Light Overcomes the Darkness

One of my favorite moments at Urbana was the second to last day after studying John 3 and Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the night.  After much discussion, Jesus shares about eternal life with Nicodemus, and eventually leaves him with these words, “But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” John 3:21  This, coming after the prologue where the writer John says, “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” John 1:4

It’s one of my favorite moments in scripture – Nicodemus, coming to Jesus at night, sheepish and nervous about being discovered by his fellow Pharisees.  And there’s Jesus, the light of the world, shining in the darkness and inviting Nicodemus to step into the light, so that eventually others might know about him.  We never find out what happens with Nicodemus.  The story ends with Jesus’ invitation, and we’re left to wonder what happened to this inquiring man.

But we weren’t left to wonder at Urbana.  17,000 students gathered on the 3rd day for scripture study of John 3, and then later gathered in the Edward Jones Dome where a call to faith was made.  As a symbol of saying yes to Jesus and a sign of that commitment, people raised glow sticks – choosing light in the midst of darkness.

It was absolutely amazing to see HUNDREDS of glow sticks around the dome, symbolizing the many first time commitments to Jesus.  Even more amazing is that several employees of the dome, not related to InterVarsity at all, also participated and made decisions!!!  How cool is that?!?

Photo Courtesy of Wayne Yuane

My friend Sherami

She spoke at Urbana 09!  I could never get up in front of 17,000 people and do what she did, so I’m just in awe a little bit.  Sherami is on staff at University of Iowa, and is a dear friend to me.  Enjoy her story!

Day 1 @ Urbana 09

Check out a behind the scenes look at Day 1 of Urbana 09!

Christian Love Campaign Video

Made by a first year named Doug.

Black Friday Challenge: Spend Less, Give More!

Join me for my 4 day fundraising challenge to raise $2,500 between Friday, November 27th (Black Friday) and Monday November 30 (Cyber Monday)!

Thank you in advance for your gift to my ministry with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship!  Financially, it’s been a difficult year, but I’m full of hope for what God wants to do through this ministry.  And I hope you are too!

Your gift in response to this challenge will help me get closer to closing a $5,000 funding gap that I have this year.  It would be awesome if the Lord made it possible for me to finish the year “in the black”!

 

Here’s what your gift will go towards:

Training students how to lead Bible studies

Mentoring key student leaders

Cultivating the values of social justice, evangelism, leadership, community and scripture

Enable me to spend more focused time with students, faculty, and staff

Resources and supplies related to the ministry

 

I hope you can help me meet my goal of raising $2,500 in 4 days!  Follow this link to donate online using credit card or electronic transfer (debit) now!

And if you’d like to join as a regular monthly donor, follow go here.

Many blessings and thanks,

Jen

 

Eunice '13 helping out during an outreach even in the JRC

 

 

Love Campaign

A short update on our “Love Campaign” – we had a great response to our interactive exhibit!  Many students stopped by to share thoughts about the different aspects of love that we covered throughout the week – forgiveness, community, grace, and compassion.  Check out some pictures below!

Love Changes Everything

During the month of November, we hosted a series of large group talks at CW (Community Worship) called Love Changes Everything.  The focus is on how the love of Christ must compel and inspire us to transformation.  The first week, alum and former staff at Grinnell Tim Lin came and spoke about love having vision, and not just being warm and fuzzy.  The second week, Andy Hamilton from the athletic department shared from the parable of the Good Samaritan and encouraged us to think practically about serving others.  The third week, Iowa Area Director Jon Hietbrink came and encouraged us to think about our stories and share them with others as an act of love.  During the final week, I challenged people to rethink the parables of the lost coin, sheep, and son – do they really know God’s powerful love that can change everything?  And will they celebrate someone who comes into the family of God and has experienced this life changing love?

After four weeks, we’re in our final week – tonight we’ll do some sharing and story time, hopefully with some great testimonies of how God’s love can change and transform us!

 

 

Website and Email Trouble

After my most recent update in October, my husband and I found out that the server that hosts both our email and my website (http:jen.weinman.cc) was dying. We’ve been blessed by the generosity of others in that using both of these has been (for the most part) free. Of course, with that can often come some hiccups. Hence why some of you received a multitude of error messages and bounced emails if you tried to respond to my last update. I’m so sorry for that, but there wasn’t anything I could do. Sorry for the inconvenience!

