It’s annual performance review time with me and my staff. Recently InterVarsity has developed this set of leadership competencies staff can aim for in our multi-faceted jobs. This particular set of skills isn’t the sum-total of everything our job requires – these are the direct ministry actions that help us build InterVarsity. We also need to find funding, communicate with our ministry partners, structure our time and cultivate our own life with God. But these are our nine most important leadership roles. Staff use these tools to grow effective, missional fellowships. Supervisors use them to grow effective staff teams. What do these 9 things look like in action? Glad you asked.

A quick tour:

Assess Reality– My role as an evangelism champion for our region has led me to launch an exploration into why most of our known conversions in GFM ministry are among International Grad students (with far fewer conversions among American Grad students – and almost no conversions among faculty). Why is that?

Build Teams– although I have a current team of 13 staff members at 9 schools we have a serious need to recruit new staff. At the moment we are in very short supply of young staff, new staff and full-time paid staff who raise their budgets. How can we get better at finding prospective staff candidates?

Catalyze Diversity– Of the thirteen staff in our Area, there are three women and two Asian American volunteer staff. As we seek new staff for our team, we’re looking for prospects that will keep us younger, more ethnically diverse, and we are eagerly looking for women as well as men staff candidates.

Collaborate with others– Our undergrad InterVarsity colleagues are our most important ministry strategists. My Area is a complete overlap with the UFM Central Region – Kathy Haug and her team of Area Directors are developing undergraduate ministries on all the campus GFM inhabits. We share strategic resources and strongly benefit from collaborating particularly in planting new work and working with christian faculty members.

Communicate Vision– when we find a new ministry strategy we’d like to flesh-out in campus ministry we need to tirelessly paint a future for it. A few years back I started thinking about Spiritual Friendship as a core spiritual formation tool for Graduate students. My hope is to grow the idea into a workable model with a set of tools and stories – click here to see my rudimentary Spiritual Friendship community I’m calling Syntrek.

Develop Staff– each spring supervisors and field staff do an extensive review of our ministry goals for the year. We’re encouraged to think about our own staff development not only in terms of immediate ministry growth, but also in terms of personal growth. What kind of skills would we like to bring to our leadership? Are there educational or training experiences we can write into our job plans for the coming year. One that I am contemplating is a writer’s workshop this summer (more on that in a coming post). Other developmental experiences I and my staff have done over the years – ongoing education like seminary, ministry in an overseas setting, courses from our Learning and Talent division nationally, preparing for a ministry job change/promotion, etc.

Exhibit Emotional Intelligence– two areas come to mind immediately: a- leading teams of student and faculty leaders in growing on campus outreach (shared leadership with our national movement’s target audience requires building trust and discerning levels of risk and sacrifice others are prepared for). b- fundraising! Understanding how to talk with people about resources and invite their commitment is one of the most tricky things to navigate sometimes.

Make Decisions and Plans– SOMETHING on this list needs to be self-evident. This one is it! Budget decisions involving significant dollars, setting pay-levels with staff and deciding when they need to set aside ministry to find funding, helping a staff member retire, hiring a new staff member, knowing when to get your supervisor’s help with something one of your staff is struggling with.

Manage Change– “InterVarsity will be changing from staff communication via email to using Microsoft Teams.” For a team of largely senior staff, traveling at the speed of technology can be a very bumpy ride.

I’d love your prayers for me and my team in the month of April. We’re wrapping up a number of administrative tasks like inventories, performance reviews and our fiscal calendar year end. May is also a month of transitions for graduating students. Seven of my students in our local GCF will be graduating. Pray for me to be able to connect with them when they migrate back to Omaha for their capstone and graduation ceremonies.

This was a couple of Friday’s ago over in Iowa City. I was teaching Matt 13 to the Univ of Iowa, Grad Christian Fellowship. If you’re curious about my teaching notes, track down that QR code in the 4th picture. That’s Kevin and Maria Kummer and myself at the Encounter Cafe on Univ of Iowa’s campus. Kevin has been on staff with InterVarsity for 45+ years! It was great fun spending time with them and their students.

