That guy on the stairs – probably not a candidate!

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

Carrie Bare, Brian Chang, Leon Fillyaw, Michael Moriarty, Will Clark, Gary Cameron, Don Paul Gross, Steve Hinkle (not present) Tim Perry (stepped out of the photo…to take the photo).

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)

Will the magic happen this summer?  If this ant has any say it will!

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