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!

Click here to give to Tim’s work

Three years ago my left shoulder experienced a cascade of problems. Kind of stiff and painful to move all the sudden one day. A little worse each day. Very, painful, less mobile and unable to ignore a week after that. My daughter Phoebe had been to the ATI clinic down the block and across the street the previous year with a ballet injury. “Chad’s pretty good, Dad, you should go see him.”

Chad Doerneman is the clinic Director. Officially he is Chad Doerneman PT, DPT, LSVT-BIG, CIDN. All those letters don’t add up to much if you’re playing scrabble, but I think in the world of Physical Therapy it means he’s attained a serious level of training and experience. Phoebe was right – I liked Chad right away. PT can seem a little anti-climactic at first. I felt like a kindergartner all over again when I was given my first set of exercises. Exercise number one: stand a little hunched over and dangle my arm like a Frankensteinian pendulum. “So Chad, this is supposed to put my shoulder back together, right?”

I discerned that Chad was a Christian believer part of the way into our many brief conversations – while skillfully torturing my shoulder. Very slowly I got better that fall. Little by little I did more rigorous exercises, worked my way through the thera-band color spectrum. I appreciated the interest Chad took in my work. I think he was the first to successfully convince me that my stressful work situation was probably the culprit behind my trashed shoulder. My job of 10 years at the church had been terminated about a month before I went to see Chad.

Health care providers like Chad are really special. I felt a level of care from him that I knew came from something deeper than his technical gifts. I also observed him with other patients. One older gentleman in particular left an impression on me. Chad was working with his parkinson’s using his training in BIG (only PTs get that). He was really kind to this man. Explained things repeatedly. Affirmed him profusely for his efforts.

My shoulder came out of its funk. It took longer than I’d hoped. But healed up far better than I thought possible. I’ve kept in touch with Chad over the past three years. He’s helped me think about my ministry with grad and faculty InterVarsity. I’m inviting him next week to come talk with our PT/OT/Pharm group at Creighton. The aim of our integration talks is to explore the connection between faith, learning and practice. My hope is that students could see themselves in what Chad has become – a very skilled practitioner. A leader in his practice. A tireless trainer of others. A professional whose relationship with Jesus makes him wiser and more effective.

I’d really appreciate your prayers for the group – we’ve had some difficulty getting going this fall. Our current list of new and returning people includes 22 students – a mix of Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Pharmacy students. We meet this time over at my house – two blocks from ATI and about 3 miles from Creighton. Pray for students to make the time to come. We usually catch-up, enjoy some dinner together and have a conversation with a Christian faculty member or clinician. I want our students to meet Christians in their profession who have connected their faith with their practice in compelling ways. I want them to hear their faith stories and soak up their passion for Jesus and his kingdom in the presence of their professional work.

Finding staff candidates for GFM is a big challenge.  It’s tempting to think they just “Grow on under-grad ministry trees.”  The orchards are R1 campuses where IV undergrad is thriving.  You show up, look for ripe fruit and coax a couple of experienced undergrad staff “to join the dark side.”  Honestly… it sometimes works.  I’m pretty sure I’ll need to try harder than that in this case.

At Washington University in St. Louis I am losing the part of my staff team that has been leading our Graduate Student Fellowship. This week I launched my first ministry trip of the fall to St. Louis and points in between.  I’m networking intensively now in hopes of filling the position later this academic year.  Between dark-o-clock Sunday morning and late Tuesday night I was able to meet with about 15 people mostly in St. Louis (also Columbia and Kansas City).  My appointments all started with the same line: “So, I’m looking for a new GFM staff member at Wash-U.  Can you help me network and discover potential candidates?”

I met with 5 Wash-U faculty members, 4 Wash-U students, a pastor, an alumni couple, two InterVarsity staff members and administrators at two seminaries.  I need connections, insight into what we need at Wash-U and further direction in the recruitment process for this important hire.  Here is the job opening as it appears on InterVarsity’s web-site.  If you have a minute to open this link I’d appreciate any feedback you may have for me – an idea or a person I should talk to.

My staff couple, Ryan and Keli Weed, who have been leading the GSF (Graduate Student Fellowship) at Wash-U for the past 5 years, will be re-locating their family to the Nashville area.  The grad student group they leave behind is part of several InterVarsity groups at Wash-U including two faculty groups, an undergrad group and a ministry to international students.  Wash-U is also home to the Carver Project – see previous blogs.  It’s an important place to staff well because of the strategic nature of such an elite institution.  In addition to local and regional networking, I’m working with my Regional and National leaders to help the need be more visible.  Please pray for our recruiting efforts this year.  Let me know if you have input for us.

