i've been praying for...

picking up from jane's thoughts, how about for our ACF time this week, we talk about how we are praying... both for ourselves and for ACF. just leave your prayer(s) as a comment and spend some time praying what others have shared as well.

I lost my Chapter Camp folder

...and so I have very little details to go by in writing today's post. Which probably means that as I write, this post will not be about anything chapter camp related. I'm usually not this careless or forgetful but ever since junior year started, I've become less punctual, less meticulous, and less enthusiastic about things. On the flip-side, college has really opened my eyes to the breadth of His Kingdom. Although my overall approach to life has become lazier, my understanding of how and for what purpose He works has grown exponentially. The experiences I've had and the friendships I've stumbled upon have shown me that even in the remotest corners of our lives, the parts that seem so nonreligious and secular (redundant), God is there waiting for me to find Him.

Maybe this is constantly in my head because it was quite annoying, but at the Winter/Spring IV retreat in Gatlinburg, VA/TN (Eunice went too), the opening skit was about waiting One of the people performing would say something along the lines of, "I want to hear what God is doing in my life and how He wants me to serve" and then the other person would say, "Wait" and then there would be a LONG, like REALLY LONG, pause. My notes from back then don't have the specific passage but while leafing through the Bible (as in checking the handy-dandy concordance) I found two passages in Psalms and Isaiah that I think the skit was trying to express:

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him -Psalm 37:7-

But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. -Isaiah 40:31-

One of the questions from that night was what does it feel lik to have no other instruction than to wait? And, as the impatient and slightly ADD person that I am, I could only think of the futility of waiting. Yet the message pointed out that by working without rest we could very well fail to see the Big picture. And in so doing our actions show that we prefer and enjoy the good of the creation over the greatness of the creator. We focus on the simplicity of self over the complexity of community. And we carry out our agenda instead of God's.

Maybe I'm saying this because I have no experience planning something so far in advance; but I think we need to take a longer time praying and waiting for His ACF agenda. It's more difficult with everyone literally all over the world and the states, but the biggest and most profound lesson I've learned in college is the power and importance of prayer. Prayer to me is talking to God and asking Him to be the sole guide and protector of my life. It's an act of surrender and faith because who else can you turn and pray to during your most difficult times and about your deepest hurts? And who do you praise and give thanks to in your most joyful and content times?

So I encourage you all to take time out of your day (I have yet to find the discipline to pray in the morning everyday) to just talk to God. Ask Him questions, tell Him what you're thinking, ask forgiveness, give thanks and praise, just enjoy His presence through conversation. And specifically, pray for patience in waiting to see what He wants us to do. (The reason I'm uncomfortable with popcorn and one-person prayers is that my prayers are so scatter-brained that no one would except my Heavenly Father would understand, so my out-loud prayers are quite forced and awkward). But no matter how and when you pray, just pray.

Jane

p.s. Andy Stanley has a pretty awesome series on prayer, you can download it as a podcast on iTunes, just search for Andy Stanley and it should be under Northpoint or something like that.

on a lighter note...

hey all,

it's Festive Friday (yeap--as cheesy as it is, i've officially named our fridays)!! which means, to your dismay or otherwise, you guys get to be blessed with my awkward jokes! i'm sure eunice, jane, and diane remember all of my knee-slapping--sometimes quite literally. . . *pause*. . . haha?--jokes in the car. lol yeah, i'm definitely trying a little too hard here.

anyways, since i've been focusing on the mcat recently, i'm in a science-y mood so i'm going to pull out my science jokes from waaaay back when. my apologies if you guys have already heard these:

• a piece of sodium was walking down the street when he saw chlorine sprinting down the street. chlorine crashes into sodium and they are both in a daze.
  chlorine asks, "sodium! i'm sorry. are you okay?"
  "NO! i think you made me lose an electron!" sodium responds
  "are you sure?"
  "yes! i'm positive"
  (this joke's really common but it's still a funny one)
  
