A good first week

Our campus team has been getting back into the swing of things after our conference. We had staff in East Asia leading students on a ten-day ministry vision trip encompassing evangelism on campuses in a closed country. Sarah, one of our interns, took a student to Houston to attend a conference for international students desiring to grow in Christ and minister on their campuses. Most of us were here at our conference in Portland. All of us spent two days in regional meetings right after the conference was over.

Now, it's time to head back on campus. Two exciting things are coming up right away:

First, we have split up the remaining schools in Portland that we have not yet attempted to launch, and have organized an all-out push to go to every campus in Portland. Manyof these schools are very non-traditional, ie highly commuter, highly specialized, and having very broad age demographics. So, Everest College, or Heald College are both schools that cater to second- and mid-career educations, and are very non-traditional, but we believe God works in the lives of students in those places as well. In all, there are now 32 schools in the scope of Portland. Our team will have attempted to start ministries on all of them by the end of next week.

What do we do there? For such a non-traditional school, we usually call the campus administration and ask if there are any Christian clubs or Bible studies presently happening on campus. If there are, then we will contact the leaders of the Bible study and talk with them about partnering with us to reach their campus. Partnership with a large, international organization can be tremendously beneficial for an independent Bible study leader. If there is not any such activity, we ask the school if we can hang some signs with our contact information so any students that might be interested in starting a Bible study or group knows how to find us.
Keep in mind that nearly all of these type of schools have no student involvement whatsoever. Students go from car to class to car, or else take classes online, rarely if ever visiting campus. Our role is to be faithful to God and believe that he can and does work in situations that do not look promising from our viewpoint. We want to give God the chance to surprise us with fruitful ministry! So, we spend some, but not too much, time in these locations.

The second exciting thing is that next week our team will be attempting to launch four or five new Epic ministries in Portland. Epic is Campus Crusade's ministry specifically aimed at Asian-American students. These students have a unique cultural heritage and face certain challenges to faith common their ethnicity and upbringing. As a result, we desire to serve them by creating ministries more tailored to their needs.

Abe Gin and Jen Morishima, two staff interns on our team, spend nearly all their time working with Asian American students. They have identified several schools with large Asian-American populations where we will be attempting to start Epic ministries.