Email me here: tim.perry@intervarsity.org

Thanks!

I hesitate to include this, but it took such a huge bite out of my life this summer.  Our home was built in 1929.  From The Boiler Room where I write this blog to the attic three floors up, this house has stood firm under its original Ludowici tile roof for 90 years!  It was about time something happened.  Two consecutive summers of hail storms (and a homeowners insurance claim) have totalled the roof.  Scaffolding completely surrounded our house on July 8th.  On July 15th the old roof was torn off.  38 days later, the new roof is almost completed.  Composite shingle roofs on houses are typically replaced in two long workdays.

Building something to last isn’t quite what it used to be.  Yet, somehow Ludowici still makes the same shingles.  Same color.  Same size and shape.  Its sobering to think that not only did the last roof outlive everyone who installed it by decades, it will most likely outlive most new homes being built today.  That just blows my mind.  I know there’s a sermon somewhere for that illustration.  I’ll leave it up to the reader to reverse engineer as you like.  We’re really grateful.  It’s reassuring to know that if this roof lasts as long as the original, Silas will be 108 years old when it needs to be replaced!

More posts coming this week.

 

 

When we were kids, us Perry boys would hunker down weekend afternoons to watch ABC’s Wide World of Sports.  “The thrill of victory…and the agony of defeat.”  Anyone remember the video clip that went with that?  A ski-jumper hops out on the steep ramp, accelerates downward, then…crashes off to the side.  Our summer has felt just about like that.  Moving fast down a steep hill.  Picking up speed every second.  But fortunately it turned out to be mostly thrill.  Not too much agony.  No crash at the end of the ramp!

The next couple of posts will catch you up so I can take you with me into a fresh semester.  Our summer was just about exactly what the Perry family needed.  Our Poppy deficit was critical – so good to spend time with Aaron and Savannah and our grand daughter.  It’s really hard to tell whose face lights up the brightest.  I think Poppy gets her unusually magnetic countenance from her Amma.  While they are almost too friendly individually, they’re definitely over the top when they are together.  Stand back if you’re around when Poppy and Cheryl first see each other after a few weeks apart!  Aaron, Sav and Poppy live in Urbana, Illinois where Aaron is a grad student in aerospace engineering.

Our daughter Phoebe also came home to celebrate Silas Perry Birthday-Week-Fest!  She caught a break from her performance schedule with the San Diego Ballet and flew back to the nest.  We took the birthday boy to the Nelson’s Produce Farm – Phoebe and Silas have worked for the Nelsons.  Employee reunion meets petting zoo.  Phoebe is the one getting smooched by the goat.

The other pics above – Silas and his date Kate headed to the Central High Prom.  They got to hang out a lot this summer.   Silas experienced Lake Okoboji with Kate’s family.  Cheryl and I are atop Sandia Peak looking 6.5K feet down on Albuquerque (another mile-high city).  What a gorgeous place!  Hung out a couple days with the St. Pierre family for a niece’s wedding.

We get refreshed by time with our family.  My travel and Cheryl’s endless school prep takes a toll on us.   We’re so grateful for several weeks of home.  We long to live close to all of our kids someday (which probably only happens in our dreams).  For the meanwhile we love it when they come back to roost.  Ten more weeks of summer, please!  BTW that was apparently Cheryl’s favorite shirt this summer.

If there’s something from your summer you need to let me know about, please email me!  We hope everyone on our support team has experienced more thrill than agony this summer.  If we’re somehow out of the loop please reach out!

Thanks!

tim.perry@intervarsity.org

InterVarsity’s 2030 Calling was the piano we were trying to lift to the second floor back in April.  Graduate Faculty Ministries staff meet annually in Mundelein, IL on the campus of St. Mary of the Woods.  I love the place by the way.  This year I managed a brief photo shoot while on a coffee break (statues and interesting architecture everywhere).  Our Regional Leadership Team stays over an extra day at Mundelein to work on regional business.  This year’s work?  You guessed it – Piano-lifting.

Fortunately no one experienced a hernia – though admittedly we feel the  gravity of what we’re trying to do.  Really?  Every Corner.  Every Campus.  Catalyzing movements of students and faculty who follow Jesus.  What does that look like?  Our RLT (Regional Leadership Team) has identified four areas of focus over the coming several years.

