This NSO was a special one and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Mesa
College saw a lot of great stuff on campus and off campus. The hope of our
organization is that these students pick up a passion for Jesus that transcends
their college years and carrying on to any place the Lord leads them to
influence. What sometimes seems like a distant reality or fleeting thought in
seeing world changers developed through the mission on campus became a reality
during our first 3 weeks of school. I wanted to highlight a couple of aspects
of God’s movement on the campus and God’s work off campus in order to show a
bit of what Jesus is doing with and through us at San Diego Mesa College.
On Campus Ministry,
Mesa College
New Student Outreach or NSO is perhaps our biggest outreach to the
campus of the year. We try to “blanket” the campus with our group’s name and to
do this we had a table on campus Monday through Thursdays, 10-2p for the first
3 weeks. We collected over 100 new contacts, we shared the gospel many times
through the four circle diagram, we creatively invited students on the campus
to engage the Word of God, we held sporting events (one of our student leaders
highlighted that we had the world’s smallest game of ultimate Frisbee) and a
game day, we invited people in to service projects, we sweated and doubted our
effectiveness, we pressed in to people’s lives to hear about their perspective
on life and faith, and we saw fruit.
There were so many conversations we
had. We had spiritual conversations with Christians and non-Christians, fiery
believers and luke warm nominal believers. We discussed everything from organic
farming to suffering in our world to God’s answer to restoring His creation,
Jesus. I just want to share one testimony that outlines the types of things
that Jesus was doing on the campus.
It was day 1 of our NSO
and I had been in a meeting with my fellow SSD staff. Our students had gone to
set up for the very first day, which is so awesome in of itself. Just think
about it, these students were setting up to share the gospel with their campus.
Later in the day, the staff joined the students, but before we me up we did
what we normally do, we walked around Mesa and prayed over it. We were asking
God to show us what He was doing and connect us with the people he wanted to
connect us with. After we prayed this, we joined the students with about 40 minutes only for us to participate in the outreach. So that
is when I met Tom (not his real name). Through the course of our conversation I
was able to share the gospel with Tom and it was clear that he was a Christian who
was feeling the damage of sin in his own life and wanted more. I took that
moment to ask him if He wanted to come back to following Jesus. To my shock (I
definitely get my doubt on at times), he said he wanted to re-commit to
following Jesus again! It was so surreal.
I’m reminded of that scripture that
the harvest is ripe and this was even apparent off campus. We actually saw 5 students recommit or commit their lives to Jesus for
the first time, but this wasn’t all that the Holy Spirit was doing. We also saw
more lives get touched off campus through the Mesa crew.
Mesa Goes out into
San Diego
As part of our outreach to the
campus we wanted to invite the students of the campus in to some of the things
we were doing all year. We called these outings: “community exposure” events. So
we took them to a local homeless shelter we are serving at all year and also a
local community center in City Heights.
We had a small gathering of mostly
our leaders go to the community center, but there at the community center we
had such a diving appointment. We were just checking the place out, playing with
kids, when we met a young Muslim woman.
She was brought to us by the founder of the center and we were told that she
needed prayer because of family issues. So, we prayed for her. Our prayers were
welcomed and appreciated but nothing substantial happened, at least that we
could tell. It was after praying where I realized that this girl was open. I basically shared about Jesus, the forgiveness of sin
through Him, and God’s love. Then, I asked her if she wanted Jesus. Again, to
my shock, she non- chalantly said yes!! It was then that one of our student
leaders shared more about what that meant and this girl prayed to receive Jesus
right there!!! I only learned later of the magnitude of her choice to follow
Jesus. It is no light decision, but it seemed so easy because of the love
invested in her already from Jesus through that center. All we did was show her,
as she put it, an “open door.”
Our next excursion took us to God’s
Extended Hand, a local homeless shelter. It was about 2 hours before I planned
to meet up with the students at the gathering point to head down there when Sy,
a student leader, asked if I would be willing to give a 30 min talk down at the
shelter. I was struck but saw the opportunity as God’s divine providence; even
though I had never given a 30 min talk from the bible in front of this big of
an audience. After praying about what I would say, I just felt the Lord wanted
me to preach the gospel. My life verse came to mind (Romans 5:8) and I just
went for it. God gave me an intro and I went right for it proclaiming the
mighty demonstration of God’s love. I shared a lot of the deep issues along my
broken journey to and with Jesus. Finally, at the end of the talk I invited the
people in the room to raise their hand if they wanted to join the wedding party
in heaven (Mathew 22). I don’t remember how many but more than 5 people
raised their hands to receive Jesus. One of my favorite pieces of
feedback was that this one man was stoked that a real person was sharing. This
was so amazing and truly hard to believe. But, it really did happen.
And I have a question for you. What do you think this does in shaping the perspectives of a missional
life for our students?