  
• a piece of sodium living in a test tube fell in love with a bunsen burner.
  the sodium said, "bunsen burner, i absolutely melt when i'm near you."
  unimpressed, the bunsen burner replied, "it's just a phase you're going through"
  
  
• what's a book that a chemist absolutely cannot put down?
  a book about helium

highlight the blanked lines to get the punchlines. i've always found these to bring out a chuckle or two from my peers so i hope you guys enjoyed them as well :]

also, while i was researching sc2 (IT'S OFFICIAL!!!) i stumbled across this comic i found to be hilarious. i wasn't sure whether if i should post it because frankly, it's not funny unless you're starcraft obessed korean. however, if you're curious just click here.

have a GREAT memorial day weekend! by the way-- any special plans? i'm going out of town for a short bit and then it's back to the mcat. okay well, feel free to post anything in the comments. i already know how extremely funny i can be...

God bless!

mission statement

on the heels of eunice's post, let's talk about a mission statement. leave your ideas for different mission statements in the comments, and let's see where this leads. remember, our mission helps us to make decisions on where to invest our time and effort, what to emphasize, and what is just not within our scope.

chapter camp

hey all. this is eunice. i'm excited to write my first entry in our blog and share about what jane, tim, diane, danny and i learned at chapter camp. i'm a fairly stream of conscious-type writer (especially when it comes to "sharing") so stay with me.

we attended the kingdom life track for the week and personally for me, i didn't really know what it would be about. i had a general grasp on what the kingdom of God is, but the track really helped to show us what the kingdom is about. each day throughout the week, we had two sessions in our track and then an evening session where everyone convened for worship and a main speaker. the theme of the week (not explicitly named, but from what i gather) focused on restoration--particularly how we as leaders in our chapters can usher in the kingdom of God through restoring broken places on our campuses. during the evening sessions we went through about the first five or six chapters of the book of nehemiah (if you haven't already, familiarizing yourself with those chapters will make this entry make more sense). these chapters are about how nehemiah went about the task of rebuilding the wall of jerusalem. the israelites had returned from exile to their city which was burned down and broken. particularly the wall, which had served to protect them from invaders and gave their lives some semblance of dignitiy, had been torn down and nehemiah began this enormous task of rebuilding.

the first session of our track titled "kingdom theology" laid out what is the kingdom of God. in my notes, i have jotted down: kingdom of God = God's rule coming to bear in a world of darkness. Jesus is the embodiment of the kingdom. several things clicked for me during this track. perhaps they have already clicked for you, but i found myself understanding a bit more about why Jesus talked so much about his Father's kingdom. as one of our track speakers said--and i can't quite recapture, but here's the essence of it--Jesus was essentially the kingdom of God (upon it's first arrival) walking around on two feet! (see luke 4:18-21) he went around changing the lives of people by reaching them in the darkest, most shameful and broken parts of their lives (i.e. sickness, poverty, being ostracized because of race, social standing, sex, etc.). so learning that Jesus was coming to their neighborhoods was Good News for these people. Jesus offered them an alternative not only from physical death but also from spiritual death.

in the evening, the track on evangelism challenged us to rethink about when we share the gospel message whether we feel like we're sharing great news with the other person or whether the experience more closely resembles us proverbially slamming them over the head with certain biblical bullet points. we were challenged to rethink not only our delivery, but also the core message that we are transmitting to others which, as you may gather from our track title, was about bringing God's reign to more and more areas of our lives, and particularly for us, our schools. by building relationships with people and understanding areas of darkness/brokenness in their lives, when we share about God's salvation plan for the world, we are truly sharing good news as we tell people of how God sent his Son to redeem people from sin that manifests itself in the forms of injustice, racism, broken relationships, poverty, etc., and how we as Christ's disciples carry forth the revolution he began by being the hands and feet.

i felt the need to share all the above in order to appropriately frame the discussion we had about our vision for acf next year. there's a summary of notes on the exec conference that details what we talked about, but essentially we want next year to focus on the kingdom of God and to shift to a new understanding of what it means to follow Christ and to examine that specifically as asian american college students. diane tagged our new vision as the "revolution," and perhaps that can aptly serve as our charge to understand God more deeply as individuals, shedding a superficial take on faith, as well as flourish in the kind of community that Jesus demonstrated that he intended for us to partake in.

