Ministry on a College Campus

Tomorrow, I start my graduating senior year at the University of Texas at El Paso seeking my BA in Computer Science. It will be my sixth year at UTEP, mostly due to changing a major from Civil Engineering to Computer Science halfway through. But the change was worth it. The two degrees plans combined have set me up for where God wants to me to: teaching. After graduation, I will be taking a Alternative Teaching Certification Program that will get my certified to teach physics and math for the secondary level. Science and math teachers are in high demand in El Paso and I will be eligible to go for the goverment program to get about half my students loans forgiven.

But there is also more to the college life than just classes. In the previous five years, I have been involved with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship and this year, God has called me to step up my involvment to a much deeper level than before. For two years, I was just an attender of the meetings, before being asked to join the leadership team. 20 years of growing up on the mission field is always a bonus when serving on any mission-minded organization. But now I am taking on the full leadership position as president of the UTEP IV Chapter.

We feel God has some big plans for our Chapter as the last few years have seen a very low turn-out and I believe that is about to be on a turn-around. It began last spring when I spearheaded a very effective outreach event when we brought Steve Lillis, a professional pool player that uses trick shots to bring the Gospel. My draw to him was that he does the exact same thing with pool as I am preparing to do with fencing. While that event did not bring a lot of people to our meetings right away afterwards, it did wake us up as a chapter and we believe we are prepared to take this year by storm.

God has called me to lead a new Bible study approach through John Eldridge's Epic presentation. The idea is that all the history of mankind, creation, ancient history, the coming of Christ, the Ressurection, Pentacost, and all the way to the End Times, is really one big, giant, epic story that God is telling. We have a hero, in God. We have a 'damsel in distress' in man. We have a villian in Satan. We have a battle against the forces of darkness. And we have the coming of the Knight in Shining Armor when Jesus returns. In fact, a John Eldridge puts it, practically every story that we love and follow over and over again in books and movies have elements that come from this grand story. And when we really want to get to know someone, we listen to thier story: where they came from, what they've been through, how they made decisions, and how they got to where they are now. So this semester, we are going to study God's story and learn about him through what he has done and how he has made his decisions. It's going to be a good semester.