We just got home from our leader’s retreat!  We had about 55 students from the U of M come together to talk about vision for how to love, serve, and come alongside the people on our campus.  We get a glimpse of what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus after his death when his disciples set out on a mission to make this amazing gift of salvation through Christ known in the cities and contexts in which they were living.  It is amazing to see how the apostles of Jesus became faithful laborers from one city to another, proclaiming the reality of Jesus to many who had never heard of his mercy and salvation.  In spite of suffering and persecution, in spite of sin in the church, and in spite of conflict, the church continued to grow. It grew in the context of remarkable love among the Christians in Jerusalem, frequent miracles, and the courageous proclamation of the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit. The word of God continued to increase in spite of widespread opposition.  Many people became Christians. The lower ranks of the priesthood numbered in the thousands, of whom many were poor and may have first been attracted to Christians by their charity, under the guidance of the newly appointed deacons.  The acts of the apostles’ lives were documented in the book of Acts in the bible, where we read in Acts 6:7: “And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.”

There would not be any students in the picture above if the reality of Acts 6:7 was not possible.  If the word of God did not continue to increase and if Jesus’ disciples never multiplied or became obedient to faith in Jesus Christ, there would not be a Campus Outreach staff team and there would not be 55 students from the U of M desiring the word of God to increase on their campus.

Two Campus Outreach Indianapolis staff team guys, Brett Barnes and Patrick Lewis, flew into Minneapolis to tell our students in Minneapolis how God has been raising up laborers through the campuses in Indianapolis.  They widened our vision from the college campus to what God is doing around the world.  There have been many students who have been discipled through Campus Outreach who are now living among other people groups in the nations of the world, coming alongside people to gently share this message of Jesus.  An amazing story Brett shared was when he went with a team to bring bibles (the word of God) to a native tribe in Peru who had never heard the story of Jesus before.  After handing out a bible to a man, the man read about Jesus and immediately asked, “Will you stay and teach us?”  They went to another city to deliver more bible and share the message of Jesus, and the chief tribe of the people group said that they’ve always known there is a God who provides their sun, their food, shelter and water, but they’ve never known how to have a relationship with Him.  The chief said he would deliver the bibles and the story of Jesus to his people immediately.”

Its amazing to think that all of the people in the world are souls.  Souls hungry and longing to be in deep, intimate relationship with their creator.  But all our souls live in different cities within different contexts.  We were challenged to be creative, take risks, trust God, and pray for bigger things within our college campuses.   I (Katie) had so much fun dreaming over our lunch break with freshman girls about creative ways to spend time with other girls in the dorms in the hopes of sharing our lives and Jesus with them.

I love the hearts of all the students who came, full of humility, faith, and desire to love others.  We spent about 1.5 hours hearing all of them confess their struggle to die to selfish desires and live with vision and purpose while they are at college.  Many of them shared their ideas and visions to give their lives away to love and serve their non-believing friends on the college campus.  Many of them suggested moving into different apartments, houses, frats and sororities in different spots all over campus to reach different types of people.  These students are ready to give up comfort and to go out into their context- the college campus- and live their lives among those who have never heard or seen the life of Jesus Christ.

(left: Bethel staff & students)

We were also blessed to have students and staff from Bethel and Northwestern College at our retreat to pray and learn.  Its like being in a sport.  You can’t play a good game without strategy, practice, team unity, and belief in what you are trying to accomplish.  As Christians, we need to think strategically for how to love other people.  We need to dream more about how to serve others by being interested in them, by caring about their lives, by having fun with them, and by sharing our own weaknesses and the gift of Christ with them.  No Christian is perfect- that’s because we were and are all sinner’s in the first place!  But am amazing, merciful savior has rescued us, and we want him to rescue many others- for God’s glory and their joy.

(Right: Northwestern Staff & students)

Pastor John is now on twitter – tweeting away

http://www.buzzardblog.com/buzzard_blog/2008/11/thinking-biblic.html

It’s amazing to see the gospel going forth to all the nations. I want to train up men that would be the “goers” for world evangelism!

This message was from our pastor Tom Steller –

The Kachin are a “christianized people” with an amazing history and so many wonderful evidences of grace and God’s preservation.  But there is much nominalism and shallow understanding of the Gospel among so many of them.  Bethlehem continues to have an open door to influence them.  God helped me as I preached to over 10,000 Kachin on Sunday (see photo).  I challenged them to remain faithful to the Scriptures which took Ola Hanson 38 years to translate for them.

One of the highlights was seeing 2,899 Kachin get baptized!  It was incredible to see, and perplexing at the same time.  How many really understood what was happening?  It’s dangerous to be part of a culture that says, “To be Kachin is to be Christian.” Aids and alcoholism is a scourge to many.  But there is a fervent devotion to Christ among a significant number.  They are strategically positioned to reach many unreached peoples in India and China as well as the millions of Burmese Buddhists in their own country.

One of the joys I had was to meet with the man who has devoted countless hours to translating Grudem’s Systematic Theology into Kachin (see attached picture).  He’s finished with the first draft (all hand written). Now he will enter it into the computer and prepare it for publication.  Pray that he doesn’t lose this one and only copy!  Theological books in Kachin are very rare. So this book has the potential of filling a huge void.

Kachin being baptized Kachin being baptized Pastor Tom Stellar preaching Translating Systematic Theology