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.