STP Internships

FINANCE INTERNSHIP

Need a financial internship this summer? Want to go to project, work part time at a job in SC as well as work a part-time finance internship?

Apply to be one of the two STP Finance Interns and help manage the budget, reimbursement process and manage our finances this summer. Work with Nick and gain valuable and transferable skills towards your future career while investing your summer in Myrtle Beach growing spiritually.

Internships starts in April, so apply by March 20th at noon and hear back by March 23rd. Applications are open to students confirmed attending STP 2018.

Pay is $10/hr for the STP Finance Internship.

DESIGN INTERNSHIP

We're looking for a design intern to help design the *top secret* STP theme logo! This internship takes place in March and the beginning of April and some additional hours during the summer. Applications are due March 20th at noon! 

The design internship includes working with Karen, COM's Communications Director, to develop a logo that will be used in the STP Notebook, banner and T-shirts. Also work with the STP student directors to coordinate the final design for the banners and T-shirts. Applications are open to students confirmed attending STP 2018.

Estimated commitment will be about 20 hours and the intern will be paid $10/hour.

APPLY FOR THE DESIGN INTERNSHIP

Mobilization Event Update: Life After College Summit

We have recently completed our first ever Life After College Summit for all of our junior and senior students. As the Mobilization Director for our region, I want to help equip our students as best I can for the world they will be entering into after college. One way to help accomplish this goal was through the creation of this summit. On February 17th, 25 of our students came and heard from several of our graduates from years past on several topics. Three different graduates came and shared about their experience in transitioning from college to the working world. One of them shared specifically about community after college, another shared about evangelism outside of college, and the third one shared about perspective on work and vocation verses being a student. We also were privileged to have Tom Lutz, who is an elder at Bethlehem Baptist Church and the CPO and Senior VP of US Bank, come and share with our students. He shared many of the scriptures and promises in the Bible that have helped him live out his faith at work and how to be a blessing to the company you work for.

One of the biggest takeaways for students was the realization of how involved God is in their vocation and much they can serve God and others through their work. God wants us to display His love and glory through our various gifts and abilities. For one of the graduate who shared it was being an engineer that works with water treatment systems, for another it was being a lawyer who was able to help display God’s justice and equality through doing his job well. Overall students were able to see their work and the way they carry themselves at work is really important. They were also able to see how much opportunity is there for them to add benefit to their employer and work excellently for God. Through these things they are living as God has called them and this will also help open doors to share about Jesus with others as their attitude and work ethic shines like a light at their company. Here are some takeaways from students that attended:

• “I was really helped by the training on money and finances.”
• “It was impactful to hear these graduates share in such an authentic way and hear about their experiences transitioning out of college.”
• “It helped me start thinking about what is coming next and help me be aware of the many things I need to think through.”
• “This event was not only practically helpful but spiritually refreshing and worshipful.”
• Others mentioned it was refreshing and exciting to see how much their work matters to God and that they can serve God by doing what they love and serving him with their gifts.

As a ministry, we love when students come on staff with us or decide to be missionaries overseas. These are amazing things and fruit of God being faithful to us. But he is also faithful to the other 85% of our students that graduate and seek to serve God as nurses, engineers, teacher and more. Their calling is different and not lesser. It was exciting to see how much students were helped by this event and it was personally worshipful for me to have some of our graduate come back and share with our students. To see these graduates established outside fo college and living out their faith is what we want, and hope that this event in some ways will help reproduce that result and help encourage our students to live for Jesus in all that they do.

Mike Polley
Campus Outreach Minneapolis
Mobilization Director

Love & Relationships at Winter Retreat

108 students from Bethel and Northwestern attended our Winter Retreat hosted in North Branch, MN. The retreat included snow tubing on Wild Mountain, hot tub and pool at the hotel, group games, and key note speak Marshall Segal, writer for DesiringGod and author of Not Yet Married.

The goal of the retreat was to gather students around fun activities and introduce the gospel through a topic that is usually fascinating to the college age student. Students were engaged over the topics and the retreat seemed to serve to foster like minded community and new friendships. Several mentioned a big takeaway being how God loves them perfectly and specifically and has a plan for their lives in relationships.

Marshall spoke three times on the topic of relationships encompassing dating, friendship, and relationship with the Lord. He started the weekend painting the picture that “Love is looking for you,” that relationship with God is the point of our existence and where we are headed for eternity. Further, all of what we believe about this affects how we date and marry. Marshall challenged the students that no one can love someone well if they do not love God more than that person. He also highlighted the importance of community and having people who know you to be present in your dating relationship. 

