Who do you see when you look at this picture?  There were some of US.  And there were some of THEM.  Can you tell which is which?  The US, were 6 Staff Directors in my four-state territory.  The THEM, were 11 potential InterVarsity staff candidates.  I got to join the undergrad side of my ministry in hosting Prospective Staff Weekend (PSW) down in Kansas City last November.  The six of us were able to spend a couple of days with terrific students and faculty involved in our ministry.  Hopefully the US…are still young-looking enough to make it nearly impossible to pick us out in the crowd.  Maybe not…

Of “The Eleven” there were several I especially loved meeting up with.  One is a faculty member at St. Louis University in the Chemistry department interested in a part time position working with faculty.  Two were graduate students connected with our Undergraduate and International Student Ministries. Three more were possibly headed to graduate or professional school within the next year!  So much potential.

Not… in the photo.

Three other possible candidates are currently looking at Graduate Faculty Ministry applications.  A recent graduate living and working in Iowa might volunteer part time as she helps start a new GFM group.  A PhD student in Theology at St. Louis University is strongly considering GFM ministry after finishing his degree later this spring.  And the spouse of a Wash-U faculty member, herself a PhD in Environmental Science, is applying for the open position we have at Washington University.  I’m so encouraged to cultivate these seeds of interest!

I just booked a flight today for St. Louis.  Pray for me on Feb 14th.  Yes, while everyone else is eating those nasty candy hearts and enjoying Valentine’s Day greetings, I’ll be spending the day following up with several of these terrific people.  Pray for great conversations, asking and answering the best questions.  Pray for God to move in bringing the people we need on staff in just the right locations.  Pray for the application process to move along.  For potential obstacles to be worked through.  For people to say “Yes!” who should.  For God’s call to be clear.

Other people.  Other places.

One of my GFM staff members at K-State has been having conversations with an International (PhD student with two years left to his program) showing great potential for ministry.  He’s been a key leader in his context and lives out his faith leading others to Christ.  I am accumulating connections with faculty and grad students at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.  But I have no staff member there.  The nearest GFM staff team-mate that I have is over two hours away.  I would be immensely blessed with a staff colleague here in Omaha!  Des Moines also has so much potential for faculty work as well as possible new ministry with Occupational Therapy students at Drake.  Keep praying.  Hopefully good news is coming!

Thank you so much for your partnership.

Coming to you today from the Rosen Center in Orlando.  The entire InterVarsity staff team is together this week meeting, eating, gathering, worshiping, praying, searching scripture and hearing stories of God’s work among university students and faculty.  As I mentioned in my last post, today is fasting day.  We’re seeking God to bring a new work among us and through us on campus.  Would you take a few minutes somewhere in your day to pray for us?

Last night in our plenary we heard from Robel Chemeda, General Secretary of the Ethiopian IFES student movement known as EvaSUE.  Some of our leadership spent time with Robel in Addis Abbas in 2019 seeking to learn from a truly remarkable student movement.

James Choung, one of our national leaders interviewed Robel.  It went something like this:

James: So you lead a movement of 50,000 students with a staff team of 70 people.  There are about 1,400 InterVarsity staff workers in this room who are dying to know how you do it?

Robel: We actually can’t do staff work the way you do here – our students aren’t given permission to meet on campus.  They have to meet where they can off-campus.  Staff members are there for support, but most things are led by students.  Small groups are a very big deal.  And we experience quite a bit of persecution.  Many students have rocks thrown at them.  Students and staff have actually been sent to jail!

James:  Jail?  Who sends them to jail?

Robel: Christians.  Many churches are infected with legalism and don’t like the student movements.

James:  God is obviously blessing their faithfulness. It doesn’t seem to slow the growth of your movement.  What impact does the persecution have on them personally?

Robel:  They are actually happy about the persecution – they count themselves blessed to share in Christ’s suffering.  It builds their faith instead of tearing it down.

James: What is the secret to their resiliency?  How can they stay so strong in the face of persecution?

Robel: It’s their discipline of prayer and fasting.

James: Could you describe that for us?

