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.

To motivate my three keys, we turned to Philippians 1:9-11. The three keys, which are (with a little stretch) mentioned here are:

1) Learn to think as a Christian, wrestling with tough questions.

2) Seek support and prayer from your fellow Christians in our common pursuit of holiness.

3) Establish long-lasting habits that will bear fruit.

I then explained each of these, and we went through 4 things that we do in CCF that aim toward each of these goals.

Key 1: We read Romans 12:2. This is about my favorite verse in the bible. God's will! Wouldn't it be awesome if we could know what it is for our life? And this verse tells us how to do that: You have to be transformed; you have to change? And change starts with a renewing of your mind. You have to learn to think as a Christian. These things will be structured with that sort of purpose:

• Large group. Contact: Sam Elder, same@caltech.edu. This was the first one; we will meet every Monday from 7:30-9pm in Avery library. This term, we will be doing a series called Nuances of the Faith on some of the gray areas of our faith.
• A new class this term called "The Culture of Christ," led by Paul Nguyen, pnguyen@caltech.edu, president of the Newman Center (Catholic club). This course will be a thinktank for Christian apologetics throughout the year, starting with classical philosophy and its bearing on medieval apologetics. Apologetics, if you're not familiar with the word, means "to give an answer" for the faith that we have, to defend Christianity. The course will have an organizational meeting from 8-9 this Wednesday, October 5, in Annenberg 107.
• Dig-ins. Contact: Timothy Johnson, tjohnson@caltech.edu. Once a term, we gather overnight on a weekend and try to study an entire book of the Bible in 24 hours, Friday-Saturday. Many times, we don't finish, but the tangents we go off on are well worth it. This term's book has not been decided, but might be Philippians. The time will be sometime in the middle of the term, but is TBA for this term.
• Life Christian Fellowship. Contact: Peter Ngo, pngo@caltech.edu. LCF is another Christian fellowship at Caltech with a lot of overlap with CCF. It is affiliated with Life Baptist Church in Pasadena, and some leaders from that church help out with LCF. It meets Fridays, also in Avery library, from 8-10pm.

2) We see in this room that there are a lot of Christians around us. From Philippians 1:10, we see we have a goal to remain pure and blameless, to be holy. But we can't do this on our own, and that's when we have to let others into our lives. We have to let ourselves be vulnerable to each other. Large group is a little large, so that's why we have small groups... and other things!

• Small groups. We have three of these this term! Andy Bartlett, abartlet@caltech.edu, will be leading one on Thursdays from 8-9 in SFL Room 2-2, studying the Gospel of John. Hunter Zhao, zzhao@caltech.edu, will be leading one on alternating Tuesdays (starting next week, October 11) from 8-9 in Ruddock 214 (but open to anyone, not just Rudds). Instead of studying a particular book, this group will have worship and a freeform discussion of whatever topics the group members want to discuss. Kevin Sutherland, ksutherl@caltech.edu, and Peter Buhler, bpeter@caltech.edu, will be leading a small group on Wednesdays from 9-10pm, also in SFL Room 2-2, studying the Gospel of Matthew. There is also a group in Fleming meeting on Wednesdays that we will get more information on when we know it. (They were busy with initiations tonight.)
• Prayer meeting. CCF holds a prayer meeting at the house of John Skidmore, jskippy1@sbcglobal.net, and Jonathan Gardner, mozviking@gmail.com, two of the older folks in our fellowship. This prayer meeting is the place to go if you think you might be experiencing anything strange; they are non-judgmental and experienced with spiritual gifts. It's also just a great place for random discussion and prayer for what's going on in life at Tech. They eat dinner together from 6-8, then hold the prayer meeting from 8 onwards (ending at a variable time around 11) on alternating Saturdays, starting this weekend (October 8). Contact John or Jonathan for rides.
• Retreats. Contact: Robb Morgan, robbwmorgan@gmail.com. Tech is awesome, but sometimes you just have to get away, to clear your mind and have some great fellowship together. So we have retreats every term (except maybe winter term). Most years, we go to a YMCA camp called Camp Oakes, but this fall we'll probably be going back to the same place we went to pre-term retreat, Malibu Creek State Park. Editor's note: For a recap of pre-term retreat, see the post by Robb below.
• Discipleship. Contacts: Tom Harris, harrist@caltech.edu, and Peter Buhler, bpeter@caltech.edu. Discipleship is essentially mentoring, "Office Hours for Life." The main idea is to pair up younger people (like frosh) with more experienced mentors who can give spiritual guidance and advice on life in general. Every pair is different, and the groups can grow beyond 2, but usually not much larger. Almost every group is same-gender. If you're interested in discipling someone, or being discipled, the best way to start is just to get to know other CCFers. Ideally, a discipleship pair should grow from a foundation of friendship. After you've talked to upperclassmen (or frosh) and you're still not in a discipleship pair, you can e-mail Tom or Peter and they can help you get started.

