Posts Tagged northwestern
What We’re About
Posted by Eric Lonergan in Ministry Update on September 1, 2010
We just had our campus kickoff for NWC Sunday (Aug. 29th). The goal of this meeting was to cast some vision for reaching the campus this semester. I wanted to communicate something that would easily be remembered and was still motivating for reaching students for the sake of furthering the gospel. The simple summary of what I unpacked was that Campus Outreach is about a Movement of Leaders proclaiming a Message.
We want to define leadership in our ministry no differently than Jesus might have. We’re saying that as long as you desire to give your life away so that others might treasure Christ you are pointing yourself in the direction of leadership. A movement consists of a group of leaders committed to authentic community, and committed to helping each other give their lives away on the campus. Finally, the message that we are all about is the gospel. This is what Jesus wanted his apostles to proclaim (Luke 9:1-6 — this was the passage we read together). Whether we’re ministering to believers or not, the gospel is what we and they need to hear (Rom. 1:15, 1 Cor. 15:1-2).
We’re praying that our students would begin to see themselves fitting into this goal; that they’d become a group of leaders committed to a movement and proclaiming the gospel at NWC. Please join us in praying for the same thing.
Student Testimony – Nikki Seviola
Posted by COM Blogger in Summer Training Project, Testimony on July 14, 2010
Retreat…To Advance
Posted by Ken Currie in Ministry Update, Resources on May 3, 2010
Jesus gave his church marching orders in Matt. 28:18–20. The church is to be about the business of making disciples. All resources; people, time, money, plans, etc. must be given to this end. One of the temptations that established churches and ministries face is to maintain the status quo. The stark realities of suffering, death, heaven and hell do not leave room for coasting. The apostle Paul gives us the template when he says, “For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe” (1 Tim. 4:10). Christians know that they are already forgiven and righteous in God’s sight. Through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the work of gaining God’s acceptance is finished. Now the church moves out with God’s favor to accomplish God’s mission by God’s grace.
Most churches and Christian ministries have retreats. In this update you will read reports of several Campus Outreach Minneapolis retreats. There is an opportunity and a danger in “retreating.” The danger is that retreats can become routine. The goal of the retreat can become obscured in the planning and executing of details, the focus of recruiting, and ideas like, “we always have a retreat in the spring.” Like any other program, sometimes retreats can become an end and not a means to an end. The opportunity in taking retreats is the chance to focus on God, strengthen relationships within the body of Christ, and give unbelievers an “inside look” at the gospel.
Our leadership continues to evaluate every program in light of our vision of “building laborers on the campus for the lost world.” So, our aim in having retreats is ultimately to advance. We aim to advance worship for the name above every name in the hearts and minds of our staff and students, to advance vision for students on our campuses, to advance vision for the lost peoples of the world, to advance understanding of God’s Word and its relevance for all areas of life, and to advance relationships built around love, truth and accountability. We have found that taking a group of students to a place that is out of the regular mainstream of the campus with time for worship, teaching, sharing, prayer and free time yields fruit as students step back and consider the most important themes of life. We hope that our students experience what the apostle Paul said of his disciple Titus, namely, that he had been refreshed by his fellowship with the Corinthians.
As always, our staff team and I are deeply grateful for the investment of our supporters through prayer and financial giving to this ministry. May you be refreshed in the presence of the Lord this spring!
Download the full newsletter here:
Spring 2010 QTR Newsletter: DownloadSummer Leaders Retreat Recap
Posted by COM Blogger in Retreats, Summer Training Project on April 27, 2010
We took 80 students and staff to Camp Shamineau this past weekend for our summer leaders retreat. We were thankful that some of our friends from Michigan State that are going to be with us on the project could make the trip over to Minnesota for the weekend. We had talks on knowledge, vision, character, and skills of a leader. We also gave the team leaders on the project opportunity to develop their teaching skills as they taught workshops on how to teach someone to study the Bible, how to share the bridge diagram, how to lead a discipleship group, and how to have a one-on-one.
Our cross cultural project team was there as well and they were able to get some opportunities to share their vision for the trip to India this summer.
Overall it was a great retreat, and it seemed like the students came away equipped for their roles for the summer. One of the main things that was stressed is the truth that being a leader doesn’t mean you have it all together or that you have all of the right answers all of the time. We really just want our leaders to walk with God and do that in front of other people, showing them what it looks like to trust Christ on a daily basis, and serve the younger students they will be leading this summer. Please join us in praying that that end.
We will post a video of the weekend’s events sometime this week.
The Danger of People Pleasing
Posted by Elliot Stokes in Ministry Update on April 8, 2010
There are multiple sins I’ve detected in my heart over the past 3 years while doing college ministry. One that is particularly dangerous is “the fear of man” or people pleasing. I catch myself acting and speaking to gain people’s approval instead of obeying my conscience. Instead of saying the hard thing in a loving way to help them, I say the easy thing in a nice way so they’ll like me.