In following up with students after the retreat, it was encouraging to hear about the Lord has used the retreat in clearer understanding of what it means that God really loves them and that our relationships here on earth are imagery of God and his character. Our student leaders were also very inclusive and engaging with new students which was a definite blessing on top of an impactful 20 hours away!

Elli Van Zee
Campus Outreach Northwestern Staff

2017 Annual Report

Our Annual Report is out! Check it out to read more about how God has been working in and through our ministry in the lives of students on college campuses over the past year. We are so grateful for what he is doing and how he blesses us by being a part of this important work! Thanks for your partnership and prayers for this ministry.

CO Alumni Connection

KatieJo Deslie, Campus Outreach Graduate

Campus Outreach is the avenue God used to bring me to him. I would not be where I am now with out CO. A staff person and an older girl shared the Gospel with me and God changed my heart using there words. I also attended CO Summer Training Project all 4 years. I gained confidence in my faith and grew in my faith with other believers. Without the support of people in CO, I would not have had the courage to step out in faith and follow a calling to another country.

I am now living and teaching in South Korea. I am not a missionary, but a recent graduate that took a leap of faith to live in another country and be a light for the kids I teach and in the lives of other people I see and interact with everyday. Korea is filled with cults and false teachers. The culture is very centered on appearances and the people have to study a lot to get anywhere in life. Christianity is on the decline and churches are attacking each other. I have shared the gospel with some students, 5 cult members, some people on the subway and some people I met through an evangelism group from our church. I am a dreamer and I love thinking big, so I feel like I could always be doing more with my life. Although, I have come to realize that just being willing to move here and being open to sharing the gospel, God is using me. God uses small things to grow his kingdom.

My hope is to be a light in a place that is very dark. As a recent graduate that was involved with CO, I am so thankful for supporters of the ministry and how it was an integral part of my life. God is using Campus Outreach for good and sending laborers to the lost world.

KatieJo Deslie

STP | WHY ARE WE SO AFRAID TO SHARE THE GOSPEL IN COLLEGE?

This is an important question to ask while any Believer in Jesus is in college. I believe that the university setting is one of the best places to share with people the good news of Jesus Christ, but why is it that we so often do not? Steven Lee, the new lead pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church North Campus, wrote an article called Four Reasons We Don’t Share the Gospel last year, and I thought that it would help explain much of what we students learned this summer at Summer Training Project. 

Steven Lee goes through four obstacles to evangelism for most people, and I will do my best to connect these same points to college students:

1. Lack of Gospel Knowledge 

College students, even at Christian schools, have a huge problem sharing the gospel simply because they do not understand the gospel enough to articulate the truths of the gospel in a simple and coherent way. 

2. Apathy

This obstacle became increasingly evident throughout this summer as students began to look at their lives and reflected on what Christ’s work on the cross actually did. Students are perfectly content making friends and going to dinner with people, but when it comes to sharing the gospel with people, it always seems that we don't have enough time. 

3. Fear 

College age students already have many insecurities. We are still growing and becoming who we want to be, and we are afraid of people rejecting us because we are not enough for them. Sharing the gospel is just another reason for which people could reject us. We do not want to push people away, so we just end up saying nothing.

4. Lack of Compassion

God has revealed to me that in my heart, as in many other college students’ hearts, I do not understand the urgency for those who do not believe in Jesus, and because of that, I, most times, do not have compassion on them as I should if I truly understand the gravity of the situation. 

Summer Training Project has pointed to the good news of Jesus that changes everything. The community that I have gained while being in South Carolina, and the community that many other college students have gained will forever change the way that these students look at the world.

Steven Lee’s Four Steps to Sharing More:

1. Pray Together for the Lost

Throughout the summer, more than 100 students have prayed fervently for the students on their campus to understand that they can be made new through the truth that God sent Jesus down to earth so that we who are sinners could be in a relationship with a Holy God that has come to save us and be in a relationship with us. 

2. Recall the Gospel Together

After going through Ephesians, the students at project were able to not only preach the Gospel to each other, but the students were able to live in a community where each and every person was reminded of the gospel each and every day.

3. Apply the Gospel Together

Throughout the summer, we as students were able to not only remind each other about the Gospel, but we were able to apply the Gospel in real ways. During conflict, arguments, joys, pains, and victories, we were able to see how God has given each of us the ability to live freely in the joys of the Gospel and to unite in the comfort of Christ’s care. 