Thanks so much for your prayers!

tim.perry@intervarsity.org

Thanks so much for your recent prayers. It’s been two weeks with a lot of travel miles. Our team time in New Orleans was wonderful! Our team enjoyed a lot of hours of time together, lots of laughter, lots of eating, and lots of business. I’m a sort of evangelism champion for our region which just means I help our team own the value and practices of reaching non-believing grad students and faculty members on our campuses. We spent a couple of sessions assessing where we could be more effective and set a new training and communication structure in motion for our whole region. Much more on that. Much later.

We got to enjoy a few outings during the four days. We took a very chilly horse-carriage tour of the French Quarter that ended at Cafe DuMonde (powdered-sugar-drowned beignets for everyone). We drove to Baton Rouge, prayer walked part of LSU’s campus and paid a visit to Mike the mascot (actually Mike 7, the seventh such LSU live tiger mascot since 1936). What I enjoyed most about our time together was the extended time we spent in scripture and prayer looking at the theme of evangelistic leadership. We spend part of a morning studying Matthew 13 – several parables about the Kingdom of God. The parable of the wheat and the weeds spoke to us about doing ministry in full contact with a messy world inhabited by the disruptive work of Satan.

The week I jumped into after landing in Omaha was lots more miles, but not on Southwest. After unpacking Friday, napping Saturday, I woke up early this Sunday morning inspired to make a batch of my best PBCC Monsters. After church I borrowed my son-in-law’s hard copy of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, downloaded an audible copy of How Not to Be Secular by J.K. A. Smith, and tore out of my driveway in our 2014 Honda Pilot (aka The Pearl). My staff member at the University of Kansas in Lawrence hosted a book discussion. A book discussion, discussing a book, about another book! Yes, this kind of thing happens in GFM (all the time). It was rather a drive-by of a campus visit, but my February schedule was just too full for any more overnights! I think my head hit the pillow back in Omaha about 1:30am.

One last event out of town this week – Tuesday night. Again in the Pearl, a trip over to Ames for a Veritas Forum co-sponsored by GFM’s faculty ministry at Iowa State. Our guest speaker was Duke professor and medical doctor Warren Kinghorn director of the Theology , Medicine and Culture Initiative. It was a full room and a wonderful dialogue with a former ISU Faculty member in Counselling. Head on my pillow ETA Tuesday night? 1:45am.

Thanks so much for your prayers!

Tuesday to Friday next week I’ll be in NOLA with my GFM Regional Leadership Team (that’s us above last year gathered in North Carolina for the same meetings). These are my teammates who lead GFM ministry with me in a massive 17 state region called the South-Central. We gather in person, just our team, just one time per year for team building and coordinating our leadership. A few things you could be mindful of when you pray for us:

• Leon Filyaw (light blue shirt, back row) is our new RD (Regional Director). He stepped in as our leader when our old boss Don Paul Gross(back row, cadigan, behind me) took an RD job in the West last year.
• Please track with us via the schedule below. We have two guest staff members joining us for the part of our gathering focused on Spiritual Formation (Kathy and Karen).
• We’re meeting in New Orleans! Looking forward to some time with my team in a fun city (and maybe some food Nebraskans like me don’t normally get to eat).
• I’ll be helping with a few things in the schedule – pray for me this week as I prep for a couple of discussions on evangelism and lead our team in a MS study of Matthew 13.
• One fun thing we’ve got planned is an outtrip to LSU over in Baton Rouge! Allison (one of our Area Directors, on Leon’s right in the pic above) lives and works there. We’re going to hang out on her campus for some meeting, eating and prayer-walking!

Please pray for our time together! I’m excited about looking at a couple of Evangelism Self-assessment tools that our region has been using for the past two years. IF you’d like to see them click the link below! Oh, hey, looks like they also talked me into doing some cooking Tuesday night when we first get there! I hope they don’t regret that! In my experience when they trust you to feed them, you better deliver! I’m bringing a pretty safe family favorite I’ve made a million times: Tim’s Chicken Chili.

Thanks so much for your terrific support, friendship, giving and praying. I couldn’t keep this thing going without you! If I’m not too busy, I’ll try to blog while I’m down there next week!

