Caroline Silva, OTD

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.

Regan Cooper’s family – a captive audience!

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!

I can’t really say for sure.  Any ancient Sumerian readers out there?

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.

Photo courtesy of my friend Neil Das

Carver is a faculty group at Washington University in St. Louis whose aim is “to cultivate Christian leaders at the intersection of the university, the church and society.”  My GFM staff member there George Stulac is on the Carver leadership team and was instrumental in assembling the faculty members that are a part of the project.  This year their spring event focused on the arts, culture and the mission of the church.   Click here to read more about the panel – John Hendrix, professor of art at Wash-U interviewed Sho Baraka, Sara Groves and Mako Fujimura.  Check out a few other Carver events while you’re there including last year’s conversation with Tim Keller.

Generative Practice and the Church

There were two ideas that made an impression on me throughout the night.  Mako spoke about the difference between the church as a machine and the church as a body of persons capable of generative practice.  “Jesus didn’t come to build a machine.  Instead of a body of gifted people making and redeeming culture, the church risks becoming mere commerce masquerading as orthodoxy.”

Thanks for the pics Neil!

Sho Baraka affirmed that “music is the only way our emerging adults are going to see the connection between beauty and justice – sermons aren’t going to do it.”  He talked about how vital it is for the church to let artists speak with full voice.  All three agreed that the commercial pressures of the church on generative practice  severely limit the impact artists can make.

Books, books, books.

Culture Care – Mako Fujimura

What Money Can’t Buy – Michael Sandel

The Locust Effect – Gary Haugen and Victor Boutros

The other idea that stuck with me came from Sara Groves sharing about her project Floodplain.  Plagued with a paralzying bout of depression her work had been sidelined for some time.  She drew insights for her life as an artist from the lives of immigrant families living in floodplains- people trying to gather enough resources to move to a place of safety and sustainability.  “These people amazed me because this was not just a temporary situation.  They had to live there under the threat of further flooding without any immediate hope for rescue or opportunity.”

Maybe Christians need to rethink things like natural disaster and how to respond.  What would it look like for artists to arrive at ground zero and give shape to recovery efforts?  How could art play a role in remaking life and culture where devastation is compounded by poverty?  In the words of Gary Haugen founder of the International Justice Mission, “How will the church continue to develop the object permanence required to sustain the mission of Jesus to the needy?”  Will the church live close enough to the needs it’s called in Jesus’ name to help meet?

Longing for revival, we catalyze movements that call every corner of every campus to follow Jesus.     – The 2030 Calling

When I worked for Christ Community Church now and then we’d get an urgent email from Steve Yost our worship pastor calling all hands on deck to the sanctuary for a piano hoisting.  The stage would need to be reset after an event.  The piano would either need to go up to the stage or down to the floor.  A Steinway Model C for example weighs in at 882 lbs.  Steve is a remarkably buff guy for a worship leader of his vintage, but no match for a Steinway.  Many hands make few hernias.

Eight, I think.  That was the bare minimum of (pastor-calibur) cross-fit bodies required to lift the piano from the floor to the stage 30 inches above.  When you think about a group of Graduate Faculty Staff trying to get a grip on The 2030 Calling, picture 8 pastors lifting a piano.  Like a piano, 2030 is stubbornly large with no convenient lifting handles.  No matter how good you are with ropes and moving dollies you’re not going to levitate a piano all by yourself.  Graduate and Faculty Ministries staff with InterVarsity are working in teams to get a grip on where our movement is headed over the next decade.  The regional leadership team I serve on, the area team I lead, we’re all asking, “Where do we begin?  How do we lift this beast?”

So why does 2030 weigh so much?

It’s long –  2030 is over a decade away.

It’s big – an endomorph!  What could happen by 2030:

• 2,500 campuses across the U.S.
• 725, 000 disciples sent (core participants)
• 12,000,000 lives reached
• 4,000,000 partners praying
• 67,000 multiplying small groups

Three major initiatives:

1. Become a thriving organization of thriving people.
2. Mobilize partners, like our alumni base, to expand ministry.
3. Plant new work exponentially.