4. Prove the Power of the Gospel Together

With the believers at project, we were reminded of the sufficiency of God’s word to do his work for his purposes. Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us that the Gospel saves by grace through faith — apart formworks — as a free gift, and during the summer, many were able to trust, believe, and declare it for the first time.

God’s sweet love has been so evident this summer, and it was my pleasure experiencing the joys of Gospel-centered community with so many college students. Amen.

Benjamin Johnson
2017 STP Student Communications Intern

Bethel Spring Break Trip and STP!

It’s that wonderful time of the year when students get a week off from classes and they can do whatever they want. Naturally, people want to do something with other people and go somewhere warm. That’s where we come in! We ask students to come down for two reasons:

1. To have fun with a community of believers who lean in
2. To come to treasure Jesus more

The fact that the price of the trip is cheap and that we were going somewhere warm is helpful, but I really think people come on these trips because they long for community. This year Bethel had 27 students come on our spring break trip. That is a lot more students than we had last year. I think it was because we had a lot of leaders who were coming and they brought others with them.

Part of what we are trying to build here at Bethel is a body of believers who lean into each other's life. We love to have fun and enjoy one another. I think that environment was definitely created on our spring break trip. Even though the weather wasn’t great, we all had such a great time. A lot of people still got burnt too. We did activities such as: playing volleyball, soaking in the sun on the beach, going to alligator adventure, going bowling, going to see a movie and playing a lot of games at our hotel (Mafia). If you ever go to Myrtle Beach you should visit Alligator Adventure, they have a crocodile named UTAN who weighs over 2,000 pounds!

To help students treasure Jesus more, each day we had a bible study. Our theme this year was “We are the problem”. As a staff team, we hear students use language as if all their problems are outside of them. “Only if this guy didn’t yell at me like that then I wouldn’t have reacted like that.” We really wanted to help students see that we are the problem. We read through passages like Romans 3 and Ephesians 2 which say that no one is righteous and that we were all once children of wrath. We have a heart and sin problem. Understanding this important aspect of our lives makes the news of Jesus so sweet. Along with talking about how we are the problem, we read and learned about how Jesus is the solution and hero of the story. Understanding our sinful hearts makes what Jesus did for us on the cross so beautiful. For some students, this was a sweet and familiar theme and for others, it was something new. Our theme created a lot of good conversations where Jesus was glorified!

Lastly, our spring break trip created a lot of excitement for Bethel students to attend our Summer Training Project. A handful of the students who came on our spring break trip signed up to come to STP. We were praying that God would bring 25 Bethel students and he has exceeded our prayer by bringing 33 students, which is double last year! Our Bethel staff team is praying that these students would treasure Jesus more not only this summer but for a lifetime.

Lucas Cecka
Campus Outreach Minneapolis
Bethel Campus Staff

All Nations

Why would Ryan*, a married father of twins with a marketable computer degree, a full-time job and grandparents on hand to provide free babysitting decide to move to the West African nation of Niger? The decision is unusual when you consider that Ryan has achieved the “American Dream”; he worked hard in high school, got into a good college, graduated with a degree, was hired at a high-paying job, married a great wife, has cute kids – everything is in place for an easy, comfortable life. Why would he throw that all away?!?

Matt 28:19-20 states, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

“All nations” was the phrase that grabbed hold of Ryan. As a college student, Ryan was intentional with the relationship choices he made. Some of his closest friends were students from Muslim majority nations. These friends were not afraid to discuss religion, and Ryan joined right in, talking about faith in Jesus Christ alone, not by our good works. Ryan’s love for the Lord and his love for his friends drove him to study Islam and the Bible in order to know how to answer the questions others were asking. God used relationships in a state university computer science department to direct Ryan into full-time international missions in a majority Muslim country.   

When we authentically open the circle of our friendships, God will work in us and through us. Our cultural perspective will change as “those people” become “my friends” who are made in the image of God.

Who are your friends? Do they all look like you and believe the same way you do? If so, pray that God will open your eyes to the nations He has brought to us. Be intentional with those you spend your time with! Look for people who are different from you and take a relational step towards them. Get to know them for who they are, and as you do life with them, talk about what is important to you - share the hope you have in Christ!

*His name has been changed due to the sensitive nature of his ministry.

Dan Sterken
Campus Outreach Minneapolis
U of M International Staff