Inspired by students!

Guest post by Donan

One of our greatest resources as InterVarsity staff is our students. They constantly amaze and inspire us. On April 1st, we took 5 WSU students and 2 Idaho students to a leadership retreat in Walla Walla. Our hope for the retreat was for students to gain skills in inviting their peers into missional experiences out of scripture. We want studying scripture to not just be an intellectual exercise but an invitation into a deeper relationship with Jesus.

As part of our training, we had students break into small groups and then pairs to practice crafting these invitations for themselves. Each small group received a piece of scripture and then the small group broke into pairs. Each pair received a small group profile so they could craft the invitation from scripture to the needs of that group. Below are the ideas they came up with... praise God for these creative, innovative students!!

Passages of scripture (One for each small group)

Table #1~Good Samaritan~ Luke 10:25-37

Table #2~ Rich Young Ruler~ Mark 10:17-31

Table #3~ Four friends and paralytic~ Mark 2:1-12

Pairs (at each table)

#1: You co-lead a group of 5 freshmen who are from the same floor. They don’t know each other too well as this is only your 2nd week of small group. They all come from church background but you aren’t if they are committed to following Jesus or if they just went to church with their parents.

#2: You co-lead a group that have 5 non-Christians coming. Occasionally a Christian student or two drops in but for the past four weeks these 5 non-Christians have shown up consistently. You’re not sure what is interesting to them about Jesus but the conversations during scripture study are lively.

#3: You co-lead a study that has 3 juniors and 1 senior who come every week. You’ve known all 4 for as long as you’ve been attending InterVaristy events. They have been around awhile and attend events faithfully.

Ideas for invitations:

Table 1

Pair 1:

- Conversation: ask where have you experienced Samaritian love?

- Group application: find someone to serve in secret… report back next week

- Community application: find an agency to serve at

Pair 2:

- Do an act of kindness towards someone that you don’t like (usually don’t interact with)

- Take action in issue of injustice if it’s not your responsibility

- Brainstorm people you don’t like and pray for them

- Use your own resources to care for someone who needs it… go the extra step

Pair 3:

- engage and serve younger students

- as a group meet with the university president or community leader and ask who is the ignored population in that community. Share with fellowship and plan how to serve

- Find a campus group and join even if you wouldn’t normally associate with them

- If they live off campus: find ways to serve their literal neighbor

Table 2

Pair 1:

- Meet with a leader for discipleship time (What questions would you ask one-on-one?)

- “mini-lent”: give a specific thing up for a week

- Bake sale: give donations/proceeds to the poor (decide on specific groups)

- Volunteer somewhere together

- Putting on a community dinner for a section/wing/floor

Pair 2

- What keeps you from following Jesus? This week will you submit that to God and pray to remove that barriers?

- As the lead, give your group a sacrificially large amount of money and have them go use it for a good cause

Pair 3

- Challenge members to brainstorm practical, real-life applications to help those in need and utilitize your riches.

- Discover areas in their lives where they are ‘rich.’ Be imaginative in finding areas in which they have riches to offer (math tutor, rides, etc.)

- Communal applications of reaching out to the poor/destitute, finding ways to give up riches

Table 3

Pair 1

- What’s stopping you from ‘goring through the roof’ to Jesus? What would that look like in your section?

- Who might need to be carried to Jesus?

- What does it look like to have your sins forgiven?

Pair 2

- Do you have any friends who have faith? What does that look like?

- Who in the passage do you relate to?

- Who would you be willing to dig through a roof for?

- What lengths would you go to in order to help a friend?