Planning unplanned things

One of my top priorities as InterVarsity staff is to help students meet Jesus.

The problem is, I don't always know how to to do that.  I myself am not Jesus, and I don't always do a great job of knowing what Jesus wants to say to a student in any given moment to be able to help facilitate that.

Or, you know, I'm a sinful person and my own sin can get in the way of recognizing God's invitations.

It can be tempting to get caught up in the training, and coaching, and leading and forget that they're all for the purpose of creating space for students to meet Jesus.

Students, too, can have a hard time spending time with Jesus or recognizing God's presence throughout their day.  It's easy to procrastinate, put too much on their plates, and then have a hard time managing all of the things, thinking that they're all more urgent than spending quality time with Jesus.

This past week, the Rochester Area InterVarsity Staff came together to create space for students to meet with Jesus.  We invited all of our students from our chapters to come to Geneseo to spend a couple of hours in the middle of their day on Saturday for a self-led retreat.  We set up a few stations centered around nine spiritual temperaments and provided them an inventory to help students recognize ways they may best engage with God, and have space to try a new way of engaging with God.  We also allocated a sanctuary with beautiful stained glass as a room for complete silence.  We gave them a retreat guide, but told them that they didn't have to use it.  Students brought their own lunch, and they had the option of eating their lunch in silence as a way of continuing to engage with God.

I didn't really know what to expect.  For me, it was freeing to be able to create a space that students could lead themselves through.  It was freeing to not have to teach something, or lead something, or plan exhaustive details.  I myself got to spend some quality time in silence with the Lord.  For students, it was freeing to dedicate some quality time to meet with the Lord in silence, while also doing it in community.

Praise the Lord for the way He meets us when we create space in our lives to hear from Him!

Learning from Daniel

"If you can't predict the future - and increasingly you can't - action trumps everything."
--From Just Start, by Leonard Schlesinger, Charles Kiefer, and Paul Brown

This isn't a new idea, but it's an easy value to forget among our organization - both among staff and our students.  It's so easy for us to overanalyze the unimportant particulars, logically give every excuse under the sun, proclaim that we need more training, and assess every possible situation.  It can give us the cover of impressing others by looking super intellectual, smart, logical, and extremely prepared, but the truth is - it's all a facade to hide our deep fears and paralysis around evangelism and all of the unknown the future holds for us.

My colleagues and I have gutted our fall conference in hopes of creating an environment that reverse engineers this over-analytical culture to propel us forward in building God's kingdom and developing followers of Jesus.

That's why the conference has been simply re-named:  act.

act:2015 is InterVarsity's discipleship fall conference for students all across upstate NY.  We gather together for a weekend in Liverpool, NY (basically in Syracuse) to spend quality time with God off of our campus grounds and be challenged to follow Jesus by taking action, not just thinking about taking action.  This year, we focused on the concept of stewardship and studied the book of Daniel to unpack some ways we were called to be stewards of the kingdom of God.

I was asked to teach some of the sessions on Daniel in order to train students to use the inductive study method to study God's Word on their own and within community as well as facilitate discussion around what we find about stewardship in these passages.

I was nervous about teaching the inductive study method in large groups of people, but once we got started and I saw what kinds of observations students were discovering and the connections they were making, it was exciting to see what I learned on my own and what students were learning as well.

Leaders are Readers: Compelling People

Harry S. Truman said, "Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers."  This 'Leaders are Readers' series highlights books I read and my reflections on them to bolster my leadership learning as I serve students on campus.

Today's book is:  Compelling People - by John Neffinger & Matthew Kohut

Learn more about the basis/premise of the book here.

Introducing the concept of how we project strength (the root of respect) and warmth (the root of affection) was extremely helpful for me to learn. 

At first when I was reading, it seemed like I had so much against me with the hand I was dealt as a young Asian-American woman with a nurturing personality bent towards conflict-avoidance and empathy.  It also got very overwhelming in the middle to read about the meticulous and multitude of ways that strength and warmth can be imbalanced or mismanaged.  

However, overall I think it was good to become a little bit more familiar with the concept with excellent examples of what strength and warmth look like, so that I'm more aware of ways I could grow in managing my strength and warmth.  And even if I can't seem to adjust all of the possible imbalances all at once, I think it would be a great reference book for taking next steps. 

It was also encouraging as I read to see what aspects of strength and warmth I was already working on and aware of for myself.  For example, I've been trying to be conscious about how I dress when I go to campus.  I also try to create space to build off of my natural warmth for public speaking engagements, while work intentionally on communicating my confidence and authority to project strength.

Here are some questions I'm reflecting on now that I've finished the read:
1) I've been intentional and conscious of how I project warmth and strength when I'm speaking publicly - how am I doing so when I interact with students on campus on a regular basis?   

2) Am I aware of how my student leaders project strength and warmth?  How can I help them recognize areas they could learn to manage how they project strength and warmth better?

Why I'd recommend this read to you:
1) It's an overall easy read.  

2) I think familiarizing yourself with the concept can be extremely helpful for yourself or for those you may be leading or interacting with.  It can be an interesting spring board for discussion around how we judge others, as well.      

What I'd be aware of:
1) While it's easy to read, I thought the middle section, Playing the Hand, was really tedious.  It definitely slowed down my reading pace.

2) The chapters are long, but the sections are short.  Using the table of contents is helpful for future reference.

3) While it's an easy read and the sections are short, it sometimes felt like it was lacking.  I wanted to read more about tips or other practical next steps to improve how I manage my strength and warmth.