PS: February’s GCF Brunch

The topic of conversation at brunch was Conflict Management! If you’re an old-school IV staff director you’ll recognize both resources we used: Difficult Conversations (in it’s 3rd rendition) and the trusty-dusty Thomas-Kilman conflict profile. YES, I had them take the old-school version of the questionnairre and discover thier conflict strategies (Avoidance, Accommodation, Competition, Compromise, Collaboration). I dare you to download it and take it right now! You can use the QR code above.

Three things very briefly. This newsblog is killing it! Time to read the books I already have. New Year, new journal.

A blog is no replacement for face to face fundraising! Eight years ago when I came back on InterVarsity staff with GFM I vowed to go paperless-if-possible. My tongue still throbs thinking about all the paper prayer letters I produced and mailed from 1987 to 2005. I work as hard as any staff member I know at inviting new donors to join me in the most personal way possible. 99% of the time that means getting together face to face and asking people to join my team. Once on my team, the paper-work stops! In the seven years I’ve been writing PBR I’ve posted a 171 times. That’s a news update roughly every two weeks. No stamps. No envelopes. No paper cuts. No damaged taste-buds!

Thank you for clicking those links and reading my posts! Thank you for praying! 2024 was the first year the blog received over 3,000 views! That’s terrific considering the fact that those views are logged by PBR readers who know me face to face. Thank You!

Don’t know about you, but I have too many books on my shelves that I haven’t read. 2025 will be a year for searching my library for great titles like Kevin Vanhoozer’s Drama of Doctrine. Van Hoozer was one of my favorite professors throughout my M-Div. I’m about halfway into Drama of Doctrine and of course saying to myself, “Why didn’t I read this book years ago?”

Tim’s Journaling habits.

I go through a couple of these a year. Moleskine is my favorite brand. A few of my discoveries over the many years of doing this follow. Maybe you have some of these practices too?

• I do two different things on the left side and the right side.
• Right side of the journal is where I journal my thoughts and my prayers. Great quotes. Prayer lists. Gratitude checks. Repentance. Spiritual retreats.
• The left side of the page I make into two columns. This is multi-purpose space for anything other than my direct God-conversation.
• Left side: notes during messages, talks, sermons. To do lists. Little sketches of projects I’m always dreaming up. Message outlines I’ve been assigned. Blog ideas. Teaching/training ideas.
• I don’t worry about blank pages building up on the left side (oddly I pretty much fill both sides at about the same rate).
• I re-read my old journal before starting a new one!
• It’s easier to find things when I know that the journal pages are always on the right and the creative pages are on the left.
• Last thing. The journal turned sideways (left side). is easier to take notes in while I’m sitting somewhere other than my desk.

Have a terrific 2025!

Oh, I’m also planning on drinking more beets in 2025!

Thanks so much for praying for our shared staff retreat last weekend! Undergrad and GFM InterVarsity spent the weekend together with an ice-storm keeping us cozy and close indoors! In my last post I gave you a wish-list. Many, if not all (and then some) items on that list were experienced. I’ll let the pictures do the talking below. Scripture. Prayer. Worship. Relationship building. And LOTS of fun.

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

One resource person we brought to the weekend was a faculty member from Iowa State University. We asked Alex Tuckness to share a few insights he’s distilled from his 25 years of teaching Political Science (philosophy) at ISU. I think you’ll find his five points incisive! Usually GFM speakers can be a little lofty and ornate. Alex was very approachable and practical. Alex is a known quantity to us in the GFM stream. But I as curious about how he’d connect with the undergrad staff. He was clear and very helpful to everyone in the room! Alex, thank you so much!

The Pendulum is Swinging. Five shifts.

1. Social Media Fatigue is creating a desire for authenticity. Students are hungry for face to face relationship and deeply need a community where they can experience grace and not more social scrutiny!
2. Change Fatigue is stimulating interest in old things (in Alex’s experience with student ministry he has noticed an encouraging draw to doctrine and the early church creeds).
3. Polarization Fatigue is giving way to Christian virtues. People are burnt out on be angry and feeling anger from others. The fruits of the Spirit are now more visible and being appreciated more.
4. Materialistic Fatigue may be making a way for something other than the desire for a high-paying job. There is an opportunity to help students ask questions about meaning and purpose.
5. Instability in the University stemming from a combination of the pending enrollment cliff and the broader cultural tension between populism and elitism, is creating an uneasiness about the future of higher education!

