoying a short little break now before dinner. Leading worship as a team has never been more fun. I think we're the most together we've been so far and we're still getting better. It has also been great leading the students, who are enjoying their chapter camp, in encountering God through music. It's a much more diverse crowd than I thought it would be initially. They even have some international students that are joining us from as far away as China! One, from Japan, just because a Christian through InterVarsity less than a year ago. There are over a hundred students from over 15 different schools around the MN area. It reminds me a lot of Catalyst but a little different in terms of how they do things here.
Please pray for me as I've caught a nasty cold!
Gotta run but I'll keep you all posted!

Praise & Worship in MN

Today at 6pm I'm leaving for MN with the rest of the Urbana Worship team. We'll be leading praise at a worship conference there for a number of students from the MN regional area. We're also planning to use the time as a team retreat to both spend some time in prayer together as well as have a long focused time to practice & get ready for this December. Please keep us in your prayers!

Impacting the Youth

Here are some excerpts from a student's testimony @ the youth retreat run by some of our college-aged InterVarsity members:

"Before I came to ETR my relationship with God was in one of those spiritual pits. I based our relationship off of rules and laws. I followed all those rules without really loving God and understanding what those rules were for. I was basically raised up as a christian so i felt like there was nothing else to learn. Therefore i was in one of those pits again and just ignored God completely. I know some ppl might think im kinda young for this experince, but i say God is mysterious and his plans are unpredictable...

Jean and Jon came to share to us about relationships and how we can use that to help built up our relationship with God. Jon was talking about how rules dont even matter with God. I was confused because i always based my relationship with God off of rules...

I walked around outside, kinda questioning God. Then all of a sudden i screamed, "WHERE ARE YOU LORD!" "WHATS NEW!!!!!!!" "WHY ARE YOU LEAVING ME IN THIS PIT!" "I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME!" I wept outloud, as tears poured onto my hands, i felt as if God commanded me to whipe my tears off and go back to the worship room. So i slowly troutted to the worship room. They just finished singing hymns when Jon said "if anybody wants to talk to us 1-1 then do so" I got the courage to ask him if i could talk to him. We waited until everybody left and we walked up the trail. Once we were out of site i just started weeping, trying to explain what i am feeling. I told him how i feel like theres nothing new. Jon prayed with me and we talked about how right now i dont need to have knowledge...but a strong open relationship with God.

The following days i was starting to fall back into routine. I started to notice and felt bad. I asked stacey and she said that u need to be doing ur quiet times. I praise God for doing wonders in my sister. So just last night I had the longest quiet time i think im my life. I just prayed to God, sang worship songs, and just really had a spiritual time with God."

--- A Seventh Grade Student

Again, none of this work would be possible without your support. Thank you!

Thank You!

Here is a letter from the organizer of the retreat Jean and I ran workshops at. None of this would be possible without your support as donors so thanks!

======= Asian American Youth Conference =======
Jean and Jon,

I cannot even being to express how thankful I am that you came to help out with the camp. I know entering in, there wasn't much of an expectation, but God used your words, even if it was a small group. I know the workshops really challenged a lot of the youth's hearts and they now learn its more about God wanting their hearts than just obeying law after law and you showed them how great it was to worship God in many ways other than the standard. I know you guys sacrificed a lot of time, energy to help prepare, and for that Im so grateful. You did work in furthering God's kingdom and putting a seed of growth in each person that went's hearts. Thank you for your passion in speaking, and I know God will do great things in the future.

Prayer updates!

Thanks for your prayers! Here are some updates:

Urbana - the team has been growing together very well even as spiritual attacks continue from paralyzing attacks that sent a member to the ER to more subtle attacks on security / identity. It is amazing to see God at work in all of us despite the spiritual warfare that we see going on in each other's lives.

Funding - after the first month of focused fundraising work I am at 15%! Thank you for your prayers! Do to a miscommunication - I need to be at 90% funding to be on campus full time, 80% is part time. Please pray that funds continue to go up.

Recoveries - two friends are out of the hospital from both cancer & labor complications. Thank you for praying!!

Planning for '06-'07 - first exec meeting with student leaders went extremely well and we established the small group structures. Tonight and tomorrow we will work on digging a little more into the details of our campus strategy. Also praise God for blessing us with what has been called 'the most thought through' campus strategy our supervisor has seen in a while.

Students Learn 3 Ways to Live

Too often as Christians we fall into the trap of thinking that the ultimate objective is to become a better person. Church becomes a self-help group to 'get my life back on track' or 'get my God time for the week'. Recently, I spoke at an Asian American Youth Conference with Jean Kung: IVCF staff @ Wash U. The conference was hosted by Chinese Christian Church in STL and organized by one of the IV SLU students. We challenged the students to have a relationship with God; the real God, not the system of laws or rules that they have to follow that we often percieve as God. Friday we used marriage and dating as an analogy to approach Tim Keller's "Three Ways to Live":

1) irreligious: life apart from God; 'I am the master of my own life'
2) religious: seeing God as law; 'I obey so I am accepted'
3) gospel: worshiping the true God; 'I am accepted so I obey'

Over 30 people attended the conference including counselors / small group leaders. Jean and I returned the next day to lead them in a workshop; there had been a lot of teaching the other days in the retreat so we decided to give them a little practical workshop time to learn how to connect with God in ways that perhaps they hadn't. We led them in a time of seeking God from where they are including listening to Him, looking at how he's working in your life now, and just spending time with Him in general.

After the workshops many students had some great questions and struggles that I believe are excellent signs that they are well on their way to owning their faith. Thank you for your prayers!