Scattering Seeds

He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”  Mark 4:26-29

Early in November, the Toronto regional Undergraduate Student Ministry, International Student Ministry, and High School Ministry Staff got together for a time of fellowship and training. We started this time studying the above passage of scripture and spent some time reflecting on where are the places we have faithfully scattered seeds in our ministries. We focused more on the places where we have been faithfully scattering as opposed to paying too much attention to whether or not things have grown. As my staff partner and I reflected on how we were scattering and wanted to celebrate the following:

Tube Duels
A google search of “obscure sports” brought up the discovery of cardboard tube duels, where people duel in homemade cardboard armour with cardboard paper tubes! My staff partner, leadership team and I thought that this was a ridiculous idea, but one that could be a lot of fun to attempt as a new student outreach event, so we did. It was a lot of fun, brought in a bunch of new and old faces, and we had reporters from one of the campus newspapers come and participate and do an article about it! We began the event by putting people into teams and asking them to create armour that represented their team (there were 4: ninjas, robots, pirates, and knights). Then the dueling began! After a number of individual and team wounds, we announced a winner who won a cardboard replica of Thor’s hammer. After a quick clean up, we invited everyone over for burgers at the McGill house, where we had a pinata strung up across our driveway. 80% of the people who came to the duel came back to the house, and a few signed up to come to our fall retreat!

Fall Retreat
For the first time in 4 years we had a fall retreat (which happened outside of the city)! We took the students to a retreat centre at Jackson’s Point, and had a great time studying Scripture, growing in friendship, worshipping by the campfire and enjoying the outdoors! We had a good mix of new and existing group members and felt very blessed and refreshed by our time together!

Teaching Workshops
Responding to a need for more teaching and training, Lauren, a student leader who is in her last year on campus, and I developed some workshops to equip students with tools to grow in their leadership and spiritual development. These workshops include scripture study, an interactive art piece, prayer and a time to learn and share from experiences. We led 3 this term on invitation, being a welcoming community and how to discern calling and listen to God’s voice. We’ve been amazed as we have seen students come from different clubs on campus and different campuses to receive and be blessed by these workshops!