SIUE Leadership Team
Our SIUE leadership team meeting! We spent last night talking about the importance of discipleship.
Leadership Overnight
You may remember that at the beginning of every semester, we have a 24-hour retreat with our student leaders from the campuses our team works on. This semester, spring of 2010, we had around 150 student leaders gather from SIUE and other schools all over the St. Louis Metro Area!
We heard from a great speaker on eternal perspective, the importance of discipleship, and received practical training in discipleship. As part of the leadership overnight, we had about 25 students in our home on Saturday night to learn more about our international partnership in East Asia—we spent time talking about what it means to be a World Christian our whole life long and how they can continue to be involved in moving the Gospel forward in East Asia by going, giving, sending and praying! We continue to see students’ hearts burdened to go to the world—what a cool thing it is to see God at work this way!
The Source
The Source is our large-group weekly meeting on the SIUE (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) campus. Every Thursday night at 8pm, over 100 college students gather on campus—we sing, have a speaker, and our awesome student MC makes the whole night really fun! The Gospel is shared every week here, and students really love it. We often talk about the Source as being the “front door” to or the “face” of our ministry on campus…it’s often the first thing people come to, and it serves as a way for people to connect with others, get involved with one of our on-campus small groups, etc!
Getting ready to start!
We have a great student band that leads worship every week!
Around 100 students hear the Gospel here through our speakers every week. We always have new people, and always have people who don’t know the Lord yet.
Hanging out after the Source!
Making new friends!
The Denver Christmas Conference
The Denver Christmas Conference is a ministry highlight for us every year! Around 1,000 students from our movements in six states make the road-trip out to Denver for a week to worship God, receive ministry training and serve the city of Denver.
I don’t know why the Lord chooses to work the way He does at conferences. However, it really does seem like the momentum of 1,000 people gathered in the same place surrendering their lives to Jesus helps college students make categorical leaps in their walks with Christ. Two students from our 40-person group placed their faith in Christ, and another five committed to giving at least a year of their lives in full-time ministry after college. So exciting!
One of the most powerful things at DCC is seeing 1,000 college students worshiping together in song!
We heard from great speakers all week.
Students spend one day of the conference serving the city of Denver--they share Christ on college campuses and partner with local churches to help them serve in neighborhoods where they minister!
Our group from the Metro East!
East Asia
As you may know, one of the unique opportunities we had just a couple of months ago was to travel to one of our international partnership locations in East Asia. Our partnership with this city is relatively new—our movements in St. Louis has been sending short- and long-term laborers here for the last two years. It was exciting to go see people who we knew when they were students now reaching college students in this city!
Us and Devin and Casey (two interns that work with us) at one of the famous landmarks in this city!
Abbie standing in a famous square in this city.
Almost every day that we were there, we would walk down to the local market to eat “street food” for breakfast or lunch. It was so yummy!
A stone carving depicting part of the history of this country at a national monument.
JB eating dinner and sharing the Good News with some students.
Some pictures of us standing on a rather famous wall just 45 minutes from the city we were in. It was quite cold!