The madness of a new academic year is beginning all over the country as you read this. Our staff are praying and planning, teaming-up with faculty and student leaders to increase our visibility on campus. Here in Omaha that means we’ll be guests at Creighton University’s student activity fair at the orientation for SPAHP. Two hundred and thirty eight new Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Pharmacy students have arrived for a week of orientation to their programs. A large fraction of those students will be here Omaha, but a significant number will be in distance programs in places like Arizona. A couple of students, myself and our faculty advisor will be at the InterVarsity table to meet new students. Pray for plentiful conversations and pray that we especially connect with Christians and spiritually open students.

SP4 Evangelism Plank

I currently serve the GFM South-Central region as a sort of cheerleader in Evangelism. SP4 is shorthand for our region’s strategic ministry plan, a four-year life-span development goal for Graduate Faculty Ministry in our 17 states. A working group I got to lead a couple years ago developed two tools we’re using to keep effective evangelism on staff members’ radar. I’m curious what your thoughts about these might be.

One tool is a simple evangelism thermometer – a basic “How important is this to me?” measurement. On a scale of 1 to 5, where would you rate yourself (without over-thinking it)? If you find yourself rarely engaging non-Christian friends in any form of spiritual conversation although you care about them, you might give yourself a 2! If you find yourself regularly helping non-Christians explore Jesus and comfortable with inviting their personal response to him, maybe you’re at a 4!

Here’s a second tool that might help you see why your temperature reading is what you think it is. It’s called the Passion and Skills 2 X 2. Skills are sooooo vital to help others explore faith, but skill isn’t the only factor. Passion, prayer, empathy, engaging the spiritual warfare of witnessing to others – is the obverse side of the coin. You can similarly have all the passion in the world, but your skills and experience might be pretty rusty or underdeveloped. Staff we give the assessment to are divided between being strong in passion and being strong in skills/experience. The assessment helps challenge ourselves to grow.

Evangelism Temperature and The Skills and Passion 2X2

Above is a link to both tools. Give them a look. Kick the tires. If you find it helpful let me know where you land – The Learner, The Lover, The Practicioner, or the Champion! Each year we have all our staff report the results of their self-assessment. We also give staff lots of ideas and support on how to grow their personal evangelism and their evangelistic leadership in their ministries. Pray for us here at the start of another year of ministry. Pray for boldness and warmth in our outreach. Pray for God to send us not only Christian students and faculty members, but open-minded non-Christian skeptics and seekers.

tim.perry@intervarsity.org

Happy Father’s Day, y’all, by the way! I am coming to you this morning from Madison, Wisconsin where I am serving as program staff for ONS (Orientation to New Staff). This year GFM welcomes 11 new staff at ONS. You’ve heard me talk about my staff recruiting needs this year. When a potential staff member winds up saying YES to InterVarsity, it’s often a not so brief on-ramp to actual employment with IV. The first steps are provision appointment and support raising. So the five staff in my small group (the pic where we’re around a table) have been making the trek to paid staff and are enough on-board to be welcomed to this year’s ONS.

So just WHO is joining InterVarsity Graduate Faculty Staff?

See if you can match the descriptions with the picture. One new staff member just finished her Masters of Divinity, she is transitioning out of her work as a medical doctor and will be doing medical faculty work in her town. Another currently works at a library but will be on GFM staff at Northwestern University in Chicago. He has a PhD in Old Testament and has done some adjunct teaching. GFM staff will be his hopefully-full-time-gig once he’s totally funded! One person in that pic (also completed his M-Div) is joining the GFM team at Harvard and will be working with three of the many grad student fellowships there. A fourth person who is currently at the University of Minnesota, teaches at a Christian Studies Center part time and will be working with students and faculty hopefully full time. She received her M-Div at a theological school in Kenya, Africa and has worked in publishing. The final person in my ONS small group is a former Pharmacy professor currently living in Laramie, WY. She’ll be doing faculty and professional student ministry at the Univ of Wyoming.

This has been a very fun week for me to be with these people! It inspires my staff recruiting to be around such incredibly gifted and well-trained people who God has led to be on staff with GFM. I WISH I could just take this small group and transport them to my area, but alas, that would be staff worker theft (pretty sure I’d get in trouble for that). I have another three days before I get back home. Pray for my travels. YES, I was able to bring a bike with me on the trip and have been enjoying some forays out into the countryside. Thanks so much for your prayers!