This is harmful for a number of reasons but it might be most dangerous because there are times when it can lead to obscuring the gospel. Charles Bridges notes this danger in his book The Christian Ministry, “The freeness of the gospel invitations, and the unreserved display of Evangelical privileges, are often fettered by the apprehension of giving indulgence to Antinomian licentiousness.” Meaning, people like me (and you) go “soft” in their presentation of the gospel to avoid being seen as “soft” on sin and appropriate Christian behavior.
I feel this fear when I teach in front of students at the college. I feel afraid to teach the gospel as freely and unreservedly as I might because people may think I am too weak to talk tough about sin and duty. And at this point you can probably see the danger. The big danger is that by obscuring the gospel you end up hurting (or even killing) people forever just because you want to be liked. That is a scary thought that helps me repent of my sin and look to Jesus so that I won’t mislead people for the sake of approval.
NWC BULL – Faking vs. Being
Posted by COM Blogger in Resources on March 28, 2010
Elliot Stokes shared at our only BULL of the semester about faking the Christian life vs. Being a Christian. He shared about two groups of people: the pretenders and the groupies and how we can fall into these categories easily if we forget what the gospel means for us.
Traveling Team – History of Missions
Posted by COM Blogger in Resources on March 28, 2010
The traveling team came to Northwestern this past week to share with some students from Bethel and Northwestern about some Christian college students who gave their lives to missions. They told stories of seven different groups of people who began praying or committed to going overseas while they were in college.
The Heart of a Servant Leader
Posted by Laura Watkins in Ministry Update on March 18, 2010
There are so many ways God grows us and one unexpected way God’s been convicting me of sin and causing me to love Christ more is through a collection of letters written by Jack Miller. Miller was a pastor, teacher, missions leader who influenced many throughout his life, and died in the 1990′s. After his death his daughter complied and organized many of the letters he wrote throughout his ministry into a book “The Heart of a Servant Leader.” I love this book! I marked it up with lots of notes to myself.
Here are a few highlights:
“Get a good view of the temporariness of life and – believe it or not – you will enjoy it more.” P. 32
“What does it mean to serve one another in love? Practically it means to labor to make others successful. Ask yourself: what can I do to make the other team members successful?” p. 146
“Forgive and forgive and forgive. Don’t let you emotional life be controlled by the sin you see in others.” P. 54
“[Impressing people] is a struggle that is intense, like tearing the flesh off of your own bones. Unless we resist with all our might, we fall again and again into our love of the praise of men or we are inwardly fearful of their disapproval.” P. 57
“Essentially I need to confess to God that I have a deep-seated need to protect and control my life and ministry. Once I acknowledge that hard, painful fact to Him, grace seems to stream into my life.” P. 66
That’s just a few highlights. I leave this man’s life wanting to pray a lot more, desiring deeper repentance over sin in my life, abounding love for other people, and commitment to give my life to the Gospel going forth.
Heaven
Posted by Elliot Stokes in Ministry Update on March 17, 2010
For some reason I continue to be more aware of how little I think of heaven. I am often more worried about my to-do list and all the little troubles of my day than I am the eternal paradise that awaits Christians. This quote has helped me put that in perspective and given me new desire to be affected by the thought of heaven:
“If there be so certain and glorious a rest for the saints, why is there no more industrious seeking after it? One would think, if a man did but once hear of such unspeakable glory to be obtained, and believed them what he heard to be true, he should be transported with the vehemency of his desire after it, and should almost forget to eat and drink, and should care for nothing else, and speak of and inquire after nothing else, but how to get this treasure. And yet people who hear of it daily, and profess to believe it as a fundamental article of their faith, do as little mind it, or labor for it, as if they had never heard of any such thing, or did not believe one word they hear.” -Richard Baxter, The Saints Everlasting Rest p.92
Ministering in Strengths
Posted by COM Blogger in Ministry Update on March 8, 2010
I have been thinking a lot lately about ministering in my strengths. In our ministry, it could be easy for some staff and/or students to get the wrong idea of what ministry looks like (that you have to do it a certain way in certain contexts or else it is not really ministry). I don’t want to be misunderstood; The principles of ministry that our ministry models and teaches should be carried out in every context possible, but that doesn’t mean that ministry has to look a certain way.
To give you an example of what I am talking about I will tell you what I have been thinking about. I am not incredibly gifted with striking up conversations with people in informal settings and talking about their life and relationship with God or what they believe about the gospel. I am more gifted at engaging people in a one-on-one setting over lunch or time in the Word or something like that. One potential response to this would be for me to avoid informal contexts or just breeze through them and wait for God to drop a one-on-one context into my life. However, a better response would be for me to seek to use the informal contexts to fuel a context where I could interact with someone over lunch or time in the Word. So I am now making it a point to use game nights, playing sports with guys, hanging out in the dorms, or other contexts like these to hopefully set up one-on-one times with guys throughout the week.
So my encouragement to whoever is reading this would be to figure out a context that you are gifted in engaging people with the truths of the gospel, then think for how you can use every context you are in to help you maximize the time you have in the context in which you are most gifted.
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