@powertochange:

A Busy Time of Year

Written by Eric Reynolds

September 11, 2012

As students return to campus for another semester of university, Power to Change launches into what is often their busiest season of ministry.

1. The Homenuke Herald

2. Humphrey Herald

3. First Week Back

Homenuke Herald

In just 4 days we surveyed 16,000 students across Canada about their cravings for love, satisfaction, and success. 12,000 of thesestudents want further contact with us either to join a small group, have a spiritual conversation, learn more about Jesus, or receive our magazine. We’re just beginning to meet with these students, but as always, the labourers are few and there just isn’t time to meet every student before the relationships go stale. Please pray that we select the right people to meet first.

On the technology side, my job description is about to expand with the departure of our desk-side support person, Keith. We are seeking a replacement, but in the meantime, some of his responsibilities fall on me. This will be a great test of the skills I was hired for: streamlining workflow. This diagram illustrates telecom billing, the first task I learned on the IT team. It used to be a tedious job, but now it is mostly automated. As another example, purchasing software used to require 19 human touch points. Now it’s less than 10. When Keith gave notice, it actually struck fear in me because we’re short staffed already and he takes much skill and knowledge with him. Please pray for an adequate replacement and for my ability to learn new skills and implement faster processes.

On a personal note, I’ve found a new place to live in Vancouver, a two-bedroom apartment at Hudson and 72nd. It’s an answer to prayer for both me and my new roommate. Since about January this year, I’ve had in mind to find living arrangements where I can host people and create community instead of the dungeon-like accommondations I usually go for. I believe the additional cost is the right investment.

Humphrey Herald

First Week Back

Dear friends,

It’s the first week of school, both for me as a campus missionary and as a part-time M.Div student. Here are 3 different stories from this week.

Wycliffe
Today, at seminary orientation, our principal exhorted us with a little pep talk. He made 2 very interesting points that will find their spots in my memory. The first: “The entire book of Romans can be summarized in 3 points— Justification by Faith, Life in the Spirit, and Mission.” I’ve never looked at the book of Romans that way before but the more I thought about it, I could see how those large headings encompass all that Paul describes and explains in Romans.

The second thing he said is this:
“As Christians, God doesn’t give us a ministry. He doesn’t entrust us with a responsibility. He entrusts us with souls.”
What a good reminder. That all of our Christian life is about souls; not tasks, events, programs, outreaches and the like. But people who need to know and experience Jesus.

The Maclean’s Article
Today I came across a very interesting article in Maclean’s magazine. Normally, I tend to look at such articles with a certain amount of skepticism. This one however intrigued me with their statistics. I quote Maclean’s here: “In 2011, 1,600 University of Alberta students took part in the National College Health Assessment survey. The problems students identified are playing out across the country. The mental health issue experienced at any time within the last 12 months

Felt things were hopeless: 51.3%
Felt overwhelmed by all you had to do: 87.5%
Felt exhausted (not from physical activity): 87.1%
Felt very lonely: 61.7%
Felt very sad: 65.6%
Felt so depressed that is was difficult to function: 34.4%
Felt overwhelming anxiety: 52.1%
Felt overwhelming anger: 40.7%
Experienced more than average stress: 57.1%
Seriously considered suicide: 6.8%
Attempted Suicide: 1.2% (you can read the entire article here)

These are significantly high numbers. Would you please take a moment to pray for our generation? It’s obvious that we are stuck in a spiritual battle and all of these symptoms prove it. We obviously need God to intervene and “save some souls”. I hope many of them hear the hope that they can experience in Christ. Pray for us too that we may be able to share the Gospel with “a broken generation” (as Maclean’s calls it) with relevance and clarity.

God & Suffering
I think it is timely then that at some of our campuses this semester we are doing a campaign called “God & Suffering”. This campaign hopes to take a pastoral and apologetic angle at sympathizing with students about the suffering that they see and experience in the World, to defuse some misconceptions about God’s love and care towards us, and to help them understand that God deals with human suffering in the most sacrifical way through Christ on the Cross. A lot of our campaign includes engaging students in conversations, Facebook interactions and dialogs, free resources, followed by an event panel discussion with Q/A. We have a Ravi Zacharias International Ministry (RZIM) speaker who will be joining us for the panel discussions.

Please pray for us that we may be able to find many students who want to hear the Gospel, and many Christians would be inspired to reach out to their friends, peers and classmates.

Naomi
Naomi is still in Edmonton, AB raising financial support there. She needs to raise another 51%. So please keep her in your prayers too! We hope to be together again in Nov 2012.

Blessings,
John D. Sundara