Three updates to tell you about. One is just a little scary. One is actually terrifying. And one is just pure feel-good joy! Which one do I tell you about first?

Let’s save the “pure feel-good joy” for last and talk about the scary stuff first! A couple posts back I mentioned that we’re nearing InterVarsity’s Fiscal Year End (FYE). Some years this one would go in the terrifying bucket, but not this year! Just a little scary. We’re a month from closing out the fiscal year and I have a pretty good shot at finishing in the black! I had pushed really hard January through March trying to find a significant chunk of new repeating support. Of the $24K I was chasing down, I managed to find $14.5K in new donations from 13 sources. While it didn’t get me all the way to my goal, it does allow me to increase my budget some starting July 1st. If the FYE donations that I’m hoping for arrive in June, I should also be able to end this year without a deficit!

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

I’m so grateful for those 13 donors. I’m so grateful for the rest of my support system who kept on giving and made increases in their giving this past year. Thank you so much for your faithfulness and generosity! What always looks impossible in July turns out to be only a little scary in June! And, my entire team with only a couple of exceptions will make it to June 30 with our budgets coming in full. “Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift.”

Actually terrifying

Cheryl and I had a chance this spring to teach Mark Manuscript to a group at One Hope Church. It had been about a decade since I last taught it but it surprised me all over again how incredible Mark’s Gospel is. Actually the thing that always delights me is the experience people have discovering Jesus and the incredible challenge of being a disciple. If you’ve ever been knee-deep in Mark (most InterVarsity types know exactly what I mean) you’ll know what a gut-check actually following Jesus turns into. Fear and Faith keep coming up again and again in their experiences. Fear and Faith. Nearly drowning in the Sea of Galilee only to wake up a man who orders the wind and waves to cease. It’s not the drowning you’re afraid of anymore! Or encountering a fully loaded demoniac with the power to tear you limb from limb, only to realize its your mild-mannered Sunday School teacher, Jesus, who orders a legion of filthy demons to their collective death! Fear is not only everywhere in Mark’s Gospel, its everywhere in life as we know it today if we’re honest. And especially if we’re honest followers trying to obey Jesus. He is still the untamed Lord of storms yet today!

More babies? What could this mean?

There’s probably nothing more incredible than realizing you are going to be a parent. Except that is… hearing that you’re going to be a grand-parent! Again! And AGAIN! Last weekend we were together with the Tennessee Perrys. We’d just moved Silas and Haleigh from Omaha to Cookeville and were heading back through Nashville to meet up with big brother Aaron and his family. “Why don’t we all get together for dinner and a game before heading back to Omaha?”

We’re all abuzz in the Perry family over our youngest and his wife expecting their first child in October. Silas and Haleigh are adjusting to looming parenthood, and a new job, and a new home-town! Silas graduated May 17th with his bachelors in Computer Engineering. We moved him and Haleigh six days later to start his full time job in Embedded Systems with Whisper Aero (same company Aaron has been employed with).

So within 5 minutes of arriving at Aaron and Savannah’s place, Cheryl opened a belated mother’s day present from Aaron. A tiny family of four little critters announcing that Aaron, Savannah and Poppy will become a family of four this coming November! Haleigh and Silas’ baby in October. Poppy’s little sib a month later!

Thanks so much for your prayers for our growing family! Thankfully we still have Phoebe and Ryan here with us in Omaha (no plans for Tim and Cheryl to move to Tennessee just yet). Please keep Silas and Haleigh in your prayers as they settle into Cookeville. Keep our beautiful daughters-in-law in your prayers as their due dates draw near. And please keep Poppy in your prayers as she welcomes a sibling and a cousin into the family this Fall!

Two weekends ago GFM Central Area staff enjoyed being together for a team retreat in St. Louis. I always forget how helpful it is to be live and together in person! One moment at the retreat captured that sense well. One of our teammates, Mark Hansard, has been on a sabbatical and hasn’t been at ANY staff gatherings since our retreat in April 2023. Mark’s been writing a book while on leave. Star-Trek and Scripture: The Final Frontier and Christian World View was the proposed title (but probably not the published title). At several points throughout the weekend Mark found a way to convey how good it was to be back with his people (the staff team). “I’ve felt so isolated and cut off from the rest of the world while working on this book. You can’t believe how good it feels to be face to face with the team again! I love being on this team!” No kidding! Direct quotes from Mark. And on top of that, it really was fun for the rest of us having Mark back!