Robel: When our students call a prayer and fasting gathering they will decide to skip breakfast and lunch.   They will meet up at about 9:00am and pray without stopping till 3 or 4 in the afternoon.  They pray in “one voice”.  One Voice is when everyone is praying out loud at the same time.

James:  You mean, students pray for 6 hours?  Do they like that?  Do they take breaks?  Why do you do it that way?

Robel: They are so encouraged to be together.  They sometimes have to find creative places to meet so they aren’t harassed.  Students who are new find it a challenge at first.  But they long to be together.  It’s scriptural to gather – that’s what they see the early Church doing in Acts.  They don’t take breaks!

James:  We’re here this week to cultivate our longing for revival.  Your movement has grown incredibly in the last several years, but that’s not what you’d call revival?

Robel: The growth we’re seeing in our movement now was actually rooted in much more severe testing Christians experienced in the past.  EvaSUE was born out of the spiritual climate of the 1960s.  It totally went underground for a period of about 8 years.  People much more fervently sought God in daily sustained fasting and prayer (eating just one meal a day and praying multiple hours a day).  In our experience revival is when the kingdom grows though intensity of trails and results in extensive growth every where!

That was last night’s set up for our day of fasting today.  As I write this the InterVarsity staff family has spent this whole day (following breakfast by the way) in prayer and scripture.  We’ve begun with an extended season of prayer of lament.  Lament over the needs we see in our nation’s universities and colleges.  The mood is pretty heavy.  I’ll have to give you an update in my next post.  Please keep us in your prayers!

Every three years InterVarsity holds a national gathering of all staff.  The 2030 Calling I’ve been writing about this past year began to take shape after the last such gathering three years ago.  This will be the first time our entire staff family has been together since then.  It will be my first SC since coming back on staff with InterVarsity.  The big question we’re going to tackle seems to be:  IF (big if) revival is the doorway God is taking us through to advance the mission, how then could we ready ourselves as a movement to welcome a work of the Holy Spirit like this?  Two quotes from our staff website about SC20:

“InterVarsity’s 2030 Calling directs us to see our campus mission field with fresh eyes, focusing on unreached corners and campuses. This calling is compelled by a holy discontent—thousands of students and faculty have little or no gospel-centered witnessing community on their campuses. It also is fueled by a holy longing—a yearning for campuses to experience a season of breakthroughs in word, deed, and power that usher in a new normal of kingdom experience and fruitfulness.”

“At Staff Conference 20 (SC20), we will seek the Lord for kingdom breakthroughs in our own lives and every corner of every campus. We will give our attention to preparing for revival, renewing our calling, and thriving together. We will meet the Lord in Scripture through John 13–17, Jesus’ Upper Room Discourse.  And we will worship with our brothers and sisters gathered from across the fellowship.”

Please be in prayer for us as we gather in Orlando, Florida later this week.  Here’s a schedule of our time together.  I’ll post an update or two  from the event.  We’ll be seeking God in a special day of prayer and fasting on Jan 4th.  Ask God to meet us and move in us in a new way.

Before the year ends…

Thanks so much to all who have been getting their year-end donations sent in.  In case you are one of those who likes to take care of things at the eleventh hour, here are two helpful links.

Click here to be taken to Tim’s donation page on InterVarsity’s website.

Click here to fill out my year-end ministry response form.

 

Thanks so much!  Here’s to a bountiful 2020!

We usually refer to our people as Ministry Partners.  At the macro level we call it Ministry Partner Development (MPD) not fund-raising.  For the sake of celebrating my team, I am intentionally referring to my supporters as donors in this post.  “Donor” doesn’t capture all of what my ministry partners are to me, of course.  Ministry partners are family.  Ministry partners are friends.  InterVarsity alumni.  Fellow staff members.  Former staff members.  People whose pastor I’ve been.  People I’ve supervised.  My wife and my kids.  All these phenomenal foundation stones are who I treasure and absolutely lean on with all my weight.

Click here to donate to Tim’s work.

Donors are ministry partners who keep me in business.  On top of all the prayers and friendship and team-work, donors give financially so that I can do ministry.  Here’s a timeline of the team God has given me over the past 34 months.