Taken together Tuckness observes that far from silencing Christian witness in the University, current cultural pressures are leading to opportunities for the mission of Jesus in higher education. Christians of mature character convinced of their calling are needed more than ever to make a redeeming impact.

Thanks so much for your prayers. Thanks so much for your giving. Please remember to let me know if you need to send a year end donation or make any changes to your giving in the coming year. At the moment I am running a typical 2nd Quarter deficit that usually rights itself in December and January. I am still trying to add to my ministry budget as I head toward the second half of my fiscal year. Thanks so much for your generosity!

A few captions from the top moving down the photo gallery:

• They left me in charge of the games for Friday night. We had a dice theme: Tenzi, Fill or Bust, Left Center Right (with real quarters, people) AND a fun print and play game called Raging Bulls – message me if you want to check it out. It was super nerdy and I DID find 3 other dice nerds who I taught it to.
• Our faculty member from Ames drove in the night before – he saw the forecast and decided that if he waited till Saturday morning to come down, he wouldn’t have come! Things melted before the weekend was over.
• My team-mate Kathy Haug – the Regional Director for the Central undergrad region was a delight to work with! We had a great time in manuscript study, she leads program times superbly as well!
• Six of my 13 member team were able to be present. Nice job with the branded merch clothing memo, George!
• We had a collaboration session on Saturday night where we broke our four-state region up into working groups around Prayer, Faculty Ministry and Effective shared Events. Just the tip of the ice-burg of how we could be adding to each others ministry.
• Kathy sent off two of the Central Region’s best leaders – Will and Esther Chu. We commissioned them as they will be leaving St. Louis to join IFES in Christchurch, New Zealand this coming summer.

Have a terrific week as you welcome the Christ-Child! As for me, I’ll get to hang out with these two cuties and their families next week (Lewyn on the left, Juniper on the right).

Blessings, Tim

This weekend my team will have the opportunity to be together with the undergraduate staff in our four-state area. Pray for our time together in scripture, prayer and team-building. Undergrad InterVarsity are more plenteous than their GFM (Graduate Faculty Ministry) counterparts. That means our grad and faculty work is more focused on R-1 universities (large schools with large research budgets and numerous PhD programs. Think University of Nebraska at Lincoln (R-1) and Creighton University (R-2). Our staff teams are on many of the same campuses. We are in separate ministry steams organizationally – sometimes we miss out on the kind of team-work we’d like to bring to faculty and students.

We’ll be together this coming weekend! Schedule is above. Please pray for us! We’ll be spending time in the Gospel of John in those rich chapters 15-17! Here’s a wish-list of ways we hope we see God work:

• Friendships enriched and incubated by time together.
• Spiritual input from scripture that feeds our missionary/pastor hearts.
• Sharing stories of God’s work from each stream (celebration and awareness).
• Refreshed vision for mission and identity.
• Pathways to more effective collaboration on the campuses we share.
• Fun and enjoyment. Spontaneous conversations. Meals. Laughter. Games.
• Sharpening each others gifts and confirming our callings.
• Opening new paths of being colleagues
• Fresh ideas for better outreach to faculty and students
• Renewed appreciation for our alumni and ministry partnerships

Pray for me and my co-director, Kathy Haug, Regional Director of undergrad ministries in NE, KS, MO, IA. On the undergrad side it’s called the Central Region. My team is the GFM Central Area. So we decided to call this thing the Central Staff Retreat (CSR). Kathy is a terrific leader – its been a delight to work with her. She’ll be co-leading the sessions with me and she’ll be teaching our MSS study sessions in John. I’ll be doing a couple of workshops (and coordinating one of the evening fun adventures). There are 42 or so people attending in all. I’ll send some pics from the weekend!

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

Just another reminder about year end finances. See the details from the past post. Let me know what you need as you think about your year-end giving or your plans for 2025! Thanks so much!