3) Life will go on after Caltech. You'll honestly lose many of the friendship you have here, but one thing that you won't lose is your habits. This is kind of a catch-all category for the things that you should do here to build long-lasting habits for life.

• Attend church. We all go to a bunch of churches in CCF, and a bunch of us go to one church, but we'll have a Church Fair next week so you can hear all about the different churches we attend and maybe check them out. Stay tuned for that.
• Keep to a regular devotional quiet time, on a regular (daily or every other day) basis. I've (Sam) been encouraging a few people in CCF to form tiny groups to do quiet times together and hold each other accountable. To encourage these groups, I have another blog at www.morning-manna-quotes.blogspot.com where I post a quote every weekday from a Christian book about community. Add this blog on Google Reader or whatever you use!
• Frosh prayer. Contact: Peter Ngo, pngo@caltech.edu. This is an opportunity for daily prayer every weekday before dinner (5:30pm MTWH, 5pm F) at Throop Pond, where the turtles are. It's a peaceful place to pray. This year, we're also looking into learning about how to pray at frosh prayer, in addition to praying ourselves. Upperclassmen, contact Peter if you are willing to lead frosh prayer one day a week this term.
• Bridgefridaynoonsing. Contact: Richard Gianforte, richardg@caltech.edu. This group, despite its name, meets on Fridays at noon on Millikan bridge to sing songs from the songbook and hang out.

These three categories are things that I believe everyone should do. But that's still not everything we do as a fellowship. For scriptural backing, we also read Romans 12:6-8. We each have additionally been given some spiritual gifts, and this passage says we should utilize them in the church! These are the ways we do that in CCF:

4) Prophecy (and other spiritual gifts). We do believe those exist; Peter Buhler has some experience with them. As mentioned before, prayer meeting is a good place to go if you think you have these gifts, as they also have experience and can help you develop them.

5) Service opportunities and contributing to the needs of others. Contact: Amy Proctor, aproctor@caltech.edu. Much of this is on an individual level, but the one thing CCF does together is make milkshakes for anyone who wants them around the time that midterms are passed back and people realize that they have to drop some of their classes.

6) Encouraging and showing mercy. Well, this is sort of a counterpart to #2. Someone needs discipleship, and you might disciple them. Or someone needs a small group and you step up to lead one in the future.

7) Teaching and leading. One of the distinguishing features of CCF is that it is student-run. The mentors, John and Jonathan, are both hands-off and the entire fellowship is run through a council consisting of these members who were all mentioned above:

• President: Peter Buhler, bpeter@caltech.edu
• Secretary: Richard Gianforte, richardg@caltech.edu
• Large Group Coordinator: Sam Elder, same@caltech.edu
• Event Coordinator: Amy Proctor, aproctor@caltech.edu
• Retreat Coordinator: Robb Morgan, robbwmorgan@gmail.com
• Dig-In Dude: Timothy Johnson, tjohnson@caltech.edu
• Frosh Prayer Person: Peter Ngo, pngo@caltech.edu
• Discipleship Coordinator: Tom Harris, harrist@caltech.edu

The entire council can be reached at the ccf-council@caltech.edu e-mail address. The first four form the "Core Council" that meets every week, with some number of the last four. The meetings are open to anyone who is curious how CCF works, and meet from 2:30 to 4pm on Tuesdays at Red Door. If you are interested in leading something we do here, just talk to the relevant leader and ask if there's anything you can do to help out, and when it comes time for leadership turnover at the end of the year, you can join in an official or unofficial capacity.

8) Evangelism. We believe in individual evangelism here, but there are also a couple campus-wide events that we support this year designed at starting conversations with our non-Christian friends. The first is the Veritas forum, which will be at the ministry fair next week, so stay tuned for that. The second is a new upcoming opportunity this month, from a group known as the Faraday Institute based at the University of Cambridge. They present a 30-minute movie consisting of a series of interviews with top Christian scientists, followed by a panelist discussion. The event is coming up soon, on Tuesday, October 18! Mark your calendars.

Whew! Thanks for reading this far if you did! Feel free to refer back to this post if you want.