Several things should jump off that chart.  Finding 83 donors is no small feat!  Calls.  Appointments.  Meals.  Gallons of coffee!  Asks.  Requests.  Proposals.  Follow-up.  Every staff member will tell you how rewarding and demanding being self-funded is.  Thank you to everyone who has given to see that I can pursue InterVarsity’s call to the University.  It wouldn’t happen without those donations month after month, year after year.  Thank you for doing your part!

It also should stand out that InterVarsity staff are constantly finding donors.  We enlist more and more people every year because our needs are always expanding.  Some of our donors move on out of necessity or hardship in their lives.  Some want to help for a season because God has blessed them in unusual ways.  I remember beginning this adventure making the prediction:  “I think I can find my full budget from about 65 donors.”  I was almost right.  But I was totally wrong.  My team will ebb and flow.  I’ll always need to welcome new partners.

Lastly, I do need a pay raise.  My supervisor actually encourages staff to not let our pay stagnate.  Personally speaking, my circumstances are pushing me harder than my boss.  As a family we’ve had an expensive year (I think you know exactly what I mean).  Expensive years are years when these kind of things happen:

• Your teenager shatters his arm in a skiing accident.
• Your damaged home needs a new roof, but the insurance settlement doesn’t cover all the necessary repairs.
• A random person doesn’t see the red light at an intersection and smashes your car (the settlement from their insurance is $1,000 short of the damages).
• A family member has a major medical procedure.

Pray for me as I continue my efforts at finding Ministry Partners.  Especially as I look for donors.  My current budget is in a pretty good place (85% funded), but in the next calendar year I need to add to my salary significantly.  Thank you to those I’ve already heard back from via the response form.  Several have indicated they can bump up their contributions.

If you haven’t yet filled out my online Ministry Response Form, please click here.  Let me know how you’d like to partner with me in 2020.

If you happen to be an avid Facebook follower of mine, this might be old news.  However, a couple of blog posts back I left you with the announcement that I’d be having a heart procedure to fix my Atrial Fibrillation.  I’ll spare you the details.  After zapping and freezer-burning excess electrical circuits inside my heart, my Atria now look and feel as completely normal as I remember them 13 years ago!

If you haven’t yet visited the Ministry Partnership Response form this month, please click here and take three minutes to let me know your plans for 2020.  Thanks!

You can tell from the image on the left that before the procedure I was an ENTJ,  Ideational, Strategic, Learner.  Just kidding – ablation did nothing to my personality profiles (hopefully).  Actually this is a before and after image mapping the electrical flutter in the left atrium of my heart.  Evidently purple is bad?  Red in the blood vessels absolutely bad!  We want chill-gray pulmonary veins.  Nice work, Doctor Mahoney!

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.  In the two weeks since the procedure I’ve been feeling terrific. Two very brief episodes of arrhythmia (lasting minutes not days).  A 1.5 mile long walk every day.  No workouts yet, but I’m itching to get back on the Nordic Track!  Sleeping well at night.  Definitely more energy during the day.  I go in for a follow-up on Dec 23rd.  Doctor and I are both hoping for the decision to take me off the medicines I’ve been on since being diagnosed with this 13 years ago!

Thank you so much for all the prayers.  Feeling so grateful to not be in a crisis over the procedure and for an effective recovery.  Grateful for my family who waited patiently through both trips to the hospital and for friends who stopped by.  Thankful for the incredible medical technology that enabled a surgeon to spend 3 hours inside my heart operating through a blood vessel in my leg!

More posts coming this week on ministry support and a training conference coming this weekend.  Please keep those response forms coming!  It’s been encouraging hearing from you.

Click here to be taken to Tim’s donation page.

It is that time of the year.  Everyone in a support-raising ministry or non-profit is reaching out letting you know how things are going… and what the current funding needs are.  This is that letter.  If you want to skip some of the details and head straight for the response form – you know the drill!

This is the fist time in three years I’m requesting everyone who reads perryboilerroom to give me feedback.  We’ll get in the groove of doing this each Nov/Dec moving forward.  In the old days this was quite a project!  Stamps, envelopes and response cards.  It led to papercuts on the lips, tongue and fingertips!  Now all you need is this convenient link:

Click here to be taken to my ministry partnership response form.  

