Meeting Minutes December 6, 2011

December 6th , 2011 Meeting Minutes
Present:
Richard G, Sam E, Peter B, Amy P

Large Group #9 Debrief: Nuances Wrap-up

To close out the term and our Nuances of the Faith series, I found, pestered and blackmailed (just kidding) six of the large group regulars to each summarize one of the large group talks from our Nuances series. They each gave an overview of the major points of their respective talks, and then we broke into discussion groups to talk about questions that they provided! Since I didn't do any of the work this week, I just want to thank them. :-) Here's the lineup (links go to the respective previous blog posts):

Vivian Huang talked about Angry, But Not Sinning.

Ben Wang talked about God Speaks, But Confirm.

Grace Tang talked about Faith, Not Blind Faith.

Charles Tschirhart talked about Unity, Not Uniformity.

Katherine Lai talked about Fundamentals, Not Fundamentalist.

Tim Johnson talked about In the World, Not Of the World.

Thanks again!

Up next term: "Theology 101" including the Problem of Evil, Predestination and Free Will, the New Perspective on Paul, and much more. We will be having even more outside speakers, including a couple Christian Caltech professors! Keep Monday nights open; you won't be disappointed.

Large Group #8 Debrief: In the World, Not Of the World

Hi everyone! Last Monday, we had the fortune of hearing from our third pastor in six weeks, Pastor Nathan Lundgren of Oasis Church Pasadena. He gave the last talk in our Nuances series on "In the World, Not Of the World". The talk was peppered with questions, and Nathan was kind enough to write out all of his thoughts as well so I could share them with you. Keep reading for his transcript.

Meeting Minutes November 29, 2011

November 29th , 2011 Meeting Minutes
Present:
Amy P, Richard G, Sam E, Peter B

Meeting Minutes November 22, 2011

November 22th , 2011 Meeting Minutes
Present:
Sam E, Richard G, Peter B, Robb M

No Large Group This Week

Due to the retreat this last weekend and Praise and Prayer Night tomorrow (8-10pm, Dabney Hall), large group this week has been cancelled. Instead, in preparation for next week, I'd like to share a fascinating discussion between three of the brightest pastors in America these days on the use of culture in their churches. Here's the link:

http://marshill.com/media/special/elephant-room-culture-in-the-church-vs-church-in-the-culture

If you get a chance to watch the video, feel free to add your comments below!

Next up: Pastor Nathan Lundgren of Oasis Church will be talking about "In the World, Not Of the World." As our third and final guest speaker coming in, we'd like to give him a warm welcome and a receptive audience, so make sure to be there!

Large Group #7 Debrief: Fundamentals, Not Fundamentalist

Hi everyone! At large group on Monday, I talked and we discussed the extent to which Christianity needs to be extreme, and the sorts of errors that Christian "fundamentalists" fall into. Rather than merely debate definitions, we focused on what the errors are and how we can avoid them. We heard from two pastors, Mark Driscoll and Matt Chandler, reflect on these things. Keep reading to get my synopsis and those links.

Meeting Minutes November 15, 2011

November 15th , 2011 Meeting Minutes
Present:
Amy P, Richard G, Peter B, Sam E

Meeting Minutes November 8, 2011

November 8th , 2011 Meeting Minutes
Present:
Richard G, Amy P, Sam E, Peter B

Large Group #6 Debrief: Unity, not Uniformity

Speakers: Sam Elder and Pastor Jeff Liou of Lake Avenue Church

This week, we continued with our series Nuances of the Faith with a two-part talk, by myself and Pastor Jeff Liou of Lake Avenue Church, entitled Unity, Not Uniformity, based in Ephesians 4. I spoke about the need for unity in the church, drawing from verses 1-6, my own experiences here at Caltech and an article from Christianity Today. Jeff then spoke about the need for diversity, drawing from verses 7-16, his own experiences at Lake Avenue, and his studies at Fuller on race. Afterwards, we broke into three groups for discussion.

Dig-In Recap

Hey everyone!

We just finished the dig-in, our intense bible study of Philippians. There was plenty of lively, insightful discussion. A lot of people were there: Peter B, Robb M, Tim J, me, Skippy, Katherine L, Grace T, Vivian H, Madeleine Y, Luke B, Stephen W, Jonathan G, Laura P, and Jay P. I've asked them to post their five most salient points from the discussion as comments below. (I'll also add my own.) Enjoy!

Sam

Meeting Minutes November 1, 2011

November 1st , 2011 Meeting Minutes
Present:
Richard G, Sam E, Amy P, Peter B

Faraday Institute Advocates A Middle Ground Between Science and Religion

Two weeks ago today, CCF and LCF hosted a group from the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in the University of Cambridge. They had wanted to show a segment of a video they had produced, essentially about how science and religion do not actually conflict. This particular video dealt with the interactions between neuroscience and spirituality. After showing the video, they gathered a panel of a pastor (Ken Fong of Evergreen), a chemistry professor (David Vosburg of Harvey Mudd), a Faraday Insitute representative (Ruth Bancewicz), and an Old Testament scholar (Tremper Longman III) to answer questions. The crowd, filling Noyes 153 (see the pictures below!) was a mix between Caltech undergrads and Evergreen members. Keep reading for some reactions to the event.

Large Group #5 Debrief: Faith, Not Blind Faith

Speaker: Sam Elder

Last night we continued in our Nuances of the Faith series with discussing the title subject: faith. The key question we struggled with was: Is faith supposed to be believing something in spite of the evidence? As you can guess from the title, my short answer is no. But then we're left with the question, what is faith?

