Renew the Campus

A few months ago I posted a blog post entilted 'Transform'. This was a three part blog post that was dedicated to examinaing the Intervarsity Mission Statement. This is part two of that post.
The first post can be read here.

The mission statement again is: Transform the lives of students and faculty, Renew the campus, and Change the world. This is the mission statement of the ministry that I have decided to commit a large portion of my life to, and I want to ensure that the ministry is actively moving towards all of these things. In this section I will examine the statement, renew the campus.

In just two days Intervarsity students will sit down in small groups of approximately 5 students, and discuss being a Christian with their campus mates. It will be freshman through seniors. It will be men and women. It will Christians, and non-Christians. I for one am very excited. This is something that our campus has never done before. We are working to get the campus talking to each other, as opposed to a 'teacher'. There were more than 65 people that committed to inviting someone to this event, and leading them into a healthy discussion well.

Another number which excited me was that there are 153 people that are involved in Intervarsity Small Groups this year. That is 153 that are being taught/prepared/equipped and then commissioned to 'Go and make disciples' That is so exciting to know. That is more students that are involved in campus ministries at some schools. That is enough people to have a small church. That is enough people to get the attention of our campus mates.

The last number I want to talk about is that there is roughly 300 students involved in Intervarsity's ministry. Now for a long time I have presented this number in a negative way. In a campus of 20,000 that means that there is only 1.5% of the campus involved in this ministry. This was a number that really upset me. I figured that 1% seems so small compared to grand scheme of everything. I felt completely insignificant. But recently I examined this number more closely.

It is true that 1.5% is not alot of the campus, but 1.5% of the entire population would be 120,000,000 (120 million). So 1.5% makes a big difference when dealing with big numbers. Not to mention that there is an Intervarsity student involved in each academic college and program on campus. Not to mention that there is at least 1 student living in each of the on campus residence halls. This means that these students are spread out all over the campus. Lastly, if all 300 students were to congregate in some of the dining areas on campus, it would break fire code. It would certainly be enough to get peoples attention.

So rather than present this statistic in a negative manner, I am proud to say that Intervaristy is helping to renew the campus. So far we have changed 1.5% of our campus. I am eager to see how God will renew the remaining students on campus through the next few years. So I say with great joy in the Lord Christ Jesus, 1.5 down, 98.5 to go!