It’s a google form.  You’ll know you’ve landed in the right place when you see this:

Here’s the skinny:

1. In 2020 I need to raise an individual budget of $103K (Area Director’s budget below).  That covers my salary, benefits, overhead and some travel costs.
2. Currently I have 68 active donors giving 85% of my budget.  That means I’m trying to find about $16,000 in new support.
3. I’m hoping new support will come partly from new donors and partly from increases in giving from current donors.

When you go to fill out the response form, would you consider helping me increase my funding?  If you are giving monthly would you think about a small boost in the amount of your donations (maybe by 10-20%)?  Please let me know what you decide on the response form.  I’ll make sure you get the link to my donation page (also below).  Monthly donors can also just add a One-Time year-end donation to their monthly giving.  Use the google form to tell me what you want to do.

If…

If you are an annual donor and haven’t given yet in 2019, now is a great time to do that.  If you can increase the amount 10-20% over last year’s donation that would be terrific!

If you’re like me, you may need to keep your budget where it’s at.  If you’ve been giving and need to keep your donations the same – just indicate that on the response form.

If you’ve been getting updates for the past couple of years but haven’t been able to support financially – maybe this could be a good time for you to begin monthly support or send in a one time donation.

If you’re old school and need a Business Reply Envelope to send a donation – add that information in the last box of the response form and make sure I have your street address.  Far be it from me to stand in the way of a fresh paper-cut!

Many of you are familiar with InterVarsity’s donation website.  Once you’ve sent me your response form, feel free to head over there if you need to send a new donation or change your current giving level.  Please email me if you’re having difficulty working the web page.

I’m so grateful for your partnership.  I can definitely tell I’m no longer on my ministry on-ramp.  I am immersed in  my job description and feeling the full weight of GFM ministry.  It’s a tougher job than I remember having on the undergrad side of things 13 years ago!  Thank you for getting me to this plateau!

In the coming days I’ll post a few other thoughts about ministry partnership.  I’ll keep a few reminders in front of you – I know its a very busy time of the year!  I would really love to hear from you.

tim.perry@intervarsity.org

Team PerryBoilerRoom, I need you to drop everything, read this post, and pray.  This dude needs help!  I’m looking at a ridiculous week.  A trip to Columbia tomorrow for a faculty outreach consultation.  On to Kansas City for a Staff Recruiting event.  Back home Sunday to rest up for a major medical procedure to fix my A-Fib on Tuesday!  I’m hoping I make it to Thanksgiving in one piece!  Here’s the play by play.

E-Champ Coaching

I am coaching an InterVarsity staff member at Mizzou who leads a Faculty fellowship of about 20.  It’s one of my jobs as a Regional E-Champ specialist (think cape, mask and tights – you know, the Evangelator).  They are vision casting and planning around a major outreach event next spring on their campus.  I’ll be doing some teaching and training with their leaders in hopes of developing their evangelistic fruitfulness.  Ok, no tights after all.

PSW

Saturday and Sunday I’ll be joining the undergrad ministry in my area for PSW.   There are at least 29 acronyms for PSW on the internet.  No, PSW in IVCF doesn’t mean:  Psychiatric Social Worker.  Not, Peachtree Symphonic Winds.  Not even Pumpspeicherkraftwerk (no kidding).  PSW stands for Prospective Staff Weekend.  I’ve been invited to team up with the undergrads in this staff recruiting effort.  I’ll be leading a manuscript bible study and helping with a session on InterVarsity’s vision.  Pray for Matt and Damon – two of several people us GFM staff have invited to the event.  Pray for everyone attending (the rest are a mix of recent IV alum, graduate students and maybe a few soon to graduate seniors).  Could InterVarsity staff be God’s call on their vocational future? Click here to view the  PSW 2019 Staff Schedule.

Up, up and away… on my beautiful cryo-ballon.

I am having a procedure done on my heart to repair a 13 year long problem I have had with Atrial Fibrillation.  Ever heard of that?  It’s an arrhythmia in the top half of the heart.  When I’m stuck in A-fib, the top half of my heart is beating out of sync with the bottom half of my heart.  It’s not life-threatening.  It is a risk-factor for stroke, though.  I’ve been experiencing more frequent and longer episodes.  Medication is not sufficiently controlling it.  The ablation is a surgical procedure done via a catheter inserted though the veins in my legs.

