As I look back on this past year as my first year on staff at the University of Minnesota, there’s so much to thank God for. After sending out one team to bolster Campus Outreach Charleston and another team to pioneer Campus Outreach Sheffield, our ministry in general and especially the University of Minnesota has seen fewer students involved. As a team, we’ve been thinking of this period of time as a rebuilding season.
U of M students at STP 2015
It’s exciting to say that God is answering our prayers for growth both on a campus level and ministry wide even though our staff team has lost some valuable members. At the U in particular, God’s been gracious to grant 17 students who will be attending Summer Training Project! This feels like a particularly sweet and somewhat unexpected blessing because many of these students were not considering STP strongly until our spring break trip to Myrtle Beach. It seems God used that trip to quickly cultivate a lot of interest in our ministry.
In addition to providing students on project, we’ve been thankful for some of the ways God’s been working in our student leaders on campus this past year. Movements do not change overnight, and what we’ve observed at the U of M has been a slow, but steady, increase in desire to share the gospel with those who have not heard it. This has resulted in a lot of gospel conversations happening over the course of the last year. We feel excited as a staff team about how God could use our small team of staff and students to reach many on the campus this coming year.
He’s been gracious to provide students for our ministry more broadly, too. We have 102 students signed up for STP at the moment and many of those students committed very recently. This feels like incredible provision because this is just above the goal that we set for ourselves as a ministry of 100 students.
What we, as a ministry, need to happen now as much as ever is for God to work in a way only he can. To work in student’s hearts and spark new life. To send his Spirit to compel students to share their faith on the campus. To grow a ministry even with a smaller staff team. We’re very grateful that it seems like he’s meeting our needs.
Nirmal Mekala
Campus Outreach Minneapolis
University of Minnesota Campus Staff