Our Christmas Progressive Dinner last Friday. Got the chance to talk about Advent – one of my favorite subjects! Great fun back at our place with dessert, Tenzi and LCR!

Two things I am powerless to do ministry without! On this first Sunday of Advent I want to you know how grateful I am for your praying and your giving. Honestly, I’m even MORE grateful that I have you in my life as a friend, a family member, or a team-mate of some sort! I love a work where I get to pick the people I want on my team. Thank you for being one of about a hundred people/families that keep me hopeful, focused and resourced. I’ve been in vocational ministry since June 1987! Never without teams to belong to, teams to lead and never without a team of intercessors and givers. Thank you!

As usual, this is that time of the year when you will be totally slammed with support needs. As usual, Tim needs to know if his team is in this for another year! IF you know you’re on-board for the coming year, NO NEED TO DO ANYTHING in response to this post! Just keep doing the terrific job you do every year, every month, every week. Keep praying! Keep giving! And PLEASE keep being my friend!

LMK means LET ME KNOW. Let me know one of two things if you’re not sure I’m aware. 1- Let me know if you are an annual giver and you need help sending your donation. Below is the link. Every year in December, quite a few of my annual donors “clear out the hopper” and send calendar year-end gifts. For some donors that is their once-a-year gift. For others who give monthly, they might send in an EXTRA gift at the end of the year. Use the same link to give, give an extra gift, or increase your monthly giving. When you hit the link below, you’ll land on your account on my donation page. Let me know if you need help! Thanks!

Click here to go to Tim’s donation page at InterVarsity

2- LMK also means let me know if you need to stop or decrease your giving. It happens every year. And it’s really helpful for me to know so I can factor that support into next year’s funding goal. It’s always exciting to bring new donors on my team. When someone has to step off, that’s a chance for God to bring more helpers. Just let me know.

You can reply this post in two ways. You can text back the notification you got on your phone (either the TEXTEDLY number or my cell phone number will do). You can also email me at my address below. I’d love to hear from you – especially if there are some changes you need to make. Thanks!

How can we pray for you THIS week, Tim?

There are three things I’d love prayer for this week. I’ll keep it short and sweet now, but post more later this month.

1. This Friday InterVarsity in Omaha is having it’s annual Christmas Progressive Dinner. It’s a great chance for our groups to hang out together – undergraduate, graduate, faculty, UNO, Creighton, Bellevue Univ, UNMC and others). I’ll be giving an Advent Devotional again like last year. I’m excited about writing it this week. Pray especially for a clear invitation to faith in the Jesus of Advent.
2. This December 13-15 the Central Region (undergrad IV) will be joining up with my GFM Central Area for a combined staff retreat. Pray for our work on that event in the coming two weeks. It will be terrific opportunity for team building and collaboration across our ministry streams.
3. Last thing. This Saturday I’ll be heading down to Manhattan, KS for a campus visit. I’ll be sitting in on George Gardner’s Brunch and Bible. George also wants me to meet an alumni named Levi who is possibly interested in GFM ministry. It will be a quick one-day trip. Pray for good travel. Pray for great conversations.

Thank you so much for your prayers and your giving. 2024 was a pretty good year for building my budget. If you recall in 2024 I had my sights set on landing in a better place on the pay-scale with my Area Director job. I was able to get a salary increase back in August! I’m about half-way toward my eventual goal of being fully funded at a level 10 salary. I need to keep going as I head into 2025. But it feels good to make some significant progress. Thanks so much to new donors! Thanks so much to old donors who increased their giving.

PS. No this is NOT the same baby from my previous post! That was Lewyn, Silas and Haleigh’s little boy. THIS is Juniper Morwen Perry. Tennessee Twinkie number two – my oldest son’s second daughter, born November 19th. So thankful for how God is growing and blessing my kid’s families. Thanks for your prayers – the waiting is over!

Poppy is SUCH a proud big sister!

A LOT has been happening in October and November! I’ve not posted nearly as often as I should have. In this post I’ll talk about InterVarsity’s recent national management meetings held annually – this year in Dallas, TX (Nov 11-14). All staff directors across every ministry line in InterVarsity gather for updates and training. Here was our opening gathering with VP Jason Thomas giving several reports of God doing terrific things in scattered locations across our movement.

