Bubble

At times we joke about the “Christian bubble”, the community of believers who can’t seem to reach outside themselves. Throughout my life I’ve talked about this group with different people, always with the idea that I’m not one of “those people”. As I’ve grown in my walk I’ve realized my tendencies to find comfort in “those people”. To be relaxed around people who are like me and enjoy things the way I do. This realization challenged my priorities and quite frankly scared me a little.

Recently I began reading the book “Finding Common Ground” by Tim Downs. Through his artistic communication Tim has helped me put words to many things floating around in my head as well as challenge those priorities I mentioned earlier. I would love to share with you just a few of those thoughts.

When talking about interacting with students in the Communication Center Tim Downs was a part of starting, he says:
“What I discovered after several years of this kind of interaction is that, because of the separatism that exists in the evangelical world, Christians tend to learn the Bible as an isolated topic. They understand biblical doctrine, but not what it has to do with business or politics or the family. They understand biblical morality, but not how to apply it to the complexity of modern relationships. They are superbly prepared to answer questions that non-Christians quit asking two generations ago.” (pg. 98)

When we don’t know how to communicate we often don’t communicate. The fact being, if we don’t know how to interact and communicate with non-believers we don’t, thus creating a separation. We begin to only associate with those who are easy to communicate with, those we think are “close to coming to God”, or those who are like us, people we know what to say to, thus driving ourselves further and further away from the masses who are living in darkness.

“With less and less communication from the Christian world, true nonbelievers are free to grow more ignorant, more distant, and more hostile.”
“It’s not as easy as it used to be to say everything—but that doesn’t mean you can’t say anything.” (pg. 107)

He references Matthew 10:16 noting that we need to be both innocent and shrewd. He talks about our tendency to error on the side of innocence and disregard the importance of being shrewd. “The word translated shrewd is the Greek word phronimos, which means ‘prudent, sensible, or practically wise’. Why should we neglect such useful qualities?”

To communicate to the world we need to communicate in the way the world communicates in this generation…more through art, not science. As Christians our tendency is to communicate solely with science, laying down the facts that frankly are not attractive to nonbelievers because you’re not speaking their language.

While there is comfort in “the bubble”, my hearts cry is to help people understand the mysteries of the gospel as Paul writes about. When I step out of the bubble and into another person’s life I am able to become fully alive.

-Terah Wiekamp

Doane Rocks!!

I just got this message from Wes Jensen at Doane College; I can't believe how creative those Doanites are!! It's amazing to hear how God is moving and working on their campus; way to go guys.

Ethan...

Cru is going really well. The gathering idea has been awesome. God is bringing in new people week by week and the conversations are phenomenal. This past week we had Kevin Pringle come in and give a talk on the story of Easter. We had 52 people show up and 10 individuals come to know Christ as their personal Savior or recommit their life to Him. It was amazing. How we advertised our meeting was through a campus wide Easter egg hunt and in the eggs was a ticket and candy. The ticket allowed them chance to win a Ipod Shuffle, dvd's (Passion and Narnia), or Easter baskets. God showed up in a huge way that night.

Plus we are starting Growth Nights which are on our "off" Tuesdays. The week right after Spring Break we had one focused on the trip and a majority of those who went down with us came to the meeting. The night was very low key and basically a night of sharing testimonies of the trip and after awhile many of the "non-Cru" folks opened up and just poured out their hearts on how they saw God moving and how God touched their lives. It was cool to see them open and share their story.

The Hurricane relief trip was also awesome and has really opened up a lot of doors. In fact, one of the girls who went on the trip came up to me and Ashlee after the meeting crying and asking if she could be a member of Cru. Then this past week she dedicated her life to Christ.

Man...I could go on and on about awesome things going on, but it'd take forever. But praise God, He is definitely moving on our campus. We also are having a Bonfire for Stop-day (a day where we have no classes, it's to make up for having no "dead week")....this is a huge outreach event so excited to see what will happen there. Also, on Saturday we have our banquet, the traditional Barn Dance so that'll be our final outreach for the year and big Cru event so that'll be cool.

-Wes Jensen