Ten strategies (for some reason, I’ll list 9 here).

1. Develop a culture of thriving, diverse movement leaders.
2. Ensure staff are fully funded.
3. Develop a ministry “playbook” (common set of effective strategies)
4. Innovative technology and business platforms for staff to run on.
5. Invite more creative collaboration from other organizations.
6. Share our best training to equip co-laborers.
7. Send Co-Laborers into the mission.
8. Accelerate proven planting programs to start new work
9. Plant at traditionally underserved institutions

I could keep going- the original vision document is over 50 pages!  If you’d like to see a smaller version let me recommend you read the Strategic Plan Summary 2018-2022.  It’s a three page summary of where the 2030 Calling will hopefully take us in the the first four years.

Graduate Faculty Ministries have been working on how to lift the 2030 Calling piano for about a year now!  In my next post I’d like to talk about the first four handles we’ve found:  1- Planting new work, 2- Adding staff, 3- Evangelism and 4- Ministry Partnership Development.

Thanks for reading, praying and partnering with me.

Lord, we need your revival in our own lives. We are tremendously grateful for what you have done in and through InterVarsity already. We acknowledge that often your activity is in spite of ourselves, by your grace. Please forgive us. We long for you to transform us, individually and organizationally. We rejoice that you have saved us and called us and used us. We once again say, “Yes, Jesus!”, for the good of students and faculty and ministry partners. We know this is for our good, as well. We trust you, and we will obey you. Amen!

This is my grand-daughter. Hanging out with her dad in his lab. Today is a very special day for Aaron. Prelims. Aaron is a PhD student in aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois. As I write this, he is with his committee presenting his preliminary paper and taking an oral exam. Prelims are a very, very big deal. When he passes this phase of his research, the finish line to a grueling journey is finally in sight. It’s how his department gives him the final, final green light to complete his research and dissertation.

I have to say after being in GFM ministry for almost two years, this is the most exciting moment for me. When I connect with students and faculty members in my ministry context, I’ll forever picture my own son and his experiences. I’ve seen how hard he’s worked to master every subject relevant to his work. He’s modeled system after system and fed it to this hungry wind-tunnel again and again. He’s built UAVs. Most flew just fine. One crashed.

I’ve also seen him become a dad in the midst of all his career-launching training. I’ve had the joy of watching every stage of his work come together and the joy of watching his daughter learn to walk and talk at the same time. PhD students are without exaggeration the best of the best. They advance the understanding of our world and how to solve its biggest challenges. They often go on to do the kind of work that eventually changes the way the rest of the planet thinks! They also have families and marriages and in-laws. I can’t imagine working with a more strategic people group.

When you think about GFM, picture my son. Say a prayer for Aaron today. 2019 is the 8th year he’s been an aero-space student at the University of Illinois (he’s done all three levels of his program there). Pray that he’s able to keep all that stuff he’s learned in place as questions are fired at him. Pray for the decision his committee will make today – for the input they’ll give him to help him conclude. Pray for his research to wrap up in the months ahead and for the last stages of writing.

Poppy loves blueberries!

And Poppy. Aaron is so blessed with a beautiful wife and daughter. Poppy is the most delightful de-stressor Aaron could hope for in his life. He and Savannah are doing a great job building a family, trusting God and staying on track till Aaron finishes. When graduation finally comes, wouldn’t it be nice if those people in the funny hats would also call spouses and children up to that stage and confer some kind of advanced degree on them as well? Pray that this grad student and his family are able to get to the finish-line. And finish well. Thanks!

Be blessed and stay well.

Tim

I now do thanks to Jake Evans’ well executed Veritas Forum last week at KU.  What do you even begin to say to an MIT professor of nuclear physics who has taught and researched his entire career on plasma containment and nuclear fusion?  Several of Jake’s colleagues welcomed Ian to the Oread Christian Studies Center for a meet and greet dinner before his lecture on campus.

Jake and I with Dr. Ian Hutchinson in Woodruff Auditorium at KU

I punted.  “So Mr. Hutchinson, what is the question you’re most asked by people who aren’t scientists?”

