City/Script
“…it was one of the most moving moments of my staff life.”
Every May, the Inter-Varsity fellowships from across Ontario come together to intensively study scripture of Mark’s Gospel or Genesis for one week. This year marked the 7th anniversary and was my third year attending the conference.
Up until this year, city/script was one of those conferences that Inter-Varsity as an organization was excited about, but not one I was excited about. I thought it was great, but found myself much more excited by other ministries and conferences of Inter-Varsity. That changed this year.
This year, we were amazed as God doubled our enrollment for the conference! Last year we had just over 120 people, and 3 Mark 1 studies, 1 Mark 2 study and 1 Genesis study. This year we had 5 Mark 1 studies, 2 Mark 2 studies and 1 Genesis study and had 188 people enroll!
My staff role at this conference was to find ways for the students to creatively process what God was doing in their hearts and lives that week. I partnered with my friend, Dave, who is Campus Staff at OCAD University. Together we visioned for and set up a studio space with 6 stations and various mediums for students to creatively express how God was speaking to them through the Scriptures they were studying. We also organized a coffeehouse, in order for students to share stories and display the artwork that was created, that happened toward the end of the week. I loved this role! I’m sure I would have loved teaching scripture but I loved using my creative gifts for this ministry.
But the one thing that made me rethink how I felt about this conference happened when a student in my Mark study decided to accept Jesus as his Saviour. This student was part of a group of students from the University of Ottawa. He came as a non-Christian and left on fire for God! Throughout the week he would ask a lot of thought provoking questions that made the long-term Christians really come to terms with what they believed. His skepticism could be easily perceived by anyone in the room. Then, after a gospel meditation, something shifted for this student. Something HUGE. He left the room, then came back visibly shaken, and then shared what had happened, and how he had just gone outside and asked God if He was real. This student then confessed that he was terrified about how God would answer. What followed next was one of the most moving moments of my staff life, as this student shared what was happening for him, I watched as students from his campus who were dispersed around the room all began praying for him. Then, students from my campus and others who had just met this student 4 days prior, began to envelop him in hugs and prayers. The emotions were high in the room, as people surrounded this student. Soon as communal prayer time started, and the room began to pray for each other and for this student. We then took a break, and Dan our study leader (and Campus Staff and housemate of the above mentioned student) asked the staff in his study what to do next; to push forward in the text or spend time in prayer in our campus groups. We opted for the prayer time. When I ran into Dan later that night, and asked what happened during their prayer time, he shared that this student accepted Jesus as his Saviour! This happened mid-week, so for the rest of the study we got to see this student transformed as God’s fire burned bright in him! This student shared his testimony during the coffeehouse, and a clip of it can be seen here.
Seeing this student’s transformation not only moved me, but my students as well, and created in them a desire to be a community where stories like this happen, and to be the kind of community that welcomed this student into God’s family.
A Semester in Review
Before I launch into some of the amazing things that have happened this summer and fall, I want to share a few highlights from earlier this year.
The Ryerson Tree:
“If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.” – Romans 11:17-21
On March 5th, GTA Ministry Director and my supervisor, Jamie came to teach scripture at Ryerson. She taught from Romans 9-11 and focused her teaching on the grafting of new branches. As part of the application of this text, I made a tree with many branches and the students made leaves and wrote words to describe themselves. Some leaves were adorned with broad words like “nerd” and “mature student”; others were more descriptive denoting programs and ethnic identities. Once the students finished their leaves they took turns pasting them onto the tree. Once everyone put their leaves on the tree; we took some time to look at the tree and see how we were represented. We then, started noting what was not represented on our tree; students noted specific students that hadn’t been around for a few weeks; as well as programs of study like “nursing” and “engineering” and then groups of people like “international students”, and “LGBTQ”. We began to write these people down on the blank spaces on our tree and began to pray for ways we could begin to reach out to these people.
The follow week, Ainsley, a Ryerson Inter-Varsity alumna, came to teach scripture. She taught from Romans 12-13; and focused her teaching on Spiritual Giftings. As part of the application of the text, we spent some time doing a Spiritual Gifts test. Ainsley made leaves of each of the spiritual gifts and asked us to write our names down on our top two spiritual gifts; and then attach them to the tree. We took some time to look at the tree after everyone had placed their leaves on it; and see the gifts that we bring to the community and how these gifts can help us reach those who were not yet part of the community.
Tell Me A Story:
What happens when you ask University students to take a break from studying and tell you a story? You find yourself with a community board game.
One thing the students of the Ryerson Inter-Varsity group love is playing games. So we took something our community loves and decided to invite students, staff and visitors to the campus to help us create a board game by telling us a story in words or pictures. We took their online and in person submissions and used them to create game cards. Once the game was completed, we invited people to come and play the game with us and made copies of the game to be sold to fundraise for student scholarships for Inter-Varsity’s regional spring and summer conferences.
Moses, one of my graduating New Media students, clocked more than 50 hours on this series of events by creating all of the web and print promotional materials; postering around the campus and taking risks inviting friends from his program to participate in the events! Moe had this to say, “I enjoyed the creative exploration and experimentation involved when working on the print and web design for Tell Me A Story. The time we had creating surrealist artwork with the Ryerson campus was fun and helped me grasp a deeper understanding of IVCF’s passion for community building. I loved playing the game and seeing all the beautiful artwork that had been made.” (Check out Moe’s website here.)
We still have some copies of the game left, so if you are interested in learning more, please click here.
Year End Banquet
We feasted on a variety of homemade and store bought treats and said good bye to some of our Extraordinary Kingdom Leaders at our Year End Banquet. One of the unexpected highlights was when we invited people to share their answers to the questions: How did you find Inter-Varsity and what caused you to stay? Each person in the room shared their story, even the alumni and special guests, the room was filled with God’s wonder!
The Arch 