1. Planting new work
2. Adding diversity as we attract new staff
3. Growing in best practice evangelism
4. Increasing Ministry Partnership

Our team would like to see new work at new campuses.  As well as some new work on known campuses.  You can take that however you like.  A campus that currently has InterVarsity’s ministry happening may be a school like the University of Nebraska, Omaha.  There are two undergrad fellowships that I know of,  but no graduate groups.  UNO would be a new campus for GFM – but not entirely new for InterVarsity.  At Creighton, however, our PT/OT/Pharm group means GFM isn’t new to the campus.  That’s how Every Corner, of Every Campus calls us forward.  Are there new corners among other graduate programs at Creighton?  Absolutely.  Let’s pray.  Let’s find them.

The South-Central Region is a pretty big critter.  GFM is particularly a good fit for R1 Institutions but smaller schools can also be strategic.  There are a total of 57 R1 and R2 schools in our 17 state behemoth.  GFM has a presence on 30+ of those campuses.  How do we begin to reach the 2030 Calling goal of every corner of every campus.  Our Regional Leadership Team has prayerfully arrived at goals like these:

•  22 new missional faculty communities
• 33 new graduate student communities on new campuses
• 7 new GFM chapters on existing campuses

I’ll get to the next three areas in the posts that follow.  Pray for our Region and for my Area – the Central Team.  We see encouraging potential in places like Webster University (an emerging faculty group), K-State (the inklings of a group in the College of Veterinary Medicine) Drake University (a faculty group?  maybe the stirrings of an OT group) and the University of Nebraska (Lincoln, UNO, UNMC all with vast untapped potential).  There’s absolutely no way we can do it without adding to our staff team.  That’s where I’ll have to leave it for now.

Thanks for reading.  Thanks for praying.  Thanks for your partnership!

Click here to be taken to Tim’s donation page at InterVarsity USA.

 

No, I’m not changing the name of my blog.  Just taking advantage of Omaha’s best weather day this spring to get a post out to you.  Hope you are enjoying a fantastic Memorial Day weekend.

Support Update

As I head into the last month of InterVarsity’s fiscal year, I wanted to throw a shout-out to all my ministry partners.  Thank you for keeping me funded so I can do this work.  June 30th will mark the end of my second full year of fundraising.  I’m grateful not only for those who gave so generously in my early days of returning to staff, but to my current team of active donors.  This year I’ve been able to maintain a very full travel schedule and get around to all the places I supervise.  Solid monthly and annual donations make that possible.  To the 61 currently active donors I’m blessed to have, thank you for playing your part!

Heading into a new fiscal year for IV staff generally means a new working budget with increased costs (sometimes including a salary increase).  Next year’s full budget for me will be about $103K.  The year I’m wrapping up next month has brought in about $79K.  Thanks to a few resources left over from the previous year – this fiscal year will most likely wrap up even.  Heading into the coming fiscal year, though I’m going to need to find about $24K in new resources.

Click here to be taken to Tim’s donation page at InterVarsity

Pray for me this summer as I recruit additional ministry partners.  The average donor in my profile gives about $1,295 per year.  I wish it were simply a matter of finding 24 new monthly givers – but in reality my supporters vary widely in what they are able to help me with.  Pray that I’d find more of those rock-solid $100 per month donors.  Pray also that I’d find larger, annual gifts as well.  I have terrific ministry partners already on my team – my future needs are pressing me to find more.  Ministry partners who have had to stop giving also need to be replaced.

SOMPD

Finding people and resources in the summer months helps us start the school year strong.  Each summer the South-Central GFM Region kicks off a group effort to find more ministry partners.  Staff facing significant shortages or in need of increased support (like me) will be video conferencing each Tuesday morning for training, encouragement and accountability.  Pray for our efforts.  Last summer I was one of 11 staff who did SOMPD (Summer of Ministry Partner Development).  Our SOMPD group raised a total $126K in 3 months!  Pray that we have another fruitful summer!

Thank You Team!