“I’m most often asked whether or not nuclear fusion will ever become a viable source of clean energy.”

Generating electricity from nuclear fission (splitting heavier atoms) is the only form of nuclear power we know.  Fusion energy (fusing lighter atoms) is vastly more potent.  Yet the containment of fusion reactions is still highly impractical.  “I don’t believe it will happen in my lifetime.  I am reasonably certain it will happen in the not too distant future, however.”

Ian says of his faith “Since I became a believer in my college years at Cambridge University, my faith and my science grew up together.  There never really was enmity between the two for me, though I felt the struggle with many around me.”  As Hutchinson grew in his understanding of the relationship between faith and science he began writing and speaking on the topic.  For over 25 years he’s done events like this Veritas Forum all over the country and around the world.

What did Ian talk about?

• Is there truth beyond Science?  Does Science answer everything?
• What is Scientism and what distinguishes it from Natural Science?
• What has the relationship between Science and Religion been like historically?
• Where did the tension between the two arise given that so many of heros of scientific discovery were devout Christians?
• What Christian voices have unnecessarily created friction around this issue?
• Why did modern Natural Science develop more in the west where the Christian world view was it’s philosophical context?
• What aspects of Christian theism are amiable to the scientific method?

Over 220 students and faculty gathered in Woodruff Auditorium.  The evening stretched on after his 25 minute presentation.  He interacted with a faculty member who moderated questions from the audience.  Below are a few screen shots of the questions people texted in.  Each participant also filled out a Veritas Forum 60 Second Survey.  Jake tells me based on the survey that the audience was largely Christian with several atheist and agnostic participants as well.

What does a Veritas Forum do for GFM groups on campus?

Events help catalyze relationships and identity.  Among graduate students and faculty members, there is such a high premium on time.  If someone is bringing a significant voice to the campus, it’s worth all the work of publicizing and collaborating in order to get significant numbers of people to the event.  The quality of the event lends visibility and credibility to the Christian community.  For many students and faculty alike, they are so absorbed in their work, it almost requires a compelling public event to bring people out.  In the process, the speaker’s credentials and academic work speak for themselves.  Once the event is over the local graduate and faculty fellowships benefit from the momentum the event has given them.  Groups and further events can grow as conversations and networking happen.

Some resources you may want to glance at:

Ian mentioned two books of his that would be of interest.  Can a Scientist Believe in Maracles  In this his latest release,  Hutchinson has organized and answered about every question he’s ever been asked at a forum.  Its almost a like a reference book that’s organized by categories.  I’ll make an offer to any of my donors reading this.  Email me right now and let me know if you want this book.  I’ll need you to tell me who you are and where to send your book!  I’ll be glad to make it available to you.  It would also be an excellent book to put in the hands of an undergrad or graduate student you know in the sciences.

In a previously published book entitled Monopolizing Knowledge, Hutchinson describes Scientism and its overreaching claims to speak for every kind of knowledge possible.  Once one understands that science has limits on what it can fully describe, a more constructive conversation can happen about Christianity’s contribution to science and it’s unique claims about truth.

Thanks for tracking with our work down in Kansas!  God is doing great things through my staff members.  More to follow on what others of my team have been up to this Spring.  Please pray for Jake as he logs dozens and dozens of feedback cards and connects with graduate students who indicated interest in a fellowship.

Here’s a sample of some of the questions Ian was grilled with.  I especially liked the one requesting that Ian read to them at bed-time with his delightful English accent!

Going to be very brief in this post.  This is the thick of my ministry calendar with road trips every week for 4 straight weeks.  Here are a few upcoming events that might be of interest to you.  I’d really appreciate your prayers – especially for Jake’s event at KU in two weeks (see links below) and for my travel.  My four state territory has been a recent favorite of blizzards!

Collegiate Day of Prayer

If you can participate in your locale jump on board!  I’ll be at K-State in Manhattan on Thursday.  Here’s a short video on the history behind the day of prayer movement.  Pray for InterVarsity staff teams and students groups all over the US as we’ll be praying this Thursday on our nation’s campuses.  Check out the EveryCampus website here for details on participating.  At Urbana thousands of students signed up to prayer walk their campuses this year!