The training part of Cultivate consists of breakouts staff opt into depending on their ministry team needs. For us in Graduate Faculty Ministries, we spent our time focusing on staff recruiting. The images below will give you some feel for how GFM as a whole fairs these days. What do you see when you look at numbers like this?

Is GFM growing?

AFR means Annual Field Report. Lyn Gill our National GFM VP is here sharing stats from recent AFRs as well as trends from the last decade. The red numbers reflect in significant part the impact of the pandemic and economic downturn most ministries experienced (from 2020 to 2022 and beyond). It’s encouraging to see signs of forward movement when one looks at the 1 Year line in comparison to the 10 year trends. Numbers of campuses, numbers of groups and Faculty participation have all pushed ahead in the picture. You can see the dip in numbers of grad student participation, though. In general our faculty work has outpaced our grad student work in recent years.

Staff Recruiting – a major concern!

While Planting numbers look positive on the whole, the screen above that gives me the most pause is Staffing. These numbers say at least two things I want you to think about and pray about for my leadership in Grad Faculty Ministries. We are not growing in staff leadership. The loss isn’t drastic- we’ve added enough new staff to almost break even. The trouble I see is in the low numbers of CSM. CSM means Campus Staff Minister and it represents full and part time paid staff who are fully engaged with GFM ministry teams on a weekly basis. CSMs also are staff who are raising budgets. When the total number of New Staff is only 8 out of 33, that means that we’ve only added 8 paid staff. It’s encouraging that 14 of those 33 are volunteer staff. Volunteer staff provide vital leadership for the campuses they are active on. However, paid staff are generally shouldering a much larger responsibility for planting and building groups. And even in the mix of paid CSMs, the very best ministry building capacity we have is from full time, fully funded Campus Staff Ministers.

When I first came back to the InterVarsity staff director role, I was convinced recruiting for GFM staff would be a matter of collaboration with undergrad InterVarsity. If we track well in our Region with experienced staff working with undergrads it should be a matter of time before many of them might want to transition to work with grad students. That in fact was my experience with Chad, one of my staff at Iowa State who joined our GFM team a couple of years after I arrived.

What we’re seeing in our recent recruiting efforts however is we just can’t depend on undergrad staff maturing then gravitating to GFM contexts. We need a broader profile of who to look for. I’ve blogged recently about the spiritual and practical challenges of staff recruiting. On our Central Area team we’ve NOT recruited new staff for over 2 years now. Please see my Central Area Staff Recruiting Profile for details on who we are looking for and how you can help connect us with staff prospects. You can also pass along the link below that will also take a potential staff candidate to a helpful landing page on our national website. IF you do direct someone there, please let me know their name as well. If an interested person fills out an initial interest survey, that will be copied to me as well.

https://gfm.intervarsity.org/get-involved/work-with-us

PS – just a quick family news item in case you haven’t heard me blabbing about it everywhere else. Our two sons have in the past month or so welcomed new babies into their families. The first to be born this fall was Lewyn Reed Perry (Oct 18). Silas is such a great new dad with his son. I got the chance after my meetings in Dallas to hang out with Little Lew. He’s a killer of a napping buddy! More on our other Tennessee grandbaby in my next post!

In this post I give you a whirlwind of things happening with students and faculty this month. Please pray for my team as they lean into lots of ministry activity in October. I’m going to try to fit two campus trips into this month as well as welcoming a new grand-baby to the Perry family in Cookeville, Tenn (ANY DAY NOW I might add)! Thanks so much for reading. Thanks for praying for my team. Thanks for your giving that makes it all possible!

First Fridays – Iowa City

The University of Iowa Graduate Christian Fellowship has a monthly large group gathering called First Friday. Our staff member in Iowa City, Kevin Kummer, has had to hit the ground running this fall. He and his wife, Maria, are coming off a 6 month sabbatical leave that included a three month stint of ministry in Barbados! Kevin got the chance to serve the Caribbean IFES movement while there through teaching and training. The wonderful thing about a sabbatical is also a challenge – reconnecting and picking back up with ministry you’ve taken a break from for 6 months! Pray for Kevin’s student leaders to stay focused and available to the fellowship in the midst of their grad work. Pray for the start up of Kevin’s bible studies as well. Tonight is a First Friday – pray for their community as they gather for encouragement, worship, prayer and teaching.