If you want a short non-cringy video click here.

If you want Dr. Wilbur Su to explain it in more detail including risk factors…  here’s your video (7+ mins long).  Heart guys like purple shirts I guess!  According to Dr. Su here’s how you should pray:

1. Accurate mapping of my left and right Atria.  Dr. Jeffery Mahoney (the guy doing my procedure here at Methodist in Omaha) told me he takes about 90 minutes using the catheter to map the inside of my heart so he knows where all the extra electricity is hanging out and causing problems.  The procedure is another 2-3 hours after that.
2. For Dr. Mahoney to be on his Tuesday morning A-Game!  What’s that guy do if he’s gotta use the restroom half way through?
3. The proper dosage of cryo-energy when freezer-burning my pulmonary veins.  3 minutes might do.  5 minutes might be too much.
4. No damage to my esophagus.  They stick a long meat thermometer (not exactly) down my throat to measure the temperature of my esophagus.  Ever eaten ice-cream too fast and gotten that splitting headache feeling way down at the back of your throat?  Bingo!
5. No damage to my phrenic nerve.  You know what this thing is.  That’s the nerve that’s going crazy when you have the hiccups.  No kidding!  If they can fix my A-fib, I guess I could live with hiccups for the rest of my life!
6. No fistula – I’ll let you research that one!  It doesn’t sound good.

Give me your best this week!  Prayers.  Text me!  Tell me how much you love me.  And pray for my family.  I’ll try to keep you posted.  It’s supposed to be an out-patient procedure.  My hope is to be with my kids in Urbana, Illinois for Thanksgiving!  We’ll see.

Full weak – exactly how I meant to spell it.  Next Tuesday, Nov 26th at 9:00 am,  I get the chance to embrace how fragile I am as I look up at that face behind the mask telling me, “Count backwards from 100.”  Thanks for your prayers!

 

 

This post is coming to you live from St. Louis.  I’m on a three day visit to spend time with staff I supervise, connect with a GSF at Washington University and to work on staff recruiting needs here in town.  But… all that said, let me get to some unfinished business from my Iowa visit.  Let’s see, where was I?  The rest of the line up:  Smokey Row, The Stompin Grounds and Z’mariks.

Universities have connections with each other not only in sports conferences, but their academic departments too.  Creighton and Drake are a little like that.  Drake University has recently added Occupational Therapy to its College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.  Many of its new faculty and staff were formerly connected to Creighton’s School of Pharmacy and Health Professions.  A recent Creighton grad I posted about last spring has located in Des Moines as a new OTD – Caroline.  She actually has two jobs – one in clinical care the other in home health.  She’s very ambitious!

I met up with Caroline at Smokey Row.  I had the turkey panini in case you’re curious.  But the really interesting thing is Caroline’s sense of mission.  Within weeks of arriving in Des Moines, she’d connected with other Creighton OTDs as well as the undergrad InterVarsity staff.  “I thought it would be good to just start meeting OT students at Drake.  When they find out you’re from Creighton, they’re excited to meet you.  OT at Creighton has an incredible reputation.”

“So how did you meet OT students at Drake, Caroline”?

“It’s easy, they all like to hang out at the same coffee place.”  [You guessed it.  Smokey Row!]  “Liz and I prayer-walked the campus and ended up at Smokey Row.”

The Apostle Paul’s got nothing on Caroline.  If you recall his prayer walk through Athens (Acts 17) took him to the agora.  Caroline is writing her own book of Acts when you stop to think about it.  Pray for Caroline as well as every other professional student/alum you can think of as God places them in their first jobs.  Caroline’s vision for ministry is rooted in her vocational calling to Occupational Therapy.  “I want to work for five years, then teach, then be a department chair.”  Did I mention that she’s very ambitious!