Ian Hutchinson at KU – March 7th

Please be in prayer for Jake Evans – GFM staff member at KU in Lawrence.  KU is hosting a Veritas Forum with MIT Plasma-Physicist Ian Hutchinson.  Details are on the posting below as well as at this link.  If you are curious about Dr. Hutchinson here is a video interview with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat.  He talks about his science as well as his Christian faith.

Here are the details on the event itself.  Please pray for Jake’s collaboration on campus as they get the word out in academic departments among faculty and grad students.  We’ll be in touch in between the blizzards!  Thanks for your prayers and support.

So what does the 2030 Calling look like in my 4 states?    In the map above, all our large, R1 Institutes are yellow stars.  Clockwise:  Iowa State in Ames, University of Iowa in Iowa City, Washington University in St. Louis, Mizzou in Columbia, Kansas University in Lawrence, Kansas State University in Manhattan, and University of Nebraska in Lincoln.  Its strategic for us to develop our work starting with the R1s and working our way outward.  R1s have the most robust graduate programs because they have the most PhD bound students in addition to professional schools (like Medical, Law and MBA programs).  Faculty and Graduate Student work can both thrive at the same time in these contexts.  My current team has strong faculty work in the places we’re located, but not necessarily significant numbers of graduate students.  We also have plenty of room to grow GFM at R2 and R1 schools.  There are no R1 schools in my town, but we do have the beginnings of groups at UNO, UNMC and Creighton.  This spring on my way to my R1s I’ll connect with potential work we have at schools like Drake University and Des Moines Area Community College (faculty groups at these schools).  Mark Hansard, one of my staff in Manhattan leads a bi-weekly bible study group for faculty at Emporia State University.

Here’s where we have potential to add groups, staff and volunteers.  I’ll be visiting a recently affiliated faculty group in Columbia.  We have undergraduate InterVarsity at Mizzou, but nothing for faculty and graduate students.  When I stop through in a couple of weeks I’ll be connecting with the faculty group helping casting vision for what it would be like to get a GFM staff member in Columbia and grow grad student groups too.  Lincoln and Ames are in the same situation – all kinds of potential, yet no staff and no groups currently.

Mark’s group at Emporia.  Kate is in her 3rd year in Education.  Scott has been at ESU for 35 yrs

My travel schedule this spring

Feb 12-14    Iowa: Des Moines (Drake and Des Moines Area Comm College) Ames (ISU) and Iowa City (Univ of Iowa).

Feb 19-21    Missouri: Columbia (Mizzou) and St. Louis (Wash U, Forest Park Comm College, Lindenwood University)

Feb 27- Mar 1    Kansas: Manhattan (K-State Internationals, Faculty and exploring possible new group in School of Veterinarian Medicine.

Mar 6-7   Kansas: Lawrence (KU is hosting a Veritas Forum with Dr. Ian Hutchinson)

March 26-29    National GFM Staff Conference in Mundelein, Illinois.  I’ll be adding on time for fundraising in the Chicago vicinity.

Apr 23-26   National Evangelism Champions meeting in Southern California

Yup, that’s my son on stage in the worship center at Christ Community Church two weeks ago.  Yup, those are my shoes he borrowed that morning.  Silas is 17 years old with a very grown-up mind and some awesome gifts for teaching and communicating.  His high school pastor Brad Mock invited him to team teach the message with him on Student Takeover Sunday.  If you want to catch the whole message you can find it here at this link.

Brad and Silas taught through that passage from Luke about when Jesus got separated for a couple of days from his family while traveling back from Jerusalem.  What do we stand to learn from a young Jesus growing up in a family at a moment when his gifts and calling take him beyond his home?  Silas had some great insights for parents and teens.  Parents have to let go and trust that their kids will be ok when it comes time to grow up.

