Katy the Prophetess?

I've been telling people my story of how I decided to come on staff with InterVarsity, and with every re-telling I include a snippet of something that happened during the end of my sophomore year at Basileia, our summer leadership conference.

It was the middle of my first term as the new Administrator on our chapter's executive board (E-board) team.  That first semester in my new role was quite a learning experience, including many mistakes and fall-flat-on-my-face moments.  It was very stressful and frustrating, so I was relieved to have finished the academic year.

Because we were on our chapter's E-board, we took the Servant Leaders' Track at Basileia and used a lot of the track time making bold goals and plans for chapter for the upcoming year.  Throughout those first few days, Katy, who was our Outreach Coordinator, kept half-joking that our E-board would all join IV staff when we graduated, live together in the same house in Binghamton, and change the world by reaching out to our Binghamton community and mobilizing college students to live out the gospel in their daily lives.

I'm pretty sure we all thought she was crazy.

Well, at least I thought she was ridiculous.  Just put yourself in my shoes - I had just finished a very tough first semester in an InterVarsity leadership role, coming in with not much understanding of what the Administrator was supposed to do and just starting to really understand what the vision of InterVarsity actually looked like and what it meant.  I was still pretty quiet and though I cared about college students, didn't yet see how I could possibly make a difference as a staff worker.

I felt like I had such a long way to go and so much to learn that even if I could miraculously become staff worker material, it would be far beyond my four years of college when that would actually develop.  Becoming a staff worker was so incredulous to me that it didn't think it belonged on my radar screen.

As I was recalling this story recently, I thought about how much and how quickly my life had changed.  And then it only just occurred to me that Katy actually turned out to be right - or partly right, at least.

Who but God knew that after I graduated I'd be working as an InterVarsity staff worker, living with the very E-board teammate that predicted this would all happen, reaching out to my Binghamton community and mobilizing college students to live out the gospel in their daily lives?

That's ridiculous.  With God, the impossible is made possible.

Jessica* joins the family!

"Can you tell me more about Expedition? I'd like to go."

That was one of the many questions Jessica* asked me during our conversation when we first met earlier this semester.  It took a little while for her to make a decision about going after I told her about the InterVarsity Fall Conference, but I was excited to see later on in the following weeks on Facebook that after her Small Group leader asked if she had registered yet, she wrote, "I'm registering right now!"

We were both in the same track called 'Gearing Up,' except I was a small group leader and she was in a different group.  The students in our track listened to speakers who taught us about Lordship and quiet times and being in a relationship with God.  We studied passages together like Luke 15 about how far away we can be from God and how he welcomes us with open arms; or like Luke 5 that challenged us to think about what risks we needed to take and what was holding us back from leaving behind the things we knew in order to follow Jesus; and even Luke 7 that gave new light to what faith in Jesus looked like.

I sat with Jessica during brunch yesterday (the last day of Expedition!) and without any prompting she said, "Tammy, I have to tell you something."  I had no idea what she was going to say, so I kept pressing and after worrying about how she was going to word this, she asked, "Would you be interested in discipling me?"

My eyes must have popped out of my head.  "Well..." I said.  "Does this mean you're a Christian?  Because I can't help guide you in your life of following Jesus if you aren't following Jesus."

She looked at her small group leader, Nathan, who sat on the other side of me.  "We were going to pray together some time today."

"Well," she said, "I didn't know how or what to pray."

So I explained to her the basics of what it meant to follow Jesus and accept Him as your Lord and Savior, while making a couple of connections to the Lordship talk we had heard earlier during the weekend, things like how whenever people encountered the holy and mighty God they didn't get warm and fuzzy feelings but instead fell to the ground in recognizing their sinfulness.  And since she still didn't know what to pray but wanted to, Nathan led us in prayer and Jessica repeated him.

So we prayed together.  And then we cheered and whooped so loud that half the 350 Expedition attendees in the dining room at Expedition cheered and whooped with us.

And even though she was completely nervous and didn't know what to say or how to say it, she was willing to stand before her new brothers and sisters in Christ from the Binghamton chapter and tell them in a simple few sentences how she came to make her decision to follow Christ and allow Him to be the Lord of her life.

It was a beautiful privilege I had to take part in what God was doing.

*Not her real name

I'm fully supported for the year!