Starbucks.  Dr. Timothy Welty

Before I left town, I got to meet up with a terrific InterVarsity alum who just so happens to teach in the Drake College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.  Tim Welty has a thick connection with InterVarsity.  His first contact with IV was at Butler University where did Pharmacy school.  InterVarsity continued to cross his path numerous times.  He’s been a significant ministry partner everywhere he and his family have lived.

Part of my desire to meet him was to help Caroline connect with his department at Drake.  Graduate Faculty Ministries till now has had no presence at Drake.  My suggestion was for Dr. Welty to collect a few other Christian faculty at Drake and meet up with Caroline for prayer and vision casting.  Maybe I got to witness the unofficial birthplace of a new GFM group in the coming days!  Pray for Caroline.  Pray for Timothy Welty.  Pray for GFM at Drake University!

Stompin Grounds

My last day.  Got to connect with another one of Tom’s faculty friends back up in Ames.  Don Beitz teaches micro-biology and food science.  Iowa State University is home to the Norman Borlaug World Food Prize.  Each year the winning scientist is invited back to ISU for the Borlaug Lecture.  Wouldn’t you know that Don knows many of the World Food Prize recipients including David Beckman.  I got to be a part of Tom and Don’s first conversation about bringing David Beckman to ISU next spring.  I’ll keep you posted on what takes shape in the coming months.

If it wasn’t for my last food stop on the way home to Omaha, I would have ended on a pretty disappointing culinary note.  Stompin Grounds barely squeaked out two stars!  And that’s only because Tom and Don had much better looking breakfasts than I did.  Thank you Z’marik’s for being an easy off/on from I-80 and for having not only great noodle bowls, but good salads!  Got my digestion back to three stars before I made it home!

This just in.  I’m on my today from St. Louis to Lawrence, then to Omaha tonight.  My dinner stop with my staff member at KU will go down at The Salty Iguana!

Day two landed me at Parks Memorial Library at Iowa State University – Ames.  My staff member Tom scheduled an appointment for me with one of his colleagues in a cubical.  We drank library coffee (yes, it was as bad as it sounds – I’ll save my stars for CornBred).  Marcia Prior-Miller is a Christian faculty member in the journalism department.  Marcia, if you read this, I apologize for every instance of bad grammar and sub-par journalism you’ll find at perryboilerroom.com!  Tom Ingebritsen is on staff at ISU with Graduate Faculty Ministries.  I supervise Tom.  As a retired biology professor, he is the perfect person to carry the mission of GFM to other faculty.  He’s loaded with decades of street cred.  Tom is ancient and nearly omniscient about the faculty body at ISU.  Tom, likewise I apologize for references to your age – they come with no hint of disrespect.

Click here to be taken to InterVarsity’s Faculty Ministry Website

Emeritus status now for several years, Tom has taught a senior seminar class called Christianity and Science.  The class is capped at 17 students.  He’s taught it dozens of times since retiring.  The class always has a waiting list.  Tom is not only ancient, he’s still “got game”!  People love his class whether they are Christians or not.  Tom has an extensive network of faculty he keeps up with.  Marcia is one of his pillars.  I got to hear Marcia’s story.  She sketched her academic career and her spiritual timeline together for me in about 45 minutes over our library coffee.  Her story was waaaay better than the coff… (dang, I said I wouldn’t rate the coffee).

Marcia has informally led a growing group of faculty women at ISU over the past twenty years!  It started with people who took initiative with her then the baton fell to her hand.  A group of six women (sometimes more, sometimes less) meets regularly for prayer, discussion, bible study and support.  Marcia remembers her early days of teaching and working on her PhD at the same time.  Connections with other Christian women in the academy was a lifeline for her.  Pray for faculty members like Marcia and Tom as they look for ways to be missional and pass on their ministry DNA.  Pray for graduate students and young faculty to find mentors.

Below are a couple of articles you might find interesting.  Explore the GFM website while you’re there.  Pass on what you find to others who would find it helpful.  Most importantly, if you know Christian faculty members that InterVarsity should reach out to – would you be willing to connect them to me via email?  I can further introduce them to Graduate Faculty Ministries and connect them to others!  Thanks.

Andy Crouch article at The Well:  What I wish my Pastor knew about the life of a Scientist.

