Happy Wednesday, everyone! I'm so excited to finally get
back to regularly scheduled programming. Shall we get to it?
When God Shows Up On
Campus: The Miraculous Birth
of InterVarsity in the Rocky Mountains
Don Everts, 2008, Lulu.com
Summary:
When God Shows Up On
Campus is, as the title suggests, the origin story of InterVarsity
Christian Fellowship (IVCF) chapters in the Rocky Mountain region of the United
States. If you're wondering what IVCF is, it's a similar type of ministry as
Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ), Navigators, or Baptist Student
Ministries (BSM). All three are ministries that serve college students on
secular college campuses. Specifically, IVCF is the American arm of a larger
international college student ministry known as the International Fellowship of
Evangelical Students (IFES), which started as a movement in the 1870s at the
University of Cambridge.
Why I Read It:
In my college days, I was a member of (and eventually
student leader within) the IVCF chapter on my school's campus. The author, at
the time a campus minister with IVCF at another school in the Rocky Mountain
Region, was speaking at a conference I attended in 2008. He talked about the
book. So I picked it up.
Opinion:
I have the heart of a researcher mashed together with the
soul of a writer, and I grew up watching my grandmother's painstaking process
of writing my family's history. By hand, in case you were wondering. Not on a
typewriter, and definitely not on a computer. That means when someone takes the
time to research and write the history of something I love and have
participated in, I get excited.
I didn't set this one aside because I lost interest. Life
happened, things came up and I needed to deal with them. I'm glad I found my
way back to this one, because it is a short, God-story packed book. People
pray, and God shows up in the best way possible. The prayers of a retired
missionary living in Denver opened the heart of a young man with no intention
of getting to know God, and the rest is history. Thousands of college students
take part in ministries on college campus in the Rocky Mountain Region now because
of it. Ten years ago, I was a part of it. It is, and should be, a story that
continues to inspire. My only complaint is that I would have liked it to be
longer and more indepth, but that's the researcher's heart.
What has been a sad and frustrating reality within the
American Church is that kids growing up in church are heavily pushed towards
Christian universities, because (somewhere along the line) parents become
convinced that public universities are going to suck the faith out of their
kids. While I've seen stories that would validate their fears, When God Shows Up On Campus makes the
case that God shows up wherever he is invited. Even on public university
campuses known by American Christians as the most godless places on the earth
(slight exaggeration there). If I were still in youth ministry, I would invest
in multiple copies so I could give this to the parents of high school students to
read before they and their kids enter into the process of choosing colleges to
apply to.
Conclusion:
Parents, God is moving on college campuses around the world
and in ways you cannot imagine. Trust your kids to know what God is telling
them about where they should be, and trust God to be working in those places.
And… pray. For your kids, for other people's kids, and for the hundreds of men
and women who work on staff with campus ministries like IVCF to reach these
students. It's hard work, but God is doing so much, and I'm sure they have
amazing God stories to share with anyone who asks.
52 Weeks of Books Challenge? What is that? What book is Cat reviewing next week?
Read up here! Link: http://www.catpollockwrites.com/p/blog-page_30.html
Comments
Post a Comment