First Saturdays – Omaha

Every Friday before our monthly GCF Saturday Brunch I wrap up my RSVP with students, figure out the menu, head over to Bakers for a grocery run, then clean my kitchen! Tomorrow looks like we’ll have 9-11 students. Pray for my new student Kyra – she’ll be sharing a 13 minute TED talk on her life answering two questions: 1- How and Why am I Christian? and 2) How does my faith connect with why I’m in this professional discipline? Each year new students get the opportunity to share their TED talk with the group. I’m really excited about this year’s new students. Please pray for our time together at brunches and for students to invest in each other on their own through spiritual friendship. And just for the record I DO make cinnamon rolls from scratch every time we have brunch!

Student Retreat at Wash-U

Please be in prayer for our staff at Wash-U in St. Louis. Sarah Gregory and Joshua Ho (volunteer staff) will be teaming up with their student leaders to host a chapter retreat next weekend, Oct 12th-13th. The theme will be on Prayer. The Fall Retreat is always a good opportunity for new students especially to get out of town and forge some community with the chapter. Pray for good weather! Pray for more to sign up (I think there are just a little over a dozen signed up at this point.

Faculty Retreat w Carver Project

While I’m on things Wash-U, my staff member there who works with faculty members has been invited to team up with The Carver Project and lead them in a Prayer Initiative throughout the 24/25 academic year. The Carver Faculty also host an out of town retreat each year in the Fall. Our GFM staff member George Stulac will be at their retreat – which is happening THIS WEEKEND. He’ll be unveiling the Carver prayer initiative. Pray for his time with these influential and missional Wash-U faculty.

Technology and Story Telling at Iowa State

One last October happening you can be praying for is happening in Ames this fall on October 29th: Author and ISU alum Ethan J. Brue is being hosted by the Committee on Lectures to talk about How Engineering, Science and Faith Play! Since Ethan is also an IVP author, I’m extra eager to meet him and be a the event. Pray for Chad and Tom, our GFM staff as they partner with faculty and student organizations to bring Dr. Brue and promote the event. It’s a Tuesday night event – interesting timing! Pray for great communication about the event on campus. It is officially sponsored by University Lectures, so it will have some good promotional channels, but pray that the word will spread especially in the sciences an engineering schools. I’ll be brining you some on-site coverage from that event!

Thanks so much for your prayers!

tim.perry@intervarsity.org

I’ve got two things for you today. First a brief PSA about how my blog works. The second, an earnest plea for intercession! Let’s get the boring part out of the way first!

I have switched my distribution tool for PBR notifications. I used to use AirDroid till it got to be too much work to keep it working (like the lawn mower you have to kick to keep running). Textedly is my new AirDroid. I used to love AirDroid because it was free and it worked. Since it’s neither now, I am using Textedly.

Textedly texts don’t come from my phone number, you’ll notice. That cleans up my phone’s text message inbox quite a bit. YET there are a couple of challenges. Your phone won’t recognize the number as coming from Tim. That also means that some users will opt out before they know it’s me sending the notification. Here are a few helpful tips:

855-976-5422 (Tim’s Textedly #)

PBRREADER (Tim’s Keyword)

1. Consider adding Tim’s Textedly number to your contacts and save it as PerryBoilerRoom(Tim Perry). Don’t call that number. That’s just so your phone recognizes it.
2. IF you text back to that number when you get a notification, just know that doesn’t go to my cell phone. I will check for replies after I send an update, but if you’re just trying to text me something, my cell number is better.
3. Textedly makes it really easy to opt out of getting notifications. You just have to text STOP and you’ll get taken off my list.
4. IF, you get taken off the list, I’ll send you a quick text from my cell phone to confirm it.
5. IF, you want to be put back ON the list, you just text UNSTOP to the Textedly number. When you get a reply you then have to send back my keyword to Textedly. My keyword is PBRREADER

Whew, thanks. Glad that is over! You are also free to email me if any of that is unclear. Hopefully you’ll not have to worry about it – you’ll keep getting a notification from me when I put something new on the blog (twice monthly max). Thanks!