So Saturday night we popped bags of Orville Redenbacher, had Mark show us a Star Trek episode and take us through one of the chapters of his book. IF you are super curious about things Trek-worldly, we watched Children of the Comet, season 1, epsode 2 of Strange New Worlds and we talked about predestination and free will! In fact the whole weekend was designed to have our team bring their best gifts and lead something. Tom and Chad (with Josh on viola) lead prayer and worship times modeled after their weekly faculty/student prayer gatherings at Iowa State. Ben and Jake led us in scripture around our theme: Growing Grapes and Tending Vineyards (John 15 and Mark 12). George brought us Wash-U faculty member John Hendrix as a Saturday afternoon guest. We enjoyed hearing his story, talking about his vision for faculty ministry and asking him questions.

Pray for our Vineyard Tending!

We spent about half a day on Saturday in scripture tearing up manuscripts with colored pencils and highlighters. As a team of more seasoned staff we take to even familiar scriptures with tireless joy (no I am not exaggerating). John 15 was very familiar. A deep dive served to tighten our grip on the very basics of spiritual formation. Building a rewarding life of ministry with students and faculty is NEVER less than being a well-nourished, self-feeding Christ follower who influences others to be the same way.

Our Mark 12 study took off from there. If we can grow grapes and lead others to do so, the next thing is making and tending vineyards. The Son of the Vineyard like no other parable takes us to the heart of Jesus’ religious conflict narratives. Jesus drew on the Song of the Vineyard from Isaiah 5 to not only retell Israel’s history, but also foreshadow his coming passion. The Pharisees and teachers of the law knew Jesus told this parable against them! The spiritual leaders of God’s people were the tenants the owner put in charge of his vineyard. When the owner sent his son to collect some of the produce, the tenants rejected him, killed him and cast him out of the vineyard thinking they’d now do what they wanted as if they were the owners!

What do our vineyards look like in GFM?

My job as an Area Director is to lead my team in campus ministry and serve them administratively to help them stay funded and supported. Mark 12 and Isaiah 5 have gotten me thinking and praying with more intensity. If we look at our fellowships as expressions of the kingdom of God on our campuses, how healthy, fruitful and thriving are they? It takes a lot of work to set up a vineyard. Just like it takes a lot of effort to build witnessing communities in our universities. The maddening thing about vineyards is that they can be so vulnerable to countless problems. Isaiah’s Vineyard Song is a very sad song! After so much planning, cultivating, watching, waiting and protecting, the vineyard of the Lord produced abundant crops of BAD TASTING GRAPES!

Pray for the work of InterVarsity GFM on campuses in my area. Pray for my team as they cultivate the life of the kingdom of Jesus in their communities. On many of our campuses our groups are small and struggling (if I could be very honest with you). Not discounting the value of the lives we are reaching, I sense we are reaching far fewer faculty and graduate students than we have potential for. Each year in April and May staff tabulate and evaluate the ministry year we’re now wrapping up. Pray for us to have our vision refreshed. Pray for us to look over our vineyards and spot the places were our work can be more effective and impactful. Pray for God to give us wisdom and patience as we network to find more Christians in graduate and professional programs. Ask God to connect us with more Christian faculty. Pray for our witness on campus which at the moment seems distracted and weak. Pray for my leadership and team-work with staff – that God would use me to encourage and sharpen staff, helping them focus their gifts and strengths for effective group building.

Thank you for your friendship and prayers! Thank you for praying for me and my team. Thank you for your financial support.

“I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it… ” Isaiah 5: 1-2

See anyone you recognize in this picture? Catch the previous post for the details, but Cheryl and I spent a fun weekend on the campus of UT Austin. The celebration dinner was really long…and really good! People had written letters of affirmation, remembrance and blessing for each of the 19 InterVarsity staff members celebrating our work anniversaries. President Tom Lin, the Executive Leadership Team and the Board collected notes and letters, compiled them into a booklet and read some of them to the whole group there. I heard from my first staff member in IV (1982), a classmate from our U of I student days who joined us on staff in the early 90s, a current pastor of one of our supporting churches here in Omaha, and two of our former students from Wesleyan days.

InterVarsity, thank you for the thoughtful gift this is for staff. Thank you for the recognition and affirmation. Thank you for blessing Cheryl and I for 25 years of serving staff, faculty and students (spread out over more than 3 decades). PBR readers and ministry partners – thank you for keeping us refreshed and able do this great work for these many years.