A word from Kathy Tuan-MacLean – GFM’s National Faculty Ministry Coordinator:  Every Campus Deserves Praying Faculty

After Tom and I had spent an hour with Marcia, we were hungry for lunch.  Tom took me to  CornBred BBQ.  The name doesn’t register till you see it spelled out.  If your default impression of the great state of Iowa is hilly cornfields and smelly cattle?  You’d be 97% right.  I can’t really give you the rating for Corn Bred based on what I had:

COUNTRY FIELDS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $13   Baby Kale, Arugula, Frisee, Maytag Bleu, Blackberries, Bing Cherries, Spiced Almonds, Cornbread Croutons, Honey Lemon Vinaigrette.

It would be unfair.  Who goes to a barbecue restaurant and orders salad?  So I’ll just have to extrapolate based on Tom’s order: Pork Spare Ribs.  Highest I’ll venture trusting someone else’s taste buds?

In the next several posts, I’m going to test a theory.  People can’t resist food.  They love talking about it.  They certainly love eating it.  But what I observe in the world of social media is that people notice food before just about anything else.  I wish it weren’t so.  Try it for yourself.  Post a picture of what you’re having for breakfast – especially if you’re out with others.  You’ll get more Facebook response from your food than you’d get from posting your favorite Bible verse and why you find it inspiring.  Go ahead!  Post both things consecutively.  In whichever order you like.  Food will win!  Here’s the saddest part:  if you actually posted something about how you are doing personally, food still wins.  Lets say you’re really bummed-out about something.  I would bet money that your breakfast post will still get more likes.  Don’t do this for real, please.  It would just make you sadder. 

In my job I spend considerable time traveling to campuses, meeting up with people (yes, over food) and doing my InterVarsity thing one face-to-face conversation at a time.  I was in Iowa for three days last week.  In the next several posts I’ll be giving you a tour of where I was.  Who I spoke with.  And… what I ate!  I hope my food theory works.  After the next seven posts, ask yourself the question “Why did I keep reading?  Was it because of the people Tim met up with?  Or was it because I wanted to know what they ate?”  No judgement here.  Ya gotta eat, right?

Iowa City.  Java House.  Kevin.

Kevin took me to the perfect campus venue.  Two places connected inside by a passage-way.  The Java House on the right.  Heirloom Salad on the left.  Kevin is our GFM staff member at the University of Iowa.  As of October 1st this year, he and his wife Maria have been on staff with InterVarsity for 40 years!  I hung out with Kevin all afternoon – we started with lunch.  I had The Heirloom Cobb Salad.  Grilled Chicken, bacon, sliced egg, fresh avocado, grape tomatoes, croutons, honey mustard dressing.  Kevin had The Waldorf Chicken Feta.

We caught up about how ministry is going so far this fall.  I listened in on how Kevin’s family is doing while we had lunch.  Then we took the discussion next door to the Java House.  Kevin is great at taking time monthly to reflect on life and ministry.  I get his notes from his monthly prayer retreat day.  We had a chance to look at them over coffee.  We also talked about his Annual Ministry Plan – InterVarsity staff submit an outline of their ministry objectives for the year.  Supervisors dial into that as we coach, encourage and pray for staff.  Last thing we talked about was a prayer task force our Area has been asked to head up for the South-Central Region.  Kevin will be leading the task force with help from our area team plus other staff from around the region.

It’s fun to go places, but to be honest, I do get tired of eating out.  Kevin and Maria hosted me for dinner and an overnight while I was in Iowa, City.  We had a chance to talk about how we’ll celebrate this 40^th year of student ministry with InterVarsity and IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students).   We’ll be planning a couple of events to gather staff and supporters they’ve worked with.  Pray that this will be a fun year of celebration for them.

So how many stars?  I’ll be giving my company all 5 star ratings.  It’s the people we do this for in InterVarsity.  Everyone I was with last week gets 5!  BUT, if I had to do it for the food…  I’d give Java-House and Heirloom 3.5 stars.  I’m picky.  That’s a pretty good score!  Next up is Ames, my staff worker Tom, a faculty member named Marcia, The Parks Memorial Library and Corn-Bred!  Yes I spelled that right!

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