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Eph 6:12 NIV)

Paul assures us that the spiritual struggle we suspect is happening around us is NOT just a figment of our imagination. It’s a real struggle. An invisible struggle. A struggle with an actual evil source that is potent! If all that is the case, I’d like you to help me contend in the lives of some of my staff and students. We need God’s presence and power in our work. You can help release that. Here are a few specific people.

Kevin – our GFM staff member in Iowa City has just returned from a 6 month sabbatical where he was able to serve the Caribbean IFES through teaching, training and mentoring of staff and student leaders. He is needing to get the new year started at Univ. of Iowa. One of his very best friends Gary has just passed away. At his request, Kevin is going to be sharing some words about Gary at his funeral.

George – one of our staff at K-State found out over the summer that he has prostate cancer and needs treatments. George runs Bike-Night and Brunch & Bible every weekend with his volunteers. He reaches out to hundreds of International Students each year. Pray for successful medical treatments for George this year and pray for the ability to manage his ministry through his gifted volunteers.

Tom – a retired Biology professor at ISU is also on our GFM staff team. Tom is starting the new school year after a difficult season of life that culminated in the loss of his wife Denise last Spring. Tom is well connected with life-giving friendships and is experiencing renewed energy and focus for ministry. Pray for his effective work with faculty at Iowa State University. Pray for him to continue grieving well.

Nick – Switching gears a bit to our students. Nick is a Physics senior transitioning into grad school at Creighton. He’s new to GCF – a friend who is in Grad Christian Fellowship brought him to the last brunch of the summer. “Would you be willing to connect with Nick and help me know where he’s at spiritually?”

Jon – Just met with Jon yesterday and I left very excited about his program at Creighton and his interest in InterVarsity. He’s a PT-1 from a solid Christian home in the Hastings area. I spent some time getting to know his spiritual background and painting some vision for Jon’s involvement in GCF. With all new students, the spiritual battle just seems to be priorities and time management. Pray for students to make space to engage others. Professional school can become almost idolatrous in its demand on one’s time and energy.

Sruthi – a distance student in the Doctorate of Pharmacy program. She lives in Manhattan, Kansas where her husband is an associate professor in Agronomy. Her and Sandeep are Hindu. They have connected with churches and ministries near K-State and seem very open to talking about spiritual things.

Isabella – an OT 1 at Creighton, she is from a Coptic Christian background (her mother is Egyptian, her father Canadian). It was delightful to learn about her life and get a feel for her enthusiasm for her faith. She serves in a campus ministry through the religious life program at Creighton. She’s in a 2 plus 3 program, so she’s familiar with Creighton and Omaha. With all new students I give them a copy of Spiritual Friendship and ask them to think about finding a prayer partner for the year in their department or in the GCF fellowship.

Kyra – First year Physical Therapy, really mature student from a strong family. Kyra was involved in Navigators at Colorado State where she did her undergrad. She resonates with the Spiritual Friendship theme and would love to get more connected while in professional school. Pray for me as I help facilitate some discipleship partners among the new students. Our first monthly brunch is next week at our home. I’ll officially kick off our Spiritual Friendship strategy called Syntrek.

Evelyn – is a new Medical Student at Creighton. We haven’t had Med Students get involved yet with GCF. Another GFM staff member knows Evelyn and connected us when she heard she was going to be attending Creighton. Evelyn is coming to our home for lunch tomorrow! Pray for a great time of conversation and hospitality. Med school is such a demanding program we seldom meet students who have the time to get involved in our monthly brunch. Pray that Evelyn will have some margin and be able to join.

Brenden, Patrick, Katherine, Karis and Devin are all returning students at Creighton. Pray for our group to welcome new students. Pray for Devin this year as he will be working in Omaha and taking a break from his program and then re-entering next year.

Thank you so much for your prayers! I hope you have fun plans for Labor Day weekend!