Here’s a picture of one of my pastors I saw on Facebook this week. The post, covering last week’s annual meeting, announced new officers and the budget approval. One big deal about the budget was that Pastor Roo, Pastor Josh and Heidi (the church admin) were all going to be able to return to full time paid status! It was happy news to everyone. I felt like I got a front row seat to what God was doing because of a Sunday morning message I was invited to give back in November.

Celebration Covenant is not a powerful mega-church in our community. God has placed us in a corner of the city where the mission of Jesus is greatly needed. But it is not what you’d consider prime church real-estate. I’ve benefitted greatly from Celebration Covenant after a decade of serving in a much larger, more prominent church came to an end in 2016. Roo and Dawn from the very beginning of my experience with them have been nothing less than wonderful friends, terrific team-mates in ministry and caring pastors for me and my family. They’ve found a place for me again and again to serve- mostly teaching and training.

So when I was invited to give the Commitment Sunday message on stewardship last Fall, I jumped on it! It was a delight to talk about one of my favorite topics. It was a little surprising that someone other than a paid pastor got to challenge the congregation to engage with financial giving. Roo and Dawn are co-pastors of Celebration Covenant (husband and wife as well). They trade off with Sunday morning preaching and occasionally invite me in to help. I jumped at the chance to give the last message in the series. 

Below is the message I gave that Sunday. I offer it here believing for certain that no PBR reader in their right mind will want to listen to a ten-point sermon on giving! May the Lord be with you if you do. BUT, it was merely a punchy summary of what Roo and Dawn had already spent a couple of months teaching about leading up to that week. 

Why share all this here, Tim? We are your donors and prayer partners. I hope you are not trying to get preachy…. or punchy…. or whatever with us!

No. I share it because I feel like your support of my ministry made the perfect platform for me to encourage a whole church to get on board with their mission and their budget. Because I am so blessed by my ministry partners in InterVarsity, I was the perfect person to encourage a congregation to give generously and cheerfully to its mission, its tangible needs and to providing for its paid leadership. 

Thank you for being the kind of people this message was about. My hope is that you DO experience all ten of these things (and more) when you give to God. I am in constant need of perspective on how Cheryl and I steward God’s blessing in our lives. I bet that’s true of you too. Thanks so much for your faithfulness. Thanks so much for your generosity. Thank you for the impact you make on the mission of Jesus in the University and in the community you live in.

“Thank God for this gift, too wonderful for words!”  2 Cor 9:15 NLT

PS – I would LOVE your prayers for me during the month of February. As I’ve hinted at in past posts, I am now in the midst of a 6 week focus on developing my funding. More details about that in posts to come! I’m off to a great start. AND I have taken on a very large funding goal. The response so far has been really encouraging.

Thanks for your prayers last weekend! We had a terrific time at the Progressive Dinner. We’re so grateful for Rene and Kathy Padilla and West Hills Presbyterian. In bygone years the group would have divided up into smaller groups for dessert. This year the whole gang came over to the Perrys. About half the people in the picture are GFM connected and the other half are undergraduate InterVarsity staff and students. I’m so blessed by my teammates Will Chu and Megan and Adam Leong.

Click here to give to Tim’s ministry.

Thanks so much to all my readers who are getting their year-end giving sent. As you can imagine, December is a big month. We are always hugely blessed and usually head into January on the positive side of the ledger. Thanks so much for your prayers and generosity. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, this fiscal year I have a big hill to climb, but my supervisor has helped me get set up in an MPD cohort for the months of January and February. MPD is Ministry Partner Development – finding prayer partners, ministry volunteers and financial supporters. Provided my current donors sustain their levels of support, my goal is to find as close to $20K in new, repeating dollars as I possible can. More on that challenge later!

I hope you are enjoying a terrific Advent season. If you’re not already aware of it, I highly recommend the BIOLA Advent Project for daily art, music, scripture and devotional thoughts. This year the project is situated in the book of Isaiah, the “Fifth Gospel”. May you enjoy some moments of much needed reflection and personal worship in the midst of the busyness this month always brings. May the Lord Jesus help us this season to receive with humility and give with sacrificial generosity! Be blessed y’all!

PS. Please do let me know (LMK) your support plans for the coming year – it’s super helpful for my planning! Just reply the text message you received this post in, OR swat me a quick email. Thanks!