To Overflow or Not to Overflow, That is the Question

We’ve been doing this to answer the question: What does it mean to be “Overflowing with Sacrificial Love?” It means choosing to leave your comfort zone so you’re not just overflowing all over your Christian buddies. So we’re learning to be a fellowship on the move. It also means risk, as you leave your comfort zone, love, and sacrifice. But students are choosing to risk so they can be a part of what God is up to on campus.

At NSO Training and our first Large Group Outreach, we headed out to ask students if we could pray for them. God definitely went before us. One pair of pray-ers encountered a student who was desperately lonely and homesick, doing laundry in her dorm. My partner, Brandy, and I got to pray with a student whose mother had passed away 3 years ago to the day. Many students were worried about classes or tests. We got to sacrifice our time and energy to love them through listening ears, comforting words, and prayer.

Positive Feedback

Our Small Groups are growing. Small Group Leaders were faithful to help with fellowship outreaches, to do their own smaller outreaches, and to follow up with students who expressed interest in InterVarsity. One new student said to one of our Small Group Leaders, “When you invited me, I thought, ‘Sure, I’ll hang out with some Christians. They’re safe.’ But y’all really live this out. I felt welcomed. I can’t go to your Small Group, but I’m going to make sure I come to one of the weekly meetings.”

When the Small Group Leader told me this, I teared up a little.

New Student Outreach

NSO is over! I hardly know what to do with myself. Well, actually I do. There’s always a little too much to do, it seems like… But it’s time to celebrate what God has done!

NSO, or New Student Outreach, ran from the week before school started back in August to the last weekend of September, when we had our new student retreat, CrossRoads. God has done some amazing things.

• There were 500 students at our big outreach event that we started this year, Fish Field Day. We played field games, ate free ice cream and pizza and had conversations with new students.
• We’ve started a thriving weekly prayer and fellowship meeting, Coffee House.
• At our first Large Group Outreach, we headed out on campus to ask people if we could pray for them. God went before us, and we got to pray with some hurting people.
• Our Small Groups are growing. Small Group Leaders were faithful to help with fellowship outreaches, to do their own smaller outreaches, and to follow up with students who expressed interest in InterVarsity. God is really blessing their faithfulness with new students who are asking questions and finding answers about the Bible, God, and following Jesus together.
• One student is in a G.I.G. (Group Investigating God) with her roommate.
• And to finish it all off, 21 AgIV students came to CrossRoads. Eleven were new students – 1 more than we’d been praying for. Ten new students was a huge goal for us. I honestly thought we may have shot a little too high, but God surpassed it!

I’ll be sharing more about NSO in my prayer letter and on the blog. If you don’t receive those updates and would like to, let me know!