You know those things that just get you really excited? Things that just stand apart from the normal things that you like or are okay? Well, one of those things has popped up on the radar for us.
Dan and I both love other cultures and believe that God has a heart for every people group. We've both been overseas with Campus Crusade in predominantly Muslim countries. It is still a passion of ours. I noticed a "veiled" student from the College in Starbucks last month and within 5 minutes had her number and arranged to hang out soon. Needless to say, we're still drawn to Muslim people!
Going overseas again is still something that we are praying about for the future. We would love another opportunity to go back to Lebanon or another place that God would call us. But for now, in the states, we can be a part of reaching other cultures on our own campuses.
Our last newsletter described an interest meeting we held for IMPACT, a Campus Crusade ministry that focuses on reaching students of African-American descent. The response to the meeting was amazing. Students whole-heartedly agreed that yes, there was a significant need for a ministry to reach students who identify more with the African-American culture than the mainstream white culture.
I didn't understand why Campus Crusade would have a separate ministry for African-Americans for a long time. Wasn't that just segregation? In my experience with Campus Crusade at UNC-CH, I recalled that very few African-American students ever came to the weekly meetings of over 400 students. It is the same with the smaller scale prayer and praise meetings at CofC and CSU. Maybe there will be a few African American students here or there.
Then I started to understand that it was silly to expect everyone to come to a one-size-fits-all prayer and praise meeting and to pretend that there are no real differences between black and white cultures. No matter what your race, if you are a minority in a place, there are 3 basic categories that you can fall into:
1. Assimilated to the mainstream culture
2. Bicultural--you feel comfortable with mainstream culture and your own minority culture
3. Culturally Cloistered--you are most likely to associate with those you most identify with culturally
We are launching an IMPACT movement on our campus to try to reach the African-American students (a large minority at CSU) who would identify themselves as falling into the second or third category.
Dan, Brook (our friend and teammate), and I will be primarily responsible for helping to start this and coach the student leaders. I don't know if I ever imagined myself doing this--I grew up in a predominantly white area, with very few African-American friends. Even then, most of them were assimilated to white culture. So when we ended up with partial responsibility for starting IMPACT on our campus, I was both intimidated and excited. I knew that it would be one of those things that would really stretch me from my comfort zone, but be incredibly rewarding.
So one of the first steps in all this was to recruit some African American students who were excited about IMPACT to go to the regional IMPACT conference in Atlanta next month. At first, we were just trying to get a group of students to go. Then, the thought occured to me that WE as staff should go...even though we're not IMPACT staff, even though we're definitely white--both by skin color and culture! But as staff, for every other Campus Crusade conference or retreat we go on, we ask students, "Hey, come with me."
So that's what we're going to do...invite students to come with us to the conference. We really want to communicate to our future IMPACT student leaders that we are in this with them--we want to do all in our power to help them reach the unreached African American peers on their campus. And going to a weekend conference with our students is one way of doing that.
I am so looking forward to this conference, mid-January, even if no students from our campus come with us. For once in my life, and I am going to know what it is like to be a minority. I am hoping for a greater love of African American students, and a greater ability to relate to them culturally and be "all things to all people."
Friday, December 18, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
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