we talked about ideas for large groups next semester (see document on conference) and following suit from the theme from chapter camp, we want to engage acf in topics that are areas of brokenness in our lives. one evening session touched on the topic of why intervarsity has different chapters. the speaker, glenn, referred us to nehemiah chapter 2 where nehemiah inspects different places on the wall, surveying the damage and seeing what must be done. in turn, we were asked to look at our campuses (it could also be applied more broadly to other contexts) as broken cities and glenn posed a question to us, asking, "where is your place on the wall?" as part of our vision, we want to incorporate more of our identities as asian americans at emory and what that means. it's not that the gospel becomes different to cater to us, but in it's universal impact it also speaks specifically to issues asians struggle with (i.e. pride, family brokenness, success, etc.). our vision for next year will help us better reach out to our particular part of the wall.

in all of this, as acf we want to learn together why we do what we do as christians and then go ahead and engage in the difficult task of doing it--not alone but together in community. this past year was one where the groundwork of community was laid out for acf. using that as a springboard, we want to grow in the knowledge of "thy kingdom come" and actually walk the walk to bring it ("thy will be done"). and underpinning our vision for all this will be communicating the importance of a real and personal relationship with God which translates into why we'll do/talk about all the things we're wanting to do.

do share your thoughts about the vision for next year and add anything i've missed. i also wasn't there for the last track and evening session, so if either tim, jane, or diane can fill us in, that'd be helpful, too.

intro to colossians

i'd like us to imagine that we are the recipients of paul's letter to the colossians. this requires that we familiarize ourselves with the story of the church at colossae. so as an intro, i'm sitting at pitts skimming a couple commentaries which will hopefully help us connect to the people whom paul addressed.

colossae is located in modern day turkey, populated by phrygians first, then greeks, and finally jews after antiochus III settled two thousand jews there around 200 BCE. the people of the city then were familiar with diverse cultural and religious perspectives. the church itself (and the synagogues) reflected a free mixing of these influences-- phrygian nature worship, iranian astrology, mystery cults and hellenistic speculation.

fertile land surrounded the city, and wool became colossae's regarded export. the city benefited from being placed along a southern trade-route but was overshadowed by its two neighbors-- laodecia and hierapolis. colossae in comparison could only be a considered a town, but a town that likely shared in the wealth of the region. not much else is known of colossae, since an earthquake destroyed it in 61-62, and there has been no archaeological excavation of the ruins.

the church was probably founded by a gentile believer named epaphras. paul probably has never visited the church, nor any other church in the lycus valley (such as laodecia). the dearth of information regarding the city makes it difficult to reconstruct the conduct of church members beyond generalities of living in a pluralistic town under roman rule.

in the comments today, share any parallels you see between ACF and the colossian church. what do you imagine are some of the struggles the colossians faced as believers? how do you identify with their situation? how would you encourage or advise the church in colossae?

to help us enter the life of the colossians as much as we can, we're going to plod through colossians, somewhat slowly. i'd like to challenge each of us to memorize the passage for the week. that way, the words of paul will be on our minds throughout the week, and the lingering of scripture in our thoughts will allow the Holy Spirit to speak in different ways. so, today or tomorrow memorize colossians 1:1-14-- when you're watching TV, eating breakfast or lunch, whenever you have time. then next week we'll jump into that text and share our thoughts.

welcome

hello ACF leaders,

our idea for the summer is to use this blog to keep our team connected. here's an initial overview-- we'll try to have four posts a week.

monday: thoughts on the reading for the week
tuesday: personal sharing
thursday: ACF fall planning
friday: something random, fun, or silly

this summer we'll be reading two things together: colossians, then the irresistible revolution by shane claiborne.

to make this more interesting, i'll be asking different people to post at different times. and please comment on posts; the more conversation the better.

feel free to leave some feedback on what you think. oh, and does anyone have diane's email?