We’re currently still working on getting my email and website transferred to a new server. In the meantime, I will be posting here and using a different email: jnweinman@gmail.com. I will let you know when my regular email and website are back up and running.

Hope you’re doing well!
Jen

Urbana 09 is Coming!

We currently have 21 Grinnell students registered for Urbana 09!  I’m super excited to be spending time several key leaders during a specific track for student leaders – Sarah, Kodi, Carlos, and Stephanie will be joining me during that time.  Please pray for us!  I’m thankful that so many students are taking a risk and giving up valuable time with friends and family to spend time at Urbana.

Here’s a video to let you know what Urbana is like.  If you’d like to “join” us for Urbana, you can register or you can volunteer.  And if physical presence isn’t an option, check out the webpage – I’m sure there will be some telecast posted there like last time.

A Student Story: Kendall

Here’s another story told by a student named Kendall.  She’s leading in multiple ways this fall.  Please pray for her!

 

My name is Kendall Hiedeman, and I’m a third-year psychology and sociology double major.  One of the things that I am doing with GCCF this year is leading a bible study on south campus with my roommate, Nikki.  This year we’re studying Mark.  Although Nikki and I went inviting for our bible study at the beginning of the year, we did not know many people living on south campus who’d be interested in attending a bible study and we had no idea if any of the people we’d invited had any real interest in attending, so we were pretty nervous about how well our bible study would go.  But God really showed us that we didn’t have any reason to worry about people coming to our bible study, and blessed us with lots of first-years and a really great group of regulars.
One of the hardest things for me about leading bible study — that I discovered last year as I led, also on south campus — is that it’s harder to get things out of bible study yourself when you’re the one leading.  This year, however, I’ve seen that complete change for me.  Even though I’ve already studied the passage in leadership meetings and in individual prep time, the people in my bible study ask questions that I’ve never thought of before and have answers that I never could’ve thought of on my own.  I have been learning so much from our bible study, even though I’m the one leading.  For example, we were studying the passage in Mark 3 where Jesus heals a man with a shriveled hand on the sabbath in the synagogue, and — although I’d studied this passage my first year at Grinnell and in leadership meetings and on my own beforehand — I’d never really realized just how awesome it is that Jesus becomes “angry and deeply distressed at [the Pharisee's] hardness of heart” (Mark 3:5).  How cool is it that Jesus is so passionate about healing people that he gets angry when people have any hesitations about him doing so?  We’ve also just had some really great group prayer time at the end of our bible studies, and have had people finding some really awesome connections between the passages we’ve been studying and their own lives.  God has really been reminding me of something that I think I forgot through the course of my first year leading last year — how he can use studying the bible in community to teach people more about Him.

Another thing that I am doing with GCCF this year is leading the worship team.  I’ve been playing the piano for the worship team since about the middle of my second semester at Grinnell.  This is my first time ever being on a worship team, and this semester has been my first time ever leading a worship team.  Benjamin Hering led last year and let me “practice” leading last year, but we lost two veteran singers and our bass player last year, so this year has been a completely different experience — and I didn’t realize it would be so different until I started doing it!  Community Worship has also relocated to Forum South Lounge, so was another big adjustment that we had to get used to.  There has been a lot of craziness and stress trying to get adjusted to a new space, a less-experienced worship team, and to being the leader — I had no idea that worship team leaders had to make so many decisions all the time, theologically and relationally and otherwise — and I was really nervous about worship team for the first few weeks.  But, God is really great about meeting us exactly where we need to be met, and He used conversations with other leaders, GCCF members, and previous worship team members as well as words of affirmations from our guest speakers to show me that people were being blessed through our music, and that we were working together really well as a team.  God has helped me to recognize the things that I need to do to help the members of the worship team build confidence and cohesiveness, and He’s given me great words of affirmation to speak to the members of the worship team and great opportunities to speak them.  God’s really been growing the members of worship team into great leaders of worship and has, I believe, really been using our music to bless the people who attend Community Worship.