Council Meeting Minutes Oct 25

October 25th , 2011 Meeting Minutes
Present:
Richard G, Sam E, Amy P, Peter B, Tim J

Large Group #4 Debrief: God Speaks, But Confirm

Speaker: Pastor James Lee, My Father's House Church

Our first guest speaker came to large group today! Pastor James Lee, who recently founded a church in San Marino, was passing out fliers on campus a few weeks ago when he ran into Peter Ngo. Peter gave me his flier and I contacted him about speaking at large group. We met over lunch and this talk is a result of that discussion and related to a book he's written. (I bought a copy from him; ask me if you want to borrow.) These are the notes that I took.

Council Meeting Minutes Oct 18

October 18th , 2011 Meeting Minutes

Present:

Richard G, Sam E, Peter B

Large Group #3 Debrief: Angry But Not Sinning

Speakers: Peter Buhler and Sam Elder

This is the first talk in a series called Nuances of the Faith, discussing the gray areas of Christianity. We believe the entire Bible is true and God's Word to us, but it's sometimes not so easy to understand, or seems to contradict itself, and we'll be focusing on those moments in this series.

This week, we talked about the emotion of anger. Should we as Christians be angry, or should we do our best to avoid it? And how do we deal with it? Keep reading to see what Peter Buhler and I (Sam Elder) had to say about it.

Large Group #2 Debrief: Church and Ministry Fair

Monday night, we had our annual CCF Ministry Fair, combined with a new Church Fair. Representatives from 5 churches (including 3 pastors!) and 5 ministries were present, and representatives of 3 additional churches were unable to be there. It really was an ecumenical gathering, showing the spirit of Ephesians 4:3-6.

Council Meeting Minutes Oct 11

October 11th , 2011 Meeting Minutes
Present:
Richard G, Amy P, Tom H, Peter B, Sam E

Council Meeting Minutes Oct 4

Meeting Summary:
Picked time for dig in, talked about book to read.
Picked time for retreat.
Decided to switch banks.
Planned next two large groups.
Debriefed from last large group.

Large Group #1 Debrief: Keys to Christian Life in College

Hey everyone! We had our first large group meeting of the year tonight in Avery library from 7:30 to 9. After a great time of worship (featuring three different guitarists!), I talked about three keys to Christian life in college that I think everyone should focus on growing in. We used these three keys to introduce pretty much everything that CCF does, which made for a very interesting meeting as we heard from a lot of different voices. It was also a long meeting, and this will correspondingly be a long post. One thing that I didn't make entirely clear: You don't have to go to everything! If you did, your entire week would be packed. The point of this talk is to have you pick and choose which things you want to go to, and I would encourage everyone to do at least one thing to fulfill each of the three keys.

Anyways, here's my synopsis for those who missed it. I hope this blog post can serve as a reference for those who were at the large group talk, as well as keeping those who weren't there in the loop. Future large group wrap-ups will not be nearly as long, I promise.

Pre-Term Retreat

The weekend before the start of Rotation, CCF had a pre-term retreat to get to know some of this year’s prefrosh and start the school year off on a good note. We camped for two nights at Malibu Creek State Park. Three prefrosh attended, Vivian, Grace and Daniel, as well as seven returning CCFers. We arrived on Friday afternoon, and spent the evening setting up camp, eating together, and singing around the fire. Saturday morning we hiked to a nearby pond and climbed around its perimeter on the rock faces that rise out from the water. After returning to camp and eating lunch, we went to the beach in Malibu for the afternoon. That night a group of students from BIOLA joined us for worship and prayer. All too soon it was Sunday morning, and we had to pack up and return to Tech. We all had a great time together. After the jump, read what one prefrosh, Vivian, has to share about her retreat experience.

Welcome all the prefrosh!

Tomorrow is the first day of classes at Caltech, and we're excited to welcome in the new freshmen. Friday evening, those of us who were here gathered in Avery library, and the prefrosh out-numbered the upperclassmen! It was a very blessed time as we sang some songs, introduced each other, answered the questions the prefrosh had, and socialized over frozen yogurt at Cherry on Top. Prefrosh, I know I'm going to forget your names -- there were just so many of you!

Next up on the schedule is the club fair Wednesday afternoon. We normally will have Monday night large groups, but we're skipping this week due to rotation. If you're a prefrosh, make sure to sign up at our table for our mailing lists. If you're an upperclassmen, come by and spend some time talking with the prefrosh and each other! Then we have our big kick-off large group of the term on Monday, October 3, from 7:30 to 9pm in Avery library again.

I hope this blog is a useful communication method for this year. Look for a post soon about the pre-term retreat which happened about a week ago.

Sam Elder

CCF Large Group Coordinator 2011-12

Welcome to the CCF Blog!

Hello everyone! This is the blog for Caltech Christian Fellowship, one of the Christian student groups at Caltech. The blog will be written for students, primarily by students, and hopefully including many things such as:

• Large group recaps
• Retreat reflections
• Dig-in wrap-ups
• Ministry opportunities
• Book/music recommendations
• Anything else we think to include

For those who remember it, this blog will serve a similar role as the old Fishline newsletter. If you're a CCF member and want to be able to write for the blog, let me (Sam) know and I can add you as an author. This is a new experiment, so there might be some hiccups along the way, but I hope the blog can be a useful resource to the entire fellowship.