10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. … 12 For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. … 15 Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift! (2 Corinthians 9- ESV)

I started my job with Graduate Faculty Ministries nearly two years ago.  While my supervisory role takes me all over the four-state region, I always have my eyes and ears open to my own backyard of Omaha, Nebraska.  Back then, Kathy Padilla, a faculty member in the Spanish department at Creighton, introduced me to a new graduate student in Occupational Therapy (OT) whom she was very encouraged with.  Caroline Silva had been in InterVarsity at UNO during her undergrad years, and right away wanted to get something started in her department in grad school.  In OT, you have a very short window of opportunity for building community.  OT1s turn into OT2s at the blink of an eye.  OT3s totally evaporate from campus the last year of their program.  If something is going to outlive your efforts as a student leader, the baton has to get handed off quickly.

The blog-post I began the school year with is proof that things can get handed off quickly.  But not without some help from more permanent players in the mix.  That’s where Kathy and Emily entered the picture.  Caroline led the OT GFM group till her OT3 year when she handed it off to Emily Carothers.  Emily built on last year’s experience by adding a bible study group that met on campus.  Caroline has been away this past year doing her rotations while the group has continued.

It was a special joy to see Caroline and few other OT3s come back to do their Capstone presentations.  There were over a hundred graduating OTDs (Occupational Therapy Doctorate) at the event presenting intricate Capstone projects like Regan’s: Interprofessional Approach for Treating Complex Developmental Trauma in Adolescents.  When you look at our mission and four commitments through this lens it’s exciting to think of the impact these professionals stand to make in their emerging careers!

The next few months for these graduates continue to scream by.  Graduation, moving, new job, new community, passing their board exam.  One student I know is actually getting married the weekend after graduation!  As you think of these graduating-graduates pray for them in midst of this tumultuous season of life.

Thanks for reading.  Thanks for praying.  Thanks for giving to our work!

Wow, there’s so much this spring I realize I haven’t brought to the blog.  Past stories I’ve left hanging out there like a piano dangling between the first and second story (better get back to that one soon).  I haven’t mentioned Mundelein.  Haven’t talked about the 2030 Calling.  So, I’ll try to work my way back to those in a series of shorter, more frequent posts.  Let me start here.  Last week.  Schuyler, Nebraska (for those nubes out there, you say it SKY-LER).

So my staff team does this retreat pretty much every year.  Last year was my first year to be with this bunch of Graduate Faculty Staff members.  This is the team I currently lead.  I am glad to report that the only person not appearing in this year’s photo – who was in last year’s photo – is the former team leader, Carrie Bare.  Carrie, where ever you are, here’s your old team after a year of being subjected to my leadership.  They don’t look too worse for the wear.

This is a significant moment for me.  Here’s what my first full year of team leading has involved.  This wasn’t true of the year leading up to that by the way.  Year one as you recall was MPD, MPD, MPD.

• 19 campus visits connecting up with staff and volunteers in the following towns:  St. Louis, Columbia, Lawrence, Manhattan, Emporia, Iowa City, Des Moines, Ankeny, Ames (odd, no Lincoln yet, hmmm).
• Weekly prayer calls with some of my team-members via Zoom most Monday mornings at 9:30.
• Monthly Zoom staff meetings as an area team.
• Supervision of my team’s finances and their Ministry Partnership Development (MPD).
• Supervision of each team member’s Annual Ministry Plan and how they are doing developing their work on campus.

I’m tired.  This time of the year is a good mental resting place because the campus visits will pause for the summer and we’ll all be able to take a deep breath.  Just in time for job performance reviews and Regional Staff conference.  There you have it.  A year in the life of a GFM supervisor.

Retreat this year had a lot of space for catching up as a team.  Formally and informally.  My two favorite team moments were the two nights we were able to hang out in the solarium at the St. Benedict Center.  It’s a quite, library-esque space with a tall, tall pointy wooden ceiling, lots of windows and bookshelves.  One team member noted that he felt my wood-wick candle had truth serum infused in it.  We took turns over the course of two short evenings catching up and praying for each other.  My team has worked hard.  Several of them are in serious moments of change on their family and ministry timelines.  The work at a few of our schools is at a difficult place and we’d like to see more fruit from our labors.  Please keep us in your prayers!

Two other favorite moments.

When you spend a lot of time and trouble getting to a beautiful place only to encounter a disappointing speaker or an activity that just doesn’t connect – it can take more energy out of you than what gets put in.  I’m not going to say everything we did at retreat was just over the moon, but we did all seem to enjoy Dr. Eric Smith on tuesday afternoon.  And pretty much everyone raved about David Brooks on wednesday morning.  Yup we had David Brooks at our staff retreat.  But first, the guy you might not have heard about, Eric Smith.

One of our core commitments in GFM is the integration of faith and academic discipline.