Unity on campus

We're in the throes of Welcome Week right now, aka crack for extroverts. It's been so much fun meeting freshmen and watching them wobble on their bikes. I even wrote a poem for them.

o freshman, o freshman
scared and wide-eyed
o freshman, o freshman
watch out, don't collide!

On Monday night the evangelical groups on campus hosted an event called "The Worship Experience." It's pretty much as it sounds - worship, testimony, mini-sermon.

From what I can tell, our students really loved it. I keep hearing students say, it's so cool to get together with the other fellowship, we should do stuff like that more often. Whenever I hear them say that, internally I reply - I don't.

I think it's great that we have this event at the beginning of the school year to try to help new students not feel overwhelmed about all the Christian groups and to demonstrate we support each other in our ministries. It's our attempt to diminish the feelings of competitiveness as we're all wanting a large group of students to join our fellowship. I like that.

I don't wish for more all-fellowship events because I think it promotes the insular, in-reaching nature of Christian community. Holy huddle, kumbaya, and all the other ways we alienate ourselves from the world. Planning these all-fellowship events takes up resources. Since we're all so busy, we have to be selective about what we choose to do. Once we take away time for sleeping, eating, schooling, working, and other priorities, our free time is so limited. I would rather be focused on outreach in witness or justice than just hanging out with other Christians. I believe we simply don't spend enough time in God's purposes for the campus.

My irreverent thoughts for the day.