It was quite a joy watching Silas from the balcony where Cheryl and I were perched.  Yup, that’s our Silas.  Unbelievable.  He’s really growing.  We loved watching so many aspects of his personality come out in his speaking.  He looks totally at home in front of a crowd.  Enjoys humor, even if at Brad’s expense.  He did a great job recreating some of the parental angst Mary and Joseph must have felt when they lost Jesus.  “They didn’t lose just any little kid.  They lost Jesus. You know, the Messiah!  Could you imagine what they might have prayed in their desperation to find him?” … “And have you ever wondered why Jesus wasn’t all that concerned about their understandable frustration?”

Recently I asked Silas if he would help me with my library.  I’ve been finishing some space in my basement in an attempt to retrieve my truck-load of books from the garage.  He unboxed one half of my collection with his broken arm and arranged them on my newly installed shelves.  He noticed my copy of God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens (among the rest of my books on atheism).  “Dad I saw a kid at school with that book.  Who is Christopher Hitchens?”  We’ve had the best conversations lately when I pick Silas up from school.  He’s really leaning into some great questions and wanting deeper than ever answers.  Among his many friends Silas seems to be having a lot of discussions on tough questions.  Here was today’s:  Why didn’t God outlaw all forms of slavery in the Old Testament instead of just regulating it with rules?

For Silas these aren’t just his friends’ questions.  He sees an opportunity to learn things he’s been curious about but hasn’t till now been able to delve into.  3:14 to 3:40 in the afternoon is becoming my favorite part of the day!  Usually we’re still buzzing once we come in from the driveway.  Silas is not only borrowing my shoes, he’ll have no problem filling my shoes as a teacher-evangelist.  Go Silas!

Totally digging having my books back within reach…

“Longing for revival, we catalyze movements that call every corner of every campus to follow Jesus.”

So, I’ve worked the InterVarsity Staff Booth more than once during the course of the 8 Urbanas I’ve attended.  Every other ministry you can imagine comes to the convention, carves out a location, constructs a booth of some sort, packs it with branded merch, printed pieces and mans it with their best staff.  Working a shift at a booth is non-stop conversation with students eager to explore options in missions.

This year was different for the InterVarsity booth.  Instead of trying to find staff candidates, we decided to build our display around the theme of InterVarsity’s 2030 Calling (please hit the link and give it a glance if you haven’t yet).  As students approach the display, a staff member engages them in conversation about their campus.  “What part of your campus would you like to see God visit in a new way?”  Rather than trolling for people interested in joining IV staff, we were looking for students with a heart for an unreached corner of their campus.

After a few minutes of buzzing about the vision, the staff member hands them a pen and directs them to the “Corner Board” where they can write the name of their corner and their campus.  Next they’re invited to a 10 minute coaching session where a staff member helps them move from vision to a plan of action once they’re back on campus.  They get a worksheet that helps them lay out a network map of the people God is moving them to reach.  They work on a set of action steps and receive some discussion group materials.  We can even do a crash-course on manuscript study with them.  The idea is to start with vision and build toward equipping them for a bold but doable plan.

After three full afternoons of conversations our team has spoken with over 500 students!  500 students with a fledgling vision and a concrete ministry plan to reach out once they return to campus.  It shouldn’t surprise me when I find a personal connection in the midst of all the seemingly random interaction.  So far this week I’ve met up with several students from Illinois where I was formerly on staff with IV.  I had a delightful encounter with a student named Hannah and the staff member who wound up coaching her.

“So what school to attend, Hannah?”

“Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois”

“No way, I was born in that town and grew up there.  I supervised the IV work there for quite a number of years too.”

Hannah caught me up on the IV chapter as we were waiting in line to get an appointment with a coach.  We talked about Millikin.  We talked about Decatur.  Yes, she knew the name of the professional sports team that originated as the Decatur Staleys. She told me about some renovations happening to the campus.  We scanned Hannah’s nametag and took her to the coaching zone.  To her surprize and mine, the coach next in line was her own staff member, Derekah Kingery.

Thanks for your prayers for students this week!  Urbana wraps up tonight at midnight.  I’ll try to get another post out to you before the day is over.

Since this is the last day of the calendar year, thought I’d also put the link here to my donations page.  Many thanks to those who’ve been getting their year-end giving sent in!

Click here to be taken to Tim’s account on the InterVarsity Donations website.